Copy X (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
derivativeofx) wrote2010-06-02 01:19 pm
derivativeofx) wrote2010-06-02 01:19 pm
(no subject)
Canon resources yeaaaaahhhh whoooo:
[x] Timeline of events leading to the Elf Wars
[x] Timeline + plot summaries. Still no concrete dates.
[x] Copy X's wiki page -- abilities, personality, backstory
[x] Voice sample -- Ciel's Memory ~ Truth of Hero
[x] MMZ1 script
[x] MMZ3 script
Complete and Utter Headcanon - How "Human" is this Reploid?
Copy X isn't quite as lucky as the original; he's still visibly robotic out of armor. Though his whole body has artificial skin, he has visible seams and doll joints, as well as removable panels for easy maintenance access -- forearms (for arm cannon interaction, as the plasma conduit and elemental chips are contained in the arm, not the outer buster) and chest (whatever power source battery whatsit future robots have, subtanks, probably some other important shit), as well as a small one on the back of the neck hiding a ...USB port? Socket? Whatever, that's where he connects for electrical recharging as well as any computer interactions he'd need to do (connecting to the computer his programming was being coded on during building, so on and so forth). Rather than human ears, the sides of his head are covered by flat plastic projections -- all the reploids in MMZ shown to be helmetless have those smooth white "ear covers", so I'm assuming they're a standard part of reploid design.
Like X, though, he's capable of humanlike behaviours:
-Crying (it's just ordinary water)
-Bleeding (it's coolant fluid. Dying it red is an industry standard.)
-Sleeping (as well as dreaming, though if he has a sufficient energy supply he can get away with not sleeping for ages.)
-Breathing (Also part of his cooling system)
-Salivate (Typically only activated in preparation of eating or kissing; this isn't a feature that's really seen a lot of use.)
-Eating (He's never done it as it's inefficient, wasteful, and uncomfortably human. He'll probably never do it in canon.)
-I'm pretty much just copypasting Jen's list here. It works so much easier when we're on the same headcanon page.
Considering there's a 200-year gap between the two, though, reploid technology's probably advanced a little. He'd have to do some tweaking to get his communicator on an FM/AM wavelength, and "interface mode" is probably not a common thing anymore; reploids are likely advanced enough to multitask, so sensors or diagnostics or a game of Angry Birds can run in the "back of their heads" without cutting off their field of vision.
How friggin' old are you, you stupid dollar store knockoff
Time for some detective work!
-Ciel built Copy X
-Ciel is 14 years old during the events of the first game, wherein Copy X dies for the first time
-"Amazingly, Ciel is aged 14 during Mega Man Zero, which means she built Copy X at the age of 6, making her a child prodigy"
-Resistance was formed when she was 9, more or less
-Thus, Copy X is ...eight years old, with Ciel defecting when he was three. Huh.
Not such a perfect copy:
-Why build a "perfect" copy with obvious physical flaws? His eye color is obviously wrong -- X never had red eyes. (He kinda went from blue (X1-X4) to green (X5+) to blue again (MMZ) for some reason.)
-I always headcanoned that the eye color change over the X series was due to severe occular damage during a Maverick Uprising. Repair parts and time would be limited, so he'd probably just have gone "give me whatever eyes you have lying around" and gotten back on the field ASAP. This'd probably also work as Copy's excuse for his blatantly obvious incorrect eye color.
-Also worth noting: his voice is different from X's, too. Higher, more boyish, and with this weirdly artificial sort of ring to it. It's not just X4-style bad casting or inconsistency between MMX and MMZ, either. X has speaking tracks in the drama CD, and his voice is more of the usual X-voice, so this was deliberately done.
-Whyyyyy. I really can't think of a reason to give him that voice. Surely 22XX technology is advanced enough that they can make a voice chip that doesn't sound like its speaker is a Cylon's distant cousin. Ciel, I know you were six, but come on. Step it up. This is not a convincing copy in the least.
