I am tall and lanky. At almost 6’3″, I am either too fat to fit into the clothes I want or too skinny to look good in the clothes I have. I wear my hair as long as possible as the only saving grace on a body that I often have no control over. Capitalism demands work, and self discipline has only gotten so far. Isolation leaves me constantly alone with nothing but my thoughts and my body. I shy away from social media, and I have the kinds of body issues anyone does. I associate me being thinner with how I desire to be pretty. Masculine role models in pop fiction are all hunking pillars of flesh. My real life idols are all men who know their way around a makeup aisle.

The constant parade of men’s bodies in videogames often borders on the grotesque. We are as players, frequently asked to drive vehicles made of rippled meat and bone. As invincible and relentless as a robot time traveling from the future. Kratos is massive – taking up almost half of his screen real estate in God of War. An unstoppable killing machine. A body that would be ridiculous even for Hollywood standards. Nathan Uncharted is so perfectly rugged and handsome if he were real the only answer would be that he was some kind of freak, government test. Kazuma Kiryu is rarely shirtless, but wears the kind of suit that a single glance of on the street would have you saying “he must work out.”

Solid Snake seemed to once be an outlier, and even moreso his secret boyfriend Raiden. Lithe and encased in spandex, his body was uniquely both objectified constantly by the camera and always at constant threat of serious injury. The first time we see him without a shirt, he’s the subject of a lengthy torture sequence. We notably return to the objectification of Snake’s body – now an old man. Smoking makes us cough. Staying crouched behind cover for too long injures his back and makes him groan in discomfort. As stealth games focus on bodies in a way very different from others, Snake is almost not unique. Finally, a bar existed for a body I felt was attainable.

Final Fantasy has never featured characters I could physically connect with. Cloud Strife has always been too thin and too pretty for that Buster Sword. Squall wears a cropped jacket combo that only looks good on the most androgynous people alive. Tidus has one pant leg. A generation of noodle-armed pretty boys swinging gigantic swords – they say a lot about what kind of qualities are desirable in a masculine body. These bodies aren’t real, and they never can be. So for, I honestly think many men and nonbinary masc people, the choices are impossible sword boys or beef titans.

There’s a lot of writing about the dress scene – which I refuse to refer to as crossdressing because Andrea tells Cloud that True Beauty is An Expression of the Soul. Nothing in Remake tells me Cloud would see himself any differently in a dress – that it’s the outside world which needs to ascribe femininity to him temporarily becoming a type of beautiful that’s Allowed. For that reason – Cloud’s expression of inner self in a dress is no different than mine. Wearing a piece of clothing does not make me a woman, because that is not who I am.

Yet, I can see myself in Cloud still. His stoicism slowly unraveled by the plot, it’s more that I finally see a body that seems real. Cloud is defined, but not so striated and drained that Hollywood requires of men. He’s altogether too pale and a little too skinny. I wouldn’t say Cloud is gaunt but it seems as if the way he covers his physique that he may not be proud of it. He’s got neither abs that somehow show through heavy fabric of western Superheroes or the broad shoulders and stature of what America requires of it’s protagonist men.

I don’t feel seen so much as here, I finally see a body I want to inhabit. Constantly being face to face with his body made me see the shortcomings I feel about my own. I associate physique so much with masculinity that working out often causes a dysphoric panic. I throw up, I clear my lips of vomit. If this is worth it, I’ll never know, because it’s not what I want to be. There are so many people I know who fear working out because they don’t want to be visible. I fear being seen wherever I go.

It surprised me to see that Square Enix went so strongly against a tradition of perfect gorgeous characters. In this return to their ur-swordboy, it’s different. Cloud is strong, but not stiff. Defined, but not grotesque. I can’t say if his body is realistic. Nothing that aspired to realism can be so if it’s made by a dozen different hands trying to craft an image worth selling. I almost believe he could swing that sword now. I want to believe it, because I want it to be true for myself. He’s also an excellent dancer.

Nothing about his body makes me associate it with an ugly kind of masculine aesthetic. Constantly during play I found my thoughts idly wandering towards my own desires for my body. Maybe I spent every day I didn’t spend trying to beat it building a space to workout in. Maybe I desired that kind of androgynous physique: to look just as good in a gothic dress as it does in the kind of modern gym-apparel his outfit has become. It’s interesting to see just how little the Honeybee Inn sequence really changes him. Underneath the tight fishnets is still a well defined body. It makes the decision to not make certain other characters reflect that even more puzzling. The rare mistake: Cloud can be effeminate and toned, but a woman still can’t have guns just as large.

It makes me wish the people willing to celebrate him in a dress could celebrate just how much he means for a lot of other people. That imagery is powerful, yes – but so is finally seeing a body I want to have reflected in a videogame.