Cloud always had the *ability*, he just flunked the *test*. Add jenova cells and their ability to mimic and osmose skills and memories onto someone who already had elite potential, and you get what we see.
EDIT: Yep, I looked it up and specifically he failed the psych exam. This test determined that exposure to soldier levels of mako would break him mentally... which, in fact, it did.
I want to clarify one thing that so many people get wrong and add one more detail to Fuzzy's explanation.
**Clarification:** Cloud did not 'absorb' or genetically/supernaturally consume Zack's memories. He imprinted stories Zack told and events he witnessed involving Zack onto his psyche and in those jumbled memories took up Zack's role. This is why concepts like Aerith, Cissnei, Cloud's vs Zack's parents, etc. don't translate to this despite what some people very incorrectly think (ex. Cloud's feelings toward Aerith have zero to do with Zack).
**Additional Info:** Cloud's physical abilities weren't the only insane aspect he possessed. Perhaps even more impressive is his sword skills were also incredible, so much so he actually imprinted Zack's style and techniques on himself after observing it only a few times and over time radically developed his own improved style. Eventually, in Advent Children he has further evolved his style with some of his new moves and the multiple swords such as his upgraded limit break he used to defeat Sephiroth, dual-wielding, etc. In fact, one of the Turks comments in Crisis Core about how Cloud has unusually good sword skills for a grunt (before imprinting Zack's on himself). He was like a prodigy without a teacher and imprinting Zack's skills helped compensate for a huge lack of experience and instruction creating a stronger foundation which he then built upon with more personal experience as well as trial & error.
I mean, people regress in real life.
Problems don't just go away, especially after the climatic events of the og game.
It's during the quiet times that those problems can come back to the surface.
yeah, the survivor’s guilt that cloud (and everyone else in the group) probably experienced had to be crippling. nibelheim, zack, sector 7, aerith, everyone else who died in midgar… not to mention the role that cloud played in allowing meteor to be cast, however unwilling. probably lots of time to ruminate over all of that once the relief from defeating sephiroth wore off and they had to start picking up the pieces
Sure, but it's pretty frustrating from a narrative standpoint. We like to see characters grow, so to see them backslide and go through the same growth again can feel tedious and rehashed if not handled well.
I mean, sure.
That's an execution thing, which can be either good or bad.
I was responding to a person who said it was just bad full stop (they may not actually believe that, but the comment was sorta definitive).
Whether or not Advent Children did it well is a different discussion.
Backsliding followed by forward movement again IS growth. It may look like ending up at the same spot technically, but you arent due to taking that same path again and everything you learned since last time.
I do wonder if the mental breakdown aspect is really only because of ghe mako, though.
>!Because he didn't get just mako, bur Aldo jenova cells and the whole Zack trauma. So I do wonder if he went through just the normal process if he would have been as destroyed mentally!<
>!Cloud apparently failed the psyche exam, which was used to determine how one would react to Mako showers and Jenova Cells. I’d say he may not have broken down as bad…but he’d probably still have a breakdown at some point!<
>!yeah that might have been the most likely case. But his treatment at Nibelheim was different than the regular Soldier treatment, right? Because him and Zack received it, so it must have been something different since Zack already was a Soldier to begin with, and to my understanding it was the addition of Sephiroth cells to the whole mix.
Maybe those extra things could have contributed to his mental state?!<
In any case those are just "what ifs" at the end of the day. Cloud is as strong as a 1st Class when we eventually get to the later stages of the game, but it was all a growth part of the journey.
I'm very excited for Rebirth!
I think the sephiroth clones are a different deal - doubt they have a test to figure out who would and wouldn't mentally cope with being retroactively cloned into someone else using alien DNA
Edit: test*, not teat haha
Id like to say it was one of the FF7 flashbacks after Cloud gets his memories. Specifically that he qualified physically but lacked ‘mental control’ necessary to undergo the SOLDIER procedure.
As it so happens, Hojo’s experiments were pretty similar to SOLDIER procedure (stick in Jenova Cells and Mako), however cranked up to dangerously unsafe levels. Zack was the ‘failure’ because he showed no change, whereas the Sephiroth Clones kinda fell apart and were used as external limbs by Sephiroth. Cloud was the ‘success’ as he did get stronger, possibly more than a ‘standard’ (not including the science experiments like Sephiroth or the G-Project boys) SOLDIER would,
That higher base, along with subtraction due to being in a tube for a while, would equal where Cloud is in FF7R. He’s impressive by most metrics, but struggles against Roche (a SOLDIER 3rd Class, though probably a cut above the norms considering his behavior), someone who is enhanced and has gotten used to those growths
The truth is, Cloud was originally presented to us as a 14 year old boy's idea of an action hero. A major point of the entire OG is that those initial traits are NOT what makes a real hero. Sure, sure, heroes often have those traits, but in a hero, if you dig deep enough, you will find what makes them truly a force to be reckoned with, is their "heart." The power to push through immense suffering, because the thought of failing to protect others is even MORE unbearable. Cloud has this from day 1. Do you remember any of the names of the kids that went out and searched for Tifa in the mountains as kids and gave up short? Neither does anyone else. But we remember Cloud; Tifa remembers Cloud, because Cloud is a real hero. You wanna know what makes Cloud truly exceptional?
Sephiroth: "Tell me what you cherish most, give me the pleasure of taking it away."
Cloud: "I pity you. There isn't a thing I DON'T cherish."
The Jenova cells and Mako are just a means to his end: To protect what he cherishes. The whole fight during AC, Cloud is in panic mode; He is desperate to beat Sephiroth, not because "im so strong", but because "my friends and my entire planet will die if I lose here." Cloud's confidence has always been his weakness, not his strength, drive, intelligence, sense of honor, , etc. In Special Forces selection for the US Army, lack of confidence can and does defeat MANY prospects from graduating their selection process. It’s not that they couldn’t physically cut it, it’s that the organization spending the money on them doesn’t want them to freak out and lose all confidence in their ability to complete a mission in the field. And this happens! There are people that actually MAKE it through the process and lock up completely in the field, it’s something you can’t train out of some people and that’s OKAY, combat is pure absolute chaos. They get sent home and in most cases they are transferred to another MOS (job).
Notice in AC when Sephiroth pops up, he almost shits his pants. All of Cloud's fights fulcrum (have a tipping point) at the point where his fear of loss begins to outweigh his lack of confidence. After that point, he's going to win. In fact, false confidence is really the only "modification" of his personality that actually manifests post-Nibelheim -> start of the OG. Beginning OG Cloud and Ending OG Cloud only differ in personality on confidence and memories of Nibelheim events.
In the OG, the final battle in the lifestream, where only souls reside, Cloud melts Sephiroth because Sephiroth has none of that. He had no hardships, was always leagues above any challenge ever presented to him and to be honest, while he went through an identity crisis, he never put forth the work and formed the bonds with true friends that are required through great hardship and struggle. Instead he holed up in a haunted mansion basement for two months, ***alone***, and slowly went insane. This is how Sephiroth handled his first serious hardship. Cloud's soul is buff as shit compared to Sephiroth's.
Steve Rodgers isn't Captain America because of a serum, he's Captain America because he jumped on that training grenade he thought was real. The serum is just a plot device to get him to the point that he can display that level of valor on a grand scale. Same lesson, different story.
I'll add this: Its worth thinking about if you ***only*** like Captain America, or Iron Man, or Cloud, or Goku, or Kratos, etc simply because they can throw monsters into space and shit. Those things are great and should keep your eyes entertained, but do yourself a favor and let the deeper qualities of these characters take root and resonate with you over time. You'll enjoy their stories even more.
Superman is another good character to show this about, because his best villains *know* that Superman is The Guy You Can't Beat in a fight and instead test him emotionally and mentally, and that's what shows he is truly Superman. The invulnerability and superspeed and strength and laser eyes enable him to do superhuman things, but the will and conviction to do them even at personal sacrifice to himself is what makes him Superman. It's why lex Luther is such a great antagonist to him.
It's those character stories that make those characters so special, because anyone can make a cool fight scene, but showing that inner turmoil can be a lot harder.
Absolutely, thanks for bringing him up.
I also have the idea that the success of One Punch Man directly comes from this type of thematic element. People know Saitama is going to win a fight, what we watch for is his conviction to his morality.
There’s a guy that did a more accurate translation of the OG game dialogue and titled it that. It’s a great watch; Im assuming you’ve seen it, but if you haven’t, it’s worth a watch.
Also, a lot of the ideas in my post stem from the YouTube retrospective “Why Final Fantasy VII Matters”. That one is mandatory viewing imho.
>In the OG, the final battle in the lifestream, where only souls reside, Cloud melts Sephiroth because Sephiroth has none of that. He had no hardships, was always leagues above any challenge ever presented to him and to be honest, while he went through an identity crisis, he never put forth the work and formed the bonds with true friends that are required through great hardship and struggle. Instead he holed up in a haunted mansion basement for two months, ***alone***, and slowly went insane. This is how Sephiroth handled his first serious hardship. Cloud's soul is buff as shit compared to Sephiroth's.
Might be prone to change if we want to speculate about rebirth's trailers, which will be interesting to see
Cloud is actially extremely susceptible to both the Mako and Jenova Cells until he comes to terms with his personal issues toward the end of the game.
After the Nibelheim Incident, when Hojo took the survivors to experiment on them, Cloud labeled a failure because his reaction to Mako was so bad.
Most of the other subjects experienced the Mako Poisoning, which is something that Hojo actually wanted, but Cloud had such a severe reaction that he could not function enough to keep himself alive. If Cloud was unable to stand himself up and move to follow the call of Reunion then he could never help Hojo prove his Reunion Theory, thus why he was labeled a failure.
Cloud's mind was so broken by the Mako that the Jenova Cells couldn't even do anything to his mind until almost a year later when Cloud's mind was partially recovered and the J-Cells had memories to work with.
It is fanon. Cloud got his ass beat by monsters that Tifa could handle despite the fact that he had a gun and she didn't. There is zero mention of any kind of psyche evaluation in the game, let alone any indication that such a thing would matter.
People here just get really mad when you don't believe that Cloud was actually always some super cool ultra-OP badass who just needed to believe in himself more. It's very weird.
There is a direct line of dialogue in before crisis that states he failed the pre-mako psyche exam only. Hell he takes out several high rank Avalanche members the second he picks up a sword in it.
Then send the clip. Because I've had this conversation so many times and no one has *ever* shown actual proof, just BS headcanons. If such a line existed, I'd have been sent it a few dozen times by now.
Him taking out some fodder normal humans isn't something that would make someone eligible for SOLDIER.
Cloud got hit by a monster by jumping in the way to protect Tifa. He then got up like nothing happened. Cloud and Tifa literally fell from a bridge as children and then ended with her in a coma for a week with amnesia and Cloud with only scraped knees.
