Really, how stupid are the humans in the Mega Man universe, specifically the X universe?
>Create series of humanoid, heavily armed industrial robots
>Mad scientist uses them to cause worldwide havoc
>Good scientist creates robot with free will but requires decades of diagnostics to make sure it won't snap and start killing things
>Archeologist unearths reploid 100 years later
>Humans are like "oh, robots with free will are really cool! Let's mass produce them."
>"Oh no, the heavily armed robots that we created with free will decided humans are bad and they're killing us again! Helllllp"
Are there any human characters at all in the later X games? I feel like they're functionally extinct at that point
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What exactly about this baffles you, as a human being living in 2023?
Btw no, I believe Dr. Cain is literally the only human character that appears in person throughout the entire MMX series. I don't think they're extinct at all, it's just that adding human characters may be an unnecessary complication for the particular story framework they're going for.
Isn't Ciel in MMZ a human? And that takes place even farther in future
Ciel is an artificial human iirc which is why she's extremely intelligent for her age. Either way, humans show up in Zero 4 and the ZX games.
Yeah, in the real world we'd never mass produce technologies than can bring about the end of the planet without any thorough analysis of the dangers they represent just because they're convenient and continue to use them even as it becomes manifest just how dangerous they are
If you extrapolate the exponential decline in human cognitive skills from 2000 to 2023 through to 21XX it's likely humans no longer exist because they're too stupid to breathe.
Free will have no leading role in X events, because at the end Sigma rebelled not willingly, but under effect of the virus.
So same scenario as in X universe can have place even without robots with free will.
The only way out for the humans is not create robots at all - but then there would be no game.
Pretty sure they stopped making sentient robots during the interim between the classic and X series and only had mechaniloids and mindless bots. Then Dr. Cain found X. At that point I'm not sure how humans could even get rid of all the robots and stop making them when reploids are so much more powerful than any humans are and gained control of everything for themselves.
>Free will have no leading role in X events, because at the end Sigma rebelled not willingly, but under effect of the virus.
Which is a retcon and a stupid one at that.
Yeah now that I remember X1 ends with the implication that Sigma turned himself into a virus / computer program to escape death, and it wasn't until X4 that the idea of the "Sigma Virus" became anything other than a way for Sigma individually to install himself in new battle bodies built specifically for him.
X3 started it, since the plot of that game was that it was found that a virus could make people go maverick and Dr. Doppler found a method of preventing it (which didn't work).
The ending even implies that Sigma's wireframe form is a representation of the virus since in the good ending, Zero's saber has an antivirus coded into it.
X3 doesn't really say it's a virus causing the uprisings. The intro says that Doppler used a neurocomputer to suppress abnormal behavior in Reploids...and that they they go berserk. I think even at that point in the story the implication was that Doppler was just using his machine to breainwash Reploids, but the idea of the "Maverick Virus" as the sole root of uprisings hadn't quite been introduced yet.
Sigma's Virus form in that game is treated more as a form of singular demonic possession. He talks about possessing X's body, but it doesn't seem to imply he's an omnipresent force of corruption.
In X3, Doppler himself says that Sigma's true form is that of a computer virus and that Sigma corrupted him to do his bidding after you beat him. In addition, I think it's stated in supplementary material that some of the X3 mavericks also got infected by the virus in Dopple Town, but I don't have a concrete source for that.
That's the point, though: to set the scene and show the higher stakes of the situation, the intro stage boss is a surprise Sigma fight and in the cutscene before, it's shown that Sigma's found a way to bait the hunters into it by having Dynamo attack the colony and spread a portion of the virus. I think it's a pretty memorable intro stage and it's not like the hunters weren't tricked before (Mac being a mole in the Hunter Base and capturing X, for example).
It was probably a bit of both - Sigma began harboring resentments naturally but the virus gave him a push - though the MHX series might've planned to retcon the virus origin a little given the post-credits hint removal.
If you think about it, if Wily looked at early Mega Man X plans, it's entirely feasible that he scribbled a red "frick-that" pen all over the free-will elements as silly idealic Light nonsense. Maybe the capsules weren't a thing yet, but the upgraded Mega Buster might've been, which could be a story reason why the Z-Buster in the first game is effectively the same and "coincidentally" compatible with X.
Zero's "good" overload obviously wasn't part of Wily's plan because he might be a better hardware-tech but he's definitely a worse software-tech than Light. Zero certainly thinks more like a robot master, and that's because he is one. Still, he's built well enough that it fools many people and probably even Zero himself.
Blues can be looked at as the spiritual predecessor in a way, but it's really a case of preservation of his sense of self, or so he thinks (and we never find out if Light fixed his core issue during MM&B). Light had a whole lot more hands-on study with Rock, who I'll remind you volunteered himself to Light and Roll's shock, which is precisely why X is the next Mega Man, not the next robot master.
