Square Enix's One-Line Tweak in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles Just Reignited a 30-Year-Old Cloud and Aerith Debate
It wasn’t about the sword. It was about power—and the fallout is spreading far beyond the ceremony.
Cloud Strife shows up in Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles for like a minute, and somehow that tiny cameo just reignited the never-ending Final Fantasy 7 love triangle debate. Of course it did.
Light spoilers for FF7 (and, to be safe, Remake and Rebirth) below.
So what changed?
In the original Final Fantasy Tactics, Cloud had a line that went like this:
"I've lost something... something very important."
Most players took that to mean his hidden weapon in Tactics, the Materia Sword+, which did not come equipped and had to be found in-game. But some fans — especially on the Cloud x Aerith side of the aisle — have always read it as Cloud mourning Aerith.
In The Ivalice Chronicles remaster, Square Enix tweaked that line. Now Cloud says:
"I've lost someone... someone important."
That wording obviously leans a lot harder toward a person, not a thing — which immediately kicked the Aerith vs Tifa discourse back into gear. Does it make Cloud/Aerith canon? Not automatically. Cloud has lost multiple people by the time he wanders into Ivalice; if, hypothetically, Barret or Cid had died off-screen before that cameo, he would probably sound just as wrecked.
The inside baseball part
A Japanese-language wrinkle started making the rounds on Twitter: in the PSP version in Japan, the line reportedly used 'taisetsu na mono' (大切なもの), which translates to 'something important' or 'important thing' — not 'taisetsu na hito' (大切な人), which would mean 'important person.' If that holds, the original intent may have always pointed at the sword, not a someone. Whether this new remaster script is a deliberate nudge toward the romance reading or just a localization choice... only Square Enix knows.
- Original Tactics line: "I've lost something... something very important" — often read as a nod to the hidden Materia Sword+, which you had to track down.
- Remaster line: "I've lost someone... someone important" — reads like a person, which stokes the Aerith/Tifa shipping war.
- JP PSP note: wording reportedly used 'something' (mono), not 'someone' (hito), backing the 'it was the sword' interpretation.
- Bottom line: the remaster makes the line more personal, but it does not definitively canonize any relationship.
Me? I don’t have a horse in the FF7 romance race. Let me hang with Jessie, Biggs, and Wedge and call it a day.
On a separate but related note: after about 45 minutes with Final Fantasy Tactics: The Ivalice Chronicles, I’m pretty convinced Square Enix 'rebuilding' this remaster after losing the original source code was worth the headache.