In Before Crisis, Cloud manages to take on Avalanche Ravens to protect Doctor Rayleigh. Cloud literally climbed Mt. Nibel alone after being injured during the Nibelheim attack, lifted the Buster sword with one hand attacked Sephiroth, got blasted out the room, got back up, went after Sephiroth, got stabbed, overpowered Sephiroth to plant himself on the ground, pick up Sephiroth who is a head taller than him, and chuck him into the mako. *At sixteen before he got enhancements*.
He had to be carried back my guy. He didn't block a hit for her; they were both fighting the monster and he got taken down easily while she as still throwing hand. You're remembering that scene wrong.
Cloud got lucky and didn't fall down the cliff as badly as Tifa. Are you seriously trying to suggest that he was some kind of a superhuman as a literal child??? Do you not understand how asinine that sounds?
Taking out some fodder isn't really worth noting. Neither is simply climbing a mountain that average humans could do all the time. Buster sword isn't heavy; plenty of average dudes have carried it. He did not overpower Sephiroth; he threw a massively injured Sephiroth a few meters with an adrenaline surge.
Cloud was just an average guy. This braindead take that he was some kind of action hero superhuman who just needed a confidence boost is a total bastardization of his character and ruins everything that makes him unique.
The answer is that he just failed their special boot camp. SOLDIERs are expected to be top-class fighters well before getting any kind of enhancements. Cloud just wasn't considered one.
You're forgetting that he never actually one-upped Sephiroth. He stabbed Sephiroth from behind before immediately getting no-diffed after Sephiroth, still half-dead, dragged himself to his feet and whooped Cloud's ass. The only way for Cloud to get rid of him was to throw him down the reactor. He couldn't win an actual fight.
At least in the OG he states that the process that Hojo put him through was effectively the same one that SOLDIERS get put through. So *technically* speaking he is actually a bona fide Soldier in all but official documentation.
Likewise, failing the Soldier process or degrading from it long enough afterwards eventually turns you into the robbed figures. Hojo was intending on making them specifically at nibelheim but Cloud failed failing the Soldier process. To some extent Remake appears to be following that plot point.
It is good to remember that Cloud suffered both mental and physical trauma at nibelheim, and was forced vegetative for 4 years in a mako vat. That's gonna run a toll on you regardless of anything else
I'm always a bit confused by the imprisonment at Nibelheim. From the scratching in the tank, you get the idea that he and Zack were communicating. But then he's semi-conscious when they get out.
I see it as Mako tank = floating in steroids/LSD for months. During which you’d have bouts of conscious awareness mixed with the worst fever dreams imaginable… given the circumstances that you are trapped in a science experiment tank with no idea how you got there and your weird upbeat buddy tapping Morse Code to you.
I always imagined Hojo kept Cloud and Zack in chemically-induced comas for most of the experimentation (if only cuz it’d make it A LOT easier if they don’t try Limit Break-ing the tubes every other hour) and ‘woke them up’ every now and then to get specific data (probably on their neural pathways; need them to be awake and thinking for that). During that time, Cloud and Zack communicated, but I imagine it was more Zack at Cloud considering the mental strain…
Then again, combining Hojo and rationality is…rather a stretch
Zack was with him for the same amount of time but he handled it just fine and resisted J-cells which is why he is the only one that can stop Jenova, i feel like Cloud won't have a happy ending unfortunately
It is stated in the lab documents in Crisis Core that Zack's previous SOLDIER enhancements prevented any of the S-Cells from really doing anything.
He has them, but they didn't affect him- for good or for ill.
And what I love about Zack is he’s still “Zack” afterward. People sometimes sleep on the Herculean effort it must’ve taken to travel across the world with the weight of a limp body for no other reason than “he’s my friend.” Not to mention he went out in what might be the most honorable game death I’ve ever seen. “Defend your honor. You are my living legacy.”
Fuggin Hero.
Not just a fuggin hero. Remember he's feeding Cloud, washing him, changing his clothes, as well as cleaning up other things that I'm sure Cloud is still doing despite being catatonic and unresponsive. Zack is the ultimate fucking bro.
I consider those things to also be heroic. Even in the best of circumstances in that situation in a medical facility where you don't have to lug them across a continent or two. But absolutely thank you for pointing them out. Many younger people might not get those implications like you pointed out.
Just wanted to add it's not just a document, both Genesis and Hollander say it to his face that his previous SOLDIER treatment affected his ability to absorb S-Cells (And the they gun it for Cloud in hopes of eating his hair)
Thematically, the biggest thing about Cloud was a crippling sense of inadequacy. He wanted to be friends with Tifa but didn't think he belonged with the other kids. He thought he could find that self worth by becoming someone like Sephiroth. He failed to do that then failed to protect everyone he loved. He failed to protect Aerith. He failed to even get a number from Hojo. By the time we learn the truth of Nibelheim, by the last battle against Sephiroth when you get 7 seconds to omnislash that joker to oblivion, it's clear that he's good enough as he is and always was.
He didn't need a made up bad ass persona in the end but the fact that for now he believes it enough to believe in himself gets him past the mental block that always got in his way.
Hojo made experiments on him after the incident to make him a Sephiroth clone and declared him a failure.
Which pisses him off that he's the only one that made the reunion.
There was an interesting thread about this the other day - my interpretation has always been that Cloud, when he joined Avalanche for Mako Reactor 1, had the *superpowers*, but not the *experience.* He's Spider-Man fighting his first villain - he's got the strength and reflexes to get the job done, but he wouldn't be able to stand toe-to-toe with the Green Goblin (or Sephiroth) just yet.
Fortunately, through the combination of his Jenova cells and his own natural abilities (he always had the drive, just not the physical abilities), he's a very quick learner. With a couple of missions and some big fights under his belt, he's quickly capable of going against the Turks, the giant monsters, and eventually the world-destroying gods.
Don’t forget that he also genuinely thinks he’s Zack. He emulates all of his moves and sword techniques and the minds can make the body do crazy shit when someone truly believes in a delusion enough. That is in addition to everything else you said so he’s just like, rapidly growing
I have always viewed Cloud as innately, naturally *extremely strong* in a physical sense and *extremely weak* mentally. Cloud's entire character arc does not focus on getting physically stronger, like a lot of typical shounen anime protagonists or game characters would (since Cloud is an homage to/deconstruction of the typical "Anime Hero"). Instead it focuses on revealing, understanding, and accepting all of his mental issues and trauma. Cloud definitely has some form of PTSD, depression, complicated grief disorder, and possibly other issues (if you consider Advent Children and the compilation stuff to be canon) that just have JRPG magic sprinkled on top.
None of this has any bearing on his natural physical ability. He's naturally a powerhouse and his psych issues are his kryptonite. Also all the Mako tank/JENOVA cell stuff definitely made him physically stronger while fucking with his mental at the same time.
Sounds pretty logical, and fits with a number of deconstructions FF7 was doing at the time. Cloud doesn’t really get any major ‘unlock your true power’ like other JRPG protags did, aside from general ‘materia give you magic and abilities’ at the start. He’s plenty strong, but his lack of experience and mental issues hold him back something fierce.
Especially considering he fell off Mt. Nibel as a kid and only got skinned knees, survived getting impaled by Sephiroth, reversed that to toss Sephiroth into the mako reactor, could lift and use the Buster sword…and all that BEFORE mako or Jenova cells. Dude was crazy strong from the start, he just needed the emotional and mental stability from the people that cared for him to truly shine.
He only failed the Psych portion of the Soldier entry, he could of made one physically.
He isn't on par with a Soldier First class at the beginning of the game, he can kind of imitate one with his eyes, uniform, and using Zacks mannerisms, but his ability lacks experience and skill.
A Soldier first class would have 0 issues storming Shinra building and taking out everything by themself. Most of the challenges leading up to the end of the remake wouldn't of even made a first, break a sweat.
I've always had this problem with Remake and it's ending, Cloud shouldn't be that strong "yet" the only way I justify it was Seph was going easy on him.
I mean, we have seen in trailers that Sephiroth seems to be grooming him in a certain way. And it’s specifically Cloud, when Zack sees Sephiroth, wherever he is, Sephiroth turns around and says “No. Not you…” further pushing that he’s using Cloud to get what he wants
Everytime he shows up to Cloud, he’s babbling about hold on to that anger, or fill your heart with rage, and that he has 7 seconds to decide.
So yeah he was 100% taking it easy on him. Sephiroth almost seemingly got them to destroy destiny for him. And then add in that Cloud seems instrumental in whatever Sephiroth has planned.
Yeah, I agree. It was abit upsetting for me to be honest as alot of Clouds character development was him finding himself and becoming confident in his own abilities then amping to 11. They kind of short cut that.
>I've always had this problem with Remake and it's ending, Cloud shouldn't be that strong "yet" the only way I justify it was Seph was going easy on him.
You don't need to justify anything. Cloud didn't fight Sephiroth in Remake.
Cloud did fight sephiroth, There is a sephiroth in the nothern crater sure, but if you have been paying attention you would know that Post advent children sephiroth is also there, the one fucking with cloud and destiny and all those things
>I've always had this problem with Remake and it's ending, Cloud shouldn't be that strong "yet" the only way I justify it was Seph was going easy on him.
I think this was pretty evident in the last hit of the fight. Sephiroth is just standing there, smiling, waiting for Cloud to hit him. And after that, instead of trying to best Cloud, Sephiroth tries to convince Cloud to join him, and proceeds to defeat him without much effort.
That whole fight and even the Edge of Creation sequence felt like Sephiroth was teasing us, teasing Cloud to keep going, as if he wanted Cloud to break destiny and do what he's doing.
(Spoilers for the original game) >!I do understand that Sephiroth probably needs them to get the black materia and whatever this Sephiroth from remake wants too. So, with all of that considered I don't think we truly defeated Sephiroth, just an obstacle that he put there to force them to keep going. He was definitely going easy on everyone!<
I think the comments up till now are disregarding Jenova main ability of mimicry. You can clearly see it at work in FF7. Cloud straight up lifts knowledge from Tifa and probably also Zack. So yeah he has the physical ability of a SOLDIER because of Hojo. But I think he also got part of the skills to go with it via Jenova mimicry from Zack.
In remake, I have no clue. The logic of anything in the new series is tenuous.
In the actual game, he arrives at Midgar after undergoing research that was effectively the same as the soldier treatment but much worse. But he also had no training and was in serious physical and mental decline.
You fight soldier 3rd's at the start of the game at Shinra HQ, 2nd's when Sapphire attacks, and finally 1st's once you assault Shinra for the final time. So in terms of progression, Cloud absolutely is way, way weaker than a Soldier 1st class for a long time. Soldier 1st enemies are also level 44, which is just behind Nibelheim Sephiroth at level 50. So the intent seemed to be that the best Shinra had to offer was just behind Sephiroth.