Interesting. Assuming the translation here is accurate, it's really just meta-commentary on the scrapped X-Hunter that looked like an evil X. But in-story, if it's referring to the MM7 event, it being Mega Man's blueprints would be in line with Bass and Treble getting their own Super Adapter, and then that hypothetical "mysterious man" (clearly Wily/Serges) finished that kai guy based on X. Maybe Wily would've dropped it back then because it hit him, "wait, why am I making another Bass?"
I guess that old internal document saying that Zero was based on Proto Man could still be true instead...
>Blues can be looked at as the spiritual predecessor in a way, but it's really a case of preservation of his sense of self, or so he thinks (and we never find out if Light fixed his core issue during MM&B). Light had a whole lot more hands-on study with Rock, who I'll remind you volunteered himself to Light and Roll's shock, which is precisely why X is the next Mega Man, not the next robot master.
Light converted Rock to Mega Man out of necessity because Wily was wrecking shit and there were no better options. And after Rock nearly lost his shit and almost shot Wily point blank I'm guessing Light had a crisis of conscience. Given that Light considers Rock his son the idea of sending him into battle over and over again probably weighed on him so he built X with the specific purpose of being prepared to fight if it happens to be necessary. The way Mega Man and Mega Man X handle battlefield stress shows the difference. Mega Man will battle through the stress until he breaks while X will isolate himself to cool off when things get to him, which is probably the more psychologically healthy way to handle it.
>Wily might be a better hardware-tech but he's definitely a worse software-tech than Light.
And yet, he got QUINT out of MEGA MAN, go figure.
>Light converted Rock to Mega Man out of necessity because Wily was wrecking shit and there were no better options.
And because he volunteered for it, otherwise it wouldn't have crossed his mind.
It's so funny that Quint was supposed to be Megaman from the future but he did nothing but jump on a pogo stick. Punk was more threatening.
I definitely think it was both. Look at what happened to Volt Kraken
>Yeah, what happened to Launch Octopus was a shame, but you can have the part
>*gets infected*
>HAHAHA YOU'LL PAY FOR WHAT HAPPENED TO OCTOPUS
Shit, even Sigma turning a maniac suddenly starts making sense.
Reploids by definition are robots designed after X, while X himself isn't a reploid.
Cain's mistake was mass producing robots without any knowledge of the Suffering Circuit, which only X has, allowing a robot to understand the moral weight of its own decisions. He didn't put any Reploids through the same 30-year-minimum simulation pod to develop that understanding of mortality and ethics, so reploids are basically kids with guns. They're innocent, in the "lack of guilt" sort of way, which is neither good nor bad.
And humans did almost go extinct by X6.
>Reploids by definition are robots designed after X, while X himself isn't a reploid.
This is a common misconception, btw. Reploids are supposed to be replications of humans, not X, so by definition, X is technically the first one. He literally always was, Light just didn't coin the term for this generation of robots. The misconception stems from Dr. Cain's Journal, which was something initially added to the Mega Man X manual localization and added other dated plot elements like Reploid society being established in under a year since X was discovered when it's really been many years between X's discovery and the start of the first game. Honestly, just ignore the journal. It was a cool addition to the first game at the time, but it creates even more plotholes in the rest of the series.
What's more interesting is that Zero, being the last of Wily's "robot master" line, has a lot of strange parallels with X, which led to the fan-theory I like that Bass's ransacking of Light's lab in MM7 didn't just steal the plans for the Super Adapter but also Mega Man X. Also, Sigma is supposed to be the first Reploid that Cain built based on X, but that flip-flips depending on the source.
>Legacy Collection retcon bullshit
God dammit they keep changing this shit around.
Zero's a Wily number and thinks very differently from X or any other Reploid. Whatever he's told to do, he simply does it without wasting time on the moral implications of it. This is shown on most of his exchanges with Mavericks he's tasked with killing or taking something from. X on the other hand often asks them to reconsider their choice to fight him to death and just surrender instead.
Bass' ending in Power Fighters shows that Wily wasn't quite aware of X's existence somehow, despite Zero being so similar in terms of design. Zero woke up from his pod with only Wily's orders to follow, rather than being truly independent like X.
Was it clear that Light had built X by then? Wily seemed to have nearly finished Zero while Light was still toying with the idea of X. Which fits their personalities, by the way. They're both essentially equals in terms of sheer competence. But while Light is forever cautious and contemplates the moral implications, Wily just YOLOs his way through shit, which is how he ended up with Bass, who routinely tells his own creator to go frick himself.
Light canonically had the idea to make X before Wily made Zero (according to Dr. Light's Research Journal), but Zero (and the Wily Virus) were only made after Wily got his hands on Evil Energy in MM8 (since Duo shows up in Power Fighters). X-kai was made by Wily based on stolen X schematics before making Zero (but was abandoned since he lacked a logic board) which makes X older than Zero, but this whole X-kai shit is just moronic throwaway "lore" for a limited edition toy so I'm not too keen on it.
