Zidane is an ok lead. He sticks to the role he was given from the beginning(rogue/thief/actor); and even in the deviations in the later parts of the story(when he shows his true emotions/feelings instead of the facade of roguishness) he is a rogue turned hero(or boy turned man) and plays the part perfectly. Zidane is a wonderful caricature of a teenage boy who searches to define himself(in this case by finding home) and adopts a masquerade of arrogance and frivolity to hide his weakness. As a side note it's a much better caricature than Cloud or Squall were. Squall had to have been a parody. I can't be made to believe that his character was written as a realistic portrayal of a young man's angst seeing as how he is such a poor imitation. And FF7's storyline is so unnecessarily convoluted that Cloud becomes a contrivance. Instead of his character molding the story as part of Cloud himself, the mosaic story turns Cloud into a mismatched grouping of shattered images. It's hard to correlate pre-FF7 leads, b/c their stories weren't as elaborated, and were 2-dimensional, and they wouldn't be fair comparison. Tidus I won't even mention because of the laugh. Oh, that hideous laugh.