#my first time to draw fusion ending samus

[limitiz-nk]

Fusion

[ghoultyrant]

Other M: Less Terrible Than I Thought

So I recently stumbled across a video digging into Metroid: Other M's localization, which argues that the localization is a strong part of Other M's issues; that the original Japanese has nuance that is lost in the official translation, and the localization straight-up inserts problematic changes and whatnot.

And... they make a pretty good case on this topic, more so than I was expecting at the start of the video. Particularly striking to me was actually the video touching on Phantoon, who came across to me as a plotless bonus boss you weren't supposed to think too hard about, but actually the Japanese manual for Super Metroid has a bit where it asserts that Phantoon is Mother Brain's 'consciousness' in physical form. (Which I've actually read elsewhere years ago, though I'd forgotten before watching this video) So... a Mother Brain variant dies over the course of Other M's plot, and along comes a Phantoon variant. That's actually a very sensible easter egg! Too bad being able to make sense of it relies on a detail that official translation excised. Oops.

A similar point is the 'hell run'; in the official localization, we end up with... well, this:

Whereas the video argues that the original intention is actually the player-as-Samus being led to deliberately subvert the spirit of Adam's orders: that he says basically "Restrict your search to places appropriately accessible with already-authorized upgrades", and then Samus/the player stays to the letter of this order (You can access the lava zone without the Varia Suit active, it's just a self-destructive idea) while violating the spirit of it. (Adam pretty obviously means "places that are reasonable to explore with your current kit")

Which... I actually buy? For starters, Fusion has pretty directly comparable elements, where eg the Diffusion Missile data gets sent, but the Federation has decided Samus is doing too good a job of killing things so they want to avoid her powering up enough to be able to kill their precious bioweapons so Adam doesn't mention it. And then the gameplay absolutely demands you collect it, at which point AI Adam tries to play it off like he has no idea what happened there. Fusion's story involves Samus increasingly getting, in-universe, 'off the rails' while her handler and their bosses are trying harder to keep her on the rails.

Alternatively, I could draw a comparison to Zero Mission, which has a standard Metroid linear route you're expected to take your first time, and then deliberately constructs all kinds of sequence breaks and item skips that an experienced player can figure out, emulating the kind of thing people have been doing in Super Metroid and Metroid Prime and so on for years. In particular, I'm thinking of the aspect where eg Metroid Prime's successive versions actively tried to close off such tricks, while players kept looking for (and finding) new ways to subvert the game's intended route, vs Zero Mission embraced players working to subvert the intended route. Samus 'sequence breaking' in the narrative and performing exactly the kind of 'hell run' sequence breakers do in other Metroid games is... very meta-appropriate in a way consistent with Zero Mission's handling.

In turn, this video led to me watching an alternate sub of Other M's 'movie mode' where this take on the translation is the basis, and... Other M's story does work better this way. I was surprised at how regularly stuff I found inane in its handling was due to the localization's handling: that for example I always found Furby-Ridley flagrantly suspicious to an eyeroll-worthy extent, and it turns out that's not 'the creators inexplicably expected you to be caught off guard when it turns out to be a threat' but rather is 'Samus herself is sure this thing is probably hostile/dangerous/suspicious'.

There's also a number of subtle implications that went over my head originally where I'm not sure how much of that is 'the localization directly butchered things such that it was hidden' vs how much is 'I was too busy reeling at the latest botched writing to be in the space for recognizing implications': that for example this time I caught that the narrative implies but does not actually spell out explicitly that Actual Madeline sicced the Metroid Queen on the traitor when said traitor came for her. (By a similar token, I caught this time that Melissa-pretending-to-be-Madeline fails to react to "Hi, I'm Samus Aran" while Actual Madeline is reassured that Samus is thus not one of the conspirators here to kill her: this makes sense! Melissa is an AI that's lived for, what, a couple years? On an isolated space station. Madeline is a regular human with a full life experience, so presumably she's heard of The Famous Samus Aran where Melissa might not have)

This isn't to suggest Other M has no problems in the original writing. The most glaring two are of course...

... the sheer indefensibility of this encounter in particular being the one where Ridley's appearance causes Samus to break down. The video tries to argue the game tries to justify this in a way that got lost in localization, and while I don't think that's untrue, in the end I don't think it matters much: this was a busted idea that would never have worked.

The other issue is Adam Shoots Samus In The Back For Her Own Good, of course.

It's less terrible in this version. Adam is not so clearly presented as a heroic good guy doing a smart and good thing Samus should be grateful for. The narrative logic for why Adam thinks it's a bad idea for Samus to go into Sector Zero is more coherent. (And why Adam is going inside at all has an actual suggestion of a reason) Adam and Samus' relationship is presented as more complicated than 'she looks up to him to an unreasonable extent', where there's less a built-up assumption we're supposed to back Adam's view, and in fact there's a fair amount of evidence we're supposed to side with Samus against him overall.

