- Reading this preview, with Samus contemplating the baby Metroid: "Not even a fragment. None of the baby remained on me. I knew it to be true but still couldn't help looking at my palm for a sign. Never again would I encounter the baby. Never. The finality of it stuck me once again." I'd say that you're right.
- A space Action Girl extremely badass kicks asses and has a sweet spot for children? Never heard that one before...
- Mostly confirmed within the finished game: while other Metroids, in the form of those bred by the Federation bioweapon project, do come into play late in the game, maternal themes are still very important, both in terms of Samus' connection with the Baby and Madeline Bergman's motherly feelings toward MB.
- I can just imagine Samus screaming into her phone at her agent over this...
So a lot has been discussed about the inconsistencies presented with Other M- the timeline, the way the suit works, the completely bonkers ways that Samus acts.However...There are periods of time that take place in between Prime 1, Prime 2, Prime 3...Dark Samus is going to be around in those periods of time.So you're a Samus Clone. You have only the most fragmented, rudimentary memories- the ones that stick out the most, but you're still, in your mind, Samus. You get in your Samus ship (take note that Dark Samus does have a spaceship) and you hear a distress call...So now you've got Other M. She acts that way not because she's the real Samus, but because it's Dark Samus reacting to having these memories now jumping out that she is just being exposed to. She's not the real bounty hunter, she's less than two years old. The real Samus is out there having other adventures while Dark Samus is busy going crazy on a Bottle Ship.
- Problem is that, canonically, Metroid Prime takes place right after the original/Zero Mission, and Prime 3 takes place before Metroid II.
- And making the Samus in Other M a clone thus removes that big continuity problem Nintendo created.
- Wow you fanboys need to chill out, lol. Just accept the story.
- The Samus in Other M is an experimental attempt at cloning Samus by the Mawkin Chozo to evaluate if a clone army of Samus Arans was viable, but she was considered a failure by Raven Beak - until he saw her Metroid powers manifesting during Dread.
- Somewhat confirmed, since Samus could have easily disobeyed Adam at any point. She even starts authorizing her own equipment later into the game. The reason she was listening to Adam in the first place was because she wanted to prove a point to herself - see the Analysis page for more info.
- Let's face it: Samus' Concentration ability makes no sense. I mean, she just waits for a minute, and suddenly her energy is refilled? It actually makes more sense than you'd think. Let's step back for a moment, and consider what has to happen before it can be used: Samus' energy has to be at critically low levels. So here's the question: at the point where the recharge becomes accessible, what is the player thinking? Odds are, they're freaking out. One more hit is all it's going to take to cause a Game Over. Now think about Samus' thoughts on the matter. Her adrenaline is probably spiking like crazy. Now let's look at what she actually does during Concentration. All she appears to do is bring her Arm Cannon up to her head, but if you pay attention, there's a subtle air of focus as she does it. And that's precisely what's happening: When the player activates Concentration, Samus takes a moment to gather her thoughts so she can focus on the task at hand. How her energy is restored is simple: once her mind is cleared, she has a ton of excess adrenaline that's going to make it hard to stay focused. So what does her suit do? It converts the adrenaline into energy, then pours it into the shields! -phazonfarmer
- ...converts... the... adrenaline... into...?
- It's the future. Don't worry about it.
- Alternate theory: Concentration is Concentration. The game shows that the Power Suit is maintained by force of will. After being hammered on for a while, she needs to step back and restore her focus.
- I thought it was manipulation of the Charge Beam ability to draw in energy and use it to fuel the suit. as for why you can't fully recharge in that style, well, the Charge Beam essentially creates a big ball of really painful, explosive energy. It could be that only one or two of Samus's many energy shield tanks can support that type of energy.
- I figured that was the case as well. And the part about concentration restoring missiles as well? The diverted energy powers a micro-fabricator.
- Another option is that her Concentration is an upgrade of her Crystal Flash from Super; she might just be taking energy from a Power Bomb and converting it to her suit systems and physical stamina. Just cause she isn't authorized to use them doesn't mean she can't use their non-lethal abilities.
- Except for the fact that Adam refuses to authorize non-lethal suit functions, such as the Varia feature and the Grapple Beam, until absolutely necessary.
- Other M was all just a bad dream after Samus ate way too many Baconators the night before. When her dream becomes a nightmare (read: low health), she has to stop and reassert the dream's lucidity.
- It's not really exaggerated, you (by which I mean everyone who has a problem with the Other M side of Samus) just figured she was a hardened, unfeeling person.
- This is kind of a misogynistic idea. However, it does play into the theme of motherhood...
- So Samus is a Best Her to Bed Her type? That's... actually not so difficult to stomach.
- At the possible risk of encouraging some fanfic author with an overheated imagination to write really bad slashfic which I will thankfully never see, I wish to point out that between that one cutscene where Ridley temporarily disables Samus's suit by poking her with his, uh, tail, and that other cutscene where Adam temporarily disables Samus's suit by shooting her in the back, the idea presented above really doesn't seem like it was thought all the way through.