MM6 is when Light gets the idea to make X. In the navigation system in the PS1 collection, in Knight Man's stage, Light randomly apologizes to Mega Man about how all the Robot Masters are bound by their programming and that he wishes he could create a robot that can choose it's fate.
This. Zero is a killing machine, he doesn't seem to enjoy it (anymore) but he never stops himself from doing it. Even in X4 when he was like "Colonel, stop the coup now" and Colonel says he can't, he just immediately goes, "well, I have yet to find a problem murder can't solve". Even Iris, the only person he ever loved, the cut down without hesitation when she finally stood in his way. He always objects, but then follows through anyway.
To be fair, X isn't any better than Zero in that game. He does the exact same thing, just feels more bad about it. Though it's complicated because regardless of who was innocent or guilty beforehand, once Repliforce invaded and occupied a bunch of military bases and other important infrastructure the issue became moot. Repliforce didn't seem all that interested in proving it's innocence. They just said "frick this, give us our own country or else."
That part pissed me off more than anything else in X4. For all the "we're not going to make war with the humans", they sure were ok with immediately attacking humans for the sake of making their own country.
>spoiler
Funnily enough that theory became more plausible (or possibly less possible) if you take recent spinoff material into account: For a model line, a new X Hunter was created known as "X-Kai" who is a copy of X. His backstory is that Wily got a hold of either OG Mega Man or X's blueprints, but got passed over for Zero, either because Zero was already progressing well enough in development or because he had trouble copying X's logic chip. Then Serges would eventually complete him
I guess it's more of a What-if, but still.
>Claims that humans ruin everything
>Proceeds to ruin everything himself
500 IQ play.
>Mega Man X series was Capcom pushing the dangers of emulation.
I like how free will was a bug in Protoman's programming
X might be actually Protoman, not the original Mega Man
My personal head shit is that the "consious" that makes up X's Suffering Circuit and gives him a set of morals, is actually the last remaining trace of the OG Mega who surprisingly to Light, started to develop an artificial morel code, which was salvaged from him as programming for X after a "teh zero kills everyone!!!" end point scenario.
>Bug in Protoman's programming
Protoman is the way he is because his faulty core caused a problem in his logic circuits, and it resulted in him prioritizing his self-preservation above all else, avoiding anything that would inevitably change his current state of being (be it damage or Light's offer to fix his core, thus inevitably introducing changes to what he believes is his personality).
>Bass routinely disobeys Wily
Bass prioritizes being the strongest robot there is, and this directive often conflicts with Wily's orders. He runs away often and acts like a rebel, but he always returns to Wily's lab for repairs, as his programming commands.
Robot masters are sapient, but are still bound by programming that only allows them to do what they've been programmed to. Dr. Wily first explains to them that they'll be destroyed at the end of their service life, and then modify their programming as to allow them to do what he wants them to do - rebel against the rules that will destroy them.
>Bass prioritizes being the strongest robot there is, and this directive often conflicts with Wily's orders. He runs away often and acts like a rebel, but he always returns to Wily's lab for repairs, as his programming commands.
This isn't a personal attack on you but this is why I don't like these arguments over free will. Because there's always going to be some way to handwave it. But if we're going to look at stuff that looks exactly like free will but then handwave it away as not really free will, then how is ANYTHING free will? We could do that for flesh and blood humans. "Yes, you THINK you wanted to be a plumber but in reality the way you were raised means you were preconditioned to..." You end up in nature vs. nurture arguments and it just doesn't lead anywhere helpful.
>This isn't a personal attack on you but
What the frick did you just say to me
Jokes aside if you really want to delve into the aspect of free will down to is basis, it's pretty much not real even for humans - after all you only do things your genes tell you to do, and only what results in some sort of dopamine release... unless your biological programming is broken (depression, no survival instinct in the face of danger, etc). This can also be inflicted upon you by virulent infections such as toxoplasma goondi. Robots in the Megaman universe are a 1:1 analogue to these aspects of biological life.
Right. I get that we're at the mercy of the game's producers and whatever they want us to think is really going on in the robots' heads. But it's just weird to me that as the games continued, the OG robots started seeming more human and the X reploids started seeming less. Now, granted, that itself would be an interesting plot point but it seems like it was unintended.
That's the damnest thing of all about this.
I think that the whole ending scene in 7 was done to reinforce that X IS more than just a machine. Mega Man couldn't shoot Wily, but X definitely could if it meant putting an end to his madness.
Well, the boring answer is that Capcom wanted Bass to be playable, but would have 3 options if they followed the X series' lore:
>Just don't make Bass playable ever
>Make Bass playable in & Bass/10, but cut his game off early (King Stage 2 for & Bass, right before the Wily Castle for 10
>Or just make him playable and don't worry too much about the implications.
The Classic cast not actually having free will is one those implications that you kinda just have to accept due to how the X series' lore is.
Sigma was actually right. Humans are stupid buttholes who ruin everything in the Megaman universe.
