First off, I'd like to give a word on updates: I haven't received a single e-mail telling me to put up songs, so I guess I'll take that as a no. Harpuia ran into a spriting snag with the comic, so that'll be awhile. (I would ask for the sprites he needs, but he says he can make them himself. As I can barely sprite 16-bit and he's woking with 32-bit, I can offer no other help.) I've been nailed down with a case of AMV fever and haven't had much time to work on a story, especially afterhaving barely survived Christmas and New Year's.

So: the debate rages on. Most opinions of webmasters I have run into seem to mention the word 'glitch' in regards to ProtoMan's seeming free will during the entire series. (Which shows what they know, as I remember Dr. Light specifying the glitch was in his power systems anyways, and it would be unable to affect his programming.) However, he had absolutely no precedent nor programming motive of any kind to fight King, that we are aware of. So then why did he show up in MegaMan and Bass, blasters blazing and ready to sacrifice himself?

It could be that he felt King would kill the humans, and as a robot, it was his duty to protect them. That did not, however, justify him destroying the plans at the end, an action which almost harmed a human--and in fact might have, even more forbidden one of his creators.

There is also no reason to believe these robots follow the Laws of Robotics. Some people like to think of them as a given when robots are present, but the truth is, they aren't. They worked for Asimov, a brilliant sci-fi writer, but the Capcom execs are, as we well know, on crack. Hence the translation of MMBN3, otherwise the most brilliant game in the series.

Truth be told, a lot of fanfic writers out there rely on the seemingly-given fact of free will. And I'm damn sure Capcom had only story purposes in their mind for the games. But if people are willing to categorize a character's every action into not having free will due to a set of personality traits, why then, why don't we do that with real people?

Yesterday I slept in as long as my body felt it needed. I went outside and threw snow around, easily traceable to my roots growing up in a snowy region. I made lunch, which is the instinct for food. I spent a lot of the rest of the day doing my instinctual version of socializing on the computer. Predictable, traceable back to my core personality. Does that mean I have no free will?

It seems to me that if you're willing to argue the robots from the MegaMan games have no free will, you should be prepared to declare that no one with an established personality has any free will either. Everyone whose actions can be traced down to instinct on some level (which is everyone) has about the same amount of free will and rights as a robot.

Sure ProtoMan rescued Kalinka, but not because of a duty in his programming. He had nothing to do with her capture, having stopped working for Wily at the time. He simply did what any person would have done: oh, there's a war going on because of this girl's kidnapping. I'll take her home and stop it, saving my little brother in the process as well. It's as traceable an action as someone eating cereal for breakfast. It can be rationalized, but if you do that, you're basically admitting that we have no more free will than robots anyway.

So: robots have as much free will as we do. How much this is is dependant on how analytical you want to get.

~MaverickZ3r0, who is tired of seeing AIs ragged on and did not even jump to Navis or Halo AIs.