The Power of Knowledge

by J. dela Paz AKA reiciel

Original Editorial: The Strife Manifesto

I would like to applaud Wisdom's editorial on the truth behind Cloud Strife's character, which I generally found compelling, cohesive, and in so far as it draws upon actual plot content within the game, quite enlightening - though I admit, after replaying the game only twice, I'm still rather foggy about some of the details he raised. Thus I'd like to clarify that I don't intend to dispute any of the facts that he recalled. However, his editorial provoked much reflection on my experience from playing the game, and I find that the conclusions I've drawn for several important points which he raises are quite different from the conclusions he has drawn. The points that follow are all based upon post-midnight theorizing spurred by a recent bout of severe FF7 nostalgia, so if at times they sound a tad abstract, my apologies. As such, I don't claim any of these theories to be 'fact', but they make the most sense to me given what I remember of the game.

Before I deal directly with my points of contention, I'll explain a theory of mine that may help to clarify why I've arrived at the conclusions that will follow: the nature of the Lifestream. There seems to be confusion in distinguishing 'Lifestream' from 'mako' - they do not denote the same thing. Mako is the physical manifestation of the spirit flow of the world, depicted as a luminous green liquid substance. It is harvested and processed into usable energy by Shinra Inc.'s reactors, much like, say, nuclear power. Lifestream, on the other hand, does not refer to a physical substance; it is rather the essence within mako, the actual energy possessed by mako. It is the force that organizes and animates the Planet's matter, sourced in the flow of those spirits who have returned to the Planet, and so all of the creatures who have lived and died on the planet contribute to it. Bugenhagen says something to this effect when you first visit him in Cosmo Canyon. Furthermore, the power of the Lifestream is knowledge - this is made clear whenever the Lifestream is mentioned in the game. Sephiroth says in the Temple of the Ancients that he has travelled the Lifestream gathering the knowledge of the Ancients, those who came before the Ancients, and those who came after - it is this plethora of knowledge that makes him powerful. When Cloud resurfaces in Mideel after falling into the Lifestream in the Northern Crater, the doctor says he has suffered severe 'mako poisoning', which he explains is being bombarded with all the knowledge of the Lifestream at once. Lastly, Shinra is not endangering the Planet simply by sucking up all of its energy, but by wasting the Planet's knowledge - ignorance is what will kill the Planet, not weapons or industry. I will elaborate further on these points later on, but first, to briefly conclude my Lifestream theory: if the Lifestream itself is knowledge, then it could be more appropriately thought of as a sort of mind, an entity - the living Planet.

Now, to my first point - the SOLDIER experimentation and the Jenova Project. I believe Wisdom has oversimplified, and perhaps even confused the motives behind the two Shinra initiatives. To my understanding, all eligible candidates for the SOLDIER program are showered with mako, which enhances their battle prowess. How is this accomplished? The mako doesn't simply chemically react with their cells to give them larger muscles, larger brains, etc. Following from my theory above, the mako shower infuses SOLDIERs with knowledge, which may have any number of psychological effects: it may broaden, focus, or simply enhance their minds so that they can in turn hone their skills, and/or give them the mental discipline to be better officers. All this enhancement is accomplished solely by the mako shower, not by Jenova injection, because not all SOLDIERs were given Jenova injections - Zack is a perfect example. The purpose of the Jenova Project was not then "originally intended to make easily manipulated superhumans, like Sephiroth." The purpose of SOLDIER was to create superhumans who could enforce Shinra's oppresive reign over the majority of the world, but I would consider it a stretch to say they were engineered to be "easily manipulated." I'm no military expert, but I would suspect that a high caliber officer, such as a SOLDIER First Class or a top-ranking general like Sephiroth, would attain that position by being of a sharp, rather than a weak and malleable, mind. Thus the Jenova Project is not primarily concerned with experimenting upon SOLDIERs; in fact, some of the Jenova injections were given to normal people - many of the citizens of Nibelheim were made into clones after the Sephiroth incident, as well as the man in the pipe in the Sector 5 slums of Midgar. Those who were selected for the Jenova project and did receive Jenova injections were, in general, reduced to mindless, babbling zombies. Easily manipulated, maybe, but superhuman? Hardly.

