honestly it would suck if i were a speedster and everything in life felt like it was 1/8th of the speed of irl. if i could control time perception though, this would be less of a problem
Nah, it's an act, he's in full control, he just like to imitate Nishitani when around the Yakuza as he thinks Nishitani was the ideal Yakuza; Majima is just a very smart and very good actor.
With Yakuza 0 showing Majima going from a calm, composed and chill person, to becoming the Mad Dog because of the traumas. I wished we got a version of Kiryu where he started off being a happy, jolly and optimistic person, and through the course of the game, becoming more of the stoic Kiryu that we know. I think that would mirror the two characters perfectly.
I started watching this video 7-8 months ago, but stopped after 3 minutes because I did not want to see any spoilers despite never having actually played any of the yakuza games. Back in December 2022 I bought Yakuza 0 and stopped at the 3rd chapter, then in February of this year I continued playing the game and finished it. I liked it so much that I ended up playing the entire series, and finished doing so last month. Now I can finally watch this video without spoilers.
Oh my God it's been one of my favorite games since 1997 as a young 17 year old I bought this game, in fact I had already bought an N64 thinking that's where this game was going to come out and I found out the hard way it wasn't, so I had to buy a PS1 however what I wanted to say was in the almost 30 years it's been since I've been a fanatic of this singular game here karma from a franchise I was already a fanatic of, I completely missed the sephiroth remained in the shinra Mansion for 7 days, and rose out of the shinra mansion on the seventh day anybody picking up some Jesus Christ vibes here on that one? Literally being buried under the mansion in the basement, as if being dead the writers of this series when real f****** Depot on that one man I never even saw that. I mean I picked up on the obvious Jesus Christ reference when he's standing in front of the Genova container with arms spread out mimicking the cross itself, that one was a alley-oop but I missed this other one damn
I played the original game right back in 1997. And I never understand why people criticized Tifa for not telling the truth until late of the game. Seriously I may have done the same if I were her in that situation. It's easy to criticize someone's decision or view, especially if that is a fictional character. However, if we were in the shoes of that person/character, what people disagree may actually make a lot of sense, even though we may still disagree with their judgement or actions.
In remake they show what Cloud does whenever he's confronted with the truth: He recognised one of the enforcer, that recognised him aswell. His response was to run and refuse to acknowledge it. Heavily implying he would have done the same had Tifa dug to deep. Not to mention that Sephiroth made him pick a fight with her in Kalm just as she obviously was going to attempt to bring up the truth to him.
This video is worth it. I am a fan of the series for the past 17 years since Yakuza 2. Wish there was a course in college about the psychology of video game characters. I would take it in a heartbeat.
amazing video! i've forever held those things as the reasons why tifa never said the truth, and there's so much layered trauma in her psyche that even those reasons have more things to peel apart. thanks for this little essay!
Something I remember: In the beginning of his first appearance in Yakuza0, at one point, he mentions something along the lines of ‘managing these girls is gonna put me in a nut house”. He then gets the mad dog fighting style after the Cabaret questline.
Been watching the gacha abomination story FF ever crisis and it even hurts more now seeing him. What an awful life he was having. No wonder the guy finally snapped. And I think for the finale all he want is Cloud to end his life and finally return to the source hence the reunion.
One thing Nishiki forgot. His bro Kiryu went to jail for him. Despite shits that everyone says, Kiryu had always been his bro 😔😔. Killing assholes in Tojo clan is alright, but Kiryu is his one and only true bro😢
I found this video when i was playing kiwami 2 almost a year ago. Told myself to keep this video aside until i reach 6 (for spoilers and character development) Literally burned through the series within that that time and made it to 6. Finally was able to watch this video fully. Completely worth the wait!
The problem is unplayable past segments, they just play as cutscene in some sort of side quest but it's main story and should be a playable segment in order to engage people to his hard past years
Here is your psychoanalysis, he literally has alien cells in his head that are fucking his brain. He's not lying about Zach, he literally doesn't know him. That's all, he doesn't have any ptsd.
