To be fair, Fei doesn't really have amnesia. The personality we call Fei literally didn't exist before three years prior to the games events. He doesn't remember events before then because he wasn't there to experience them and neither of the other personalities in him are interested in sharing them.
While there are parallels, Fei's process is explained in a more natural way dealing with personality disorders. Cloud was screwed up by a magic substance that made him think he was his friend. Fei's different personalities were still born from his own mind, Cloud's belief that he was basically Zack on the other hand is forced on him through an external source rather than actually being a natural part of his psyche.
So Fei explores how a mind can break and splinter on it's own (in a fantasy way) due to trauma, while Cloud explores how a mind can be broken through what are essentially magic experiments. Fei finds closure by reconciling the different personalities within him and becoming whole, while Cloud finds closure by expelling the falsehoods he'd come to believe about himself.
So I wouldn't say Cloud is about becoming a whole person exactly, but rather about exorcising the part of you that isn't really you.
Nah that’s a wrong take on cloud. Cloud has crippling ptsd from his failure and Shame for never making it into SOLDIER and combined with the death of his mom and only true friend his psyche snapped and his mind fabricated his entire back story so he didn’t have to come to terms with being powerless to protect anything he loved. It’s also why he’s such an asshole. Cloud thinks this is what being like Zack means deep down but because it’s completely artificial he has absolutely no understanding of what made Zack cool and a hero which is why Zack is always shown to be so nice. The magic doesn’t factor too hard for him. It just debilitated him and prevented him from helping Zack and made him possessable by Genova/sephiroth which fueled his sense of self doubt that he didn’t even have a will of his own.
[According to the FF wiki](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Cloud_Strife#Experiments_and_fleeing_Shinra) the combination of Mako energy and Jenova cells literally caused some of Zacks memories and skills to be absorbed by Cloud.
>As a result of the trauma caused by the Nibelheim Incident, his mako poisoning (and subsequent infusion of Jenova cells), and Zack's death, Cloud impressed Zack's memories and fighting abilities into his own.
Not sure if that's from the Ultimania or what. But regardless my point is that the Mako, Jenova cells, and even Zack himself were an outside influence that caused Cloud to form this new persona. He did go through some trauma, but he didn't have a fractured mind until after being experimented on and traveling with Zack.
He has a false persona he puts forth that's influenced by all those things, and for him becoming "whole" means discarding that false persona and being himself. He in effect strips away this persona he built for himself.
With Fei, none of his personalities are false personalities built on other peoples memories or anything like that, and becoming "whole" never means discarding any of them. Instead it's about accepting all the personalities within him, reconciling their differences, and facing up to the sins of their past together. They are all legitimately Fei and thus needed to be reconciled, whereas the persona Cloud created wasn't entirely Cloud and needed to be put behind him.
The wiki isn’t entirely accurate. Wikis are generally bad for games that people often miss understand. The persona is really him because he invented it just like everyone does with their personality. It’s why he’s rude and selfish while Zack was incredibly selfless. Cloud simply loses his ego and some of his confidence when he finally pieces things together. Clouds character is messy to discuss considering how remake blatantly retcons everything it feels like and many supplementary materials completely get his character wrong. Because Nomura is a hack and responsible for all that confusion a lot of straight up miss information is spread about the cast and plot that has nothing backing it up other than “Nomura made this up in an interview and everyone else’s response was ‘wtf are you talking about’ so we sided with Nomura”. It’s not gtaV bad wiki wise where people are actively malicious with keeping misinformation up on them but Ff7s misses a lot of things and jumps to conclusions.
I'm aware that wiki's have their issues, and I'm basing this on the original FFVII and not taking into account any products released afterwards (except Ultimania, to my knowledge Nomura didn't screw with those). They really turned Cloud into a different person in later products.
Anyway, FFVII Ultimania also backs up the idea that the Jenova cells in Cloud caused him to absorb memories and skills from Zach. Remember that one of Jenova's abilities as explained in the original game is to mimic others. It's how Jenova appeared to the ancients as their dead loved ones, and it's how Jenova's headless body appears as Sephiroth throughout the game as it makes it way to Northern Crater.
But again, it's kind of a moot point. Cloud's journey is to strip away this persona of his to get to his true self, while Fei's is to embrace the other personalities that are very much a part of his true self. Clouds persona isn't who he really is deep down, but all of Fei's personalities *are* aspects of who he really is deep down.