The true original purpose of the Jenova Project was to create another Ancient - I believe the game says as much in the Kalm flashback when Sephiroth goes through the books in Shinra Mansion's library. The project was headed by Hojo and Prof. Gast, and they both believed that Jenova was in fact an Ancient; but Prof. Gast abandoned the project, I suspect because he was disgusted by Hojo's unethical experimental methods, the foremost being the creation of Sephiroth by injecting Jenova cells into him while he was developing in Lucretsia's womb. It wasn't until after Hojo tracked Gast down to the Icicle Village and found the videotape records of Ifalna that he discovered Jenova's true nature, that of a monster who infected and nearly wiped out the Cetra. Sephiroth had already been born at that point, and likely was already on his way to becoming a First Class SOLDIER; this means that Hojo did not create him to be a puppet, he created him to be powerful, to be an Ancient. He did not really change this motive after he discovered Jenova's true nature, he merely improved it: he wanted Sephiroth, with the help of Jenova, to become more powerful than the Ancients. And why wouldn't he? Sephiroth was his son, after all, and if he could pull it off, it would make him not only a world-renowned scientist, but also a very proud father.

This leads me to consideration of the new Jenova Project, and at this point I must state a crucial belief that I hold: Jenova was not manipulating everyone to her will. She was never in contact with the Lifestream, and so there was no way for her to manipulate others unless they were connected to her directly. After all, she was sealed by the Ancients, meaning that she was rendered virtually powerless. The only time she could have begun to exert influence would be if she had a new vessel to control: the clones. And yet, in creating the first - and, as I will later explain, the only complete - clone of Jenova, Hojo negated that opportunity: her power passed to Sephiroth. Again, I will return to this point later, as I'd like first to analyze an issue more relevant to the perception of Jenova having the upper hand in the grand scheme of things: the Reunion Theory. Hojo began his Jenova cell injections after he discovered her true nature. It seems logical then that his injections paralleled Jenova's action upon the Ancients when she arrived on the Planet: he was giving them all the "virus." The Ancients turned into monsters; the clones Hojo created turned into mindless zombies. The difference I suspect is because the Ancients were more powerful to begin with, and so were more dangerous when infected than Hojo's specimens. Recall now how viruses act: they cannot live on their own, they can only survive by infecting a suitable host and using up all of the host's resources until they die. Thus what Hojo was effectively doing by 'infecting' all of his specimens was in fact feeding their energy back to the source of their cells. This is probably where he derived his Reunion Theory from: all the clones would return to Jenova, and perhaps 'resurrect' her. However, I don't believe that the Reunion Theory came into effect until after Sephiroth died (and yes, I do agree with Wisdom that Sephiroth died, physically , in the Nibelheim reactor. That is not to say that his essence disappeared, which is another point I will revisit later.)

So how does Sephiroth fit into this scheme then? And furthermore, how does Cloud? As I said earlier, Sephiroth was not like Hojo's other specimens: he was the only complete Jenova clone. By complete I mean not that he completed all the phases of Jenova experimentation, since as we all know, he received her cells quite differently: he received them pre-natally, when he was still developing. This means that he actually integrated Jenova's cells with the human cells in him, bestowed by his parents; the Jenova cells were not simply alien cells infecting his body, they partially constituted his body. This, I think, is one of the factors that grants Sephiroth resilience to Jenova's debilitating influence for the majority of his life, for we can surmise that he was relatively normal up until the Nibelheim incident. Cloud himself says, in the Kalm flashback, something like, "He was cold, but not cruel." Sephiroth apparently was not showing any of Jenova's character up to that point in time. Furthermore, in keeping with his ambition to make his son great, Hojo did not create any clones while Sephiroth was alive. Until Sephiroth died, he didn't need to; he already had an ideal clone. As far as we know in the game, Hojo only continued his Jenova cloning after Sephiroth died in the reactor, beginning with Zack, Cloud, and the people of Nibelheim. These specimens, however, were inferior to Sephiroth, since they would receive Jenova only post-natally, meaning that their cells were already too differentiated to successfully integrate with Jenova's. Only very strong specimens had any hope of achieving the same level of resistance as Sephiroth to the debilitating affects of the Jenova cells, so what better specimens to choose than a SOLDIER First Class and the young man who had singlehandedly killed Sephiroth?

