Microsoft has confirmed that its last-gen Xbox One console sold less than half of what Sony’s rival PS4 did.
The Redmond, Washington-based tech giant noted the sales data in a broader filing to Brazil’s national competition regulator about its pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
“Sony has surpassed Microsoft in terms of console sales and installed base, having sold more than twice as many Xbox in the last generation,” Microsoft wrote in the documents, as translated from Portuguese by Game Luster.
This is particularly notable because Microsoft stopped sharing Xbox One sales data in 2016. Therefore, while it’s been clear that the PS4 had been performing better than the Xbox One, analysts have only had to estimate a more precise margin.
For context, the PS4 topped 117 million units sold as of March 2022, which would work out to Xbox One sales of fewer than 58.5 million. This is in line with Ampere Analysis’ report that the Xbox One reached 51 million units sold as of Q2 2020.
That said, Microsoft still doesn’t reveal Xbox hardware sales data, even in this new console generation. However, Ampere Analysis reported earlier this year that “Sony ended 2021 with PS5 cumulative sell-through reaching 17 million units, around 1.6 times the performance of Xbox Series sales,” suggesting that Xbox is closing the gap. In Microsoft’s most recent quarterly earnings call, company CEO Satya Nadella also claimed that Xbox has “been the market leader in North America for three quarters in a row among [current-gen] consoles.”
It should be noted, though, that Microsoft and Sony’s hardware strategies are somewhat different, as there are two different current-gen Xbox consoles, the Xbox Series X and Series S. The former is a beefier, 4K-capable model, while the latter is a lower-cost, smaller hardware upgrade over the Xbox One. Naturally, the Series S’ price point of $379 positions it as an affordable entry point into the current generation, especially when the Xbox Series X and standard PS5 cost $599 and $629, respectively.
Of course, it’s still early in the consoles’ lifecycles, as both families of devices launched in late 2020. There’s also a global semiconductor shortage that has constrained the supply of all of the consoles, an issue that the PS4 and Xbox One generation didn’t have to deal with. Therefore, it remains to be seen how this generation will play out in the years to come, especially as Microsoft further dives into a more platform-agnostic approach which includes Xbox consoles, PC and streaming.
Microsoft’s long-awaited admission of the Xbox One’s sales comes as the company is working to get its Activision Blizzard buyout deal approved in Brazil and other markets. As part of that process, the company is arguing with Sony over various aspects of the gaming industry, particularly whether Microsoft owning Activision’sCall of Duty series would be anti-competitive and unfair to PlayStation.
Microsoft has accused Sony of paying for “blocking rights” to keep games off services like its own Xbox Game Pass.
The Redmond, Washington-based tech giant made the claims in documents filed with Brazil’s national competition regulator as part of a review of its pending acquisition of Activision Blizzard.
“Microsoft’s ability to continue expanding Game Pass has been hampered by Sony’s desire to inhibit such growth,” Microsoft claimed in an August 9th filing to the Administrative Council for Economic Defense (CADE), as translated from Portuguese. “Sony pays for ‘blocking rights’ to prevent developers from adding content to Game Pass and other competing subscription services.
Sony is arguing that Microsoft’s planned acquisition of Activision Blizzard would be anti-competitive, specifically arguing that it could pull Call of Duty players — a large and lucrative audience — from PlayStation to Xbox. In particular, Sony says Microsoft would do this by making Call of Duty available on its popular Xbox Game Pass service. In response, Microsoft has brought up the purported Sony “blocking rights” while also reiterating plans to continue to release Call of Duty on PlayStation should the acquisition be approved.
It should be noted, though, that specifics regarding Sony’s alleged “blocking rights” deals were not provided, so it’s unclear whether they’re supposedly short-term (i.e. one year) or more long-lasting. We do know, however, that exclusivity deals for games have grown increasingly complicated amid the advent of streaming services. For example, during the major Epic Games v. Apple trial over the past two years, it was revealed that Microsoft was looking into lowering its PC games revenue split in exchange for securing streaming rights.
In any case, this is just another variation on the time-old business strategy of exclusivity, which PlayStation, Xbox and Nintendo all take part in. To that point, VentureBeat‘s Jeff Grubb, a credible industry insider, responded to this “blocking rights” news by stating that “this is what exclusivity is” when it comes to games.
“Companies almost never pay to make a game truly exclusive, they instead pay to keep a game off of one console,” he said. “Or Epic pays to keep a game off of Steam, but you can get it everywhere else.”
This is what exclusivity is. Companies almost never pay to make a game truly exclusive, they instead pay to keep a game off of one console. Or Epic pays to keep a game off of Steam, but you can get it everywhere else. https://t.co/hm4v9NIZtF
Responding to a tweet from The Verge‘s Tom Warren that this “doesn’t feel like the ‘traditional’ concept of exclusivity,” Grubb added that “none of this is the traditional idea of ‘exclusivity.’” Instead, he says, “companies [are] just trading specific favors for cash in an attempt to position themselves as best as possible.”
Looking at what game companies have been doing in recent years, it’s easy to see what Grubb means. By and large, the platform holders have been paying to have titles debut first on their platforms before they can eventually release elsewhere. With Xbox, this has been the case with games like Cuphead, 12 Minutes, Below, Nobody Saves the World! and The Medium, which all came to PlayStation and/or Nintendo consoles at later dates. Similar situations have happened with PlayStation with the likes of Persona 5, Final Fantasy VII Remake, Death Stranding, Nier Automata and Bugsnax.
Otherwise, “traditional” exclusives — games that permanently remain on a single console or family of consoles — tend to come from studios that these publishers own, like God of War (PlayStation’s Sony Santa Monica), Halo Infinite (Xbox’s 343 Industries) or The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Nintendo EPD). There are also special instances in which an once-multiplatform series becomes exclusive because a publisher stepped in to foot the bill, like Nintendo helping to fund Bayonetta 2 and 3 and Marvel’s Ultimate Alliance 3, which were then only released on Nintendo platforms.
See below for the full list of games that are coming to PS Plus Extra and Premium on August 16th:
Bugsnax
Dead by Daylight
Everspace
Metro Exodus
Monopoly Madness
Monopoly Plus
Tom Clancy’s Ghost Recon Wildlands
Trials of Mana
UNO
Yakuza 0
Yakuza Kiwami
Yakuza Kiwami 2
It’s important to note that these games are only offered through PS Plus to those subscribed to the service’s higher Extra and Premium tiers, which start at $17.99 CAD/month and $21.99/month, respectively. If you’re a PS Plus Essential member, click here to find this month’s free games.
