Why Megaman Battle Network 4 Is Still The Worst Of The Series Part 2
In this second of what is planned to be three posts, we will analyze the narrative structure of Megaman Battle Network 4 and why it failed to be as good as the other games. For this reason, let's review a few things. This will have story spoilers, which are essential to examine the plot structure of Battle Network 4 as compared to other BN games and the Megaman series in general.
Megaman Battle Network is an alternate universe to the original "Classic" series born from humanity deciding to specialize in internet networking technology instead of robotics. Robotics, while not entirely ignored, remains much more niche and marginalized. As a result, virtually everything in the world is not connected to the Internet, which has become its own dimension that can be traversed by digital beings called Net Navis. The Navis are the equivalent to many of the "Robot Masters" of the classic Mega Man games. As digital beings, their names all have ".EXE" at the end, and the classic platformer structure, a spinoff game or two aside, is instead switched for a semi-turn-based grid-bound strategy RPG. The various minor enemies of the classic games are now viruses that must be defeated. True to the original series' conceit of gaining powers from defeated foes, viruses can drop battle chips, allowing Navis to use virus skills as their own.
The overarching narrative of the first trilogy branches off this what-if world. Dr. Albert Wily, while he did help shepherd the early internet into being with Tadashi Hikari (aka Dr. Thomas Light of the original platformer games alternate universe equivalent), was hoping his efforts would be rewarded by humanity helping back his own efforts to focus on robotics as the technology of the future. Unfortunately, aside from some minor usage in some niche areas, mankind largely rejected this in favor of further internet-based technology.
As a result, the first three games focus on Wily's rage against a world he believes spurned his true calling and tries to destroy the net-based society. Lan Hikari (called Netto in Japan as a pun on the term "Net" for the internet, his localized name is instead a play on LAN, for "local area network") is the grandson of Tadashi Hikari and the son of Yuuichiro Hikari. While Lan's father continues the work of his own father, Lan is still going through school at this time.
The narrative structure of the first three games had an "A" story, the overarching villain narrative of Wily's efforts, and the "B" story, focusing on Lan and Megaman.EXE, his personal net navi, who is actually a digital recreation of his brother Hub Hikari (Hub referring to where LANs are plugged into, his Japanese name is Saito for "site") who died in childbirth due to a rare heart defect. While the story strongly favors the "B" narrative, the "A" winds up interfering with it and becoming intertwined. By the end of each game, the "A" narrative and "B" narrative unify and the "A" narrative aspect must be fully resolved so Lan and Megaman can resume their daily lives as before.
Battle Network 4 is completely different. It has a very large and largely pointless "B" narrative", which is a huge amount of "Padding" to very poorly disguise the three separate "A" plots, which are all supposed to be connected but are very poorly fleshed out and none of the three carry the game on their own. For this reason, the story of Battle Network 4 is considered the weakest of all the games, and the four story arcs can be termed the "Tournament Arc", "Asteroid Arc", "Nebula Arc" and "Regal Arc". We shall examine them at length below.
1. The Tournament Arc
This is the biggest and frankly most pointless part of the game. Given it comprises nearly 90% of the entire story, it's nigh all filler that is never brought up again. In fairness to the developers, given Capcom unreasonably gave them 12 months to shove an entire game out the door with no preexisting assets to work with, this absolutely shameless excuse for padding out what is otherwise a largely plotless game was the only way they were going to meet that deadline.
Given they had already done a tournament arc twice (once in Battle Network 3 and several in the plotless gaiden game Battle Chip Challenge), they at least tried to mix it up a bit by having its latter arcs take place outside of Electopia (i.e. - Japan) and tried to slip in as much worldbuilding as their time limit allowed. Unfortunately, since they had little time to make a lot of this content actually interesting, we get a lot of filler material that relies on cliches and simplistic padded-out sidequests.
It's worth noting only a select few aspects of this arc refer to prior established characters or are even referenced in later works, so instead of covering the stuff that is generally never brought up again or even before, let's cover what was and see what BN4 did with it.
