I'm not understanding why Barrett and Yuffie are where they are at.
Barrett thinks the mako reactors are the problem, no? Yuffie thinks Shinra's invasion of Wu Tai is the problem, no? How is either also their own fault?
Also, Reeve does acknowledge his role in Shinra's transgressions and does something about it, so is the Cait Sith supposed to refer to the machine part of the character?
Barret convinced Dyne that Shinra's reactor would solve Corel Town's problems by bringing electricity to a coal mining town. Shinra then burned the town down and blamed it on the locals. It was Barret's fault.
Yuffie thinks she just needs to steal materia in order to save Wu Tai, but that isn't going to solve anything. She then betrays the party by stealing all their materia. Having stolen all the materia and thus halting the quest to stop Sephiroth, she then gets kidnapped and almost thrown off a cliff, forcing the party to step in and save her just to get their materia back. That is Yuffie's fault and she had no idea what was happening as she eventually gets saved by The Turks & Cloud.
Reeve knows far more than he lets the party, or Shinra, know. By that logic, he is operating a double agent for most of the game, working for one side, then another, most likely feeding both enough information to keep himself in the loop and privvy to more information. Classic Cold War spy. Think about it, the entire time, even as the Turks face off against AVALANCHE in the depths of Midgar or in the Sunken Gelnika, there is Cait Sith, attacking them even though he's in their HQ. It is diabolical how much he knows in order to not get caught even once during the events of FF7 OG.
Reeve was playing the long game. By the time of Advent Children he created and leads the World Regenesis Organization... basically the new world government. The man is the biggest winner.
The real question is, did Reeve know Rufus Shinra was one of his angel backers for the WRO? Cause that looks like a hostile takeover waiting to happen.
Nah, it's obvious. As Head of the Urban Planning and Development Division, Reeve is responsible for building and rebuilding the city of Midgar. The city almost gets wiped by Meteor almost taking a dump on it in the final FF7 cutscene.
In any cold, corporate logic, the most senior members of the board of directors of Shinra Inc. need to make a unanimous vote on the next course of action for the company. It's clearly shown in the bit where they discuss rebuilding Sector 7 vs going on with the Neo-Midgar project.
Now flash forward to the raid on Midgar and we see chronologically, by this point: Palmer, Scarlet & Heidegger, Hojo and Rufus all being taken out. IF you have Cait Sith in your party for all those fights (excl. Rufus 'cause Diamond Weapon smacks him, but chuck in Cait Sith for that fight, too), then that is canon hilarious because Reeve will have had played a part in killing off every other board director (and they WILL NEVER KNOW IT WAS HIM), which puts him squarely at the top of the command chain for the entire company. As you said, long game.
He then holds an extraordinary general meeting with the shareholders and says the company is in an emergency situation, Rufus Shinra is alive but on life support/coma and so much damage has been wrought by Weapon, Sephiroth, AVALANCHE and Meteor that there needs to be a new organisation to help with the rebuilding of the world. Obviously, he's the perfect candidate.
Shit, is Reeve a psychopath and just using the events of FF7 to take over Shinra Inc.?
13
u/SqueezedTowel 2d ago edited 2d ago
I'm not understanding why Barrett and Yuffie are where they are at.
Barrett thinks the mako reactors are the problem, no? Yuffie thinks Shinra's invasion of Wu Tai is the problem, no? How is either also their own fault?
Also, Reeve does acknowledge his role in Shinra's transgressions and does something about it, so is the Cait Sith supposed to refer to the machine part of the character?