-Maybe Copy X's speech hardware just sucks all across the board for some obtuse reason. It'd make sense with Copy Mk II having his weird speech-glitch-stutter thing going on, though I kind of figured Weil's remake was so flawed just because it was a hastily-glued-together puppet he didn't give a rat's ass about.
-I can presume he's the same height as X (who's canonically 5'2" in the first game and 5'4" in Command Mission), at least. He's shorter than the Guardians and Zero, I know that much as fact.
"Perfect copy" vs. "Only I could do this!"
So, Copy, what is your deal re: being a copy? In the same breath that you announce that you're a perfect copy, you state that the original X couldn't have accomplished what you did. BLATANT SELF-CONTRADICTION. When elf-X shows up in Z3, Copy calls him "my original form" instead of "the original X" or "the one I was based on" or something. That strikes me as weird word choice, implying they actually are the same person. That's also a contradiction to Z1, where he very clearly recognizes himself as a separate replica. Translation quirk, maybe? Is there some weird blurring-the-lines thing going on in his head? Or is it possible the "only I could do this" statement is hinting at an underlying want for an identity of his own?
My current working theory, anyway, is that it's a "have your cake and eat it too" situation. I think he does want some form of recognition and acknowledgement for what he has done, not X -- this ties in with that whole obsession with being a hero and backs up the "only I could make this awesome sparkling paradise" boast, as well as his "I WILL SHOW YOU MY TRUE POWER" Dragonball-Z-transformation-freakouts. At the same time, though, being X is literally the entire reason he exists. If he's not a convincing copy, then he renders himself obsolete and negates an entire (albeit very short) lifetime of work to be as X-like as possible. Without his X-mimicry, what even is there of him? You can't be Copy X without being a copy of X, right? Besides, being X is probably pretty awesome. Everyone in Neo Arcadia obeys him because he's X. X is a beloved and celebrated legend. X is a ~*~hero~*~. Who wouldn't wanna be loved like that?
Humans vs. Reploids
It's really, really obvious that Copy X doesn't have a lot of empathy for his fellow Reploids. When he speaks, surprisingly, a lot of it does seem to be on behalf of humans:
-"The humans have found happiness more than ever before... The utopia that humans have searched for, is here in Neo Arcadia."
-"Ciel... I was holding-ng back until now, because you were there, a human..." (Would unaltered Copy X have threatened Ciel? Where does he stand on his mom-creator-turned-traitor? CANON WHY DO YOU NEVER TALK ABOUT THIS.)
-"Almost a-all humans support our cause. All humans dream of defeating th-the extremists."
Does he actually care about humanity, then? Why not reploids too? Naive misinterpretation of the fact that during the Maverick Wars, it was basically all just reploids (especially X) taking down reploids? Harvesting "Mavericks"--a kid with an oversimplified view of bad guys vs. good guys trying to be a hero by emulating X? A cruel but pragmatic band-aid solution to the energy crisis? Both? Either way, it's obvious that he doesn't care at all that what he's doing is killing.
Is his lack of regard for reploid life a learned trait he picked up from somewhere else? Does he resent other reploids for having the freedom to actually have the individuality that separates reploids from machines? The very nature of his existence forces him to be a simple robot, not a reploid, so to speak -- he exists to fill a job, with no room for individual desires or goals. He's as disposable as you can get: not an actual person, but a puppet who ceases to have any meaning whatsoever if he deviates from his intended function. When he no longer performs as Ciel intended, she defects, leading up to her sending Zero to kill Copy X. Weil reprogramming him into little more than a convenient mouthpiece to further his aims kind of reinforces that further. Even X, the most famous reploid on the planet, the father of all and the world's saviour, was regarded as replaceable: when that machine could no longer do its job, why, along comes a human to build another X to take over. The real X's sacrifice is kept a strictly-classified secret and Copy X is born. When Copy X himself dies, that's kept hushed up too. The only way the public ever knows of "X's" death is in fact when Weil's bomb goes off in Copy X Mk-II. Even then, the only reason Weil announced it was so that he could officially take the reins of Neo Arcadia and drum up anti-Resistance sentiments in the process.