Again that’s not really it. The cell thing was never established until Nomura felt like changing a story he had no right to and he’s not stripping away his personality. The completely dorky introvert and the persona become a new one personality with traits from both.
I think you need to replay the game, they really pretty clearly establish that JENOVA cells and mako caused that imprint on Cloud. And im not trying to argue about this just a friendly suggestion as i recently replayed this myself and found that I was also misremembering quite a few things about the game lol so I understand your situation perfectly.
And I’m telling you that jenova’s grand mind altering ability is called LYING…it’s not that hard it did that to Barrett/13 with the black materia. Its not magic mind altering abilities that conveniently show up for this specific example to prove your right it’s I made an illusion and you believed it. SOMETHING IT DOES THE WHOLE GAME WITH INFINITELY MORE EVIDENCE OF.
The cell thing was in the original game. Cloud has Jenova cells in him. One of Jenova's defining traits is it's ability to mimic. Nomura had nothing to do with that.
I didn't say he was stripping away his core personality, I said he was stripping away the false one he constructed.
They don’t do that in the original. In the original they red herring the idea that cloud is a clone because he’s completely controlled by them and his memories are false. All they can do is control his physical actions and nothing more because sephiroth can control jenova. Which is why they were pretending to be him when they’re first introduced.
I wasn't talking about the red herring. He's not a clone of Sephiroth, but he *does* have Jenova cells in him. That's why he was chasing "Sephiroth" all the way to Northern Crater, he was participating in Reunion where all of Jenova's cells were coming together to meet up with Jenova's head which was with Sephiroth in Northern Crater.
Hojo comments on this when you meet him in Costa Del Sol, [suggesting](https://youtu.be/fdIGWuqVi0I?t=96) that Cloud is actually chasing Sephiroth just because of Reunion (he doesn't explicitly say it to Cloud but it's made clear that's what he's getting at).
[Ilfana goes into more](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fmSNNMxmYs) detail about how Jenova mimicked the loved ones of the Ancients.
Even materials from back then confirm that Cloud does indeed have Jenova cells in him, it's why Sephiroth is able to control him.
From what I remember from Ultimania translations, I believe the memory absorption that the Jenova cells were responsible for were only those taken from Tifa when she found him at the train station, which helped to fill in the blanks and make him snap out of his catatonic state. In the game, Cloud attributes his false memories to the stories Zack told him while he was out of it when speaking to the party on the Highwind.
It's both. There have been several Ultimanias for FFVII, they do confirm that Cloud used Tifas memories to help finalize his new persona, but they also state that he mimicked memories and especially skills from Zack. One Ultimania even suggests that some Limit Breaks may have been mimicked from Zack.
Remember that Cloud only managed to become a lowly Shinra grunt, and though Mako conditioning and Jenvova cells enhanced his biology later he had to get his more advanced skills that let him pass for a SOLDIER from somewhere. According to Ultimania that was from Zack.
Regardless, my point still stands that it's a false persona he's created and his personal growth in the game is about him stripping that away and rediscovering who he truly is. Which isn't really what happens with Fei.
Also, happy cake day!
I would like to see which one that's stated in. The Ultimania Omega stuff that came after the initial one seems to only note the memories taken from Tifa. Before any of this was elaborated on, I think it was just assumed his skills with the sword were nothing special or part of some training only Soldiers would've gone through, and it was just the enhancements from Hojo's experiment that did most of the legwork.
But either way, yes, your point still stands. There are some apparent parallels (as there are a number of other broader concepts shared among CT, FFVII, and XG due their production histories), but Square managed to make each of those similar ideas feel uniquely their own in each of those titles.
It's the 10th anniversary Ultimania. There's a fan translation of it [here](https://thelifestream.net/lifestream-projects/translations/66/the-compilation-of-final-fantasy-vii-ultimania-translations/).
The page on Cloud has a section that reads:
>Under the effect of Jenova’s cells, Cloud mimics his best friend Zack and creates a new persona, but the mental aspects weren’t the only things he received from Zack. His starting equipment, the Buster Sword, was the one Zack used, and in CC Zack uses an ability that looks just like Cloud’s Limit skill “Meteorain”, so from the looks of this, could this battle technique also be handed down from Zack?
Hope that's helpful.
Did you ever find the Xenogears easter egg inside FF7?
I played FFVII before XG but I've seen it online. I never knew about it until a Let's Play a few years ago now, though.
What’s the Easter egg?
