It is the distant promise

So some Twitter discussion made me finally find the words for a Problem I have with FFVII's place in our culture-- the fandom, the sequels/spinoffs, etc., not the game itself. I might have complained about this to some of you before, in worse words, but I don't think I've done so here?

This will of course spoil the hell out of the game, which... I can see the temptation to declare that this doesn't matter for a game that old, but I also like introducing people to old games, so maybe it does?

Anyway, Cloud has this place in the video game fandom-- and at the very least in Advent Children (though, I was encouraged to hear, not so much in Crisis Core), spinoffs/cameos, and loads of marketing material-- as a bad-ass lone warrior. And... he's really, really not.

Game-mechanics-wise, of course, Cloud is practically identical to every other character in FFVII, aside from Aeris. Yeah, they're all sorta fighter-leaning, but he can easily be your healer, glass cannon, or weird materia combo user, as the situation demands.

Story-wise, if you'll recall, he was never in SOLDIER. He failed to achieve his childhood dream of being an elite fighter, he gets motion-sick, and he has significant mental health issues. When he accomplishes anything, it's always working together with others.

And all this is actually pretty cool! It's totally in my file of good things about FFVII that people forget, along with Tifa and Aeris' friendship and the tragedy of Sector 7. Of course I can't say what the creators intended, if the materia system was supposed to hint that Cloud isn't what he seems, etc., but Cloud is visually a callback to that time in Dragon Quest V when you have to come to terms with how you're not the legendary hero for once, just as Sephiroth is a callback to Dragon Quest's first sympathetic (and non-static) antagonist, so maybe? At any rate, I don't think they were trying to do a simple warrior hero revenge story.

FFVII does have a lone badass in Sephiroth, of course. Who is Cloud's childhood hero, and wow does the Nibelheim flashback do a good job making you feel Cloud's admiration through game mechanics, which is what makes the part later with the fire that everyone remembers have so much impact. But the truth is that Sephiroth barely appears on screen in the present-- Jenova's body wears his shape as it walks north, dropping pieces of itself and collecting/slaughtering followers who are like Cloud but worse, but we see Sephiroth more in Cloud's mind than we do the body that fell into that reactor and eventually mutates into his Bizarro and "Safer" forms.

This game is the story of Cloud's hero worship fucking up his life, and him learning to get over it. That is a pretty cool story to tell in a video game. But when all you import from the game is an excessively bad-ass Cloud in an undending battle with Sephiroth-- with the recollection that Sephiroth killed a woman Cloud liked, but of course with very little recollection of what that woman did while she was alive-- it feels gross. Like how seeing a display of shitty products stamped with mockingjay logos feels now, when it's clear that the irony of imitating the Capitol is remaining pretty lost on people.

Gamers, FFVII was warning you about the dangers of doing that thing you're now doing with it (and honestly that you started doing with it almost immediately). Knock it off.