Why cloud strife is awesome

Aerith and Zack will never come back to life, and Cloud will never again have a mind without mako poisoning or relive the years of his adolescence that were stolen by Hojo. Even though he will learn to sift through his mind, finding the perspectives that are Cloud and pushing the Zack-thoughts to the side, there is no such thing as a perfect, blank-slate Cloud he can use to remake his personality.

Cloud will never be able to fully escape his own insanity. Perhaps this is the thing that I find most inspiring about Cloud. He stands out to me not because he can beat Sephiroth, but because he can go toe-to-toe with the darkness in his own mind and come out relatively functional. Like Cloud, I too have done battle with the dark parts of my mind, with insecurity, self-doubt, anxiety, depression, and one thing I am learning is that it never really goes away.

There may be days, months, or years that I feel better than others, more confident, less vulnerable, but the dark thoughts are always lurking in the background. I am getting better at accepting my emotional reactions without letting them take me for a ride.

We use cookies on our website to give you the most relevant experience by remembering your preferences and repeat visits. Cecil was also the first protagonist who is not fully human, as he later finds out that he is part of the Lunarian race of moon people. The easy-going protagonist of Final Fantasy V, Bartz Klauser, may not be your typical stoic and brave hero, which even he himself admits.

He would much rather explore the world and not be the one saving it. This is due to the fact that his parents died early on, affecting him as he wanders the world alone. As destiny has it, Bartz was meant to be a Warrior of Light, protector of the realm and a role his father also held in his youth. A character like Bartz shows that anyone can be a hero, and that even ordinary people can do extraordinary things in life. Experimented on at an early age due to her lineage as a half-human and half-Esper, Terra was mind-controlled to be the perfect soldier by the Gestahlian Empire.

This all changed when a fateful battle with a rogue Esper led her to join the Returners, an anti-empire resistance group. Throughout the game, Terra is haunted by trauma, with the experiments conducted on her giving her amnesia.

As her Esper powers emerge, she fears that she is no longer human and flees from her friends. Eventually, she makes peace with her lot and accepts her lineage, using her powers to bring peace to the world. This all changes when he meets Rinoa Heartily, the foil to his cold demeanor and love interest throughout the game. He soon learns what it means to trust people, be a good friend and leader, and how to love again. With Cloud being the main protagonist of the title, it should be no surprise that he was the first character who was properly designed for the game.

So, it's only fitting that the character designed right after him was none other than Aerith herself. However, what might be more surprising is the identity of the third character that was officially designed for Final Fantasy VII — Barret Wallace! After it was decided that Sephiroth would have long and silver hair, the designers thought of giving Cloud slicked-back black hair to serve as a contrast to his rival.

However, due to Cloud's position as the protagonist, the character designers decided to give him blonde spiky hair in order to make him more notable as a main character. That being said, one good thing that can be said about Cloud's early design concepts is the fact that none of it really went to waste. After all, elements of this early design were used to create the character of Angeal Hewley instead in Final Fantasy VII: Crisis Core , which ended up being a rather smart move from the designers.

During the development of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children , the creators joked about how Cloud's Buster Sword was so massive that he would ideally have to carry the sword around in parts to wield it efficiently. In Final Fantasy VII Remake , Cloud's strength is in his raw damage output and his versatility, able to switch back-and-forth between the agile Operator Mode and the more offensive Punisher Mode that allows him to counterattack. In both titles, Cloud has the best all-around stats.

Cloud was born August 11, [1] [3] [4] in the mountain village of Nibelheim to Claudia Strife ; his father died when Cloud was very young.

Bitter as a result, Cloud developed a superiority complex, believing her friends were stupid, and that he was more mature and different from them. He did not harbor any dislike for Tifa, but suspected she disliked him.

Tifa's mother died when Cloud was nine. Nibel , taking her friends along. Unbeknownst to them, Cloud followed her, and when she took a misstep, he tried to catch her but they both fell. Though he was unharmed, Tifa was severely injured and in a coma for seven days. Her father, Brian Lockhart , blamed Cloud and forbade him from approaching her. He too blamed himself for failing to save her, harboring guilt in the form of increasing anger at himself, leading him to start fights for little to no reason.

Tifa encouraged Cloud that he could make the newspapers and asked him to promise to save her should she ever find herself in trouble. Out of embarrassment and shame, he lost contact with everyone from Nibelheim. Though he is unsuccessful, their lives were saved by the Player Turk. During the incident Cloud displayed impressive sword skills for a regular infantryman.

The two bonded upon learning they were both "backwater experts". Hollander , former Shinra employees who since turned against the company. When Hollander attempted to escape, Cloud briefly captured him, though Hollander broke free.

At the age of sixteen, Zack and Cloud met again on September while protecting the city of Junon from Genesis's attack. On September 22 of that year, Cloud returned to Nibelheim along with Zack and Sephiroth to investigate a damaged mako reactor on Mt. Nibel, and with Tifa as their guide through the mountains.