Additionally, check out what came to PS Plus Extra and Premium last month here.
The message behind this purchase was quite clear: more PlayStation games are coming to PC. Fast forward one year and Nixxes is about to release Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, the enhanced version of 2018’s beloved PS4 game, Marvel’s Spider-Man, on PC for the first time. Assisting with the port? Burbank, California-based Insomniac Games, the original developer of the Marvel’s Spider-Man series.
Together, the studios have brought several features to Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered on PC, including ray-tracing, Nvidia DLSS (Deep Learning Super Sampling), Nvidia DLAA (Deep Learning Anti-Aliasing), a multitude of display ratios, mouse and keyboard support and the option to use PS5’s DualSense controller for adaptive triggers and haptic feedback.
To learn more about Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered, MobileSyrup sat down with Jurjen Katsman, Nixxes founder and senior director of development, and Mike Fitzgerald, Insomniac core technology director. Together, the pair offered insight into the two PlayStation studios’ close partnership, the technical work that went into getting Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered up and running on PC, swinging around New York City on the Steam Deck and more.
MobileSyrup: Jurjen, Nixxes has a long history of PC game development, but you’ve also worked on several PlayStation games. Your first project, even, was a Dreamcast port of Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver, which is a classic PlayStation game, so it’s almost a full circle moment to be part of PlayStation Studios. What’s it been like for Nixxes to make that transition and be welcomed into the PlayStation family over the past year?
Jurjen Katsman, Nixxes founder and senior director of development.
Jurjen Katsman: That’s certainly been really exciting. It’s interesting how you sort of took it all the way back to Soul Reaver — I hadn’t made that link yet. But yeah, [we] certainly worked on that originally as we were putting out on PlayStation back then. And then, in general, we’ve just had a connection with PlayStation for many, many games. We’ve done a lot of ps3 titles. In the past, we’ve got a bunch of PS5, then some other PS5 games, even, in addition to all those PC work. And we knew various people before who worked at PlayStation studios, especially some local ones. So in many ways, it was a sort of break away from the previous home, but certainly also felt like coming home to a new home — a great home. That was a really nice move. So we really excited about it.
One thing I actually was doing a little while before, as we were wrapping some of the projects, I had some discussions with the team about, ‘hey, whatever projects would you guys be excited to work on in the future?’ And it could be a dozen publishers. And it was interesting how many Sony projects came up in the people’s wish list. It wasn’t even a realistic list. Everybody’s going crazy, and it was interesting sometime after that to start working on some of those, including Spider-Man. So that was it was good news for the team. And everybody was really, really excited to join PlayStation Studios, and especially the partnership with Insomniac has been a really, really big part of that.
Q: What’s the collaboration between Insomniac and Nixxes been like, especially considering one team is in the U.S. and the other in the Netherlands?
Mike Fitzgerald: It’s been a great collaboration from my point of view. We’ve tried to get a lot of our tech folks chiming
Mike Fitzgerald, Insomniac’s core technology director.
in and getting Nixxes up and running on our tools and our engine and understanding all the bits and bobs and how it fits together and where the opportunities were to do a bit more on PC. But they’ve also just taken it and run with it and really done a great job bringing it to the PC. So it’s been nice to be involved and have the team understand what Nixxes is doing and why it’s important, but also not have it be a big devotion of our time and we can keep focusing on the other projects that we have in development.
Katsman: To anchor on that, I think it’s really interesting how much, in one way, the teams are really quite independent and working on their own different things, but even though that is true, how much they interact and just chat and talk to each other about technology about things that are going on in the game or going on with the engine. So I think that’s actually been really exciting for me to see and the team is incredibly excited about that.
Fitzgerald: [to Katsman] You mentioned other people’s wishlists of PlayStation games, and I think if we [Insomniac] had a little wishlist of studios to work with to bring our games to PC, Nixxes is at the top of that. So things lined up really, really nicely for us to do this together.
Q: Mike, as someone who originally created Marvel’sSpider-Man and then brought it to PS5, what’s the process been like to bring your work to PC? And for Jurjen, what’s it like from more of an outsider’s perspective to come on board as a fan of Insomniac and Marvel’sSpider-Man and help port the game?
Fitzgerald: For me, I think as someone who makes games — really, at the end of the day, what you want is for people to play it, and have a lot of fun playing it. And so just thinking about [how] we can get our game that has, very thankfully, already seen many, many millions of players in front of many, many more millions of players, hopefully, via the PC is just as exciting. That’s what it is for me.
Katsman: And I think for [Nixxes], it’s really exciting to do, because they’ve played this game, they’ve loved this game, and then being able to go in there, as engineers, to understand that engine, see the clever things they were doing there, maybe, in some cases, even like, ‘oh, that’s how I would have done it, great!’ And that’s the sort of thing that our team really gets to do quite a lot and really enjoys doing — diving into different engines, working with different companies, and just adding another one to that list that they really enjoyed working on.
Q: A lot of people underestimate how difficult game development can be, and for a port, in particular, some people might assume it’s sort of an easy ‘copy-and-paste’ job, which obviously isn’t true. With that in mind, can you give some insight into the behind-the-scenes work that goes into bringing a game, especially one as big as Marvel’s Spider-Man, from PS4/PS5 to PC?
Katsman: I think the first one that comes to mind, sort of thinking through the ‘cut-and-paste’ idea — the Insomniac [proprietary] engine has a history on PC, though it’s been quite a few years ago since they shipped on PC. For example, it has the DX11 Renderer; on the DX11, we can’t do any ray tracing. So we did have to fully rebuild the renderer for DX12. And that’s not just a cut and paste; there’s a lot of real work to do to make sure that aligns well and runs efficiently. So people put in an awful lot of work into that. And then the challenge there that is new to PC is the variation of hardware and features, even, that people are looking for. That just adds a whole other level of complexity. It’s actually quite common for a lot of studios to have a version of their game just as they made it on consoles, but that is not a shippable PC product — it needs a lot of customizations capability, and potentially other features to really turn it into a shippable PC game. We spent quite a while still adding [all of this], even though the original game was already there and already really great.
