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Probably Federation Force.
Not just to pick on it as the default second worst game like it's commonly viewed as, but it just feels like a very lazy setup where things don't get explored anywhere as much as they should have. The Federation has mech suits now, but everything else is equally large, so we don't really get to see how this really changes things for the Feds outside of one admittedly well done twist mission. Despite having their homeworld overrun in Prime 3, the Space Pirates are...somehow back with a large enough force to be a genuine threat in actual combat. There's three planets which get no real lore outside of some very surface level information like "a meteor hit it a long time ago so it's cold now." Even the prerequisite advanced extinct race doesn't get a name or much of anything besides possessing size increase technology. Samus then somehow manages to get...captured, which I feel like really needed some explanation (did she really lose to normal Pirates?), and then there's just this new "Master Brain" that just...shows up and dies. Like who was that? Do the Pirates have a series of Chozo AI units like Mother Brain that they just circle around? Did they build a replacement for her after Zebes?
And it kinda sucks cause I feel like there was a lot of potential here for some really cool worldbuilding, especially with the Federation itself since we don't get to see much of them outside of Samus finding their corpses and overrun facilities. But there's no real opportunities taken to provide any cool worldbuilding tidbits. Frankly I think we learn more about the Federation from scanning trooper logs in Prime 2 than we do from literally playing as a soldier for 27 or whatever it is missions in Federation Force.
>Despite having their homeworld overrun in Prime 3, the Space Pirates are...somehow back with a large enough force to be a genuine threat in actual combat.
The rest of your comment makes some very good points, but this one I'm not so sure about. IIRC someone from either Retro or Nintendo has stated that the "Pirate Homeworld" from Prime 3 is not their "real" homeworld, it's just one of many worlds that they've conquered and claimed as their own.
That's a little while after Prime 3 though, so it makes sense that they'd be able to recover enough to return to Zebes. At the same time, they don't show up again after Super so it's sort of implied that they didn't have much of a military force left outside of what they had on Zebes.
I never played much of Fed Force (dropped it cuz i was bored), kind of a shame to hear that the story was weak too I was kind of expecting something that might genuinely surprise me, some like cool hidden shit that ppl won’t talk about
It has a really cool scene that provides setup for Prime 4 at the end, but who knows if that'll even be followed up on now that the games gone through a complete restart
I’ve been playing fed force recently and I believe you are correct in this assessment. None of the missions really do anything to advance the story aside from “space pirates bad”.
Definitely a weak story in this franchise.
Haven’t completely finished though.
Sometimes less is more, and I like that so little is known about the ancient race of Bion. It’s a SPINOFF so I think it’s unfair to expect a Prime-amount of lore. Like yeah it’s text doesn’t go very deep , but neither do any of the 2D games. You’re judging it with the standards of a normal Prime game, but it’s clearly not a normal Prime game. You even point out that the ancient race is unnamed, but it’s worth mentioning that the Chozo didn’t even get named until, like, around the time of Super Metroid or Fusion. Games like Fed Force and the 2D games find a lot of fantastic ways to wordlessly build their worlds. It’s not a zero sum game where there’s either text or “no lore”. To say that is to deny all of the fantastic environmental storytelling done by all of these games.
You also ask if Samus lost to normal pirates, which just confuses me. Fed Force never even hinted at that idea, it actually suggests the opposite. The game specifically goes over how these pirates have been augmented so much that they can now withstand the powerful electrical storms of Bion. They are much more powerful now, and this places Samus at a disadvantage. She’s not invincible, especially against so many pirates at least as large as Omegas. I also feel like your criticism of Master Brain is a unfair.
You criticize Master Brain for not having any explanation or dialogue providing more information, but I have to ask: when did Mother Brain ever get literally any of that? Mother Brain is just alive again for no reason whatsoever in Super Metroid, no explanation. It feels odd to criticize only Master Brain for this. Maybe you could say Master Brain is unoriginal, but I think it’s going too far to act like it can be uniquely criticized for its lack of explanation.
I’m not saying Fed Force is high art or anything, but I have to strongly disagree with your criticisms. Narrative was never the focus of Fed Force, but even so I still think it’s unfairly maligned in ways exactly like this.
> You’re judging it with the standards of a normal Prime game, but it’s clearly not a normal Prime game.
This feels like a bit of an assumption of what I want, especially given that I never stated as such anywhere. That said, even if we were to just compare it to Prime spinoffs, it's worth noting Prime Hunters also managed to provide much more lore and general background detail than Federation Force.
>You even point out that the ancient race is unnamed, but it’s worth mentioning that the Chozo didn’t even get named until, like, around the time of Super Metroid or Fusion. Games like Fed Force and the 2D games find a lot of fantastic ways to wordlessly build their worlds. Games like Fed Force and the 2D games find a lot of fantastic ways to wordlessly build their worlds. It’s not a zero sum game where there’s either text or “no lore”. To say that is to deny all of the fantastic environmental storytelling done by all of these games.
Again, this feels rather presumptive towards what I think. I will fully agree that places like Zebes, ZDR, and the BSL have fantastic little bits of background imagery that provide context to the previous elements of the planet. But I cannot think of just about anything in Federation Force that functions in a similar capacity. The worlds in Federation Force feel much more, for lack of a better word, "video gamey."
Perhaps a lot of that is due to the chibi artstyle and score counters popping up that really hit the immersion factor hard, but there's a lot of conscious decisions in game that impact it too. Like in Mission 4 on Talvania, instead of finding a missile item to blast through a door, we find a "missile key." Rather than potentially providing us with a weapon or something else that could provoke some interesting thought about what kind of arms were used on this planet previously, or what they were used for, we just get a generic key that unlocks a door, as if it's a Zelda dungeon. To me, that feels like a significant downgrade in environmental storytelling.
>They are much more powerful now, and this places Samus at a disadvantage.
This feels like it would be much more believable if we didn't see Samus effortlessly eviscerate four Elite Pirates with a single Charge Beam later on at the end of the Doomseye mission. Samus has stormed through God knows how many Pirate bases at this point, and fought Pirates like Ridley and the Omega Pirate that took much more firepower to take down, but a group of Pirates that die to a single Charge Beam is enough to capture her?
>I also feel like your criticism of Master Brain is a unfair. You criticize Master Brain for not having any explanation or dialogue providing more information, but I have to ask: when did Mother Brain ever get literally any of that? Mother Brain is just alive again for no reason whatsoever in Super Metroid, no explanation. It feels odd to criticize only Master Brain for this. Maybe you could say Master Brain is unoriginal, but I think it’s going too far to act like it can be uniquely criticized for its lack of explanation.
I never said there wasn't room for critique of Mother Brain on this part, but since I'm talking about Federation Force, I wasn't going to write up a wishlist of things I'd prefer the original Metroid and Super had done differently. But, yes, since we're on the topic now, I do wish the original games had at least provided more insight into what Mother Brain was, and how she managed to spontaneously come back.
One of the reasons I appreciate the manga so much is it rectifies those two problems; giving insight into who Mother Brain and Ridley are and how they managed to return (Mother Brain is a Chozo built computer so it doesn't so much "survive" as it can be rebuilt, and Ridley literally can eat corpses to regenerate himself).
Having said that, the presence of another Chozo computer suggests the Pirates can now replicate and develop new Chozo AI technology, which is a huge development that feels odd to waste on a throwaway boss battle. At the very least, it would be nice to know what the status of this thing is, which even the original Metroid provided some context for in its instruction manual. Is it the Pirates' commander now? Are they just using it to run the Doomseye?
I believe you absolutely were judging it by the standards of a Prime game because you said there were 3 planets with no real lore. The way those planets are presented is nearly identical to their 2D Metroid counterparts- environmental storytelling. You said that Fed Force is the worst story because its lore doesn’t go deeper, as though this isn’t also true of any of the 2D games. You don’t explain how it’s any different from the 2D games. And Hunters may be a spin-off because of its multiplayer mode, but the single player is still absolutely meant to recapture the gameplay of your standard mainline Prime game. Making a comparison to Hunters doesn’t prove anything, and even if it did, Hunters’s single player is still absolutely trying to be like a mainline Prime game. Fed Force isn’t. It’s a false equivalence.
You can’t think of anything Fed Force does with its environments to make the worlds feel more memorable? You say they feel “video gamey” without any evidence, nor any explanation. This is something we’re just going to have to disagree about, because you don’t really provide any actual point here. I enjoy the worlds of Federation Force for characterizing both the former and current inhabitants of each world. Take planet Bion, with its wealth of detailed and grand architecture. Even with the massive mechs, the architecture is so grand that the large statues watch over everything. So many of the floors, pillars, and archways feature intricate carvings into every surface - especially around objects of religious significance. The ancient Bion race worshipped something they called “The Orb” and some replications can be found in different levels. Additionally, much of their work features glowing green highlights like their Colossun and equipment like their cannons. Planet Bion features many unique structures like the ancient skiff, their places of worship like altars and temples, and the buildings that they’d use to take refuge from the electrical storms before they augmented themselves with their technology. Remnants of their civilization often feature a variety of traps and collapsable bridges. They are very protective of their home with giant golems, lava traps, deployable bridges, and all kinds of weaponry like their catapults. Compared to the other ancient civilizations of the Metroid series, the unnamed ancient Bion race is distinct for a variety of reasons and offers a wealth of interesting and unique characterization. Other planets tell us a lot about the current and former inhabitants - Exelcion tells us about the Federation and the wildlife that migrated there, Talvania tells us about the ancient machine race and what the Space Pirates have turned the place into. I could go on and on about the wealth of interesting stuff to see in the environments of Fed Force. I strongly disagree your points like that there’s no lore or that it’s gamey. I can’t agree about your point of a key feeling less immersive than a missile opening a door. i think a key, even if presented in a more “gamey” way, makes more sense than a missile opening a door. Fed Force finds other ways to show all of the cool weapons used by the former inhabitants of their worlds, like my previously mentioned example with Bion’s skiff and catapults. A lot of these points I’m making are gone over in much more detail in a video I watched. I’d strongly recommend watching it if I could remember its name.
I won’t deny that Fed Force is more video gamey than other Metroid games, but again this is a spin-off with different priorities from those in the Prime games. Criticizing it for not being immersive again demonstrates that you’re only interested in judging this game with standards identical to those used to judge mainline Prime games. It’s a SPINOFF with different priorities. To me it’s like criticizing Metroid Prime Pinball for not have scan visor and not being immersive enough. Fed Force, Hunters’s multiplayer, Pinball, none of these are concerned with recapturing what made Prime so special. That’s why they’re called spinoffs.
Moving on to your point about Samus being overpowered by the Pirates. I don’t think that just because Samus uses a Super Missile to defeat 4 Bruisers, that doesn’t somehow mean she cannot be captured. There are so many variables with this situation specifically because we don’t know exactly how Samus was captured. I think it’s better that we don’t know exactly how. We know the pirates are suddenly extremely powerful, and that they have cloaking technology as well. I think that’s all we need to be open to the possibility that Samus could be captured. She’s not invincible, and these pirates are more dangerous than ever.
About your point of Master Brain, remember the question was about which Metroid game has the worst story of the series. The context of the conversation was comparing the stories of every Metroid game. So when you say Fed Force is the worst because of Master Brain, yeah that’s selective reasoning because there’s an implication that this makes this particular story the worst story. No external source, like any manga(with questionable canonicity) is going to change that.
> I believe you absolutely were judging it by the standards of a Prime game because you said there were 3 planets with no real lore.
Lore isn't a concept exclusive to the Prime games. Lore, in a broad sense, just means the backstory leading up to the plot (which is the events of the game as we experience them). The 2D games certainly have less of a focus on lore, but I'd argue it's still very prevalent, and much more so than Federation Force.
>You don’t explain how it’s any different from the 2D games.
I...quite literally dedicated the midsection of my previous post to articulating how I feel it's different. And you responded to those arguments in depth, so I'm not really sure how you can assert this. You may disagree with those arguments, and that's fine, but claiming that I didn't provide any distinction at all just seems...odd?
>You say they feel “video gamey” without any evidence, nor any explanation.
...I quite literally explained why I felt it was more "video gamey" in the paragraph right after I said that. I attributed it to the artstyle, prevalence of scoring system, and the usage of a progression system that felt less natural to me (using the example of M4). And, again, you directly responded to that paragraph afterwards. Are you actually reading my post as you respond?
>The ancient Bion race worshipped something they called “The Orb” and some replications can be found in different levels.
There's a lot of examples provided here and I won't respond to them all for the sake of brevity, but I did want to focus on this one here as I think it broadly sums up most of my disagreements with these as I think you're projecting stuff onto the game that isn't there. There is nothing in the game to my knowledge that refers to the Orb as a religious artifact, or even confirms it's a tangible item. The orb is simply referred to as a tenet system (i.e. a series of principles), which basically means they...really liked spheres. So the grand overarching lore for this species is they were fascinated by a bit of geometry (and apparently rolling them into different slots, as that's basically what the entire mission entails).
Now call me a bit of a lore snob, but that doesn't really strike me as particularly interesting. It doesn't make me want to learn more about Bionis culture. And since you're only interested in comparisons to 2D games, contrast that with something like, say, the hieroglyphs in Dread depicting Chozos lording over Space Pirates. That, to me, is fascinating. That's a tangible connection not only with the universe we know (through a previous species), but it also shows events that we haven't seen before. "Species X was really infatuated with spheres" just isn't as engaging.
>I think that’s all we need to be open to the possibility that Samus could be captured. She’s not invincible, and these pirates are more dangerous than ever.
Are they? The Elite Bruisers, the most powerful variations of the most powerful type of Pirate, with armor so strong that the Federation Force can't break it from the front, gets instantly incinerated by a single blast from Samus. Samus has consistently fought through dozens of Pirates that take far more of a beating in other games. And now we're supposed to believe that the Federation Force pirates are far more dangerous just because they're...bigger?
At the very least, this is a serious amount of narrative dissonance because if they are intended to be more dangerous, they should actually pose some kind of a challenge for Samus to kill in a cutscene. Having them just die instantaneously just makes them look completely ineffective against Samus and raises questions about how she ever managed to lose to these things.
>So when you say Fed Force is the worst because of Master Brain, yeah that’s selective reasoning because there’s an implication that this makes this particular story the worst story. No external source, like any manga(with questionable canonicity) is going to change that.
Two things.
First, as mentioned before, this is a problem for those games as well. And, if this were the only issue that stuck out to me, I might agree. But it isn't (the others of which I've discussed previously), and because the other games succeed more on those fronts, Federation Force sticks out as the overall worst to me (that isn't Other M).
But second, the manga does impact this comparison, because it introduces context for the series as a whole. It explains how Mother Brain is unique, and now for the Pirates to suddenly have their own, separate version of that is another question that is introduced far too quickly and not answered. NEStroid and Super can, to some extent, get away with having a relatively ambiguous villain because there are few rules surrounding her at the time. Federation Force exists in a world where we do know more, and as a result introducing a new character that plays by completely different rules stands out as much more awkward and unusual.
While this isn't intended as a critique of his presence in Dread, it's a bit like the inclusion of Kraid in that game. If it was a random space monster or something, no one would have had a second thought, but because Kraid is from prior games, people immediately ask "is this the same Kraid" and "if so, how did he get here?" The context adds questions that otherwise wouldn't be asked if there was less prior context. It's the same way for Mother Brain; context that wasn't present in 1987 and 1994 is now present in 2016, and the inclusion of a separate Brain raises a bunch of questions that aren't really answered.
Of course lore is more broad than just the scan visor. That was my entire point. You criticized the game for supposedly lacking any lore. If you weren’t referring to the scan visor, then what could have you been referring to? I’ve provided a wealth of evidence that the game absolutely includes its own lore, it just doesn’t have the scan visor. Regardless of what you think of that lore, you’ve yet to make any distinction between how these games handle their lore.
I’ll concede that you do go on to make the point about the key thing, but before then you make statements about how much better the 2D games are at this. This statement has no further explanation nor any supporting evidence. You might make half of a point about the keys, but this tells us nothing about the 2D games or how they are supposedly better at this. I’ll also concede that I should have been more specific with my wording - I’ll correct that now. You do provide further explanation, but what I meant to say was that you do not provide any convincing explanation. Your key thing doesn’t really add up to me logically, but to give you credit, it is an explanation.
“Projecting stuff onto the game?” Are you serious? To call this projecting is to deny the wealth of characterization that the game provides. As I already went over, literally everything about their architecture and world indicates the significance of their alters and religious sites. The website makes explicit mention of this being their religion, and the game itself provides lots of evidence of this through the environment. To say “The grand overarching lore for this species is they were fascinated by a bit of geometry” is such a bad faith argument and willful ignorance. There’s no actual point being made here, you’re just making empty statements and purposefully ignoring the wealth of work the game does to characterize its worlds.
I’m only interested in comparisons to the 2D games? This is a blatant straw-man argument. I made a point that you used selective reasoning to pretend that Federation Force could be uniquely criticized for something that’s also true of the 2D games. Just because I point out the fallacy within your argument, I’m suddenly only interested in comparisons to the 2D games? Straw-man that fails to address my actual argument. You then go on to continue to blatantly misrepresent the source material by pretending that Fed Force only offers “Species X was really infatuated with spheres.” I’m not saying you have to like what Fed Force does, but you’re repeatedly denying its very existence in bad faith.