But it's still really, really dumb that Adam shoots Samus in the back when there's a Metroid right there, and the writing is hampered by the fact that Adam is just assuming the Metroids in Sector Zero are immune to freezing while the game fails to depict freeze-immune Metroids. I at least caught this time there's an actual implication he's right on this supposition, where Samus, much earlier in the game, reacts to a corpse as "That looks like a Metroid killed it! Oh crap! Wait, no, this area is too cold for that, and also they're extinct. There's gotta be another explanation."

Buuuut there still should've been stronger evidence of Sector Zero Metroids being immune to freezing.

And also even if that was fixed, Adam shooting Samus in the back to stop her is stupid, and absurdly stupid when there's a Metroid right there that he expects to be unable to hurt. The alternate translation doesn't change these problems.

More subtly/generally, the vibe I get from this translation is that the core story person/people (Yoshio Sakamoto, going by how the credits present things, but... credits are always an incomplete picture, and can be very misleading) were too aware of the themes they were trying to write.

That is, in watching this version, it was a lot clearer to me that Other M has as one of its main thrusts be about parent/child relationships, and more specifically that it's trying to argue that, basically, being a controlling jerk of a parent is going to blow up in your face someday so please consider not doing that. And honestly, the bits that are just the story doing that tale work okay-to-pretty-good.

But then there's all the secondary signaling thrown in that largely doesn't add anything or actively detracts from the story: the (baby) Bottle Ship name, Nightmare being given modified human baby cries and its face animated to more directly evoke a crying human baby, and so on; lots of stuff that is consistent with 'this game is trying to make a point about human parent/child relationships', but which aren't actually contributing to the message and all.

At this point I do suspect that if Other M had been given a less borked localization, it would've gone over better, but by 'better' I mean 'more like Hunters, which people mostly don't actively hate but they also are largely pretty unenthused about it'. (I liked it, and I still totally understand this reaction) The baseline handling absolutely has a number of pretty big flaws (I'm not even reiterating stuff like the camera work focusing way too much on clearly-intentional titillating shots, for example), where even a different translation doesn't iron them out.

But I am glad to have watched these two videos, and I think they should be seen by more people.

[sablegear0]

This is a blog about metroids (part 2: imprinting)

Specifically the creature, the metroid, and their ecology.

See, I’ve been having some thoughts today about the metroid’s imprinting behaviour so it’s time to blog about it because this is what I do with all my fan-theories.

Spoilers for the Metroid series at large but mostly Return of Samus/Samus Returns (Metroid 2), Super Metroid, Other M, and Metroid Fusion. Full ramble under the cut!

So what do we know about metroids as a species? Well, you can brush up here on Wikitroid, which is a well-sourced article drawing on everything we know from the games. In a nutshell: they’re bio-weapons created by the Chozo to contain a dangerous parasitic life-form endemic to the planet SR388. Metroids feed by draining the “bio-energy” of their prey (maybe a blog for another day bc I have thoughts on this too), rather than physically consuming it. They’re resistant to most weapon-systems, but they have a notable weakness to cold temperatures and cryonic weapons.

But there’s something missing from this article: the metroids’ rather unusual “imprinting” behaviour, seen at the end of Metroid 2 and at the beginning/end of Super Metroid. Allow me to elaborate.

The whole reason every game after Metroid 2 happens is that Samus has a crisis of conscience upon realizing that the last metroid on SR388 has imprinted on her. Like a baby bird, it instinctively acknowledged the first thing it perceived after hatching as its parent (or ally or various other kin, more later). Unable to kill it (again, perhaps a blog for another day/exploration for another fic), she brings it back to the surface with her and later turns it over to the care of Galactic Federations scientists.

The dramatic finale of Super (and melodramatic opening of Other M) show the imprinted metroid returning to protect Samus from harm, losing its life in the process. 

So, knowing what we know about metroids, why do they have this imprinting behaviour? The answer may be obvious, but I’d like to break it down a little.

Despite having a “queen” stage of development, metroids do not appear to be eusocial creatures like bees, ants, or termites. While larval metroids do often seem to hunt in packs, they are relatively solitary predators in their more mature stages of development. Metroid queens may be brood-queens, but they are not “hive”-queens. So why the imprinting?

I think the answer is in part because they were intentionally designed to exhibit this behaviour. They were never meant to reach these more “mature” stages of development, but rather, were meant to remain “larval” and stay as companions to the Chozo, a bit like hunting dogs. I think the intent was that a Chozo (warrior? beastmaster, perhaps?) would have a lone metroid, or perhaps a pack, they raised from hatchlings to fight alongside them against X-infected creatures. 

This imprinting behaviour would be crucial to keeping the metroids under control, and perhaps even as a method for detecting X-infection. Presumably they are able to detect the parasites somehow, so a metroid pack turning on their master might be a good sign that individual was infected.

Unfortunately, as we see in the Chozo Memories lore of Samus Returns, the metroids had unintended potential; they were able to grow, metamorphose, and even reproduce in ways the Chozo had not intended. Seeing the danger posed by these feral bioweapons, they sealed them away and abandoned those areas of SR388, letting the metroids go wild and establish themselves as the apex predators of the ecosystem. A fortunate side-effect of this was that the X-parasite population was kept to a safe minimum, at least until the metroids were exterminated.