At this point I must confess that I'm slightly uncertain about the actual Jenova cloning process, specifically the phases that Wisdom recounts, as I can't recall which specific flashback sequences actually outline them. Given that, I will simply accept what he states as fact: that there are 3 phases, involving administering of Jenova cells followed by 3 successive mako injections. Few of the clones managed to survive to Phase III however, the stage at which subjects supposedly gain conscious control over the Jenova cells, and so they simply degenerated. Cloud is among those, as we can observe from his constantly unstable state following the procedure, though he manages to remain alive. Wisdom accounts for this instability by saying that Cloud was "two-thirds of a Mako experiment... He's completely subject to outside interference. His cells are incomplete. He can't consciously control them; his body lacks the chemical stability to do so." From this claim, it seems that the sole reason why the clones are vulnerable to Jenova is because their cells are incomplete, making them too chemically unstable to exert voluntary control over their minds and bodies. I disagree with this conclusion, and that is because of the one question that no one can seem to answer: why doesn't Zack react to Jenova's cells?

If we recall Jenova's original influence when she first arrived on the Planet, she singlehandedly nearly wiped out all of the Cetra. Fast-forwarding to the Jenova Project, there are countless specimens who successfully reacted to her cells and either disintegrated or flung themselves off the cliffs in the North Crater. Cloud himself nearly killed one of his dearest friends, and gave the Black Materia from Sephiroth. Why wasn't Zack affected so drastically? Some people would say it is because he already had a shot of mako from being in SOLDIER. I don't believe this conclusion, as that would only hypothetically place him at Phase II of the experiment, at which point he still wouldn't have been stable enough to withstand Jenova's influence. No, the answer lies not in the method or the materials of the experiment, but in the subjects themselves: it's my belief that psychological instability is also a requirement for the reaction to Jenova cells, and not solely a consequence. Think about all of Jenova's victims. Jenova confronted the Cetra in the guise of their family and friends and then infected them, as Ifalna explains in Prof. Gast's records. Imagine how devastated you would feel if the people closest to you, the people you cared about most, seemed to turn against you. Little is known about any of the present day subjects exposed to Jenova's cells, with the exception of 3 people: the man in the pipe in the Sector 5 Slums, Cloud, and Sephiroth. First, the man in the pipe. We know nothing of him from before he was experimented upon, as when you first meet him he is already non-verbal and bearing the telltale tattoo; however, you can assume that if he was living in a pipe, he's not likely to have been living a very happy or fulfilling life. Second, Cloud. Hojo finds him after he has returned to his hometown for the first time in years, which itself bears many distressing memories; after he has spent the entire trip hiding from his closest childhood friend, whom he wishes he could speak to but is either too shy or too ashamed to do so; and after he watches his mentor go mad and destroy his town, kill his mother, nearly kill his childhood friend, and nearly kill the only other comrade he's had since he left for Midgar. And let's not forget that he has a giant gaping gash in his abdomen from Sephiroth impaling him. Why wouldn't he be unstable? I suspect that this is a more primary cause for Cloud's strange stupor following the incident at the reactor; it's quite simply post-traumatic stress disorder. Now, as for Sephiroth, I said earlier that I believe he has already successfully integrated Jenova's cells, and that is why he lived his life generally unaffected. But we see that he does in fact go mad after he visits the library in Shinra Mansion's basement and discovers his origins. Why now? Because it is the first point at which he becomes psychologically unstable. His identity as 'the Great Sephiroth' is formed around his esteem as a highly-skilled military official. He doesn't know who his parents are, and apparently has no friends. Suddenly he discovers that he isn't even fully human, that he's merely the product of an experiment, and also discovers who his true father is - Hojo, a man who he absolutely disdains. The world he once understood no longer makes sense, and so an adverse reaction to Jenova's cells ensues. Once the psychological immune system is down, the host is primed for infection by the virus, and Jenova's cells trigger a destructive impulse in him and draw him to her in the reactor.

