i got the impression from the lifestream flashbacks that Cloud was always unsure of himself... it's in that incident that he shakes off the Zack persona and takes on his real personality which was always a bit negative in some way, of course the poor translation of the original game may have something to do with the english speaking worlds misunderstanding of Clouds personality... i believe the AC persona may be more like what it was originaly intended to be, but of course the U.S. entertainment industry was afraid of anything negative, like sad endings and the lead character being less than heroic untill more recently...