Game Theory: How Mega Man DOOMED Humanity!

[Music] hello Internet welcome to game theory whether it's work school or just a tough day you can always count on us to be the mental e tank that keeps your energy maxed out today we're going old school to talk about franchise that no one cares about least of all Capcom themselves well least of all might be an exaggeration probably the entity that cares the least about this franchise is the YouTube algorithm eat nobody see in this video anyway today we're talking about leg a man or more specifically his villain dr. wily doctor wahwee dr wily doctor sure whatever he said but today we're not covering the usual dr. wily is actually the hero of these games in part because I already did that theory no friends far from it today it's my goal to convince you that despite being beaten over and over and over and over and over again in this franchise Wiley is one that ultimately comes out on top in the Mega Man series you lose the bad guy wins and humanity suffers big time ladies gentlemen and beloved household appliances strapping your rust jet and get those busters a charge in we're about to ruin Mega Man before digging into this theory too much it's important to recognize that the Mega Man timeline is essentially broken into four main chunks Mega Man classic Mega Man X Mega Man Zero and ZX as well as Mega Man Legends except there's a twist here as early as the first game of the series there's something deeper at work you can actually see wily learning growing evolving in his techniques creating a massive character arc that spreads through a huge chunk of the Mega Man series and if you read between the lines throughout the course of Mega Man classic Mega Man Legends you'll soon see that after years and years of defeat wily accepts his death as an inevitability he begins developing ways to keep his conscience alive and he eventually succeeds in destroying all of humanity while he doesn't just win by the end of the series he dominates how do we know all that well it all starts with og Mega Man on the yes throughout all of the classic games we watch his wily learns and steals from his rival dr. light it's never told to us explicitly but rather it's much more subtle storytelling happening through the increasingly complicated development of Wylie's robot masters using the Japanese manual for Megaman one dr. late receives news stating quote the robots you developed are going out of control one after the other at this rate robots will take over humankind of course sleight has no idea what the message is referring to but quickly makes the connection that dr. wily modified the robots that he develop so when the series starts wily is forced to steal dr. lights robots to achieve his ends and even though he ends up losing the experience was useful because by the next game wily has actually figured out how to build his own evil robots in the 1991 rock man character collection we're told by dr. light seems he somehow managed to complete eight of his own combat robots and thus begins a pattern wily is constantly losing but also improving himself based on the events from the previous game in Mega Man 3 we see in the third Castle stage that while he's progressed to creating his own rudimentary megaman clone these mega clones make a nice blue print from build upon leading us to Mega Man 5 and the introduction of the dark man series unlike other robot masters who are named based around a certain function darkman is the name given to four different robots with only Roman numerals differentiating between them these guys are particularly interesting as they mimic dr. Wily's growth in the most literal way darkman one has tank treads and represents dr. Wily's early and inexperienced robot development darkman 2 has legs more complicated on movement side and electromagnetic shields but no Buster Dark Man 3 is all Buster no shield and darkman 4 combined shield and fire arms and legs in an effort to mimic proto man across the four stages of Wiley's castle in Mega Man 5 we see the evil doctors design crosses becoming more and more sophisticated from tank treads to one of the hardest fights that you'll encounter in the classic series unless of course you have beat the bird in which case it's a bit of a cakewalk Mega Man 7 though is where we see all of this learning come together as he reveals his version of Mega Man and rush the robots bass and treble Mega Man 7 is also noteworthy because this is where we start to see the doctors changing mindset up until this point the series he's only been focused on creating the strongest robots but this time is the first time that we see Wylie truly create a fail-safe in the event that his plans crumble at the end of six wily is jailed but expecting this he programs his lab to boot up and push out for robot masters in the event that it's left undisturbed for six months and this becomes a staple from this point forward in the series Wylie has backup plans he stops building for the now and he starts building for the future now I'm no doctor but to me this seems like the kind of shift in behavior from someone that's beginning to realize that they don't have forever to reach their ambitions following Mega Man each recover all the energy immediately Megaman we have the fan named Megaman eight and a half or Mega Man and base a lesser-known Megaman title that stayed in Japan until the release of internal Game Boy Advance in 2003 in this game we see two major events base rebelling against wily and wily brainwashing his own creations which should be redundant right sly brainwashed the things that you yourself are creating but bases betrayal in this game shows us exactly why while he's pursuing this wily is learning that robots to be truly powerful have to have free will but that free will comes at a cost them turning on you as such he needs to either a get robots to willingly follow him or be assert his own will in more subtle underhanded ways and in the next few games we see exactly that in Mega Man 9 he targets robots that are slated for termination and what he tells them isn't unlike the way that he sees the world himself quote you work hard for humans and then they destroy you when you're no longer needed just because you reach some arbitrary expiration date doesn't mean you should be scrapped and the robots are convinced they willingly follow him the plan doesn't work of course but it's interesting because it reflects Wiley's mindset at this point like we said he's planning for the future he knows that he won't be around forever just like the aging robots and so his focus is about what's coming next prolonging his own life which segues to Mega Man 10 and why Lee's most important scheme in all of the classic franchise the creation from the robo ends a virus at first symptoms of this virus are pretty much what you'd expect from a robot version of the flu but after a few months the infected robots become dangerous with the following text played on screen the infected robots turn violent and attempt take over the world violence okay that's fine I would expect that but take over the world it's a very specific behavior there's only one person in all in the Mega Man series so far that's expressed interest in this sort of goal one what we see with Robo Enza is a prototype twily virus a way to preserve his life's goal a way to preserve a piece of himself after he dies but it needs more development after he's defeated in Mega Man 11 the latest game in the series and likely the last time that we see these characters alive he makes the oddly bold claim my plans have only just begun he's got something else in the works which brings us to the X series where everyone in the classic series has long since passed away so what was Wiley's ace in the hole here well since the early 90s it's been theorized that zero the super advanced red robot with a laser sword was a wily creation a robot designed to be the perfect Mega Man killer there was even this incredibly fun fan game named megaman unlimited that bridged the gap from the story showing zero as Wiley's final and most prized and most violent work the culmination of all his experiences up to that point now none of this was ever officially stated especially in the games but it was always very very heavily implied and finally two years ago during Rockman unite a 30th anniversary event celebrating