Rejoice, for I have prepared stairs!

First, we can establish a scale pretty easily.

Cloud is 173cm tall, and the water tower is about 3.3 Clouds wide, making it about 5.7m/18.7ft. This makes sense! Apparently the minimum size a water tower reservoir can be in order to be functional is around 14ft in diameter, so the size of the water tower is pretty true to life.

However.

According to the map in Rebirth, the water tower is the smallest structure in the village.

Based on this map, Cloud's childhood home is pretty much exactly 3 water towers wide and about 2.25 water towers deep, making it about 17x13m/56x42ft, which gives the floorplan an area of 221m²/2,352sqft.

For reference, in the real world, Australia ranks #1 for the largest average floorplans in the world at 214m²/2,303sqft. Based on the scaling of this map, we are meant to believe that Cloud's childhood home, which is generally portrayed as having one bedroom with the rest of the house as a single open space, and implied to be quite small, is larger than the average home in every single country on Earth.

I understand that it's portrayed as being larger in Rebirth than it was in the OG, where it looked like this:

But Claudia is still like three steps from the front door when she's washing the dishes in the kitchen, which is also directly next to the bedroom.

Cloud is the only child of a single mother who had him as a teenager. His house has never been portrayed as large. And yet, the scaling of the Rebirth map says it's in the same ballpark as this real-world floorplan, which includes a 3 car garage, 4 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, an office, a mud room, and more:

This isn't even getting into the fact that, based on this scale, the Shinra Manor is 18 water towers wide and 6 water towers deep, making it about 103x34m, giving the floorplan of the first floor alone an area of 3,502m²/37,518sqft. We're talking about a combined area of over 50,000sqft for both aboveground levels.

For reference, check out this real estate listing for a 50,000sqft house in Beverly Hills.

It has 16 bedrooms, 27 bathrooms, and a shitton of other stuff I'm not listing in full here, including but not limited to a dance studio, a gym, a wine cellar, a theater, a spa, a pool, a sauna, servants' quarters, a bar, and a whole other house just for guests. The Shinra Manor is nowhere near that size.

First, we can establish a scale pretty easily.

Cloud is 173cm tall, and the water tower is about 3.3 Clouds wide, making it about 5.7m/18.7ft. This makes sense! Apparently the minimum size a water tower reservoir can be in order to be functional is around 14ft in diameter, so the size of the water tower is pretty true to life.

However.

According to the map in Rebirth, the water tower is the smallest structure in the village.

Based on this map, Cloud's childhood home is pretty much exactly 3 water towers wide and about 2.25 water towers deep, making it about 17x13m/56x42ft, which gives the floorplan an area of 221m²/2,352sqft.

For reference, in the real world, Australia ranks #1 for the largest average floorplans in the world at 214m²/2,303sqft. Based on the scaling of this map, we are meant to believe that Cloud's childhood home, which is generally portrayed as having one bedroom with the rest of the house as a single open space, and implied to be quite small, is larger than the average home in every single country on Earth.

I understand that it's portrayed as being larger in Rebirth than it was in the OG, where it looked like this:

But Claudia is still like three steps from the front door when she's washing the dishes in the kitchen, which is also directly next to the bedroom.

Cloud is the only child of a single mother who had him as a teenager. His house has never been portrayed as large. And yet, the scaling of the Rebirth map says it's in the same ballpark as this real-world floorplan, which includes a 3 car garage, 4 bedrooms, 2 full bathrooms, an office, a mud room, and more:

This isn't even getting into the fact that, based on this scale, the Shinra Manor is 18 water towers wide and 6 water towers deep, making it about 103x34m, giving the floorplan of the first floor alone an area of 3,502m²/37,518sqft. We're talking about a combined area of over 50,000sqft for both aboveground levels.

For reference, check out this real estate listing for a 50,000sqft house in Beverly Hills.

It has 16 bedrooms, 27 bathrooms, and a shitton of other stuff I'm not listing in full here, including but not limited to a dance studio, a gym, a wine cellar, a theater, a spa, a pool, a sauna, servants' quarters, a bar, and a whole other house just for guests. The Shinra Manor is nowhere near that size.