Cloud hid his identity from the townspeople, ashamed of his failure to join SOLDIER, though he did visit his mother who asked about his new life with Shinra. When the expedition reached the reactor, Sephiroth discovered Professor Hojo 's experiments with humans mutated into monsters dubbed makonoids , and Jenova , whom Sephiroth mistakenly believed to be his mother.

Genesis knocked Cloud out and Tifa helped him back into town, though still did not discover his identity. Sephiroth locked himself in the Shinra Manor 's basement for several sleepless days, immersing in Professor Gast Faremis 's writings, and discovered his dark past, as well the secrets regarding the Cetra and the promised land. On October 1, Sephiroth destroyed the village on a rampage, fueled by his newfound hatred for humanity.

Cloud witnessed his mother's death in the ensuing fire, and rushed back to the reactor to confront Sephiroth, finding both a gravely wounded Tifa and a barely conscious Zack.

Cloud picked up Zack's Buster Sword, caught Sephiroth offguard in the reactor core, and impaled him before attending to Tifa. When a wounded Sephiroth emerged from the reactor core, Cloud attacked him, intent on avenging the deaths of his mother and all the townspeople Sephiroth had killed. Though impaled on Sephiroth's Masamune , Cloud summoned the strength to overpower him with sheer willpower.

Using the katana as a lever, Cloud lifted Sephiroth up and hurled him into the mako pit below before collapsing. Cloud and Zack, as well as other survivors in the town with the exception of Tifa who was rescued by Zangan before Shinra arrived , became Professor Hojo's test subjects. Injecting them with Jenova's cells and exposing them to mako, Hojo attempted to test his Jenova Reunion Theory on them, turning them into Sephiroth Clones , people whose wills can be over-ridden by Sephiroth's.

Hojo labeled the two failures, placed them in a cryogenic sleeping state, and left them in their pods in the Shinra Manor basement. Four years later December 19, Zack broke out of his confinement and helped a vegetative Cloud escape, giving him a SOLDIER uniform to wear as his old clothes were soaked with mako. Due to the experiments, Cloud was mentally broken, weak and delirious, but during their journey following the escape from Nibelheim, Zack told the unresponsive Cloud about his life and his plans for both of them to become mercenaries in Midgar.

Though Cloud was unable to participate in the events, he was present when Zack defeated Genesis. After almost a year of running, the pair arrived outside Midgar in September The Shinra forces caught up and Zack fought to defend both Cloud and himself against overwhelming numbers.

Zack was gunned down , but the Shinra forces ignored the catatonic Cloud. Cloud regained some awareness and crawled over to Zack, who entrusted the Buster Sword to him, telling his legacy will live on inside Cloud, before dying. Buster Sword in hand, Cloud trudged off towards Midgar.

As a result of the trauma caused by the Nibelheim Incident, his mako poisoning and subsequent infusion of Jenova cells , and Zack's death, Cloud impressed Zack's memories and fighting abilities into his own. In late , Tifa found Cloud mumbling deliriously at the Sector 7 slums train station.

Though he became lucid upon recognizing her, his inconsistent memories and mental breakdowns concerned her. Tifa recruited him as a mercenary to her group, an Avalanche cell led by Barret Wallace , while concealing information about his past due to doubting her own memories, wishing to find the truth herself.

In " No. Throughout the mission, Cloud claimed to be working only for money, angering Barret and leading him to question his loyalties. Despite having a brief mental breakdown at the reactor core, Cloud planted the bomb and the mission was successful.

Following a dispute with Barret, who suspected Cloud remained loyal to Shinra, Cloud attempted to walk out. Barret led another mission to destroy mako reactor 5 , this time with Tifa joining them, in " To the No.

Though they reached the core and planted the bomb, President Shinra confronted the group after revealing they were caught in a trap. Cloud was separated from the others and fell into the Sector 5 slums church , commencing " The Woman at the Church ". Cloud formally met Aerith Gainsborough , a flower merchant whom he had ran into in Sector 8 after the first bombing. Cloud agreed to become her bodyguard in exchange for a date after Reno , a Turk, attempted to capture her.

Cloud stayed at the house of her guardian, Elmyra Gainsborough , who believed he was dangerous and asked him to go back to Sector 7 without telling Aerith. However, Aerith came with him regardless.

On Aerith's advice, Cloud disguised himself as a woman so the two could enter the Don's mansion, and the three interrogated him. Corneo revealed Shinra had tracked Avalanche's base to Sector 7 and planned to destroy it by dropping the Sector 7 plate, before ejecting the three to the sewers through a trap door.

Tifa requested Aerith find Barret's daughter, Marlene Wallace , and keep her safe, while she and Cloud ran up the pillar. Even after battling the Turks they were unsuccessful in saving the pillar, as the Turks destroyed Sector 7 and captured Aerith. The group was captured and imprisoned, commencing " The Nightmare Beginning Anew ", when Cloud awoke to find the prison doors open and the guards dead.