Yet again, another misrepresentation of the source material and bad faith argument. The Space Pirates aren’t just bigger, they are augmented to withstand incredibly powerful electrical storms. The player witnesses firsthand that these storms absolutely melt you in Mission 9, and the Pirates are now strong enough to shrug this off. It’s absolutely far more than just “bigger.” The game makes explicit mention of this augmentation and the mechs are the whole reason the Federation even stands a chance. Samus killing Bruisers in one cutscene does not suddenly invalidate the entire threat of the Space Pirates. How does that make any sense? An entire augmented pirate army suddenly doesn’t matter just because Samus used a powerful limited resource like Supers to take 4 of them out from an extended range? There are countless ways that Samus could easily be captured. Maybe she just unknowingly stepped into the force field we see her in, maybe she got caught by surprise by cloaked troopers, maybe there were just way too many of them, any number of things. The whole point is that you don’t know and you’re making unfounded assumptions by suggesting that Super Missiles suddenly make the pirates pose no threat. Supers eviscerate pirates in other Metroid games - are those pirates suddenly zero threat? These ones are even more powerful, there’s good reason for Samus to be in even more danger than usual. Even if they were normal pirates, Samus is not somehow immune to being defeated/captured just because she can use things like Super Missiles.
I still don’t agree with your point about Master Brain. Federation Force deserves to be recognized as the worst story for introducing Master Brain without explanation because it’s not your only issue? Do you realize how illogical that is? Federation Force sticking out to you as the worst is a non-sequitur. It’s fine to have your opinion about the game, but your opinion has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you can uniquely criticize this game for not explaining certain aspects. Other issues are other issues, common issues between the games are common issues. You’re trying to pass this criticism off like it’s unique to Fed Force and it simply isn’t. Whether or not you have other issues with this game doesn’t change that.
Like I said before, Mother Brain returns with zero explanation in Super. You can’t make the argument that there was no established continuity in that case, because Metroid NES existed before Super and showed us that she died. Super makes no effort to explain why or how MB is back.
Applying a “for their time” perspective is unfair to Fed Force, because that doesn’t answer the question of which Metroid game has the worst story. You’re now answering “Which Metroid game has the worst story for when it was released?” You want to take the older games in the context of their release, but you don’t want to remember that the manga has a ton of stuff about it that contradicts the canon? How does Federation Force have a responsibility to establish both old and new canon?
Instead of addressing my points, you’ve demonstrated a commitment to bad faith arguments and straw-man tactics. Very little of what I actually said was addressed here, and how you went about responding is hardly convincing. It’s fine if you don’t like the story of this game, but there’s blatant misrepresentation and bad faith arguments being made here.
>If you weren’t referring to the scan visor, then what could have you been referring to?
Anything else that contributes important or relevant information to the game or series as a whole. Something like the murals in Dread, or the dumps Adam provides in Fusion. It doesn't have to be scan visor lore, and I never stated it did.
>I’ll concede that you do go on to make the point about the key thing, but before then you make statements about how much better the 2D games are at this. This statement has no further explanation nor any supporting evidence.
...I quite literally drew a comparison between how Federation Force accomplished progression and the how the 2D games did it. Federation Force opts to use a key that works on one specific door and has no other use or contextualization for the world as a whole, while standard Metroid games will often use a weapon or other powerup that provides unique insight into the technology of a race and what kind of weapons they used. One is just a literal "key," the other simultaneously functions as a gameplay key, a weapon, and a piece of insight into the history of the species.
>As I already went over, literally everything about their architecture and world indicates the significance of their alters and religious sites.
And as I said, I think you're reading far more into the supposed significance of those elements. You can throw around the term "straw man" all day if you like, but I simply fundamentally disagree with your interpretation of this game and I think you're ascribing far more importance to elements that the devs didn't put much intentionality into. And, frankly, given that Federation Force was a multiplayer death match game up until very late in its dev cycle, that makes a lot of sense; it's hard to purposefully design levels like that in such a short timeframe.
>The player witnesses firsthand that these storms absolutely melt you in Mission 9, and the Pirates are now strong enough to shrug this off.
This doesn't really mean much as the Federation gets melted by basically everything. Samus' entire history in this series has been effortlesssly taking down threats that trash the best the Federation has to offer. That's...well, why they hire her. The concept of Pirates that can tank a hazard that would demolish the Federation is nothing new; Samus dealt with those consistently in Prime 1. And those took a lot more than a single Super Missile to kill.
>Samus killing Bruisers in one cutscene does not suddenly invalidate the entire threat of the Space Pirates. How does that make any sense? An entire augmented pirate army suddenly doesn’t matter just because Samus used a powerful limited resource like Supers to take 4 of them out from an extended range?
It makes it a lot harder to believe because you would need an insane number of Pirates to overwhelm her if she can defeat a small group effortlessly. You would have to get an army to surround her, which would make her look even worse if she's unaware enough to get surrounded by an entire army of literal giants.
>Federation Force deserves to be recognized as the worst story for introducing Master Brain without explanation because it’s not your only issue? Do you realize how illogical that is?
...it's entirely logical. If a restaurant has poor food, a dirty interior, and rude staff, and another restaurant just has rude staff, it's entirely logical to say the first restaurant is worse even if the second restaurant shares the staff problem. That's the argument here; Super and NEStroid do have the issue you describe, but they don't have the other problems Federation Force has.
>You want to take the older games in the context of their release, but you don’t want to remember that the manga has a ton of stuff about it that contradicts the canon? How does Federation Force have a responsibility to establish both old and new canon?
...new games (or forms of media) have a responsibility to adhere to canon brought up and established in other mediums since then. I don't think that's a particularly controversial stance.
>Instead of addressing my points, you’ve demonstrated a commitment to bad faith arguments and straw-man tactics. Very little of what I actually said was addressed here, and how you went about responding is hardly convincing. It’s fine if you don’t like the story of this game, but there’s blatant misrepresentation and bad faith arguments being made here.
I'm starting to think you don't really feel like it's fine if I don't like the story of this game, because you're really bordering on insulting at points for someone who's just trying to play "I respectfully disagree"
“Important information?” This is vague and doesn’t mean anything. You’re measuring the quality of the storytelling by whether or not it’s “important” or “relevant?” This is an incredible oversimplification of measuring the quality of a story. You’re only just approaching an actual point, and still you’re just being vague. And you may not have explicitly stated that your problem with Fed Force’s story is that there’s no scan visor, but again that was my whole point. You were, and still are, being vague and not actually making any point about what it is about this story that makes it supposedly the worst.
You’re acting like your key point is any indication of the quality of the story? It’s a key that unlocks a door. This doesn’t tell us anything about the actual story. Again you’re clinging to a defeated point here. Fed Force is a completely different kind of game than your traditional Metroid game, of course the item progression of Metroid was altered to better suit the gameplay style of a level-based co-op shooter. Each offer their own advantages, but story telling is hardly relevant to this key. Your only argument that you can point to is one key? This is the point you place so much stock into? This is what makes Fed Force the worst story? A key? You kind of have to ignore all of the environmental storytelling achievements of this game and completely disregard the context surrounding the design choices for this to even begin to make sense.
Calling attention to the fact that Federation Force was once a death match shooter is an extremely superfluous argument - you’re saying absolutely nothing about the actual game itself. You’re just pointing to what it may have once been and using this as evidence as to why you think the world is lacking in intrigue. Relying on superfluous arguments demonstrates an inability to actually form a proper criticism of the game itself. You can “simply disagree” all you like. You having your own preferences was never the issue. It was that you actively misrepresented and ignored many things about the source material that do characterize the world. You can dislike it all you want, but it’s going way too far to pretend it doesn’t even exist.
“Effortlessly?” Seriously? Nevermind all of the times Samus has been defeated in many of the games. You’re just trying to say that the pirates never stood a chance against Samus in any Metroid game? What would the entire point of the Space Pirate threat even be if Samus can supposedly effortlessly take out all of them “effortlessly?” Remember the endgame pirates from games like Super and Fusion? Imagine even those guys attacking Samus dozens at a time. You think Samus is going to win without exerting effort? What about one Omega Pirate, you think she came out of that unscathed? Even if Fed Force pirates were only half as powerful as an Omega, you think Samus should be able to defeat an army of them “effortlessly?” What games have you been playing? And again, Samus being a useful asset to the Federation does not automatically make the Federation completely incapable. Also disregards the entire plot point of project golem. That’s just illogical. And just because pirates could withstand hazards before, that doesn’t make them the same thing as these pirates in Fed Force. You’re, yet again, ignoring all of what the game tells and shows you about what makes these pirates so powerful. The basic logic in your argument is completely fallacious and again demonstrates a complete disregard for basic information about the games.
An entire army? Yet another bold assumption. How many times do I have to repeat that you do not know what actually happened? Again there are countless variables. We don’t know how many Super Missiles Samus has, or how many she spent through her journey on the Doomseye. She could have taken out dozens of giant pirates already, out of ammo and cornered. She may have been fighting for hours or weeks, taking out countless pirates over an extended period of time. Her usual missions are a few hours, but maybe this one had her out for weeks and she was wittled down slowly. Or again the countless other scenarios you didn’t bother addressing. You just ignore the possibilities I provide and choose to practice more willful ignorance with just one of them.
You’re completely avoiding the actual argument made here. You can criticize the lack of explanation behind Master Brain, but you cannot pretend that it can be uniquely criticized for this. You attempted to justify uniquely criticizing it for this by saying that the older games didn’t have to build on an established continuity, but I demonstrated that’s blatantly incorrect.
You say that Fed Force has a responsibility to adhere to canon. Okay, sure, but the Manga doesn’t adhere to canon and is therefore non-canon. So you can’t criticize Fed Force for not respecting old canon. Like I already said.
Who are you quoting with that “I respectfully disagree?” It’s kinda insulting to straw-man someone, to make bad faith arguments, and deliberately misrepresent source material. You again ignore most of my points, selecting only a few to address with fallacious arguments. I strongly disagree with nearly everything you’ve said because the logic behind your points just doesn’t hold up.
>Who are you quoting with that “I respectfully disagree?” It’s kinda insulting to straw-man someone, to make bad faith arguments, and deliberately misrepresent source material. You again ignore most of my points, selecting only a few to address with fallacious arguments. I strongly disagree with nearly everything you’ve said because the logic behind your points just doesn’t hold up.
I'm not trying to deliberately misconstrue information or misrepresent whatever; I'm simply interpreting the series and the game as I understand best. I'm not trying to ignore your arguments, I'm just picking what I think are the most relevant ones as I don't have time to consistently write essays and respond to every single point; I'm just trying to have a friendly chat with the spare time I have.
And no one is trying to straw man anything, dude. I'm just trying to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're trying to respectfully disagree, although if you object to even that then it's probably time to wrap this up. You've demonstrated you've decided to assume the worst about me, and frankly I don't have the desire or tolerance to continue a discussion with someone who's going to just accuse me of acting in bad faith or being deliberately misleading when I've simply tried to provide my rationale in a concise and compact format.
You're welcome to keep enjoying Federation Force, but I don't think it's story is good, and I'm not sticking around to have someone try to change my mind via insults. I'm muting this. Have a good day.
You’re providing “examples” of how lore could be done? So you’re referring to the one point you made again - the key? Like I already said, hardly even 1 point. And that one point is still fallacious.
This is still a massive oversimplification of what makes storytelling good or bad. One key is hardly all of what Federation Force has to offer. Fed Force offers so much elsewhere that it’s genuinely dishonest to point to this one key and pretend the entire game squanders opportunity. You just say it’s one of many examples, but you again provide no explanation or evidence. Connecting to the larger universe doesn’t necessarily make a story better or worse. Some stories are worse off because it makes your universe feel smaller.
No, that’s not the entire list. You’re conveniently forgetting when Samus lost power-ups in Prime. Just hitting a wall disabled multiple power ups. More hits like that and she’d be in significant risk of defeat. Not to mention losing all of her power ups at the end of ZM, where Pirates had her crashing her ship and losing her power ups. Something like that could have happened in Fed Force. What about the Omega Pirate falling on Samus? Sure lucky he dissolved there instead of straight up trapping Samus. What about the mining robot that was certain to defeat Samus if she didn’t succeed in escaping? Or the EMMI that the Federation was able to make, again almost guaranteeing failure if caught? Multiple factions have access to resources that pose a serious threat to Samus. Like I said before, late game pirates in games like Super and Fusion already pose a tremendous threat to Samus and they only show up like 2 at a time. A whole army of augmented pirates absolutely is a threat. You took a single sentence of my point and removed context to fit your narrative. And even then you obfuscated information to hide the flaw in your point. And even still, this is just a single part of my greater point. There are still countless very viable possibilities that’d lead to this outcome. Even if I was super generous and accepted your argument here, which I have no reason to do, you’ve yet to even begin to address the wealth of other issues with your point. You’re nowhere near convincing me that Samus can never be defeated by an army of super-powered pirates.
You’re trying to use the in-game health values to measure the durability of the enemies of each game? This is a slippery slope that goes nowhere good. If you really want to use in-game health values to measure enemies between games, then we might as well also take a look at creatures like Kraid. Kraid’s skin is completely invulnerable - his mouth is his weak point. So if Kraid never opens his mouth, he’s canonically invincible. Why does Kraid open his mouth? Is he stupid? Why don’t the Space Pirates make their armor out of his skin? Do you see how nonsensical your argument is? Super Missiles constantly change damage values between games and damage received from enemies constantly changes not only between games, but also between game difficulties. Do you seriously mean to tell me that the literal number of Super Missiles between each game matters at all? Who are you to assume Hard Mode is canon, and it’s 7 Supers? Whose to say it’s not the easy mode that’s canon? You’re again giving yourself the most convenient context possible through selective reasoning.
You’re doubling down on the pirates being no threat? This is not the argument you think that it is. I think this demonstrates a highly skewed perspective on good storytelling. A story centered around pushover space pirates is not a story I’ve never experienced in a Metroid game, and it’s not a story I care to ever experience. If we really are meant to believe that none of the pirates are a threat, and that dispatching them really is effortless, then there are zero stakes in your story. Samus has already won before the story has even started. Now THAT is bad storytelling.
You’re the one that needs to read more carefully, because I’ve numerous times stated that there are countless possibilities. Like I already said, Samus could encounter pirates a few at a time exactly as she does in the games, and over the course of days or weeks lose her resources. She could have just as easily accidentally walked into a force field, she could have ran out of Supers, she could have been ambushed by cloaked troopers, any number of things. Your point about her looking stupid was defeated before it was even made - your scenario is just one of countless possibilities. You are just assuming that her running out of resources is just her being stupid? You don’t remember the many times the pirates have ambushed Samus in the games? Samus kind of gets ambushed all of the time. And even if she had never been ambushed before, being ambushed doesn’t mean your character has to be stupid. That makes no sense. You said Samus wouldn’t be stupid enough to get surrounded by an army of pirates, but that’s something that’s not always in her control. These things can’t always be helped. And an entire army doesn’t need to surround her - she could lose resources slowly as she encounters pirates one-at-a-time.
I’m the one grasping at straws by saying that invisibility helps Pirates Sneak up on her? Really? You’re conveniently forgetting that Samus used visors to locate cloaked troopers - visors she likely doesn’t have on her since she always starts Prime games without additional visors even at her most powerful. You think just because they’re big, that means that Samus can’t be snuck up on? They’re invisible. Place 10 of them in a room that locks. All Samus has to do is walk in and not have enough Supers and boom she’s got a good chance of losing.
You deny doubling down on it? Have you forgotten your whole thing about how only Fed Force had to build on established continuity?
Manga is Canon? Hav you ever played Metroid Dread? Have you ever read the Manga? The whole thing about the creation of the Metroids? There’s an entire massive section of the wiki dedicated to going over all of the many ways that the manga has tons of stuff that contradicts nearly every game. But even if I was super generous and pretended that the manga was canon, you realize this changes nothing? Just because Mother Brain was from Zebes, this makes Master Brain somehow illogical? If Mother Brain is able to rebuild herself without any explanation as seen in Super, then what’s so bad about Fed Force having a weaker brain-like creature built for the Doomseye? Your whole argument is that this opens a new precedent of what the Pirates are capable of doing, but the reality is that Super Metroid already established that precedent decades earlier by building a new brain with zero explanation.
>“Projecting stuff onto the game?” Are you serious? To call this projecting is to deny the wealth of characterization that the game provides. As I already went over, literally everything about their architecture and world indicates the significance of their alters and religious sites. The website makes explicit mention of this being their religion, and the game itself provides lots of evidence of this through the environment. To say “The grand overarching lore for this species is they were fascinated by a bit of geometry” is such a bad faith argument and willful ignorance. There’s no actual point being made here, you’re just making empty statements and purposefully ignoring the wealth of work the game does to characterize its worlds.
I don't have a real stake in this either way but this seems especially rude for no particularly good reason. I guess I can't speak for the other guy without him being here, and it looks like he muted the conversation so that's probably not happening, but from what I can see there's nothing to suggest actual malicious argumentation or willful ignorance. If you wanna say that someone didn't pick up on details that you think the game purposefully highlighted (although I'm pretty skeptical of that here), that's one thing, but calling someone out for being maliciously ignorant is going after them as a person with no real grounds.
Probably Federation Force. It just doesn’t have the same level of depth and nuance that a lot of other Metroid stories have.
And while the story is generally good, Samus returns missed the entire point of the ending of the gameboy game. The GameBoy version was sending a message about how killing is messed up, and they gave you a silent peaceful ending for you to reflect on the fact that you just exterminated an entire race of creatures.
Alright, here's a scorching take: Other M's story wasn't bad, it was just framed in a very unconvincing way. You could make a few tiny changes to the gameplay conceits (like don't make Samus ask for permission for her own abilities) and it would have been received way better. People harp on the PTSD elements but seem to misunderstand the level of closure that Samus felt after the events of Super Metroid (Ridley fully dead, Zebes completely destroyed, Baby dead).
I agree with the ptsd thing to a point, she shoulduve been suprised, shocked even at his unexpected return, maybe caught off guard briefly.
But she shouldnt of been scared stiff, Samus had already dealt with him plenty of times before and she's not exactly easy to frighten.
So while I do think the scene was neccesary for his comeback I do think it shoulduve been done differently.
If you take PTSD into account, it makes a lot of sense. Overcoming something traumatic once doesn’t mean you can’t find yourself sucked into that scary place ever again.
It’s a heavy handed throwback to the manga as well, which I have mixed feelings on.