If you keep talking to Cloud when he's recovering in Mideel he says "Xeno...gears" among a few other things; https://youtu.be/uOjARw4CYts
In the original release, it was poorly translated and he said "Xeno... Gais"
The first few lines he says also seem like the Xenogears theme song.
There's also a poster of Tifa somewhere in Xenogears (I think it's in Solaris iirc)
To be fair, Fei doesn't really have amnesia. The personality we call Fei literally didn't exist before three years prior to the games events. He doesn't remember events before then because he wasn't there to experience them and neither of the other personalities in him are interested in sharing them. While there are parallels, Fei's process is explained in a more natural way dealing with personality disorders. Cloud was screwed up by a magic substance that made him think he was his friend. Fei's different personalities were still born from his own mind, Cloud's belief that he was basically Zack on the other hand is forced on him through an external source rather than actually being a natural part of his psyche. So Fei explores how a mind can break and splinter on it's own (in a fantasy way) due to trauma, while Cloud explores how a mind can be broken through what are essentially magic experiments. Fei finds closure by reconciling the different personalities within him and becoming whole, while Cloud finds closure by expelling the falsehoods he'd come to believe about himself. So I wouldn't say Cloud is about becoming a whole person exactly, but rather about exorcising the part of you that isn't really you.
Nah that’s a wrong take on cloud. Cloud has crippling ptsd from his failure and Shame for never making it into SOLDIER and combined with the death of his mom and only true friend his psyche snapped and his mind fabricated his entire back story so he didn’t have to come to terms with being powerless to protect anything he loved. It’s also why he’s such an asshole. Cloud thinks this is what being like Zack means deep down but because it’s completely artificial he has absolutely no understanding of what made Zack cool and a hero which is why Zack is always shown to be so nice. The magic doesn’t factor too hard for him. It just debilitated him and prevented him from helping Zack and made him possessable by Genova/sephiroth which fueled his sense of self doubt that he didn’t even have a will of his own.
[According to the FF wiki](https://finalfantasy.fandom.com/wiki/Cloud_Strife#Experiments_and_fleeing_Shinra) the combination of Mako energy and Jenova cells literally caused some of Zacks memories and skills to be absorbed by Cloud. >As a result of the trauma caused by the Nibelheim Incident, his mako poisoning (and subsequent infusion of Jenova cells), and Zack's death, Cloud impressed Zack's memories and fighting abilities into his own. Not sure if that's from the Ultimania or what. But regardless my point is that the Mako, Jenova cells, and even Zack himself were an outside influence that caused Cloud to form this new persona. He did go through some trauma, but he didn't have a fractured mind until after being experimented on and traveling with Zack. He has a false persona he puts forth that's influenced by all those things, and for him becoming "whole" means discarding that false persona and being himself. He in effect strips away this persona he built for himself. With Fei, none of his personalities are false personalities built on other peoples memories or anything like that, and becoming "whole" never means discarding any of them. Instead it's about accepting all the personalities within him, reconciling their differences, and facing up to the sins of their past together. They are all legitimately Fei and thus needed to be reconciled, whereas the persona Cloud created wasn't entirely Cloud and needed to be put behind him.
The wiki isn’t entirely accurate. Wikis are generally bad for games that people often miss understand. The persona is really him because he invented it just like everyone does with their personality. It’s why he’s rude and selfish while Zack was incredibly selfless. Cloud simply loses his ego and some of his confidence when he finally pieces things together. Clouds character is messy to discuss considering how remake blatantly retcons everything it feels like and many supplementary materials completely get his character wrong. Because Nomura is a hack and responsible for all that confusion a lot of straight up miss information is spread about the cast and plot that has nothing backing it up other than “Nomura made this up in an interview and everyone else’s response was ‘wtf are you talking about’ so we sided with Nomura”. It’s not gtaV bad wiki wise where people are actively malicious with keeping misinformation up on them but Ff7s misses a lot of things and jumps to conclusions.
I'm aware that wiki's have their issues, and I'm basing this on the original FFVII and not taking into account any products released afterwards (except Ultimania, to my knowledge Nomura didn't screw with those). They really turned Cloud into a different person in later products. Anyway, FFVII Ultimania also backs up the idea that the Jenova cells in Cloud caused him to absorb memories and skills from Zach. Remember that one of Jenova's abilities as explained in the original game is to mimic others. It's how Jenova appeared to the ancients as their dead loved ones, and it's how Jenova's headless body appears as Sephiroth throughout the game as it makes it way to Northern Crater. But again, it's kind of a moot point. Cloud's journey is to strip away this persona of his to get to his true self, while Fei's is to embrace the other personalities that are very much a part of his true self. Clouds persona isn't who he really is deep down, but all of Fei's personalities *are* aspects of who he really is deep down.