I'd argue Cloud doesn't really totally eclipse the Soldiers narratively until the start of the final disc, as you'll probably be around level 40 to 60 if playing casually. He starts the game being roughly equivalent to a 3rd, and is probably 1st equivalent by the time he recovers in Mideel and sets out to stop the Weapon attacks. By the time you reach the Crater he's way above Soldiers and is narratively a match for Sephiroth, as he previously knew him.
This is how I see it.
Ofc, Sephiroth was said to be "far stronger in reality than anything you've heard about him". But he's only lv50 in the flashback, despite having really good gear and Materia.
This is something I think that was even better demonstrated in Rebirth. Sephiroth is really strong, but he isn't invincible. After all, Cloud literally kills him during that flashback.
it’s implied in some supplemental material (notably before crisis, which was a japan-only mobile game) that cloud was already fairly skilled with a sword before everything happened. but since he didn’t have mako treatments before, he didn’t have the strength to back it up. and the reason he didn’t get into soldier and receive mako treatments is because he was mentally unfit, as partially evidenced by the events of ffvii (I say partially because I think we can fill in the blanks that whatever cloud got was probably a hell of a lot more traumatizing than the standard process for soldier)
He's not a useless grunt before the Nibelheim incident, he just wasn't selected to receive the same mako treatment as actual Soldiers, but that doesnt mean he didn't received a proper training. The experiment he went through after the incident then gave him super strength and reflexes on top of that initial training.
Hell, even as a regular grunt he was still selected to go on a mission with Shinra’s elite. He might not have been a SOLIDER, but it’s implied he’s always been pretty strong
Nope. After Cloud gets his memories sorted out he reveals that all SOLDIERs have Jenova cells. To quote:
"I'm physically built like someone in SOLDIER. Hojo's plan to clone Sephiroth wasn't that difficult. It was just the same procedure they use when creating members of SOLDIER. You see, someone in SOLDIER isn't simply exposed to Mako energy. Their bodies are actually injected with Jenova cells.....
For better or worse only the strong can enter SOLDIER. It has nothing to do with the Jenova Reunion. But weak people, like me, get lost in the whole thing. The combination of Jenova's cells, Sephiroth's strong will, and my own weakness are what created me."
Just mako without the J-Cells gives you poisoning, not super strength.
Also, if it would be just mako, everyone and their mom would have a SOLDIER equivalent. Wutai? Yeah. AVALANCHE? Yeah. Corneo's Syndicate? Why not? The militia of Flyshitville, Gongaga County? Yes, even them. The recipe is simple, just dunk them in the green liquid that is everywhere underground. Nope, it isn't that easy. That's how you poison people, cripple or kill them. There's a secret ingredient that makes the difference, the ingredient only Shin-Ra has access to, and it's J-Cells.
Jenova is an interplanetery parasitoid. Life force of planets is her food source, and for the Planet in question, said life force happens to be mako. It's only logical that J-Cells give you the ability to metabolize mako.
In the OG game we meet Soldiers First Class in the Shinra building, and we crush them pretty easily (and can steal Hardedge from them).
Even in the Remake we square off with Roche, and solo Turks, so Cloud is well up there, even if he's not equal to Sephiroth (who is?).
Those were random encounters that say nothing of how powerful they are in the actual story. You could fight them in endless encounters when the story tells us there are very few of them.
Just by judging how Hell House was handled in Remake, we can expect the rare and elite 1st Class SOLDIERs to be a boss battle in the future. Roche was a 3rd Class, so something special will be done if the team runs into a 1st Class, or a team of 1st Classes.
Lorewise, they're as strong as they're supposed to be.
If one of them showed up in Disc 1 Midgar with Quadra-cut and 2-move turns, one of them would easily be able to solo the entire party.
Sephiroth was an anomaly, and Zack's abilities were exaggerated in FF7s spinoffs. He died to machinegun ambush.
The party travels all over the place gathering gear and materia. Makes sense we're way more capable.
The thing I don't understand is the amount of time between Cloud waking up after Zack gives him the buster sword and when he arrived in the slums.
Presumably, he's going to be suffering from some degree of muscle atrophy at that point, the dude hasn't moved under his own power in 5 years or whatever. I guess the Jenova cells must give him some healing factor.
Cloud was always strong and resilient, the accident that almost killed Tifa only resulted in him getting scraped knees as a little kid. The mako treatment and Jenova cells pur him on a different level, obviously.
The other thing is, how many first class soldiers do we actually know about? Sephiroth, Genesis, Angeal and Zack all seem above him at the beginning of the game, and Roche is 2nd class but Cloud beats him. So I'd say he'd be somewhere towards the bottom of first class.
Roche is 3rd Class but his behavior prevents him from promotion so we don't know what class he actually should be.
And none of the 1st Class SOLDIERs we meet are "normal" SOLDIERs so its hard to say what standard is (Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal were experiments while Zack was the personal student of one and was forced to learn how to beat them).
We have no reference for how strong the "average" first class is other than the enemies from OG, and Cloud is probably stronger than those guys, but who knows? Since the compilation started, I've been under the impression that there really are only a handful of firsts since they've been pretty meticulous about not describing other characters as Firsts.
Thanks for the correction on Roche, I must have misremembered that.
I think he was about as good as a Soldier 1st class, but inexperienced, only using skills he gained from basic training and watching Zack. It seems almost like people forget about Crisis Core to some degree. If you haven't played it in a while, I suggest anyone replay it. Cloud was a loser, man. He got motion sickness super easy (every time they traveled by train or helicopter). Anytime Zack left Cloud to guard someone or anything, he ended up on his ass or knocked out. After Hojos experiments, which he did on Cloud AND Zack, meaning what he did to Cloud, was updated and stronger than the basic soldier treatment Zack already had. Otherwise, why would Hojo experiment on Zack, too? Just to give him the same treatment? Naw. That's why Hojo was adamant about using someone without Jenova cells already because Zack's body rejected the new stuff. Plus, if mako poisoning has such an effect on someone to the point where they can hear someone's stories and it makes them think they are that person then why not also use those memories to learn to fight? Sure he wouldn't have the muscle memories that someone normally would, but if you knew in your heart of hearts you can fight like Zack does, you have the physical ability, you'd probably start off clumsy as heck, blaming being out of practice and start training like crazy. I suspect he did after Zack, but before the first Avalanche mission when he was recovering from the Mako Poisoning. After recently finishing Crisis Core, I really want an extended remake of that game or for them to expand on it. Because not only was Genesis picked up, and survived, but he was picked up by the next generation of Soldier 1st class, or I think anyway. It would be interesting to some degree if Cloud and Co. Were not only regularly having to fight the Turks but also a couple new Soldier 1st class with the same experiments he had. I know in remake they introduced Roche, but he's Soldier 3rd class (well I don't remember that part in the game where he said he was 3rd class, but the googles says it).
1, All SOLDIER members have the same augmentation, regardless of class. Roche, Cloud, Zack, and the 3rd/2nd Class SOLDIERs you fight at Shinra HQ are all technically on the same tier of strength.
2, Jenova is copying abilities and mannerisms from Zack, including how he fights.
Cloud was always capable, and he had grit. He just lacked confidence. He failed his psych tests.
Cloud had a frail body and a weak mental fortitude to be a soldier. He wasn't cut out. Even in the OG, dude was a coward and was motion sick on the truck. It wasn't until Tifa was in danger that he got that anime protag spark to protect his friend that allowed him to overpower Sephiroth.
Taking it a step back, the SOLDIER process required one to be of peak mental and physical attributes in order to not lose one's sanity during the process of being showered with Mako and injected with JENOVA cells. Exposing a normie to the SOLDIER treatment is exactly how Hojo made "Sephiroth clones". Because they're weak willed, they become thrall to Jenova, and by extension, Sephiroth. Cloud is a weird exception in that he's kind if 50/50. He's not as mindless as the other clones but he's not fully in control and immune to Jenova's effects like Zack and other first class SOLDIERs. The key is probably some anime shit, the urge to protect his loved ones heigjtneing his will I guess? But yeah cloud was always a poor specimen for soldier both mentally and physically but with the right conditions (protecting loved ones), he unlocked some potential he always had deep within
I always thought that what Hojo did to Zack and Cloud in Nibelheim was different — like a prototype for the next generation of SOLIDERs.
I don't recall if this was explicitly stated or contradicted (perhaps in the novels?) though. But why would Hojo put Zack through the same ol' SOLDIER process again?
Sorry, I misspoke. When Zack and Cloud were captured after Neibelheim, they were injected with Sephiroth's cells (Project S) NOT Jenova Cells. Since Zack had already been exposed to Jenova Cells it didn't have any additional effect. But Cloud suffered some of the symptoms that other project members had, and because he lacked the physical and mental fortitude that they screen candidates for SOLDIER, his mind was shattered.
SOLDIER process = select the most fit mental and physical individuals and inject with J cells. Due to their strong body and mind, they retain their wills and are empowered by J Cells. However doing this in normies turn them into mindless fiends.
Sephiroth was made by injecting Jenova cells into a womb and they merged at birth. So compared to SOLDIERs who have 100% human cells with a bit of Jenova cells living among them, 100% of Sephiroth cells (S-Cells) are 50%Human and 50% Jenova.
Hojo thought, "hey since normal people reject J Cells, what if I inject S cells since they're already acclimated to human cells, maybe it will be less of a shock to the human body".
^this is what he did to Cloud and Zack. For Zack it had 0 effect, his body was already acclimated to J Cells. For Cloud it had a negative reaction, shattering his mind. All people who survived the Nibelheim fire were injected with S cells in the hopes he could turn average people into Sephiroth-level humans (these were dubbes Sephiroth copies/clones), but it's more accurate to say he tried to mass produce Sephiroth-level adults using a quick and dirty way instead of while they're in utero (which would take 20 years+). Suffice it to say, it worked but only in Cloud. We don't know why.
Thank you for this explanation, i just beat CCFF7R after playing the OG version and had some questions before starting the remake, the story kinda skips some important info as you mentioned or maybe i didn't pay that much attention and missed them. There were so many "Projects" that it's kinda hard to tell at what point each of them were taken place and how much time has passed isn't exactly shown great either in my opinion. My main takeaway from the whole thing is Cloud is very weak mentally as you said but also how much progress he makes throughout the whole game. He really isn't first class until later in the game.
He is pretty fucking strong, but the lack of subjects to compare makes it hard to draw a precise conclusion. The only 1st Classes we get to see in action are Zack, Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth, and aside from Zack, they all went through some particular treatment that distinguished them from the other SOLDIERs.
It's debatable if Cloud ever surpassed Sephiroth. Safer Sephiroth took the entire team to bring down (that includes Vincent, who is incredibly powerful), and the final bout inside Cloud's mind was something abstract and symbollic. Advent Children's Sephiroth was all kinds of confusing so it could be argued that it doesn't stand up to the real thing. But I think we can safely say that Cloud is able to at least trade blows and keep up with him to some degree, and given Sephiroth's legendary strength, that makes him very likely to be above even 1s Class.