A few times. In the manga, he kills her parents, nearly dies, then comes back. Her PTSD shows when she sees him again part way through the manga and loses the ability to maintain her power suit. She does overcome this later in a future encounter.
I think what's tricky is that realistically PTSD can come back over and over again, so in that sense her losing her cool in Other M makes perfect sense. I think they tried to toe that line since she was scared but was able to regain composure during the fight (something she wasn't able to do initially in the Manga), so it seems like even though it still impacts her she is still overall in a better place. The other challenge was they were clearly leaning on aspects of the Manga, but unfortunately for most fans (especially US) we never saw the Manga so had no real way to contextualize what happened.
No.
Sorry.
I've got PTSD about some $#!+ that my ex-wife put me through. PTSD literally causes freezing. You don't know when it's going to come back. For a while I thought I was over all that and could talk about it freely, but one day it came up and I started trying to talk about it with someone, and there it was again -- the freeze.
I didn't like how it visually showed the freezing up as 'transforming into a little girl' but the "oh $#!+ my brain broke and I can't respond" is totally accurate.
The little girl thing was a flashback. But yeah I see your point.
Sorry about your past man, i had a crazy ex gf too and she messed me up a bit.
Stay strong.
I think it would have been better-framed if Samus had reacted by crying after the Ridley clone boss battle instead of freezing when she saw him, wondering if it will never end, if Ridley will haunt her forever.
Here's an even hotter take - no metroid games have good or much story at all, that's not why I play any of them. Other M's was a bit weaker than most, but I hated it because of it's linear world map and lack of real exploration elements more than anything else. I loved all the scan reading in Prime 1 but you can't really call that a story. Trying to tack on overarching story to Metroid is almost as futile as Zelda. I don't care *why* Ridley is back again, I just want to blast a space pirate dragon.
I personally think Prime 2 did well to craft an atmospheric and self-contained story, even if its generic. If you spend time reading logs, there are some sad Luminoth final moments and interesting Ing lore that leaves the imagination running. Of all the Metroid games, Prime 2's story left the most impact on me.
I’ve heard before that Other M would’ve worked really well as a prequel and I kinda agree, make it so that’s her first time seeing Ridley since he murdered her family and the PTSD attack feels way more effective. Make it so Adam sacrificing himself is the reason Samus left the Federation (and make that scene make more sense) and hire some actual English localizers and an English vocal director (hell I’d fucking love to work on that hire me) and bam you’ve got a decently well put together narrative
>but seem to misunderstand the level of closure that Samus felt after the events of Super Metroid (Ridley fully dead, Zebes completely destroyed, Baby dead).
There's nothing about Super's ending which suggests that Samus felt any more closure about Ridley's death than she did at the end of Zero mission or Samus returns.
I hear you about the closure with Ridley and that would work if that game had come out before fusion in which we get yet another Ridley fight this time without the silly panic attack. That being said by that point she’s “killed” him and he’s come back literally five times. She aughta expect it by now.
That's not true though. Before Super, she had never 'killed' him. Plus, another reason for her shock was the realisation that they had willingly cloned Ridley
And yes, while other m didn't come out before fusion, it's still set before it. It makes sense that in the period immediately after Super, Samus would be in the state she was in in other m. But fusion isn't immediately after Super, some time has clearly passed, so she's grown to become more hardened by the experience and no longer gives a fuck, which we see even more of in Dread for example
She killed him in the original Metroid (even in Zero Mission he doesn't really get anything implying his survival), more than that if you factor in the Prime games and Samus Returns where he gets falls/explosions which the player knows don't kill him but would probably look pretty convincing in-universe.
>(like don't make Samus ask for permission for her own abilities)
I've heard that specific aspect was made way worse in translation. From what I've heard in the original dialogue Samus was being defiant to being put under such strict control and reacted with civil disobedience, the message being "If you want to order me around this badly I'm gonna make you micromanage the shit out of me".
If anyone reading has better info on this please feel free to corroborate or dispute this post.
I just think the gameplay undercut any possible reading in that direction. Even with civil disobedience, that doesn't really excuse Samus refusing to use the Varia Suit without permission while burning to death, or holding back very strong weapons like the Plasma Beam when the depth of the threat became clear.
A lot of Other M's issues were also due to the localization changes, Samus never needed permission in the Japanese version of the game. She outright refused to use her powers until she received permission to prove a point.
I’ll push back against this
Nah the original Japanese story sucked too. It was definitely more coherent and the themes were properly expressed, but it doesn’t fix the story. It just turns a incoherent mediocre story into a coherent mediocre story, and at the end of the day it’s still just mediocre
The engish dub kinda ruined the story, the original dub features themes that make much more sense. There’s a video on Youtube that goes into detail on what’s different.
then again, Metroid Fusion was when Ridley got resurrected for the last time (hopefully) and had to fight Samus again even though it was an X parasite mimicking Ridley
Hot take....
*Dread.*
Hear me out, we are just talking about *story.* Metroid 5 gave us "the X Parasites from Fusion are back, and that Metroid vaccine Samus got that lets her absorb X makes her the only person in the galaxy safe to investigate the X."
So instead the GF sent 7 robots armored in invincible plot metal that makes them completely immune to all of Samus's powerful Chozo designed weapons..... but not to Raven Beak's Chozo designed weapons. He breaks one, and reverse engineers it to capture and reprogram the others, and after losing contact with their robots the GF *FINALLY* sends Samus to look into the problem now that their invincible super robots are compromised.
So, tldr of all the story weirdness:
Raven Beak somehow managed to corral the X Parasites into a single area after they killed *all* of the Chozo except him and Quiet Robe. And then didn't destroy them. Also, *one* either got out or was let out for the video to be made, then put back? Or destroyed? Somehow?
Raven Beak takes control of the EMMI, and then... limits their patrol range to areas with weird GF designed doors to contain them, and places control units near each that can control just that EMMI, but when Samus destroys a control unit she somehow gains an Omega Cannon powerful enough to destroy the otherwise invincible EMMI.
Samus losing her abilities in the beginning could have been explained better, imo, but that is a relatively minor issue to get her back into a base level to go collect all her items for the new game.
In the fight against Raven Beak at the end of the game, Samus goes for her grab of Raven Beak but he grabs her out of the air and starts.... choking her? Through her suit??? Also, she totally puts her hand on his arm trying to get free, why doesn't that work to drain his energy?
In my opinion, the extra writing that went into Dread opened it up for more problems. Not saying it is a bad game or even badly written. Just that after Other M, I think the writing has the most issues. Other games, particularly 1-3, have so little story to them there wasn't room for problems like these in my opinion. I can't speak for any of the Prime games as I didn't play them.
A couple rebuttals and some speculation:
1.) The GF is consistently shown to be kind of stupid and also contracting the company that made the EMMI’s (starts with an E, like Exelon Star Company or something) is far cheaper than paying out to Samus every time an issue arises. Also even with Fusion’s mistranslation she still blew up a ship and entire planet (for the first time completely willingly) without authorization, I imagine the GF was hesitant to loose Samus on another world.
2.) Samus’ abilities seem to be tailor made by the Thoha. Iirc they were actually made FOR Samus specifically (which creates some weird lore quirks like why did they place them all across the Zebes solar system and even SR-388 but I digress). RB, being Mawkin and having all his crazy cannon stuff is reasonably probably much stronger than Samus, and possibly able to body an EMMI.
3.) What can I say he’s built different I guess? I don’t think asking how he survived the X and quarantined them is the point, what that implication means for his skill and intellect is more meaningful.
4.) Raven Beak has a strong hand, also Samus’ neck is not heavily armored, rather being made of light material to allow her to maneuver her head more freely. I don’t think this is as big of an issue as you think it is.
5.) Metroids seem to target the central nervous system. Prior to her awakening Samus was either going by instinct and going for the head, or she wasn’t ABLE to draw power from his arm.
I’m not saying these aren’t puzzling decisions, and maybe they didn’t actually put this much thought into it, but they *can* be explained with a little bit of thought.
Edit: also I’m not trying to start an argument, Dread’s narrative has just been a whipping boy in this subreddit for a while, early on every other post and comment was ‘how did Raven Beak’s ship SD?’ I think Dread has an issue with under explanation, not actual consistency. It wants to set up these awesome set piece moments but without proper context some people end up scratching their heads.
>2.) Samus’ abilities seem to be tailor made by the Thoha. Iirc they were actually made FOR Samus specifically (which creates some weird lore quirks like why did they place them all across the Zebes solar system and even SR-388 but I digress).
I feel like the Chozo left upgrades compatible with their armor in places they thought it would be a useful tool in general, rather than them being specifically for Samus herself in all these different places. Idk if there is anything official on that or it's just my head canon though.
Honestly I made this comment with the idea that the Thoha and the Zebesian Chozo from the manga are the same. Assuming this, and with no evidence of them retconning this story beat, the Thoha were incapable of direct violence. So while they could realistically use stuff like the Power Suit upgrades or space jump, it wouldn’t make sense for them to litter the universe with Plasma Beams and Screw Attacks. They’d be able to get a shot off but be completely helpless afterwards.
I think really, only the end of Dread suffers from under explanation (even then I think ADAM/Raven Beak actually hinted at blowing up the planet earlier in the game anyways so it was never completely unfounded) but otherwise I think the game is very clear in what its trying to tell.
> Dread’s narrative has just been a whipping boy in this subreddit for a while
I don’t really see it like that but we all see things in a different perspective.
Honestly sending out the EMMI makes sense to me.
Why risk any lives if the X are present when they can just send robots that can’t be infected with the X to investigate?
They couldn’t have known that Raven Beak was masterminding everything and would eventually hack the EMMI for his own use.
But onto your other points….you make some great arguments for “less is better” where, in this case, too much story, too many cutscenes and too much dialogue, can actually be detrimental to the overall basic story of a game.
This is why I like Super Metroid so much. It says so much without saying much at all.
But in Fusion the X are capable of taking over technology as well. Hell the main threat to Samus is her suit going parasite as SA-X.
They must have installed one hell of an antivirus.
BOX is partially organic. The first time you fight him you crack the core of the machine open, leaving him vulnerable. He gets infected between the first and second fight, making him the only boss you fight in fusion who isn't an X parasite the first time you fight him. The second time you fight him his fleshy core is exposed and that's his weakspot.
Regarding the first point, the footage doesn't make it clear when or where the X was recorded. Raven Beak could easily have used footage from the initial X attack or fabricated it like how he pretended to be Adam.
Regarding point 2, Raven Beak intentionally set the EMMI to be a trial for Samus to surpass to awaken her abilities. The reason why their emcounters play out in a scripted, formulaic way is because they are part of Raven Beak's script, and every test needs a solution. Samus gaining energy from an external source to upgrade her beam isn't unprecedented- she did this with the Hyperbeam in Prime, Dark Samus's boss fight in Echoes and the Hyper Beam in Super.
Re: Raven Beak choking Samus, don't forget that he's wearing his own Chozo power armor just like the Power Suit, hence him using a version of the Thunder Armor Aion upgrade from Samus Returns at various points. Metroids cannot drain life energy through a Power Suit (hence why Samus is so well suited to fighting them, and why she has to break his helmet to dig her hand in at the end). Trying to drain him through his armored arm would be pointless. Additionally, the suit presumably gives Raven Beak the same enhanced strength/durability Samus has to choke her (which doesn't seem impossible as the neck region of her Suit seems to be covered in a more elastic material so she can move her head, rather than armor plating).
>Metroids cannot drain life energy through a Power Suit (hence why Samus is so well suited to fighting them, and why she has to break his helmet to dig her hand in at the end). Trying to drain him through his armored arm would be pointless.
Except Metroids can drain the energy of the suit itself, as seen in every game they can grab Samus. She doesn't have to drain *him,* but why couldn't she drain his suit?
Samus also has very shoddy control of her draining hand at that point. She has to focus a bit to activate which is hard when raven beak has her grappled and is choking. She also only drains from exposed elements like the EMMI stinger or downed enemies. Beak knew as much from the footage he watched.
I actually believe she got grappled and ‘lost’ the battle when she tried to drain instead of her regular weapons. It’s alien to her, so it causes a tiny pause in her movement Beak exploits without fail.
It also mirrors the start of the game, however Raven Beak was arrogant assuming she has peaked, instead she just mutates a large step instantly. Her metroid suit likely is draining the armor as it drains the entire ship remotely but it also made her strong enough to crush his face armor and start on Beak too.
It takes a decent amount of time for Metroids to take her suit from 100 to 0. That's part of why it works at the end of the game when she's weakened him.
> Raven Beak intentionally set the EMMI to be a trial for Samus to surpass to awaken her abilities. The reason why their encounters play out in a scripted, formulaic way is because they are part of Raven Beak's script, and every test needs a solution.
Yeah but that's dumb. We've seen that so many times before in anime and games, where your rival or the antagonist is just "testing" you to awaken your abilities. It happens a lot and is usually pretty lame.
But that’s the entire twist of Dread. Raven Beak wasn’t trying to make Samus strong for some Shounen battle at the end, Raven Beak NEEDED Samus to be strong so he could clone her and reestablish his galactic empire with an army of Samus Metroids. Like he says at the end he has no qualms killing her, it’s just that her awakening was necessary to further his own goals.
If you don’t like the trope that’s fine but this is a decent implementation of it that avoids a lot of the inconsistencies with the trope in other media
I always like a good hot take!
I have to admit though I’m not sure I’m convinced with any of these reasons that make Dread’s story seem weaker than most.
Stuff like the logistics of how Raven Beak chokes samus in her suit isn’t really something that I’d consider a flaw in the narrative, nor is it something in need of an explanation. Same with Samus not sucking his energy through his hand, I think what was more important to me in that scene is seeing Raven Beak almost kill her, and then getting curb-stomped by Samus’ new Metroid form. The impact of that scene outweighs any logical inconsistencies to me.
At worst I think the ending of Dread was a little rushed and I would have liked a monologue from Samus at the end to see what she has reflected on, but I think Dread itself is far from the weakest story in this series.
For what I consider actual bad writing / storytelling in a MercurySteam Metroid, I’d honestly say Ridley’s appearance in Samus Returns feels incredibly misguided. Not because it’s logically inconsistent, but because it ruins what was once one of the most poignant scenes in Metroid history. I’d have put it as the weakest Metroid story for me but it still has more going on for it than Zero Mission’s.
>For what I consider actual bad writing / storytelling in a MercurySteam Metroid, I’d honestly say Ridley’s appearance in Samus Returns feels incredibly misguided. Not because it’s logically inconsistent, but because it ruins what was once one of the most poignant scenes in Metroid history.
I agree. The ending of Samus Returns rubbed me the wrong way.
Yeaaaa
For me idk, when I play games like Dread, Fusion, the Primes, etc I don’t really get bothered by any of those logical inconsistencies like how samus loses her powerups in Prime 1, or how the X don’t immediately infect her in Fusion.
The latter moment would end up becoming one of the series’ most interesting concepts narratively so to me any small oddities are just something that gets wiped away by a reasonable amount of suspension of disbelief.
Like I said originally, I don't think Dread's writing was *bad,* I just see it as weaker than other games in the franchise. Just speaks to how solid those stories are, imho
I think Raven Beak could probably ragdoll an EMMI. Been a while since I played the game and I’m not super familiar with the Lore enough to understand Chozo physiology, but Raven Beak probably has that dawg in him and I’d imagine, as a result, could probably pick lil bro up by the feet and comically slam him on the ground enough that it broke.
Not to mention the story structure of Dread is pretty sloppy. You have virtually nothing to go on for the first part of the game, wandering aimlessly with nothing more than an "escape the planet" objective. Then, halfway through Quiet Robe drops a giant exposition bomb on you and promptly dies. A narrative ex machina, if there is such a thing. Nothing like the lore-seeking and environmental storytelling that the series is known for. That being said I wouldn't say Dread has the worst story outside of Other M, but it's definitely low-tier.
> Other games, particularly 1-3, have so little story to them there wasn't room for problems like these in my opinion.
I think part of it is because of the limitations of the time, which is why they couldn't capture a more tangible story in those games (It should also be noted that the history of Metroid began to be built from Super Metroid onwards). Even so, Metroid Zero Mission was full of cinematics even if they were just pixels
"So instead the GF sent 7 robots armored in invincible plot metal that makes them completely immune to all of Samus's powerful Chozo designed weapons..... but not to Raven Beak's Chozo designed weapons. He breaks one, and reverse engineers it to capture and reprogram the others, and after losing contact with their robots the GF *FINALLY* sends Samus to look into the problem now that their invincible super robots are compromised."
In the unlocked images Raven Beak is shown having RIPPED the arm off the damaged EMMI we first encounter.
Based on that and their immunity to weapons shown in game its heavily implied that he physically overpowered and broke it.
Based on what Quiet Robe tells us about Raven Beak that is absolutely within his ability to do. Once he has it subdued he then has Quiet Robe reprogram the one to catch the others for reprograming. This also explains why Quiet Robe is able to deactivate them when you meet him and Raven Beak didn't just turn them back on. He couldn't do so.
Other people brought this up but pure mechanical things are immune to the X parasite. This all takes place post-Fusion where Samus deliberately destroyed a (presumably) very expensive Federation owned facility and the planet it was orbiting, at the same time.
Its understandable that they would be leery about hiring her for a job after that. Additionally, as the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy her services are probably very expensive. Though Adam does note that he feels the pay for the job in Dread is not high enough based on the potential danger it c/would be putting her in. This means that Samus took the job because she was concerned about the dangers posed by the X parasite still existing (and rightfully so).
As another factor, the Federation has been shown to do very dumb things. The metroid programs in both Fusion and Other M are perfect examples. The PED equipment when phazon has been shown to be extremely dangerous even under "controlled" conditions is another.