- Somewhat supporting the theory that she is a Best Her to Bed Her type is that canonically, we never see Samus actually lose to anyone who theoretically would be interested in her as a romantic partner - even in the odd chance that Ridley does have feelings for her, she never loses to him. However, I was always under the impression that the reason she suited down was the same that someone would kick off their shoes after a long day of work - she's tired and just wants to relax.
- Of course, the fact that they destroyed everything she knows and loves when she was a little girl probably colored this perception.
- If this game is any indication, she's probably right.
- A Metroid game usually has self containing plotlines that wrap up neatly by the end of the game. Other M might have gotten backlash due to parts of the story that were never explained fully, if at all. This could have been because of this being a "Project M" game, which might have meant that the story for Other M could have been one that was meant to continue across multiple games.
- Also, no game in the series before Other M depended on the player to have an understanding of plot points and backstory from other Metroid media (in this case, the Metroid Manga) to fully understand why what happened during Samus' encounter with Ridley happened the way it did. Perhaps they had plans to further develop on this in another game, and to actually question "why now". The part of the scene when Adam freaks out over Samus' freezing in place might have been the indication that this was supposed to be the question they wanted us to have, and for us to theorycraft as to why she did.
- She never offers you cake.
- Look at Mother Brain in the Manga! It's TRUE!
- Except that concept art shows otherwise. Samus is described as socially inept or awkward as her parents were killed when she was only three and her childhood was largely spent being trained as a warrior among non-humans of which she was only close to one, whom she thought of as a grandfather figure. She didn't begin to live with humans again until she turned 14 when she would join the Galactic Federation and befriend Ian Malkovich, Anthony Higgs and Adam Malkovich.
- Confirmed. The next two Metroid games, Metroid Prime: Federation Force and Metroid: Samus Returns, return Samus to her pre-Other M characterization as a silent stoic badass who leaves the Galactic Federation in awe of her prowess.
- Let's face it, the Wii wasn't that powerful, and for a time when we had the Xbox 360 and the Playstation 3 doing well by comparison. Other M had full FMV cut scenes that seemed to have some artifacting going on. The game might have been demanding way too much of the hardware it was using (and this was made pretty late into its lifespan, as it was around this time that word of what would become the Wii U became known).
- This might have been why things might not have been explained: not enough time or space or power to really do it all in one go (see Left Hanging above). They might have planned to add more to the Ridley scene, but could not because they just didn't have the resources to add the additional scenes. One might wonder what this game could have been had it been run on the hardware the Wii's competition had at the time.
- The rating seemed to have a hand in this, too. For years, Metroid had gotten a Teen rating (or the regional equivalent). But one could argue that, if things like flashbacks were added, given that we were delving into Samus' backstory as a young girl, it could've easily been enough to cross into Mature rating territory, something that Nintendo has not really had much of a willingness to create (Eternal Darkness was the last M rated game Nintendo had a hand in developing). Given that Nintendo edited out the "Damn" expression from the commander in Prime 3 for the Trilogy rerelease, this theory might have some truth to it. Some have said that it could have been time for a M rated Metroid game. If there's one franchise that could benefit from some more graphic content, after all, it would be Metroid.
- Its like spiders. No matter how many times you squish one, they still freak you out.
- This isn't a guess so much as "really freaking obvious"...for this game anyway. Considering how controversial that particular scene is, whether it will carry over to future installments is anyone's guess.
- I meant through out the entire series
- It's possible she was always afraid, but this time was worse because he appeared with no warning and started bearing down on her while on other occasions she figured out he was about and was able to mentally prepare. Zero Mission she knew he was alive, Prime 1 she followed him to Tallon, Corruption she saw him trashing Norion and Super, well the link between them wasn't even written in yet so of course no fear could be displayed. This time was the first he apparently survived the detonation of a planet, so Samus was certain he was gone.
- Hey, we never hear her talk. During all the cutscenes of all the games with Ridley, Samus could be freaking out, we just can't hear her.
- This troper believes that it wasn't necessarily just Ridley being... Ridley... that terrified her. I think Samus's issue was that, after so long, she was used to fighting the big guy when he had cybernetics. The knowledge that she weakened him to such a point of forcing the Pirates to remake him as a cyborg likely gave her a confidence boost. Seeing the murderer of her parents being 'whole' again after so long, with those glowing blue-green eyes glaring at her... well, we saw the result of that.
- Holy shit I had the same theory!
- The only problem with this is the fact that he was back in his original body in Super.
- Not quite, his original body was green with red eyes (Zero Mission artwork), in Super, he's purple with yellow eyes. Seems the Pirates made some genetic modifications that the GF scientists furthered.
- Another reason for the freak out is that this time Samus has actually killed ridley in the last game, unlike any other encounter - he'd always survived before, if injured, but this time he was actually dead. Seeing him alive, rising from what looks like hell and nearly killing a close friend of Samus (again...) - might be enough to freak her out. because, just think about it, it might as well be saying she'll never be free of him
- That doesn't work because this one was a clone, and not the first clone encountered that day either.