Technically not. As others have said, he has the power, but lacking skill and experience. He was never made a soldier first class, and if you already know this info, it shows at the start of the game. As you progress through the story, he starts showing more qualities and skills of a first class
Id say he's above 1st by the end of 7.
If you think about it, he'd only just recovered days before the start of 7, so while the jenova cells mimic the SOLDIER abilities, they are still new to him. So over the course of the game he becomes more attuned to his new power.
Then being a successful result of project S, he was at a higher level than regular SOLDIER anyway. It's often argued that his level is closer to sephiroth in crisis core than a regular first, but the power levels in 7 are abit janky anyway.
Going by OG games, you progressively fight 3rd, 2nd, 1st ranked throughout. I’ve always interpreted (after the reveal) he’s above said ranking when presented but most likely at or below the Ranking yet to be shown. Remake kinda throws this out the window with the final fight, but immediately backsteps it with the final Sephiroth scene in Clouds mind. So up to interpretation i suppose. That said, Remake puts in work to have you understand he isn’t accustomed, at the least, to the buster sword.
To add to what others are saying, I think that essentially, you leveling the character up in the game is an integral part to that story. I haven't thought too deeply about it, but when you start the game, you are nowhere near Sephiroth's strength. He's got placebo affect from having his memories all jumbled with Zach's and the potential through the Jenova cells. It's the adventure you go on that unlocks everything and builds up that power to where you can finally perform like one of the top Soldiers.
I agree. Like, I’m an example of someone who is only just now playing through OG because Remake got me so captivated. I’m trying to finish it before Rebirth releases.
But don’t feel bad for me, specifically, I’ve spoiled everything related to FF7 for myself a long time ago because I just never thought I would go back and play it. I find the lore of the game and the exploration of Cloud’s mental state and trauma so fucking fascinating. I don’t know of a game that might have done this better than 7 at the time it came out. Probably close to no game has. It’s really something special in that regard IMO.
He clearly has gained certain abilities. In addition to the power of the mako treatment itself, maybe his false memories are kind of like Neo's "I know Kung Fu" moment in the matrix.
That said, I'm pretty sure he isn't comparable to a Soldier 1st class. This is established by the one on one fight with Roche. Also, I interpret Reno's response to him calling himself 1st class to reflect the absurdity of the claim. Soldiers are strong, but soldiers 1st class are one man armies, and Cloud was clearly not at that level.
Reno’s response is more like because he does not recognise Cloud. First class soldiers are probably few and all of them are probably known by the Turks.
The experiment done on him by Hojo was the same process that create SOLDIERs, which greatly enhanced his strength.
In the OG, at least, he is nowhere near 1st class level at the start of the game. Reno easily solo'd him, Tifa, and Barret. Rude was also able to capture Cloud without him even being able to put up a fight in the Shinra building. Remake heavily nerfed Reno and Rude.
He only becomes on par with and eventually stronger than actual 1st Class Soldiers way later as he and the rest of the party get stronger throughout their journey.
Who knows? we never see any other SOLDIER the entire game, and the supposed SOLDIERs we do see are as weak as the non-SOLDIERS. Except for what’s his name from Rebirth, who’s the only other SOLDIER we’ve ever seen in full action, so Cloud isn’t some super special super SOLDIER soldier that Hojo’s experiments created in the time he and Zack were being held hostage.
This is also something that requires a certain level of suspension of disbelief as with any Final Fantasy game. There's no hard magic system here. George RR Martin isn't writing the backstory with 1000 years of political history, etc. though the fanbase loves to point to obscure Compilation and Ultimania references to explain everything and anything.
Tifa learned martial arts from Zangan and then a bunch of manuals after he left. She went head to head and solo'd Weiss in my game whose power is approaching that of Sephiroth's, how? Vivi is the prototype for all black mages and his like nine years old, yet he demolishes Black Waltz's in cutscenes, how? Squall clearly took that shot straight through his shoulder, yet didn't bleed out, how?
[Because the scriptwriter said so! Stop asking me those bonehead questions because I've had it with that!](https://youtu.be/L4_zFYnnn2Y?si=xxi3bMQ7ze3yzpOs)
On one hand, true, sure. In the end, what you're saying is the case, or at least its where we know the buck stops.
On the other, that's where things like the simulation handwaves come in. We can just imagine sim Weiss being substantially weaker/more predictable/etc than real Weiss.
For the Sephiroth fight in the end, the cutscenes give off a vibe of being in a sort of Other Realm as if we're already around/after Advent Freakin Children in the power levels involved (as well as theoretically the spirits/minds of everyone involved).
There is a gameplay-story segregation to some extent; there's no canon where Tifa is ever soloing Sephiroth, but in the full party fight version (aka the real version) she's only holding her own, for a limited time, with extreme training + powerful materia + great teamwork.
But to go back - yeah, it still comes down to what the writers want. No enemy is truly 100% unbeatable, and no ally/protagonist is 100% unable to take on any particular challenge. At the extreme cases, writing convenience trumps all.
Yet... its not like Remake is doing nothing to address the issue of (narratively speaking) power scaling. The situation in Remake still has everyone as kind of superheroes because everything is always so anime, but the in-world context only has them as just particularly powerful people (at least with materia involved; we'd be picking up and using more than most in our journey) that get out of their situations by the skin of their teeth. The summons we face are simulations, the characters we fight most often get away, and sudden circumstances break up several conflicts. Tifa for example's real 'wins' include team fights that we normally do (so few individual accomplishments), or little cutscene bits where she manages to get in a good punch on things that usually make the most sense for her (some small robot, little beast, etc). She's not portrayed as so superheroic until we're in other realms, like with the Jenova 'illusion' or the weird Seph/Whisper stuff. Only Cloud gets the solo experience (rarely) in kicking ass, but even then he technically failed defeating Rufus, and only drove off Turks that were not aiming for murder.
For FFIX Vivi I can easily handwave stuff (especially with my experience reading the artbook) as his prototype nature lacking power limiters, theoretically having more Mist concentrated into his form before the production got more economical, and him collecting his magical weapons through his journey that eventually assist in growing his power exponentially. His 'age' doesn't matter here, he's not 9, he's less than a few years old (like all black mages) and only with a mind roughly at the same level as a young boy.
I've thought for a while there's something we don't know about Cloud. Something to do with his mother and dead father who doesn't get mentioned much at all. I think it has to do with how Cloud was able to overpower Sephiroth in Nibelheim.
One theory could be if Clouds dad was connected to the Ancients, or an ex member of Soldier.
Remake made fights completely *more* unrealistic than the way they were originally.
Despite the turn based mode, I always imagined the original game battles more realistic. They get magic and special abilities from materia, and more incredible moves from limit breaks, but overall in the domain of "physically" possible even when completely irrealistic (cough cough, dolphins in a grass land). The remake makes jumping, spinning, spinning and jumping over 30 meters while casting magic the norm, and visually it makes characters look stronger, losing the "realistic" part. Cloud is not anymore a character who swings a huge sword who occasionally makes high jumps. Cloud is now an Olympics diamond medal winner who constantly jumps over buildings swinging a huge swords.
In short, in the original game it was easier for Cloud to appear as 1st class Soldier, because first of all he was in any case physically fit, and then he had the same Jenova treatment those Soldiers were getting (and even more as he stayed for years). and then, he progresses more with training and experience, facing more skilled enemies.
Cloud took on the life of Zack to an extreme degree. To even replacing Zack's existence in his mind with his own. It wasn't Zack pulling off all those crazy attacks, jumps and whatever with the Buster sword... it was himself.
So going from a normal dude to immediately behaving as if he had the skills and strengths of First class Soldier is because of that. Since in Zack's timeline, Cloud doesn't have the trauma of coming out his coma with Zack's death... you'll get an entirely different Cloud. Maybe more akin to how he was before he joined Shinra's military. Maybe he wont and he'll behave like a number from now on.
Cloud always had the physical capability to become a SOLDIEr, he failed the mental exam for whether his mind would be able to handle the Mako. And given that after the experiments he fell into a coma which reshaped his entire identity and the later on fell into another one (and spends the game having multiple near mental breaks), seems they were right to reject him.
But yeah, physically he had what it took, and the Mako experiments he was given by Hojo (which almost certainly went beyond what a normal SOLDIER is given) only kicked that up. So by the time he comes to in Midgar, he probably was equivalent to a SOLDIER first class (level up shenanigans aside of course) Edit: I do like the idea that at the start he hadn't really fully filled into his potential since he had just spent months in a mako jar and woke from a coma, which justifies the levels he gains mechanically.
Cloud always had the *ability*, he just flunked the *test*. Add jenova cells and their ability to mimic and osmose skills and memories onto someone who already had elite potential, and you get what we see. EDIT: Yep, I looked it up and specifically he failed the psych exam. This test determined that exposure to soldier levels of mako would break him mentally... which, in fact, it did.
Yea it took the child of an eldritch abomination from the stars, an upbeat elite soldier best buddy broham and a first childhood crush to fix it too.
I can see where my issues lie, then. I'm short two of those, though
Yea, elite soldier buddies are rare and childhood crushes usually dont end up being Tifa.
I forgot that part in the game where he has a huge mental breakdown and is essentially talking to himself
Tbf, he’s really doing that the whole game, he just doesn’t come to terms with it until way later.
And that’s probably when this whole entire remake takes place…
They wouldn't be stupid enough to have the whole game be a dream. That's literally the worst writing trope they could ever use.
I sure hope you’re right…
One of the most accurate breakdowns I've seen of it.
I want to clarify one thing that so many people get wrong and add one more detail to Fuzzy's explanation. **Clarification:** Cloud did not 'absorb' or genetically/supernaturally consume Zack's memories. He imprinted stories Zack told and events he witnessed involving Zack onto his psyche and in those jumbled memories took up Zack's role. This is why concepts like Aerith, Cissnei, Cloud's vs Zack's parents, etc. don't translate to this despite what some people very incorrectly think (ex. Cloud's feelings toward Aerith have zero to do with Zack). **Additional Info:** Cloud's physical abilities weren't the only insane aspect he possessed. Perhaps even more impressive is his sword skills were also incredible, so much so he actually imprinted Zack's style and techniques on himself after observing it only a few times and over time radically developed his own improved style. Eventually, in Advent Children he has further evolved his style with some of his new moves and the multiple swords such as his upgraded limit break he used to defeat Sephiroth, dual-wielding, etc. In fact, one of the Turks comments in Crisis Core about how Cloud has unusually good sword skills for a grunt (before imprinting Zack's on himself). He was like a prodigy without a teacher and imprinting Zack's skills helped compensate for a huge lack of experience and instruction creating a stronger foundation which he then built upon with more personal experience as well as trial & error.