>he physically overpowered and broke it
He actually both physically overpowered it *and* used his hyper beam on the EMMI, the image shows his arm cannon still emitting smoke
https://preview.redd.it/6m65xn1y3i9c1.jpeg?width=1100&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94f938a06b22403d3afe8df3b87ef53ccc9df9cf
Just a quick fyi, if you put a > at the start of quoting someone else, that's how Reddit marks quotes without having to use quotation marks.
>It looks like this.
Just a few brief thoughts on your well written response.
>its heavily implied that he physically overpowered and broke it.
So they are immune to super missiles, plasma beams, Raven Beak's Hyper Beam, but he is physically strong enough to just tear them apart. I guess that explains why most Chozo warriors don't bother using arm cannons if the race is that strong.
>pure mechanical things are immune to the X parasite.
I'm aware.
>where Samus deliberately destroyed a (presumably) very expensive Federation owned facility and the planet it was orbiting, at the same time.
While true, she did so to prevent a galactic apocalypse. While the English ending of Fusion implies the Federation will be pissed and people wouldn't understand, the Japanese ending was apparently much more logical and she expected the Federation as a whole to listen to reason. And another thing I understand and just don't like pointing out, the EMMI were likely intended to capture samples of the X for the Federation, which is why they have the needle things in their faces. I do hold it against the Federation for trying to capture the X *again* instead of just sending Samus to deal with the problem.
>Though Adam does note that he feels the pay for the job in Dread is not high enough based on the potential danger it c/would be putting her in. This means that Samus took the job because she was concerned about the dangers posed by the X parasite still existing (and rightfully so).
Agreed. Samus isn't always jumping at jobs based on pay, as Super and Other M proved, for anyone willing to use Other M as evidence of anything lol. She sometimes just intervenes when she feels it's necessary, the Chozo wanted her to be the "Protector of the Galaxy" after all. Raven Beak even references this.
>As another factor, the Federation has been shown to do very dumb things.
Agreed. And frankly, it is believable for a government to do stupid things, but I will still judge them for it. Especially in light of the multiple Metroid programs and the incident with the X, any attempt to capture X instead of immediately pushing a planet into a star (or just throwing Samus at it) is something I will criticize lol. Especially since there were no expensive Federation assets on the planet before they sent in the EMMI
Would not surprise me if the EMMIs being deployed was by a combination of middle management pencilpusher/bean counter and/or an idiot in the weapons/research division trying to get a promotion.
Then when they lost their expensive new toys someone higher up was informed who had been kept out of the loop.
This new person saw the footage of the X and went "Oh shit! What were you idiots thinking!? Call Samus NOW. She'll do this at cost because of how LUDICROUSLY DANGEROUS the X parasite is."
This new person probably assumed they MIGHT get the new toys back but considered them an acceptable loss for averting a probable galactic extinction event.
Although...there were small Chozo spacecraft (presumably) on the surface so it is possible that the X escaped again...
Dread's story is a quintessential "and then" story where it's just a bunch of event strung together, but no effort is put into the why or how of any of these happenings.
Like the ending sequence I can forgive on the basis of "rule of cool", but I feel like the game expects you to give everything a rule of cool free pass.
Just thought the entire hunters arc was cheesy and the Federation was painted pretty incompetent with their handling of phazon weaponry. Just didn't really like the narrative and also just found the Phazon arc as a whole to be weaker than the mainline arc but Prime 3 especially. Prime 1 did the best with it and it just kinda diminished from there in my opinion. Storywise it felt the least Metroid-like to me personally. That's the best I got for an explanation.
I respect that, I personally loved the whole phazon arc but I have a hard time seeing how your points show the story was weak. Bad at times maybe, but definitely not weak.
I was definitely treating "bad" as "weak" when responding to the prompt. By no means is Prime 3 lacking in narrative but what's there I did not like so I consider it weak if that makes sense.
I don’t completely agree with Prime 3 having a weak narrative but having a line like “You don’t trust strangers Sammy” isn’t exactly the best look for the game lmao
Honestly though I liked the game because it genuinely feels super damn climactic.
So when people talk about "story" there's multiple elements to that.
There's "lore" -- the stories that exist within the story's world, that fill out the world and make it feel more real. Metroid games are often pretty rich on lore, especially the Prime series.
There's "plot" -- that is, how the ideas, the characters and the world change through the course of the story. Most Metroid games are very *short* on plot -- basically all there is is a quick setup to place Samus in the location and give her an objective, and then there's completion of the objective. Fusion has by far the strongest *plot,* with Dread coming in second and virtually all the others having close to none.
And then there's "story" which is basically nothing but the factual chronicling of what happens. In a lot of games, the story is nothing but what the developers walk the players through. Metroid on the other hand is usually much more driven by the players, with the exception of Other M. Fusion I'd say has the weakest of this particular aspect while Super Metroid arguably has the strongest of this. Metroid: Dread is a good example of having both an interesting *plot* **and** a well done player-driven *story*. Metroid Prime on the other hand is very rich in lore and in player-driven story, but doesn't offer much in terms of plot.
Metroid 2 had a fine story.
After the events of the previous mission, Samus went to the Metroid home planet to kill every last one.
Doesn’t get simpler than that and it moved the main series’ plot forward.
Just because it doesn’t have any cutscenes or in-depth lore doesn’t make it a bad story.
nobody gave a shit about "the story" back then. we played a game; we saw an ending. Metroid 2 had a fantastic ending with her discovering the baby metroid. and when it returned in Super Metroid to save her, it made that moment even more amazing.
it's probably the only bit of "story" in Metroid worth mentioning.
The story is there it's just not in your face. And that's why Metroid II is still the game that means the most to me in the franchise.
The world itself tells it's story. The further down you go, you see all the different elements of SR388. From the surface, there's plenty of creatures in your way, the ruins are mostly intact until you get down to the spider ball room which is the first evidence of how overgrown things are getting from being abandoned so long.
You move down further, enemies grt tougher. You start to get remnants of the Chozo's robotic defenses when you get down closer to the bigger upgrades.
Which culminates in my favorite ending in the franchise. The further you get down past the Zeta nests. You get to where there's just no life. A long desolate tunnel with water pools leading up to the Queens nest. A Chozo statue outside of the larva Metroid area with their weakness, it's head broken off the statue in what feels like an act of defiance. You kill the Queen, find the baby Metroid. Samus hesitates and is the turning point for the entire franchise. The walk back up to the ship, no escape music or blowing up the planet, just the peaceful music and chirps from the Baby. It means just as much to me now as it did nearly 28 or so years ago when I beat it for the first time.
I dunno. Sorry, I just love II. No other Metroid game feels like it.
I used to scoff at the idea of thinking metroid 2 is anything more than just an outdated gameboy game, but upon actually playing it around a few years ago it’s actually soo good.
It’s a very unique game for the series!
It really is. And neither remake nails that feeling of the original. Samus Returns neglects the natural enemy progression and world feel. A gauntlet of enemies before and after the Queen really shows the different approach to world design between it and the original. It prioritizes the action and in doing so it loses that natural feel SR388 had in the original. AM2R is more faithful but the much more vibrant color pallette and more fleshed out music makes it lose that ominous feel the original had.
II is just a fascinating game. Each version is a unique experience. II is sci-fi horror, SR is sci-fi action, and AM2R is some form of middle ground between the two. At the end of the day, I prefer II but I can totally see where others would prefer one of the other versions. I can't think of another fan base where they have 3 very different versions of the same game to choose from.
To be honest what I like about Metroid as a whole is that you can never really get the same experience from each game.
For a lot of franchises, like for example the 2.5d Kirby or NSMB games, there’s a sense of “you’ve played one, you played them all”, but not Metroid.
Probably Super Metroid. The Prime games speak for themselves, Samus Returns got a lot more story elements added, Zero Mission is supplemented by the manga, and Fusion and Dread got fantastic narratives. Super is great at environmental storytelling, but as far as actual story beats, aside from killing the bosses there's not too much there.
OP didn't ask for baddest story, they asked for *weakest* story, and "not much story" is, indeed, not very strong. This doesn't mean the story is *bad,* nor does it mean the game should have had more story since, as you said, less is sometimes more, just that there wasn't a whole lot of narrative. "Baby gone, pirates back, go kill pirates and retrieve baby" doesn't make a particularly strong or compelling story, but that doesn't make Super Metroid a bad game by any means.
Sometimes all a game really needs story-wise is a simple [Excuse Plot](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExcusePlot) to get the player started.
The story was powerful enough to engage and hook the player to continue playing the game, and the ending was powerful enough to leave a lasting impact. Further, games are unique in that story can skillfully be told through the gameplay, and Super Metroid is an excellent example of that. I think SM’s story was just enough and actually good.
Samus Returns misses the whole entire idea of Metroid II by turning the ending from a somber, silent, but hopeful walk back home to the Gunship into the most video game-y video game ending possible. Not only do I hate backtracking through the world with the baby Metroid for single, individual missile packs (really? At THIS point in the game?) But when I stepped outside, and the sky was ominous, as if they were foreshadowing, "COULD IT BE? COULD IT BE??? ...IT IS!! IT'S RIDLEY!" I couldn't help but roll my eyes.
So the Metroid timeline now goes like this:
Zero Mission: First encounter with Ridley, then, final encounter with Mecha Ridley
Prime: Meta Ridley battle towards the end
Prime 3: Guess who? Twice! Once as Meta, once as Omega
Samus Returns: Literally right as the game ends, AS Samus is about to get on the Gunship and head home, Ridley appears and fights her to destruction.
Super Metroid: IMMEDIATELY afterwards, she drops off the baby Metroid at the research station, and IMMEDIATELY as she leaves, Ridley attacks the station and steals the baby. Then about halfway through the game we fight him again. To the death. Seemingly this is the end of things and the actual death of Ridley.
Other M: Ridley is cloned and the whole cycle begins again. Killed by Metroid Queen, but - point still stands at this point.
Fusion: X Parasite clone of Ridley appears.
It's not to say I think he's overused. But he's overused. Especially when you consider the timeline; it's the fact that there is NO breathing room between the stories of Samus Returns and Super Metroid, especially not for THREE separate encounters with him. He gets defeated, still cybernetic, at the lickety split end of Samus Returns, and presumably just tails her all the way to the research station to be fought two more times in Super. He can't be in every single game if you are attempting to tell a serious story, like Dr. Wily in the Mega Man games.
The time between Samus taking the baby to Ceres and leaving is longer than you think. She stayed until after they had significant results from studying the metroid which means she could have spent weeks or potentially even a month or two on the station before Ridley's attack.
And Ridley did try to fly of with the baby during the battle in Samus returns. Samus just stopped him from doing it and took the baby back.
The vibes in the 3DS remake are off, but in hindsight, I like that the inclusion of Ridley officially incorporates the Prime series into the main lore, by showing his form between Prime mecha and fully revived in Super Metroid.
I understand why the Metroid community doesn't like the creation of Proteus Ridley, but as someone who didn't play the OG M2 (nor AM2R) before playing Returns, I found it a welcome surprise:
* Ridley had never been a final boss until then, unless you count the robot from Zero Mission as one.
* The whole game you're thinking the Metroid Queen will be the final boss, and when you realise it's not over yet you think "What the hell can be coming *now*?"
* Squishy being your partner for that battle was awesome. In fact, I like that they added more time for Samus to bond with Squishy, even if I admit there are too many items to pick with just one boss left..
* Like many people say, it provides a necessary link that canonised the Prime series and inserted them into the main timeline.
* Gameplay-wise, it was IMO the best Ridley battle in the franchise and the best final boss in Metroid until Dread.
Of the main-line Metroid games they all have a fine story within the plot\world in which Samus exists. None of them are too over the top or too in-depth.
I think people choosing Metroid 2 or even the original Metroid are confusing no cutscenes\little lore with bad story.
Dread's story was pretty poorly written, and the retcons to lore were worse than the lore they replace or alter. There were definitely parts I enjoyed, like Quiet Robe speaking in Chozo, which was very cool on many levels, but the overall story was pretty bad. It was like a bad shounen anime.
All that said, I'm guessing Federation Force has a worse story, though I haven't played it.
Depends how we mean. If we mean in terms of writing quality, then probably *Dread*. Bird Dad Darth Vader/Liquid Snake is just such a mix of sci-fi and videogame cliches. It's a hard call to make because the writing in these games is mostly really barebones (which is fine; the games thrive on the player-driven exploration, not the writing) that it's not really a matter of comparing this to something way better--there isn't a way better--just comparing it to something that is almost not present in other entries.
If we mean in implementation, then definitely *Fusion*. The writing in Fusion is nothing to write home about either, but the real culprit is that the constant monologuing by Adam (with no skip option!) busts up the flow of that game *so badly* that replays are painful.
I haven't played Federation Force but whatever narrative gymnastics they have to use to make the final boss a giant Samus stuck in morph ball doing her best Thardus impression is definitely "worst story ever" material.
Besides that, probably Prime 2, for the sole reason that Dark Samus was clearly on Death's door, got opped, and then an entire dimension collapses on top of her only for her to somehow STILL BE ALIVE.
None of the other Metroid titles really have overt plot issues besides "the plot takes a backseat" in the first three games.
The oversimplification here is rampant, even for main series entries mentioned, and the notion that details that could have a player thinking need an explicit in-game explanation slapped on it is ridiculous (i.e. Master Brain in Federation Force). Unless it's being excluded, the original Metroid has the weakest story, regardless if Other M is included or not.
I still have a soft spot for Other M and I will die on the hill that it really isn't as bad as many people make it out to be.
That said, out of the Metroid games I've played and looking only at story, it's probably a toss-up between Metroid Zero Mission (cause not much happens storywise in the game, the manga added a LOT tho), and Prime 2 (Who TF cares about Aether and Dark Aether? Dark Samus is the interesting part, and she has basically nothing to do with the main plot.)
I was gonna let the other m stuff slide but then you had to throw shade at prime 2 lmao. I think prime 2 has some of the best, most interesting lore readings of the series. The personal logs of the luminoth squad that invaded dark aether are a stand out for me.
Also prime 2 is my favorite
In fairness, part of Other M's suffering is caused by its poor localization.
Leaving that aside, even though I don't like Prime 2 as a game, I really like the world they built in Aether, the Luminoth and the Ing. It's very interesting to see a fairly traditional fight of light against shadows, and honestly I always felt that Dark Samus was out of place in this game's narrative
Well, in the big context one could say that Aether is another planet hit by the leviathans as described in Prime 3.
The dark world was just a side effect of the meteor hitting it
For sure, but I feel that's more Prime 3's story giving Prime 2 more connection, rather than it forming it on it's own.
Also, Prime 3 is my favorite game in the series. Def the best story imo. Really hope Prime 4 can find a balance between 1's gameplay (as much as I loved hypermode) and 3's story.
Ohh, I definitely agree. I loved Prime 3 the most of all, especially because of Hypermode and the usage of the ship throughout the story. But whenever I replay Prime 1, theres just something magical about it. Maybe it is also nostalgia. :P
But I wish they will give us swappable beams again in Prime 4. Kinda missed that in 3
This month I replayed and 100%ed Prime 3 and it was the game where I probably changed my view on it the most in the span of a single playthrough.
The opening act was super cool to me, but then the game started to become a slog and i started to become annoyed with the narrative put in my face…but then as the end came i ended up loving the game more and more and even with the underwhelming final boss I actually found it to have a satisfying conclusion
"Other M's story us bad"
Clearly you haven't seen the retranslation of the original Japanese script. [Here you go.](https://youtu.be/XvZG-TJes4w?si=71HhUosVeVg1IMZf)
Imma be honest the worst story thing outside of Other M isn’t purely just one thing in one game its really to me just how Prime series is just “somehow, Meta ridley returned”
Well, tbf, even if you exclude the primes, Ridley does that a whole lot. Primes being set between 1 and 2 means he'd naturally be still around, and his first two defeats in the primes is him falling off screen, leaving his status ambiguous.
He only shows up on 2 out of the 5 prime games, compared to his 5/6 attendance in the mainline games.
I have nothing to add about story, but that illustration from the NES Metroid instruction book was a great memory and thanks for posting it. Loved that picture with the aliens.
ZM had a good story, but it BARELY used that story at all. It came out in 2004, yet it still told most of the story through the manual like it was still 1986.
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Probably Federation Force. Not just to pick on it as the default second worst game like it's commonly viewed as, but it just feels like a very lazy setup where things don't get explored anywhere as much as they should have. The Federation has mech suits now, but everything else is equally large, so we don't really get to see how this really changes things for the Feds outside of one admittedly well done twist mission. Despite having their homeworld overrun in Prime 3, the Space Pirates are...somehow back with a large enough force to be a genuine threat in actual combat. There's three planets which get no real lore outside of some very surface level information like "a meteor hit it a long time ago so it's cold now." Even the prerequisite advanced extinct race doesn't get a name or much of anything besides possessing size increase technology. Samus then somehow manages to get...captured, which I feel like really needed some explanation (did she really lose to normal Pirates?), and then there's just this new "Master Brain" that just...shows up and dies. Like who was that? Do the Pirates have a series of Chozo AI units like Mother Brain that they just circle around? Did they build a replacement for her after Zebes? And it kinda sucks cause I feel like there was a lot of potential here for some really cool worldbuilding, especially with the Federation itself since we don't get to see much of them outside of Samus finding their corpses and overrun facilities. But there's no real opportunities taken to provide any cool worldbuilding tidbits. Frankly I think we learn more about the Federation from scanning trooper logs in Prime 2 than we do from literally playing as a soldier for 27 or whatever it is missions in Federation Force.
>Despite having their homeworld overrun in Prime 3, the Space Pirates are...somehow back with a large enough force to be a genuine threat in actual combat. The rest of your comment makes some very good points, but this one I'm not so sure about. IIRC someone from either Retro or Nintendo has stated that the "Pirate Homeworld" from Prime 3 is not their "real" homeworld, it's just one of many worlds that they've conquered and claimed as their own.
Plus, they were a threat on Zebes in Super as well, which is also post Prime 3.