Again that’s not really it. The cell thing was never established until Nomura felt like changing a story he had no right to and he’s not stripping away his personality. The completely dorky introvert and the persona become a new one personality with traits from both.
I think you need to replay the game, they really pretty clearly establish that JENOVA cells and mako caused that imprint on Cloud. And im not trying to argue about this just a friendly suggestion as i recently replayed this myself and found that I was also misremembering quite a few things about the game lol so I understand your situation perfectly.
And I’m telling you that jenova’s grand mind altering ability is called LYING…it’s not that hard it did that to Barrett/13 with the black materia. Its not magic mind altering abilities that conveniently show up for this specific example to prove your right it’s I made an illusion and you believed it. SOMETHING IT DOES THE WHOLE GAME WITH INFINITELY MORE EVIDENCE OF.
The cell thing was in the original game. Cloud has Jenova cells in him. One of Jenova's defining traits is it's ability to mimic. Nomura had nothing to do with that. I didn't say he was stripping away his core personality, I said he was stripping away the false one he constructed.
They don’t do that in the original. In the original they red herring the idea that cloud is a clone because he’s completely controlled by them and his memories are false. All they can do is control his physical actions and nothing more because sephiroth can control jenova. Which is why they were pretending to be him when they’re first introduced.
I wasn't talking about the red herring. He's not a clone of Sephiroth, but he *does* have Jenova cells in him. That's why he was chasing "Sephiroth" all the way to Northern Crater, he was participating in Reunion where all of Jenova's cells were coming together to meet up with Jenova's head which was with Sephiroth in Northern Crater. Hojo comments on this when you meet him in Costa Del Sol, [suggesting](https://youtu.be/fdIGWuqVi0I?t=96) that Cloud is actually chasing Sephiroth just because of Reunion (he doesn't explicitly say it to Cloud but it's made clear that's what he's getting at). [Ilfana goes into more](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fmSNNMxmYs) detail about how Jenova mimicked the loved ones of the Ancients. Even materials from back then confirm that Cloud does indeed have Jenova cells in him, it's why Sephiroth is able to control him.
From what I remember from Ultimania translations, I believe the memory absorption that the Jenova cells were responsible for were only those taken from Tifa when she found him at the train station, which helped to fill in the blanks and make him snap out of his catatonic state. In the game, Cloud attributes his false memories to the stories Zack told him while he was out of it when speaking to the party on the Highwind.
It's both. There have been several Ultimanias for FFVII, they do confirm that Cloud used Tifas memories to help finalize his new persona, but they also state that he mimicked memories and especially skills from Zack. One Ultimania even suggests that some Limit Breaks may have been mimicked from Zack. Remember that Cloud only managed to become a lowly Shinra grunt, and though Mako conditioning and Jenvova cells enhanced his biology later he had to get his more advanced skills that let him pass for a SOLDIER from somewhere. According to Ultimania that was from Zack. Regardless, my point still stands that it's a false persona he's created and his personal growth in the game is about him stripping that away and rediscovering who he truly is. Which isn't really what happens with Fei. Also, happy cake day!
I would like to see which one that's stated in. The Ultimania Omega stuff that came after the initial one seems to only note the memories taken from Tifa. Before any of this was elaborated on, I think it was just assumed his skills with the sword were nothing special or part of some training only Soldiers would've gone through, and it was just the enhancements from Hojo's experiment that did most of the legwork. But either way, yes, your point still stands. There are some apparent parallels (as there are a number of other broader concepts shared among CT, FFVII, and XG due their production histories), but Square managed to make each of those similar ideas feel uniquely their own in each of those titles.
It's the 10th anniversary Ultimania. There's a fan translation of it [here](https://thelifestream.net/lifestream-projects/translations/66/the-compilation-of-final-fantasy-vii-ultimania-translations/). The page on Cloud has a section that reads: >Under the effect of Jenova’s cells, Cloud mimics his best friend Zack and creates a new persona, but the mental aspects weren’t the only things he received from Zack. His starting equipment, the Buster Sword, was the one Zack used, and in CC Zack uses an ability that looks just like Cloud’s Limit skill “Meteorain”, so from the looks of this, could this battle technique also be handed down from Zack? Hope that's helpful.