Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth is a beautiful but bloated tribute to the original game, and part of that excess includes a large cast of characters that draws upon the larger world of Final Fantasy 7 media. At this point, it’s getting to be a bit like the Marvel Cinematic Universe, because Rebirth adds several characters who never appeared in the original, but did in some of the spinoffs. If you’ve just played either the original Final Fantasy 7 or Final Fantasy 7 Remake, then Rebirth can get confusing at points, since some characters from other games just show up out of the blue.
While you don’t need to know who these characters are to enjoy the story, it’s good to understand some additional context of their backstory and larger role in the world. One such character is Cissnei, who appeared in Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 and its remake, Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion, along with the Japan-only mobile title Before Crisis: Final Fantasy 7.
In Rebirth, she’s a local leader in the Gongaga region who welcomes Cloud and the rest of Avalanche to town. Although she doesn’t play the largest role, her appearance is meaningful given she’s central to the events leading up to Final Fantasy 7. So here is everything you need to know about Cissnei from Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth.
[Ed’s note: This post contains spoilers for chapter 9 of Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and the ending of Crisis Core: Final Fantasy 7 Reunion.]
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Before we begin, it’s important to note that Cissnei does not appear in the original Final Fantasy 7. The developers originally introduced her in separate Final Fantasy 7 compilation media. Her introduction in Rebirth marks the first time she appears in a “mainline” Final Fantasy 7 story. (I use quotation marks because we have two mainline stories now, between the modern remakes and the original game.)
Rebirth introduces Cissnei as the coalition captain in the Gongaga region. When she meets Cloud, she threatens him and mistakes him for someone else as she questions the group. Despite initial tensions, she soon welcomes Avalanche to town and her own home. The game doesn’t give any information on her background, but she seems very connected to the region and takes Cloud and friends to a memorial that commemorates the lives lost in a Shinra reactor explosion. In the end, Cissnei ends up helping the group by giving them a place to stay, and later, by providing Tifa, Aerith, and Yuffie with grappling guns so that they can go and save Cloud, Barret, Red XIII, and Cait Sith from Scarlet after a Shinra attack.
In Crisis Core, Shinra employed Cissnei as a Turk, and she worked alongside many of the same faces we see in the game today, like Rude, Tseng, and Reno. During that time, Cissnei developed close ties with Zack Fair, a first-class member of SOLDIER and friend of Cloud Strife. For the sake of avoiding unnecessary spoilers and just giving you the most important background information on Cissnei, I won’t be diving into all things Zack Fair. However, if you want to get all the details on him, we have a separate explainer.
Like the other Turks, Cissnei was often tasked by the company with doing the higher-ups’ dirty work. At one point, she’s tasked with tracking down a “fugitive sample.” As it turns out, the fugitives in question were Zack and Cloud after the two had escaped from a Shinra lab where Professor Hojo had been experimenting on them. Cloud remained in a vegetative state due to mako poisoning, but Zack woke up and escaped with Cloud on his back.
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One day, Cissnei finds Zack at the beach and asks if he’s the fugitive she’s looking for. He tells her yes, but begs her to let them go, and she does. However, in a later part of the story, she encounters Zack again in his hometown, Gongaga. In a sort of awkward, meandering conversation, Cissnei lets Zack escape again and tells him she can keep an eye on his worried parents. Zack then escapes once again, and that’s the last time he sees her.
Crisis Core doesn’t tell us the end of her story, but now we can fill in some of the blanks. Presumably, her appearance in Gongaga means that she deserted the Turks and continued to watch over Zack’s family. When Cissnei sees Cloud, she says, “You…” but then tells him she mistook him for someone else. In this moment, it’s possible she mixes up Cloud and Zack and remembers her prior history with him. It’s a quick moment that would be easy to miss, but it’s an important one, given she represents another crossover point where we start to see the overlap between Zack’s and Cloud’s lives.
Cissnei never formally met Cloud. When she could have hypothetically met him, Cloud was in some sort of mako-induced coma and she only spoke with Zack. However, her actions to spare Zack and as a result Cloud ultimately had the power to change his fate throughout the rest of the series. If it weren’t for Cissnei, Zack and Cloud would’ve been captured by Shinra back during the events in Crisis Core and Cloud might not have survived. Her decision to look away and defy her orders as a Turk ultimately changed the course of Cloud’s life in a way that allowed him to evade the clutches of Shinra and eventually bring him to the safety of Avalanche in Midgar. So without Cissnei, there might not have been a Cloud for us to play as today.