We know very little of Zack, but as alluded to by others, his lighthearted excitement about becoming a mercenary following the events in Nibelheim doesn't speak highly of his moral fiber. Therefore I don't believe the events that transpired in Nibelheim had a dramatic enough effect upon him to make him vulnerable to Jenova, and so he did not react to Jenova's cells. I now must turn to the progression of the Jenova procedure. Wisdom emphasizes chemical effects of mako in granting the subjects stability and control, but following from my Lifestream theory, I prefer to emphasize psychological effects. Controlled mako exposure, like in the SOLDIER process, enhances the mind by imbuing it with knowledge; thus the mako strengthens the subjects' minds against the Jenova cells. However, if the power of the Lifestream, which opposes the Jenova cells' influence, is knowledge, the Jenova cells react by suppressing knowledge. Furthermore, I would propose that Jenova's mode of attack is more specifically to steal, or at least, erase her victims' identities, so long as her victims are sufficiently unstable to yield to her deceptions. This is evidenced by Jenova's ability, which is constantly mentioned, to adopt the appearance and voice of others. Her victims are easily reduced to little more than puppets to be used for her own ends, moreso when she weaves a pleasant illusion of an identity for them to believe in. That is precisely what happens to Cloud, as Hojo explains in the Northern Crater: his true identity is pushed down into his subconscious, and the one he presently holds is constructed out of Tifa's memories, as well as his recollections of Zack and Sephiroth. The Jenova cells within him have convinced him that this identity is real, it is not a subconscious decision he makes. Subconsciously the real Cloud still exists, and still tries to break through, evidenced by 'young Cloud' who we often see and hear speaking to him. Young Cloud does not begin to appear until Tifa finds Cloud at the train station in Midgar and calls him by name. Moreover, the Jenova cells do not construct this false identity for him until he hears Tifa call his name. This alone should point to Tifa as the catalyst for Cloud's struggle with the Jenova cells within him, which is the next point I will address.

If I follow Wisdom's logic, up to the point I've been speaking of, Cloud has only achieved Phase II of the Jenova treatment. He has managed to keep himself alive and stabilize himself to the point where he can still function normally within an identity, which, though it is false, is still quite a feat. The other clones can barely talk, and yet Cloud has the semblance of a fully-functioning human being. Again, I must emphasize however, that this level of stability is not achieved until he meets Tifa, does not involve another mako injection, and happens instantaneously - we see in Tifa's flashback after the Reunion sequence that all she had to do was say his name and suddenly Cloud snapped out of his stupor, boasting his newfound ex-SOLDIER First Class identity. Tifa is intimately and critically tied to not only Cloud's true identity, but to his very sense of an identity to begin with. There is countless evidence for this: whenever young Cloud speaks to him, he constantly refers to memories he shared with Tifa - for example, when Cloud sleeps in lower Junon after rescuing Priscilla, young Cloud says something like "You could always get away with just scraped knees", alluding to how Cloud remarkably survived with barely a scratch after he and Tifa fell from the bridge in the Nibel Mountains. Young Cloud explicitly tells him then to talk to Tifa, because Tifa is the key. In the true Nibelheim flashback sequence in the Northern Crater, Cloud tells Tifa himself that although there are many things he doesn't understand, he doesn't need to worry because Tifa remembers him. He only falls apart when she can't uphold his false identity anymore; the false identity depended on her for its creation and persistence, and without her support, it crumbles. He learns from Hojo what happened to him after the Nibelheim incident, and with the false identity eliminated, he literally begs for another: it still sickens my stomach whenever I see him say, "Please, Professor Hojo, give me a number..." Cloud doesn't care if it demeans him, the simple label would still give him an identity of sorts for him to cling to. Yet Hojo refuses, and so in that psychologically and emotionally unstable state, once again, he is vulnerable to the Jenova cells. The adverse reaction occurs and he gives the Black Materia to Sephiroth.

Cloud's plunge into the Lifestream after the Reunion is what Wisdom would refer to as the third injection, bringing Cloud into Phase III. That should make him stable enough to take control of his body, should it not? Yet when the party finds him in Mideel, he is catatonic. This doesn't follow the logic of the Jenova experiment as Wisdom perceives it, for he proposes that the successive mako injections are supposed to make the subject ever more chemically-stable. Cloud is far from this when he is found in Mideel, and in fact, as Wisdom indeed points out, he is diagnosed with 'mako poisoning.' I would further point out however that 'mako poisoning' does not refer to chemical toxicity, but rather, as the doctor further explains, to the experience of being bombarded with all the knowledge within the Lifestream - once again, a psychological effect. That is why he should not have survived - his mind should have buckled from information overload, and as we know, if someone is brain dead they effectively are dead. Given this, I would hesitate to refer to this as the third injection, because the effect of the Lifestream did not stabilize Cloud in any sense whatsoever; it in fact worsened his condition. This negative effect resulted because it was not a controlled mako injection, as the first two injections were. Therefore, that plunge cannot be considered to be the third injection, and as such, the third injection theory cannot be the reason why Cloud survived. There is a much simpler reason for why he survived, which you can discover if you talk to one of the villagers in Mideel before you visit Cloud: he says, "He must have one powerful guardian angel watching over him." Of course he survived the Lifestream. Aeris was there to watch over him.