A. Tamako Ura/MetalMan.EXE
Tamako Ura (first met in Megaman Battle Network 3, where she was a required meeting at one point during the N1 Grand Prix tournament as a contestant, is reintroduced in Megaman Battle Network 4's Blue Moon Edition. While a potential contestant in the tournaments, Tamako curiously acts as if BN4 is the first time they met Lan, despite her being canonically met in 3, and in fact such was required for them to have met at one point of 3.
Given how it is possible to never encounter her due to the semi-random nature of the tournament selections and its direct inconsistency with BN3, the entire scenario must be discarded as non-canon.
5/15/2023 UPDATE: As pointed out on Reddit, I forgot to include mention of Raoul/ThunderMan.EXE.
Like Tamako, they act like it's the first time they met, and that is even more cringe than what they did with Tamako, who that could feasibly work with if Lan went out of his way to avoid meeting her except briefly during the N1 and they both just forgot about it next time they met. Pretty weak even then, but a plausible excuse.
Raoul though, they have no excuse at all. He was key to the story of MMBN2 and present at the N1 in MMBN3. Botching his BN4 appearance to neglect this is beyond being excusable, it's just utter laziness that should not have gone unnoticed.
B. Eugene Chaud/ProtoMan.EXE
It's worth noting it IS canon he does play a role in the story, namely, he's investigating Nebula as a criminal organization given his status as a member of the internet police force. We do see this in the Shademan meetings and his prior knowledge is remarked on in BN5 Team Protoman.
His actual Blue Moon tournament arc, however, is essentially a blatant recycling of his BN3 tournament arc, right down to the appearance of his estranged father. Given this arc adds basically nothing that wasn't already established and it's entirely possible to never actually encounter him in said tournament, and it is also non-canon. Only his actual story role outside of it is referenced in any later appearances.
C. Higsby/NumberMan.EXE
Higsby, like Chaud, does play a minor canonical role in both editions of BN4, specifically warning you away from the use of Dark Chips. His actual tournament arc, however, is basically noncanonical. Not only does it not mesh with BN5 Team Colonel, which acts as if it's the first time you ever learn the Number Cross Double Soul, but it also adds no story that is later referenced again.
D. Mr. Match/FireMan.EXE
Of the six tournament arcs that have any story reference either before or after BN4, the Red Sun tournament arc is the only one that appears to be canonical alongside one other.
In BN3, Match (Kenichi Hinoken in Japan) faked having reformed his past as a criminal in BN1 (he was seen as a neutral civilian in BN2), and even secured a position working for Scilab. He had secretly rejoined the criminal organization he had claimed to cut ties with and nearly tricked Lan into successfully helping him commit a terrorist act that would have killed all the scientists in SciLab, including Lan's own father. He was last seen left for dead in a sinking island base strapped to a chair he had uploaded his consciousness into.
Having somehow survived the events of BN3, he claims to have been cured of his criminal past for good when met again, though Lan holds him under the darkest of suspicion regardless. To some extent, the suspicions remain valid, as Match still had some lingering connections to the criminal world that he cut ties with at the last minute when someone he didn't intend would be hurt by proxy.
The end of the scenario prompted Match to further divorce himself from his old ways, which would match his later meeting in BN6 Cybeast Gregar.
When met in BN6 Cybeast Gregar, Lan is still a bit suspicious, but no longer as severely as he was in BN4, and Match does indeed serve as an entirely law-abiding citizen who plays a heroic role in BN6 Cybeast Gregar.
This seems to logically follow from the BN4 Red Sun events and the only tournament arc that appears to not violate any canon.
E. Raika/SearchMan.EXE
Raika is a citizen of Sharo (i.e. - Battle Network's version of Russia) and has a military background, hence his military-themed navi, SearchMan.EXE. While the Japan-only anime greatly expanded his relevance, his scenario in BN4 is likely non-canon. Not only does he act like he and Lan met for the first time BN5 Team Protoman, it is also regarded as the first time you gain usage of the Search Soul Double Soul power.