- The only problem with this is the fact that he was back in his original body in Super.
- Except every single bit of material shows she's long since gotten over it. Even the argument of "He came back from the dead" doesn't hold water. It's honestly far more plausible that the game was just very poorly written. Except for Anthony, Anthony is perfect.
- This actually makes some sense since - in every game past Super, when they started to get enough room for some characterization - she's at least hesitated or frozen for a few seconds when encountering Ridley (or, in the case of Corruption, she went berserk - the way she finished off Meta Ridley in that game was not the act of someone thinking rationally, but looked to this troper more like her screaming at him to just stay dead).
- I can sort of buy that. On the other hand, when she first found herself about to face Ridley, she broke down badly enough to beg Gray Voice, the Chozo who'd raised her, to kill her before Ridley got to her, so...
- The original Japanese version of the game makes the reason for her BSOD a lot more clear, it kinda got muddled by Sakamoto's meddling in the English translation. Basically, Samus' character arc in this game is about her learning to deal with her problems in a more mature way, and realizing that firepower can't solve all her problems. This comes to a head with Ridley, who puts the final nail in the coffin that Samus can't be rid of him. After blowing up Zebes in Super, she was sure that he was gone for good. But here he is, as dangerous as ever. She feels utterly powerless in this moment, like a child (she literally turns into one in the flashback), and can't process her frustration, trauma, and sadness all coming back at once. So yes, in a way this was just the culmination of every fight Samus has had with Ridley, and resulted in her coming to terms with her inability to fully erase the past and realizing she just needs to accept her weaknesses.
These allow for two things. First of all, every time Ridley was defeated between Metroid and Metroid Prime 3, its body was never fully destroyed, and Samus knew it would eventually be rebuilt, not being surprised upon facing Ridley in the next game. Second of all, that means Ridley only ever truly died once: when his body was vaporized in the Zebes destruction at the end of Super Metroid, the only time Ridley is ever caught in a massive explosion that vaporizes all it touches. This is why Samus went crazy upon seeing a revived Ridley in Other M. While every other time she killed Ridley, she knew he'd come back, his death in Super Metroid was the first time she truly believed he could never come back, since the planetary destruction vaporized his body. Thus, when he appeared in the Bottle Ship, she freaked out, believing there was no possible way he could come back to life after what happened following their last face-off.
- Samus isn't a fragile flower or dependent on others most of the time, but Other M picks up right after Samus has taken a real emotional sledgehammer blow when the baby Metroid sacrificed itself for her. The reason Samus seems to lack her independent spirit and stoicism implied by the other games is that she's hit an emotional nadir from losing the only "family" she had for the third time in a row, only now she's not only lost her biological parents and the Chozo, but the closest thing she's ever likely to have to a child. Under that level of depression, she's still able to function but everything about her is just phoning it in; she's lost the ability to muster initiative and operate alone and unsupported like normal, and she tries to deal with it by trying to surround herself with people, like Adam, and to get along with the one remaining parental figure she has left even though Adam's orders restrict her ability to get things done. The depression only deepens when Ridley revives; Samus had been sure this time she was finally rid of him forever, but now she sees that she can't seem to keep anyone she cares about from dying while the monster that ate her parents won't stay dead no matter what she does. Hence, freezing up and needing help. In the next Metroid game, she will be able to overcome the depression and undergo Character Rerailment.
- This is certainly plausible, seeing as Samus does show a number of textbook signs of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in the game. She may have this Character Rerailment in Metroid Fusion, during which she shows signs of being a Death Seeker and slightly unhinged before rising to the occasion and completing her rogue mission at the end with renewed resolve to stay alive.
- Dissenting opinion: She sure didn't seem to have any trouble handing the Metroid neonate over to the Federation for an extended and probably not too pleasant spell as a subject of renewable energy research, and there's no suggestion that, had Ridley's visit to Ceres Station not necessitated her hasty return, she intended to see the neonate again ever. While it seems to have regarded Samus as its mother, that's no reason to assume Samus necessarily regarded it as her child.
- Perhaps Samus didn't start to view it as a surrogate child until after it gave its life for her, making her realize that its affection for her was genuine and throwing her into a form of survivor's guilt.
- And this is something like, what, the twelfth time Samus has fought Ridley in whatever form? And she had a major PTSD breakdown the first time, and overcame it with Chozo help, and went on to deliver to Ridley the first of many near-death experiences he received at her hands. If she were going to have trouble with the way he kept on not quite all the way dying, why would it take so long to sink in?
- Because Ridley truly died in Super Metroid, which resulted in him being blown up into bit, later accompanied by an interplanetary explosion that vaporish what's left of him. After losing the Baby Metroid and her adopted home planet, as well as nearly jeopardizing the entire safety of the galaxy, Samus would at least take comfort that at least her arch-enemy is gone for good until she encounters the Ridley's clone in the Pyrosphere, who seems to have the exact same sadistic personality as the original. Not to mention it's hard to lose fear and anxiety permanently, even when you've overcome it several times.
