May 20, 2004
Suddenly things are beginning to make a lot more sense.
Mr. Inafune, principle producer of most of the Mega Man games, wanted to end the X series at Mega Man X5. Yes, that’s right, finé. He was excited about making Zero the hero of the story in Mega Man Zero, and so the endings in Mega Man X5 were all geared toward launching into the Zero series. This explains why Zero invariably “dies” (or as close to it as Zero ever gets) in all three of the endings.
This also explains the complete wandering in search for a plot that the later X series games have been experiencing. The plot for Mega Man X6 was written by somebody else and took even Mr. Inafune by surprise, because, as we all know, in it Zero comes back to life. Just like that. I have a feeling, though, that the writers nevertheless tried to still work within the original plan—this would explain why they added that whole bit to the ending about Zero being in a capsule for 100 years. Perhaps they thought, “Okay, so we messed everything up by bringing Zero back, but we’ll make sure that the plot still fits in the end.”
They did then. But I guess they gave up trying to keep the plots consistent by the time Mega Man X7 came around.
Now we have Mega Man X8, Mega Man X Command Mission, and who knows how many more games before the series is actually really said and done. And I wonder how many more times Zero is going to “die” before he finally gets it right?
After all, someday he has to be there for Ciel’s Cyber-elf Passy to awaken...
I suspect this may be the reason why X is destroyed in Mega Man Zero 2. If Mr. Inafune wrote that plot, it may be his subtle way of saying, “There! He’s blown up! He’s gone! That’s it! No bringing him back!!”
A wasted effort, though, if you ask me; Capcom’s writers seem to adore bringing characters back from the dead, despite seemingly insurmountable odds. Who knows if they will experiment with this skill in future Zero series titles...
- The MegaMaster