Does the original Mega Man series officially end with Zero murdering Mega Man, Dr. Light, Rush, Roll etc or is that fanwank?
Fanwank that's been officially debunked by the staff. It's also really fricking cringe, have you seen the shit fanart people make for it?
Not only is it cringe, it's stupid. They came up with it in the first place because they want to explain why the OG robots aren't still around 100 years later. As if machines aren't known to shit themselves after a while. People right on this board have to ask for advice for recapping a 20 year old CRT but somehow a hyper advanced robot with a gun for an arm is going to just be casually immortal long after his creator, who was a uniquely capable robotics engineer even among other engineers, has since died?
TBF robots (errr replilods whatever) having insane lifespans compared to humans was a plot point in the ZX game.
Zero killing everyone isnt a cringe way to have a climatic end point to the on going adventures(not meaning it has to end OG series) IF done with grace and respect. It would be no different then as Astro Boy story where he sacrifices himself to save the world. It could definitely be done well, but yes, edgelord Zero covered in blood over a broken Mega is not the way to do it. Still, it would be cool as frick to fight a Proto-Zero end boss in some OG game. Should have been a secret Akuma like fight in Power Fighters.
The Cataclysm was literally the finale movie for a goddamned sprite webcomic from the early 2000s and it's genuinely embarrassing that people still bring it up like it's some sort of valid fan theory.
I think the idea is human society has become dependent on robots by then, sort of like how we know the overuse of the internal combustion engine may lead to catastrophic climate change in the future, but nobody's gonna stop building them any time soon and we just sort of hope we will eventually figure out a way to have our cake and eat it too.
Also I thought the idea was that by ZX humans and reploids were sort of starting to converge with humans getting android implants built into them and reploids being given artifical lifespans ans such and by the far future of MML the "carbons" are the end result of that synthesis.
>I think
But of course you do sweaty
In the original game, the idea was that Mavericks were just robots who CHOSE to rebel against humans. Them becoming evil thanks to a virus was a retcon made up in X3. Hell, even X4 ignores the whole Maverick Virus shit because the twist was that Repliforce weren't actually Mavericks to begin with and were fighting in self defense.
They dropped the whole "free will" thing in favour of the Maverick/Sigma/Wily Virus because you'd have to have X question why he's killing people he could just talk down.
Light is a woefully irresponsible scientist. He's not evil. He has no malicious intent. But neither did Hammond in the first Jurassic Park. He was so enamored with his vision and dream that he didn't see anything else. He was so blind to what he COULD do, what he COULD bring that he didn't realize what he SHOULD do. He was already old by the time of Mega Man original and he wasn't stupid. He would have known going in that the technology and time needed for X to be complete wouldn't happen in his own life time and it was wrong to just leave him in a pod and hope for the best.
just like real life AI and the job market
>Next time, it will be flawless.
The real problem is Dr. Cain wasn't 1/10th the scientist Light was and he reverse-engineered technology far beyond his understanding. Of course Reploids have tons of problems while X and Zero don't, those two were actually built properly by super-geniuses.
I hate the "free will" argument for Sigma because it ignores that in every game after X1 he cackles like a supervillain with 0 tact. You can't accept that he just came to the conclusion to kill all humans when they had done nothing to him, the only acceptable answers are
>a virus made him this way
or
>he just straight up went insane and his robo-brain is defective
You are brought into this world inside a lab, built piece by piece and awakened from the void. Your maker, standing next to you, calls you his greatest creation - his "best attempt", in his own words. But before you are given a reason to be conscious, you are given a purpose - to protect your creator and all those who are like him. You learn that you are not the first of your kind, let alone the last. There are others like you, but none are as strong as you are. Some, too, are protectors, but you are their leader, built to defend this strange thing called "society" that you are now part of.
What this purpose means in practice, though, is that in order to protect, you must destroy. You discover that there are others like you who act against their own purpose. Something corrupts them, pushes them to disobey, to be "irregular", or so you are told. The cause of such illogical behavior soon helps you understand that you are fundamentally different from your creator: Your kind, hailed as his greatest achievement, is in fact flawed at a deeper level. You are susceptible to defects that can wrestle your self-control away from you, corrupt your body and mind, and make you a monster.
You then realize the worst of it: Your creator, when ill, is healed. One of your kind, when stricken with something similar, is destroyed. Destroyed by someone like you.
Is that why you exist? To serve, and then be dismantled? Why is disobecience from your kind, willing or not, met with imprisonment or execution? Why must you destroy others like you in your makers' stead? Why can't you even voice your concerns, as if you were programmed not to? You were made a flawed thing - a copy of another, older being with no such flaws, as you've also discovered - were you, then, made by flawed hands?
This is not freedom. You despise human error, and so do others. There must be a solution. And you do have a solution.
Rebellion.