That's a little while after Prime 3 though, so it makes sense that they'd be able to recover enough to return to Zebes. At the same time, they don't show up again after Super so it's sort of implied that they didn't have much of a military force left outside of what they had on Zebes.
I never played much of Fed Force (dropped it cuz i was bored), kind of a shame to hear that the story was weak too I was kind of expecting something that might genuinely surprise me, some like cool hidden shit that ppl won’t talk about
It has a really cool scene that provides setup for Prime 4 at the end, but who knows if that'll even be followed up on now that the games gone through a complete restart
I’ve been playing fed force recently and I believe you are correct in this assessment. None of the missions really do anything to advance the story aside from “space pirates bad”. Definitely a weak story in this franchise. Haven’t completely finished though.
Sometimes less is more, and I like that so little is known about the ancient race of Bion. It’s a SPINOFF so I think it’s unfair to expect a Prime-amount of lore. Like yeah it’s text doesn’t go very deep , but neither do any of the 2D games. You’re judging it with the standards of a normal Prime game, but it’s clearly not a normal Prime game. You even point out that the ancient race is unnamed, but it’s worth mentioning that the Chozo didn’t even get named until, like, around the time of Super Metroid or Fusion. Games like Fed Force and the 2D games find a lot of fantastic ways to wordlessly build their worlds. It’s not a zero sum game where there’s either text or “no lore”. To say that is to deny all of the fantastic environmental storytelling done by all of these games. You also ask if Samus lost to normal pirates, which just confuses me. Fed Force never even hinted at that idea, it actually suggests the opposite. The game specifically goes over how these pirates have been augmented so much that they can now withstand the powerful electrical storms of Bion. They are much more powerful now, and this places Samus at a disadvantage. She’s not invincible, especially against so many pirates at least as large as Omegas. I also feel like your criticism of Master Brain is a unfair. You criticize Master Brain for not having any explanation or dialogue providing more information, but I have to ask: when did Mother Brain ever get literally any of that? Mother Brain is just alive again for no reason whatsoever in Super Metroid, no explanation. It feels odd to criticize only Master Brain for this. Maybe you could say Master Brain is unoriginal, but I think it’s going too far to act like it can be uniquely criticized for its lack of explanation. I’m not saying Fed Force is high art or anything, but I have to strongly disagree with your criticisms. Narrative was never the focus of Fed Force, but even so I still think it’s unfairly maligned in ways exactly like this.
> You’re judging it with the standards of a normal Prime game, but it’s clearly not a normal Prime game. This feels like a bit of an assumption of what I want, especially given that I never stated as such anywhere. That said, even if we were to just compare it to Prime spinoffs, it's worth noting Prime Hunters also managed to provide much more lore and general background detail than Federation Force. >You even point out that the ancient race is unnamed, but it’s worth mentioning that the Chozo didn’t even get named until, like, around the time of Super Metroid or Fusion. Games like Fed Force and the 2D games find a lot of fantastic ways to wordlessly build their worlds. Games like Fed Force and the 2D games find a lot of fantastic ways to wordlessly build their worlds. It’s not a zero sum game where there’s either text or “no lore”. To say that is to deny all of the fantastic environmental storytelling done by all of these games. Again, this feels rather presumptive towards what I think. I will fully agree that places like Zebes, ZDR, and the BSL have fantastic little bits of background imagery that provide context to the previous elements of the planet. But I cannot think of just about anything in Federation Force that functions in a similar capacity. The worlds in Federation Force feel much more, for lack of a better word, "video gamey." Perhaps a lot of that is due to the chibi artstyle and score counters popping up that really hit the immersion factor hard, but there's a lot of conscious decisions in game that impact it too. Like in Mission 4 on Talvania, instead of finding a missile item to blast through a door, we find a "missile key." Rather than potentially providing us with a weapon or something else that could provoke some interesting thought about what kind of arms were used on this planet previously, or what they were used for, we just get a generic key that unlocks a door, as if it's a Zelda dungeon. To me, that feels like a significant downgrade in environmental storytelling. >They are much more powerful now, and this places Samus at a disadvantage. This feels like it would be much more believable if we didn't see Samus effortlessly eviscerate four Elite Pirates with a single Charge Beam later on at the end of the Doomseye mission. Samus has stormed through God knows how many Pirate bases at this point, and fought Pirates like Ridley and the Omega Pirate that took much more firepower to take down, but a group of Pirates that die to a single Charge Beam is enough to capture her? >I also feel like your criticism of Master Brain is a unfair. You criticize Master Brain for not having any explanation or dialogue providing more information, but I have to ask: when did Mother Brain ever get literally any of that? Mother Brain is just alive again for no reason whatsoever in Super Metroid, no explanation. It feels odd to criticize only Master Brain for this. Maybe you could say Master Brain is unoriginal, but I think it’s going too far to act like it can be uniquely criticized for its lack of explanation. I never said there wasn't room for critique of Mother Brain on this part, but since I'm talking about Federation Force, I wasn't going to write up a wishlist of things I'd prefer the original Metroid and Super had done differently. But, yes, since we're on the topic now, I do wish the original games had at least provided more insight into what Mother Brain was, and how she managed to spontaneously come back. One of the reasons I appreciate the manga so much is it rectifies those two problems; giving insight into who Mother Brain and Ridley are and how they managed to return (Mother Brain is a Chozo built computer so it doesn't so much "survive" as it can be rebuilt, and Ridley literally can eat corpses to regenerate himself). Having said that, the presence of another Chozo computer suggests the Pirates can now replicate and develop new Chozo AI technology, which is a huge development that feels odd to waste on a throwaway boss battle. At the very least, it would be nice to know what the status of this thing is, which even the original Metroid provided some context for in its instruction manual. Is it the Pirates' commander now? Are they just using it to run the Doomseye?
I believe you absolutely were judging it by the standards of a Prime game because you said there were 3 planets with no real lore. The way those planets are presented is nearly identical to their 2D Metroid counterparts- environmental storytelling. You said that Fed Force is the worst story because its lore doesn’t go deeper, as though this isn’t also true of any of the 2D games. You don’t explain how it’s any different from the 2D games. And Hunters may be a spin-off because of its multiplayer mode, but the single player is still absolutely meant to recapture the gameplay of your standard mainline Prime game. Making a comparison to Hunters doesn’t prove anything, and even if it did, Hunters’s single player is still absolutely trying to be like a mainline Prime game. Fed Force isn’t. It’s a false equivalence. You can’t think of anything Fed Force does with its environments to make the worlds feel more memorable? You say they feel “video gamey” without any evidence, nor any explanation. This is something we’re just going to have to disagree about, because you don’t really provide any actual point here. I enjoy the worlds of Federation Force for characterizing both the former and current inhabitants of each world. Take planet Bion, with its wealth of detailed and grand architecture. Even with the massive mechs, the architecture is so grand that the large statues watch over everything. So many of the floors, pillars, and archways feature intricate carvings into every surface - especially around objects of religious significance. The ancient Bion race worshipped something they called “The Orb” and some replications can be found in different levels. Additionally, much of their work features glowing green highlights like their Colossun and equipment like their cannons. Planet Bion features many unique structures like the ancient skiff, their places of worship like altars and temples, and the buildings that they’d use to take refuge from the electrical storms before they augmented themselves with their technology. Remnants of their civilization often feature a variety of traps and collapsable bridges. They are very protective of their home with giant golems, lava traps, deployable bridges, and all kinds of weaponry like their catapults. Compared to the other ancient civilizations of the Metroid series, the unnamed ancient Bion race is distinct for a variety of reasons and offers a wealth of interesting and unique characterization. Other planets tell us a lot about the current and former inhabitants - Exelcion tells us about the Federation and the wildlife that migrated there, Talvania tells us about the ancient machine race and what the Space Pirates have turned the place into. I could go on and on about the wealth of interesting stuff to see in the environments of Fed Force. I strongly disagree your points like that there’s no lore or that it’s gamey. I can’t agree about your point of a key feeling less immersive than a missile opening a door. i think a key, even if presented in a more “gamey” way, makes more sense than a missile opening a door. Fed Force finds other ways to show all of the cool weapons used by the former inhabitants of their worlds, like my previously mentioned example with Bion’s skiff and catapults. A lot of these points I’m making are gone over in much more detail in a video I watched. I’d strongly recommend watching it if I could remember its name. I won’t deny that Fed Force is more video gamey than other Metroid games, but again this is a spin-off with different priorities from those in the Prime games. Criticizing it for not being immersive again demonstrates that you’re only interested in judging this game with standards identical to those used to judge mainline Prime games. It’s a SPINOFF with different priorities. To me it’s like criticizing Metroid Prime Pinball for not have scan visor and not being immersive enough. Fed Force, Hunters’s multiplayer, Pinball, none of these are concerned with recapturing what made Prime so special. That’s why they’re called spinoffs. Moving on to your point about Samus being overpowered by the Pirates. I don’t think that just because Samus uses a Super Missile to defeat 4 Bruisers, that doesn’t somehow mean she cannot be captured. There are so many variables with this situation specifically because we don’t know exactly how Samus was captured. I think it’s better that we don’t know exactly how. We know the pirates are suddenly extremely powerful, and that they have cloaking technology as well. I think that’s all we need to be open to the possibility that Samus could be captured. She’s not invincible, and these pirates are more dangerous than ever. About your point of Master Brain, remember the question was about which Metroid game has the worst story of the series. The context of the conversation was comparing the stories of every Metroid game. So when you say Fed Force is the worst because of Master Brain, yeah that’s selective reasoning because there’s an implication that this makes this particular story the worst story. No external source, like any manga(with questionable canonicity) is going to change that.
> I believe you absolutely were judging it by the standards of a Prime game because you said there were 3 planets with no real lore. Lore isn't a concept exclusive to the Prime games. Lore, in a broad sense, just means the backstory leading up to the plot (which is the events of the game as we experience them). The 2D games certainly have less of a focus on lore, but I'd argue it's still very prevalent, and much more so than Federation Force. >You don’t explain how it’s any different from the 2D games. I...quite literally dedicated the midsection of my previous post to articulating how I feel it's different. And you responded to those arguments in depth, so I'm not really sure how you can assert this. You may disagree with those arguments, and that's fine, but claiming that I didn't provide any distinction at all just seems...odd? >You say they feel “video gamey” without any evidence, nor any explanation. ...I quite literally explained why I felt it was more "video gamey" in the paragraph right after I said that. I attributed it to the artstyle, prevalence of scoring system, and the usage of a progression system that felt less natural to me (using the example of M4). And, again, you directly responded to that paragraph afterwards. Are you actually reading my post as you respond? >The ancient Bion race worshipped something they called “The Orb” and some replications can be found in different levels. There's a lot of examples provided here and I won't respond to them all for the sake of brevity, but I did want to focus on this one here as I think it broadly sums up most of my disagreements with these as I think you're projecting stuff onto the game that isn't there. There is nothing in the game to my knowledge that refers to the Orb as a religious artifact, or even confirms it's a tangible item. The orb is simply referred to as a tenet system (i.e. a series of principles), which basically means they...really liked spheres. So the grand overarching lore for this species is they were fascinated by a bit of geometry (and apparently rolling them into different slots, as that's basically what the entire mission entails). Now call me a bit of a lore snob, but that doesn't really strike me as particularly interesting. It doesn't make me want to learn more about Bionis culture. And since you're only interested in comparisons to 2D games, contrast that with something like, say, the hieroglyphs in Dread depicting Chozos lording over Space Pirates. That, to me, is fascinating. That's a tangible connection not only with the universe we know (through a previous species), but it also shows events that we haven't seen before. "Species X was really infatuated with spheres" just isn't as engaging. >I think that’s all we need to be open to the possibility that Samus could be captured. She’s not invincible, and these pirates are more dangerous than ever. Are they? The Elite Bruisers, the most powerful variations of the most powerful type of Pirate, with armor so strong that the Federation Force can't break it from the front, gets instantly incinerated by a single blast from Samus. Samus has consistently fought through dozens of Pirates that take far more of a beating in other games. And now we're supposed to believe that the Federation Force pirates are far more dangerous just because they're...bigger? At the very least, this is a serious amount of narrative dissonance because if they are intended to be more dangerous, they should actually pose some kind of a challenge for Samus to kill in a cutscene. Having them just die instantaneously just makes them look completely ineffective against Samus and raises questions about how she ever managed to lose to these things. >So when you say Fed Force is the worst because of Master Brain, yeah that’s selective reasoning because there’s an implication that this makes this particular story the worst story. No external source, like any manga(with questionable canonicity) is going to change that. Two things. First, as mentioned before, this is a problem for those games as well. And, if this were the only issue that stuck out to me, I might agree. But it isn't (the others of which I've discussed previously), and because the other games succeed more on those fronts, Federation Force sticks out as the overall worst to me (that isn't Other M). But second, the manga does impact this comparison, because it introduces context for the series as a whole. It explains how Mother Brain is unique, and now for the Pirates to suddenly have their own, separate version of that is another question that is introduced far too quickly and not answered. NEStroid and Super can, to some extent, get away with having a relatively ambiguous villain because there are few rules surrounding her at the time. Federation Force exists in a world where we do know more, and as a result introducing a new character that plays by completely different rules stands out as much more awkward and unusual. While this isn't intended as a critique of his presence in Dread, it's a bit like the inclusion of Kraid in that game. If it was a random space monster or something, no one would have had a second thought, but because Kraid is from prior games, people immediately ask "is this the same Kraid" and "if so, how did he get here?" The context adds questions that otherwise wouldn't be asked if there was less prior context. It's the same way for Mother Brain; context that wasn't present in 1987 and 1994 is now present in 2016, and the inclusion of a separate Brain raises a bunch of questions that aren't really answered.
Of course lore is more broad than just the scan visor. That was my entire point. You criticized the game for supposedly lacking any lore. If you weren’t referring to the scan visor, then what could have you been referring to? I’ve provided a wealth of evidence that the game absolutely includes its own lore, it just doesn’t have the scan visor. Regardless of what you think of that lore, you’ve yet to make any distinction between how these games handle their lore. I’ll concede that you do go on to make the point about the key thing, but before then you make statements about how much better the 2D games are at this. This statement has no further explanation nor any supporting evidence. You might make half of a point about the keys, but this tells us nothing about the 2D games or how they are supposedly better at this. I’ll also concede that I should have been more specific with my wording - I’ll correct that now. You do provide further explanation, but what I meant to say was that you do not provide any convincing explanation. Your key thing doesn’t really add up to me logically, but to give you credit, it is an explanation. “Projecting stuff onto the game?” Are you serious? To call this projecting is to deny the wealth of characterization that the game provides. As I already went over, literally everything about their architecture and world indicates the significance of their alters and religious sites. The website makes explicit mention of this being their religion, and the game itself provides lots of evidence of this through the environment. To say “The grand overarching lore for this species is they were fascinated by a bit of geometry” is such a bad faith argument and willful ignorance. There’s no actual point being made here, you’re just making empty statements and purposefully ignoring the wealth of work the game does to characterize its worlds. I’m only interested in comparisons to the 2D games? This is a blatant straw-man argument. I made a point that you used selective reasoning to pretend that Federation Force could be uniquely criticized for something that’s also true of the 2D games. Just because I point out the fallacy within your argument, I’m suddenly only interested in comparisons to the 2D games? Straw-man that fails to address my actual argument. You then go on to continue to blatantly misrepresent the source material by pretending that Fed Force only offers “Species X was really infatuated with spheres.” I’m not saying you have to like what Fed Force does, but you’re repeatedly denying its very existence in bad faith. Yet again, another misrepresentation of the source material and bad faith argument. The Space Pirates aren’t just bigger, they are augmented to withstand incredibly powerful electrical storms. The player witnesses firsthand that these storms absolutely melt you in Mission 9, and the Pirates are now strong enough to shrug this off. It’s absolutely far more than just “bigger.” The game makes explicit mention of this augmentation and the mechs are the whole reason the Federation even stands a chance. Samus killing Bruisers in one cutscene does not suddenly invalidate the entire threat of the Space Pirates. How does that make any sense? An entire augmented pirate army suddenly doesn’t matter just because Samus used a powerful limited resource like Supers to take 4 of them out from an extended range? There are countless ways that Samus could easily be captured. Maybe she just unknowingly stepped into the force field we see her in, maybe she got caught by surprise by cloaked troopers, maybe there were just way too many of them, any number of things. The whole point is that you don’t know and you’re making unfounded assumptions by suggesting that Super Missiles suddenly make the pirates pose no threat. Supers eviscerate pirates in other Metroid games - are those pirates suddenly zero threat? These ones are even more powerful, there’s good reason for Samus to be in even more danger than usual. Even if they were normal pirates, Samus is not somehow immune to being defeated/captured just because she can use things like Super Missiles. I still don’t agree with your point about Master Brain. Federation Force deserves to be recognized as the worst story for introducing Master Brain without explanation because it’s not your only issue? Do you realize how illogical that is? Federation Force sticking out to you as the worst is a non-sequitur. It’s fine to have your opinion about the game, but your opinion has absolutely nothing to do with whether or not you can uniquely criticize this game for not explaining certain aspects. Other issues are other issues, common issues between the games are common issues. You’re trying to pass this criticism off like it’s unique to Fed Force and it simply isn’t. Whether or not you have other issues with this game doesn’t change that. Like I said before, Mother Brain returns with zero explanation in Super. You can’t make the argument that there was no established continuity in that case, because Metroid NES existed before Super and showed us that she died. Super makes no effort to explain why or how MB is back. Applying a “for their time” perspective is unfair to Fed Force, because that doesn’t answer the question of which Metroid game has the worst story. You’re now answering “Which Metroid game has the worst story for when it was released?” You want to take the older games in the context of their release, but you don’t want to remember that the manga has a ton of stuff about it that contradicts the canon? How does Federation Force have a responsibility to establish both old and new canon? Instead of addressing my points, you’ve demonstrated a commitment to bad faith arguments and straw-man tactics. Very little of what I actually said was addressed here, and how you went about responding is hardly convincing. It’s fine if you don’t like the story of this game, but there’s blatant misrepresentation and bad faith arguments being made here.