Fitzgerald: I think supporting a vast array of hardware is something that certainly has taken a lot of work and attention and something that Insomniac isn’t familiar with these days. It’s a luxury on our part to have one console, one configuration of hardware, that it runs on. So that’s been a new one, but for us, this has been an opportunity to learn from a studio like Nixxes that’s done this work and has so much experience there and hoping it rubs off on us.
Q: What were the challenges in adapting the game to PC, be it from translating the experience from controller to mouse and keyboard, variety of hardware (including different screen types and supported resolutions), etc.?
Katsman: The challenge is that all of those you mentioned and quite a few more all have some challenges associated with them, which compounds the challenges. And certainly, as we get closer towards [release], I always start feeling like, ‘oh my god, did we add one too many of those?’ To focus and close all of those things down. For example, you were talking about different screen types. [In Spider-Man], there’s the open-world gameplay, so you have a wide aspect ratio. But it’s a very cinematic game, right? So there are lots of cinematics and scripted things playing out, and then suddenly, if you expand the view on the screen, then that doesn’t always work nicely. The strangest things can happen. So the team has put a lot of work into it, going through all those cinematics and making sure it all looks great on a 4:3 screen, a 21:9 screen, a 16:9 screen, 48:9… The craziest things we try out because we feel gamers will try it out, and we owe them the best experience in all those combinations.
And the same applies for mouse and keyboard. Yes, we’re talking about how DualSense works — it’s great that DualSense works on PC, I love DualSense — but also, mouse and keyboard are what’s unique about PC. How you can quickly use the mouse to swing and look around the world, I think that’s really powerful. And having controls that definitely work for that was a long road with many user tests where we have large groups of players play the game — see how they will configure them, how will they remap things differently, do they want features in our game that will allow them to do things in a different way.
And so intuitively, slowly and slowly, we get to a state that we feel, ‘Yes, this will be great for everybody. And everybody will be able to get set it up just the way they like it and enjoy playing it.’ And then all those categories of things you mentioned have that route to go through, which actually, in some ways, you do on console, but there’s just a far, far larger amount of unique little aspects that play into PC.
Fitzgerald: I’ll add that mouse and keyboard support isn’t just, ‘can you make the mouse and keyboard work?’ But one thing Nixxes noted is that some of our UI-based minigames in the game, like the DNA sequencer and things, they worked with mouse and keyboard, but they didn’t feel natural that you couldn’t drag and drop a thing from one side to the other. Of course, we didn’t even do that with the controller at all — it was ‘choose this thing, then choose that thing.’ And so they spent the time to put in support for some of that type of stuff into the different [minigames] around the UI and things like that.”
Q: The core appeal of Spider-Man is just going through the city with those great Marvel’s Spider-Man swinging mechanics. When you were first playing it on PC and swinging through the city, what were some of the things that caught your eye — that were a step up from the PlayStation versions?
Fitzgerald: I think sometimes [developers] look at games differently than players do. [laughs] Like, for me, I know exactly the level of quality we had in the window reflections on the PS5, and so even the most minor little detail improvement in them is exciting for me. I guess I’ll mention the very high ray tracing settings that Nixxes was able to put in that adds more objects to scenes in the windows and things to eat up people’s GPU power a little bit more. And the ultra-widescreen is probably the other one. I have not personally had the benefit of sitting in front of a triple monitor setup yet, but I’m very excited to do that and see how that feels.
Katsman: Just last night, I was going through the latest build on my system, spending an hour just sort of swinging through the city and hanging on windows. I couldn’t really call out what was the one [standout] thing but I think overall, it just felt really satisfying — just swinging from one side of the city, crossing the park, hanging on another window, looking all the way back across the park, seeing every little thing in there, the detail of some of the buildings as they sort of panned across to the side. And then I was playing with some options, turning off some things that really allowed me to see that we have so many more exciting things that you can enable on the PC that looks so much better. And yeah, I was pretty happy with what I was seeing.
Fitzgerald: And the configurability of the PC means players might also decide, ‘I want to see the different experience, I want to get swinging through the cities, I want to run it at 100 frames per second’ or something like that, and so maybe for some other players, that’s the most salient difference.
Q: Growing up, pretty much all of the portable Spider-Man games were pared down from the console/PC versions, so you couldn’t really swing around the same fully-realized city. But now, we have the Steam Deck, and Marvel’s Spider-Man is Steam Deck Verified, so you can take the full, unaltered experience on the go. What’s it like to have the game, which was originally intended for a TV or, now, a PC monitor, on a small handheld screen?
Katsman: The first time it was kind of exciting because we hadn’t necessarily proven that yet. Before we got Verified, it was quite a while before we fired it up [on Steam Deck] and it actually worked reasonably well. But there was still quite a lot of tuning we had to put in to making it run better on that. But I think it is kind of special in that way, right, how that scales? In some ways, it’s just a small PC, but it also gives you this very different way of controlling it, with the inputs straight in your hand, how you can use trackpads and things like that.
It’s really kind of neat. And [while] weren’t allowed to take it on the train, you can just take the train and play with it there. It’s really cool that PC allows that, and to me, that is the excitement of PC. New devices will come out and the existing games will look better on that and be able to be played in a whole different way. And that’s what you get when you buy a PC — something that will last for a really long time and will play on all these different devices.
Fitzgerald: It’s a different feeling for sure. I think it does come back to just finding more people who get to play this game for the first time that didn’t play it before. And if those people are Steam Deck players, then we want to just embrace that hardware and make the game show it off well and use all the features of it in different ways. And I think we got there. Nixxes did a great job optimizing for it because that was a unique challenge.
Q: We touched on a bit, but do you each have a particular feature or enhancement in Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered on PC?
Fitzgerald: It’s the ultra-wide screen for me. I just like seeing it at that ratio.
Katsman: For me, I think it is all the detail in the reflections. That really stands out, to me, as a giant difference. I really can’t get enough of looking out over New York with all that enabled.
Q: It’s been almost four years since Marvel’s Spider-Man was first released, and then Miles Moralescame two years later and we have Spider-Man 2 set for next year. For you, Mike, what does it mean to have seen so much love for this series, and then now to extend that to a larger audience with PC?
Fitzgerald: Really, it’s just something to be grateful for — to get an opportunity to work with a character like that, have Marvel be such a good partner with it and give us the freedom to do some creative things and make the character feel like ours. And it’s amazing how it’s resonated with people and it seems like that excitement hasn’t died down, even as we have this game coming to PC and Spider-Man 2 coming later. [I’m] really just thankful for it and excited about it every day.