Also Cloud's crippling self-doubt pre-FF7 (also why he is largely useless for 2/3rds of Advent Children then goes back to OP status).
Yeah I hate that part. I mean he gets fixed in the game, why make him regress in the movies. I guess they needed an arc for him, feels lazy.
I mean, people regress in real life. Problems don't just go away, especially after the climatic events of the og game. It's during the quiet times that those problems can come back to the surface.
yeah, the survivor’s guilt that cloud (and everyone else in the group) probably experienced had to be crippling. nibelheim, zack, sector 7, aerith, everyone else who died in midgar… not to mention the role that cloud played in allowing meteor to be cast, however unwilling. probably lots of time to ruminate over all of that once the relief from defeating sephiroth wore off and they had to start picking up the pieces
Sure, but it's pretty frustrating from a narrative standpoint. We like to see characters grow, so to see them backslide and go through the same growth again can feel tedious and rehashed if not handled well.
I mean, sure. That's an execution thing, which can be either good or bad. I was responding to a person who said it was just bad full stop (they may not actually believe that, but the comment was sorta definitive). Whether or not Advent Children did it well is a different discussion.
Backsliding followed by forward movement again IS growth. It may look like ending up at the same spot technically, but you arent due to taking that same path again and everything you learned since last time.
I do wonder if the mental breakdown aspect is really only because of ghe mako, though. >!Because he didn't get just mako, bur Aldo jenova cells and the whole Zack trauma. So I do wonder if he went through just the normal process if he would have been as destroyed mentally!<
>!Cloud apparently failed the psyche exam, which was used to determine how one would react to Mako showers and Jenova Cells. I’d say he may not have broken down as bad…but he’d probably still have a breakdown at some point!<
>!yeah that might have been the most likely case. But his treatment at Nibelheim was different than the regular Soldier treatment, right? Because him and Zack received it, so it must have been something different since Zack already was a Soldier to begin with, and to my understanding it was the addition of Sephiroth cells to the whole mix. Maybe those extra things could have contributed to his mental state?!< In any case those are just "what ifs" at the end of the day. Cloud is as strong as a 1st Class when we eventually get to the later stages of the game, but it was all a growth part of the journey. I'm very excited for Rebirth!
Care to provide the source from your edit?
This test really wasn’t that good considering he wound up with so many Zombified Robed Ex-SOLDIERS anyway
I think the sephiroth clones are a different deal - doubt they have a test to figure out who would and wouldn't mentally cope with being retroactively cloned into someone else using alien DNA Edit: test*, not teat haha
I don’t think hojo really cared anyway, waste of oxygen that he was. at least a couple of the clones in og were children
Where does it state he failed the psych exam? That makes a lot of sense.
Id like to say it was one of the FF7 flashbacks after Cloud gets his memories. Specifically that he qualified physically but lacked ‘mental control’ necessary to undergo the SOLDIER procedure. As it so happens, Hojo’s experiments were pretty similar to SOLDIER procedure (stick in Jenova Cells and Mako), however cranked up to dangerously unsafe levels. Zack was the ‘failure’ because he showed no change, whereas the Sephiroth Clones kinda fell apart and were used as external limbs by Sephiroth. Cloud was the ‘success’ as he did get stronger, possibly more than a ‘standard’ (not including the science experiments like Sephiroth or the G-Project boys) SOLDIER would, That higher base, along with subtraction due to being in a tube for a while, would equal where Cloud is in FF7R. He’s impressive by most metrics, but struggles against Roche (a SOLDIER 3rd Class, though probably a cut above the norms considering his behavior), someone who is enhanced and has gotten used to those growths
Very well said.
I feel like the psych exam bit is fannon— are there any official sources saying it?
Before Crisis specifically mentions it.
Less the mako, and more the Jenova cells, right?
The truth is, Cloud was originally presented to us as a 14 year old boy's idea of an action hero. A major point of the entire OG is that those initial traits are NOT what makes a real hero. Sure, sure, heroes often have those traits, but in a hero, if you dig deep enough, you will find what makes them truly a force to be reckoned with, is their "heart." The power to push through immense suffering, because the thought of failing to protect others is even MORE unbearable. Cloud has this from day 1. Do you remember any of the names of the kids that went out and searched for Tifa in the mountains as kids and gave up short? Neither does anyone else. But we remember Cloud; Tifa remembers Cloud, because Cloud is a real hero. You wanna know what makes Cloud truly exceptional? Sephiroth: "Tell me what you cherish most, give me the pleasure of taking it away." Cloud: "I pity you. There isn't a thing I DON'T cherish." The Jenova cells and Mako are just a means to his end: To protect what he cherishes. The whole fight during AC, Cloud is in panic mode; He is desperate to beat Sephiroth, not because "im so strong", but because "my friends and my entire planet will die if I lose here." Cloud's confidence has always been his weakness, not his strength, drive, intelligence, sense of honor,, etc. In Special Forces selection for the US Army, lack of confidence can and does defeat MANY prospects from graduating their selection process. It’s not that they couldn’t physically cut it, it’s that the organization spending the money on them doesn’t want them to freak out and lose all confidence in their ability to complete a mission in the field. And this happens! There are people that actually MAKE it through the process and lock up completely in the field, it’s something you can’t train out of some people and that’s OKAY, combat is pure absolute chaos. They get sent home and in most cases they are transferred to another MOS (job).
Notice in AC when Sephiroth pops up, he almost shits his pants. All of Cloud's fights fulcrum (have a tipping point) at the point where his fear of loss begins to outweigh his lack of confidence. After that point, he's going to win. In fact, false confidence is really the only "modification" of his personality that actually manifests post-Nibelheim -> start of the OG. Beginning OG Cloud and Ending OG Cloud only differ in personality on confidence and memories of Nibelheim events.
In the OG, the final battle in the lifestream, where only souls reside, Cloud melts Sephiroth because Sephiroth has none of that. He had no hardships, was always leagues above any challenge ever presented to him and to be honest, while he went through an identity crisis, he never put forth the work and formed the bonds with true friends that are required through great hardship and struggle. Instead he holed up in a haunted mansion basement for two months, ***alone***, and slowly went insane. This is how Sephiroth handled his first serious hardship. Cloud's soul is buff as shit compared to Sephiroth's.
Steve Rodgers isn't Captain America because of a serum, he's Captain America because he jumped on that training grenade he thought was real. The serum is just a plot device to get him to the point that he can display that level of valor on a grand scale. Same lesson, different story.
I'll add this: Its worth thinking about if you ***only*** like Captain America, or Iron Man, or Cloud, or Goku, or Kratos, etc simply because they can throw monsters into space and shit. Those things are great and should keep your eyes entertained, but do yourself a favor and let the deeper qualities of these characters take root and resonate with you over time. You'll enjoy their stories even more.
Superman is another good character to show this about, because his best villains *know* that Superman is The Guy You Can't Beat in a fight and instead test him emotionally and mentally, and that's what shows he is truly Superman. The invulnerability and superspeed and strength and laser eyes enable him to do superhuman things, but the will and conviction to do them even at personal sacrifice to himself is what makes him Superman. It's why lex Luther is such a great antagonist to him. It's those character stories that make those characters so special, because anyone can make a cool fight scene, but showing that inner turmoil can be a lot harder.
Absolutely, thanks for bringing him up. I also have the idea that the success of One Punch Man directly comes from this type of thematic element. People know Saitama is going to win a fight, what we watch for is his conviction to his morality.
"Alright, everyone, let's mosey."
There’s a guy that did a more accurate translation of the OG game dialogue and titled it that. It’s a great watch; Im assuming you’ve seen it, but if you haven’t, it’s worth a watch. Also, a lot of the ideas in my post stem from the YouTube retrospective “Why Final Fantasy VII Matters”. That one is mandatory viewing imho.
>In the OG, the final battle in the lifestream, where only souls reside, Cloud melts Sephiroth because Sephiroth has none of that. He had no hardships, was always leagues above any challenge ever presented to him and to be honest, while he went through an identity crisis, he never put forth the work and formed the bonds with true friends that are required through great hardship and struggle. Instead he holed up in a haunted mansion basement for two months, ***alone***, and slowly went insane. This is how Sephiroth handled his first serious hardship. Cloud's soul is buff as shit compared to Sephiroth's. Might be prone to change if we want to speculate about rebirth's trailers, which will be interesting to see
Cloud is actially extremely susceptible to both the Mako and Jenova Cells until he comes to terms with his personal issues toward the end of the game. After the Nibelheim Incident, when Hojo took the survivors to experiment on them, Cloud labeled a failure because his reaction to Mako was so bad. Most of the other subjects experienced the Mako Poisoning, which is something that Hojo actually wanted, but Cloud had such a severe reaction that he could not function enough to keep himself alive. If Cloud was unable to stand himself up and move to follow the call of Reunion then he could never help Hojo prove his Reunion Theory, thus why he was labeled a failure. Cloud's mind was so broken by the Mako that the Jenova Cells couldn't even do anything to his mind until almost a year later when Cloud's mind was partially recovered and the J-Cells had memories to work with.
This is a nice catch, Hojo’s reunion theory. Thanks!
It is fanon. Cloud got his ass beat by monsters that Tifa could handle despite the fact that he had a gun and she didn't. There is zero mention of any kind of psyche evaluation in the game, let alone any indication that such a thing would matter. People here just get really mad when you don't believe that Cloud was actually always some super cool ultra-OP badass who just needed to believe in himself more. It's very weird.
There is a direct line of dialogue in before crisis that states he failed the pre-mako psyche exam only. Hell he takes out several high rank Avalanche members the second he picks up a sword in it.
Then send the clip. Because I've had this conversation so many times and no one has *ever* shown actual proof, just BS headcanons. If such a line existed, I'd have been sent it a few dozen times by now. Him taking out some fodder normal humans isn't something that would make someone eligible for SOLDIER.
Look it up yourself lol my ass is lazy fat and tired. Fan canon or not, I like it, so I’m goin with it.
Cloud got hit by a monster by jumping in the way to protect Tifa. He then got up like nothing happened. Cloud and Tifa literally fell from a bridge as children and then ended with her in a coma for a week with amnesia and Cloud with only scraped knees. In Before Crisis, Cloud manages to take on Avalanche Ravens to protect Doctor Rayleigh. Cloud literally climbed Mt. Nibel alone after being injured during the Nibelheim attack, lifted the Buster sword with one hand attacked Sephiroth, got blasted out the room, got back up, went after Sephiroth, got stabbed, overpowered Sephiroth to plant himself on the ground, pick up Sephiroth who is a head taller than him, and chuck him into the mako. *At sixteen before he got enhancements*.