I'm also tying his humans-first policy into his take on equality. Reploids, let's face it, are way cooler than people. They have flawless-model-perfect good looks, never age, could live forever with proper maintenance and upgrades, can go places humans can't go, can do things that would kill a human outright, can be raised from the dead if their control chip is intact, a bunch of them can shoot lasers out of their cool gun-arms and stuff, and they're stronger, faster, smarter than humans are. The things that famously separate humans from others? Creativity? Emotions? Souls? A life after death? No longer just the property of humans. Reploids have all those too (the last one being the whole Cyber-Elf/Cyberspace dealie).
Back in the early days, humans presumably had social standing over reploids: they had human rights, minimum wage, etc. etc, whereas I imagine reploids could be owned as property, probably weren't paid much/at all for their jobs, worked much longer hours than humans because hey, inhuman stamina, etc. It stands to reason that by the time Neo Arcadia is born, that's no longer the case. Neo Arcadia? Run by reploids. Law enforcement? Pantheon drones and reploids. Humans are no longer the dominant species. Consider, too, the social circumstances: the Maverick Wars had been raging for a century -- pretty much from the birth of reploids on, there was constant fear and bloodshed because of reploids who wanted to rise up against humans. This had worldwide impact after the fallout of the Eurasia Incident rendered the earth itself temporarily uninhabitable to humans. After that? The Elf Wars, wherein Dark Elf's ability to control reploids (thanks to Project Elpizo) had been magnified to turn every reploid on the planet (minus X and Zero, who aren't even reploids anyway) into another killing machine of Weil's. 60% of the human population died in the Elf Wars. Basically: it would not surprise me if there was a lot of fear of reploids going on.
Add in the energy crisis to that. Humanity desperately needs stability, a lack of resources threatens to send the paradise the original X worked so hard to make crumbling into the ground, and... oh, hey, the reploid population's on the rise again. Reploids consume a lot more energy than humans do, by virtue of needing an artificial power source, creation of parts, etc. With no alternative energy source to be found (The Ciel System wasn't completed until Z3), something has to be done. So, here's a band-aid solution: harvest the Maverick reploids. Recycle their parts and energy cores. Aaand if someone happens to power trip hardcore and expand their definition of Maverick to lead to the mass-killing of innocent reploids, well... oopsie daisy. (That begs the question: would he have kept up his killing if the Ciel System had come up before he was wired into Weil's puppet?)
At the very least, humanity probably doesn't have to fear him. He does threaten Ciel in Z3, but I think he's far too conscious of the price of Maverick behaviour and just how important human support of his regime is.
So what's the deal with the Mk-II thing anyway?
Copy X Mk-II is pretty. Uh. Different. So where does Weil's reprogramming end and Copy X's own ruthless jackass tendencies begin? Mk-II's a lot more... open about his childishness, from my point of view. ("o hai zero you're looking for the extremely dangerous macguffin? LET'S MAKE IT A GAME. p.s, I missed youuuuu") I'm pretty comfortable chalking up a few things to Weil's rewrites: allowing Weil back at all, appointing him as controller of Neo Arcadia's armies, his threatening of Ciel and bombing out a populated area all just reek of Weil to me. I'm tempted to say that firing the Guardians was Weil's work too -- his ordering the surviving three to let him handle Zero in Z1 seems to imply he has some level of concern for their wellbeing. His need to be seen as a hero, not a naive idiot, and childlike understanding of the conflict ("Why would a legendary hero side with an evil army?") are intact, at least.
Was he aware that he was reprogrammed? I'm going to err on the side of thinking he didn't even realize that he was very obviously Weil's puppet. Weil's smart enough that he wouldn't allow a pawn in his plan the elbow room to catch onto the fact he was being manipulated and subsequently risk throwing a wrench in the works. Presumably if taken post-death he'd revert back to his pre-override self and be able to have a huuuuge hindsight mindfuck, at least.
So is he evil?