This interview has been edited for language and clarity.
Marvel’s Spider-Man Remastered launches on PC (Steam and Epic Game Store) on August 12th. Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales will debut on PC sometime later this year.
PlayStation is confirming that it’s PlayStation 5 Accolades feature is getting the axe later this year. This day-one feature of the console is being removed in the Fall due to the “level of usage.”
If you aren’t aware of what the PlayStation 5 Accolades system entails, we don’t blame you. It’s largely been an under-the-radar feature for many. Amongst other unique PlayStation 5 features like Activity Cards, Accolades were brand new to the console. This system allows players to award badges and give feedback to other players online.
Accolades are split into three tiers and tie into the User Profile. Accolades available are Helpful, Welcoming, and Good Sport. If perhaps you ran across another player who carried the team in Call of Duty: Warzone, you could award them a Helpful badge. Alternatively, someone who helped you get accustomed to a co-op game may be deserving of a Welcoming badge.
It was a novel incentive to see the PlayStation community interact with eachother in a positive way. However, like many console features, some stand out more than others. In this case, Accolades didn’t have the stickiness PlayStation was hoping to see.
Now, Accolades join a growing list of discontinued PlayStation apps, features, and services. On the landing page, PlayStation confirms “In fall of 2022, the Accolades feature on PlayStation 5 will no longer be supported.”
While Accolades won’t be available for much longer, PlayStation does encourage the community to maintain some general positivity online. “We encourage the community to continue to send positive messages to one another.”
Although PlayStation will be laying its Accolades to rest, it did recently bring 1440p support to PlayStation 5. Console beta testers are now able to take advantage of this feature via the new software update when using a compatible display.
That’s a question I’ve been mulling over ever since Square Enix posed it to the world. After all, it’s the 25th anniversary of the iconic Japanese role-playing game (JRPG) — what better time to reflect on my all-time favourite game?
— FINAL FANTASY VII (@finalfantasyvii) July 7, 2022
On a surface level, it’s easy to see why Final Fantasy VII is so (rightfully) revered. It was a technical marvel upon its release in 1997, offering grand full motion video and 3D computer graphics that no prior game — Final Fantasy or otherwise — had featured. It told a deep, emotionally-charged narrative with themes of climate change, class warfare and mental illness that grow further relevant every day. It offered robust RPG mechanics in the form of a Materia system that let you intricately fine-tune each of your character’s abilities and specs. It features one of the all-time great gaming soundtracks, courtesy of legendary composer Nobuo Uematsu. It almost single-handedly sold the original PlayStation and helped popularize JRPGs — a then-niche genre — in the West.
But above all else, I cherish Final Fantasy VII because it helped me findmyself. As they say, all good things come in threes, and so fittingly, the lessons I’ve learned from this game have been imparted upon me in three key periods of my life. What does Final Fantasy VII mean to me? Well, everything.
A journey of self-acceptance
At this point, most gamers probably have an idea of what FFVII is about, but here’s a brief synopsis for the uninitiated. Our story begins as Cloud Strife, a cold, aloof mercenary, joins a group of eco-terrorists called Avalanche to topple the Shinra Electric Power Company. During this quest, they learn of the return of Sephiroth, Cloud’s nemesis, whose mysterious plans put the entire planet at even greater risk.
It’s a riveting yarn filled with countless memorable moments, but its most famous, by far, is when Sephiroth kills Aerith. It was tremendously affecting; the kind-hearted flower girl is taken so soon, robbing you, the player, of both her infectiously warm presence and ever-handy healing abilities. I remember spending ages running around the Midgar Slums, desperate to find a way to bring her back — an effective way to teach a young kid about the impermanence of life.
But for me, the bigger and more impactful twist came just a bit later, in the Northern Cave at the start of Disc 2. After mostly dealing with Sephiroth’s minions up until this point, we find the villain sleeping cozily in a creepy cocoon. As it turns out, everything that’s happened has been Sephiroth manipulating the party to get to that point. The coup de grâce? He reveals that Cloud isn’t the renowned SOLDIER hero he claimed to be — he was a simple Shinra infantryman who never made it into SOLDIER. Worse still, Shinra scientist Hojo had experimented on Cloud in an effort to turn him into a loyal Sephiroth clone, and he even proved a failure at that. All of that trauma caused Cloud to snap, assuming an identity that was formed by stories he’d heard from his best friend, Zack, an actual top-ranking SOLDIER.
It was an earth-shattering revelation for 10-year-old Brad. Our hero lied to us? I questioned everything I knew! And even in the years since, this “unreliable narrator” twist has remained remarkably novel in the video game space, making me appreciate it all the more. What follows, though, is even more painful to watch. We next find Cloud in a comatose state, suffering from intense sickness and the soul-crushing revelation he just experienced. Simply put, he’s utterly broken. Tifa, distraught by what’s happened to her childhood friend, opts to stay with him in the hospital in hopes that he’ll recover. Through some convenient spiritual magic, Tifa’s eventually able to enter Cloud’s subconscious and help him piece together who he really is. It turns out, he was a sad, lonely little boy who pined for Tifa, a popular girl in their hometown. When she nearly died in an accident with Cloud, the townspeople wrongfully blame him, leading the sullen youth to desperately want to leave home, join SOLDIER and become strong.
Now, Cloud’s story hit so hard because it related so heavily to my own. Those who follow MobileSyrup might remember that when Kingdom Hearts‘ Sora was revealed for Super Smash Bros. Ultimate last year, I wrote about why that meant a lot to me. In that piece, I focused on my best friend growing up, who was everything I wanted to be. I was pudgy, short, shy and awkward; my friend was lean, tall, confident and outgoing. He had a girlfriend and knew karate; I was single and could barely kick a soccer ball without falling on my face.
That same friend is the one who loaned me FFVII, which gave it special significance before I even played it. But beyond that, my friend, in many ways, was the “Zack” to my “Cloud” — the person I wished I could see myself as. Underneath Cloud’s badass swordsman exterior lay a deeply insecure loner. Like me, Cloud also was raised by a single mother, except in his case, his father had died, whereas mine was just an emotionally abusive, distant asshole. As someone who’s struggled with confidence and social interaction, I felt seen. We learn that when Cloud once returned home, he felt so embarrassed that he never made SOLDIER that he hid his identity so as to not be recognized by Tifa and everyone else. As a kid who would always nervously slink into a corner to fade away, I understood Cloud’s pain.