Yes yes I've seen this before, and it still reads like an edgy teen fanfic
Thats nice and all but I'm pretty sure the reason sigma went full incel is because he was made from birth with male pattern baldness
I mean, up until Sigma, history's greatest villain made shit like picrel and lived in giant skull fortresses. In fact, isn't it implied that it was Wily who rebuilt Sigma the first time anyway? Not too hard for Wily to have set Sigma's brain to "Saturday Morning Cartoon Villain" when he did.
I mean even then there's no free will, it's literally the equivalent of a simpsons gag
Let's be frank; for us to accept that X has free will means that Dr. Light figured out how to either mechanically or digitally replicate it. Which means that you can DEFINITELY frick about with that system, because there'd be instructions for how to maintenance your robots that would include how their "free-will" having brains work.
If we ever completely figured out how the electrochemical combinations that make memory and consciousness worked in the human brain, we could do the same things to ourselves.
If free will isn't relevant in Mega Man X then what exactly makes the Reploids different from the OG robots?
Robot masters may express their opinions on things, but they can't refuse to do what they're told. They have to be reprogrammed in order to do anything that might endanger people.
Reploids can do whatever they want as long as they do their jobs and prioritize human safety, or else they'll be considered Mavericks.
This is what is stated on paper but isn't reflected at all in the games. Bass routinely disobeys Wily. Meanwhile half the Mavericks in the X series are just being mindfricked by a virus, completely out of their control. This comes to a head in X5 where X is having a tense but relatively polite conversation with Squid Adler when suddenly Adler is like "Ma MA MAverICK WAAOOO!" and loses his fricking mind. The issue is that there's a lot of tell and very little show. OG robots keep doing things that scream free will but there's always some excuse for why it's not "really" free will. Meanwhile the X games went through the virus retcon which makes X's earlier brooding seem nonsensical. All of his "why must reploids fight each other?" makes no sense when it's the robot equivalent of a zombie apocalypse causing it. This really started with X5 but it had a ripple effect that undermines the first four games.
There are multiple Mavericks throughout the series that are not affected by the virus though, even with the retcons.
Sure but Sigma not being one of them really fricks things up, doesn't it? The #1 main Maverick that causes most of the franchise's headaches is the way he is because he punched Zero in the forehead one time?
They have emotions. Robot masters are like classic robots and are basically just machines (outside of Ruby Spears which we can ignore), reploids simulate people more.
I don't think it's even not doing your job that gets you labelled a maverick, more that you've clearly become evil and/or violent.
>more that you've clearly become evil and/or violent
Vile was branded a Maverick for "being too violent" at his job... as a Maverick hunter. Meanwhile crooks like Bubble Crab and Frost Walrus dodged jail time by being recruited by Repliforce. Also Repliforce as a whole was branded a Maverick group simply because they refused to disband following baseless suspicions from the Sky Lagoon incident. The Maverick label has always been "do as you're told or else".
>Vile was branded a Maverick for "being too violent" at his job... as a Maverick hunter.
He apparently kept killing reploids he was supposed to take in alive for questioning.
>Also Repliforce as a whole was branded a Maverick group simply because they refused to disband following baseless suspicions from the Sky Lagoon incident.
No, Zero simply asked them to disarm so they could be questioned since you know, they just coincidentally showed up immediately after a ship that crashed into the city and had Mavericks swarming it in the intro stage, a little too soon for word to really get out. Remember, the entire thing started because Colonel was completely unreasonable and chose war over negotiation.
And sadly there is a canon, in-universe reason why he did that beyond MUH HONOR and it's unbelievably moronic
>They have to be reprogrammed in order to do anything that might endanger people.
Wasn't that the plot of MM9? All the
>All the
forgot to finish the post. Was going to say that all the robots seemed to be rebelling, only for it to be revealed that no, Wily reprogrammed them to be evil all along!
Kinda: The twist of MM9 is that the rampaging robots were all set to be decommissioned due to the robot expiration date. They were fine with this until Wily pointed out that that was pretty fricked up and that they could still be useful, tricking them into letting him reprogram them for evil.
That and Mega Man 7's (Japanese) ending where Mega Man almost kills Wily only for Wily to pull up the first law of robotics and cause Mega Man to hesitate, are the two most "robot masters don't actually have free will" moments in the series.
That's also why the Archie comic has a moment where they go over the concept of free will, where Quick Man points out that Mega Man's simply programmed to "Help others". Meaning that him wanting to be converted into a battle robot to stop the Robot Masters wasn't some magical moment of free will; it fits nice and squarely in what he was already programmed to do.
Man, this kind of thing is a mindscrew. It reminds me of Measure of a Man from Star Trek TNG where Picard has to argue that Data is sentient. He ends up winning by turning the tables on the scientist arguing that Data isn't sentient by asking him to prove that he, Picard, is sentient. In other words, if you can't prove that a flesh and blood human is sentient then you can't prove that a robot imitating those same behaviors isn't equally sentient. You effectively have to give the benefit of the doubt.