So what about this imprinting behaviour in “wild” metroids? I believe it still had function of sorts. Though not eusocial, the imprinting behaviour probably created a sort of minor social structure, or at the very least, prevented intraspecific competition among larval metroids. Presumably the first thing they would detect upon hatching would be their brood-queen, or perhaps other mature metroids in the vicinity, as well as their clutch-mates. Imprinting on their clutch-mates likely prevents them from eating one another, and imprinting on mature metroids prevents them from attacking mature rivals and endangering themselves. 

So what’s the takeaway? Nothing, really. I just think it’s an interesting quirk that doesn’t line up with metroid ecology at first glance, but makes a lot of sense once we dig into it a little. I think it’s also rather poetic, in a way: the last metroid imprinting on the last Chozo, the way things should have been in an age past.

Anyway that’s all I have on this for the moment. As always, send an ask or leave a comment if there’s more you want to add or chat about here.

Until next blog!

[sepublic]

2018 in review...

What a year. I’m honestly baffled at how... LONG and eventful 2018 was. People really aren’t joking when they say it felt like forever.

And I can see why, with all of the many, many things that happened. Many, major things. So to celebrate the end of 2018, which I consider to be one of the better years of my life... I really just want to review, in as close to chronological order, all of the major things I remembered and enjoyed;

There was me wrapping up Pokemon Ultra Moon.

I also began to finish Super Mario Odyssey, as well as Mario Kart for the Switch.

I watched the Greatest Showman, which was amazing.

There were the memes, of course. Ugandan Knuckles, Tide Pod challenge, Spaghet...

I began writing a personal, original story of mine and felt for the first time in a long while the simple joy of writing and the imagination that comes with it...

I tried Super Chix for the first time.

Shortly after I got my braces, which was genuinely painful.

Black Panther came out and was a MASSIVE success as the ninth highest grossing film of all time.

I watched my first new season of Voltron, Season 5. I’d also like to point out that the latter half of the entire show aired this year. All of it, from Lotor to Sendak to Adam’s rushed death to the disappointing finale. Yet I still enjoyed the show, by the end of the day.

The first Aru Shah book came out and I enjoyed that immensely.

Kirby Star Allies has its initial release, as well as the release of its DLC, this year. A VERY satisfying game with plenty of new lore for the series, as well as certain characters returning and being playable.

I got introduced due to Heathers the Musical, and later got interested in Hamilton and Wicked.

Infinity War, my most anticipated film of ALL time. I legit bought reserved seating for it ASAP upon the release of the second trailer. The film was amazing and somehow exceeded my wildest expectations... and then there’s the cultural impact, from the memes, the quotes, the mutual tragedy, all of it. Cinema history.

Trials of Apollo: The Burning Maze was released. RIP

I achieved a personal fitness record by jogging for about an hour and a half, my longest time yet- and I continued to do that every once in a while.

There was the many, many Steven bombs... we got Emerald, a Lapis Lazuli song, and of course the Pink Diamond reveal... THAT messed me up. Then the aftermath, including the return of Bismuth, the Diamond attack, Nephrite, as well as White Diamond and her pearl.

I rekindled my interest in Bionicle, and went back to doing drawings and creating lore for a hypothetical rewrite of G2.

There was the beauty that was Ninjago: Sons of Garmadon, as well as Harumi. Up there with Tournament of Elements as the best seasons of all. Harumi is one of my favorite characters now, as is Faith.

I saw the trailer for Hazbin Hotel and got hooked onto the series, and have since followed its numerous updates, including clips of the show.

I got reinterested in Pokemon Mystery Dungeon: Explorers of Time and completed it after years in my ownership. Then I got Explorers of Time, but I’ve dropped that. I’ll finish it next year.

Solo: A Stars Wars story was surprisingly enjoyable and inspired me creatively.

I went to Florida again and had a great time at Crab Island. I revisited New York a second time, and I’m still surprised by how much I enjoy just the atmosphere of being there.

There was E3, with all of the game announcements. Me following up excitedly on Smash Bros Ultimate, the directs, the character reveals, the memes... and of course me playing the game on release day.

I’m still hyped for the Resident Evil 2 remake.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom came out with the Indoraptor, one of my favorite monsters of all time now. There was also Incredibles 2, something we’ve waited for for over a decade. And after that, Ant Man and the Wasp.

I got interested in the Metroid Series, and have played Fusion, Zero Mission, and Samus Returns. I have yet to give Super Metroid or the Prime series a try.

Speaking of games, I enjoyed Warioware Gold. I also got my aunt’s old NES and some classic cakes like Mario and Zelda.

I read Poisonwood Bible. I dressed up as something different for Halloween for the first time in years- A Plague Doctor.

There was also a lot of depressing deaths... Stefan Karl Steffanson. Stephen Hawking, Stan Lee, Stephen Hillenburg. All of their names started with ST and I will continue to cherish all of them.

I also discovered Tumblr for the first time and have since been riding the highs and lows of this hellhole. I’ve made posts and a few have gone past 100 notes, which is neat.

I worked on my drawing skills and did a personal major accomplishment on a piece.