Although he survived, Cloud is still unstable. So unstable in fact that not even the Jenova cells can formulate a new identity for him, although I would propose that any question of the Jenova cells' influence is irrelevant by this point. There is no longer any need to manipulate clones, because all of them but Cloud are dead and he has already given the Black Materia to Sephiroth. Thus, again, Cloud must rely on Tifa to piece together an identity for him, his true identity this time, which she accomplishes after Ultima Weapon flies away and she and Cloud fall into the Lifestream. Again, I consider it irrelevant by this point, but if anything were to be considered the third injection, it would be this exposure to the Lifestream, and not the one from the Northern Crater. The reason for this conclusion is that Tifa is there with Cloud to sort through his memories, in effect controlling the dose of Lifestream knowledge being administered to him. I should re-emphasize then that it is not a chemical stability granted to Cloud from this experience, but a psychological one; furthermore, it is not simply stability that Cloud achieves, but also a complete liberation from the Jenova cells' influence, period. The Jenova cells are effectively dead within him because he has regained his true identity, thus making him stable once again and as unreactive to their manipulative influence as Zack was when he received the Jenova treatment. Not to say Tifa is solely responsible for Cloud's recovery - obviously he must be exceptionally strong in his own right to survive the entire process, and he also had other friends to support him. Yet Tifa is the only member of the party who knew who Cloud was before he even encountered Sephiroth, and so her role is pivotal.

Now that I've generally explained my perspective on the Jenova Project, I'll deal with the two most controversial issues: who was stronger, Cloud or Sephiroth?; and, who was really in control, Sephiroth or Jenova? First of all, I believe that, taking all things into consideration, Cloud and Sephiroth began on equal footing. Sephiroth was exceptionally strong growing up, and so was Cloud - again, he managed to survive the fall from the bridge in the Nibel Mountains with barely a scratch, while Tifa was comatose for a week as result. Both men were given Jenova treatments, albeit by different methods and with generally different results. They both experienced an adverse reaction, however, when their identities came into question. This is the point upon which they differ. When Cloud lost his identity, he formulated another one upon meeting Tifa which was false, but not completely so. He did in fact experience virtually everything he remembered, only in the case of the Nibelheim incident, he remembered it from the wrong point of view. He finds his true self with Tifa's help because she preserved him in her memory, and he was then able to link her memories to his own to find his true identity. Sephiroth, on the other hand, did not have that benefit. He had no social network whatsoever to fall upon while growing up, and so no one to preserve who he truly was, beyond 'the Great Sephiroth', before he lost his mind in Nibelheim. There is perhaps Hojo, but it is arguable whether Hojo was personally involved enough in raising Sephiroth to know his true identity. Hojo would prefer Sephiroth to discard his mundane former identity anyhow, in pursuit of a more powerful one. Sephiroth's only solution then was to create a new identity for himself, which at the time was to be an Ancient, as he believed his 'mother' Jenova to be. His madness and obsession with his 'mother' left him vulnerable for Cloud, whom he severely underestimated, to overcome him, and so he was flung into the depths of the reactor. It's clear from this scene that Cloud is the stronger of the two, for Sephiroth has the advantage of his integrated Jenova cells to make him strong; Cloud does not, and still manages to kill him. So Sephiroth dies, but his will is so strong that his essence survives in the Lifestream. I believe Cloud subconsciously knows this, that the threat of Sephiroth has not been eliminated, and so his hatred for him persists in his subconscious memories. Cloud can only properly defeat Sephiroth in the Lifestream sequence at the end, where he confronts the true Sephiroth: Sephiroth stripped of the power of Jenova, Sephiroth the man. Cloud defeats him easily because without Jenova, Sephiroth is essentially empty and impotent; he has no identity to keep his consciousness alive. Cloud does, however, and if you'll note in final movie, after he defeats Sephiroth he actually absorbs Sephiroth's dissipated essence - that is to say, he finally understands Sephiroth. Sephiroth's greatest flaw was that he denied the essential vulnerability of existing, to the point that he wished to become a god in order to escape it; but Cloud comes to understand this weakness - the weakness of all humankind - and he accepts it, as all heroes eventually do. He realizes that such vulnerability is what inspires courage, which is humankind's greatest virtue. And that is what makes him stronger in the end.