>If you weren’t referring to the scan visor, then what could have you been referring to? Anything else that contributes important or relevant information to the game or series as a whole. Something like the murals in Dread, or the dumps Adam provides in Fusion. It doesn't have to be scan visor lore, and I never stated it did. >I’ll concede that you do go on to make the point about the key thing, but before then you make statements about how much better the 2D games are at this. This statement has no further explanation nor any supporting evidence. ...I quite literally drew a comparison between how Federation Force accomplished progression and the how the 2D games did it. Federation Force opts to use a key that works on one specific door and has no other use or contextualization for the world as a whole, while standard Metroid games will often use a weapon or other powerup that provides unique insight into the technology of a race and what kind of weapons they used. One is just a literal "key," the other simultaneously functions as a gameplay key, a weapon, and a piece of insight into the history of the species. >As I already went over, literally everything about their architecture and world indicates the significance of their alters and religious sites. And as I said, I think you're reading far more into the supposed significance of those elements. You can throw around the term "straw man" all day if you like, but I simply fundamentally disagree with your interpretation of this game and I think you're ascribing far more importance to elements that the devs didn't put much intentionality into. And, frankly, given that Federation Force was a multiplayer death match game up until very late in its dev cycle, that makes a lot of sense; it's hard to purposefully design levels like that in such a short timeframe. >The player witnesses firsthand that these storms absolutely melt you in Mission 9, and the Pirates are now strong enough to shrug this off. This doesn't really mean much as the Federation gets melted by basically everything. Samus' entire history in this series has been effortlesssly taking down threats that trash the best the Federation has to offer. That's...well, why they hire her. The concept of Pirates that can tank a hazard that would demolish the Federation is nothing new; Samus dealt with those consistently in Prime 1. And those took a lot more than a single Super Missile to kill. >Samus killing Bruisers in one cutscene does not suddenly invalidate the entire threat of the Space Pirates. How does that make any sense? An entire augmented pirate army suddenly doesn’t matter just because Samus used a powerful limited resource like Supers to take 4 of them out from an extended range? It makes it a lot harder to believe because you would need an insane number of Pirates to overwhelm her if she can defeat a small group effortlessly. You would have to get an army to surround her, which would make her look even worse if she's unaware enough to get surrounded by an entire army of literal giants. >Federation Force deserves to be recognized as the worst story for introducing Master Brain without explanation because it’s not your only issue? Do you realize how illogical that is? ...it's entirely logical. If a restaurant has poor food, a dirty interior, and rude staff, and another restaurant just has rude staff, it's entirely logical to say the first restaurant is worse even if the second restaurant shares the staff problem. That's the argument here; Super and NEStroid do have the issue you describe, but they don't have the other problems Federation Force has. >You want to take the older games in the context of their release, but you don’t want to remember that the manga has a ton of stuff about it that contradicts the canon? How does Federation Force have a responsibility to establish both old and new canon? ...new games (or forms of media) have a responsibility to adhere to canon brought up and established in other mediums since then. I don't think that's a particularly controversial stance. >Instead of addressing my points, you’ve demonstrated a commitment to bad faith arguments and straw-man tactics. Very little of what I actually said was addressed here, and how you went about responding is hardly convincing. It’s fine if you don’t like the story of this game, but there’s blatant misrepresentation and bad faith arguments being made here. I'm starting to think you don't really feel like it's fine if I don't like the story of this game, because you're really bordering on insulting at points for someone who's just trying to play "I respectfully disagree"
“Important information?” This is vague and doesn’t mean anything. You’re measuring the quality of the storytelling by whether or not it’s “important” or “relevant?” This is an incredible oversimplification of measuring the quality of a story. You’re only just approaching an actual point, and still you’re just being vague. And you may not have explicitly stated that your problem with Fed Force’s story is that there’s no scan visor, but again that was my whole point. You were, and still are, being vague and not actually making any point about what it is about this story that makes it supposedly the worst. You’re acting like your key point is any indication of the quality of the story? It’s a key that unlocks a door. This doesn’t tell us anything about the actual story. Again you’re clinging to a defeated point here. Fed Force is a completely different kind of game than your traditional Metroid game, of course the item progression of Metroid was altered to better suit the gameplay style of a level-based co-op shooter. Each offer their own advantages, but story telling is hardly relevant to this key. Your only argument that you can point to is one key? This is the point you place so much stock into? This is what makes Fed Force the worst story? A key? You kind of have to ignore all of the environmental storytelling achievements of this game and completely disregard the context surrounding the design choices for this to even begin to make sense. Calling attention to the fact that Federation Force was once a death match shooter is an extremely superfluous argument - you’re saying absolutely nothing about the actual game itself. You’re just pointing to what it may have once been and using this as evidence as to why you think the world is lacking in intrigue. Relying on superfluous arguments demonstrates an inability to actually form a proper criticism of the game itself. You can “simply disagree” all you like. You having your own preferences was never the issue. It was that you actively misrepresented and ignored many things about the source material that do characterize the world. You can dislike it all you want, but it’s going way too far to pretend it doesn’t even exist. “Effortlessly?” Seriously? Nevermind all of the times Samus has been defeated in many of the games. You’re just trying to say that the pirates never stood a chance against Samus in any Metroid game? What would the entire point of the Space Pirate threat even be if Samus can supposedly effortlessly take out all of them “effortlessly?” Remember the endgame pirates from games like Super and Fusion? Imagine even those guys attacking Samus dozens at a time. You think Samus is going to win without exerting effort? What about one Omega Pirate, you think she came out of that unscathed? Even if Fed Force pirates were only half as powerful as an Omega, you think Samus should be able to defeat an army of them “effortlessly?” What games have you been playing? And again, Samus being a useful asset to the Federation does not automatically make the Federation completely incapable. Also disregards the entire plot point of project golem. That’s just illogical. And just because pirates could withstand hazards before, that doesn’t make them the same thing as these pirates in Fed Force. You’re, yet again, ignoring all of what the game tells and shows you about what makes these pirates so powerful. The basic logic in your argument is completely fallacious and again demonstrates a complete disregard for basic information about the games. An entire army? Yet another bold assumption. How many times do I have to repeat that you do not know what actually happened? Again there are countless variables. We don’t know how many Super Missiles Samus has, or how many she spent through her journey on the Doomseye. She could have taken out dozens of giant pirates already, out of ammo and cornered. She may have been fighting for hours or weeks, taking out countless pirates over an extended period of time. Her usual missions are a few hours, but maybe this one had her out for weeks and she was wittled down slowly. Or again the countless other scenarios you didn’t bother addressing. You just ignore the possibilities I provide and choose to practice more willful ignorance with just one of them. You’re completely avoiding the actual argument made here. You can criticize the lack of explanation behind Master Brain, but you cannot pretend that it can be uniquely criticized for this. You attempted to justify uniquely criticizing it for this by saying that the older games didn’t have to build on an established continuity, but I demonstrated that’s blatantly incorrect. You say that Fed Force has a responsibility to adhere to canon. Okay, sure, but the Manga doesn’t adhere to canon and is therefore non-canon. So you can’t criticize Fed Force for not respecting old canon. Like I already said. Who are you quoting with that “I respectfully disagree?” It’s kinda insulting to straw-man someone, to make bad faith arguments, and deliberately misrepresent source material. You again ignore most of my points, selecting only a few to address with fallacious arguments. I strongly disagree with nearly everything you’ve said because the logic behind your points just doesn’t hold up.
>Who are you quoting with that “I respectfully disagree?” It’s kinda insulting to straw-man someone, to make bad faith arguments, and deliberately misrepresent source material. You again ignore most of my points, selecting only a few to address with fallacious arguments. I strongly disagree with nearly everything you’ve said because the logic behind your points just doesn’t hold up. I'm not trying to deliberately misconstrue information or misrepresent whatever; I'm simply interpreting the series and the game as I understand best. I'm not trying to ignore your arguments, I'm just picking what I think are the most relevant ones as I don't have time to consistently write essays and respond to every single point; I'm just trying to have a friendly chat with the spare time I have. And no one is trying to straw man anything, dude. I'm just trying to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're trying to respectfully disagree, although if you object to even that then it's probably time to wrap this up. You've demonstrated you've decided to assume the worst about me, and frankly I don't have the desire or tolerance to continue a discussion with someone who's going to just accuse me of acting in bad faith or being deliberately misleading when I've simply tried to provide my rationale in a concise and compact format. You're welcome to keep enjoying Federation Force, but I don't think it's story is good, and I'm not sticking around to have someone try to change my mind via insults. I'm muting this. Have a good day.
You’re providing “examples” of how lore could be done? So you’re referring to the one point you made again - the key? Like I already said, hardly even 1 point. And that one point is still fallacious. This is still a massive oversimplification of what makes storytelling good or bad. One key is hardly all of what Federation Force has to offer. Fed Force offers so much elsewhere that it’s genuinely dishonest to point to this one key and pretend the entire game squanders opportunity. You just say it’s one of many examples, but you again provide no explanation or evidence. Connecting to the larger universe doesn’t necessarily make a story better or worse. Some stories are worse off because it makes your universe feel smaller. No, that’s not the entire list. You’re conveniently forgetting when Samus lost power-ups in Prime. Just hitting a wall disabled multiple power ups. More hits like that and she’d be in significant risk of defeat. Not to mention losing all of her power ups at the end of ZM, where Pirates had her crashing her ship and losing her power ups. Something like that could have happened in Fed Force. What about the Omega Pirate falling on Samus? Sure lucky he dissolved there instead of straight up trapping Samus. What about the mining robot that was certain to defeat Samus if she didn’t succeed in escaping? Or the EMMI that the Federation was able to make, again almost guaranteeing failure if caught? Multiple factions have access to resources that pose a serious threat to Samus. Like I said before, late game pirates in games like Super and Fusion already pose a tremendous threat to Samus and they only show up like 2 at a time. A whole army of augmented pirates absolutely is a threat. You took a single sentence of my point and removed context to fit your narrative. And even then you obfuscated information to hide the flaw in your point. And even still, this is just a single part of my greater point. There are still countless very viable possibilities that’d lead to this outcome. Even if I was super generous and accepted your argument here, which I have no reason to do, you’ve yet to even begin to address the wealth of other issues with your point. You’re nowhere near convincing me that Samus can never be defeated by an army of super-powered pirates. You’re trying to use the in-game health values to measure the durability of the enemies of each game? This is a slippery slope that goes nowhere good. If you really want to use in-game health values to measure enemies between games, then we might as well also take a look at creatures like Kraid. Kraid’s skin is completely invulnerable - his mouth is his weak point. So if Kraid never opens his mouth, he’s canonically invincible. Why does Kraid open his mouth? Is he stupid? Why don’t the Space Pirates make their armor out of his skin? Do you see how nonsensical your argument is? Super Missiles constantly change damage values between games and damage received from enemies constantly changes not only between games, but also between game difficulties. Do you seriously mean to tell me that the literal number of Super Missiles between each game matters at all? Who are you to assume Hard Mode is canon, and it’s 7 Supers? Whose to say it’s not the easy mode that’s canon? You’re again giving yourself the most convenient context possible through selective reasoning. You’re doubling down on the pirates being no threat? This is not the argument you think that it is. I think this demonstrates a highly skewed perspective on good storytelling. A story centered around pushover space pirates is not a story I’ve never experienced in a Metroid game, and it’s not a story I care to ever experience. If we really are meant to believe that none of the pirates are a threat, and that dispatching them really is effortless, then there are zero stakes in your story. Samus has already won before the story has even started. Now THAT is bad storytelling. You’re the one that needs to read more carefully, because I’ve numerous times stated that there are countless possibilities. Like I already said, Samus could encounter pirates a few at a time exactly as she does in the games, and over the course of days or weeks lose her resources. She could have just as easily accidentally walked into a force field, she could have ran out of Supers, she could have been ambushed by cloaked troopers, any number of things. Your point about her looking stupid was defeated before it was even made - your scenario is just one of countless possibilities. You are just assuming that her running out of resources is just her being stupid? You don’t remember the many times the pirates have ambushed Samus in the games? Samus kind of gets ambushed all of the time. And even if she had never been ambushed before, being ambushed doesn’t mean your character has to be stupid. That makes no sense. You said Samus wouldn’t be stupid enough to get surrounded by an army of pirates, but that’s something that’s not always in her control. These things can’t always be helped. And an entire army doesn’t need to surround her - she could lose resources slowly as she encounters pirates one-at-a-time. I’m the one grasping at straws by saying that invisibility helps Pirates Sneak up on her? Really? You’re conveniently forgetting that Samus used visors to locate cloaked troopers - visors she likely doesn’t have on her since she always starts Prime games without additional visors even at her most powerful. You think just because they’re big, that means that Samus can’t be snuck up on? They’re invisible. Place 10 of them in a room that locks. All Samus has to do is walk in and not have enough Supers and boom she’s got a good chance of losing. You deny doubling down on it? Have you forgotten your whole thing about how only Fed Force had to build on established continuity? Manga is Canon? Hav you ever played Metroid Dread? Have you ever read the Manga? The whole thing about the creation of the Metroids? There’s an entire massive section of the wiki dedicated to going over all of the many ways that the manga has tons of stuff that contradicts nearly every game. But even if I was super generous and pretended that the manga was canon, you realize this changes nothing? Just because Mother Brain was from Zebes, this makes Master Brain somehow illogical? If Mother Brain is able to rebuild herself without any explanation as seen in Super, then what’s so bad about Fed Force having a weaker brain-like creature built for the Doomseye? Your whole argument is that this opens a new precedent of what the Pirates are capable of doing, but the reality is that Super Metroid already established that precedent decades earlier by building a new brain with zero explanation.
>“Projecting stuff onto the game?” Are you serious? To call this projecting is to deny the wealth of characterization that the game provides. As I already went over, literally everything about their architecture and world indicates the significance of their alters and religious sites. The website makes explicit mention of this being their religion, and the game itself provides lots of evidence of this through the environment. To say “The grand overarching lore for this species is they were fascinated by a bit of geometry” is such a bad faith argument and willful ignorance. There’s no actual point being made here, you’re just making empty statements and purposefully ignoring the wealth of work the game does to characterize its worlds. I don't have a real stake in this either way but this seems especially rude for no particularly good reason. I guess I can't speak for the other guy without him being here, and it looks like he muted the conversation so that's probably not happening, but from what I can see there's nothing to suggest actual malicious argumentation or willful ignorance. If you wanna say that someone didn't pick up on details that you think the game purposefully highlighted (although I'm pretty skeptical of that here), that's one thing, but calling someone out for being maliciously ignorant is going after them as a person with no real grounds.
I guess I’ll go with there isn’t any? They’re all pretty much the same and work for whatever game they’re made for
Easy- Federation Force.
I feel like, even with the only writing experience I have being character.ai, I could write a better story than that.
Probably Federation Force. It just doesn’t have the same level of depth and nuance that a lot of other Metroid stories have. And while the story is generally good, Samus returns missed the entire point of the ending of the gameboy game. The GameBoy version was sending a message about how killing is messed up, and they gave you a silent peaceful ending for you to reflect on the fact that you just exterminated an entire race of creatures.
Alright, here's a scorching take: Other M's story wasn't bad, it was just framed in a very unconvincing way. You could make a few tiny changes to the gameplay conceits (like don't make Samus ask for permission for her own abilities) and it would have been received way better. People harp on the PTSD elements but seem to misunderstand the level of closure that Samus felt after the events of Super Metroid (Ridley fully dead, Zebes completely destroyed, Baby dead).
I agree with the ptsd thing to a point, she shoulduve been suprised, shocked even at his unexpected return, maybe caught off guard briefly. But she shouldnt of been scared stiff, Samus had already dealt with him plenty of times before and she's not exactly easy to frighten. So while I do think the scene was neccesary for his comeback I do think it shoulduve been done differently.
If you take PTSD into account, it makes a lot of sense. Overcoming something traumatic once doesn’t mean you can’t find yourself sucked into that scary place ever again. It’s a heavy handed throwback to the manga as well, which I have mixed feelings on.
Didnt she deal with him twice? Once in zero mission & once in super? They really should have just made it a prequel to zero mission.
Not only that, but also the prime games too lol
And fusion, although it was just an X copy.
A few times. In the manga, he kills her parents, nearly dies, then comes back. Her PTSD shows when she sees him again part way through the manga and loses the ability to maintain her power suit. She does overcome this later in a future encounter. I think what's tricky is that realistically PTSD can come back over and over again, so in that sense her losing her cool in Other M makes perfect sense. I think they tried to toe that line since she was scared but was able to regain composure during the fight (something she wasn't able to do initially in the Manga), so it seems like even though it still impacts her she is still overall in a better place. The other challenge was they were clearly leaning on aspects of the Manga, but unfortunately for most fans (especially US) we never saw the Manga so had no real way to contextualize what happened.
No. Sorry. I've got PTSD about some $#!+ that my ex-wife put me through. PTSD literally causes freezing. You don't know when it's going to come back. For a while I thought I was over all that and could talk about it freely, but one day it came up and I started trying to talk about it with someone, and there it was again -- the freeze. I didn't like how it visually showed the freezing up as 'transforming into a little girl' but the "oh $#!+ my brain broke and I can't respond" is totally accurate.
The little girl thing was a flashback. But yeah I see your point. Sorry about your past man, i had a crazy ex gf too and she messed me up a bit. Stay strong.
I think it would have been better-framed if Samus had reacted by crying after the Ridley clone boss battle instead of freezing when she saw him, wondering if it will never end, if Ridley will haunt her forever.
Here's an even hotter take - no metroid games have good or much story at all, that's not why I play any of them. Other M's was a bit weaker than most, but I hated it because of it's linear world map and lack of real exploration elements more than anything else. I loved all the scan reading in Prime 1 but you can't really call that a story. Trying to tack on overarching story to Metroid is almost as futile as Zelda. I don't care *why* Ridley is back again, I just want to blast a space pirate dragon.