Should redo this with Rebirth. But even in Remake, Cloud continually accepts her unusual nature. Talking to flowers? He orders the flowers to learn to talk to her. Wears a red dress? Cloud.exe has stopped working. Captured by the most powerful organization on earth? "You can't fall in love with me. Even if you think you have, it's not real." "Don't I get a say in all this?" "Almost morning, time to go..." "I'm coming for you..." "...If that's what you want. Thank you." Aerith seems to have expected Cloud to abandon her like everyone else. Nope. We're gonna assault this office building! All 70 stories of it!
Yup, in Remake and Rebirth Cloud gets incredible headache and PTSD whenever faced with the truth that do not align with his current "reality". That's the flash we see when Hojo tells him he wasn't a SOLDIER and in Rebirth he accounts the last meeting he had with his mother, we get flashes and her voice being blotted out when she is telling him that she is still proud of him, despite not getting into SOLDIER. And in Gongaga when he almost tells Aerith that if Zack has not made contact that means he's either a loser for ditching a babe like Aerith or he's..... dead. And just as he say "D" he gets the same headache and flash. Because he deep down knows Zack, knows he's from Gongaga, knows that those were his parents he just met and that he is dead. And he can't cope with that, yet.
I hated that Hojo scene in FF7 Remake. Because Hojo outright spoils the major plot twist of Cloud's character for people whose first experience with FF7 is the Remake. It was a very poor decision from the developers.
I think a lot of this is relevant, but it's also important to remember that it's a game and a fictional story populated with fictional characters. There are limits to which real psychology can explain the characters' behaviors and mental states throughout the story, because none of them are subject to real causality. Around 4:05 you start to say that Tifa isn't sure of her own memories after being presented with Cloud's messed up narrative, but that's not it at all. She explains her reasoning clearly in OG7, when she says she knew there were things about him that seemed off, things he shouldn't have known that he did, things he should know that he didn't, that his recollection was different from her memory of what really happened 5 years ago. She didn't know what to make of it, she was confused, and didn't know how to confront it. She had lost so much already, and one day out of the blue appeared a long-lost piece of her past. She was afraid to lose him again, so rather than reacting impulsively to the inconsistencies, she just kept telling herself that if she gave it time, she'd figure it out or it would work itself out. She does say something along the lines of "I'm just not sure of myself," but that's not the same as saying "I don't trust my own memories," it's instead perfectly in-line with the rest of the narrative of the game saying that she wasn't confident in how to handle the situation, she was afraid of making a mistake and losing someone. So she was avoiding the problem deliberately & hopefully. This FF7 scenario was not a case of Tifa distrusting her own memories or being uncertain because Cloud told the story differently. She knew very well that his telling was incorrect, she just didn't know how to deal with it. You see this playing out in Rebirth frequently as she tests him with questions to see if he's the real deal, if he really remembers the same Nibelheim that she remembers. He even eventually starts to recognize that they're tests. It may be easy to confuse what is actually her gentle and somewhat insecure approach, with an insecurity about herself and her own memories, but that's not the same, and it's not what's happening here in FF7. Tifa didn't forget Zack, not even a tiny bit. Her denial about that in OG7 when the party meet's Zack's parents in Gongaga is paper-thin. When they revisit Cloud's memories in the lifestream, she encourages him to remember who Zack was, and as he remembers, she affirms it. She knew it was Zack all along. She didn't want Sephiroth to show the photo that was taken because she knew Zack was going to be in it, not Cloud. It is true that she's puzzled by why Cloud knows so much about things he shouldn't, but this doesn't add up to mistrust in her own memories, it adds up to mystery and confusion about Cloud, and an uncertainty on her part about what to do in response to that. Her decision not to confront it was about putting off the problem and trying to keep the peace, out of fear of losing someone thought long-gone that she'd only kind of recently gotten back. The bit in OG7 where she says her childhood memories weren't all made up is her response to Sephiroth's claim that none of it was her fault, that Jenova created her memories during the fabrication of Cloud. That's not about memory distrust syndrome, again, sometimes you have to see the story before you rather than the annals of psychology arcana that might be an explainer for real people in a similar situation. The