Eventually, Tifa is able to help Cloud finally discover who he really is. Crucially, she shows Cloud that regardless of what he or anyone else thought of him, he still saved the day — not as SOLDIER, but as Cloud. When Sephiroth burned down their hometown and nearly killed Tifa, it wasn’t Zack who stopped him — it was Cloud. Because he pushed through his fears and uncertainties to be there for her when she needed him most. That’s what she cared about, not that he didn’t make SOLDIER.
Later, in the party’s airship, The Highwind, Cloud comes clean to the team. “The combination of Jenova cells, Sephiroth’s strong will, and my own weaknesses are what created me. Everyone knew that,” he says. “I’m… Cloud. The master of my own illusionary world. But I can’t remain trapped in an illusion anymore… I’m going to live my life without pretending.” As he says this, the rousing, triumphant Highwind theme starts playing. Accepting their leader for who is and filled with a renewed sense of purpose, the party then excitedly leaves the room. Cloud, now alone, does a big stretch, a huge weight has been lifted off his shoulders. He’s not Zack, nor is he Sephiroth; he’s Cloud, and that’s okay. Final Fantasy VII wasn’t afraid to show us a hero who was deeply flawed. Sure, he could swing a sword like no other on the battlefield, but we also got to see him at his most achingly vulnerable and lonely.
It’s difficult to overstate how significant this all was for me. Growing up, I was often told to be one thing or another. When I did see him, my father would yell at me for being overweight and timid. His devout Hindu parents berated for me reading fiction books instead of the Bhagavad Gita. Kids at school would make fun of me for being nerdy. Even with a loving and supportive maternal family, that repeated external pressure to conform was a lot. And as a mixed kid, torn between two different cultures and ideologies and not looking quite like most my age, I felt like an outsider, just like Cloud. When my best friend moved far away, it felt like I lost the one person who fully understood me.
So, to see Cloud work through a similar identity crisis and come out all the better for it was powerful. He becomes more open about his emotions, like when he admits he’s anxious during a stressful moment in a submarine. He’s more conscious of his teammates, encouraging them before the final battle to leave the airship to reinforce what they’re fighting for, but also saying he fully understands if they choose not to return. He drops the cool front and says corny things like “let’s mosey!” — a good reminder to the player that despite how cool he looks, he’s still just a big dork like many of us. And as a brilliant marriage of narrative and gameplay, the final fight of the game with Sephiroth is an unlosable one, illustrating in a unique way, how much Cloud how has grown.
All of this showed me the importance of staying true to yourself. By doing so, Cloud discovered his own self-worth and, by extension, the enduring loyalty of his friends. In turn, I learned to accept myself for who I am, not what I thought or was told I should be. It didn’t matter if I had the recognition of many, as long as I had the love of a few. What my friends and family valued in me — my honesty, loyalty and genuine desire to do good — was what mattered. This was an essential truth to learn when I was younger, and it’s even more relevant today. Often, I’ll see people making disingenuine social media posts for cheap engagement. People care more about clout, like Cloud did, then earnestness. I even drifted apart from my best friend in high school because he turned into a completely different person in a disappointing effort to become more popular. There are few things more important than sincerity, and I have Final Fantasy VII to thank for teaching me that.
Have a little faith
I have a complicated relationship with religion.
As I alluded to before, my paternal grandparents are hardcore Hindu — the sort that wakes up at 3am to pray, constantly preaches to everyone and frowns upon family doing pretty much anything that could, you know, be perceived as fun. That wouldn’t be nearly as bad if it didn’t come laden with hypocrisy. At the same time I was told that meat-eating, gambling and leather-seated cars were wrong, I would see this same family… eating meat, gambling and rocking cars with leather seats. Hell, my dad would literally take me to Burger King, get me a burger without the patty, tell the guy working there that we shouldn’t be eating meat, and then order a chicken sandwichanyway. This “do as I say, not as I do” mentality was enough to make me pretty jaded at an early age. For a while, I couldn’t understand why anyone, outside of those being forced into it like I was, would even bother with religion.
But then I played Final Fantasy VII, and I began to open my mind. When you boil it down, pretty much any work of art has a theme of “life,” but FFVII took that concept to a level I had never seen in a game. Several hours into the game, the party stops at Cosmo Canyon, the home of party member Red XIII. Here, we meet Bugenhagen, Red’s grandfather, who explains the Lifestream, an ethereal substance that keeps the planet alive. When people die, they join the Lifestream, creating Spirit Energy which, in turn, fuels the birth of new life.
When I first watched this scene in Bugenhagen’s observatory, I was stunned. A video game espousing profound spirituality, with similarities to the Hindu teachings I’d been made to sit through and had come to resent? (Not to mention, as an adult, discovering all of the other religions that the game has drawn inspiration from.) To find such beauty in something I had once held in disdain! And that was even before I learned that creator Hironobu Sakaguchi, who co-wrote the story of FFVII, dreamed up the Lifestream as “a mathematical and logical way” of dealing with the untimely passing of his mother. Therefore, I started to view religion differently, a feeling that was further validated as I made friends who were Christian, Jewish and Muslim, who all had healthy, lovely relationships with their respective faiths. Although I still didn’t love the role it played in my family, I could finally understand what it meant for others.
Hironobu Sakaguchi, the creator of Final Fantasy. Image credit: Apple
All of that’s proven even more poignant now as I’ve been putting this piece together. Earlier this week, a close friend’s sister passed away from an aneurysm. After spending six days listening to him vent — desperately trying to give him some hope that she’d pull through in the hospital — she’s now officially gone. I can’t even imagine how he feels, and my heart breaks not only for him, his parents and his brother-in-law, but also for his young niece and nephew, who will now grow up without a mother. Such a sudden death can no doubt be difficult to process. How do you make sense of it?
While I now identify as agnostic, there’s still a part of me that hopes something like the Lifestream could exist. Some level of comfort, however small, can be found in the belief that the lives that are lost — especially young and innocent ones like his sister — are given some sort of afterlife. Incidentally, my friend’s family is Buddhist, so they’ll no doubt have their own takes on reincarnation.) Knowing Sakaguchi’s inspirations for the Lifestream, and seeing how they could apply to what my friend is going through, adds deeper meaning to FFVII‘s themes for me, even all these years later. Amid all the horrible trials of life that so many people go through, I now see how religious beliefs can provide solace, and I credit VII for helping to make me be just that little bit more empathetic.
