June 6, 2006
Someone once sent a MegaGram where the basic point was the opinion that Mega Man Zero 4 should end the series because Zero was honored with such a heroic death at the end, and Capcom is stretching the series out too much anyway. (More so than the original or X series, I ask?) Rather than wait for the next MegaGrams update to comment on this, I thought I would discuss it here instead.
I might have to argue with the heroic death thing. I mean, not that it wasn’t heroic, but Zero has died a heroic death at least four times already. It starts to get kind of old. You know, the first time that he dies a heroic death, sure, you mourn for him, you thank him for his sacrifice, and so forth. But by the fourth time, you’re just like, “Come on, why haven’t you been rebuilt yet?” If Zero didn’t let three previous heroic deaths get him down, why succumb to a fourth? And it doesn’t matter if he was blown to bits at the end of Zero 4; he managed to be completely rebuilt after Mega Man X1 (and again in Mega Man X6) after being reduced to just an upper torso and an arm, so what’s stopping him?
I take the completely opposite angle to this. Rather than wish that Capcom would kill off my favorite characters (and, thus, my favorite series), I wish that Capcom would stop killing off characters. Killing someone and then bringing him back is always much more absurd than any plot you could come up with where he didn’t die in the first place. Zero’s “deaths” are getting to the point where they’re not even heroic because he does it so darn often...
Or, as a friend of mine once put it:
“Zero has ‘died’ and come back to life so many times that it’s beyond ridiculous. He must have the best service warranty ever is all I can say...”
It’ll be interesting to see what effect, if any, the Mega Man ZX series will have on this. Perhaps Zero is done dying for good. But then you can never tell with Capcom.
For further thoughts on this, definitely see a previous Musing I once wrote on a similar topic.
- The MegaMaster