the franchise we were given a look at an official design document from Mega Man X one way back in 1993 confirming that Capcom intended all of this from the start 0 is Wiley's robots but how does this help us with the theory well it's simple did you catch the peculiar note under the zero project wily dies at the same time zero is completed and yet zero is in stasis when he's discovered almost a hundred years later it's presumed that zero was sealed off because he was too violent to be controlled but an all-powerful berserk robot kills their creator and takes a nap for hundred years it doesn't make sense now you'll notice another branch on this flowchart Wiley's a robot virus project the evolution of his Robo ends a plan from Mega Man 10 we know from that game that he was infusing elements of himself his plans for world domination into early versions of that virus so we know wily injecting his will into a virus and thus infecting robots isn't all that far-fetched and though the chart says wily died before the virus was completed remember this is from very early in the design process for these games in Mega our fighters - Wylie alludes to something much different with this robot and my other project complete the world will be mine it all leads to one conclusion the virus quite literally is dr. wily his consciousness or his will or something like that it's infused into zero and zero stasis pod waiting to be unleashed onto the world now that may seem like a stretch but consider this in a cutscene of x4 we see the classic wily W flash across zeros forehead just before a good guy Sigma shatters it with his giant Reptoid e fist zero is taken to the mechanic and when he wakes he's totally cool he's a changed robot so you know who suddenly has a taste for violence Sigma Y Lee via the virus has passed from zero to Sigma I know that the flowchart says that zero being built to be bad is made good by the evil virus and so two negatives equal a positive but that seems oh it seems kind of dumb if that were truly the case then why would the switch from bad to good and zero happen with Sigma smashing the crystal on his head the housing point of the wily virus and likewise why would Sigma the good guy suddenly become the big bad shortly after this moment it's as though the wily consciousness is transferred between these two robots or that zero housed a more concentrated version of the wily virus that got passed on to Sigma and yes as an aside I know in make man x5 Sigma alludes to meeting an old man that's likely wily but that would make sense with anything else established elsewhere in the series and is more likely him either referring to visions of wily or potentially our next big villain of dr. Wael anyway from there the virus comes to be known by many names and evolves throughout the x series from the Maverick virus to the Sigma virus to the zero virus and in reality it was always why Lee's virus for further proof just look at Sigma's behavior once he gets infected in X 2 Sigma attempts to rebuild zero who's good now to fight against X he's reprogramming a good robot to join the bad guys sounds exactly like what wily did back in Mega Man 1 in Mega Man X 3 dr. dopplers the main bad guy only to be revealed later that he was being manipulated by Sigma it's a direct parallel to Y Lee's plan with dr. kasich in Mega Man 4 Sigma throughout the series is recycling why Lee's old plans as if he's the same guy playing by the same old playbook but okay in this theory I promise to show that Wylie wins how does that happen well from this point forward Wiley through Sigma and the virus plunges the world into a constant state of war cities are destroyed space stations fall to earth thousands of human and robot lives are lost at the hands of this robot war wily through his final two actions of creating zero and a robo virus sends the world into hundreds of years of bloodshed in order to defeat the virus once and for all scientists resort to using zeros body to create a sort of antibody this Sigma antibody program using zero results in the creation of what comes to be called the mother elf this elf destroys the virus once and for all and ends the maverick wars hooray hurrah it would seem that why Lee's influence has come to an end except for one problem the elf gets corrupted by another evil scientist named dr. Weil no relation or is there there isn't really as far as I can tell and this sends the world into yet another series of Wars the elf wars which is the plot of the Mega Man Zero series and who's responsible for those elf wars zero himself so much so that the original 0x Isles himself away multiple times there are even clones of him made to become some of the most threatening murder bots on the planet these wars which lasts for years and ultimately are only happening because zero the robot is a thing that exists end up being more destructive than the Maverick wars resulting in 90% of Reptoids and 60% of all humans on earth being killed and all of it again is tying back to Wiley's creation of zero and the virus humanity needed a cure for the virus they used zero and everything went to heck all of it creating chaos hundreds of years after his death there is also the ZX series mixed in there where the lines between human and robot gets super blurry due to bio metals but that's kind of a side point here anyway all this destruction on earth from the various wars coupled with a massive flood eventually forces humanity to have to retreat to safety in space where we enter the final phase of the Mega Man timeline Mega Man Legends set thousands of years after the ZX titles in legends we meet the master the last of the original humans do not forget the master is the only true human remaining beyond him every other human in existence is either dead or has been fused together with a bio metal robot parts to create what are known as carbons we eventually watch as the master dies meaning that the final purely human character in this universe is dead that leads us to the main choice the game when Mega Man is tasked with in the ending of Legends 2 does Mega Man allow carbons to continue living and leave humanity dead or does he activate a system that eliminates all carbons so humanity can be reborn once more megaman decides to fulfill his masters wishes and let the carbons live and with that humanity is and remains completely extinguished by the end of the megaman timeline the last human has died and there are no plans for recovery thanks to the actions of wily the human race is extinct it took him over 3,000 years to do it but he won it was all because the robot Institute of Technology chose to go with doctor light rather than dr. Wily's proposal talk about a butterfly effect huh from petty squabbles and stealing robots to turning himself into a freakin virus that prompts multiple Wars the extermination of millions and the human race having to evacuate into space where they eventually die out without this feud between dr. light and dr. wily in college none of it would have happened the conflict between the two doctors ignited the beginning of the end Wiley's final solution of making zero and the virus had ripple effects that were felt thousands of years after his death just goes to show that in the end despite everything dr. light did to keep Wiley's evil at bay it only prolonged the inevitable quite frankly only made things worse dr. Wily's plan at the end of Megaman 11 really was the ticket for a one-way trip to extinction and rub it in even more Mega Man Legends 2 ends with Megaman stuck in space with no way to get home so he even succeeds in taking the Blue Bomber out of the equation talk about killing two birds with one stone so theorists stare yourself a favor and keep all that in mind the next time you and your overeager friend are applying for research grants step on their toes too much and they just might end up destroying the human race but hey that's just a theory Oh game theory thanks for watching oh and if you want to see some really old cringy content we've only actually done one other episode on Megaman you want to watch that one it's old I haven't watched it in a long time so I make no promises but it's there if linked on screen chances are if you only watch our new episodes you've never seen this one so strap in for a good time also hit the subscribe button I'd appreciate it thanks