F. Shuuko/AquaMan.EXE
BN6 NOTE: AquaMan.EXE was briefly renamed Spoutman.EXE in the original English versions due to potential legal trouble from DC Comics, a change that was reverted to the original name in the Legacy Collection.
Shuuko and her navi are exclusive to the Blue Moon Edition of BN4 and the Cybeast Falazar Edition of BN6. BN6 directly references their first meeting from BN4 Blue Moon in the Falzar Edition, so this tournament arc is also canonical.
2. Asteroid Arc
The Asteroid Arc is supposed to be the "global threat" from the previous three games. The first game had a threat confined to Electopia with global implications, the second game a truly global threat, and the third a threat of such severity the world was legitimately staring an apocalypse in the face and every nation had declared martial law due to scale of the disaster that was barely averted.
In BN4, an asteroid is discovered, first detected just outside our solar system, and its trajectory is a collision course with Earth. It's described as being of sufficient size, mass, and scale as being a legitimate threat to the survival of humanity, meaning it at least has to be of the same type of asteroid that caused the end of the dinosaurs if not larger. At any rate, NAXA (a play on NASA and the name of its Japanese equivalent) immediately gets all the leading scientific minds together from around the world to come up with a solution to stave off the worst case.
Very early on, one of the scientists called in to work on the problem is, curiously enough, Yuuichiro Hikari. While Lan's father is indeed one of Electopia's brightest minds, his established discipline is in networking technology. Why he was picked for solutions to dealing with the threat of the heavenly body impacting the Earth is unclear. It may be he was shorthand for leading the Electopian delegation to this multinational effort, but this remains speculation. What is clear is that he proposes a laser be used to knock the asteroid off course with Earth given the level of tech available to Earth, and Dr. Regal of Nation X (more on that in the Regal section) concurs along with everyone else.
The asteroid threat mostly disappears from the plot until the very end of the Red Sun/Blue Moon Tournament (depending on the version of BN4 the player has). It turns out, late in the study of the asteroid threat, they determined it has an artificial intelligence and computer network that is compatible with Earth net tech that they intended the best net battler in the world to be sent to navigate and stop the asteroid threat should the laser plan fail.
Since Dr. Regal purposely sabotages the laser plan, and Lan is the winner of the last tournament, Lan and Megaman.EXE are sent to deal with the problem.
The Asteroid arc "villain" turns out to be Duo, a being who is the digital counterpart to the alien robot intelligence Duo from Mega Man 8. Duo believes humanity is unregenerate and that we have proven worthy of destruction for failing its standards of a just and upright civilization capable of resisting its darker impulses, and to that end, engages Lan and Megaman in battle but is defeated. They then, oddly enough with the people of Earth sending them power in a totally hackneyed cliche, are able to direct the asteroid away from Earth.
Duo, for his part, impressed the people of Earth could put aside their wicked ways and combine their power for their own mutual survival, decides he could have been wrong, and leaves humanity to decide its own future. This entire scenario is so filled with implausible nonsense that the next succeeding game goes out of its way to pretend nothing about it ever happened save retaining Dr. Regal and what few bits of writing that didn't break established canon they could, they otherwise blot this from the series memory, as no one ever recalls Lan was the guy who saved Earth in the remaining games, even the people who should logically do so like his dad and Dr. Regal.
Now, this was a story aimed at a Kids to Adults crowd, but even with that in mind, all the things based on real science the series has usually tried to either stick to reality or do reasonable extrapolation into the future Jules Verne style, the obvious internet tech conceit aside. However, I see grave problems with plausibility, both with Plan A and Plan B, let me go over them:
A. Plan A Issues
Plan A, or hit the asteroid with a laser to change its course, it's not entirely unreasonable if you don't think about it too hard. If you apply critical thinking, lots of things go wrong.