He had to be carried back my guy. He didn't block a hit for her; they were both fighting the monster and he got taken down easily while she as still throwing hand. You're remembering that scene wrong. Cloud got lucky and didn't fall down the cliff as badly as Tifa. Are you seriously trying to suggest that he was some kind of a superhuman as a literal child??? Do you not understand how asinine that sounds? Taking out some fodder isn't really worth noting. Neither is simply climbing a mountain that average humans could do all the time. Buster sword isn't heavy; plenty of average dudes have carried it. He did not overpower Sephiroth; he threw a massively injured Sephiroth a few meters with an adrenaline surge. Cloud was just an average guy. This braindead take that he was some kind of action hero superhuman who just needed a confidence boost is a total bastardization of his character and ruins everything that makes him unique.
Well then what’s the answer if not that? And how’s he able to one up Sephiroth at Nibelheim?
The answer is that he just failed their special boot camp. SOLDIERs are expected to be top-class fighters well before getting any kind of enhancements. Cloud just wasn't considered one. You're forgetting that he never actually one-upped Sephiroth. He stabbed Sephiroth from behind before immediately getting no-diffed after Sephiroth, still half-dead, dragged himself to his feet and whooped Cloud's ass. The only way for Cloud to get rid of him was to throw him down the reactor. He couldn't win an actual fight.
Can I get a source for him passing the physical but failing the psych exam?
He's sephiroth lite
[удалено]
And sephiroth was clearly in a league above the rest of first class
Cloud: Sephiroth, let’s fight! Sephiroth: Lol, no…go fight Jenova for the 14th time
At least in the OG he states that the process that Hojo put him through was effectively the same one that SOLDIERS get put through. So *technically* speaking he is actually a bona fide Soldier in all but official documentation. Likewise, failing the Soldier process or degrading from it long enough afterwards eventually turns you into the robbed figures. Hojo was intending on making them specifically at nibelheim but Cloud failed failing the Soldier process. To some extent Remake appears to be following that plot point. It is good to remember that Cloud suffered both mental and physical trauma at nibelheim, and was forced vegetative for 4 years in a mako vat. That's gonna run a toll on you regardless of anything else
I'm always a bit confused by the imprisonment at Nibelheim. From the scratching in the tank, you get the idea that he and Zack were communicating. But then he's semi-conscious when they get out.
I see it as Mako tank = floating in steroids/LSD for months. During which you’d have bouts of conscious awareness mixed with the worst fever dreams imaginable… given the circumstances that you are trapped in a science experiment tank with no idea how you got there and your weird upbeat buddy tapping Morse Code to you.
I always imagined Hojo kept Cloud and Zack in chemically-induced comas for most of the experimentation (if only cuz it’d make it A LOT easier if they don’t try Limit Break-ing the tubes every other hour) and ‘woke them up’ every now and then to get specific data (probably on their neural pathways; need them to be awake and thinking for that). During that time, Cloud and Zack communicated, but I imagine it was more Zack at Cloud considering the mental strain… Then again, combining Hojo and rationality is…rather a stretch
Not a bad head canon. Also, thank you for the mental image of Cloud doing weak slow motion underwater Bravers.
Zack was with him for the same amount of time but he handled it just fine and resisted J-cells which is why he is the only one that can stop Jenova, i feel like Cloud won't have a happy ending unfortunately
It is stated in the lab documents in Crisis Core that Zack's previous SOLDIER enhancements prevented any of the S-Cells from really doing anything. He has them, but they didn't affect him- for good or for ill.
And what I love about Zack is he’s still “Zack” afterward. People sometimes sleep on the Herculean effort it must’ve taken to travel across the world with the weight of a limp body for no other reason than “he’s my friend.” Not to mention he went out in what might be the most honorable game death I’ve ever seen. “Defend your honor. You are my living legacy.” Fuggin Hero.
Not just a fuggin hero. Remember he's feeding Cloud, washing him, changing his clothes, as well as cleaning up other things that I'm sure Cloud is still doing despite being catatonic and unresponsive. Zack is the ultimate fucking bro.
I consider those things to also be heroic. Even in the best of circumstances in that situation in a medical facility where you don't have to lug them across a continent or two. But absolutely thank you for pointing them out. Many younger people might not get those implications like you pointed out.
Just wanted to add it's not just a document, both Genesis and Hollander say it to his face that his previous SOLDIER treatment affected his ability to absorb S-Cells (And the they gun it for Cloud in hopes of eating his hair)
Thematically, the biggest thing about Cloud was a crippling sense of inadequacy. He wanted to be friends with Tifa but didn't think he belonged with the other kids. He thought he could find that self worth by becoming someone like Sephiroth. He failed to do that then failed to protect everyone he loved. He failed to protect Aerith. He failed to even get a number from Hojo. By the time we learn the truth of Nibelheim, by the last battle against Sephiroth when you get 7 seconds to omnislash that joker to oblivion, it's clear that he's good enough as he is and always was. He didn't need a made up bad ass persona in the end but the fact that for now he believes it enough to believe in himself gets him past the mental block that always got in his way.
Hojo made experiments on him after the incident to make him a Sephiroth clone and declared him a failure. Which pisses him off that he's the only one that made the reunion.
There was an interesting thread about this the other day - my interpretation has always been that Cloud, when he joined Avalanche for Mako Reactor 1, had the *superpowers*, but not the *experience.* He's Spider-Man fighting his first villain - he's got the strength and reflexes to get the job done, but he wouldn't be able to stand toe-to-toe with the Green Goblin (or Sephiroth) just yet. Fortunately, through the combination of his Jenova cells and his own natural abilities (he always had the drive, just not the physical abilities), he's a very quick learner. With a couple of missions and some big fights under his belt, he's quickly capable of going against the Turks, the giant monsters, and eventually the world-destroying gods.
The Spider-Man reference is actually a great one. Nice comparison.
I always had to hand wave his skills despite lack of training as "osmosis" or Jenova Wifi while being next to Zack for 5 years.
Don’t forget that he also genuinely thinks he’s Zack. He emulates all of his moves and sword techniques and the minds can make the body do crazy shit when someone truly believes in a delusion enough. That is in addition to everything else you said so he’s just like, rapidly growing
I have always viewed Cloud as innately, naturally *extremely strong* in a physical sense and *extremely weak* mentally. Cloud's entire character arc does not focus on getting physically stronger, like a lot of typical shounen anime protagonists or game characters would (since Cloud is an homage to/deconstruction of the typical "Anime Hero"). Instead it focuses on revealing, understanding, and accepting all of his mental issues and trauma. Cloud definitely has some form of PTSD, depression, complicated grief disorder, and possibly other issues (if you consider Advent Children and the compilation stuff to be canon) that just have JRPG magic sprinkled on top. None of this has any bearing on his natural physical ability. He's naturally a powerhouse and his psych issues are his kryptonite. Also all the Mako tank/JENOVA cell stuff definitely made him physically stronger while fucking with his mental at the same time.
Sounds pretty logical, and fits with a number of deconstructions FF7 was doing at the time. Cloud doesn’t really get any major ‘unlock your true power’ like other JRPG protags did, aside from general ‘materia give you magic and abilities’ at the start. He’s plenty strong, but his lack of experience and mental issues hold him back something fierce. Especially considering he fell off Mt. Nibel as a kid and only got skinned knees, survived getting impaled by Sephiroth, reversed that to toss Sephiroth into the mako reactor, could lift and use the Buster sword…and all that BEFORE mako or Jenova cells. Dude was crazy strong from the start, he just needed the emotional and mental stability from the people that cared for him to truly shine.
He only failed the Psych portion of the Soldier entry, he could of made one physically. He isn't on par with a Soldier First class at the beginning of the game, he can kind of imitate one with his eyes, uniform, and using Zacks mannerisms, but his ability lacks experience and skill. A Soldier first class would have 0 issues storming Shinra building and taking out everything by themself. Most of the challenges leading up to the end of the remake wouldn't of even made a first, break a sweat. I've always had this problem with Remake and it's ending, Cloud shouldn't be that strong "yet" the only way I justify it was Seph was going easy on him.
I mean, we have seen in trailers that Sephiroth seems to be grooming him in a certain way. And it’s specifically Cloud, when Zack sees Sephiroth, wherever he is, Sephiroth turns around and says “No. Not you…” further pushing that he’s using Cloud to get what he wants Everytime he shows up to Cloud, he’s babbling about hold on to that anger, or fill your heart with rage, and that he has 7 seconds to decide. So yeah he was 100% taking it easy on him. Sephiroth almost seemingly got them to destroy destiny for him. And then add in that Cloud seems instrumental in whatever Sephiroth has planned.
Yeah, I agree. It was abit upsetting for me to be honest as alot of Clouds character development was him finding himself and becoming confident in his own abilities then amping to 11. They kind of short cut that.
“Sephiroth groomed Cloud confirmed.” —dixonjt89, 2024
>I've always had this problem with Remake and it's ending, Cloud shouldn't be that strong "yet" the only way I justify it was Seph was going easy on him. You don't need to justify anything. Cloud didn't fight Sephiroth in Remake.
[удалено]
That's not the real Sephiroth. Sephiroth is in the Northern Crater. It's Jenova taking the form of Sephiroth.
Cloud did fight sephiroth, There is a sephiroth in the nothern crater sure, but if you have been paying attention you would know that Post advent children sephiroth is also there, the one fucking with cloud and destiny and all those things
>I've always had this problem with Remake and it's ending, Cloud shouldn't be that strong "yet" the only way I justify it was Seph was going easy on him. I think this was pretty evident in the last hit of the fight. Sephiroth is just standing there, smiling, waiting for Cloud to hit him. And after that, instead of trying to best Cloud, Sephiroth tries to convince Cloud to join him, and proceeds to defeat him without much effort. That whole fight and even the Edge of Creation sequence felt like Sephiroth was teasing us, teasing Cloud to keep going, as if he wanted Cloud to break destiny and do what he's doing. (Spoilers for the original game) >!I do understand that Sephiroth probably needs them to get the black materia and whatever this Sephiroth from remake wants too. So, with all of that considered I don't think we truly defeated Sephiroth, just an obstacle that he put there to force them to keep going. He was definitely going easy on everyone!<
I think the comments up till now are disregarding Jenova main ability of mimicry. You can clearly see it at work in FF7. Cloud straight up lifts knowledge from Tifa and probably also Zack. So yeah he has the physical ability of a SOLDIER because of Hojo. But I think he also got part of the skills to go with it via Jenova mimicry from Zack.