He's definitely not a good person, nor do I intend to make him Copy X in Leather Pants. Ever. If I do this, drag me out behind the barn and shoot me. He has zero regard for reploid life, and his concept of morality is an utter joke ("Wh-who cares about value? Neo Arcadia's doing what's right. That i-is enough proof that what we do is j-just!"). He cares more about being praised as a big sparkly hero than whether what he's doing is right.
At the same time, though, I do like to consider his circumstances. Think about it: take a newborn, give him a bunch of war stories about some idealized, flawless hero figure he will probably never be able to meet -- an experienced, wizened veteran with 200 years' worth of wisdom -- and tell him that he has to be that guy. Stick him in a throne, tell him to get busy running the world. Make sure to make him so important than nobody around him ever dares to tell him no or correct him. Give him a preschool genius for a mom, then have that aforementioned mom turn around and decide she wants him dead when he's three years old.
Then? Act really surprised when he turns out to be an incredibly horrible person who makes shockingly bad decisions. His policies are draconian and unjust, he's got a serious god-complex power trip going on, and his morals are based more on what the majority will praise him for than what's actually right, but even Zero calls out his naivete as a flaw. I can't help but wonder just how much of the monstrous direction he developed in has to do with his inexperience. He's, when you get down to it, trying to do a job that he's nowhere close to being qualified to do. Taking him to a game removes a lot of the circumstances that drive him. He's not longer in that position he's so horrifically unqualified for, since there's no Neo Arcadia. He's not in the public eye, he doesn't need to convince everyone he's X, and considering how rare the casts are, there likely won't even be any reploids around to bring out his murder-happy lack of empathy. Not even an energy crisis to sweat about. That, of course, also means no peons to boss around, and none of the power and entitlement that he's had spoonfed to him all his life. It'd leave an interesting vaccuum, and I'm kinda curious about how it'd get filled.
So, uh, is he evil? He's definitely not a good person. Even if you overlook the mass-murdering policy for some reason, you're likely just left with a needy, demanding brat on a huge power trip who refuses to believe he can actually be wrong. Is what he did justified? In his mind, maybe, but no. Does he have the potential to be good? Mmmaybe? Possibly? Eventually? I dunno.
[x] Timeline of events leading to the Elf Wars
[x] Timeline + plot summaries. Still no concrete dates.
[x] Copy X's wiki page -- abilities, personality, backstory
[x] Voice sample -- Ciel's Memory ~ Truth of Hero
[x] MMZ1 script
[x] MMZ3 script
Complete and Utter Headcanon - How "Human" is this Reploid?
Copy X isn't quite as lucky as the original; he's still visibly robotic out of armor. Though his whole body has artificial skin, he has visible seams and doll joints, as well as removable panels for easy maintenance access -- forearms (for arm cannon interaction, as the plasma conduit and elemental chips are contained in the arm, not the outer buster) and chest (whatever power source battery whatsit future robots have, subtanks, probably some other important shit), as well as a small one on the back of the neck hiding a ...USB port? Socket? Whatever, that's where he connects for electrical recharging as well as any computer interactions he'd need to do (connecting to the computer his programming was being coded on during building, so on and so forth). Rather than human ears, the sides of his head are covered by flat plastic projections -- all the reploids in MMZ shown to be helmetless have those smooth white "ear covers", so I'm assuming they're a standard part of reploid design.
Like X, though, he's capable of humanlike behaviours:
-Crying (it's just ordinary water)
-Bleeding (it's coolant fluid. Dying it red is an industry standard.)
-Sleeping (as well as dreaming, though if he has a sufficient energy supply he can get away with not sleeping for ages.)
-Breathing (Also part of his cooling system)
-Salivate (Typically only activated in preparation of eating or kissing; this isn't a feature that's really seen a lot of use.)
-Eating (He's never done it as it's inefficient, wasteful, and uncomfortably human. He'll probably never do it in canon.)
-I'm pretty much just copypasting Jen's list here. It works so much easier when we're on the same headcanon page.