First off, if this is an object of sufficient size, scale, and mass to be a global threat to humanity, it would be traveling at thousands if not million miles a second given the sheer distance involved, even if we assume the most generous time for "a few months" before it hits Earth. Battle Network 4 assumes it remains the same size, mass, and scale, and at the same velocity from where it was first detected to when it hits Earth.
Even if it were a simple asteroid and not something more as Plan B covers, this makes no sense. The laws of physics mean that the object should lose SOME mass on the way to Earth. The sheer stress of how fast it's traveling should cause some loss of structure due to the sheer force involved, it's why warp speed in fiction has objects travel in a bubble that is slipstreaming objects to their destination as opposed to putting all the velocity of above light speed travel on the object, it would fly apart unless it was constructed out of materials that are solid enough to restrict warp speed friction and momentum causing them external and or internal damage.
Since there is no indication the laws of physics were set aside in this universe, this is just bad sci-fi writing.
Also, let's assume they have a powerful enough laser to affect the course of said object. Even if this is a workable plan, all sorts of things can go wrong even if it hits, like it breaking into pieces that hit the planet, they lack the force to change their course enough, or worse, miss entirely.
B. Plan B Issues
Plan B, if the laser plans fail (and it does, via sabotage, so we never know if it would have worked), is that they detected signals from the asteroid indicating a networked system similar enough in structure to Earth's own networking technology they plan to send a Net Navi operating by the best Net Battler they can find to change the course of the asteroid by finding the appropriate controls in the network.
I have two problems with this, one minor and one major.
The minor problem is that they don't have a clue how extensive this network is, or even if it includes the theoretical controls for the asteroid in question. It's basically a desperate shot in the dark, but whatever, I can let this slide because it's a minor quibble compared to the major problem.
The BIG problem with this plan is that if they are going to send a Net Navi via wireless broadcast to the asteroid and back from Earth's surface, they would have to do so long before the object is so close it's going to get caught in Earth's gravity well, meaning it would have to be sent to the asteroid before it enters Earth's gravity field.
Even if they pull this off, canonically, it's established their signal tech is about as advanced as ours, meaning they can barely do more than send signals globally. Somewhat faster than our world, but far shorter than they'd need to pull off something of this scale between an object that would be thousands if not millions of miles away.
They would have to keep up a continuous, uninterrupted signal between Earth and the asteroid at speeds approaching light speed and back (176,000 meters a second) to even approach making this workable. They obviously can't do this.
C. Duo Himself
Duo violates a core series tenet by his mere existence. The core conceit of the series is that the people of Earth doubled down on network tech instead of robotics, and everything else from that point is a logical outgrowth connected to Earth itself. Sure, the AU version of Earth has different geography, history, and technological progression, but it's still Earth's people taking a different path as the starting point.
Duo in Mega Man 8 was an alien ROBOT. Not a Net Navi. It makes no sense everything outside of Earth was affected by this alternate history, and Duo himself offers no explanation for who or what he is, but given every Net Navi with a classic counterpart has been explicitly cribbed from the canonical Mega Man games, Duo is the odd man out and makes no logical sense.
For Duo to be the same Duo from MM8 in a different form, this would have to be "Cosmic Retcon", a rewrite of the entire universe, not a mere alternate timeline of Earth's own history as was established since the very first game.
3. Nebula Arc.
The Nebula Arc has even less going for it than the Tournament and Asteroid arcs. At least those have a proper beginning and end, even if one is chock full of noncanonical and plotless filler and the other rests on a foundation of bad sci-fi. The Nebula Arc is more a teaser for what the next game would do far better than any form of a proper story, and that's being generous.
The basic structure of the arc is as follows. Nebula is an internet crime syndicate that now fills the void left by the WWW (World Three), Gospel, and the Neo WWW from the first three games. On top of alleged international reach, they also peddle "Dark Chips", which are generally highly illegal and have aspects of both illegal substances (like steroids, but for Net Navis) and soul-selling (like a literal deal with the devil) attached to their use.