game's story wasn't written by a psychologist, and the characters aren't real, so real psychology applies only to the limited extent to which the authors are aware of the principles and bake it in. That is to say, in fairly basic, layman-relatable ways. 7:00 is full of very similar kinds of unwarranted assumptions too. Yeah, it provides a rationale for its conclusions, but the rationale is loaded by presumptions that are not identified as presumptions (e.g. attacking Sephiroth after he killed her father and burned her town is a response that perhaps needs no explanation, but the author presumes it as evidence of avoiding thinking, even though she's thinking about it and speaking aloud about it the entire time), so it lends itself to unjustified confidence in the statements and conclusions. The avoidance thing does finally touch on a legitimate aspect of this whole thing, which was explicitly stated in the OG, but that doesn't have to be established by building up an image of her as an avoidant character, an argument largely predicated on unwarranted assumptions; not every behavior has to be part of a larger pattern of behavior, they can also be circumstantial; So instead, apply Occam's razor - it's a really weird situation to be in, she's never been in a situation like it or heard of anything like it, and she doesn't understand and can't explain what's going on. She's not sure what the consequences will be if she confronts it directly. It's reasonable to be reluctant to react, when you're presented with the bizarre. So she waits it out, hoping that time will provide an answer.
People keep saying Seph is power hungry. He is not. He wants revenge and lone for a Mother figure. Most of his actions is to follow the footsteps of his mother and for her approval while getting revenge on humanity and if becoming a God will help him get his revenge then he will take that opportunity. He has been abused and lied to all his life. His only friends died or betrayed him. Shin-Ra treated him as their attack/guard Dog, not a human being. This broke him, the only love and relief he believes is Jenova
And she doubts herself because Aerith makes the point of mentioning the whispers took memories from her and Red, so Tifa then quietly says "maybe that's why".
I say it is inaccurate to say Cloud lied. As far as he was concerned, he was telling the truth, and it was partly true. He was there at the incident, but he believed he had Zack’s role.
This was a great culmination of why Sephiroth became this way. I still don't buy it. Even when I was a kid playing the original, it didn't make sense. If you can't convince a kid of it, something is missing. All these reasons would be enough to turn a person, eventually. You don't read books for 7 days and then start slaughtering people. It was like Daenerys from Game of Thrones. Did it make sense that she went crazy? Yes. But we needed to see that transformation more convincingly. This is my favorite game by a pretty big margin, but even masterpieces have their holes, and this is one of them, even with great Character deep-dive-analysis like this.
Good video and there's a few bits you missed that reinforce your arguments Tifa - She isn't just a love interest but an intense source of shame and grief for Cloud. Tifa has an accident in her childhood where she fell down a mountainside looking for her mother spirit, all her friends abandoned her except for Cloud who followed despite not being close friends with Tifa or her group. Trying to save her, Tifa ended up in a coma whereas Cloud got by with just skinned knees where her Father put the blame solely on Cloud. His inability to save her made him begrudge his weakness which is where his desire to become stronger came from. His failure to get into SOLDIER only intensified this especially after his farewell promise to Tifa creating the terrible emotional cocktail of shame, guilt and self loathing. JENOVA - Cloud is put through the same process which creates SOLDIERs in the Shinra Mansion which involves being injected with Jenova cells. This can have the effect when combined with Mako infusion of creating super soldiers just like Zack. If the subject doesn't have a strong enough will and ego to endure the treatment however the near catatonic state you expanded on is the other side of the coin. The Jenova cells themselves act as a conduit where memory is easily transferred. Having seen Zack and Sephiroth fight during the Nibelheim incident, the Jenova cells in his body effectively taught him how to fight as a SOLDIER to the point where shortly after their first mission together, Barret readily admits that Cloud is strong. These cells, combined with Cloud's self doubts, trauma, and experimentation are the reason why he is unable to remember Zack. One thing to remember however is that Tifa finding Cloud is what saves him. She gives him the core of his personality to piece back together even before the Bombing Mission. If it wasn't for this encounter at the station, Cloud would have ended up just like the other poor souls in Black cloaks.