Considering there's a 200-year gap between the two, though, reploid technology's probably advanced a little. He'd have to do some tweaking to get his communicator on an FM/AM wavelength, and "interface mode" is probably not a common thing anymore; reploids are likely advanced enough to multitask, so sensors or diagnostics or a game of Angry Birds can run in the "back of their heads" without cutting off their field of vision.
How friggin' old are you, you stupid dollar store knockoff
Time for some detective work!
-Ciel built Copy X
-Ciel is 14 years old during the events of the first game, wherein Copy X dies for the first time
-"Amazingly, Ciel is aged 14 during Mega Man Zero, which means she built Copy X at the age of 6, making her a child prodigy"
-Resistance was formed when she was 9, more or less
-Thus, Copy X is ...eight years old, with Ciel defecting when he was three. Huh.
Not such a perfect copy:
-Why build a "perfect" copy with obvious physical flaws? His eye color is obviously wrong -- X never had red eyes. (He kinda went from blue (X1-X4) to green (X5+) to blue again (MMZ) for some reason.)
-I always headcanoned that the eye color change over the X series was due to severe occular damage during a Maverick Uprising. Repair parts and time would be limited, so he'd probably just have gone "give me whatever eyes you have lying around" and gotten back on the field ASAP. This'd probably also work as Copy's excuse for his blatantly obvious incorrect eye color.
-Also worth noting: his voice is different from X's, too. Higher, more boyish, and with this weirdly artificial sort of ring to it. It's not just X4-style bad casting or inconsistency between MMX and MMZ, either. X has speaking tracks in the drama CD, and his voice is more of the usual X-voice, so this was deliberately done.
-Whyyyyy. I really can't think of a reason to give him that voice. Surely 22XX technology is advanced enough that they can make a voice chip that doesn't sound like its speaker is a Cylon's distant cousin. Ciel, I know you were six, but come on. Step it up. This is not a convincing copy in the least.
-Maybe Copy X's speech hardware just sucks all across the board for some obtuse reason. It'd make sense with Copy Mk II having his weird speech-glitch-stutter thing going on, though I kind of figured Weil's remake was so flawed just because it was a hastily-glued-together puppet he didn't give a rat's ass about.
-I can presume he's the same height as X (who's canonically 5'2" in the first game and 5'4" in Command Mission), at least. He's shorter than the Guardians and Zero, I know that much as fact.
"Perfect copy" vs. "Only I could do this!"
So, Copy, what is your deal re: being a copy? In the same breath that you announce that you're a perfect copy, you state that the original X couldn't have accomplished what you did. BLATANT SELF-CONTRADICTION. When elf-X shows up in Z3, Copy calls him "my original form" instead of "the original X" or "the one I was based on" or something. That strikes me as weird word choice, implying they actually are the same person. That's also a contradiction to Z1, where he very clearly recognizes himself as a separate replica. Translation quirk, maybe? Is there some weird blurring-the-lines thing going on in his head? Or is it possible the "only I could do this" statement is hinting at an underlying want for an identity of his own?
My current working theory, anyway, is that it's a "have your cake and eat it too" situation. I think he does want some form of recognition and acknowledgement for what he has done, not X -- this ties in with that whole obsession with being a hero and backs up the "only I could make this awesome sparkling paradise" boast, as well as his "I WILL SHOW YOU MY TRUE POWER" Dragonball-Z-transformation-freakouts. At the same time, though, being X is literally the entire reason he exists. If he's not a convincing copy, then he renders himself obsolete and negates an entire (albeit very short) lifetime of work to be as X-like as possible. Without his X-mimicry, what even is there of him? You can't be Copy X without being a copy of X, right? Besides, being X is probably pretty awesome. Everyone in Neo Arcadia obeys him because he's X. X is a beloved and celebrated legend. X is a ~*~hero~*~. Who wouldn't wanna be loved like that?
Humans vs. Reploids
It's really, really obvious that Copy X doesn't have a lot of empathy for his fellow Reploids. When he speaks, surprisingly, a lot of it does seem to be on behalf of humans:
-"The humans have found happiness more than ever before... The utopia that humans have searched for, is here in Neo Arcadia."