- Jossed for reasons noted below under the "James was the Deleter" entry.
- Actually, this makes perfect sense. The part with the Metroid report being written by him was brushed off far too quickly, really. It should be noted that the demolition of the Bottle Ship was scheduled; Samus just had really bad timing at the end. I haven't checked the timeline of the radio silences, but I recall they were common and often very long; odds are they fit in well with the murders of the team. Even then, he might have carried a radio around with him. The only question is why he would kill the team. I forget what the original motivation was assumed to be, but I'm guessing that either he was acting alone, the team was considered expendable and was used as a cover story, he didn't have enough people he could trust to bring along or Samus showing up meant he had to improvise a cover.
- This could explain why we don't see who the Deleter really was; There was more than one of them, but they might not have been working together, either. A different way to look at all of this is that Adam's plan was to destroy the project because his Metroid report was supposed to be about why they shoudn't do it, and this was his way at getting back at them for doing something so dangerous. The real Deleter was still the one killing the team, but Adam could use him as a cover for everything else. Tying back to Samus being an outside element, he never planned on having her getting involved and was trying to keep her safe by whatever means necessary, and his sacrifice could have been a Thanatos Gambit where not only does he save Samus, but also even gets rid of himself for the whole mess.
- He HAS to be, him and KG are the only ones Samus hasn't seen dead at this point and having seen James' body that means KG cannot be the deleter as he has to have been the one thrown into the lava. Major evidence is that the Deleter has the lower half of his helmet's 07 logo faded away and James is the only one with said faded numbers.
- Don't forget he's a CIA agent. No, really. His service record during the briefing cutscene near the beginning of the game flat-out states his training was under the Federation Central Information Agency. It would certainly explain how a guy whose specialty is "Communications" is also a computer hacker and demolitions expert, considering what happened at the Sector 1 building.
- A bit of minor evidence, but in the body dumping scene the deleter never had a massive gun on his back so it points away from Anthony.
- As the communications expert, he could easily have sabotaged the group's communications.
- This is all but confirmed with a note on his concept art.
- Yahtzee suspected it just because of his mustache.
- Assuming that this is the exact same Ridley, that is.
- There's a perfectly reasonable explanation of this that has nothing to do with the storyline. Remember what this game comes right after, and what system it's on. See, Nintendo has this condition where if they make a game for the Wii, they are required to incorporate all of the features of it. Therefore, the similarities have nothing to do with the storyline and more to do with how it was chronologically released. Sorry for shooting this WMG down.
- Remember that we don't know too much about Post Traumatic Stress, either. There are times in which the human body can react very differently when encountered with a potential trigger twice over. They might not feel anything one encounter with it, then be frozen the next, and then enraged at a third encounter (who's to say fear was Samus' only emotion when finding out that Ridley was still alive in Super Metroid?). Being surrounded by other factors can also heighten risk of an episode, which those additional factors DID exist on the Bottle Ship, whereas it never did for her before.
- According to an interview with Samus' English voice actress for Other M, you're on the right track. (Long story short: Samus is a badass but she sucks at analyzing other peoples' feelings, which in Inner Monologue terms translated to a monotonous delivery, while her actual voice in action cutscenes is very emotional and engaging)
- Considering her childhood was spent mostly in training to become a Chozo Warrior (at least, what was seen of it in the canon mangas) with few actual friends a normal kid would have, she might indeed have some trouble relating to other people. Or writing books.
- For both this and the above, it seems more like her narration is so awful in most of the game because she's suppressing the pain of the Bottle Ship incident while revisiting it "for the record." Notice how she's much more lifelike and emotional when she's speaking in real time (call is suit recordings) and much more robotic while doing after-action narration. Given what she's remembering and what she lost there, is it any wonder she can't even try to act?
- Another possibility would be if the events of the game were being seen from her PTSD-affected memory, and it's not as accurate as it looks. Maybe Adam's behavior was a little different than what we saw, or her showdown with Ridley didn't exactly start the way it did.
- Corruption and too much paperwork for good to be accomplished would also go a very, very long way towards explaining the BSL debacle.
- Not only that, but given the Bottle Ship's similarities to the BSL station in Fusion (similar layout, existance of Nightmare), it could be presumed that BSL is in control of a good chunk of the Federation government, because they managed to violate numerous sentient rights laws and superweapon non-proliferation treaties twice, and get away with it, as far as the audience knows.
- I too was under that impression. She went as far as leaving the Federation and her supposed father figure after that incident, must've been a pretty hard hit.
- Wouldn't it be interesting if you were right, but also Adam was jealous of their relationship? He let Ian die by forbidding Samus to rescue him, which she probably could have done, since she outruns self-destruct sequences all the time; with Ian out of the way, Adam's plan was to take Samus for himself. Adam knew that she saw him as a father figure, but he didn't care; he may even have seen her as a sort of daughter-figure for him, but decided to go after her anyway. That's just one reason why Adam was not and probably never will be ready for parenthood.
