in terms of personality. He felt Vincent was older and more mature than Cloud, and as a result, he cast Suzuki, who has a very low voice. In the English dub, Vincent was voiced by Steve Blum as the casting staff searched for a man who portrays Vincent's brooding manner based on his dark past. Blum was overjoyed because he claims being a fan of the original Final Fantasy VII. Vincent is shown to be a tall, lean man with long black hair and a ragged red cloak and mantle over black underclothes. He wears a metallic, golden-colored gauntlet on his left forearm. Vincent's cloak covers the lower half of his face and is held closed by a series of buckles. His eyes are naturally red. His crimson cloak was added to symbolize the idea of Vincent carrying a heavyweight connected to death. While other characters were given simple costumes in Advent Children, Vincent was given something more complex. Nomura felt that changing his design to something complicated would "conflict with his personality," which is relatively straightforward, and he was thus given attire consisting of "various, complex parts." His cloak was difficult to animate due to it being very organic; the overall complexity of Vincent's design led to his scenes being "especially hard to create." These scenes were constantly being adjusted so as "to convey [their] elusive nature of seemingly having shape, but not." These adjustments concluded six months before the film's completion. Vincent was chosen as the protagonist of Dirge of Cerberus due to his strong connections to the setting of Final Fantasy VII and the room available for expanding on his background. Due to the staff's desire to make Dirge a shooter, Vincent was also chosen because of his weaponry, while his transformations into a different type of monsters in the original Final Fantasy VII was something the staff wanted to work into the gameplay. For the game, Nomura redesigned Vincent's gun in the same way that Cloud's Buster Sword was redesigned for Advent Children, so as to demonstrate that Vincent is the protagonist of the game. The gun was named in reference to the multiheaded hound with the same name from Greek and Roman mythology; the gun has three barrels as Cerberus has three heads. Reception The character has received mixed comments by video games publications. In GameSpot's article "The History of Final Fantasy", Vincent was comically