Embrace your dreams
After everything I’ve said about Cloud, you’d think he’d be my favourite FFVII character. But actually, it’s Zack. Not in the original game, mind you — he barely has any screentime there, and the pivotal flashback scene in which he dies is, oddly, completely missable! No, I’m talking about the prequel game Crisis Core: Final Fantasy VII, in which Zack is the lead.
Simply put, Crisis Core itself came at the perfect time for me — March 2008, when I was 13 and just a few months away from ninth grade. That’s a critical time in one’s life. Puberty, teenaged angst, the dread of starting high school… all of it. I needed a big game to dive into, and there FFVII was again.
On the one hand, I shouldn’t have been surprised that I ended up liking Zack. After all, he does remind me a lot of my childhood best friend. But what I couldn’t have foreseen is how impactful his story would end up being. Zack’s arc is, ostensibly, the inverse of Cloud’s; he starts off overly energetic and becomes more serious over time. Totally understandable — by the end of the game, his good friend Sephiroth had a heroic fall and Shinra, the company he gave his life to, begins hunting him down. But throughout all of this adversity, Zack kept reminding himself of his aspirations. His personal mantra, “embrace your dreams,” was what helped him pull through — in this case, dreams of becoming a hero.
In the end, the Shinra army catches up with him, and after an incredibly grueling battle and heartwrenching farewell scene with Cloud, he succumbs to his injuries. But my biggest takeaway, in between balling at what I had just seen, was that amid everything he’d gone through, Zack still held onto his dreams. Despite a literal army at his heels, he stopped to save both a wounded Cloud and a former SOLDIER named Genesis, who Shinra had left to die. Because of this, he never got the happy ending with Aerith that he’d hoped for, but he did fulfill his dreams. In the end, he became a hero. Does that sound like a cheesy anime plot? Sure! But it’s what 13-year-old Brad needed to see. Zack’s story, so intrinsically tied to Cloud’s, had recontextualized my favourite game. Knowing the sacrifice that ensured Cloud would live added deeper meaning to everything that he later went through.
More importantly, though, it proved inspirational. That “embrace your dreams” quote is one that’s stuck with me ever since. As someone who’s always enjoyed reading and writing, I’d always thought turning that into a job would be pretty swell. Then high school comes along and we’re rather quickly pushed to make educational decisions that will lead us down a career path and shape the rest of our lives. At this time, I looked around and saw seemingly all of my peers turn to engineering or some other similar field, and I thought that I maybe should do that, too, even though I’d never been good at math or science. Ultimately, I ended up taking a gap year to figure things out, which included a failed exchange program attempt and a stint at FutureShop, where I’d meet many good friends, including the one whose sister just passed, and come out of my shell a bit.
The music of Nobuo Uematsu has been so important in my life, so you can imagine how much I freaked out after meeting him in my graduating year.
And throughout all of this, I kept hearing that damned quote in the back of my head. “Embrace your dreams.” After many hours in deep thought at the local library, including reading an eye-opening Official Xbox Magazine piece about how writers with journalism backgrounds could break into the industry, I got a crazy thought. “What if you pursued journalism? Honed your writing skills so you could eventually use them to pursue something related to gaming?” Months later, I applied to Ryerson Toronto Metropolitan University, one of Canada’s top journalism schools, thinking it was a long shot. To my surprise, I got accepted and, after a four-year program, got this job at MobileSyrup right after graduating. In the five years since, I’ve gotten to realize many lifelong dreams, including going to E3 and interviewing Hironobu Sakaguchi himself. I still pinch myself that I was able to speak with him.
It’s been a wild, satisfying ride, and it’s all because I listened to this spiky-haired fictional character. Not bad, huh?
On Our Way
It’s not an understatement to say that Final Fantasy VII changed my life. When I was 10, it taught me the value of accepting myself for who I am. In the following few years, it taught me to accept others for who they are. And during my teens, it taught me the importance of always pursuing your dreams.
If that weren’t enough, VII has remained a steady source of joy. I make a point of replaying it almost every year, reminding myself of all the memories and life lessons that have come about from it. It’s like a warm blanket. When I’m not playing the game, I regularly turn to Nobuo Uematsu’s majestic music, which never ceases to genuinely move me. The soundtrack has many beautiful pieces, but “Main Theme of Final Fantasy VII” has provided so much comfort in my darkest moments — I hold it very dear) And now, with the ongoing Final Fantasy VIIRemake trilogy, I get to experience fresh adventures with Cloud and the gang — basically old friends at this point — for years to come.
At every point in my life, Final Fantasy VII has been there for me, and I’ll always love it for that.
Backbone has teamed up with PlayStation to create its latest mobile gaming accessory, the Backbone One — PlayStation Edition.
Launching today, July 28th, the peripheral builds on the Xbox-inspired Backbone One model for iPhone that was released last year by adding PlayStation-specific accoutrements. The new device is also compatible with iPhone and has been built specifically for PlayStation’s Remote Play feature, which lets you stream and play PS4 and PS5 games on your smartphone or tablet.
To start, the Backbone One — PlayStation Edition sports a white finish that’s inspired by the standard PS5 DualSense controller, with signature PlayStation buttons like Triangle, Circle, Square and Cross.
The Backbone app has also been reimagined to allow users to navigate without the device connected via touch screen in what it’s calling ‘Standalone Mode.’ To switch back to ‘Controller Mode,’ simply re-connect the Backbone device and the app will automatically transition.
Further, the Backbone app now features “special integrations” with the PlayStation and PS Remote Play app, including a dedicated row with new releases and updates from PlayStation and the ability to install content onto your console remotely.
Finally, the Backbone One — PlayStation Edition can connect directly to other PS5 accessories, including the Pulse 3D Headset.
You can order the Backbone One — PlayStation Edition from Backbone’s website. We’ve reached out for specific Canadian pricing and will update this story once a response has been received.
Every month, PlayStation offers a handful of games at no additional cost to its PlayStation Plus service.
As part of a recent revamp, it’s now broken up into three tiers, with ‘Essential’ being the new name for the base version of PS Plus which is identical to the previous one. The more expensive ‘Extra’ and ‘Premium’ memberships offer everything included with Essential, plus bigger game catalogues and other perks.
