Cait Sith or Reeve

[LicoriceAllsorts]

When the party reassembles for the final showdown with Sephiroth, should it be Cait Sith or - in a change from the original - Reeve himself (in a velvet blue suit) who shows up to join the battle?

Bonus question - should the remade game show Yuffie and Vincent evacuating Midgar? Maybe it could be a minigame involving Yuffie, Vincent and the Turks?

 

[Shademp]

When the party reassembles for the final showdown with Sephiroth, should it be Cait Sith or - in a change from the original - Reeve himself (in a velvet blue suit) who shows up to join the battle?

I think Reeve would be too busy keeping some semblance of order in Midgar after the fall of Shinra, coupled with the preparations for the inevitable evacuation of Midgar.

However, it'd be nice if the game found ways to make Reeve feel more present. Could it work to have Cait Sith shift between humorous "Cait Sith" speech and formal "Reeve" speech and to accompany these shifts with camera transitions to whatever room Reeve is currently in? It all depends on how jarring these transitions would be, as we have never heard Reeve's voice come out of Cait Sith before. ...Now that I think about it, the humor in hearing Reeve's voice while seeing Cait Sith's mouth move would be too funny to pass up. XD After all, the game's sense of humor should not be limited to the first sections of Disc 1.

I definitely think that once Cait Sith's identity is revealed, Reeve's presence should be stronger even if he doesn't hang around with Cloud and the others on the Highwind.

 

[Wolf_]

Assuming you kill gya ha ha and kya ha ha, Reeve is currently the highest authority in Midgar I would imagine. It would be nice to see the distinction between the two characters.

 

[Tennyo]

Yeah, Reeve was the one who took charge in Midgar and tried to evacuate everyone to safety. He can't go to the Northern Crater.

 

[Octo]

I'm gonna say no, not unless Reeve has office supplies as his weapons. I'd like to see Safer Sephiroth in all his majestic splendour being pelted with a hole punch.

But if he did participate they'd probably have him using his 'Inspire' ability or some shit. I mean that whole thing was fucking stoopid. I liked it better when Cait Sith was a robot/AI and an architect/town planner Reeve - and that is his surname as far as I'm concerned - was controlling it. Simple. Not this Doctor Strange bullshit.

All angried up now

 

[Tennyo]

Reeve's surname is Tuesti.

 

[hian]

Unless Reeve is some kind of fighting man, which doesn't seem all that likely, I don't think so. Considering the risk involved as well, it would make more sense for him to use the robot.

What interests me more is how Cait Sith will be pulled off in the remake, in general, because it's such a weird character.

I mean, is the entire thing a robot? Or just the moogle it rides?
Does Reeve always control the entire thing, or does it have some sort of sentience/A.I that allows it to move around, speak etc. even when Reeve isn't in direct control? I mean, how can Reeve do anything at all, if he has to control the thing 24/7?
With the voice acting, how will the game avoid making it painfully obvious from the start who Cait Sith actually is?

And moreover, with the new game-play obviously taking a leaf out of FFXV's book in how exploration is handled, how does Cait Sith factor into that?
You can't exactly have that thing jump around and navigate the kind of environments that Cloud is seen to navigate through in the trailer without looking all kinds of weird and out of place.

Maybe they'll have Cait Sith just be the cat outside of battles, sitting on Cloud's shoulders or something, or running around, well, like a cat - only to summon the robot moogle once you encounter enemies?

I don't know, but I'm pretty intrigued.

 

[Shademp]

With the voice acting, how will the game avoid making it painfully obvious from the start who Cait Sith actually is?

I don't see anything with the voice acting that would make it obvious from the start who Cait Sith is. Listen to Reeve at 2:56 and Cait Sith at 3:17.

 

[Ite]

Reeve's surname is Tuesti.

Now it is.

A "Reeve" is an appointed overseer of a village or hamlet, and for the last few centuries it's been a common last name.

 

[Tennyo]

Does that make it not Canon for the past ten years?

 

[Octo]

Over my dead body it is!

 

[ForceStealer]

Hey, I will gladly accept "Reeve Tuesti" if they forget about Inspire.

To my knowledge Inspire is only mentioned in one book source, and no one's mentioned it in any game's before. I'll be perfectly happy with them leaving it as a vague remote control device. (Indeed, the FF7 Advent Children Reunion Files explicitly refers to it as a robot ) And as for hian, yeah I always gathered Cait Sith acts on an artificial intelligence, but Reeve can control it directly when need be.