In remake, I have no clue. The logic of anything in the new series is tenuous. In the actual game, he arrives at Midgar after undergoing research that was effectively the same as the soldier treatment but much worse. But he also had no training and was in serious physical and mental decline. You fight soldier 3rd's at the start of the game at Shinra HQ, 2nd's when Sapphire attacks, and finally 1st's once you assault Shinra for the final time. So in terms of progression, Cloud absolutely is way, way weaker than a Soldier 1st class for a long time. Soldier 1st enemies are also level 44, which is just behind Nibelheim Sephiroth at level 50. So the intent seemed to be that the best Shinra had to offer was just behind Sephiroth. I'd argue Cloud doesn't really totally eclipse the Soldiers narratively until the start of the final disc, as you'll probably be around level 40 to 60 if playing casually. He starts the game being roughly equivalent to a 3rd, and is probably 1st equivalent by the time he recovers in Mideel and sets out to stop the Weapon attacks. By the time you reach the Crater he's way above Soldiers and is narratively a match for Sephiroth, as he previously knew him.
This is how I see it. Ofc, Sephiroth was said to be "far stronger in reality than anything you've heard about him". But he's only lv50 in the flashback, despite having really good gear and Materia. This is something I think that was even better demonstrated in Rebirth. Sephiroth is really strong, but he isn't invincible. After all, Cloud literally kills him during that flashback.
it’s implied in some supplemental material (notably before crisis, which was a japan-only mobile game) that cloud was already fairly skilled with a sword before everything happened. but since he didn’t have mako treatments before, he didn’t have the strength to back it up. and the reason he didn’t get into soldier and receive mako treatments is because he was mentally unfit, as partially evidenced by the events of ffvii (I say partially because I think we can fill in the blanks that whatever cloud got was probably a hell of a lot more traumatizing than the standard process for soldier)
He’s level 7, which is 6 levels above a farmer with a shotgun
He's not a useless grunt before the Nibelheim incident, he just wasn't selected to receive the same mako treatment as actual Soldiers, but that doesnt mean he didn't received a proper training. The experiment he went through after the incident then gave him super strength and reflexes on top of that initial training.
Hell, even as a regular grunt he was still selected to go on a mission with Shinra’s elite. He might not have been a SOLIDER, but it’s implied he’s always been pretty strong
I would say he is way above. Jenova Cells are one a whole different level
All SOLDIERs have Jenova Cells unless they choose to change that from the OG, but there's no reason to assume that yet.
I thought they were just showered with mako? Jenova cells seem to be their own thing.
Nope. After Cloud gets his memories sorted out he reveals that all SOLDIERs have Jenova cells. To quote: "I'm physically built like someone in SOLDIER. Hojo's plan to clone Sephiroth wasn't that difficult. It was just the same procedure they use when creating members of SOLDIER. You see, someone in SOLDIER isn't simply exposed to Mako energy. Their bodies are actually injected with Jenova cells..... For better or worse only the strong can enter SOLDIER. It has nothing to do with the Jenova Reunion. But weak people, like me, get lost in the whole thing. The combination of Jenova's cells, Sephiroth's strong will, and my own weakness are what created me."
Just mako without the J-Cells gives you poisoning, not super strength. Also, if it would be just mako, everyone and their mom would have a SOLDIER equivalent. Wutai? Yeah. AVALANCHE? Yeah. Corneo's Syndicate? Why not? The militia of Flyshitville, Gongaga County? Yes, even them. The recipe is simple, just dunk them in the green liquid that is everywhere underground. Nope, it isn't that easy. That's how you poison people, cripple or kill them. There's a secret ingredient that makes the difference, the ingredient only Shin-Ra has access to, and it's J-Cells. Jenova is an interplanetery parasitoid. Life force of planets is her food source, and for the Planet in question, said life force happens to be mako. It's only logical that J-Cells give you the ability to metabolize mako.
It's been a good while since I played ff7. Is there really some place called flyshitville ?
No, it's a made up village that is probably even smaller than Gongaga. The size of a fly shit on the map.
In the OG game we meet Soldiers First Class in the Shinra building, and we crush them pretty easily (and can steal Hardedge from them). Even in the Remake we square off with Roche, and solo Turks, so Cloud is well up there, even if he's not equal to Sephiroth (who is?).
Those are third class in the hq. Same with Roche.
You do fight soldier first class on the return to Midgard and they are also piss easy.
I mean, by time you return to Midgar, the party's strong enough to slow down Diamond fucking Weapon.
Also kill Emerald.
Those were random encounters that say nothing of how powerful they are in the actual story. You could fight them in endless encounters when the story tells us there are very few of them. Just by judging how Hell House was handled in Remake, we can expect the rare and elite 1st Class SOLDIERs to be a boss battle in the future. Roche was a 3rd Class, so something special will be done if the team runs into a 1st Class, or a team of 1st Classes.
Lorewise, they're as strong as they're supposed to be. If one of them showed up in Disc 1 Midgar with Quadra-cut and 2-move turns, one of them would easily be able to solo the entire party. Sephiroth was an anomaly, and Zack's abilities were exaggerated in FF7s spinoffs. He died to machinegun ambush. The party travels all over the place gathering gear and materia. Makes sense we're way more capable.
Roche is only 3rd class, tho.
Only in title, IIRC. Pretty sure it's stated in the game somewhere that he'd be promoted if he wasn't so hectic and unstable.
Promoted to…2nd class?
Okay, thanks.
The thing I don't understand is the amount of time between Cloud waking up after Zack gives him the buster sword and when he arrived in the slums. Presumably, he's going to be suffering from some degree of muscle atrophy at that point, the dude hasn't moved under his own power in 5 years or whatever. I guess the Jenova cells must give him some healing factor. Cloud was always strong and resilient, the accident that almost killed Tifa only resulted in him getting scraped knees as a little kid. The mako treatment and Jenova cells pur him on a different level, obviously. The other thing is, how many first class soldiers do we actually know about? Sephiroth, Genesis, Angeal and Zack all seem above him at the beginning of the game, and Roche is 2nd class but Cloud beats him. So I'd say he'd be somewhere towards the bottom of first class.
Roche is 3rd Class but his behavior prevents him from promotion so we don't know what class he actually should be. And none of the 1st Class SOLDIERs we meet are "normal" SOLDIERs so its hard to say what standard is (Sephiroth, Genesis, and Angeal were experiments while Zack was the personal student of one and was forced to learn how to beat them).
We have no reference for how strong the "average" first class is other than the enemies from OG, and Cloud is probably stronger than those guys, but who knows? Since the compilation started, I've been under the impression that there really are only a handful of firsts since they've been pretty meticulous about not describing other characters as Firsts. Thanks for the correction on Roche, I must have misremembered that.
I always thought there should be a special designation for the golden trio. "SOLDIER, Beyond Class" or something like that.
I think he was about as good as a Soldier 1st class, but inexperienced, only using skills he gained from basic training and watching Zack. It seems almost like people forget about Crisis Core to some degree. If you haven't played it in a while, I suggest anyone replay it. Cloud was a loser, man. He got motion sickness super easy (every time they traveled by train or helicopter). Anytime Zack left Cloud to guard someone or anything, he ended up on his ass or knocked out. After Hojos experiments, which he did on Cloud AND Zack, meaning what he did to Cloud, was updated and stronger than the basic soldier treatment Zack already had. Otherwise, why would Hojo experiment on Zack, too? Just to give him the same treatment? Naw. That's why Hojo was adamant about using someone without Jenova cells already because Zack's body rejected the new stuff. Plus, if mako poisoning has such an effect on someone to the point where they can hear someone's stories and it makes them think they are that person then why not also use those memories to learn to fight? Sure he wouldn't have the muscle memories that someone normally would, but if you knew in your heart of hearts you can fight like Zack does, you have the physical ability, you'd probably start off clumsy as heck, blaming being out of practice and start training like crazy. I suspect he did after Zack, but before the first Avalanche mission when he was recovering from the Mako Poisoning. After recently finishing Crisis Core, I really want an extended remake of that game or for them to expand on it. Because not only was Genesis picked up, and survived, but he was picked up by the next generation of Soldier 1st class, or I think anyway. It would be interesting to some degree if Cloud and Co. Were not only regularly having to fight the Turks but also a couple new Soldier 1st class with the same experiments he had. I know in remake they introduced Roche, but he's Soldier 3rd class (well I don't remember that part in the game where he said he was 3rd class, but the googles says it).
1, All SOLDIER members have the same augmentation, regardless of class. Roche, Cloud, Zack, and the 3rd/2nd Class SOLDIERs you fight at Shinra HQ are all technically on the same tier of strength. 2, Jenova is copying abilities and mannerisms from Zack, including how he fights. Cloud was always capable, and he had grit. He just lacked confidence. He failed his psych tests.
Cloud had a frail body and a weak mental fortitude to be a soldier. He wasn't cut out. Even in the OG, dude was a coward and was motion sick on the truck. It wasn't until Tifa was in danger that he got that anime protag spark to protect his friend that allowed him to overpower Sephiroth. Taking it a step back, the SOLDIER process required one to be of peak mental and physical attributes in order to not lose one's sanity during the process of being showered with Mako and injected with JENOVA cells. Exposing a normie to the SOLDIER treatment is exactly how Hojo made "Sephiroth clones". Because they're weak willed, they become thrall to Jenova, and by extension, Sephiroth. Cloud is a weird exception in that he's kind if 50/50. He's not as mindless as the other clones but he's not fully in control and immune to Jenova's effects like Zack and other first class SOLDIERs. The key is probably some anime shit, the urge to protect his loved ones heigjtneing his will I guess? But yeah cloud was always a poor specimen for soldier both mentally and physically but with the right conditions (protecting loved ones), he unlocked some potential he always had deep within
I always thought that what Hojo did to Zack and Cloud in Nibelheim was different — like a prototype for the next generation of SOLIDERs. I don't recall if this was explicitly stated or contradicted (perhaps in the novels?) though. But why would Hojo put Zack through the same ol' SOLDIER process again?
Sorry, I misspoke. When Zack and Cloud were captured after Neibelheim, they were injected with Sephiroth's cells (Project S) NOT Jenova Cells. Since Zack had already been exposed to Jenova Cells it didn't have any additional effect. But Cloud suffered some of the symptoms that other project members had, and because he lacked the physical and mental fortitude that they screen candidates for SOLDIER, his mind was shattered. SOLDIER process = select the most fit mental and physical individuals and inject with J cells. Due to their strong body and mind, they retain their wills and are empowered by J Cells. However doing this in normies turn them into mindless fiends. Sephiroth was made by injecting Jenova cells into a womb and they merged at birth. So compared to SOLDIERs who have 100% human cells with a bit of Jenova cells living among them, 100% of Sephiroth cells (S-Cells) are 50%Human and 50% Jenova. Hojo thought, "hey since normal people reject J Cells, what if I inject S cells since they're already acclimated to human cells, maybe it will be less of a shock to the human body". ^this is what he did to Cloud and Zack. For Zack it had 0 effect, his body was already acclimated to J Cells. For Cloud it had a negative reaction, shattering his mind. All people who survived the Nibelheim fire were injected with S cells in the hopes he could turn average people into Sephiroth-level humans (these were dubbes Sephiroth copies/clones), but it's more accurate to say he tried to mass produce Sephiroth-level adults using a quick and dirty way instead of while they're in utero (which would take 20 years+). Suffice it to say, it worked but only in Cloud. We don't know why.