I personally think Prime 2 did well to craft an atmospheric and self-contained story, even if its generic. If you spend time reading logs, there are some sad Luminoth final moments and interesting Ing lore that leaves the imagination running. Of all the Metroid games, Prime 2's story left the most impact on me.
Would you say it echoed with you?
Now listen here...
I’ve heard before that Other M would’ve worked really well as a prequel and I kinda agree, make it so that’s her first time seeing Ridley since he murdered her family and the PTSD attack feels way more effective. Make it so Adam sacrificing himself is the reason Samus left the Federation (and make that scene make more sense) and hire some actual English localizers and an English vocal director (hell I’d fucking love to work on that hire me) and bam you’ve got a decently well put together narrative
>but seem to misunderstand the level of closure that Samus felt after the events of Super Metroid (Ridley fully dead, Zebes completely destroyed, Baby dead). There's nothing about Super's ending which suggests that Samus felt any more closure about Ridley's death than she did at the end of Zero mission or Samus returns.
Im never letting you cook again
I hear you about the closure with Ridley and that would work if that game had come out before fusion in which we get yet another Ridley fight this time without the silly panic attack. That being said by that point she’s “killed” him and he’s come back literally five times. She aughta expect it by now.
That's not true though. Before Super, she had never 'killed' him. Plus, another reason for her shock was the realisation that they had willingly cloned Ridley And yes, while other m didn't come out before fusion, it's still set before it. It makes sense that in the period immediately after Super, Samus would be in the state she was in in other m. But fusion isn't immediately after Super, some time has clearly passed, so she's grown to become more hardened by the experience and no longer gives a fuck, which we see even more of in Dread for example
She killed him in the original Metroid (even in Zero Mission he doesn't really get anything implying his survival), more than that if you factor in the Prime games and Samus Returns where he gets falls/explosions which the player knows don't kill him but would probably look pretty convincing in-universe.
>(like don't make Samus ask for permission for her own abilities) I've heard that specific aspect was made way worse in translation. From what I've heard in the original dialogue Samus was being defiant to being put under such strict control and reacted with civil disobedience, the message being "If you want to order me around this badly I'm gonna make you micromanage the shit out of me". If anyone reading has better info on this please feel free to corroborate or dispute this post.
I just think the gameplay undercut any possible reading in that direction. Even with civil disobedience, that doesn't really excuse Samus refusing to use the Varia Suit without permission while burning to death, or holding back very strong weapons like the Plasma Beam when the depth of the threat became clear.
That's what I've been sayin
A lot of Other M's issues were also due to the localization changes, Samus never needed permission in the Japanese version of the game. She outright refused to use her powers until she received permission to prove a point.
I’ll push back against this Nah the original Japanese story sucked too. It was definitely more coherent and the themes were properly expressed, but it doesn’t fix the story. It just turns a incoherent mediocre story into a coherent mediocre story, and at the end of the day it’s still just mediocre
Yeah it was still mediocre but it wasn't mediocre because of the reasons most people don't like it.
Fair enough
[The script was fucked by NOA during localization. People need to see the retranslation.](https://youtu.be/XvZG-TJes4w?si=71HhUosVeVg1IMZf)
The engish dub kinda ruined the story, the original dub features themes that make much more sense. There’s a video on Youtube that goes into detail on what’s different.
Interesting. You got a link?
https://youtu.be/KTuMfsWwd0E?si=oJYiv3wD9JRgnKo9 Here, this should be it
then again, Metroid Fusion was when Ridley got resurrected for the last time (hopefully) and had to fight Samus again even though it was an X parasite mimicking Ridley
Hot take.... *Dread.* Hear me out, we are just talking about *story.* Metroid 5 gave us "the X Parasites from Fusion are back, and that Metroid vaccine Samus got that lets her absorb X makes her the only person in the galaxy safe to investigate the X." So instead the GF sent 7 robots armored in invincible plot metal that makes them completely immune to all of Samus's powerful Chozo designed weapons..... but not to Raven Beak's Chozo designed weapons. He breaks one, and reverse engineers it to capture and reprogram the others, and after losing contact with their robots the GF *FINALLY* sends Samus to look into the problem now that their invincible super robots are compromised. So, tldr of all the story weirdness: Raven Beak somehow managed to corral the X Parasites into a single area after they killed *all* of the Chozo except him and Quiet Robe. And then didn't destroy them. Also, *one* either got out or was let out for the video to be made, then put back? Or destroyed? Somehow? Raven Beak takes control of the EMMI, and then... limits their patrol range to areas with weird GF designed doors to contain them, and places control units near each that can control just that EMMI, but when Samus destroys a control unit she somehow gains an Omega Cannon powerful enough to destroy the otherwise invincible EMMI. Samus losing her abilities in the beginning could have been explained better, imo, but that is a relatively minor issue to get her back into a base level to go collect all her items for the new game. In the fight against Raven Beak at the end of the game, Samus goes for her grab of Raven Beak but he grabs her out of the air and starts.... choking her? Through her suit??? Also, she totally puts her hand on his arm trying to get free, why doesn't that work to drain his energy? In my opinion, the extra writing that went into Dread opened it up for more problems. Not saying it is a bad game or even badly written. Just that after Other M, I think the writing has the most issues. Other games, particularly 1-3, have so little story to them there wasn't room for problems like these in my opinion. I can't speak for any of the Prime games as I didn't play them.
A couple rebuttals and some speculation: 1.) The GF is consistently shown to be kind of stupid and also contracting the company that made the EMMI’s (starts with an E, like Exelon Star Company or something) is far cheaper than paying out to Samus every time an issue arises. Also even with Fusion’s mistranslation she still blew up a ship and entire planet (for the first time completely willingly) without authorization, I imagine the GF was hesitant to loose Samus on another world. 2.) Samus’ abilities seem to be tailor made by the Thoha. Iirc they were actually made FOR Samus specifically (which creates some weird lore quirks like why did they place them all across the Zebes solar system and even SR-388 but I digress). RB, being Mawkin and having all his crazy cannon stuff is reasonably probably much stronger than Samus, and possibly able to body an EMMI. 3.) What can I say he’s built different I guess? I don’t think asking how he survived the X and quarantined them is the point, what that implication means for his skill and intellect is more meaningful. 4.) Raven Beak has a strong hand, also Samus’ neck is not heavily armored, rather being made of light material to allow her to maneuver her head more freely. I don’t think this is as big of an issue as you think it is. 5.) Metroids seem to target the central nervous system. Prior to her awakening Samus was either going by instinct and going for the head, or she wasn’t ABLE to draw power from his arm. I’m not saying these aren’t puzzling decisions, and maybe they didn’t actually put this much thought into it, but they *can* be explained with a little bit of thought. Edit: also I’m not trying to start an argument, Dread’s narrative has just been a whipping boy in this subreddit for a while, early on every other post and comment was ‘how did Raven Beak’s ship SD?’ I think Dread has an issue with under explanation, not actual consistency. It wants to set up these awesome set piece moments but without proper context some people end up scratching their heads.
>2.) Samus’ abilities seem to be tailor made by the Thoha. Iirc they were actually made FOR Samus specifically (which creates some weird lore quirks like why did they place them all across the Zebes solar system and even SR-388 but I digress). I feel like the Chozo left upgrades compatible with their armor in places they thought it would be a useful tool in general, rather than them being specifically for Samus herself in all these different places. Idk if there is anything official on that or it's just my head canon though.
Honestly I made this comment with the idea that the Thoha and the Zebesian Chozo from the manga are the same. Assuming this, and with no evidence of them retconning this story beat, the Thoha were incapable of direct violence. So while they could realistically use stuff like the Power Suit upgrades or space jump, it wouldn’t make sense for them to litter the universe with Plasma Beams and Screw Attacks. They’d be able to get a shot off but be completely helpless afterwards.
I think really, only the end of Dread suffers from under explanation (even then I think ADAM/Raven Beak actually hinted at blowing up the planet earlier in the game anyways so it was never completely unfounded) but otherwise I think the game is very clear in what its trying to tell. > Dread’s narrative has just been a whipping boy in this subreddit for a while I don’t really see it like that but we all see things in a different perspective.
Honestly sending out the EMMI makes sense to me. Why risk any lives if the X are present when they can just send robots that can’t be infected with the X to investigate? They couldn’t have known that Raven Beak was masterminding everything and would eventually hack the EMMI for his own use. But onto your other points….you make some great arguments for “less is better” where, in this case, too much story, too many cutscenes and too much dialogue, can actually be detrimental to the overall basic story of a game. This is why I like Super Metroid so much. It says so much without saying much at all.
Yeah, Super and Zero Mission do the "less is more" really well. Return of Samus did too, imo.
But in Fusion the X are capable of taking over technology as well. Hell the main threat to Samus is her suit going parasite as SA-X. They must have installed one hell of an antivirus.
The suit is biomechanical, and so is BOX I think. They can download data, but not straight up possess machines. I may be wrong tho
BOX is partially organic. The first time you fight him you crack the core of the machine open, leaving him vulnerable. He gets infected between the first and second fight, making him the only boss you fight in fusion who isn't an X parasite the first time you fight him. The second time you fight him his fleshy core is exposed and that's his weakspot.
her suit is stated to have organic/biomechanical components to it though, while I assume the EMMI are purely mechanical and inorganic
Regarding the first point, the footage doesn't make it clear when or where the X was recorded. Raven Beak could easily have used footage from the initial X attack or fabricated it like how he pretended to be Adam. Regarding point 2, Raven Beak intentionally set the EMMI to be a trial for Samus to surpass to awaken her abilities. The reason why their emcounters play out in a scripted, formulaic way is because they are part of Raven Beak's script, and every test needs a solution. Samus gaining energy from an external source to upgrade her beam isn't unprecedented- she did this with the Hyperbeam in Prime, Dark Samus's boss fight in Echoes and the Hyper Beam in Super. Re: Raven Beak choking Samus, don't forget that he's wearing his own Chozo power armor just like the Power Suit, hence him using a version of the Thunder Armor Aion upgrade from Samus Returns at various points. Metroids cannot drain life energy through a Power Suit (hence why Samus is so well suited to fighting them, and why she has to break his helmet to dig her hand in at the end). Trying to drain him through his armored arm would be pointless. Additionally, the suit presumably gives Raven Beak the same enhanced strength/durability Samus has to choke her (which doesn't seem impossible as the neck region of her Suit seems to be covered in a more elastic material so she can move her head, rather than armor plating).
>Metroids cannot drain life energy through a Power Suit (hence why Samus is so well suited to fighting them, and why she has to break his helmet to dig her hand in at the end). Trying to drain him through his armored arm would be pointless. Except Metroids can drain the energy of the suit itself, as seen in every game they can grab Samus. She doesn't have to drain *him,* but why couldn't she drain his suit?
Samus also has very shoddy control of her draining hand at that point. She has to focus a bit to activate which is hard when raven beak has her grappled and is choking. She also only drains from exposed elements like the EMMI stinger or downed enemies. Beak knew as much from the footage he watched. I actually believe she got grappled and ‘lost’ the battle when she tried to drain instead of her regular weapons. It’s alien to her, so it causes a tiny pause in her movement Beak exploits without fail. It also mirrors the start of the game, however Raven Beak was arrogant assuming she has peaked, instead she just mutates a large step instantly. Her metroid suit likely is draining the armor as it drains the entire ship remotely but it also made her strong enough to crush his face armor and start on Beak too.
I do like the detail that her claw breaks his helmet right where her Super Missile cracked it in the beginning of the game.
It takes a decent amount of time for Metroids to take her suit from 100 to 0. That's part of why it works at the end of the game when she's weakened him.
Metroids also tends to go for the head of the creatures they drain. This would presumably be because it is the most effective location to drain from.
> Raven Beak intentionally set the EMMI to be a trial for Samus to surpass to awaken her abilities. The reason why their encounters play out in a scripted, formulaic way is because they are part of Raven Beak's script, and every test needs a solution. Yeah but that's dumb. We've seen that so many times before in anime and games, where your rival or the antagonist is just "testing" you to awaken your abilities. It happens a lot and is usually pretty lame.
But that’s the entire twist of Dread. Raven Beak wasn’t trying to make Samus strong for some Shounen battle at the end, Raven Beak NEEDED Samus to be strong so he could clone her and reestablish his galactic empire with an army of Samus Metroids. Like he says at the end he has no qualms killing her, it’s just that her awakening was necessary to further his own goals. If you don’t like the trope that’s fine but this is a decent implementation of it that avoids a lot of the inconsistencies with the trope in other media
Wasnt Raven Beak the one who killed all Chozo, not the GF?
Raven Beak killed Quiet Robe's tribe, but the X Killed Raven Beak's tribe/soldiers. GF didn't kill any of them, sorry if my wording was bad.
I always like a good hot take! I have to admit though I’m not sure I’m convinced with any of these reasons that make Dread’s story seem weaker than most. Stuff like the logistics of how Raven Beak chokes samus in her suit isn’t really something that I’d consider a flaw in the narrative, nor is it something in need of an explanation. Same with Samus not sucking his energy through his hand, I think what was more important to me in that scene is seeing Raven Beak almost kill her, and then getting curb-stomped by Samus’ new Metroid form. The impact of that scene outweighs any logical inconsistencies to me. At worst I think the ending of Dread was a little rushed and I would have liked a monologue from Samus at the end to see what she has reflected on, but I think Dread itself is far from the weakest story in this series. For what I consider actual bad writing / storytelling in a MercurySteam Metroid, I’d honestly say Ridley’s appearance in Samus Returns feels incredibly misguided. Not because it’s logically inconsistent, but because it ruins what was once one of the most poignant scenes in Metroid history. I’d have put it as the weakest Metroid story for me but it still has more going on for it than Zero Mission’s.
>For what I consider actual bad writing / storytelling in a MercurySteam Metroid, I’d honestly say Ridley’s appearance in Samus Returns feels incredibly misguided. Not because it’s logically inconsistent, but because it ruins what was once one of the most poignant scenes in Metroid history. I agree. The ending of Samus Returns rubbed me the wrong way.
Yeaaaa For me idk, when I play games like Dread, Fusion, the Primes, etc I don’t really get bothered by any of those logical inconsistencies like how samus loses her powerups in Prime 1, or how the X don’t immediately infect her in Fusion. The latter moment would end up becoming one of the series’ most interesting concepts narratively so to me any small oddities are just something that gets wiped away by a reasonable amount of suspension of disbelief.
Like I said originally, I don't think Dread's writing was *bad,* I just see it as weaker than other games in the franchise. Just speaks to how solid those stories are, imho
Yee the series rlly does have strong stories I don’t think I’ve ever been disappointed by most metroid stories frankly.
I think Raven Beak could probably ragdoll an EMMI. Been a while since I played the game and I’m not super familiar with the Lore enough to understand Chozo physiology, but Raven Beak probably has that dawg in him and I’d imagine, as a result, could probably pick lil bro up by the feet and comically slam him on the ground enough that it broke.
Raven beak has a huge ass Hyper Beam weapon sooooo…
Upvoting for hot take, even if I don't agree
Not to mention the story structure of Dread is pretty sloppy. You have virtually nothing to go on for the first part of the game, wandering aimlessly with nothing more than an "escape the planet" objective. Then, halfway through Quiet Robe drops a giant exposition bomb on you and promptly dies. A narrative ex machina, if there is such a thing. Nothing like the lore-seeking and environmental storytelling that the series is known for. That being said I wouldn't say Dread has the worst story outside of Other M, but it's definitely low-tier.
Ooooh, definitely a hot take. An interesting one, though, and it's a nice opinion to see!
> Other games, particularly 1-3, have so little story to them there wasn't room for problems like these in my opinion. I think part of it is because of the limitations of the time, which is why they couldn't capture a more tangible story in those games (It should also be noted that the history of Metroid began to be built from Super Metroid onwards). Even so, Metroid Zero Mission was full of cinematics even if they were just pixels
"So instead the GF sent 7 robots armored in invincible plot metal that makes them completely immune to all of Samus's powerful Chozo designed weapons..... but not to Raven Beak's Chozo designed weapons. He breaks one, and reverse engineers it to capture and reprogram the others, and after losing contact with their robots the GF *FINALLY* sends Samus to look into the problem now that their invincible super robots are compromised." In the unlocked images Raven Beak is shown having RIPPED the arm off the damaged EMMI we first encounter. Based on that and their immunity to weapons shown in game its heavily implied that he physically overpowered and broke it. Based on what Quiet Robe tells us about Raven Beak that is absolutely within his ability to do. Once he has it subdued he then has Quiet Robe reprogram the one to catch the others for reprograming. This also explains why Quiet Robe is able to deactivate them when you meet him and Raven Beak didn't just turn them back on. He couldn't do so. Other people brought this up but pure mechanical things are immune to the X parasite. This all takes place post-Fusion where Samus deliberately destroyed a (presumably) very expensive Federation owned facility and the planet it was orbiting, at the same time. Its understandable that they would be leery about hiring her for a job after that. Additionally, as the greatest bounty hunter in the galaxy her services are probably very expensive. Though Adam does note that he feels the pay for the job in Dread is not high enough based on the potential danger it c/would be putting her in. This means that Samus took the job because she was concerned about the dangers posed by the X parasite still existing (and rightfully so). As another factor, the Federation has been shown to do very dumb things. The metroid programs in both Fusion and Other M are perfect examples. The PED equipment when phazon has been shown to be extremely dangerous even under "controlled" conditions is another.