I watched Venom and enjoyed it WAY more than I ever expected myself to. Like, WAY more.

The Castlevania Netflix series had its second season, and I began and finished both seasons in a day.

Speaking of Netflix, Hilda was amazing, as well as She-Ra, and Dragon Prince.

Thanksgiving Break, I watched both Fantastic Beasts movies back-to-back, first at home and then in the cinema.

I went Black Friday shopping for the first time ever.

All of the splendid movies that came out in December, including Into the Spiderverse, Bumblebee, and Aqua Man- another film I enjoyed a lot more than I did. Not as much as Venom, but still.

For Christmas, I had SEVERAL back-to-back feasts, lunches and dinners, eating out and/or eating big at someone else’s home, or my home. I really need to burn off the fat.

I got a Zoku Slush maker and experimented with that with varying degrees of success.

AAAAND that’s about it. I watched the New Year’s countdown for New York, like every year, with my family.

It’s been quite a wild ride, and one of the craziest years I’ve ever experienced. And yet, looking back...

I wouldn’t change a thing.

Happy New Years, everyone. Goodbye to a beloved 2018, and hello to new hopes for 2019!

[lewisibarra1512]

My thoughts on the 2021 Game of the Year nominees at the Game Awards

As I wait for my Clairen plushy to arrive and guard the pennies, especially with G4 set to return on Twitch and YouTube, I've laid out a list of my thoughts over what I can expect from one of the following nominees and when I do plan on playing them. Here's the rundown:

DEATHLOOP - Announced at E3 2019, it was already set for release on PlayStation 5 as a timed console exclusive. From what I heard, it does look fascinating. I love the fact it was heavily inspired by Mr. and Mrs. Smith, but have Mr. Smith as Colt and Mrs. Smith as Julliana having a battle against each other in a do-or-die standoff. It does come with three endings, but I'd pretty much avoid spoilers. Considering it as a first person survival shooter, I'd be surprised if it wins and then all of a sudden "Country Roads" starts to play in the background. (Nah, I'm only kidding. It's for fun.) Knowing how I was able to pre order a remastered copy of Quake for the Nintendo Switch from Limited Run, I have a feeling Bethesda's going to take some serious action against Naughty Dog. I'm not trying to diss on the players who bought copies of the Last of Us Part II, despite not owning a PS4 Pro or a PS5. It's just... last year's presentation was a mixed bag. Though, I appreciate the part where many survivors managed to kill so much zombies. Wonder if there's an inspiration of it somewhere...?

it takes two - This one is entirely funny: it's a combined blend of comedy, fantasy, action and adventure with a hint of fixing a relationship. What exactly does the latter mean? As told by a character turned narrator named Dr. Hakim, Cody and Mary are suffering through a relationship that's about to be broken prior to having a divorce, when all of a sudden, they were magically turned into small plushy dolls. The only way back home and to turn themselves back to human is by working together on a number of stages and fix their relationship so they won't get a divorce. With motion capture involved and zany traps being put up, there's one major setback: it only requires up to two players. I don't know if this could work on the Nintendo Switch, but that's just me. And hey! Maybe if it wins, I may check out the entire longplay of it while making some popcorn.

Metroid Dread - Remember when Next Level Games first created Federation Force and then their fans started loathing them prior to Nintendo's acquisition of the company? Bad omen. But when you look at MercurySteam, I'll be honest. I'm... actually jealous of the way they worked hard to care a lot about the Metroid franchise since Samus Returns hit shelves on the 3DS. Thankfully, it received positive reviews, which lead the developer to relaunch Metroid Dread. I'm not a Nintendo fanboy, but the Metroid community seems to know how amazed they felt when the game was initially revealed at E3 this year. Yeah, I understand Ridley got in the roster, but that's another post for some time. I will admit the fact it became the highest selling Nintendo Switch game following Fusion, so I'll leave it to the fans over this. Unless it wins, don't expect any negative vibes.

Psychonauts 2 - I remember back as a kid, I've seen some gameplay footage of Psychonauts at a local Toys "R" Us store via the XBOX demo kiosk, and I figured "Is that Billy? Is that Zim?" Well, it was confirmed Richard Horvitz was announced he lent his voice role as the playable character. To my surprise, I didn't expect an XBOX published game to achieve a Game of the Year nominee. But since one of my brothers gained interest into the series, maybe fans of the game will give this vote a try. I mean, it was developed by a former LucasArts dev behind Double Fine Studios and iam8bit's Day of the Devs livestream held every summer. If it wins, I'm going to draw an anthropomorphic alien cosplaying as Raz in my sketchbook.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart - I definitely know this category is going to draw in so much furries over this, so here's a backstory: When I first heard of Ratchet & Clank, I barely knew about the series until Ratchet Deadlocked was one of my brothers' Christmas presents they have for the PS2. And the fact Insomniac had hit a home run with the creation of Rivet, I feel bad for Clank being separated from Ratchet after an unfortunate incident. I haven't been able to play it since every PS5 console had been scalped to death like last year's Black Friday sales event, but knowing how much I love aliens, yeah! I mean, don't get me wrong: I like the franchise as a whole. Especially since Captain Qwark became the showstopper of a comedian these days! If it does win, expect me to find an art book. Insomniac, y'all better give me a good excuse as to why your art style made my brain go 'splodey.