Rufus Shinra , the new head of the company, arrived shortly after, and Cloud battled him to buy the others time to escape, with Tifa staying behind to help. The group met in an inn in Kalm , where Cloud told his version of what happened on the day Nibelheim was burned, with himself in Zack's place. Tifa remained mostly silent, and Barret struggled to believe the account. Cloud and the group sneaked into the city, where he saved a girl named Priscilla from a monster, and they were allowed to stay over.

In his sleep, a voice told Cloud to ask Tifa about the time he returned to Nibelheim, but Tifa dodged the question when he did.

The pursuit of Sephiroth led them through North Corel and the Gold Saucer , where after resolving an incident, the manager Dio gave Cloud and his friends a buggy to assist them in their travels, and Cait Sith joined their cause. The buggy broke down, forcing the group to stay at Red XIII's hometown, Cosmo Canyon , where the Elder Bugenhagen revealed critical information about the planet and the lifestream , and how Shinra's drilling for mako affects them.

Sephiroth appeared in the basement of the Shinra Manor, and alluded to a "reunion" Cloud should attend. Nibel and visited Rocket Town where they escaped on Cid Highwind 's plane, only to have it shot down by Shinra soldiers.

Adding Cid to their roster of allies, the group returned to Gold Saucer and claimed the Keystone from Dio. Cloud and the group stayed the night when the trolley to the park broke down, during which Cloud went out with a party member. Cait Sith, who turned out to be a Shinra spy, stole the Keystone and turned it over to Tseng of the Turks, but blackmailed the others to let him stay with them. Traveling to the Temple of the Ancients , the party found Tseng gravely wounded after a struggle with Sephiroth.

In the heart of the temple, Cloud found Sephiroth, who revealed his plan to perform the Ultimate Black Magic, calling down Meteor to deal a critical wound to the planet to absorb the lifestream that would well up to heal it, becoming god.

Sephiroth left as Cloud discovered the temple itself is the Black Materia needed to summon Meteor. Cait Sith sacrificed his body though he had a backup available to get the Black Materia, but Sephiroth returned. The Jenova cells inside Cloud from Hojo's previous experiments on him gave Sephiroth control over him, causing Cloud to hand over the Black Materia, then attack Aerith, before his friends knocked him out.

While unconscious, Aerith appeared to Cloud in a dream, telling him to let her handle Sephiroth. When Cloud regained consciousness, Barret and Tifa told him Aerith had left, and assured they would be there to help him should he have another breakdown. Cloud resolved to find Aerith and guided them as he knew where she had gone, first through the Sleeping Forest to the Forgotten City. He found her praying on an altar in the center of the city's underground complex.

Cloud approached her with the Buster Sword and attempted to attack her, until his friends yelled at him to stop. Sephiroth descended from above the altar and killed Aerith , impaling her with his Masamune. Cloud mourned her passing with the party and rested her body in the lake, despairing at how Sephiroth could control his actions.

Arriving at the North Crater , the party regained the Black Materia and Cloud gave it to a party member as he did not trust himself. Sephiroth appeared and showed Cloud a partial vision of what really happened at Nibelheim, revealing Zack's presence in his stead, but not Cloud's true part in the events. Shinra arrived and Professor Hojo revealed his Jenova Reunion Theory that involved Cloud, and how his drive to hunt for Sephiroth was fueled by the Jenova cells in his body summoning him to the "reunion".

The shock of Cloud's fabricated past shattered his mind, as he came to believe he was created by Hojo and that even his name and memories of being Tifa's childhood friend belonged to someone else. Sephiroth used an illusion to convince the party to give the Black Materia back to Cloud, who promptly handed it to Sephiroth's true body that was stored in the crater. Cloud apologized to Tifa for not living up to the "real" Cloud, and the crater shook, Cloud falling into the lifestream.

Surfacing at Mideel a week later, Cloud had been subjected to intense mako poisoning within the lifestream, leaving him paralyzed and incoherent, in a state similar to when Zack rescued him from Shinra Manor a year before.

Tifa found him and stayed to care for him while the rest of the party fought Shinra. Amid trying to ascertain Cloud's true memories, they became aware of the thoughts and feelings each was holding. Restored to his true self, Cloud resumed command of the Highwind and the party, no longer plagued by an inner voice, and finally accepting the truth about who he is.

While in the escape pod on their way back to the planet, the party marveled how small the planet was in the vastness of space, reaffirming their conviction to protect it.

With Bugenhagen's guidance they discovered Aerith had summoned the ultimate white magic spell, Holy , before Sephiroth killed her. Holy could stop Meteor, but Sephiroth was holding it back. Cloud and the party stopped Diamond Weapon and defeated Hojo. Preparing to go to the North Crater to stop Sephiroth, Cloud asked everyone to leave and find a reason to fight. Tifa remained as she had nothing left outside of the party and her quest, and she and Cloud spent a night under the stars.

Cloud led a descent through the Northern Cave to the depths of the planet to confront Sephiroth. After Sephiroth's new god-like form was defeated, his mind was sent back into the lifestream. Cloud, sensing Sephiroth was not dead, followed him mentally into the lifestream and defeated Sephiroth in a final duel of wills.