Okohara: The truth of that is still unknown-for now, at least… -The Bandai Carddass series for Mega Man X4 contains what feels like a nice little side story to the main narrative, but are there any plans to turn that into a game? In other words, the seniority of the Maverick Hunters isn’t based around who was built first. So that’s why Zero is the senior ranking member. Once that danger had passed, X joined up with the Maverick Hunters. Cain used the discovery of X to create the other Reploids, but as the first Mega Man X story explains, he sensed a possible danger with X and had to seal him away. In the backstory, X is discovered before Zero, but of the Maverick Hunters, Zero is senior in rank. Light in the X series, but whether they’re the same person or not, we leave ambiguous. It’s merely one possible future, or parallel world. Okohara: The world of Mega Man X is not the strictly determined future world of the original series. I’ve got lots of other questions, but one thing I wanted to know: is there a connection between the original Mega Man series, and the X series? One of Mega Man X4’s most striking cutscenes, mercifully presented without audio. We also felt like there haven’t been enough female characters in the Mega Man series so far. Then, to give breadth to Zero’s story, we added a female character. X has a “new cousin”, who is kind of like a double of him. Okohara: In order to add individuality to X and Zero’s stories, we added characters that only appear in one mode or the other. There are a number of new characters this game, but the female character Iris is especially interesting. Even in the single city scene, it’s nothing but Reploids. Also, to strengthen our theme of “Robots and The Future”, we decided not to include any humans this time. Okohara: X has a lot of issues with fighting itself, so he throws away those upgrades once he no longer needs them. (laughs) We like to say he’s a masochist who enjoys the thrill of danger. Takenaka: Well, there’s the fact that X, at the end of each game, always gets rid of his suit enhancements. Are there similar “must have” things like that with the X series? The original Rockman series has a few staple features, like the way spikes=instant death. Takenaka: Yeah, the boss voices were recorded in CD quality. The voice data, too, really ended up being too much… There was so much data for both X and Zero, that we had to employ a compression routine to store it all, then decompress it when you actually load a given stage. So, for example, if he’s walking and he suddenly stops, his hair comes to a rest in a more natural way. Okohara: Zero’s main body and his hair are made up of two different sprites. There were twice as many sprite animation patterns to create too. In particular, we struggled in the beginning with the massive amount of backgrounds we had to draw, but I think they came out looking really nice. The CG, voicework, and other technical aspects are a huge jump up from the previous Super Famicom games. To address that, we raised his attack power and added Street Fighter-style moves, so he feels completely different from X. Okohara: Yeah, his sword doesn’t have any reach, and they thought it would make the game too difficult. Takenaka: I remember the vast majority of the developers were against that decision at first, actually. And there’s no “charge” ability for his weapon, either. Okohara: Looking back at X3, we felt there wasn’t enough difference between the way Zero and X controlled, so we we tried to really distinguish them this time. (image courtesy of vgjunk) -I see you’ve updated the controls a bit for this entry as well. We've still yet to see the point where the OG series and X series link.MMX4’s rendition of Zero, fully differentiated from X by a plethora of fun and flashy moves designed for close-quarters combat. Capcom doesn't have a habit of closing their game series off like that. Unless they really do want to address the Elf Wars in X9, which would make it the last X game. NOT Neo Arcadia, since X establishes that sometime around the Elf Wars.
If they want to do some bridging of the story to the Zero series they could have the Maverick Hunters based in Arcadia. Sigma should be the villian at the end but the setup to get there should have some level of uniqueness. I think Zero sacrificing himself is done to death though. Story wise they can go in whatever direction they want. Something like Mega Man 11 though that HD's it and adds a new mechanic like double gear would be higher effort but cooler though. That's all we really need and it would be a passable game if it has the same high quality level design that it has had. Everything SNES style, same kind of music, same formula. If they make X9 a Mega Man 9, that would be really good.
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