Mega Man Zero 3 Ending: I am Zero
So one thing I forgot to talk about until now is Cyber Space: there are Cyber Space doors in each level that allow you to enter Cyber Space versions of the levels. All of your Cyber Elves are activated at once without them dying and enemies always drop health. It’s basically God Mode though you are penalized by 5 points at the end of the mission.
I only enter it in the second to last level because you can actually fight a secret boss this way: the deceased Phantom from Zero 1, establishing that upon dying a reploid’s programming goes to Cyber Space thus functioning as a form of afterlife for them.
Though this raises the question: did the same apply to Robot Masters? Or are Mega Man and the gang completely….you know….
Anyway by beating him you get the Ultima Chip which allows you to have all leg chip abilities on at once
Zero also basically kills two babies! And I find it hilarious how neither him nor especially Ciel have any reaction about it!
So the scene where Weil mind controls every Reploid on Earth is awesome and all but it’s always bugged me how they never explain why Zero and X are not affected, simply noticing that they’re not
If I had to give my own explanation well the Dark Elf can control Reploids and, at this point, neither X nor Zero are technically Reploids
X is a Cyber Elf, one powerful enough to negate the Dark Elf’s powers within an area
And Zero was technically never a Reploid to begin with as reploids are made from X’s technology while Zero is 100% Wily’s creation. Granted Zero’s current body is a replica made presumably using standard reploid tech but his programming is still Wily’s original
But then we see that even the Guardians seem to be unaffected. The only explanation I can come up with is that, since they were made by specifically using X’s very DNA, thus making them far closer to X than your average reploid (remember: in the X series X was so advanced that Dr.Cain couldn’t fully understand what made him tick and thus created the reploids based on said faulty understanding), and so also immune to the Dark Elf’s control
The final battle against Omega unfortunately suffers greatly from this late game balancing issue regarding difficulty: he’s just not nearly hard enough given all the hype around him. Yeah you could limit yourself by not using Cyber Elves, but it’s not like I used them super liberally either and I still barely had to spend a Sub Tank across 3 phases.
Speaking of which, some fans take issue with how Zero barely reacts to the revelation that he’s living in a copy body and that he now has to destroy his original. In general some people criticize Zero era Zero for being an emotionless drone
I’ve….never had such issues. With Zero 1 and to a lesser extent Zero 2? Yeah he barely speaks there. But here and especially in the next one?
Yeah Zero is generally more taciturn and stoic here than in most X games, whether due to the writers giving a different take or due to his amnesia and current circumstances just not giving him many chances to be very cheery
But once you peel back the surface this is still very much the same Zero as always
Zero was introduced in X1 as a no-nonsense kind of guy who takes shit very seriously, has a sense of justice and will support his friends (X specifically) by encouraging them when they’re doubting themselves, being very blunt in how he conveied said support and not very mushy, his no nonsense attitude showing even here: he flat out tells X that he has no chance in beating Vile as he is now but will grow capable of it and of beating Sigma and caps it all off by saying “X, I know you can do it!”
And that’s exactly how Zero acts here with Ciel: always giving her moral support whenever she’s feeling down and unsure about what to do next, ensuring her that she’s doing the right thing and that he has faith in her. He’s not all hugs and kisses, he just tells her straight up what he thinks very bluntly but also weirdly gently too
Zero also never once gave Sigma the time of day whenever he tried to toy with him with his unknown dark origins: in X2, when Sigma tells him that he was “destined to join him” Zero tells him that he’s not interested.
In X4 when Sigma toys with him by reminding him that he used to be a Maverick Zero literally tells him “Yeah and?”
In X5, when faced with the blatant truth that he was built for an evil purpose, Zero STILL tells Sigma to shut up and fight
Zero doesn’t bend easily, he mostly tries not to let his doubts about his past meddle with his present. He has his moments of doubt, like when he kept wondering about his dreams of Wily at the start of X4 or in that conversation with Dr.Light in X5, or how in the latter game he’s visibly afraid of the effect that the Virus is having on him. But he never breaks, he never keels over and cries. The only time that he does is when he kills Iris but that was an extreme situation even for him
Throughout this game Zero is indeed shown to be somewhat pensive about all the times a character makes cryptic comments about “his body” or about why would the Dark Elf know his name (although X could’ve really cleared the latter up for him huh). In the ending when Ciel reassures him that he is still Zero in her eyes he quietly says her name and then thanks her genuinely, implying that he was harboring inner doubts, but was bottling them up because he had bigger fish to fry
The way he reacts to Weil’s big revelation about Omega is perfectly in-character, just pointing out the logical hole in the idea of the legendary hero being a puppet for a madman for no reason
(Fun fact: the design of Omega’s outer armor is actually based on Zero’s X era design, which can be seen by the shape of the ponytail, the shape of the helmet, the sword on his back and the somewhat squared shoulder pads. I only noticed in recent years when someone pointed it out)
I mean just saying: a character reacting to a startling revelation about themselves with lots of angst isn’t always required, especially if it would be out of character for them. Sometimes a character not bending to whatever happens to them can be good: not all characters are meant to be relatable and vulnerable, some are written to be inspiring, to be looked up to as anchors. Zero mostly falls into the latter category. He’s not X
Oh also X is pretty much dead now. I would normally be angry about such a long running character getting such a quick send off but X has technically been dead since before the series started, only appearing as a ghost to help out whenever possible. Now he’s just completely passing on. Given that the X series is not over I think it should be up to it to depict X’s final living moments, even if we already know roghly how they will play out.
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