Commentaries

Mega Man Zero 3
November 22, 2004

Just for fun, I thought I’d offer some of the random comments on the plot of Mega Man Zero 3 collected from my notes from when I was playing through the game. Obviously, if you haven’t played the game yet, don’t read further.

First Third

At the beginning of the game, the principle players are Omega, Dr. Weil, and Harpuia. Apparently, a century ago Dr. Weil created Omega and corrupted the Dark Elf and caused the Elf Wars. He was defeated by X and Zero and subsequently banished from Neo Arcadia—which is the kingdom of humans, although you never see any humans except for Ciel (and Dr. Weil, if he counts, although there is apparently some doubt on that; more on that later). And Omega was banished to outer space (destroying him would have been easier, methinks). Then Zero was apparently put to sleep for some unknown reason, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

At the end, a hundred years later, everyone has, naturally, forgotten all of the details of the Elf Wars except for a few random rumors. (Nobody in the X series ever knows what happened in their own past.) During the course of the game, you even have to go into a flooded library and try to extract data about the past because nobody can remember it...

Then there’s Harpuia. Harpuia was working for Copy X, thinking he was the real X, thinking he was helping humans, but... ugh, my head hurts.

Mid-Game Interlude

After you defeat the first four bosses, you get the typical mini-stage. Naturally, the folks at the Resistance Base tell Zero to rest, but the idiot game designers don’t give you a chance to actually rest before the next mission. (This is why you can decode Cyber-elf Secret Disks on the mission report screen—you don’t always have the opportunity to go to Cerveau to do it.) I’m still waiting for these people to realize that rest means rest. I counted at least three times in this title alone where the game tells you to rest, then tries to shuffle you off to the next stage without giving you a chance to rest...

Your goal during the mini-stage is to stop a missile which is being launched toward a human residential district. I guess Omega is on the missile and he’s being launched to where the Dark Elf is to...get the Dark Elf. Or something. I’d think with a missile the end result would be blowing up the Dark Elf, but what does a faker like Omega know anyway? (And why not just transport there? Or use a jet plane? I mean, who in their right mind uses a missile for transportation anyway?)

After the missile predictably explodes, Zero wakes up in the shambles of the residential area (why do we even try?). The Baby Elves find their mother, who is with Omega. Omega opens a black hole in his chest and sucks the Dark Elf into him, then turns gold. The Baby Elves aren’t the least bit bothered by this. In fact, they are still trying to get revenge on Zero for a crime which has been left unrevealed to the player by this point in the game. Apparently, they are so blinded by their hatred of Zero that they don’t even care that Omega just ate their mother.

Omega starts for Zero, but then Harpuia drops down and attacks Omega—wait for Zero to come and help, fool! Then again, when Zero does show up, he’s not looking too good either. Great, we have two half-dead Reploids against Omega. Ciel comes to the rescue and tells Zero not to move, and that she’ll transfer him. I’d think Zero would worry about leaving Harpuia behind, but this is never mentioned. Harpuia is simply shown transporting out without any explanation, and he ends up at the Resistance Base. Yet everyone credits (or blames) Zero for making the decision to save Harpuia...

Ciel says Harpuia wasn’t hurt badly but that he’ll have to rest to recuperate for a while. Uh. Right. If he’s not hurt badly, why does he have to recuperate?

Copy X (they actually call him that!) and Weil contact the base and ask Ciel to turn over the energy system—the one that she freely offered to them earlier in the game. Of course, now she says that she can’t, because she can’t trust someone who sacrificed humans to obtain the Dark Elf. (They wanted the Dark Elf because apparently combining it with the energy system Ciel made will result in enormous amounts of energy—enough to solve the crisis, Weil says, but I thought the Ciel System was enough all by itself?) So Ciel tells them they can’t have the system because it was built so that humans and Reploids could live in peace—yet that’s exactly what Weil promised her if she gave it to him. Oh well, we can all see Weil’s a creep, so I suppose this is for the better anyway.

Okay, so the Neo Arcadian troops are heading for the base from multiple directions. Zero says he’ll intercept them. Noble thought, but how can he be in three places at once? And of course, this made me wonder that if the player explores the base or revisits stages, will the troops arrive and conquer it while Zero’s off doing other things? Even the operator doesn’t seem very worried if you refuse to take a mission right then—she just says, “Whenever you’re ready.” I guess the armies are just going to wait around until the player is ready to defeat them. That’s good for the player, at least. The Neo Arcadians will let the player rest even if the Resistance doesn’t...

As a side note, you can learn right about now that Harpuia was cloned from X’s DNA. Um. Right. This once again putting aside the fact that robots don’t have DNA... According to the computer, Harpuia was rendered unconscious by the attack by Omega, but he sure didn’t look unconscious the last time I saw him...

Second Half

After you defeat Copy X, the copy finally gets to meet the real X, although too bad the real X is still wearing that dippy robe. X tells Copy X that Weil has moved to another base with Omega. (You coulda told us that sooner, X!) Copy X claims that he’s going to show them his true power, but when he starts to power up, X informs him that Weil had placed a trap on his body, and Copy X explodes. Apparently, Dr. Weil didn’t want Copy X to destroy Zero...

The real X, still with Zero, agrees to help look for Weil. (Uh, if X knew he’d moved to another base, doesn’t that preclude knowing where the base is? Otherwise he wouldn’t know that he moved to a base!) Then X starts to mention something about Omega, but he changes his mind and says he’ll bring it up again when the time comes. (Translation: “I’ll tell you when it’s too late for the knowledge to be helpful in any way.”) X also says the heart is what matters, not the body. (And he would know, considering he no longer has a body.)

In a later cut scene, the Resistance Base warriors fall under Weil’s control and surround Ciel and Zero (Zero seems to be okay, mysteriously enough). Then X comes down and zaps the Reploids somehow and they fall over. X says he can disable the Dark Elf’s control over Reploids, but with his current power he can only protect those at the Resistance Base. (I guess this means Harpuia is going to end up really regretting having left the base, heh.) Zero says, “Took you long enough, X.” Ha ha—typical Zero. Zero asks X where Weil is, and X says without hesitation that Weil’s in the underground power station, Sub Arcadia. But he lies. After you clear Sub Arcadia, Ciel says that X just gave them new coordinates...to where Weil and Omega are. Well, you moron X, why didn’t you give us those coordinates to start with?

At the end of that stage you encounter Weil who only speaks to Zero through a computer terminal (smart guy). Anyway, Weil says that Zero would never understand his ambitions because Zero’s a Reploid. People apparently question the fact that Weil is a human, because he feels it necessary to affirm that, yes, he is in fact actually a (gasp) human being. Maybe.

Of course, at the end of the game (you can read my commentary on that here), you learn that Zero is now in a duplicated body, and that Omega had taken over Zero’s original body. Yet, even though Zero is supposedly a copy, everyone still says he’s centuries old. Uh...right. I think this just goes to prove he’s not so much of a copy as everyone likes to say he is. As X said, apparently the heart truly does matter the most, since Omega was nothing like Zero, even in Zero’s body.

And I guess I’ve rambled more than enough...

- The MegaMaster