- ROFL. For a more serious explanation, it was probably the Federation or the rogue faction transmitting a self-destruct signal, which is a lot easier than mobilizing a fleet and/or firing off some nukes. The story had already explained that it was going to happen in a day or two; apparently the timetable was moved up a bit. They probably didn't even know Samus was there, since she went back in secret.
- Or they did know, and the signal was sent by the same rogue faction that had begun the Metroid program in the first place.
- I assumed that it was because Phantoon absolutely wrecked the ship during your battle with him. Notice how they prevent you from exploring the rest of the ship after that battle (and, also, prevent you from getting to the control room before that point). The delay is just the computer needing to take some time to figure out how extensive the damages are. Or something.
- Remember how the power on the Wrecked Ship doesn't go on until you beat Phantoon? It's quite possible that the ship was set to blow up but that its self-destruct signal requires power.
- Quick question: If the federation was able to blow the whole ship with a self-destruct signal, why couldn't they have done the same to sector zero? I'll be the first to admit that I never got accepted into Spaceship Design School, but it seems like a good idea to make something containing what could be the end of the galaxy able to self-destruct from somewhere other than inside it. You know, standing around with all the end of the galaxy bringers.
- Or given what Phantoon is suggested to be in Super Metroid, the one we fight in Other M is the Bottle Ship created by Melissa Bergman.
- ... OR, you know, they DID say the GF was going to actually blow it up in some days, maybe THEY activated the self-destruct feature.
- In addition, in the manga, when Samus has another encounter with Ridley, she freezes up, then starts screaming for someone to kill her. This breakdown is less drastic by comparison.
- This just completely redeemed that scene for me. Hopefully it won't get Jossed now.
- This makes perfect sense, except for the Varia Suit. Unlike the rest of her ridiculously destructive equipment, the Varia Suit is purely defensive and poses absolutely no threat of accidental friendly fire to her squadmates or any innocents she might come across. It shouldn't have needed to be authorized because there was no reason to ever turn it off in the first place. And Samus would have to be pretty stupid to turn it off just because "she didn't think she'd need it." Most every planet and space station she's ever visited up to that point contained superheated areas where she needed the Varia suit, why would she think this one would be any different?
- It's true that most of the planets she'd been on had super-heated areas, but, chronologically, this is the first time in-game she's spent more than a few minutes on a space station. It's not unreasonable to believe she didn't know that there was an active volcano on the Bottle Ship, thus she saw no reason to activate it. Again, not the best explanation, but it's the best I can come up with.
- There was a scene in Metroid Fusion in which the AI actually asks Samus if the "Adam" she's naming the AI after would "lead her into a dangerous area to die" when she tells it of her loyalty to him. The "hell run" is more or less there in order to give some sort of continuity. In order for the AI to question the loyalty from something such as that, the actual event needs to take place. Since Other M takes place before Fusion, it's only fitting that that event would happen before Fusion.
- The only problem is that in roughly five minutes it should be pretty damn obvious that nobody is still alive on this ship. If there are any survivors, they're probably in on it. Also, its not like your weapons can ever do any damage to the ship, so who cares?
- Considering how massively huge the Bottle Ship is and that their main priority was to locate and secure the safety of survivors, Adam's squad would have pretty much sucked at their job if they decided that, since nobody was in the first few rooms, everyone must be dead. They probably came to the conclusion that everyone had locked themselves up and were hiding somewhere. As it turned out, Madeline was the only one who was smart enough and/or able to do so, but they had no way of knowing that at the time. And, as far as the whole "not like your weapons can damage the ship" argument, I'm fairly certain that's a case of Gameplay Story Segregation.
- Has anyone thought about Samus being a bounty hunter and the Federation is requiring her services that she could be billing them for the stuff she has to use?
- If that were the case, then he wouldn't have needed to authorize his own team to use their ice guns
- In addition to the Varia Suit point, not only does it protect Samus from heat, it also reduces the damage she takes by half. The latter point is especially useful, and since the Varia suit has absolutely no chance of harming or otherwise even affecting anyone else, it can't really be defended for not being authorised sooner.
- Makes sense. afterall, since it is held together by concentration, getting aparantly betreyed by the person she sees as a father ill probably be enough to bring said concentration down.
- So... he's a Wall Banger?
- Except for the fact that communication with his squad is down and the only way he can talk to them is via Navigation Booths. Not to mention the fact that one of his men was a traitor who was going around killing everyone else, and he had no way of knowing about it until Samus discovered this. Even then, this didn't become apparent until after the second death, as the first one was caught off-guard by Ridley. As for the occasions where he gave her authority to activate her Ice and Wave Beams mid-battle, one thing we have to remember is that he can only see what Samus sees. During those battles, she's doing a lot of jumping and flipping around to avoid getting shot in the face, so it most likely took him a moment to figure out what was going on and what needed to be done.