Lan encounters them during a run-in with an agent of theirs named ShadeMan.EXE, a bat-themed Navi who plays out the classic Dracula cliches in the internet world. While ShadeMan is driven off by Chaud and ProtoMan.EXE initially, he drops a Dark Chip Lan picks up with no idea of its meaning.
Later, he asks the local chip shop owner and former WWW member Higsby (Yamitarou Higure in Japan) about it, and Higsby nearly freaks out hard as he explains Dark Chips are bad news, not to be used unless you want to corrupt your Navi and yourself and wind up going to a kid-friendly stand-in for Hell.
Lan wisely defers the use of the chip on this advice but is later forced to use it during his rematch with ShadeMan later since nothing else does any damage. It works but succeeds in awakening a dark side that is later brought to life as an enemy you must defeat and the player is given random dark chips out of nowhere at times in battle to further tempt you into their use, with dire gameplay consequences like permanent HP reduction in exchange for insane levels of power.
The arc ends near the end of the tournament arc after defeating your dark side, just in time for the Asteroid and Regal arcs to reach their own conclusions.
My problem with the writing of Nebula is that they are little more than an ill-defined boogeyman that the next game would properly do something with, and what they do isn't very impressive during what time they get onscreen.
A. Nebula just doesn't have very good street cred for their supposed threat.
Nebula in BN4, some minor attempts at making them seem scary aside, come off pretty lame. The WWW in both incarnations and Gospel were very capable of damage on a global scale, we saw them commit horrible acts of mass terrorism, and the very last game had society facing the literal apocalypse if they succeeded in their evil plan.
Nebula's worst apparent crime is the peddling of Dark Chips, which is bizarre since they magically can appear to those who have them in extra copies, making their selling in bulk rather silly. Worse, it's shown not using them, the one time the plot forces you to aside, is actually wiser long-term since they make the end game a lot harder and shunt off things like Full Syncro use, which you'd have to be an idiot to pass up using constantly.
With this in mind, the steroid and soul-selling metaphors come off as weird instead of compelling.
True, they at one point briefly kidnap and bind/gag Lan's mom to intimidate him, but that's literally all they do, just to scare him. Match in his arc planned to set off literal bombs and some of the other non-Nebula affiliated contestants do a lot more damage, like ColdMan.EXE and his operator, who hack weather satellites to cause regional blizzards. Nebula comes off as pretty sad by contrast, merely doing non-permanent damage to a theme park at most.
B. Dark Chips make no sense.
Dark Chips are stupidly powerful battle chips for Net Navis that grant awesome power in exchange for a loss of -1 permanent HP per use and some other gameplay-related drawbacks. That's fine, but while the series has flirted with some mild supernatural elements at times, Dark Chips just break the willing suspense of disbelief over their knee.
The very first dark chip you get is by sheer accident, when supposedly these things are peddled in the less honorable corners of the internet, which you cannot find a legit seller for at any point in BN4. Battle Network 5 actually did have legit sellers of these chips, and they were hard to find and appropriately rare, and quite illegal.
Second, their magical appearance after your only story-mandated use makes no sense. Battlechips are a finite resource with a physical form in-universe. More can be made based on viral data, but still, they don't just magically appear out of thin air like Dark Chips do in BN4. Battle Network 5 wisely walked back most of the supernatural implications of this because this strains plausibility even for the Battle Network series to its limits and beyond.
Second, even as a metaphor for illegal substances, how does the usage of these things send the Navi and their user to actual Hell (or Murkland, as they call it)? In the game, the worst penalties can be ignored until the very end, and while they make the final boss battle harder since they can't be used there (thus crippling the player severely if they leaned on them for most of the game), it's still not impossible to beat the game, just far harder.
And this has no implications for the next game even if you went all in on Dark Chip abuse in BN4.