As for Sephiroth and Jenova, as I mentioned before, with the birth of Sephiroth, Jenova loses the only opportunity to exert influence in the world. I believe her power passed on to him, because he was the first as well as a complete clone of herself. That being so, he had the potential within him to use her power, as I'm sure she was pleased about, because it meant that he would also have the power to release her. But Sephiroth had other plans. He did not want to 'resurrect' his mother, he wanted to succeed her, by becoming 'one' with her, as he says in the Kalm flashback. He adopts her mission to take the world back from humankind and heads towards her prison in the Nibelheim reactor. What follows is interesting, however; Sephiroth doesn't release her from bondage, he takes her head. I would hardly think that Jenova would manipulate her son to decapitate her, that would be a rather gruesome wish from a mother indeed. On a deeper level, however, it is significant that Sephiroth chose to take her head - he was taking her knowledge . And when he plunges into the Lifestream, he takes her head with him as he gathers knowledge, which means that he can now use her power to manipulate the clones. Note that until this point, Jenova has never existed in the Lifestream. She only enters it to a limited degree when Sephiroth takes her head with him, and even then she is subject to his will because her essence within the lifestream is not whole - some of her is still living on the planet. This is why, whenever I speak of the Jenova treatment, I refer to the Jenova cells, not Jenova herself; Sephiroth was using her power and her connection to the clones to manipulate them for his purposes. Thus, Hojo proceeds with the new Jenova Project, creating clones for Sephiroth to suck more knowledge from, and who can find the Black Materia for him to enact his plan to become a god. Furthermore, when they die, he can direct their spirits to the Northern Crater to create for him a new physical body. I suppose that not enough of them died to grow him new legs, however.

Jenova's body also then becomes his pawn. As Hojo says in the Northern Crater, Sephiroth was manipulating all the clones to come to him, and even Jenova's body was following along. His summoning Jenova served two purposes: one was so that he could fully assimilate her in the Crater, and second was so that he could use her as a convenient distraction to prevent Cloud and his party from interfering with his plans. If you notice whenever you fight Jenova, the fight is instigated when Sephiroth's hurls a piece of her at you - more fanciful mutilation - so that his Sephiroth clone can fly away and do its business. The fact that Jenova's voice finishes Sephiroth's sentence for him when you fight her after Aeris dies seems largely trivial to me; Sephiroth, or at least his clone, had already flown away when Jenova appeared, so it was just that - she was finishing his sentence for him. Besides, it is more conceivable for Sephiroth to be talking through Jenova, whose cells are his only connection to Cloud, than for the scenario to be reversed. Furthermore, as far as I can tell, the Jenovas you fight still do not have a head, or at least, the same head she had in the Nibel reactor; she has grown a new, monstrous head in its place, to show that she has not regained her power. This holds until you fight her final form in the Northern Crater, Jenova Synthesis, which looks nothing at all like her previous incarnations. Perhaps this is because Sephiroth has already severed all of her useful body parts and what you see in Synthesis are the monstrous appendages she has grown in their place, much like her head. At any rate, once you defeat her, she has finally died, which means that, as her body has returned to the Lifestream, Sephiroth can fully assimilate her power and his physical body is reborn. That is hardly what I believe she would want him to do if she were in power. Sephiroth is your ultimate enemy throughout the plot of the game, and he has controlled the course of events from the moment he realized what he truly was. His only mistake was in trying to deny what he realized, as I explained above, and that is why, in spite of all his manipulations, he still fell in the end.

That brings to conclusion my rather long-winded examination of some of the intricacies of FF7's plot. My theorizing may be incredibly complex at points, but it is only fair to do justice to such a brilliantly complex plot. Though my emphases and explanations throughout this piece differed from Wisdom on many points, I still agree with him on many things, not the least being how fine a job Square did in forming Cloud's character. I too find that his character is too often relegated to a weak little boy with an inferiority complex, for his history and actions throughout the game bely a much richer psyche. I still hold my more psychologically-bent view of the story, but I acknowledge that Wisdom's perspective is also compelling. At the very least, I thank him for putting together such a thorough analysis of this game, for it inspired me to expand my own understanding of it. The broadening of horizons, coming to a fuller understanding of things - that is the power of knowledge.