 

[Octo]

Inspire is like....Reeves signature fragrance. Available in the Shinra shop. Only 59.99gil

 

[Shademp]

I know of two mentions of Inspire.


#1: Early Material File of the FFVII Ultimania Omega (2005), Cait Sith / Reeve's Character Profile
These profiles tell us scrapped scenarios and character history.

A fortune telling machine at a theme park. A kitten. He rides on the back of a fat moogle. He gathers monsters using cards, uses slots… He’s really a puppet controlled by Reeve (actually an ‘Inspire&#8217 of the Shinra Company. At first he comes along as a spy, but through his interactions via the Cait Sith puppet, he develops a friendship with the party.

...

Reeve is the head of Shinra’s Urban Development Division. He is an ‘Inspire’, with the power to breathe life into and control nonliving objects. At first he approaches Cloud’s party using the Cait Sith puppet in order to keep an eye on their movements and spy on them. For some reason, wherever Cloud’s party goes Shinra isn’t far behind.

...

They persuade Cait Sith. Reeve is revealed to be an ‘Inspire’ as well. Reeve, who has complete control over the mako reactors, shuts down the power from the world’s mako reactors.

So the "Inspire" concept predates even the release of the original game, though at that stage Inspire seemed to be more of a race/class rather than the ability itself.


#2: FFVII 10th Anniversary Ultimania (2007 & 2009), Reeve's Profile

The head of the Urban Development Department. Involved in the construction of Midgar from the very beginning, he watches over the town’s development like that of a child. By utilizing his special ability, “Inspire”, he is able to cause inorganic things to emit life; his “child”, the “cat”-shaped robot, Cait Sith can be controlled from a great distance. After Meteorfall, he became the director of the World Regenesis Organization (WRO), which is devoted to the purpose of restoring life to the planet.

Here we see Inspire referred to as an ability instead of a group/race/sub-species/class of people.


It would be neat to know if Inspire is mentioned in, for example, the Crisis Core guide books.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

So "Inspire" is like "Manipulate" but for rocks and spoons?

Why couldn't Reeve "Inspire" Meteor? if Cait Sith can be controlled from a great distance, why can't the Huge Materia? See, I think they quietly dropped the Inspire idea when they realised it would break the game (Reeve could use his Inspire to make the Sector Seven plate gently fly away and land on a soft patch of grass somewhere) and that's why I don't really regard it as canon. There are so many situations in the game when Inspire would have averted tragedy - so if Reeve really had this abilty, and chose not to use it (mentioning sector 7 again), that would make him a bigger, more self-serving shit than Scarlet and Palmer combined.

 

[Octo]

Yeah, there are any number of things he could have done secretly with an ability like that, he could have seriously fucked with Shinra. He could have 'inspired' all the money in President Shinras bank account to spontaneously combust

 

[ForceStealer]

So "Inspire" is like "Manipulate" but for rocks and spoons?

Why couldn't Reeve "Inspire" Meteor? if Cait Sith can be controlled from a great distance, why can't the Huge Materia? See, I think they quietly dropped the Inspire idea when they realised it would break the game (Reeve could use his Inspire to make the Sector Seven plate gently fly away and land on a soft patch of grass somewhere) and that's why I don't really regard it as canon. There are so many situations in the game when Inspire would have averted tragedy - so if Reeve really had this abilty, and chose not to use it (mentioning sector 7 again), that would make him a bigger, more self-serving shit than Scarlet and Palmer combined.

Hence why it's stupid. So here's where we count on Square's penchant for forgetting previously established things.

And, thanks Shad. So that's still only one "canon" reference since one is for scrapped material. Not saying that invalidates its canonicity, but it's still pretty easy to ignore considering it never actually plays a part in the games.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

It would be neat to know if Inspire is mentioned in, for example, the Crisis Core guide books.

It wasn't mentioned in the CC Ultimania (Cait Sith is just called a robot there), but here in the second line of Reeve's entry from the CC Complete Guide's Keyword Collection we find this:

インスパイアという無機物に命を吹きこむ能力を持っており、ネコ型ロボットのケットシーを操作できる。

"He possesses an ability, called Inspire, to imbue life into organic material, and is able to use it to control the cat-shaped robot Cait Sith."

So, here -- as with the 10th Anniversary Ultimania profile quoted earlier -- we have Cait Sith referred to as both a robot and as something Reeve "Inspired." I don't know what the fuck.

So "Inspire" is like "Manipulate" but for rocks and spoons?