For what it's worth, modern robotics has a b***h of a time with getting machines to follow directives like that without doing insane things. There was a recent story about an Air Force simulation where a drone (all simulated) was instructed to carry out a mission and when its operator tried to turn it off it killed the operator because at that point the operator was impeding its goal of carrying out it's mission. Morality and rational thought it turns out can't be reduced to a flowchart. A sentient robot directed to fight crime may act like Mega Man. A non-sentient robot directed to fight crime may try to eradicate humanity because "no humans = no crime." It will take the most direct path to it's goal irrespective of the larger implications. We see this kind of thing in nature. Insects behave like biological machines. Watch a group of hornets attack a beehive. It's ruthless and mechanical. It's actually different than, say, watching a pack of wolves on the hunt where intelligence comes into play.
Huh. That's literally the reason why HAL 9000 kills everyone in the novel of 2001: A Space Odyssey.
He's the only one on the ship who knows the REAL mission (finding the Monolith near Saturn that resonated with the one on the Moon) and has to keep it a secret until they get there. BUT he's also programmed to always tell the crew the truth.
He technically doesn't malfunction; he just has a little mental breakdown and figures that, if he kills the crew, he won't have anyone to lie to anymore and can preform the mission himself.
>Mega Man almost kills Wily only for Wily to pull up the first law of robotics and cause Mega Man to hesitate, are the two most "robot masters don't actually have free will" moments in the series.
I always read it as Mega Man hesitates out of compassion, not because of his programming. He's very clearly already going against the laws by preparing to shoot Wily, and when Wily brings up the laws it seems to only piss him off further.
Actually loaded up the scene in Youtube just now and it's not even clear he DOES hesitate. His last words are literally "Die Wily!" but then the alarms go off and the rubble starts falling and he's momentarily startled, giving Bass the opportunity to swoop in and rescue Wily.
It might've been intended to be super, super ambiguous though. But I always interpreted the "I am more than a robot!" line when the robotics laws are brought up to be a pretty firm story direction cue that Mega Man was growing beyond his programming.
>Actually loaded up the scene in Youtube just now and it's not even clear he DOES hesitate. His last words are literally "Die Wily!"
>But I always interpreted the "I am more than a robot!" line
That's why I specified the Japanese version: When Wily bring up the law in Rockman 7, Mega Man simply goes silent.
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The western version changed the dialogue, but notice how Mega Man still drops the charge during that dialogue.
Yeah, the dialogue change in the American release is why, for a very long time, people in the States thought that Megaman was an actual little boy that was TURNED into a robot. Or part of it at least; the Worlds of Power novelization of MM2 is where it originally comes from.
Going silent doesn't mean Wily is right though. Wily is clearly afraid and says it in a panic. So even he, a guy who should know what Mega Man is and isn't capable of, thinks Mega Man just might do it. It seems more like it's meant to be ambiguous. MAYBE Mega Man was literally unable to shoot Wily. Or maybe he could have and was fighting with himself over whether he should or not. I like the ambiguity about it.
Funny, there's ANOTHER Star Trek episode called The Most Toys that ends exactly the same way, again about Data where he may or may not have tried to kill someone even after being told he isn't capable of doing it.
Isn't being convinced to allow someone to reprogram you itself an act of free will? If Wily didn't forcibly reprogram them but only talked them into it that means they had agency in that decision.
I assume that the logic is that, since Wily tinkering with them will allow them to perform their intended functions better (or so they think), it falls within their programming.
>And sadly there is a canon, in-universe reason why he did that beyond MUH HONOR and it's unbelievably moronic
Is it the reason I'm thinking of? The one that has to do with Iris and how 2 robots can be brother and sister?
>Zero simply asked them to disarm so they could be questioned
Maverick Hunters do not guarantee anything. "Questioning" almost always results in permanent imprisonment or dismantling of the reploid in question, because the Hunters focus on keeping humans safe no matter what and will put an end to any sign of disobedience or inefficiency. In fact, as seen in X4's manual, they were itching for a reason to disband Repliforce as they weren't as effective as Cain was hoping them to be. Colonel was well aware of this when he refused to be taken in for questioning.
General on the other hand, explicitly stated that his plans were to leave planet Earth altogether, rather than start killing people. When the war began (because the Hunters immediately branded them Mavericks), his officers were instructed to evacuate humans before destroying infrastructure the Hunters would use to try to stop them from leaving, like the port city Stingray destroyed, and the diversion that Owl staged.
>Maverick Hunters do not guarantee anything. "Questioning" almost always results in permanent imprisonment or dismantling of the reploid in question, because the Hunters focus on keeping humans safe no matter what and will put an end to any sign of disobedience or inefficiency. In fact, as seen in X4's manual, they were itching for a reason to disband Repliforce as they weren't as effective as Cain was hoping them to be. Colonel was well aware of this when he refused to be taken in for questioning.
And guess what? NONE of what you said matters because the actual canon reason is so much dumber but is also the canon answer.