Battle Network 5 walked back a lot of this nonsense because even it realized these issues. We see Dark Chips are clearly produced in factories. They are appropriately rare and illegal to acquire physical items. And the "moral" implications of their use were severely downplayed in BN5 to something that doesn't break prior canon over its knee.
4. Regal Arc
Dr. Regal is an "Original Generation" villain created specifically for the Battle Network series. While not a bad character, Battle Network 5 showed what they could really do with him if given good writing and a much more awesome makeover that included a sweet Beard of Evil, he just has the misfortune of debuting in a game that gives him almost no screentime to actually be a credible villain.
He is first introduced during the eggheads' meeting up at NAXA to figure out how to stop the asteroid. He is from Nation X, a generic military state with a bad reputation whose exact real-world counterpart is left vague on purpose, they just want you to know it's not a nice place. Regal himself does have a sinister monocle but otherwise doesn't look overly evil like Wily did on purpose.
In fact, when we first meet him, aside from Dr. Hikari noting everyone's reservations about his sponsor nation, they are all willing to work together in the name of humanity's survival, and Dr. Hikari privately concedes he could have the best knowledge of them all to make a counter plan work. Dr. Regal is even quite appropriately grateful for the opportunity and quite sincere in working with everyone, immediately asking to take over the analysis of the asteroid as his skills are best used for that area.
Slightly later, they all are debating the merits of Dr. Hikari's proposition to hit the asteroid with a laser to knock it off course. Regal is a gracious advocate of Hikari's plan, and the story then quits focusing on the Asteroid Arc until towards the very end.
A TON of revelations are thrown at the player in quick succession.
First, Regal is the founding leader of Nebula. Second, he sabotages the laser plan. Third, he plans to hijack Plan B, jack into the asteroid network, and stop it himself, getting sole credit for saving the Earth. Finally, after his Navi is defeated and the Earth is saved, he yeets himself off a roof as opposed to being captured for his crimes. Battle Network 5 reveals he faked his death so he can be used again in a better game.
Now, he was a decent villain cursed to be put in a debut game that used him poorly, let's examine why.
Nebula being his creation is something that is not even remotely hinted at besides the fact he wears some clothing items with a purple color scheme similar to Nebula agents like ShadeMan.EXE. That's it. He otherwise has to outright admit it while telling Lan to get bent while he saves the Earth for the player to connect him to Nebula. He could have kept quiet about being connected to Nebula in any way and that was only revealed in the intro of Battle Network 5 and the story would not suffer in the slightest for not mentioning it. In fact, some very mild changes to the plot of BN4 could keep the connection at a complete remove until the next game, that's how badly this was tacked on to his character.
Second, aside from coming from a military state with a bad reputation, our only hint of his ill intentions comes from Dr. Hikari's suspicions, and he stays so long off-camera is very easy to forget this. He otherwise betrays not a hint he's going to do his own thing until the story says he should. His Navi, LaserMan.EXE, does explain in hindsight his advocacy of the laser plan and his sabotage of it, but even here we have problems.
He could have allowed the laser plan to work and gained the praise of the world if it worked, which could have been later used in any number of interesting ways to further his actual villainous goals. Given he apparently has a poor view of the morality of man, his desire for the praise of humanity seems bizarre, especially given his very black-hearted take on humanity's moral potential in Battle Network 5, which ties into the Dark Chips and his goals in 5 a lot better.
The Battle Network anime was never dubbed past its second season in English, but even that used him far better than the games did, even during his BN4 appearance look.
Basically, Regal just had barely anything to work with from the get-go and had to wait for Battle Network 5 before the games used him properly.
5. Conclusion
Battle Network 4 was doomed to fail. Given a year to whistle up an entire game, game engine (even if they did reuse some earlier game code from 3), and assets, there was no way we were going to get a decent game with a story that was remotely decent. In 18 months, possibly, but just 12, not at all. Capcom forced Battle Network 4 to exist by sheer desire for profit, and they killed the series continuing past a sixth game after fans discovered the absolute tire fire they were sold.
And more is the pity if you ask me.
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