RESIDENT EVIL VILLAGE - If the Last of Us wasn't enough, Resident Evil Village will change your mind. Of course, there's been so many games that categorize the Zombie apocalypse like Plants VS Zombies; LEFT 4 DEAD; Deadrising; Dying Light and others. But Resident Evil Village is the one PS5 owners should consider having it as a halloween treat. It follows Ethan who is on a solo mission to find and rescue his daughter from a series of zombie attacks, only to be hunted down by the Lycans who were mutated and started killing so many European villagers. The first game I did enjoy watching a longplay of the series before Village was Resident Evil II, the 1998 game that came out on the N64 and PlayStation. It turned out to be an inspiration when saving the city from being infested by zombies, just like how DOOM became the source material of killing demons and saving aliens and robots from them. If it wins, I wanna imagine myself seeing Jack Skellington come out and state he freed Halloweentown from a bunch of employees from Hot Topic. Hey, come on! I was only kidding.

So, yeah. There are some other nominees I would point out, but not yet. All I could do is recommend watching who got in.

Also, looking forward to the ghost of a late and not-so great troll who'll do anything NOT to announce an all new Donkey Kong game as a world premiere and turn it into a missed opportunity while having a big influx on Wii themed excuses. Suckas like you couldn't go another day without talking shit about King K. Rool and the Kremlings who haven't officially made a grand return since DK Jungle Climber while being fucked over the lack of a 40th anniversary themed announcement, could ya?

[aion-rsa]

Metroid Dread: Unsolved Mysteries the Sequel Needs to Answer

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Scheduled for release for Nintendo Switch on October 8th, the highly anticipated Metroid Dread is being touted as the final chapter in the Metroid story that began nearly 35 years ago. This isn’t necessarily the last time we’ll see Samus in action (Metroid Prime 4 will finally be released one day), but it will likely act as the culmination of her bout against the titular alien menace.

For all those reasons and more, the pressure is on developer MercurySteam and director Yoshio Sakamoto to deliver an epic Metroid tale that also answers the many unresolved questions and unsolved mysteries in the Metroid lore. What, exactly, are those mysterious narrative elements that need to be addressed? Conveniently enough, that’s what we’ll be running through here today.

We’re not claiming to have explored every hanging thread in the greater Metroid storyline, but we can’t help but wonder about some significant plot points that we’ve been left to dwell on since we last saw Samus. These are the main unsolved mysteries we want to see answered in Metroid Dread.

What Connection Does Planet ZDR Have to the Chozo Plans?

As is typically the case for most Metroid games, Dread takes place within an isolated (yet detailed) setting full of secrets and hidden areas. This time around, though, that detailed setting happens to be an entirely new location (planet ZDR) which is – unfortunately for Samus – infested by a gauntlet of dangerous E.M.M.I robots. All the Dread pre-release trailers that have been shown so far tease that planet ZDR is somehow tied to the Chozo: an ancient race of extraterrestrials previously revealed to be responsible for creating the Metroids. But what, exactly, are the Chozo doing on ZDR?

Thanks to Metroid II: Return of Samus, we know that SR388 is the Metroid homeworld and that the Chozo have a habit of settling down on various planets across the cosmos. That being the case, what is so special about the ZDR, and how does the planet tie into their master plan?

This is surely one of the many conundrums Samus will be getting to the bottom of as soon as she touches down. While it’s rare for Chozo figures to appear in person, we already know that at least one of the Chozo plays an important role in Metroid Dread. Besides, aside from creating the Metroids, the Chozo did raise Samus. What are they hiding on Planet ZDR?

How Did the X Parasite Survive Planet SR388’s Destruction?

Metroid Fusion ended in an appropriately bombastic fashion with Samus going against Galactic Federation orders and setting the BSL station on a collision course with planet SR388. The resulting chaos seemingly destroyed the dangerous and wildly hostile X Parasite for good, but as we’ve learned from some of Metroid Dread‘s previous trailers, that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Samus is led to planet ZDR at the beginning of the Dread by a video transmission claiming that the X Parasite still exists. That message is either part of an elaborate ruse to draw Samus in, or the X Parasite is indeed somehow still alive in some capacity.

If the latter is true, then how? When trying to unravel the possibilities, it might be worth considering that while the X Parasite was first introduced in Metroid Fusion, they were retroactively inserted into the series’ canon in 2017’s remake of Metroid II: Samus Returns via a cutscene. With both SR388 and BSL destroyed by the time Dread kicks off, we’re left to wonder just how the X Parasite is alive.

Why is Samus Still Working With the Galactic Federation After the Events of Metroid Fusion?

Samus and the Galactic Federation have always had a fractious relationship. That said, the two have almost always come together in the past to help try and rid the universe of any Metroid threat. However, the ending of Metroid Fusion throws a bit of a wrench into even that part of the relationship.