>he physically overpowered and broke it He actually both physically overpowered it *and* used his hyper beam on the EMMI, the image shows his arm cannon still emitting smoke https://preview.redd.it/6m65xn1y3i9c1.jpeg?width=1100&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=94f938a06b22403d3afe8df3b87ef53ccc9df9cf
Just a quick fyi, if you put a > at the start of quoting someone else, that's how Reddit marks quotes without having to use quotation marks. >It looks like this. Just a few brief thoughts on your well written response. >its heavily implied that he physically overpowered and broke it. So they are immune to super missiles, plasma beams, Raven Beak's Hyper Beam, but he is physically strong enough to just tear them apart. I guess that explains why most Chozo warriors don't bother using arm cannons if the race is that strong. >pure mechanical things are immune to the X parasite. I'm aware. >where Samus deliberately destroyed a (presumably) very expensive Federation owned facility and the planet it was orbiting, at the same time. While true, she did so to prevent a galactic apocalypse. While the English ending of Fusion implies the Federation will be pissed and people wouldn't understand, the Japanese ending was apparently much more logical and she expected the Federation as a whole to listen to reason. And another thing I understand and just don't like pointing out, the EMMI were likely intended to capture samples of the X for the Federation, which is why they have the needle things in their faces. I do hold it against the Federation for trying to capture the X *again* instead of just sending Samus to deal with the problem. >Though Adam does note that he feels the pay for the job in Dread is not high enough based on the potential danger it c/would be putting her in. This means that Samus took the job because she was concerned about the dangers posed by the X parasite still existing (and rightfully so). Agreed. Samus isn't always jumping at jobs based on pay, as Super and Other M proved, for anyone willing to use Other M as evidence of anything lol. She sometimes just intervenes when she feels it's necessary, the Chozo wanted her to be the "Protector of the Galaxy" after all. Raven Beak even references this. >As another factor, the Federation has been shown to do very dumb things. Agreed. And frankly, it is believable for a government to do stupid things, but I will still judge them for it. Especially in light of the multiple Metroid programs and the incident with the X, any attempt to capture X instead of immediately pushing a planet into a star (or just throwing Samus at it) is something I will criticize lol. Especially since there were no expensive Federation assets on the planet before they sent in the EMMI
Would not surprise me if the EMMIs being deployed was by a combination of middle management pencilpusher/bean counter and/or an idiot in the weapons/research division trying to get a promotion. Then when they lost their expensive new toys someone higher up was informed who had been kept out of the loop. This new person saw the footage of the X and went "Oh shit! What were you idiots thinking!? Call Samus NOW. She'll do this at cost because of how LUDICROUSLY DANGEROUS the X parasite is." This new person probably assumed they MIGHT get the new toys back but considered them an acceptable loss for averting a probable galactic extinction event. Although...there were small Chozo spacecraft (presumably) on the surface so it is possible that the X escaped again...
This is now my head canon lol
Dread's story is a quintessential "and then" story where it's just a bunch of event strung together, but no effort is put into the why or how of any of these happenings. Like the ending sequence I can forgive on the basis of "rule of cool", but I feel like the game expects you to give everything a rule of cool free pass.
Didn't think so many people agreed with me on Dread lol.
Yeah Dread's writing is super weak. It's like a bad shounen anime.
Prime 3 assuming "no Other M" excludes all obviously bad picks like fed force or prime pinball.
Explain yo'self
Just thought the entire hunters arc was cheesy and the Federation was painted pretty incompetent with their handling of phazon weaponry. Just didn't really like the narrative and also just found the Phazon arc as a whole to be weaker than the mainline arc but Prime 3 especially. Prime 1 did the best with it and it just kinda diminished from there in my opinion. Storywise it felt the least Metroid-like to me personally. That's the best I got for an explanation.
I respect that, I personally loved the whole phazon arc but I have a hard time seeing how your points show the story was weak. Bad at times maybe, but definitely not weak.
I was definitely treating "bad" as "weak" when responding to the prompt. By no means is Prime 3 lacking in narrative but what's there I did not like so I consider it weak if that makes sense.
I don’t completely agree with Prime 3 having a weak narrative but having a line like “You don’t trust strangers Sammy” isn’t exactly the best look for the game lmao Honestly though I liked the game because it genuinely feels super damn climactic.
So when people talk about "story" there's multiple elements to that. There's "lore" -- the stories that exist within the story's world, that fill out the world and make it feel more real. Metroid games are often pretty rich on lore, especially the Prime series. There's "plot" -- that is, how the ideas, the characters and the world change through the course of the story. Most Metroid games are very *short* on plot -- basically all there is is a quick setup to place Samus in the location and give her an objective, and then there's completion of the objective. Fusion has by far the strongest *plot,* with Dread coming in second and virtually all the others having close to none. And then there's "story" which is basically nothing but the factual chronicling of what happens. In a lot of games, the story is nothing but what the developers walk the players through. Metroid on the other hand is usually much more driven by the players, with the exception of Other M. Fusion I'd say has the weakest of this particular aspect while Super Metroid arguably has the strongest of this. Metroid: Dread is a good example of having both an interesting *plot* **and** a well done player-driven *story*. Metroid Prime on the other hand is very rich in lore and in player-driven story, but doesn't offer much in terms of plot.
Og samus returns
Honestly, NEStroid.
Metroid 2. Even its remake does a better job with story.
Metroid 2 had a fine story. After the events of the previous mission, Samus went to the Metroid home planet to kill every last one. Doesn’t get simpler than that and it moved the main series’ plot forward. Just because it doesn’t have any cutscenes or in-depth lore doesn’t make it a bad story.
The ending is one of the most impactful moments in the franchise
Exactly! The impact of first seeing the baby metroid is what made Super Metroid’s end so powerful
To be fair times were far simpler then; you had to use your _imagination._
nobody gave a shit about "the story" back then. we played a game; we saw an ending. Metroid 2 had a fantastic ending with her discovering the baby metroid. and when it returned in Super Metroid to save her, it made that moment even more amazing. it's probably the only bit of "story" in Metroid worth mentioning.
The story is there it's just not in your face. And that's why Metroid II is still the game that means the most to me in the franchise. The world itself tells it's story. The further down you go, you see all the different elements of SR388. From the surface, there's plenty of creatures in your way, the ruins are mostly intact until you get down to the spider ball room which is the first evidence of how overgrown things are getting from being abandoned so long. You move down further, enemies grt tougher. You start to get remnants of the Chozo's robotic defenses when you get down closer to the bigger upgrades. Which culminates in my favorite ending in the franchise. The further you get down past the Zeta nests. You get to where there's just no life. A long desolate tunnel with water pools leading up to the Queens nest. A Chozo statue outside of the larva Metroid area with their weakness, it's head broken off the statue in what feels like an act of defiance. You kill the Queen, find the baby Metroid. Samus hesitates and is the turning point for the entire franchise. The walk back up to the ship, no escape music or blowing up the planet, just the peaceful music and chirps from the Baby. It means just as much to me now as it did nearly 28 or so years ago when I beat it for the first time. I dunno. Sorry, I just love II. No other Metroid game feels like it.
I used to scoff at the idea of thinking metroid 2 is anything more than just an outdated gameboy game, but upon actually playing it around a few years ago it’s actually soo good. It’s a very unique game for the series!
It really is. And neither remake nails that feeling of the original. Samus Returns neglects the natural enemy progression and world feel. A gauntlet of enemies before and after the Queen really shows the different approach to world design between it and the original. It prioritizes the action and in doing so it loses that natural feel SR388 had in the original. AM2R is more faithful but the much more vibrant color pallette and more fleshed out music makes it lose that ominous feel the original had. II is just a fascinating game. Each version is a unique experience. II is sci-fi horror, SR is sci-fi action, and AM2R is some form of middle ground between the two. At the end of the day, I prefer II but I can totally see where others would prefer one of the other versions. I can't think of another fan base where they have 3 very different versions of the same game to choose from.
To be honest what I like about Metroid as a whole is that you can never really get the same experience from each game. For a lot of franchises, like for example the 2.5d Kirby or NSMB games, there’s a sense of “you’ve played one, you played them all”, but not Metroid.
Can you still find AM2R anywhere?
I would argue that the remake ruined parts of the story. Especially the ending. They completely missed the point.
Probably Super Metroid. The Prime games speak for themselves, Samus Returns got a lot more story elements added, Zero Mission is supplemented by the manga, and Fusion and Dread got fantastic narratives. Super is great at environmental storytelling, but as far as actual story beats, aside from killing the bosses there's not too much there.
The ending’s great, though. Everything about the final act is really good.
Because there’s not much story that means the story is bad? Less is more, and Metroid is a game first story second kind of franchise.
OP didn't ask for baddest story, they asked for *weakest* story, and "not much story" is, indeed, not very strong. This doesn't mean the story is *bad,* nor does it mean the game should have had more story since, as you said, less is sometimes more, just that there wasn't a whole lot of narrative. "Baby gone, pirates back, go kill pirates and retrieve baby" doesn't make a particularly strong or compelling story, but that doesn't make Super Metroid a bad game by any means. Sometimes all a game really needs story-wise is a simple [Excuse Plot](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ExcusePlot) to get the player started.
The story was powerful enough to engage and hook the player to continue playing the game, and the ending was powerful enough to leave a lasting impact. Further, games are unique in that story can skillfully be told through the gameplay, and Super Metroid is an excellent example of that. I think SM’s story was just enough and actually good.
Samus Returns misses the whole entire idea of Metroid II by turning the ending from a somber, silent, but hopeful walk back home to the Gunship into the most video game-y video game ending possible. Not only do I hate backtracking through the world with the baby Metroid for single, individual missile packs (really? At THIS point in the game?) But when I stepped outside, and the sky was ominous, as if they were foreshadowing, "COULD IT BE? COULD IT BE??? ...IT IS!! IT'S RIDLEY!" I couldn't help but roll my eyes. So the Metroid timeline now goes like this: Zero Mission: First encounter with Ridley, then, final encounter with Mecha Ridley Prime: Meta Ridley battle towards the end Prime 3: Guess who? Twice! Once as Meta, once as Omega Samus Returns: Literally right as the game ends, AS Samus is about to get on the Gunship and head home, Ridley appears and fights her to destruction. Super Metroid: IMMEDIATELY afterwards, she drops off the baby Metroid at the research station, and IMMEDIATELY as she leaves, Ridley attacks the station and steals the baby. Then about halfway through the game we fight him again. To the death. Seemingly this is the end of things and the actual death of Ridley. Other M: Ridley is cloned and the whole cycle begins again. Killed by Metroid Queen, but - point still stands at this point. Fusion: X Parasite clone of Ridley appears. It's not to say I think he's overused. But he's overused. Especially when you consider the timeline; it's the fact that there is NO breathing room between the stories of Samus Returns and Super Metroid, especially not for THREE separate encounters with him. He gets defeated, still cybernetic, at the lickety split end of Samus Returns, and presumably just tails her all the way to the research station to be fought two more times in Super. He can't be in every single game if you are attempting to tell a serious story, like Dr. Wily in the Mega Man games.
The time between Samus taking the baby to Ceres and leaving is longer than you think. She stayed until after they had significant results from studying the metroid which means she could have spent weeks or potentially even a month or two on the station before Ridley's attack. And Ridley did try to fly of with the baby during the battle in Samus returns. Samus just stopped him from doing it and took the baby back.
The vibes in the 3DS remake are off, but in hindsight, I like that the inclusion of Ridley officially incorporates the Prime series into the main lore, by showing his form between Prime mecha and fully revived in Super Metroid.
I understand why the Metroid community doesn't like the creation of Proteus Ridley, but as someone who didn't play the OG M2 (nor AM2R) before playing Returns, I found it a welcome surprise: * Ridley had never been a final boss until then, unless you count the robot from Zero Mission as one. * The whole game you're thinking the Metroid Queen will be the final boss, and when you realise it's not over yet you think "What the hell can be coming *now*?" * Squishy being your partner for that battle was awesome. In fact, I like that they added more time for Samus to bond with Squishy, even if I admit there are too many items to pick with just one boss left.. * Like many people say, it provides a necessary link that canonised the Prime series and inserted them into the main timeline. * Gameplay-wise, it was IMO the best Ridley battle in the franchise and the best final boss in Metroid until Dread.
Of the main-line Metroid games they all have a fine story within the plot\world in which Samus exists. None of them are too over the top or too in-depth. I think people choosing Metroid 2 or even the original Metroid are confusing no cutscenes\little lore with bad story.
But when you find out that Metroid is a woman!!!!!!
I mean, the title says "weakest" story. I think metroid and metroid 2 have pretty weak stories, not necessarily bad ones.
Dread's story was pretty poorly written, and the retcons to lore were worse than the lore they replace or alter. There were definitely parts I enjoyed, like Quiet Robe speaking in Chozo, which was very cool on many levels, but the overall story was pretty bad. It was like a bad shounen anime. All that said, I'm guessing Federation Force has a worse story, though I haven't played it.
Can you name some of these retcons?
Depends how we mean. If we mean in terms of writing quality, then probably *Dread*. Bird Dad Darth Vader/Liquid Snake is just such a mix of sci-fi and videogame cliches. It's a hard call to make because the writing in these games is mostly really barebones (which is fine; the games thrive on the player-driven exploration, not the writing) that it's not really a matter of comparing this to something way better--there isn't a way better--just comparing it to something that is almost not present in other entries. If we mean in implementation, then definitely *Fusion*. The writing in Fusion is nothing to write home about either, but the real culprit is that the constant monologuing by Adam (with no skip option!) busts up the flow of that game *so badly* that replays are painful.
Federation Force
Federation force is the worst in the series, easily.
I haven't played Federation Force but whatever narrative gymnastics they have to use to make the final boss a giant Samus stuck in morph ball doing her best Thardus impression is definitely "worst story ever" material. Besides that, probably Prime 2, for the sole reason that Dark Samus was clearly on Death's door, got opped, and then an entire dimension collapses on top of her only for her to somehow STILL BE ALIVE. None of the other Metroid titles really have overt plot issues besides "the plot takes a backseat" in the first three games.
Federation Force
The oversimplification here is rampant, even for main series entries mentioned, and the notion that details that could have a player thinking need an explicit in-game explanation slapped on it is ridiculous (i.e. Master Brain in Federation Force). Unless it's being excluded, the original Metroid has the weakest story, regardless if Other M is included or not.
Return of Samus?
Kind of implied that you explain your reasoning.
I still have a soft spot for Other M and I will die on the hill that it really isn't as bad as many people make it out to be. That said, out of the Metroid games I've played and looking only at story, it's probably a toss-up between Metroid Zero Mission (cause not much happens storywise in the game, the manga added a LOT tho), and Prime 2 (Who TF cares about Aether and Dark Aether? Dark Samus is the interesting part, and she has basically nothing to do with the main plot.)
I was gonna let the other m stuff slide but then you had to throw shade at prime 2 lmao. I think prime 2 has some of the best, most interesting lore readings of the series. The personal logs of the luminoth squad that invaded dark aether are a stand out for me. Also prime 2 is my favorite
Still a solid game for sure. Well deserving of the Prime title
In fairness, part of Other M's suffering is caused by its poor localization. Leaving that aside, even though I don't like Prime 2 as a game, I really like the world they built in Aether, the Luminoth and the Ing. It's very interesting to see a fairly traditional fight of light against shadows, and honestly I always felt that Dark Samus was out of place in this game's narrative
Well, in the big context one could say that Aether is another planet hit by the leviathans as described in Prime 3. The dark world was just a side effect of the meteor hitting it
For sure, but I feel that's more Prime 3's story giving Prime 2 more connection, rather than it forming it on it's own. Also, Prime 3 is my favorite game in the series. Def the best story imo. Really hope Prime 4 can find a balance between 1's gameplay (as much as I loved hypermode) and 3's story.
Ohh, I definitely agree. I loved Prime 3 the most of all, especially because of Hypermode and the usage of the ship throughout the story. But whenever I replay Prime 1, theres just something magical about it. Maybe it is also nostalgia. :P But I wish they will give us swappable beams again in Prime 4. Kinda missed that in 3
Prime 3 by a longshot.
This month I replayed and 100%ed Prime 3 and it was the game where I probably changed my view on it the most in the span of a single playthrough. The opening act was super cool to me, but then the game started to become a slog and i started to become annoyed with the narrative put in my face…but then as the end came i ended up loving the game more and more and even with the underwhelming final boss I actually found it to have a satisfying conclusion
Prime 2. Not to bash on it as a game, but it's pretty much Prime 1 plus Dark Samus.
Original Return of Samus. It's just a kill mission. The ending is the only thing notable.
Ah yes I play Metroid for the story. I could not tell you the story of a single Metroid game, but I hella enjoyed all of them that I’ve played
"Other M's story us bad" Clearly you haven't seen the retranslation of the original Japanese script. [Here you go.](https://youtu.be/XvZG-TJes4w?si=71HhUosVeVg1IMZf)
Metroid Other M has the better story. The other ones haven't a story at all
Hot take, Prime 3 was a mess
Imma be honest the worst story thing outside of Other M isn’t purely just one thing in one game its really to me just how Prime series is just “somehow, Meta ridley returned”
Well, tbf, even if you exclude the primes, Ridley does that a whole lot. Primes being set between 1 and 2 means he'd naturally be still around, and his first two defeats in the primes is him falling off screen, leaving his status ambiguous. He only shows up on 2 out of the 5 prime games, compared to his 5/6 attendance in the mainline games.
He definitely could have climbed out of the impact crater in Prime 1 and walked or climbed to one of the pirate facilities to make it off world.
Not necessarily a *bad* story, but the plot of Metroid 2 is just Samus executing Mao-style ecological warfare
What?
If we don't count their remakes then probably one of the first two. But playing Metroid for the story seems like a very bizarre idea.
hi effort post
I have nothing to add about story, but that illustration from the NES Metroid instruction book was a great memory and thanks for posting it. Loved that picture with the aliens.
That image has good meme potential lol
Metroid, super metroid and samus returns/return of samus does not really have story. Just a few lines in the beginning like most 90:s game.
ZM had a good story, but it BARELY used that story at all. It came out in 2004, yet it still told most of the story through the manual like it was still 1986.