Cloud is not depressed??

[PaladinPie]

Hi. This is just a speculation/point/view or whatever.
Cloud got really sad after Zack's and Aeris' death. But why wasn't he THAT depressed when his mother died? Didn't he love her aswell? It seems like he almost doesn't even react to his mother's death.
What do you think about this?

 

[Apparent Amarant]

Well his real mother died during the first trip to Nibleheim. This doesn't actually take place in VII but in Crisis Core. He is unconscious after words I believe for months getting some sort of mako treatment that nearly kills him from mako poisoning.

 

[Stoic Hero]

Yeah, sadly (as far as we know) he doesn't even recall his mother until he meets Aerith in VII. I don't know what the deal is with that, though if you'll take notice very few Final Fantasy characters have close ties with their parents. Most don't even have parents, or else they aren't mentioned. For example:

FFI-No parents mentioned
FFII-No parents mentioned
FFIII-Orphans, in the remake only Refia has a father and they aren't really that close.
FFIV-No parents mentioned
FFV-Galuf/Krile have a relationship, but they're grandfather/granddaughter so it doesn't count. Also, Cid and Mid have a pretty close relationship.
FFVI-As far as I can recall, only Terra's parents are mentioned and only briefly.
FFVII-If you can call Barrett Marlene's dad, then they are very close. However, her real father and her are not close at all. RedXIII and his father seemed to be close, though you never got to know his father since he was turned to stone.
FFVIII-All orphans.
FFIX-Dagger's love for her mother is strong, but the feelings are hardly mutual.
FFX-Tidus and Jecht. Do I really have to explain? "I hate you!"
FFXII-Orphans, and Balthier and Cid are enemies.

I think I've made my point. Anyway, I would like to see more parent/child character development, and FFXIII looks to include that with Hope and his father. I "Hope" so.

 

[Dionysos]

I think I've made my point. Anyway, I would like to see more parent/child character development, and FFXIII looks to include that with Hope and his father. I "Hope" so.

And more importantly, Dajh and Sazh!


Anyway, you are right it is odd. I guess you could say that the reason he doesn't mention it or gets depressed about it is because his mind becomes confused following the incident, and he

Spoiler

believes many of the things Zack did he had done himself

. His memories are very confused, and the events that were to unfold in the basement did not give him the chance to grieve normally.


lionheartcs makes a good point. There is definatey something about the heroic orphan in the FF games, and in stories in general.. A hero with a troubled past with nothing to lose, and no-one to worry about him at home. Complete freedom to be a hero, at least until he meets the leading female who tries to pull the hero back to earth and eventually sets the hero up to settle down.

Unless there is a specific plot point where parents are needed to be mentioned, they rarely appear. Very few characters have parents who are still alive at the time of the game.

Parents provide an obstacle to the hero and would sometimes limit the extent the hero would go to, and also because it will give another thing that will weaken the heroes focus, and could become a potential target for the villain. Therefore most of the time the parents are killed off to make everything easier.

For Cloud, the opportunity for the storywriters to kill off his mother arrived with the fires of the Nibelheim incident.

Cloud probably wasn't made to be depressed about it because it was not meant to be the plot point, Zack's death was instead. The death of Cloud's mother was just convenient. Without it Cloud would hardly be the lone-warrior type at the begining of the game, if he was having to check up on his mother.

Cloud may have been depressed about it when the memories caught up to him, but the story didn't dwell on this because the focus was on Zack.

 

[Jimmy]

I guess teenagers are more fond of game characters "daddy issues", there are lot of them in late games.

As for Cloud, i would imagine that after learning of his mother's death he could shed a tear, but we never really saw it because of the events that followed, it's a shame his mother seemed like a regular nice woman.

 

[Amizon]

From what I get from the flashback in Kalm,he didn't even want to talk about his mother,probably because he felt pain.

I was thinking along the same lines.

It seems that with each tragedy that hits Cloud, he seems to shut it all off and not want to go through the emotion of pain. However, it's only until later on in the game that he begins to show his true feelings. He's just one of those ones that doesn't seem to open up much. In a way, you could say he was depressed. But on the other hand, you could argue he wasn't entirely depressed either.

 

[Morrigan]

No one said he wasn't sad,we just didn't get to see the scene where his mother died.That's all.
So we can't blame him for something we don't know,it'd be pointless.
We really don't get much information on her except for his memories.He rarely even refers to her.Maybe it could be the result of his mistaken identity thing.