As mentioned in the previous point, Samus went directly against the Galactic Federation’s request to keep the BSL research station intact. It turns out when you lie to the galaxy’s most infamous bounty hunter about breeding Metroids for use as weapons, things tend not to go so well.

We already know that Samus is once again working on behalf of the Galactic Federation at the start of Metroid Dread, but we don’t know why. Could it be that the threat down on planet ZDR is too great for petty rivalries, or does Samus have another reason for wanting to go there? Not helping matters is the fact that the game’s E.M.M.I bots were designed to solve the alleged X Parasite issue, but they’ve since gone haywire and left Samus to pick up the slack.

The big question is: Can Samus trust the Galactic Federation long enough to get the job done?

Why Are The E.M.M.I Bots Hunting Samus?

Prior to the events of Metroid Dread, the Galactic Federation sends E.M.M.I robots to ZDR’s surface in the hopes of preventing the X Parasite (or any other treat, for that matter) from spreading. They soon go offline, as previously discussed, but if they were initially programmed to hunt a virus, why have they suddenly set their sights on Samus?

One possible explanation is Samus’ integration with the X Parasite at the beginning of Metroid Fusion. Since then, Samus gained new suit abilities and became stronger, but she also became susceptible to all of the Metroids’ many weaknesses. Could it be that the E.M.M.I robots see the X Parasite trait in Samus? Given what we know now, that might just be the most likely explanation.

Of course, it could just be that the bots have since been reprogrammed by another force entirely (the Chozo?). Hopefully, all will be revealed by the time the credits roll on Metroid Dread.

How Will Metroid Dread Conclude the Story of the Metroids?

Look, the game is called Metroid Dread, so even though the X Parasite seems to be the primary threat this time around, we’re certain the Metroids themselves will make an appearance one way or another. Yoshio Sakamoto even stated that this game will “mark an end” to the main series story arc, which for 35 years has focused on Samus’ battles and mysterious relationship with the Metroids. It all leaves us wondering not just how the team is going to satisfying end this story but how they’re going to do it in a way that leaves enough room open for future stories in this universe.

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We know this isn’t the last time we’ll see Samus. Although it takes place between the events of the first two Metroid games, Metroid Prime 4 is still deep into development at Retro Studios. So far as the Metroids themselves go, though…well, I suppose there are only so many times the same bounty hunter can keep bumping up against them even within this series’ expansive universe. So while it makes sense that these games may eventually move past that part of the story, many questions remain regarding how has this series is going to move past a part of itself that’s so big it’s literally in the name of the games.

My best guess is that Dread will be a full stop of sorts for the main series that ultimately segues into something new, but will Sakamoto and MecurySteam be able to pull that off? We won’t have too much longer to find out.

The post Metroid Dread: Unsolved Mysteries the Sequel Needs to Answer appeared first on Den of Geek.

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[lngtm]

11/01/21 - 17/01/21 Playlist

Final Fantasy 7 Remake

Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve been playing a lot of Final Fantasy 7 Remake. To me, it genuinely truly redefines what a remake can even be. My time with this game is over double the time I spent playing through the entirety of the original game yet this game only covers the first couple of hours of the original! It expands on the setting of Midgar to an unprecedented level and adds additional story elements and characters to make you feel involved and immersed in the gigantic sprawling cityscape you find yourself in, topped off with stunningly beautiful graphics and animations and an unrivalled music score. 

[Wanted to put a video of One-Winged Angel here but Square Enix copyright striked the unmonetized video :) ]

Pokémon Art Academy

Since Christmas, I’ve also been improving my drawing skills with Pokémon Art Academy and I’m finding it to be genuinely helpful with learning new techniques and skills so I don’t have to resort to pixel art in all of my projects. I’ll likely use these skills that I’ve picked up when redesigning characters and enemies for Dreamscape.

Metroid Fusion

After achieving the coveted platinum trophy in Final Fantasy 7 Remake, I decided to have a quick run of Metroid Fusion on my GBA. Being the second Metroid game I’ve played to the end (the other being Samus Returns on the 3DS), I found myself impressed by a large amount of the game! The environmental storytelling and the blatant storytelling via dialogue. It was very well done and the tone and theme of doom and hopelessness was incredibly apparent throughout the entire game as you are hunted by the SA-X Parasite throughout the entire gameworld.

Spyro Reignited Trilogy - Spyro the Dragon & Ripto’s Rage

Working Playlist

When working on my projects, I tend to listen to my playlist that I have setup on YouTube. This playlist is set to private so I cannot share it here but it’s mostly compiled of video game vocal themes and remixes. The most notable one of these would be Badniks & Chill by NicoCW. A set of four remixes spanning the Classic Sonic line-up with a night-time theming (Spring Yard Zone, Chemical Plant Zone, Casino Night Zone, and Collision Chaos Present).

[ghoultyrant]

Samus

You know, I’ve never really gotten into the fandom end of Metroid. I rarely read fanfics for the series or anything of that sort. Which always feels weird, because the Metroid series is one of my all-time favorite video game series, and it’s got a plenty good setting for playing around in.

