Cloud Strife As Compared To Other FF Protagonists & Fei Fong Wong

So a short exchange between me and WK in VMs got me to make this thread.

Said exchange:

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I wanna make a topic about this but I have already made a couple Xenogears topics lately and I do talk about it too much...

Doesn't it seem like Cloud is "out of place" in the FF series? That he has very little in common with any other Final Fantasy protagonist? As we both know, Xenogears was once supposed to be FFVII and it seems they took some of the ideas and concepts from early Xenogears and put them in VII. As a result, Cloud is much more like Fei than Cecil or Squall or any of them.

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I hate to say it but I have to disagree. Cloud's character borrows heavily from Cecil's archetype and his story of self-identity is sort of a strange mishmash of Cecil's journey of redemption and Terra's struggle to find her place in the world.

Granted, I do feel Cloud takes some elements from Fei (Masato Kato did work on both projects as a writer) such as a heavier emphasis on psychological issues and both games play with Disassociation Personality Disorder but I wouldn't go so far as to say that Cloud is necessarily unique from other main characters anymore than they are to begin with. Cecil was the first villain protagonist who turned good, Terra was the first protagonist who struggled with issues about identity, Squall was the first character that players truly got into his head and got to see his complete character, and Tidus was the first character whom the player experienced his early and later incarnations simultaneously through the use of narration and clever use of in median res.

What makes Cloud unique is that he's the Anti-Bartz, Bartz was a nobody who learns that he is a somebody and his heroic deads are sort of a familial destiny. Cloud on the other hand, thinks he's somebody only to learn he's actually nobody, but the point is to give the message that even nobodies can be heroes if they put their minds to it (and get genetically modified by the bad guys to gain super powers).

Fei's story is... well its complicated and I don't want to fill this page with another wall of text to get my point. Still I feel its a good topic and there is nothing wrong with making another Gears thread if you ask me

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First off it should be pointed out that I don't think Cloud was ever considered a villain like Dark Knight Cecil. Even in his false memory SOLDIER Cloud was just that - a soldier. He wasn't going around slaughtering innocents and plundering their crystals. While it's true in the main that he "worked for the bad guys," he never did anything bad for them so i don't see the similarity with Cecil. That's probably because Cecil's whole tale is one of redemption while Cloud has nothing to be redeemed for. He was never a bad guy in either his false memory or reality.

Now onto the reason I feel a greater connection between Fei and Cloud.
Both stories are ultimately one of piecing together a fragmented and forgotten past and discovering who you are from that past. Both of them would obviously rather forget their pasts too as the reason it's all a blank is largely due to trauma. They have Dark and Troubled Pasts they want to move on from. Similarly they both have "a dark half" in them that make them do evil. Sephiroth can control Cloud's "real self" that he has shut away and Id can hijacK Fei's body.

The true climax of both their characters is realizing who they are. One of the best moments in VII is when Cloud removes the helmet and you realize that Shinra Grunt was him all along. And on the XG side, Fei learning what happened to Karen and merging together all his personalities was just as memorable.

Now obviously Wolf is smarter than me in these matters and I'm sure a lot of you are as well. But this was my reasoning for making that initial statement. I'd like to read more walls of text from Wk and anyone else who is interested. :)

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Originally Posted by Forsaken Lover

First off it should be pointed out that I don't think Cloud was ever considered a villain like Dark Knight Cecil. Even in his false memory SOLDIER Cloud was just that - a soldier. He wasn't going around slaughtering innocents and plundering their crystals. While it's true in the main that he "worked for the bad guys," he never did anything bad for them so i don't see the similarity with Cecil. That's probably because Cecil's whole tale is one of redemption while Cloud has nothing to be redeemed for. He was never a bad guy in either his false memory or reality.

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While the player certainly never sees Cloud as the bad guy, it doesn't really stop Barret from flaunting it in Cloud's face from the get go but I agree that Cecil and Cloud's situations are different in that Cecil actually committed terrible acts because his supposedly good kingdom had turned evil, whereas Cloud just happened to work for the villains organization from the get go but one look at VII's world and no one would blame him for the choice.

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Now onto the reason I feel a greater connection between Fei and Cloud.
Both stories are ultimately one of piecing together a fragmented and forgotten past and discovering who you are from that past. Both of them would obviously rather forget their pasts too as the reason it's all a blank is largely due to trauma. They have Dark and Troubled Pasts they want to move on from. Similarly they both have "a dark half" in them that make them do evil. Sephiroth can control Cloud's "real self" that he has shut away and Id can hijacK Fei's body.

The true climax of both their characters is realizing who they are. One of the best moments in VII is when Cloud removes the helmet and you realize that Shinra Grunt was him all along. And on the XG side, Fei learning what happened to Karen and merging together all his personalities was just as memorable.

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I don't disagree with this but I would point out they handle their situations differently. Cloud is not actually aware in the beginning that something is wrong with him, it's only after he's been body snatched by Sephiroth or had a heart to heart with his real self that he begins to question who he really is until Sephiroth breaks him and Tifa finally helps the real Cloud uncover who he is.

Fei on the other hand is well aware that something is wrong with him from the beginning, his search for his identity is something that starts early but Fei is genuinely afraid to learn the truth. Course blacking out only to wake up and find out you murdered countless people and being chased down by a Darth Vader wannabe who wants you to help him destroy god would make most people a bit antsy about finding out the truth.

