the task beyond ‘response modality’ necessary for the movement and progression of
the character/avatar.
As against this, here is an extract from a fan spoiler from the Final Fantasy Shrine
website, in which Cloud’s story is rendered as a kind of literary narrative:
Originaly [sic], Cloud did leave Neiblhiem [sic] to join SOLDIER. However,
he was found to be unfit, and so he became nothing more than a common
grunt. During this period, he became friends with a SOLDIER member named
Zack. As luck would have it, these two were assigned to accompany Sephiroth
to the Neiblhiem reactor. Cloud, too ashamed of his failure to admit it to his
friends and neighbors, kept his mask on when they arrived.
Because this is no longer a game, the demand function is eliminated, unlike in the
walkthrough, whose function was to deliver the wisdom of the expert to steer novices
through the game. This narrative, like the cut scenes, has nothing to do with system,
everything to do with guise: it is about filling in the gaps, developing the replete,
heavy hero of popular narrative provenance, and is a communicative act of the offer
variety, entirely dominated by the declarative mood. As a monomodal text, it
combines elements which were multimodal in the game: moving image, the
procedural steps of the game, and dialogue all become transformed into written
narrative. There is no sense of interactivity: Cloud is firmly located as the Actor, and
the modes which in the game separately render his actions, his thoughts, his past and
his speech are fully integrated as game becomes story, complete with character
psychology.