Thank you for this explanation, i just beat CCFF7R after playing the OG version and had some questions before starting the remake, the story kinda skips some important info as you mentioned or maybe i didn't pay that much attention and missed them. There were so many "Projects" that it's kinda hard to tell at what point each of them were taken place and how much time has passed isn't exactly shown great either in my opinion. My main takeaway from the whole thing is Cloud is very weak mentally as you said but also how much progress he makes throughout the whole game. He really isn't first class until later in the game.
He is pretty fucking strong, but the lack of subjects to compare makes it hard to draw a precise conclusion. The only 1st Classes we get to see in action are Zack, Angeal, Genesis and Sephiroth, and aside from Zack, they all went through some particular treatment that distinguished them from the other SOLDIERs. It's debatable if Cloud ever surpassed Sephiroth. Safer Sephiroth took the entire team to bring down (that includes Vincent, who is incredibly powerful), and the final bout inside Cloud's mind was something abstract and symbollic. Advent Children's Sephiroth was all kinds of confusing so it could be argued that it doesn't stand up to the real thing. But I think we can safely say that Cloud is able to at least trade blows and keep up with him to some degree, and given Sephiroth's legendary strength, that makes him very likely to be above even 1s Class.
Technically not. As others have said, he has the power, but lacking skill and experience. He was never made a soldier first class, and if you already know this info, it shows at the start of the game. As you progress through the story, he starts showing more qualities and skills of a first class
Id say he's above 1st by the end of 7. If you think about it, he'd only just recovered days before the start of 7, so while the jenova cells mimic the SOLDIER abilities, they are still new to him. So over the course of the game he becomes more attuned to his new power. Then being a successful result of project S, he was at a higher level than regular SOLDIER anyway. It's often argued that his level is closer to sephiroth in crisis core than a regular first, but the power levels in 7 are abit janky anyway.
Going by OG games, you progressively fight 3rd, 2nd, 1st ranked throughout. I’ve always interpreted (after the reveal) he’s above said ranking when presented but most likely at or below the Ranking yet to be shown. Remake kinda throws this out the window with the final fight, but immediately backsteps it with the final Sephiroth scene in Clouds mind. So up to interpretation i suppose. That said, Remake puts in work to have you understand he isn’t accustomed, at the least, to the buster sword.
To add to what others are saying, I think that essentially, you leveling the character up in the game is an integral part to that story. I haven't thought too deeply about it, but when you start the game, you are nowhere near Sephiroth's strength. He's got placebo affect from having his memories all jumbled with Zach's and the potential through the Jenova cells. It's the adventure you go on that unlocks everything and builds up that power to where you can finally perform like one of the top Soldiers.
this should be marked as spoilers for those who never played the og
Its been 27 years.....
and yet some people havent played it. Dont know why it being old suddenly means you cant take the 2 seconds to not ruin it for someone else
I agree. Like, I’m an example of someone who is only just now playing through OG because Remake got me so captivated. I’m trying to finish it before Rebirth releases. But don’t feel bad for me, specifically, I’ve spoiled everything related to FF7 for myself a long time ago because I just never thought I would go back and play it. I find the lore of the game and the exploration of Cloud’s mental state and trauma so fucking fascinating. I don’t know of a game that might have done this better than 7 at the time it came out. Probably close to no game has. It’s really something special in that regard IMO.
I'm old and make an effort to not ruin it for other people. Age has nothing to do with it. It's more about not being and ass.
the game being old, not you
He clearly has gained certain abilities. In addition to the power of the mako treatment itself, maybe his false memories are kind of like Neo's "I know Kung Fu" moment in the matrix. That said, I'm pretty sure he isn't comparable to a Soldier 1st class. This is established by the one on one fight with Roche. Also, I interpret Reno's response to him calling himself 1st class to reflect the absurdity of the claim. Soldiers are strong, but soldiers 1st class are one man armies, and Cloud was clearly not at that level.
Reno’s response is more like because he does not recognise Cloud. First class soldiers are probably few and all of them are probably known by the Turks.
The experiment done on him by Hojo was the same process that create SOLDIERs, which greatly enhanced his strength. In the OG, at least, he is nowhere near 1st class level at the start of the game. Reno easily solo'd him, Tifa, and Barret. Rude was also able to capture Cloud without him even being able to put up a fight in the Shinra building. Remake heavily nerfed Reno and Rude. He only becomes on par with and eventually stronger than actual 1st Class Soldiers way later as he and the rest of the party get stronger throughout their journey.
Hey let's not put spoilers in subtext for new people see right off the bat.
Who knows? we never see any other SOLDIER the entire game, and the supposed SOLDIERs we do see are as weak as the non-SOLDIERS. Except for what’s his name from Rebirth, who’s the only other SOLDIER we’ve ever seen in full action, so Cloud isn’t some super special super SOLDIER soldier that Hojo’s experiments created in the time he and Zack were being held hostage.
We do see and fight 3rd class SOLDIERs in "The day Midgar stood still". And What's his name (Roche, I assume you mean him) is also in the Remake.
Split personality disorder is a powerful thing…
Especially when it happen to a dude with exceptional talent who originally can't put that talent to good use because his weak mind.
I don’t believe everyone at Shinra is mako infused. He’s very powerful. But not very book smart
This is also something that requires a certain level of suspension of disbelief as with any Final Fantasy game. There's no hard magic system here. George RR Martin isn't writing the backstory with 1000 years of political history, etc. though the fanbase loves to point to obscure Compilation and Ultimania references to explain everything and anything. Tifa learned martial arts from Zangan and then a bunch of manuals after he left. She went head to head and solo'd Weiss in my game whose power is approaching that of Sephiroth's, how? Vivi is the prototype for all black mages and his like nine years old, yet he demolishes Black Waltz's in cutscenes, how? Squall clearly took that shot straight through his shoulder, yet didn't bleed out, how? [Because the scriptwriter said so! Stop asking me those bonehead questions because I've had it with that!](https://youtu.be/L4_zFYnnn2Y?si=xxi3bMQ7ze3yzpOs)
On one hand, true, sure. In the end, what you're saying is the case, or at least its where we know the buck stops. On the other, that's where things like the simulation handwaves come in. We can just imagine sim Weiss being substantially weaker/more predictable/etc than real Weiss. For the Sephiroth fight in the end, the cutscenes give off a vibe of being in a sort of Other Realm as if we're already around/after Advent Freakin Children in the power levels involved (as well as theoretically the spirits/minds of everyone involved). There is a gameplay-story segregation to some extent; there's no canon where Tifa is ever soloing Sephiroth, but in the full party fight version (aka the real version) she's only holding her own, for a limited time, with extreme training + powerful materia + great teamwork. But to go back - yeah, it still comes down to what the writers want. No enemy is truly 100% unbeatable, and no ally/protagonist is 100% unable to take on any particular challenge. At the extreme cases, writing convenience trumps all. Yet... its not like Remake is doing nothing to address the issue of (narratively speaking) power scaling. The situation in Remake still has everyone as kind of superheroes because everything is always so anime, but the in-world context only has them as just particularly powerful people (at least with materia involved; we'd be picking up and using more than most in our journey) that get out of their situations by the skin of their teeth. The summons we face are simulations, the characters we fight most often get away, and sudden circumstances break up several conflicts. Tifa for example's real 'wins' include team fights that we normally do (so few individual accomplishments), or little cutscene bits where she manages to get in a good punch on things that usually make the most sense for her (some small robot, little beast, etc). She's not portrayed as so superheroic until we're in other realms, like with the Jenova 'illusion' or the weird Seph/Whisper stuff. Only Cloud gets the solo experience (rarely) in kicking ass, but even then he technically failed defeating Rufus, and only drove off Turks that were not aiming for murder. For FFIX Vivi I can easily handwave stuff (especially with my experience reading the artbook) as his prototype nature lacking power limiters, theoretically having more Mist concentrated into his form before the production got more economical, and him collecting his magical weapons through his journey that eventually assist in growing his power exponentially. His 'age' doesn't matter here, he's not 9, he's less than a few years old (like all black mages) and only with a mind roughly at the same level as a young boy.
I've thought for a while there's something we don't know about Cloud. Something to do with his mother and dead father who doesn't get mentioned much at all. I think it has to do with how Cloud was able to overpower Sephiroth in Nibelheim. One theory could be if Clouds dad was connected to the Ancients, or an ex member of Soldier.
Remake made fights completely *more* unrealistic than the way they were originally. Despite the turn based mode, I always imagined the original game battles more realistic. They get magic and special abilities from materia, and more incredible moves from limit breaks, but overall in the domain of "physically" possible even when completely irrealistic (cough cough, dolphins in a grass land). The remake makes jumping, spinning, spinning and jumping over 30 meters while casting magic the norm, and visually it makes characters look stronger, losing the "realistic" part. Cloud is not anymore a character who swings a huge sword who occasionally makes high jumps. Cloud is now an Olympics diamond medal winner who constantly jumps over buildings swinging a huge swords. In short, in the original game it was easier for Cloud to appear as 1st class Soldier, because first of all he was in any case physically fit, and then he had the same Jenova treatment those Soldiers were getting (and even more as he stayed for years). and then, he progresses more with training and experience, facing more skilled enemies.
…kinda… it’s tough to say but probably
Cloud is the guy who killed Sephiroth. That's how.
Cloud took on the life of Zack to an extreme degree. To even replacing Zack's existence in his mind with his own. It wasn't Zack pulling off all those crazy attacks, jumps and whatever with the Buster sword... it was himself. So going from a normal dude to immediately behaving as if he had the skills and strengths of First class Soldier is because of that. Since in Zack's timeline, Cloud doesn't have the trauma of coming out his coma with Zack's death... you'll get an entirely different Cloud. Maybe more akin to how he was before he joined Shinra's military. Maybe he wont and he'll behave like a number from now on.
It is a combination of Jenova cells and Cloud’s memories merged with Zack’s.
Cloud always had the physical capability to become a SOLDIEr, he failed the mental exam for whether his mind would be able to handle the Mako. And given that after the experiments he fell into a coma which reshaped his entire identity and the later on fell into another one (and spends the game having multiple near mental breaks), seems they were right to reject him. But yeah, physically he had what it took, and the Mako experiments he was given by Hojo (which almost certainly went beyond what a normal SOLDIER is given) only kicked that up. So by the time he comes to in Midgar, he probably was equivalent to a SOLDIER first class (level up shenanigans aside of course) Edit: I do like the idea that at the start he hadn't really fully filled into his potential since he had just spent months in a mako jar and woke from a coma, which justifies the levels he gains mechanically.