What's important here is the point of their conflicts because the true kicker about Cloud's story is the revelation that he's an everyman who found himself in extraordinary situation and ultimately became the hero he wanted but never believed he could be. Fei on the other hand is more of a typical hero who embodies The Call Knows Where You Live. Fei's revelations are more dire and go back to traditional themes of discovering heroic divinity or some other nonsense my Lit teacher would try to sell. Fei's story is kind of an allegory for both Gnostic, Hinduism, or Buddhist teachings about breaking the cycle of suffering or ascending past the material realm by finally fulfilling ones divine duty. Fei is trapped in an infinite cycle of suffering through the wheel of reincarnation. In every lifetime Fei runs away from his duty or lets the world corrupt him before he can fulfill his duty, leading to more and more suffering and these sins come back to haunt every future incarnation. Abel failed to stop Cain and his disciples, leading to them to go on and create Solaris, he creates Esmerelda whom Krelian later uses to short cut Deus' resurrection, Lacan's grief created Grahf and set in motion the current world political situation that Fei finds himself in.

Cloud does share similarities to Fei, but I would argue that Fei's story goes beyond his current situation and spans generations of mistakes, hardships, and lost opportunities. In truth, I feel Cloud's real counterpart in gaming is Ashley Riot as both men share the fact that they believe their false personas because neither of them can accept their true identities. Granted Cloud's got some supernatural elements that is helping him along the way, whereas Ashley's issues are largely self-inflicted. Fei also is afraid of who he is but the Fei we know isn't real and unlike Cloud, he isn't based on anyone either. He is an artificial construct that grew to become its own being and unlike Cloud who eventually embraced his true self and returned to it, Fei wins out over his two real selves and becomes the dominate if now complete persona. Ashley interesting enough rejects his true self and decides to embrace his new self because he can live with him better, though this is all left rather ambiguous and this could all be my own interpretation of events.

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Now obviously Wolf is smarter than me in these matters and I'm sure a lot of you are as well. But this was my reasoning for making that initial statement. I'd like to read more walls of text from Wk and anyone else who is interested. :)

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I'm not smarter on these matters, I just waste my free time thinking about this stuff more than any sane person should when I could be putting my mind to better uses.

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Doesn't it seem like Cloud is "out of place" in the FF series?

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No, not when it comes to the main lead role of the heroes, most of the heroes feel sort of like they're stuck within a huge struggle, and they sort of fight and battle to become a better person.

http://i.imgur.com/dho5aYr.gif

Guess you guys are right... Cloud ain't got nothing on Fei.

Don't forget that Cloud doesn't get shot down by his best friend, or that Fei has the decency to disturb a birds nest when he doesn't have other party members around to think badly of him for his actions.

Fei, Fei, Fei, Fei! Fei, Fei, Fei, Fei!

I have absolutely no experience with Xenogears.

It always shocked me when I played Xenogears how many of its ideas shared similarities to FVII, it really explored the concepts that VII only mentioned on the surface. When I read Perfect Works and the Soraya Saga interviews explaining that they had originally pitched it as FFVII, it made a lot of sense.

So obviously I sympathize with FL's analysis more. Cloud and the player are betrayed by who he really is, in a way other FF protagonists never were. It reminds me of Fei and how he actually does these evil things he has no real control over and you question if he is really coming back. I remember feeling an overwhelming sense of loss in both Xenogears and FFVII, that the protagonist was no longer mine and might not come back. Chrono Trigger and, in a different way, Dragon Quest V evoked this feeling as well. Interestingly, these are also some of the most powerful RPGs I've played.

Zidane comes close but he really only had a momentary bout of melodrama, he never actually crosses the line in the way Cloud and Fei did and IX was a tribute game with several nods to FFVII's plot points as it was. So his little "episode" was less Xenogears and more Emogears.

While I agree Square may have toyed with some of these ideas in previous FF games, it's hard to draw comparisons when there's so little there to compare to. Characters in the Nintendo games were very barebones stereotypes, partially due to the relative scarcity of text in those titles. The characters are depicted by the players' imaginations more than they are by the actual game. It wasn't until VII, maybe Chrono Trigger before that, that Square really began getting their hands dirty with characterization and writing casts for the sake of telling a story, rather than drawing pixellated sprites to sell a video game.

I will also note Fei is, bizarrely, a rather stupid main character.

No, this is not an insult to the writing, it was actually handled really well. He regularly says stupid things and comes up with bad plans that other people just kind of shoot down, though it takes a while to set in how dumb he actually is in many regards.

But it's a believable and well written dumb. It's not big or over the top, though it is quite noticable at a certain point, and feels like trout someone would actually say. I wish more games that want to include dumb characters would look to Fei to learn how it's done.


...Yeah, this is about the only chance I would ever have to say this, and maybe the only chance I will ever have to praise a games writing for something like this ever again.

But yeah, Cloud at best took on some very vague version of the Idea's of Fei, but I feel they are largely unconnected.

Huh, really good points. I never realized how air-headed Fei kinda was from time to time, probably because the rest of the cast immediately makes up for his short-comings. And it's amusing to realize those short-comings were purposely, and professionally crafted into his character. So that you don't have this perfect-thinking protagonist that outshines everyone else in the cast making them all secondary or even useless

I can't think of any other video game parallel so this degree, but lately I've been rewatching Avatar: The Last Airbender, and it kinda makes me think of that. All the characters are really well written, and even the main character has some serious flaws, that the rest of the cast isn't shy about pointing out, but also more than make up for in themselves and their ideas

Good storytelling is about the only correlation I could draw between the two though. Or, well, maybe the reincarnation thing. To a degree..