If Cloud was just a lowly Shinra infantry grunt...

Didn't he defeat and kill Sephiroth before he was ever experimented on?

Yes. But that's being generous.He backstabbed Sephiroth when he was getting completely mindbroken. Pretty sure they were all close to death at that point.

Not only is he infused with Mako(which he tells Aerith in the game) but he's also injected with Jenova cells just like Sephiroth, which grant superhuman abilities.

I wonder if newcomers will piece together that he was a Shinra grunt and not a SOLDIER, since the game drops far too many hints to that extent despite not outright stating it.

He got both the standard SOLDIER mako and Sephiroth genes (though it's possible Hojo put sephiroth genes in all SOLDIERs I suppose), plus his unrelenting determination. See: pulling himself down on the masamune and flinging ol' Sephiroth into hell.

because

Defeat is a strong word, it wasn't really a fight.

>not outright stating it
Hojo literally says "you're not a SOLDIER" before getting history nigga'd

After cloud dealt with sephiroth (the real sephiroth), shinras cleanup squad got there, buried the whole incident and handed zack and cloud over to hojo
he did his obsessive experiments on them until zack broke free and freed cloud
they hitchhiked to midgar where zack was murdered outside by shinra forces and cloud, still delirious, took his sword and hid in the slums until tifa found him
she tells him about the avalanche job and that's where the game starts

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Did you even play the game? After he throws Sephiroth into the pit, Hojo takes him and tries to turn him into a Sephiroth clone, which is nearly the same process as infusing SOLDIERs with Mako except they include Jenova cells.

Cloud was the only one of the clones that had a strong enough will to survive without turning into one of those little black hooded fellas. His whole journey to find Sephiroth was his intrinsic instinct to participate to Reunite with Jenova.

So he's actually stronger than SOLDIERs because he's part Jenova.

Yes, but they don't say that Cloud was an infantryman, and the Zack flashback at the end shows Cloud with the SOLDIER uniform which helps to obfuscate the truth. Cloud also tells Tifa that he didn't "finally get into SOLDIER until the war was over". All in all I think it paints the picture that Cloud was some new lowly SOLDIER recruit instead of 1st Class, and Zack's sidekick, but I think it should still come as a surprise to learn he was that random trooper.

>until zack broke free and freed cloud
>they hitchhiked to midgar where zack was murdered outside by shinra forces
Fanfiction

he was protecting his buddy

imagine if aerith remembered zacks name during their chat at the playground
clouds head might have exploded

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The process is the same. Soldiers get mako and Jenova cells. Think of the cells as gene therapy and mako as the food for the cells. Mako alone give you Makonoids and even then who knows if those didn't get Jenova cells since it's body was held nearby.

she knew
she had to have known, she was all mystic and shit
>I want to know the real you

All Cloud ever did was stab Sephiroth in the back. Even in the other retellings, Cloud got the stab in and was on the defensive the whole time until Sephiroth fell into the reactor pit.

I'm almost certain it was mentioned somewhere (the Ultimania book? That old cellphone-only game Before Crisis?), but one of the reasons Cloud failed to get into SOLDIER was because even though he was skilled enough to match a Class3 SOLDIER and the Turks, his body was too weak and initially rejected the Mako infusion treatment that SOLDIER recruits get.
Only after the trauma and and excessive mako poisoning in the Nibelheim basement did Cloud get the glowy eyes and a big buff to his already formidable ability.

youtube.com/watch?v=g_SgvAb8W9M
Crisis Core didn't invent everything, dipshit.

nomura surely isn’t bringing back real sephiroth, cool guy extraordinaire who everyone loves before he was mind broken, as a good guy right? He’s gonna mess with the time jannies and get mindbroken even more than he was the first time.

I'm amazed at how much she talks about Zack on a second playthrough. Like in the date scene, too bad that Cloud doesn't respond since he's literally in denial.
The fact that Zack was so crucial to the story but only shows up in two short sequences, one being hidden, was some great storytelling. It really made you feel like that one character was missing in the story and Cloud is an ersatz of him for most of it.

he'd kebab'd cloud
>don't...
>push...
>your luck...

granted zack would have worn him down, he was limping out of jenovas cell
and cloud was running on pure rage and adrenaline

Crisis Core only ruined it with anime last-stand bullshit

Zack wearing him down is a valid point of view even in the original game despite you only seeing him being served. But Sephiroth's own insanity and hubris is what got to him. He was too distracted admiring Jenova to notice Cloud before it was too late.

Tifa also helped iirc but in the sense that he smacked her around after he killed her dad.

Here’s a question. Why is jenova such a fuckin cunt?

in essence she's just a giant virus, doing what viruses do
it's a stretch to call her biological imperative evil

personally I think Jenova likely didn't even have a human id or ego at all back when it was still an alien. then it started consuming the Cetra and became an unholy distortion of life as the anti-thesis of it. mix in one controlling Sephiroth so many generations later please lets not get into yet another divergent thread about who was in control and bam, psycho super alien that can control and infect anything down to the cellular level

>That old cellphone-only game Before Crisis?
I think that was the one that mentioned that the Turks wanted to extract and protect Zack and Cloud, but they were too late and just watched as some spiky haired dude took down an army and promptly became swiss cheese

Cloud stabbed Sephiroth straight through with the Buster Sword BEFORE he limped out of Jenova's room. And that was after Zack fought him too.

