Surely Cloud Strife Has To Be In Dissidia?

Surely Cloud Strife Has To Be In Dissidia?

(Posted: 21/09/2008) by Ronin90

Weekly Musings is something that I'm sure will be quite unique to Final Fantasy Union, as (hopefully) every week I will post random thoughts about events surrounding Final Fantasy. These could be related to modern affairs, or just things that happen to crop into my mind.

Either way, I hope you enjoy the article and if you do, remember to subscribe to the RSS Feed and check back next week for more Weekly Musings!

So, the topic of this first edition is Dissidia's character roster. Currently 17 characters have been announced for Dissidia, with all of the villains being named and seven of heroes having been announced. It's heavily speculated that Bartz will fill the Final Fantasy V spot and Terra will fill the Final Fantasy VI spot. However, something that's probably most surprising is that while Sephiroth was announced some time ago as the character who will occupy the Final Fantasy VII villain spot, the hero still remains a secret, even with the game only a few months off.

Cloud Strife is nothing short of a sensation in Japan. Recently, he came 2nd in a "Who is your favourite video game character" survey, beating beaten only by the Italian plumber Mario. If Cloud is included in Dissidia, it will surely boost sales astronomically compared to if he isn't and Square Enix are sure to know this. So, why hasn’t he been announced yet?

Dissidia speculation has actually been quite odd. Last Christmas hype was really high, especially after the media got to have a hands-on with the game and raved about it. However, since then it died down considerably as news dried up. The announcement of Cecil and Golbez recently has re-ignited interest slightly, but it cannot be underestimated how huge it would be if they announced that Cloud would be in the game.

If they are saving this announcement for the Tokyo Game Show (which starts shortly), then that would raise the roof in Japan, but maybe Cloud isn’t even going to be in the game? If this is the case, then they're probably just letting people speculate up until the end. It wouldn't be unconceivable to have Zack Fair as the Final Fantasy VII hero, as he starred in the most recent game in the Final Fantasy VII franchise – Crisis Core – but his popularity probably isn’t at the same heights as Cloud.

So, I'm going to go out on a limb and say that Cloud will be the Final Fantasy VII hero representative, but I won't even try to hazard a guess as to when Square Enix are going to announce it to the general public.