I sometimes think part of it has to do with the mood or atmosphere of the games themselves. A substantial component of fandom is the social portion of things, whereas a big part of the Metroid series is Samus going off to do her thing by herself. I can imagine that an inherent difficulty exists there, where the draw of the Metroid experience is more or less antithetical to a lot of what motivates more typical fandom. Certainly, the series has a lot less fanfic and whatnot than I’d expect for something that sells well and is a pretty big cultural phenomenon and so on, which is part of why I’ve never gotten much into the fandom: there’s just not much fandom to get into.

On the other hand, a more in-my-face component of it is the way people write Samus. Bizarrely enough, the Metroid fandom seems largely unable to write Samus except in the context of a specific continuum: at one extreme, we have Samus The Cold Professional, who kills people she believes to be innocent at the behest of people she believes to be scum and shrugs at the idea that she might have any moral culpability for this. At the other extreme, we have Maternal Feminine Samus, generally fixated on her unwillingness to kill the baby Metroid but occasionally people do things like invent a family for her to have. Either way, the end result generally feels... well, for one thing, it feels extremely removed from the person we see in the actual games.

Maternal Feminine Samus tends to be morbidly amusing to me. People taking this interpretation are generally very obviously deriving it from the opening in Super Metroid establishing that she couldn’t bring herself to kill a newborn that had latched onto her as its mother...

... and completely ignoring that her follow-up response was to shove the thing in a jar and pass it off to a bunch of scientists.

Like yeah, Samus clearly has a conscience, but the idea that the baby Metroid awakened her latent maternal instincts or something like that is just hilariously wrong.

Samus The Cold Professional was vaguely understandable as the other extreme back when Super Metroid was the last release -and to be entirely fair, it seems to me to have become less common after Metroid Prime and Metroid Fusion came along- inasmuch as Samus was enough of a cipher it wasn’t completely impossible she was in that vicinity, but the baby Metroid situation once again makes it fairly questionable. If Samus is someone who can kill basically anyone without guilt, even when they have names and faces and family and all those other humanizing things, why would she hesitate to kill the last of an alien race of life-sucking monsters her paycheck is tied to killing?

I’m not sure I’ve ever seen fanfic write a happy middle ground. More importantly, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen a Metroid fanfic avoid that dichotomy in the first place.

Of course, this is a Metroid-specific manifestation of a broader fictional trend I’ve observed; that media routinely feels a need with female characters who break from traditional femininity to either assure the audience they are for sure Traditionally Feminine Beneath The Surface, or to have them out-man the men and be stone-cold monsters with not an ounce of stereotypical feminine behavior to them. (eg suggesting in complete seriousness using children as suicide bombers, even though even Stereotypical Manly Men would be unlikely to countenance such a plan without really strong situational pressures)

And in turn this is a manifestation of the broader cultural wrestling with the transition from women being assumed to be stay-at-home-moms to participating in realms that were traditionally Manly Men Jobs, and the attendant difficulties of disentangling what expectations were rooted in what realities, and which of those realities are still true vs which ones are not. Samus just happens to be a good lens for working through these problems, since she’s doing Manly Space Dude Combat With Guns And Shit while happening to be female and with her female-ness never really emphasized. (Except in Other M, but this whole thing is part of why it was reviled, above and beyond all the ways in which its story was an incoherent mess told badly; it went out of its way to make a big deal out of Samus’ femininity, not only with the in-universe story but with its goddamn camera work)

Which is actually tied pretty deeply into why it frustrates me that people don’t seem able to write Samus as who she appears to be, but rather write her in a manner that’s fundamentally reactionary to the whole A Woman In A Stereotypically Masculine Role thing. A big part of the appeal of Samus is that who and what she is isn’t tied up in her ~femininity~ just because she happens to be female. The reactionary writing, whether it falls too far toward trying to reject femininity or assert that everything’s okay because even though she’s a killer for hire she still loves her children or whatever the author believes to be an essential feminine quality, is fundamentally taking things in the wrong direction for wrestling with this particular issue.

I honestly don’t get why this particular piece is apparently so hard for so many people.

[ghoultyrant]

I've tried a few times to write Samus' pov before and I've had a lot of trouble. I feel like she is fairly inscrutable as characters go, being largely voiceless, and taciturn even when she does speak (not counting Other M). A lot of her dialogue is also removed from social interactions, being internal memos in scan logs. Idk. Maybe this is just me.

Samus as a character isn’t so much a cipher as an archaeological mystery.

The point of that comparison being that the Metroid series actually tends to tell a large fraction of its story through its environments, and does so quite well. Metroid II makes it clear that the endgame area is some manner of laboratory where the Metroids were apparently created, probably by the Chozo, but at some point control was lost. The laboratory is their nest because that’s where their existence as a species started, rather than the Metroid Queen selecting it as a good brooding ground for some other reason. Notably, the laboratory is unusually isolated and difficult to reach, even by Metroid II’s standards of travel distance, suggesting that the lab was deliberately cut off from the rest of the planet, and also probably explaining why the Metroid Queen didn’t wander off elsewhere to nest; she very possibly couldn’t.