-"Ciel... I was holding-ng back until now, because you were there, a human..." (Would unaltered Copy X have threatened Ciel? Where does he stand on his mom-creator-turned-traitor? CANON WHY DO YOU NEVER TALK ABOUT THIS.)
-"Almost a-all humans support our cause. All humans dream of defeating th-the extremists."
Does he actually care about humanity, then? Why not reploids too? Naive misinterpretation of the fact that during the Maverick Wars, it was basically all just reploids (especially X) taking down reploids? Harvesting "Mavericks"--a kid with an oversimplified view of bad guys vs. good guys trying to be a hero by emulating X? A cruel but pragmatic band-aid solution to the energy crisis? Both? Either way, it's obvious that he doesn't care at all that what he's doing is killing.
Is his lack of regard for reploid life a learned trait he picked up from somewhere else? Does he resent other reploids for having the freedom to actually have the individuality that separates reploids from machines? The very nature of his existence forces him to be a simple robot, not a reploid, so to speak -- he exists to fill a job, with no room for individual desires or goals. He's as disposable as you can get: not an actual person, but a puppet who ceases to have any meaning whatsoever if he deviates from his intended function. When he no longer performs as Ciel intended, she defects, leading up to her sending Zero to kill Copy X. Weil reprogramming him into little more than a convenient mouthpiece to further his aims kind of reinforces that further. Even X, the most famous reploid on the planet, the father of all and the world's saviour, was regarded as replaceable: when that machine could no longer do its job, why, along comes a human to build another X to take over. The real X's sacrifice is kept a strictly-classified secret and Copy X is born. When Copy X himself dies, that's kept hushed up too. The only way the public ever knows of "X's" death is in fact when Weil's bomb goes off in Copy X Mk-II. Even then, the only reason Weil announced it was so that he could officially take the reins of Neo Arcadia and drum up anti-Resistance sentiments in the process.
I'm also tying his humans-first policy into his take on equality. Reploids, let's face it, are way cooler than people. They have flawless-model-perfect good looks, never age, could live forever with proper maintenance and upgrades, can go places humans can't go, can do things that would kill a human outright, can be raised from the dead if their control chip is intact, a bunch of them can shoot lasers out of their cool gun-arms and stuff, and they're stronger, faster, smarter than humans are. The things that famously separate humans from others? Creativity? Emotions? Souls? A life after death? No longer just the property of humans. Reploids have all those too (the last one being the whole Cyber-Elf/Cyberspace dealie).
Back in the early days, humans presumably had social standing over reploids: they had human rights, minimum wage, etc. etc, whereas I imagine reploids could be owned as property, probably weren't paid much/at all for their jobs, worked much longer hours than humans because hey, inhuman stamina, etc. It stands to reason that by the time Neo Arcadia is born, that's no longer the case. Neo Arcadia? Run by reploids. Law enforcement? Pantheon drones and reploids. Humans are no longer the dominant species. Consider, too, the social circumstances: the Maverick Wars had been raging for a century -- pretty much from the birth of reploids on, there was constant fear and bloodshed because of reploids who wanted to rise up against humans. This had worldwide impact after the fallout of the Eurasia Incident rendered the earth itself temporarily uninhabitable to humans. After that? The Elf Wars, wherein Dark Elf's ability to control reploids (thanks to Project Elpizo) had been magnified to turn every reploid on the planet (minus X and Zero, who aren't even reploids anyway) into another killing machine of Weil's. 60% of the human population died in the Elf Wars. Basically: it would not surprise me if there was a lot of fear of reploids going on.
Add in the energy crisis to that. Humanity desperately needs stability, a lack of resources threatens to send the paradise the original X worked so hard to make crumbling into the ground, and... oh, hey, the reploid population's on the rise again. Reploids consume a lot more energy than humans do, by virtue of needing an artificial power source, creation of parts, etc. With no alternative energy source to be found (The Ciel System wasn't completed until Z3), something has to be done. So, here's a band-aid solution: harvest the Maverick reploids. Recycle their parts and energy cores. Aaand if someone happens to power trip hardcore and expand their definition of Maverick to lead to the mass-killing of innocent reploids, well... oopsie daisy. (That begs the question: would he have kept up his killing if the Ciel System had come up before he was wired into Weil's puppet?)