Channel: The Game Theorists

Views: 3,247,007

Rating: 4.9365306 out of 5

Keywords: megaman, dr wily, megaman x drive, mega man, capcom, mega man x drive, megaman zero, megaman zero/zx legacy collection, megaman perfect blue, megaman zero zx collection, megaman zx collection, megaman rock n roll, megaman lore, megaman theory, megaman timeline, megaman the game theorists, game theory, matpat, game theory megaman

Id: SHBQaowGAHg

Length: 15min 54sec (954 seconds)

Published: Sun Jul 05 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/Ravioko]

This is just the series' canon explained as if it were a theory

[u/semimetalalchemist]

I don't think anything here is news to fans. Like, we've known since X4 that Zero was a Wily creation and the world basically kept going to shit after that.

Also, the opening line of "Today we're talking about a franchise that no one cares about" was just straight up baiting.

But hey, that's just a theory

[u/absurdchrono]

Game theory is pompous nonsense?

[u/Celestial_Navigator]

Not really a theory though. Just an explanation of the series as a whole really. Really worth watching just for entertainment or a nice recap of the series.

[u/J-Ray15]

Game theory is a hit or miss for me, cause I know he's a bit of a pompus butt munch... I honestly only like his Minecraft videos and some choice videos from the past. His Megaman theories are really stupid though. He didn't even acknowledge the Japanese version of the mm7 ending in his last theory.

[u/nix131]

What I want to know is what the title has to do with the video. At no point did he have a theory that blamed Mega Man for "dooming" humanity.

[u/Timesmyth]

No new information here, and he doesn't claim anything that isn't canon.

There's not really any "theory" here; it's more of a lore recap.

[u/SavageWarrior257]

I mean we kinda already know that

[u/Tritnew0]

Always never liked his stuff. His Sans is Ness theory is the worse, even if it was a "joke".

In this video he's basically regurgitating what every hardcore Mega Man fan already knows, and did an obnoxious bait by saying the franchise is something no one cares about.

Dude really is a pompous fuckwad, as many have said here.