#Remake series laser focused on making him as unstable as possible from the get go and I love that

[rin-hanarin]

There's something I really appreciate about Cloud Strife, and it's the fact that he's mentally falling apart half the time he's on screen. Like, people sometimes lose the plot because of 20 years of cameos and spin-offs, or love making him out to be this broody tough super soldier, or just straight up make a self insert out of him because they can't relate to him at all, but the fact that he's having all kinds of episodes every other game hour and it's not some cryptic subtext just speaks to me for some reason.

Cloud is this "legendary video game protagonist" and whatnot, but his actual story is so much more complex and choke-full of vulnerability and really down to Earth human weakness, amplified by a cocktail of all sorts of trauma and crazy alien influences. My guy is so not okay and is so messed up in the head he accidentally dooms the planet to a literal fiery death from a meteor strike, and it's just so different from what you might expect from him, considering how famous of a character he is.

I really respect the fact that he was written this way back in 1997, and the way his unstable, fractured sense of self is even more apparent in Remake series makes me really happy and really unsettled in equal measure. The OG game couldn't convey how bad it was within its graphics, but I think I managed to grasp what they were going for the first time I played it, and it is heartbreaking, with or without clear presentation attached to it.