With that in mind, here are the three games coming to PS Plus Essential in August 2022.
To start, the RPG Yakuza: Like a Dragon and skateboarder Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 1+2 Cross-Gen Deluxe Bundle will be offered on both PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5. Meanwhile, the puzzle-platform horror title Little Nightmares will be available through PS Plus on PS4.
PS Plus subscribers will be able to claim all three titles for free from August 2nd to September 16th.
Sony has offered an “early look” at the user experience (UX) of its PlayStation VR2 headset.
In a blog post, the company outlined the following four features.
See-Through View
This option will allow users to look through the headset into the real world without having to take it off. This could be helpful in cases like positioning, locating your Sense controllers and more.
There will be a card in the Control Center for easy toggling off See-Through View, as well as quick access to other PS VR2 settings.
Broadcasting
Using a PS5 HD Camera, you’ll be able to record and broadcast yourself while playing a PS VR2 game. It’s important to note that the camera is sold separately at $79.99 CAD.
Customizing the play area
After the PS VR2’s embedded cameras scan your room, the accompanying Sense controllers can be used to adjust the play area to your liking. These settings can be modified at will as long as the headset is connected and will be saved for future use.
VR Mode and Cinematic Mode
In VR Mode, players can interact with VR game content through a 360 viewpoint. This will display in a 4000 x 2040 HDR video format (2000 x 2040 per eye) with a 90Hz/120Hz frame rate.
Cinematic Mode, meanwhile, is for all non-VR game and media content, such as PS5 menu navigation. This content will be shown in 1920×1080 HDR video format with 24/60Hz and also 120Hz frame rate.
That’s all for the latest update on the next-gen PS VR headset. It’s important to note, however, that Sony still hasn’t confirmed pricing or release timing for the device. At the end of its latest blog post, it promised to “share more information soon, including launch date and additional games coming to the platform.”
So far, confirmed games include Resident Evil Village, Resident Evil 4 (remake) and Horizon Call of the Mountain.
Where do you go when the last mainline entry in your series had your main character becoming the U.S. president, getting superpowers and thwarting an alien invasion?
That’s the question developer Volition had to ask when rebooting its popular Saints Row series after 2013’s Saints Row IV. After all, how much more outlandish could you get? Even as someone who enjoyed that delightfully ridiculous premise, the series clearly needed a reinvention.
It’s for that reason that I’ve been more open-minded about the reboot, simply titled Saints Row, as others have been skeptical. And after playing about four hours of Saints Row (2022) at a Las Vegas preview event, I’ve come away quite pleased with the new direction.
I don’t have friends — I got family
From left to right: Kevin, one possible version of The Boss, Eli and Neenah.
What’s impressed me the most so far, remarkably, is the storytelling. I’ve always enjoyed the irreverent humour and charming characters of the Saints Row series, but I don’t know if you would call any of that particularly grounded or relatable. Much to my surprise, then, was the fact that Saints Row (2022)’s first mission follows your character — a fully customizable avatar once again called “The Boss” — on their first day at the Marshall Defense Industries mercenary company, begrudgingly taking orders from a superior. Why? To pay rent and student loans. Indeed, this Boss isn’t a gangbanger; they’re practically broke and living with three equally cash-strapped roommates in the fictional American Southwest city of Santo Ileso. “I’m not sure [about] the back story of Johnny Gat but I think these characters might be a little more relatable. I don’t know if [Saints Row fan-favourite character] Johnny Gat had student loans!” quips Cailyn Talamonti, Saints Row UI artist, during a group interview with MobileSyrup.
Early on, there are several scenes between this group, which includes mechanic Neenah, DJ Kevin and entrepreneur Eli, that lend Saints Row more heart than I was expecting. Between Kevin cooking shirtless for the group to give them “dinner and a show,” The Boss busting Eli’s balls for caring about the “carbon footprint” of the car they steal or the ways they try to help a defeated, bed-ridden Boss after they’re fired, each character has a lot of personality that really shines during their rapport.
They also all come from different backgrounds and even belong to the three rival factions of Santo Ileso: The Boss at the aforementioned Marshall, Neenah with the vehicle and fitness-oriented Los Panteros and Kevin from the partygoing Idols. Taking a few hours to develop their camaraderie is important, because it explains the team’s decision to quit their jobs after The Boss is fired to start their own criminal venture. Centring Saints Row (2022) around the formation of a new Saints was quite brilliant; instead of joining a pre-existing gang like in the series’ first game, you get to be there from day one with these scrappy upstarts. They’re not super deep or anything (at least so far), but the characterization has nonetheless been quite pleasurable.
Like a Boss
Making the new Saints Row feel even more personal is its character creator, “Boss Factory,” which is one of the most in-depth I’ve ever seen. For one, it’s refreshingly inclusive — you can tailor your character using different body sizes; races; gender-neutral sliders to let you mix and match “masculine” and “feminine” traits; customizable prosthetics and even skin conditions like vitiligo. “We didn’t want it gender-locked; it’s much more fluid just to have the triangle with the different body types, and then being able to adjust the rest of it,” says Talamonti.
“I think [Volition] wanted to take anything that existed before and just multiply it and make it greater and make it more inclusive. Because we really want ‘Be Your Own Boss’ and to be ‘self-made’ to apply to everybody and to be able to see everybody and have people see themselves in-game. I think that was one of the touchstones of customization in this game: to be for everybody. Of course, there are things in there — candy corn teeth, for example. I’m hoping no one in real life has those! [But] it means a lot to the whole studio to be inclusive, but also take it a step further, and be fucking weird.”
To that point, I’ve also seen hilarious — and exceptionally accurate — recreations of all kinds of recognizable pop-culture figures, like Shrek, Billy Butcher from The Boys, several Time Lords from Doctor Who, Thor from both Avengers: Endgame and Love and Thunder. You also have a lot of freedom to deck out your guns with all kinds of decals or even turn them into other weird objects, like foam fingers. To save time during my demo, I went with a gleefully potty-mouthed English lady who used basic firearms, but I definitely plan to go wild in the final game. And as a nice touch, Volition has even released a free Boss Factory suite to let you sample the robust tools and import your character in the retail version, with the option to freely and fully re-customize your character later on.
Going big in Santo Ileso
The Boss with some Marshalls.
