Final Fantasy 7's Cloud Strife is one of gaming's most iconic characters. His striking, spiky hairstyle has not gone out of style in the 27 years since he first graced our screens. No matter what game you see him in, he just exudes cool, but there's no denying that since his debut appearance in 1997, he's had quite a glow-up.
In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, Cloud looks better than ever before, with a character model so detailed that you could probably count all of his individual pores if you really wanted to. Believe it or not, his character model's total polygon count has actually doubled from around 110,000 to 220,000 since 2020's Final Fantasy 7 Remake – a game that was already visually stunning. Of those 110,000 Cloud-based polygons in Remake, though, Square Enix definitely had its priorities in order, as it's been revealed in a PlayStation Blog post that half of them were dedicated to perfecting his luscious locks.
"When people think of Cloud, most think of his gigantic sword and his unique hairstyle. Because it is so iconic, we needed to put special effort into creating Cloud’s hair for Final Fantasy 7 Remake, to properly express his personality," Square Enix's lead character artist and main character modeler, Dai Suzuki, explains.
"The hair was an extremely high-priority element and in fact accounted for half of the total polygon count for the whole model. In Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, the hardware has been changed to PS5, allowing for a higher polygon count to be used than in Final Fantasy 7 Remake."
For comparison, back in the original Final Fantasy 7, Cloud's battle model was made up of roughly 900 polygons, making his polygon count in Rebirth around 244 times larger. Meanwhile, his timeless Buster Sword was estimated to have had a polygon count of approximately 50-100 in the original, which has since grown to around 8,000 in Rebirth.
There's no denying that the entire Final Fantasy 7 world, including the characters in it, now looks significantly better than it did in the late '90s, even if there is something incredibly nostalgic about those low-poly models. It makes you wonder how much more detail Square Enix might be able to cram into Cloud's hair for the third Remake installment.
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