- Samus in no way thinks he's always right. She outright disagrees with him on some extremely important points, most notably his entire sacrifice. Samus outright says she thinks he is wrong and that they should take the chance.
- Yet the games story proves Adam to be right each time, or at least has Samus later admit to herself he was, so those points of disagreement really don't matter in the grand scheme.
- Ridley was not cloned by accident, that would be impossible for a multitude of reasons. Far more likely, it was done intentionally by MB. This would explain how a creature could be cloned without the scientists being aware of what it was; they aren't the ones who did it. The one thing that they were afraid of was that the Mother Brain personality would take over MB and Ridley's presence seems too much of a coincidence, especially with the mystery surrounding him.
- Why was the metroid outside of Sector Zero vulnerable to Adam's freeze gun? There were never any freeze-proof metroids. The epilogue shows that Adam learning that the Sector Zero metroids were invulnerable to cold from Melissa and the reason she told Adam but not Samus was very specifically to get Adam to sacrifice himself. They were supposedly foreshadowed by a monster's drained husk in the arctic sector but, as you enter it for the first time, the automated announcements refer to a recent climate-control malfunction; the indoor areas were not frozen until very recently.
- Power bombs do hurt SR 388 strain metroids, BUT it takes 3 power bombs to kill even 1. Combining that with the way Other M does power bombs, what with a slow charge up to use, and a very slow cool down afterward, she would have been trying (and failing) to destroy metroids LONG after all hope for her survival is lost. Besides, once Adam went in, Samus still had to escape the corridor leading to Sector Zero before it fell off, trying her damnedest not to get sucked into the vacuum of space, before reaching blast doors which were already about to close. Granted, Samus still could have died while Sector Zero was detaching, which would have made Adam's sacrifice pointless, but she would've had been doomed if she actually went in.
- The point was not for the power bomb to kill the Metroids directly, just damage the sector enough for it to detach while she speed boosts/shine sparks away using sense move to avoid flying parasites. Dodging and dislodging them long enough for three power bombs to go off probably would be an interesting sequence though. Wonder if it would have been as controversial as what we currently have?
He is the hero that Metroid deserves, but not the one it needs right now. And so we'll hate him, because he can take it, because he's not a hero. He's a silent guardian, a watchful protector. A Dark Knight.
- No, he isn't.
Like the Metroids and many of the other organisms on the Bottle Ship, their DNA was taken from Samus' suit. Also, as noted elsewhere, a couple of the regular Mook creatures likely have some of Ridley's genetic code in their own. So who's to say that the reverse didn't happen to Ridley? In fact, the sequences showing Ridley's metamorphosis seem to indicate that his own DNA was gradually reasserting itself amid the other genomes in his body. That would explain why his larval rabbit form has the chicken legs, as if the clone started off as a plain rabbit-like creature but was having the rabbity DNA shoved out in favor of the dragony DNA. It also explains why Ridley's metamorphosis cycle as depicted in the game involves the cocoon-like molting process; while the normal Ridley is a reptile, this process, normally only seen with insect(oid)s, was implemented into his genome when it got mixed in there accidentally by the scientists.
Such a strategy is certainly not foreign to the Metroid series. Recall back to the time of Echoes and Hunters. Like Other M, neither of these games broke the million units sold barrier thanks to certain aspects that alienated customers. So when Corruption came around, Retro Studios took out or de-emphasized the parts that critics didn't like (limited ammo for all non-Power Beam weapons, excessive linearity, multiplayer, unbalanced difficulty, etc.) while retaining and expanding on the bits that critics did like (emphasis on other hunters besides Samus, flying around in the gunship, free aiming, etc.). The same is bound to happen with the next game; the disliked bits (Samus' characterization and narration, the linearity, the length of cutscenes, the "authorization" mechanic, etc.) will be expunged or altered, while the well-liked bits (the smooth controls, the refocusing on advanced platforming, the faster pace, the concept of a more complex plot, etc.) will be improved upon.
- Small corrections. Echoes did break 1 million in sales, though not by much. Also, Retro didn't have anything to do with Hunters, so they mostly just ignored it (well, except for the 100% cameo at the end). It should also be noted that Fusion was the most linear Metroid game of its day, and following it came Zero Mission, the only Metroid game so non-linear that it actively encourages sequence breaking. So we'll see.
- All of Samus's memories are placed into the clone by the GF, but the GF do not know about her upbringing with the Chozo.
- Ridley is Doomed by Canon thanks to Fusion. The only two possible reasons for Phantoon's appearance is either a Continuity Nod or to set him up as a Ridley replacement.
- Jossed. Ridley is back Metroid: Samus Returns thank to his Joker Immunity.