The idea of being “self-made” that Talamonti mentioned is something that’s been brought up a lot by Volition during the promotion of Saints Row (2022). It’s a core theme that runs throughout the game, and it’s what’s ultimately won me over to this take on the series. Not only does this mantra apply to our four leads and the character customizer, but pretty much all other facets of Saints Row‘s gameplay. Sure, at a base level it’s quite similar to previous games in the series. An open-world sandbox? Check. Third-person shooting mechanics that are a little loose and janky? Yup. Arcade-y but solid handling of vehicles? You bet. That’s why it’s odd to me that people are so up in arms about the new game. Even if you don’t appreciate the different approach to story like I do, the core gameplay is still quintessentially Saints Row.
It’s all of that, with just a bit more depth. As you play, you’ll unlock points that can be used towards new skills for The Boss. These include active abilities like a Street Fighter Shorukyen-esque flaming uppercut, and passive ones like increased resistance to flames. The Boss can also perform finishers that mix John Wick-style “gun fu” with good old-fashioned haymakers, dropkicks and more.
You can really see the Saints Row DNA of wacky combat here; there’s nothing quite as ridiculous as a giant dildo bat or dubstep gun, but you still get some over-the-top moves — and more options to customize them, at that. I appreciated having this more varied arsenal since the initial lineup of guns — a pistol, assault rifle and shotgun — are pretty boringly standard. Grenades also still have that goofy, awkward throwing animation from older games. These gripes aside, though, I’m looking forward to seeing what other abilities there are later in the campaign, especially since the early ones are so promising.
Having just been there, I can say this sure does look and feel like Vegas.
The real highlight of the reboot’s gameplay for me, though, is Santo Ileso itself. With so many open-world games set in bustling, New York-esque cities, I admire Volition’s desire to take Saints Row to a Las Vegas-inspired desert locale. On a narrative level, it gives our “heroes” a smaller, rural apartment to start off in that juxtaposes well with the more urban areas they’ll head break out into. But beyond that, this variety just makes Saints Row more enjoyable to explore. Since our event was held in Vegas, I was able to see firsthand how well Volition drew from Sin City. Saints Row (2022) might not be very graphically impressive, but the developer more than makes up for that through a rich, dense setting that features pretty sun-soaked mesas, dusty, tumbleweed-filled streets, dingy motels and wedding chapels and neon-soaked, casino-filled downtown strips. The commendable mission variety — which includes a sandstorm-covered desert convoy raid, small-town police chase and linear saloon shootout — only further highlight the heterogeneity of this world.
If all of that wasn’t enough, Volition has given us some wonderfully entertaining ways to explore said locations. Chief among these: a wingsuit, which you have right from the start. In typical Saints Row fashion, the physicsare hardly realistic, but that just makes it even more of a blast to use. Not since the Batman: Arkham games have I had this much fun gliding around a city, freely diving and pulling up and twisting and turning to maintain altitude. It’s also just a smart way to strike a balance between the crazy superpowers of Saints Row IV and the (slightly) more grounded vibe of the reboot. Meanwhile, you’ve got a diverse vehicle lineup that consists of standard four-wheelers and trucks to golf carts, monster trucks and sports cars. These are all highly customizable in both look and function, and I was particularly happy to see that you can deck your car out with a tow cable, tire spikes and even an ejector seat to quickly get you airborne for some wingsuit action. Specific launching pads and shortcuts to high rooftops are also available for that purpose.
Saints Row’s wingsuit is insanely fun.
But perhaps the coolest feature of Santo Ileso is how you yourself can affect it. And I don’t just mean in a “blow shit up” sort of way, which you can absolutely do, or taking over territory from the other factions, as in previous Saints Row games. No, what Volition has done in the reboot is allow you to dictate what optional content populates the world and where they’re located. These ‘Criminal Ventures’ can be planned out once the Saints find a base of operations (which is itself customizable to a degree with various interior decorations) shortly after they all decide to quit their jobs. These side activities are unlocked through properties you construct on open lots.
It’s a fascinating and clever way to let you tailor the experience; if there are certain gigs you prefer over others, you can prioritize filling Santo Ileso with those. Naturally, I opened a medical clinic to unlock Insurance Fraud, a returning — and absolutely bonkers — mode from previous Saints Row games. In this minigame, you have to cause as much damage to The Boss as possible by letting yourself get run over, blown up and all kinds of other masochistic exploits. Amusingly, the doctor at this clinic even pointed out that there are easier and less painful ways to commit insurance fraud, to which The Boss said “you do it your way, and I’ll do it mine.”
The best of both worlds — so far
Now that I’ve had a few days to reflect on my time with Saints Row (2022), I find myself remembering just how much it kept me entertained. Is it the most technically impressive or mechanically sound game? Definitely not. But it’s an admirable effort by Volition to combine the zaniness of past Saints Row games with a more endearing story and deeper customization of character and setting alike. It remains to be seen how well all of this will hold up over an entire open-world experience, but for now, I’m here for the ride.
Saints Row will release on August 23rd on PlayStation 4, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PC and Google Stadia.
But for me, the bigger and more impactful twist came just a bit later, in the Northern Cave at the start of Disc 2. After mostly dealing with Sephiroth’s minions up until this point, we find the villain sleeping cozily in a creepy cocoon. As it turns out, everything that’s happened has been Sephiroth manipulating the party to get to that point. The coup de grâce? He reveals that Cloud isn’t the renowned SOLDIER hero he claimed to be — he was a simple Shinra infantryman who never made it into SOLDIER. Worse still, Shinra scientist Hojo had experimented on Cloud in an effort to turn him into a loyal Sephiroth clone, and he even proved a failure at that. All of that trauma caused Cloud to snap, assuming an identity that was formed by stories he’d heard from his best friend, Zack, an actual top-ranking SOLDIER.
That same friend is the one who loaned me FFVII, which gave it special significance before I even played it. But beyond that, my friend, in many ways, was the “Zack” to my “Cloud” — the person I wished I could see myself as. Underneath Cloud’s badass swordsman exterior lay a deeply insecure loner. Like me, Cloud also was raised by a single mother, except in his case, his father had died, whereas mine was just an emotionally abusive, distant asshole. As someone who’s struggled with confidence and social interaction, I felt seen. We learn that when Cloud once returned home, he felt so embarrassed that he never made SOLDIER that he hid his identity so as to not be recognized by Tifa and everyone else. As a kid who would always nervously slink into a corner to fade away, I understood Cloud’s pain.