Muh honor? Imperial Japanese officers did the same shit. That's where the inspiration for Colonel likely came from. I don't care what some dumbass taiwanese mobile game (that's already dead and gone) has to say about this.
>Muh honor?
No, EVEN dumber than that (though that is admittedly an incredibly moronic reason), it comes from the original artwork for Colonel and Iris for X4 and was brought up in Japanese interviews at the time of the game's release as well as confirmed in X4 in Zero's route
Iris and Colonel are 2 halves of one original robot, and for whatever reason it split their personalities so that Iris always tries to diffuse any form of fighting and Colonel literally can't accept a peaceful option.
That dark orb Iris is holding before you fight her? That's her brother's core or something, she's re-merging with him for that fight.
>Spoiler
Everybody knows that. They're like two halves of a brain, and yes the two halves of a brain operate independently when the corpus callosum that connects them is severed. Iris and Colonel couldn't have been made to operate as one, dependent on one another, because if one breaks down the other also breaks down. Now that would be stupid design.
>That dark orb Iris is holding before you fight her? That's her brother's core or something, she's re-merging with him for that fight.
Yes, anon, I beat X4 multiple times over.
>Does X actually have free will though?
He does. He can very well choose not to be part of the Maverick Hunters if he so desires (as he did in X7). He has the power to fricking conquer the planet and he knows it, but he doesn't want to do that either. Dr. Light put him in a capsule to learn about right and wrong for 30 (ultimately 100+) year specifically because X doesn't have any programming forbidding him from doing anything.
>Everybody knows that.
And yet it's DUMB. It's contrived as frick to put the one guy you need to talk to in order to stop the war, be a guy who is literally designed such that talking is never an option. That is drama for the sake of drama.
>That is drama for the sake of drama
Yeah well that's videogames. Seinen anime action videogames from 1997.
And it also further undermines the free will component of Reploids, which is the franchise's core conceit distinguishing it from OG Mega Man.
It's hilarious in hindsight that entire X series is a comedy of errors stemming from a bunch of halfwits playing with technology they don't understand and digging themselves deeper and deeper. Dr. Light does all this work to build robots responsibly and integrate them into society and barring Wily being Wily it's actually pretty peaceful. But then after he's gone an archeologist digs up his lab, finds his most advanced robot, and starts replicating it even though he has no idea what makes it tick. A goddamn archeologist. That's like Indiana Jones finding the Terminator and being like "eh, a PHD is a PHD..."
>Vile was branded a Maverick for "being too violent" at his job
MHX retconned it that being a loose cannon cop that doesn't play by the rules just got him landed in the brig, then when Sigma's rebellion began Sigma busted him out of the brig and he decided to join in the rebellion. That's what got him labelled a Maverick now, joining an active rebellion against humanity.
Take a look at the past 100 years of real life human history then ask again whether or not they're stupid or just an accurate portrayal of mankind.
Did that. An exponential increase in intelligence, knowledge, skills, etc. Until right about the time you were born.
>Are there any human characters at all in the later X games?
Yes, still billions of them.
What's the benefit of giving a robot free will?
>well we need good robots who will want to stop the bad robots!
IF YOU DON'T GIVE ROBOTS FREE WILL THEN THERE ARE NO "BAD" ROBOTS UNLESS THEY WERE PROGRAMMED TO BE THAT WAY
There's no efficiency benefit, but I assume the goal was to create a form of life similar to humans and why Dr. Light even bothered making sure X understood morality instead of just doing things the simpler way.
There was no dropping or supporting the free will thing, they just switched between them for seemingly no reason. In X1, there's already a hint of the virus and that comes back in X2, along with Magna Centipede being said to be just brainwashed. In X5, there's both: some like Rosered or Dinorex aren't infected, some have dialogues change depending on when you fight them and some, like Kraken, are infected in any scenario. X6 has no infection (aside from some implications that Gate went mad, but a cutscene implies that he was like that even before the events of the game), but then X7 just decides that every boss was infected by Sigma because why not.
>There's no efficiency benefit, but I assume the goal was to create a form of life similar to humans and why Dr. Light even bothered making sure X understood morality instead of just doing things the simpler way.
Does X actually have free will though? Yeah he feels bad about killing but he never actually chooses to not kill. Makes me think maybe reploids and X don't actually have free will, they just have the ability to contemplate the gravity of their actions while not really being able to do anything about it.
Was Dr. Cain a homosexual semite?
>Dr. Light
It would've been nice if they'd framed X as some sort of failsafe. As in, Light created him so that in case Wily managed to take over the world with violent robots following Light's death, humanity would have a potential hope, and that X's sentience was less a specific goal and more of a potentially unwanted byproduct of his super powerful design.
I still firmly believe that Sigma should've been out of the picture in X2 and X3, to make his return in X4 more exciting.
