Final Fantasy 7's original director suggests Cloud should be proud of the JRPG's infamous love triangle: "What a lucky guy"

Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth Aerith and Tifa suited
(Image credit: Square Enix)

Final Fantasy 7's scandalous love triangle 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:burned even hotter in 澳洲幸运5开奖号码历史查询:Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth's 2024 reappraisal of the 1997 game, and while some fans still disagree on which empathetic, pretty girl is best for bad boy protagonist Cloud, the original Final Fantasy 7 dir🌄ector thinks he should simply be grateful.

"Cloꦺud's thought of deep꧑ly by two different women," producer Yoshinori Kitase . "What a lucky guy."

– those who believe Cloud's level-headed childhood friend Tifa is the love of his life, opposing those who want Cloud and flirty spellcaster Aerith to get married – Kitase has a point. Some people can't even get one girlfriend. Why be ungrateful about two with close-combat experience? 

"Aerith has always been this sort of sisterly character pulling Cloud along and encouraging him," Rebirth director Naoki Hamag🦂uc🌟hi instead told Inverse with more finality. 

In an emotional sequence in Rebirth, Aerith and Cloud go on a bittersweet date in an altern🌊ate timeline, which Hamaguchi thought showed that Aerith "is feeling what is to come, and under📖standing her fate. She's still pushing Cloud along and leading him in this way, and it shows her pure heartedness and inner strength."

But "there can be many different interpretations of what this scene truly means for each player," Hamaguchi conceded to Inverse. Ultimately, we can all agree that love is complicated. Even more so, I imagine, wh👍en there's magic involved. 

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Ashley is a Senior Writer at GamesRadar+. She's been a staff writer at Kotak🌄u and Inverse, too, and she's written freelance pieces about horror and women in games for sites like Rolling Stone, Vulture, IGN, and Polygon. When she's not covering gaming news, she's usually working on expanding her doll collection while watching Saw movies one through 11.