So then Other M happens, while Samus is still reeling from the events of Super Metroid. By sheer chance, Samus comes face to face with Adam Malkovich, a man whom she viewed as a father figure during her time in the Galactic Federation. However, due to the death of Ian, Adam's younger brother who was also heavily implied to be in a relationship with Samus, she ended up ragequitting the GF, and the two of them parted on, at best, incredibly rocky terms. So, as one can imagine, it was probably rather awkward running into him like this. However, this would also explain why she was so quick to adhere to his command, despite being an independent bounty hunter. She was able to acknowledge how immature she had been all those years ago, and she was hoping to make amends with the man who, in her mind, was still like a father to her.
Then, there was the whole thing with Ridley. Out of everything that happened during Super Metroid, the one thing she could take solace in was the fact that her most feared and hated enemy, Ridley, was finally gone for good. This was the monster who destroyed her human home and quite literally ate her parents in front of her when she was only three years old, so she was understandably relieved to have finally avenged her friends and family. After all, not only did she defeat him a second time, but this time, the planet itself was vaporized, meaning there was (seemingly) nothing else to clone him from. As it turned out, that ended not being the case, and he was cloned purely by accident. However, she had no way of knowing this, so when he literally showed up from out of nowhere in front of her, the stress of everything that had been happening to her finally caused her to snap, resulting in the rather epic Heroic BSoD that the game is understandably infamous for.
And yet, in spite of all of this, when Samus was actually fighting monsters, she was still a complete and total badass, doing things like grappling a large chameleon-like enemy, pinning it to the floor by its neck and shooting it point-blank in the face. When she finally snapped out of the aforementioned Heroic BSoD, she proceeded to give Ridley and asskicking so epic that the battle ended with him fleeing from her in terror. So yes. Emotionally, she was a wreck in this game. Everything just kept piling up, and it left her far more vulnerable than she would have been otherwise. Yet, when she was actually able to focus on what she was supposed to be doing (i.e. during gameplay), she was still every bit as badass as she was in the other games. As far as I'm concerned, that's all that matters.
In most of the other Metroid games, we never see her interacting with other people. She's clearly a badass in battle, but she's a lone wolf bounty hunter instead of a soldier or law enforcement officer because, to her, other people are scarier than Metroids and space pirates, and her behavior in this game reflects this. (As related by a person with an anxiety disorder)
- Beyond the jumbled or changed to the point of being unidentifiable flashbacks, the rest of the game is Through the Eyes of Madness, hence stuff like the Deleter subplot. It oversaw Samus' journey through Zebes in Super and recreated Samus' appearance, just out of its own memory, and just went with it. Why?...Because it felt like it, apparently. The only plot points in the game that are 100% real are four things: Adam's existence, the whole Metroid cloning process, Nightmare, and Ridley. That's it. The rest is basically SA-X screwing around and misinterpretating almost everything in different ways. Melissa Bergman? Just a harmless scientist. SA-X just randomly assumes the "truth" about MB. Phantoon? Actually a GF ship trying to gun SA-X down because of it murdering MB. Plus, it probably didn't know much about Samus nor humans in general anyway, therefore, it gets her character all wrong. The redesign of the Gravity Suit also helps, since it probably didn't even know how her suit works, too. It's only after trying to infect Samus and obtaining the infected portions of Samus' Power Suit parts that it knows what it's doing. Regardless, the battle with the SA-X in Fusion probably had it saying "the baby the baby the baby the baby" non-stop.
It is unlikely that this self-contained Metroid universe will ever see a second game.
- Phantoon has always been on Zebes. Maybe he's been responsible for all of Ridley's resurrections, not just that one. The pirates always have a spare Ridley clone in stasis somewhere, and when he dies Phantoon just rounds up his soul and transfers it to the next one. That could also be how Mother Brain and Kraid returned for Super Metroid.
As an extension to the Samus is SA-X theory, I had thought about it a bit more and had come to a decision - Ridley may have been the Big Bad the whole time, or at least had a much, much bigger impact on the story than originally thought.
Having schemed the thought of doing a Frame-Up on Samus during the events of Super Metroid, Ridley had perished before he got the chance, seemingly having this plot go nowhere. However, during his raid on the Ceres space facility, he had located schematics of the rogue offshoot of the Federation's Metroid cloning process, banking on the Corrupt!Federation's antics and figuring that they would carelessly clone him too through blood samples on Samus' suit.
And they did, but let's dig into his larger role some more.