At the very least, humanity probably doesn't have to fear him. He does threaten Ciel in Z3, but I think he's far too conscious of the price of Maverick behaviour and just how important human support of his regime is.
So what's the deal with the Mk-II thing anyway?
Copy X Mk-II is pretty. Uh. Different. So where does Weil's reprogramming end and Copy X's own ruthless jackass tendencies begin? Mk-II's a lot more... open about his childishness, from my point of view. ("o hai zero you're looking for the extremely dangerous macguffin? LET'S MAKE IT A GAME. p.s, I missed youuuuu") I'm pretty comfortable chalking up a few things to Weil's rewrites: allowing Weil back at all, appointing him as controller of Neo Arcadia's armies, his threatening of Ciel and bombing out a populated area all just reek of Weil to me. I'm tempted to say that firing the Guardians was Weil's work too -- his ordering the surviving three to let him handle Zero in Z1 seems to imply he has some level of concern for their wellbeing. His need to be seen as a hero, not a naive idiot, and childlike understanding of the conflict ("Why would a legendary hero side with an evil army?") are intact, at least.
Was he aware that he was reprogrammed? I'm going to err on the side of thinking he didn't even realize that he was very obviously Weil's puppet. Weil's smart enough that he wouldn't allow a pawn in his plan the elbow room to catch onto the fact he was being manipulated and subsequently risk throwing a wrench in the works. Presumably if taken post-death he'd revert back to his pre-override self and be able to have a huuuuge hindsight mindfuck, at least.
So is he evil?
He's definitely not a good person, nor do I intend to make him Copy X in Leather Pants. Ever. If I do this, drag me out behind the barn and shoot me. He has zero regard for reploid life, and his concept of morality is an utter joke ("Wh-who cares about value? Neo Arcadia's doing what's right. That i-is enough proof that what we do is j-just!"). He cares more about being praised as a big sparkly hero than whether what he's doing is right.
At the same time, though, I do like to consider his circumstances. Think about it: take a newborn, give him a bunch of war stories about some idealized, flawless hero figure he will probably never be able to meet -- an experienced, wizened veteran with 200 years' worth of wisdom -- and tell him that he has to be that guy. Stick him in a throne, tell him to get busy running the world. Make sure to make him so important than nobody around him ever dares to tell him no or correct him. Give him a preschool genius for a mom, then have that aforementioned mom turn around and decide she wants him dead when he's three years old.
Then? Act really surprised when he turns out to be an incredibly horrible person who makes shockingly bad decisions. His policies are draconian and unjust, he's got a serious god-complex power trip going on, and his morals are based more on what the majority will praise him for than what's actually right, but even Zero calls out his naivete as a flaw. I can't help but wonder just how much of the monstrous direction he developed in has to do with his inexperience. He's, when you get down to it, trying to do a job that he's nowhere close to being qualified to do. Taking him to a game removes a lot of the circumstances that drive him. He's not longer in that position he's so horrifically unqualified for, since there's no Neo Arcadia. He's not in the public eye, he doesn't need to convince everyone he's X, and considering how rare the casts are, there likely won't even be any reploids around to bring out his murder-happy lack of empathy. Not even an energy crisis to sweat about. That, of course, also means no peons to boss around, and none of the power and entitlement that he's had spoonfed to him all his life. It'd leave an interesting vaccuum, and I'm kinda curious about how it'd get filled.
So, uh, is he evil? He's definitely not a good person. Even if you overlook the mass-murdering policy for some reason, you're likely just left with a needy, demanding brat on a huge power trip who refuses to believe he can actually be wrong. Is what he did justified? In his mind, maybe, but no. Does he have the potential to be good? Mmmaybe? Possibly? Eventually? I dunno.