Why couldn't Reeve "Inspire" Meteor? if Cait Sith can be controlled from a great distance, why can't the Huge Materia? See, I think they quietly dropped the Inspire idea when they realised it would break the game (Reeve could use his Inspire to make the Sector Seven plate gently fly away and land on a soft patch of grass somewhere) and that's why I don't really regard it as canon.

Hence why it's stupid.

Agreed all around. Hence why it's the one bit of canon that Shad and I just kind of never addressed in our unfinished fanwork finale to the Compilation.

Really, what is one supposed to do with that crap?

It does seem like someone from the original development team is still fond of this bit of stupid for whatever reason, though. It's gotten included in these books somehow.

 

[Shademp]

The biggest problem with Inspire is that its limitations are not defined.

If for example we defined that Reeve is only able to breath life into inorganic objects that he holds a deep emotional connection to, then the idea could work. Cait Sith might be a doll from his childhood and regardless of the copy (Cait Sith #1 is destroyed in the original game and when Dirge of Cerberus starts out we are observing Cait Sith #5) his emotional connection could be what brings it to life.

At the start of Dirge of Cerberus, Reeve controls a Reeve doll who contains a Cait Sith doll. I can easily see Reeve feeling a connection with a doll that perfectly resembles himself, ergo why Inspire would work on this Reeve doll copy.

Some wonder why Hojo hasn't dissected Reeve, given the scientific interest there would be in researching Inspire. All it takes is that Reeve's ability is a secret that hasn't spread to Hojo.

If we also define that Inspire only works on small objects, no bigger than a human, then we get rid of yet another problem.

But it seems unlikely at this point that Square is going to explore and explain the rules for the Inspire ability.

 

[LicoriceAllsorts]

Can you imagine what an angry toddler with that power would be like? They're not even old enough to distinguish between animate and inanimate objects. if my kids had been "Inspires", I'd have been assassinated by their soft toy collection years ago, when I made them eat brussels spouts or sent them to their room for tormenting the cat.

 

[The Twilight Mexican]

The biggest problem with Inspire is that its limitations are not defined.

If for example we defined that Reeve is only able to breath life into inorganic objects that he holds a deep emotional connection to, then the idea could work. Cait Sith might be a doll from his childhood and regardless of the copy (Cait Sith #1 is destroyed in the original game and when Dirge of Cerberus starts out we are observing Cait Sith #5) his emotional connection could be what brings it to life.

At the start of Dirge of Cerberus, Reeve controls a Reeve doll who contains a Cait Sith doll. I can easily see Reeve feeling a connection with a doll that perfectly resembles himself, ergo why Inspire would work on this Reeve doll copy.

Some wonder why Hojo hasn't dissected Reeve, given the scientific interest there would be in researching Inspire. All it takes is that Reeve's ability is a secret that hasn't spread to Hojo.

If we also define that Inspire only works on small objects, no bigger than a human, then we get rid of yet another problem.

But it seems unlikely at this point that Square is going to explore and explain the rules for the Inspire ability.

Those things would help, but we'd still be left confused as to how the hell he can do it in the first place.

How funny if he were an Ancient's child all along or something.

 

[Shademp]

Those things would help, but we'd still be left confused as to how the hell he can do it in the first place.

How funny if he were an Ancient's child all along or something.

Inspire is definitely bordering on the Ancient-type ability to cultivate spiritual energy. Similar to how Shelke is close to a Cetran due to her ability to perform Synaptic Net Dives. Shelke is like the Computer Nerd version of a Cetra: Seeing mostly lifeless data, not feeling the emotions of life's essence.

 

[Flare]

I never even knew about 'Inspire' until this thread.

As for the idea working, I think it'd naturally be limited by mass or something, hence why Reeve can't lift a Midgar plate tbh I never would've thought of him using that ability to completely beat the game, because I would've just assumed it was limited to small objects or something similar.

 

[Octo]

Some wonder why Hojo hasn't dissected Reeve, given the scientific interest there would be in researching Inspire. All it takes is that Reeve's ability is a secret that hasn't spread to Hojo.

You know that this is the makings of a fanfic right here, if it hasn't been written already. Hojo doing experiments on Reeve....mainly involving stuffing various things up his bum probably and seeing if he can 'inspire' them out again.

A bit like a maze game or something...

I really disgust myself sometimes.

 

[Shademp]

You know that this is the makings of a fanfic right here, if it hasn't been written already. Hojo doing experiments on Reeve....mainly involving stuffing various things up his bum probably and seeing if he can 'inspire' them out again.

A bit like a maze game or something...

I really disgust myself sometimes.

All this fits with my headcanon of Reeve being gay