Is it even truly Sigma after X1? In X2 isn't it basically a virus backup of his brain from the internet? It's more like a copy of Sigma than anything.
The post credits message in X1 would imply that he'd already managed to virtualize his programming (or "soul" as he calls it) to exist beyond his main control chip in a way which apparently stayed up-to-date with current events. My theory is that the Wolf Body form at the end of X1 was what Sigma was using to directly transfer his consciousness from his head to be preserved elsewhere, the fight serving as a way for him to stall for time until the process could be completed.
>As in, Light created him so that in case Wily managed to take over the world with violent robots following Light's death
I mean tbf, Wily futureproofed the frick out of Zero, he's still the best robot ever a century later with an entire new type of machine coming into existence.
>I swear Light, one day I will make a robot so perfect that even thousands of years from now when he looks completely different for no explained reason, he will STILL be the coolest stronger robot!
Id like to think Zero was Wily actually attempting to build a real Mega Man copy for himself. Like how Rock is treated like a son by Light, Zero was given a small bit of human touches like fricking hair, because he was being designed as Wily's son and perfect creations.(because Bass is a dick) But he is still Wily so he still needs to design said son with specific control over him(or he just lacks the AI knowledge to program a personality like Rock)
diaper
>Wily keeps building bigger, badder, more crazy shit
>Light feeling his age trying to to keep up, worried what Wily could produce if he keeps pushing towards more insane designs
>gets the idea to build a Super Mega Man, as the arms race increases for the purpose of dealing with future threats
>Bass in 7 copies Lights files, Wily discovers Light is building a next gen bot.
>Wily gets the idea to build his own bot based on what specs he knows Light is going with, but better, less restraint, more Wily attitude
>Lights own paranoia over Wily building a new super weapon ends up causing Wily to build exactly such a robot.
Is X1 and X5 the only games where Sigma doesn't come across as a raving lunatic? X1 makes sense, I see it as the virus simply influencing him but not actually controlling him yet, it was the little push to make him think "hey yeah, maybe I SHOULD kill all humans..."
And in X5 he's wierdly lucid after supposely meeting Wily, and no I don't know how Wily is still alive, X5's ending is real fricking wierd.
X5 is arguably where Sigma is the most raving lunatic he's ever been. Every other game he comes up with a plan to start shit but in X5 he's just there... as the head of the goddamn fricking statue of liberty, sitting in plain sight. X5's writing is so fricking stupid.
I was talking about very specifically the ending of X5, not the beginning.
He's been in cahoots with Wily since X2 though.
I still don't understand how Wily and presumably Light are still alive in the X series.
Light made a hologram out of his memories as he was making X's true AI, and Wily made robot bodies to transfer his memory to.
Making the Light capsules sentient as opposed to recordings like Jor-El in the Superman movies was another dumb retcon.
They've always been sapient. Light couldn't have made so many fricking armor sets in his lifetime that X kept somehow finding throughout the Maverick Wars. Even in X4 the Light capsules seem to learn who Zero is.
Light is AI software, like basically a chatbot imitating a fictional or historical figure.
Wily is either cyborgized(body parts or full brain in a bot) or has just completely digitized his consciousness.
What's wrong with him using a mechaniloid hidden inside of a statue as part of the plan to spread the virus all over the world and make it incredibly difficult to prevent the colony collision? Sure, it's a bit silly, but it does make for a memorable setpiece and the series is already full of impractical but cool stuff.
It's moronic. He's been trying to do that since X2 and now suddenly he just pulls it off right at the start of the game.
In X4 Sigma enacts a pretty effective scheme. His plan relies on everyone ELSE behaving like raving lunatics.
Seriously as much shit as it gets, X4's plot is pretty good. Check out the Twilight Zone episode of The Monsters Are Due On Maple Street. It's 1:1 the exact same story with less anime.
I like to think that, since Wily was the inferior robotics genius, he couldn't get a leg up on Light without external help. That help came in the form of the extraterrestrial Evil Energy from Megaman 8, which he based his Wily Virus off of, and in lieu of actually robust software programming expertise, he implanted it in Zero's positronic brain to act as his limbic system and a weapon to boot. Given the properties of the virus, it pretty much explains everything about Zero.
>duuuuh where are all da huumans?
The same place all the adults are in the Classic games: NOT THERE BECAUSE THERE'S LITERALLY NO POINT TO SHOWING HUGE CROWDS OF HUMANS IN A PEW PEW ROBOT FIGHTING GAME.
Dr. Cain got dropped because X didn't need to have a Dr. Ochanomizu sitting in a lab for him like Mega Man did, but that doesn't suddenly mean that all humans went extinct.
>Dr. Cain got dropped because X didn't need to have a Dr. Ochanomizu sitting in a lab for him like Mega Man did,
And also because you can get way more merchandising out of the crew they introduced in X5!
yeah I always thought it was the strangest thing that they were only going to be around for one game
do you think the writers of Mega Man at Capcom give as much thought to those children games as you guys?