Cloud was edgy in the 2kewl4u way a character like sonic acts like.
This was a stem of his personality being melded by zack and overcompensating it to the nth degree. He's not just confident, he's a fuckin super star and you're not worth his time. He's not just a little witty with depreciating humor, everything he says has to be aloof and edgy. He IS a try hard because he's an empty shell projecting as hard as he can. He's in denial and confused and doesn't sort that shit out until he falls in the lifestream with tifa. By that point he's developed relationships with the rest of the crew and takes all the lessons he's learned from them and zack to make himself a proper personality. This is why AC cloud is such a kick in the dick.
Remake cloud is almost the opposite. He's insulated, autistic, can't even talk to people. It's not that he doesn't want to, he literally can't come up with a response.This is because zack isn't with him in the remake, future sephiroth is. Cloud reverts back to his autistic childhood self, biggs even mentions how much of a kid he's like. The few times genuine malice comes out of cloud like trying to kill reno and johnny are sephiroth's influence.
I am seeing a disturbing amount of people recently who think that humanity was definitively wiped out in the end. At the very least it is open to interpretation, and I'm aware Kitase seemed to imply in one interview that he believed humanity was gone by Red's post-credit scene, but I find it impossible to believe that the game would take our characters, who struggled through so much and already have dealt with so much death, and wipe them out as well, destroying the narrative weight of their accomplishements. The laughter of human children at the end as the screen fades to black says it all, and it does it subtly, but seems to me too many people confuse the ending because they don't pick up on that or have just forgotten. Really, after Aeris and Red XIII, both surrogates for "muh nature," find our characters at least worthy of friendship and protection, the planet kills them and all of humanity? By what logic then us planet any better than Sephiroth who, after all, only has a problem with humanity for betraying the Cetra? All our characters struggles and accomplishments to protect what matters to them, Marlene, Shera, Ester, Priscilla, Elmyra, and the countless other innocents, not to mention the memories of everyone lost like Zack, all of that is deemed not worthy of saving by the planet. Humanity needs to die. It is irredeemable, the planet, the great moral arbiter, deems it so.
I for one refuse to believe something so nihilistic. Fuck spinoffs or even the fucking devs. This is art and I get to choose what I take from it. I choose hope, and if the children's laughter at the end isn't reason to do so then I don't know what is.
I think it's even more likely humanity survived considering the conversation about the White Materia and Holy. One of the characters goes on about Aerith's prayer to the planet - or materia or lifestream - was a plea to spare humanity. At least, I think that's what I read. But then there's the chaotic aspect of the planet's will. In any case, I'm with you on the ending not being completely bleak.
Jason Jackson
A running theme is death isn't the end necessarily. You become one with the lifestream and reincarnated. Sometimes games have sad, unfair endings. Like terranigma.
Do I believe they died? All we can say for sure is everybody abandoned the fuck out midgar, but AC retcons even that. I'd say there are humans still out there around the globe. We're survivors. The ambiguity comes from what the fuck happened to midgar. Was everybody there killed? Does it matter?
Mason Brown
What do you mean argue over it? Like if it was Sephiroth or Jenova? Their goals are the same so it’s irrelevant.
Nathaniel Richardson
It feels like they’re the same thing though. Cloud is actively trying to come off as aloof and edgy in remake, but that’s the only context he understands how to act in because he’s got fucking mental issues. Being autistic in most social situations makes sense since he literally has no idea what a cool SOLDIER man would do in those situations Ironically, I think that’s what I like about Roche: I can imagine EXACTLY how he’d respond in normal social situations that Cloud finds himself in
Logan Peterson
What if humanity got reincarnated on Red XIII's puppers?
Christopher Edwards
The epilogue shows Nanaki and a bunch of little nanaki’s running around. Obviously humans survived if they did. Then it shows a run down Midgar. I always took that as humanity stopped Mako generation and moved out of Midgar because it was a plague to the planet, also it was obliterated by meteor.
Elijah Jackson
Good man.
If death doesn't matter, why should be be sad Aeris or Zack died? I get your point, having influence after death is a key concept, but the original FF7 did not have Advent Children's "no one's ever really gone" shtick. Cloud said it all: Aeris will no longer laugh, or cry, or get angry. That kind of life is over for her. It was a sacrifice, not just some state transfer that doesn't really matter one way or another.
Sure, you return to the lifestream when you die and your existence is sort of perpetuated in a cosmic sort of way. But if it was all the same either way, then all the sacrifices and death would mean nothing in the grand scheme of things, which I think goes against the core concept of the game. It's not about the game being "fair" or it being what I want to happen, it would be that the ending of humanity being wiped out would directly undo much of the narrative purpose of the story. No way around it. I give 1997 Square credit enough to not do that.
