Why is the letter double-u used to signify doing things twice, one might say, doubling their use? It clearly is a mystery.
Hey Omi how do you pronounce "W"
e: ninja'd
Because it's a DOUBLE-u.
EDIT: Damn, someone beat me to it.
EDIT 2: Multiple someones, even. And here I thought I was being clever.
This is stupid. I hate this. Who even thinks of that? How does that make sense? I hate everything now. I'm never using the letter W ever again.
To be more specific than the preceding posts, it's an English-to-Japanese loan "word" used as shorthand to signify "double" because, yeah, double-U. You can also see it used that way in other Japanese media (Kamen Rider, for example).
Okay, as an untranslated cultural quirk that makes more sense, thank you for the explanation. The letter W is back in my good graces.
In earlier drafts of the plot and setting, Reeve was an Inspire, a person with the innate magical power to bring objects to life. The terminology was scrapped in the final draft, quite possibly because someone had the good sense to realize that would make Aerith's special magical powers way less special, but as you can quite clearly see, they didn't really bother scrapping the plot point.
Well… I guess sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic? XD
Remember how we all had a bit of a laugh about Cait Sith using the Manipulate materia for any of his bullshit to fly with the party?
Yeah Reeve just has superpowers. He can 'breathe life' into the Cait Sith doll and there is zero explanation for how this random human has a genuinely magical ability outside the paradigm of all other supernatural abilities shown in the game. Cait Sith #1 was, seemingly, genuinely sentient and expressed as much before it died in the Temple of the Ancients, before Reeve Drifted with the backup body.
Okay, that is wild. But it does explain this weird subplot. It's just... cut content that was never properly replaced nor completely removed and left in the game without zero explanation. I can make sense of that, at least, even if it's not... great writing.
Honestly, they could have kept that plot element and just made it a unique materia he owns instead of an inherent ability.
What's this chat, "it's that whole thing Omi talked about earlier with Materia being weirdly absent from the character layer of the plot even when it would make sense or fit in naturally all over again?" Why yes, thank you, I
am a genius.
Fun fact, at some point in FFVII's development they planned to kill off all the party members you didn't bring in this sequence, having them die parachuting in while only the main party made it.
Fun fact - originally, the game just fucking slaughtered the party here. You'd pick your party of three for the raid and then everyone else on the roster would die to build heat for the climax. Nomura said "what? that's fucking stupid, don't do that" and the conversation that followed is what led to the placement and role of Aerith's death at the end of disc 1.
That is... insane, holy shit. That is
hilariously deranged as a plot point. It's like, the bizarro universe version of Mass Effect 2's suicide mission where the entire cast fucking dies if you didn't both leveling up their social link, god. Can you imagine if they had kept this in the final product? I don't know
how it would have impacted the game's reception but I can be pretty sure it wouldn't have the same role in modern pop culture, lmao.
So once the Ultima Weapon got close, what was the Steal?
As usual, Steal whiffed repeatedly until the Weapon ran away
@Omicron: Technically the W-X materias aren't
dualcasts. They allow you to input the relevant command
twice, instead. For example, with W-Summon, you could summon both Hades and Bahamut. Or Knights twice. However, you pay the full cost of both commands -- both items are consumed, both summons cost their standard MP and consume a summon use, etc.
Yes, that is... How Dualcast has always worked
Identifying with Salami Dave? Get in the cuck coffin with Vincent right now.
I am my own justification.
Don't forget to check out Shinra's headquarters again. Maybe your good friend Cait Sith/Reeve cached some goodies there…
Yes, that is, in fact, the area that becomes unavailable if you do things in the wrong order
I personally think throwing Cait Sith into the plate drop was Remake's biggest misstep.
Even for those of us who get the reference, Cait trying to emote despair looks faintly ridiculous
Game, 50 thousand people just died, I don't want to be distracted by how silky and beautiful Cait's fur looks
For all the newbies, and I know there were a lot, it must have been even worse
Why is there a talking cat suddenly
Yeah, Cait Sith has like... Such a minor role in Advent Children that I pretty much didn't remember his existence, so in Remake when that random anthropomorphic cat showed up in the middle of an otherwise quite hard-hitting scene of devastation and loss with several character deaths I was just kind of... Confused. It didn't really hurt my enjoyment of the scene but it was weird and kind of inexplicable.
.