As a posthumous Kick the Dog, Ridley pulled one last trick to get at Samus and doom the Bottle Ship - somehow managing to trap an X Parasite in a special capsule, which eventually made contact with and destroyed her gunship. It had left her in emergency care due to the X Parasite attacking her body. During her recovery process, the X that infected her traversed aimlessly - wielding a less efficient Power Suit that it doesn't know how to fully utilize, constantly swimming in Samus' memories (the whole "authorization" process is just it learning Samus' powers, while hallucinating Adam's presence, while also believing random mercenaries to all be Adam being a jackass, if there were any mercs at all), still developing itself to attempt to muster an adequate replica of Samus' suit (hence the Gravity Suit changes and such). It slaughtered any monsters it found (including a pre-infected Nightmare and Phantoon) and searched through Samus' memories, falsely seeing numerous soldiers and personnel in a clearly abandoned ghost ship (Anthony, the Colonel and his group who kills MB being the only real ones, everyone else is either long dead or fake). The SA-X develops from an instinctual predator into a murderous being that was deluded into thinking that a "Deleter" was nearby, and must be killed (eventually concluding that one corpse on the ship was him). It also thought that Sector Zero was full of Metroids as it could sense them everywhere. Both of these came to be because it was dwelling on Samus' hate for Ridley, believing that is all she truly is, just a murderous maniac. However, what it didn't know was the Metroids were already extinguished, with only a few actually being cloned! Sector Zero was full of innocent humans, which GF soldiers quarantined from the monsters and helped escape during the game's events, before destroying the sector to ensure the SA-X can't reach them.
...All while this is going on, the newly cloned Ridley had been blackmailing Madeline Bergman to create many beasts in his image (which is why so many have a head shaped like his) for him to command, and a human android based off of Mother Brain to rebuild the Space Pirate army and kill anyone else on the ship to fulfill his sadistic desires. He also forced her to vilify the Galactic Federation as a cover-up story if anything gets exposed, lest she runs the risk of losing her life and his plan flying off the rails. The Little Birdie and the Mystery Creature were both isolated creatures that the GF sought to domesticate, prior to the latter killing the former, and Ridley killing the latter.
Aware that Samus is the SA-X, Ridley's clone (which had been deformed due to Metroid DNA seeping into his own) toyed with it sadistically, basking into the apparent newly rekindled fear in the otherwise imperfect "bounty hunter", and eager to destroy it for rebelling against the creatures he made rather than lead them. In his last moments, he had allowed himself to die by the Queen Metroid's hand, challenging her to kill him brutally and thereby abandoning MB to her own machinations, who the SA-X wrongfully mistook her as sympathetic.
Once the GF execute MB for good, and thereby eradicate Mother Brain, the SA-X escapes the Federation, Madeline is jailed for obscuring the truth of the matter and Phantoon took over the remains of the ship and triggered it to explode, dooming it thanks to the real Samus' inability to help; just as Ridley planned. Ever since, the SA-X kept developing its own form, finishing before the events of Fusion, and through being absorbed does Samus gain its memories of Other M, for better or worse. As for the rogue faction of the GFeds that cloned a handful of Metroids and Ridley, they were long shut down by the main division by the time of Dread.
TLDR: SA-X is a complete idiot, the few people actually on the ship are trying to kill it, Adam was never therenote , and it's all Ridley's fault.
- This is supported by the fact that the series of minibosses that you fight before entering Phantoon's chamber are all warped in via portals identical to the ones he uses to summon his Rage Hands during the battle. Clearly, he had taken over in the time between Samus' departure and return. As for his physical absence during the main conflict on the Bottle Ship, it seems like his ability to warp in and out of local timespace makes it quite likely that he simply disappeared for a while, probably under MB's aforementioned orders to back off.
Seriously, the resemblance is uncanny◊.
- Speaking of which, Anthony◊ looks an awful lot like Taye Diggs too.
MB shows Samus that Adam wrote a report on Metroids that led to the Metroid cloning project on the BOTTLE SHIP. Did Adam condone the bioweapons on the BOTTLE SHIP? This shakes Samus' trust in Adam for a while, until he tells her that his report was against the Metroid project and got co-opted by the wrong crowd. But what if that was only the official story? What if Adam was lying, and he was actually in on the Metroid conspiracy the entire time? It fits his "ends justify the means" style, such as sacrificing Ian.
Adam's team just happened to investigate the BOTTLE SHIP, armed with Freeze Guns even, because he knew something bad had gone down with the Metroids, and upon seeing the deadly results of his machinations, was completely horrified and regretted having ever signed the report. To make matters worse, the Deleter (James) is there to stop Adam from destroying what they've built, at whatever cost (which is why he sabotages his comms but leaves him alive). But Samus is the one who truly compounds his regret; now one of his most treasured comrades is endangered by his creations too. This is why he acts so coldly towards her at first, clearly wishing she'd never gotten involved.
This reframes Adam's sacrifice in Sector Zero as repentance for his hubris - however, he couldn't tell Samus this. Not only would it forever sully her perception of him, but she was in the midst of an emotional episode and desperately seeking Adam's trust. He couldn't break her heart at this moment, not with so much on the line, so he told her what she needed to hear to get back in the game and finish the mission. He took this secret to the grave with him.
This is also in line with his computer replica in Fusion, who is utterly fascinated by the X and complicit with the Federation conspiracy to weaponize them, up until Samus reminds him of what he truly held dear. The computer let slip Adam's true interest in bioweapons, which he hoped Samus would never see.
The Galactic Federation will twist the events of Other M into making Anthony out to be the true hero, downplaying Adam's and completely ignoring Samus' involvement. He'll be given a higher rank, and will play an important role in a future Metroid game as an ally or even employer of Samus.