Cloud's body was strong enough, it was his psyche that was too weak, and we saw the results when he had the process done anyway.

No Dudenova to give her the D.
So Jenova became a cat mom, except the cats are whatever living things she crashes into.

if Sephiroth can control her, why not the other SOLDIER members or Cloud?

Why would the Turks go against Hojo?

>Kunsel
Based.

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>why not the other SOLDIER members or Cloud?
We never see a damn thing about any SOLDIER characters in the original, but he does control and fuck with Cloud.

A fucking femcel!

SOLDIER members are mako infused
the dudes in hoods are jenova infused
cloud and sephiroth are both, with the minor detail that sephiroth was infused whilst he was a fetus, and cloud as an adult

Major plot hole in the remake but in the original Cloud couldn't really do much more than swing the sword in the beginning. The grunts posed enough of a threat that could kill him if his sword were not that hulking slab that could dispatch them in one hit.

I'd have to go for the wiki for that because I'm only going by what an user told me a long long time ago. Fuck phones

one quick trip to the lifestream with tifa to finally fix his brain and he was strong enough to not only resist sephys last attempt at control, but omnislash his ass
unless you just waited and did a 22/23 gravity based counter attack, you fucking pussy

I’m only playing ffvii for the first time. Just starting. But why didn’t they just shoot jenova back into space?

All SOLDIER are Jenova cell infused too, the difference is that presumably they meet the Psyche evaluations that keep them stable, whereas all the "Sephiroth Clones" were directly injected with cells from Sephiroth himself. Cloud was susceptible to the cells, but Zack, having already gone through the SOLDIER process and mentally/physically sound, seemingly brushed them off.

the only rocket on the planet doesn't have much cargo room

I remember he says something along the lines of
>weak people like me get lost in the whole process

Fucking hell, just how long is this mobile game? 25 chapters and 2 epilogues for a foregone conclusion?
>Pursuing two escaped research samples that had escaped the Nibelheim Mansion, the Player Turk finds themselves in competition with the Shinra army to locate them. While searching the Nibelheim forest, the Player Turk questions why they are hunting the subjects whom they were partially responsible for imprisoning in the mansion four years previously.
>Coming across the escapees on the beach, the Player Turk discovers they were hunting Zack. Conflicted over their feelings, the Player Turk attempts to do their duty and capture him, but after seeing the extent of damage the experiments have done to Cloud, the Player Turk reports Zack is no longer in the forest and allows Zack to escape, while they return to Nibelheim to investigate the mansion and find Veld poring through the mansion's archives.
>When the fugitives Zack and Cloud are relocated, the Turks attempt a Priority-S retrieval attempt, but are unable to acquire them before the Shinra military ambushes them.
So the Turks are butt buddies with spikey boy

She definitely knew. She knew Elmyra's husband died when he was halfway across the planet she never even met the guy. I'm sure she would be aware that they guy she liked died right outside the city

he still has the mako eyes which is also why people don't just call his bluff since he at least looks the part of a SOLDIER

I don't understand why so many people keep saying he got his powers from mako. He got it from a combination of mako and jenova, just like the rest of SOLDIER. Hell, mako probably didn't really do shit. It was either just a binding agent, shit to aid with the reunion theory, or put there as a red herring.

And endless topic of debate, but the Ultimania makes it "official" that Sephiroth's will is the one in charge. He may not be directly controlled, but Sephiroth fucking snapped and is still doing as "mother" wants.
If there was any sort of battle over wills when the two of them fell into the Lifestream, Jenova probably ceded to Sephiroth willingly and let him call the shots because he has the means and power to summon Meteor.

Well Crisis Core established that decently well too, even if without enough emphasis. The cutscene before the final battle outright had Reno and Rude flying around under Tseng's orders to try to find Zack and missed him.

>brushed them off
Eh, I thought that was why he was still so weakened from being tortured. He was more able than cloud in the moment, but ultimately what lead to him being gunned down. Otherwise he probably could have taken them all out.

Based. I hope Luxiere makes an appearance just so we can beat his ass.

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I really should emulate Crisis Core sometime. Maybe try Dirge too?

>dirge too
Really just watch a cutscene movie on YouTube if you’re that interested in what happens. Or read a wiki thread about it.

sephiroth was unique in that he received jenova cells whilst he was a fetus
that's presumably why there's a gulf between him and the next best SOLDIER

it's all tied into vincents story

Yes but why did you reply to me with this

Guess that's a valid reason in the original game. But then in the original game everyone was far less retard strong and superhuman compared to everything that followed.

I mean, Crisis Core is playable, but it's pretty clunky and not great. Zack is pretty much the only highlight of the game unless you like girls like Cissnei too. Dirge of Cerberus on the other hand is a subpar shooter and easily the most retarded plotline in all of Final Fantasy besides maybe X-2.5

I could chat about ff7's plot for days

If I beat a boss battle with a party member unconscious. Do they not get exp??

>just like the rest of SOLDIER
he wasn't just like the rest of soldier

You do know we were discussing Cloud right? Not Sephiroth.

Original or remake? Original for sure, they lose out.

no exp or ap for ko'd party
good for challenge runs

Remake.