In turn, this grounds a detail many players probably never questioned, but which is slightly odd on its own: that Metroids can apparently only grow into their Alpha and so on forms on SR388. As a consequence of natural evolution, this is certainly possible, but seems odd. But given that they’re clearly artificial, it’s easy to guess that the Chozo put that in as an artificial constraint; most likely the Chozo had plans for shipping them out to other worlds, and for some reason or another didn’t want them to change form once they were off the planet. (There’s a lot of plausible reasons for why they’d want this, but that’s a bit of a tangent)

Furthermore, this also grounds the Metroid Queen itself. Most players probably never question the fact that there’s literally only one Metroid Queen on an entire planet, because after all she’s the final boss. There’s obvious video game design reasons involved. But actually, it makes perfect sense in-universe: while fandom frequently assumes that any Metroid could potentially molt all the way to being a Metroid Queen, and that’s not an unreasonable assumption, it’s also entirely possible the Metroid Queen was one-of-a-kind because the Chozo carefully designed things so she’d be unique; that the Metroid Queen was built to be a Queen from the ground up, and is not supposed to be capable of producing more Queen-capable Metroids. That would be a logical thing to do to limit the damage in the event of a containment failure, and neatly explains why the planet has only one Metroid Queen even though Metroids themselves are running rampant across the planet.

Speaking of the Chozo and environmental storytelling, the fact that we saw their statues on two different planets back in the original trilogy was already a strong indication that the Chozo were a spacefaring species. Metroid Prime using scan logs to spell it out was a confirmation of an already-likely-true thing, not a state of canon invented by that particular entry. Again, I imagine a lot of players never questioned it because there’s game design reasons that are obviously applicable (eg that Chozo statues are frequently used to mark Important Power-Ups), but it’s extremely good environmental storytelling.

Anyway, that’s just some bits from Metroid II. Aside Other M and let me be brutally honest Samus Returns (I enjoyed it, but it mostly doesn’t try to do environmental storytelling, and probably-accidentally heavily retcons things, with the Metroid Queen’s nest no longer being set deep inside a laboratory being the most blatant example), the Metroid series does this heavily and constantly. The player is expected, if they care about the story and the world it takes place in, to look at the details they can see and make inferences.

And if they don’t care about any of that, it’s not intruding on their experience: they can just play a fun little game with blasting aliens and whatever.

Looping this back to Samus, though: yeah, we mostly don’t get Samus’ voice, both in a literal sense and in the writing sense. What we get is a ton of secondary information hinting at the kind of person she is, supplemented with concrete facts (eg that she was substantially raised by the Chozo), and then are expected to draw inferences.

As one of the more obvious examples: the first two games implicitly establish that Samus has to have a high degree of confidence in her abilities, or if she doesn’t she’s got a literally suicidal streak. She twice accepts missions to travel alone, deep into hostile territory, with the interstellar bounty hunter equivalent of nothing but the clothes on her back. Metroid II’s manual tells us that some elite corps of soldiers was sent to SR388 and never heard from again, and this didn’t dissuade Samus from going in completely alone.

This strongly implies she earnestly believes she can do the job when a literal small army couldn’t even survive: it’s not just that the Egenoid Star Marines failed at the mission, it’s that they were so completely out of their depth that none of them were able to escape the planet to report their failure!

Important and related is that starting from Metroid Ii it’s very normal for Samus to unambiguously have the option of just turning around and leaving. Her ship is on-planet, she uses it to leave at the end of a given game, and nonetheless she sticks each given mission out. She doesn’t encounter Omega Metroids and go ‘no, this is too dangerous, I’m out’. She doesn’t rampage across half of Zebes in Super Metroid and give up in disgust when she fails to find the stolen Metroid reasonably quickly. She doesn’t report the Space Pirates on Tallon IV to the Federation and leave them to clean up that particular mess while she goes to get a drink. Echoes and Fusion are the only games that actually trap Samus on-site temporarily to justify her ongoing presence, and even then if you bother to visit and scan her ship regularly in Echoes you’ll discover it’s ready for liftoff well before it’s time for the endgame, while in Fusion it actually doesn’t take that long to get back access to the Main Deck and thus her ship.

A lot of games that place a player character alone and far from civilization are very careful to explain that the player character was stranded in this strange place, and implicitly or explicitly sets the player character’s goal as escape back to civilization. The implication is generally that these are people who would never willingly inflict such a situation on themselves, and if they ever accidentally found themselves in such a situation with the ability to back out, they’d take it in a heartbeat.

Samus, meanwhile, keeps ending up in these situations and sticking them out. She doesn’t mind being alone with her thoughts for long periods of time.

It’s worth mentioning that the Japanese version of the original Metroid tracked how long you’d played, only your hours of play were presented as how many days Samus had been on Zebes. If you treat this ratio as canonical to all future games, which are generally designed so a first-time player will beat them in 4-20 hours... yeah. Samus has repeatedly spent several days or weeks in a row far away from civilization, and is just fine with sticking those situations out, and even inflicting them fairly spontaneously on herself if she has a specific reason for doing so. (eg she goes to Tallon IV in pursuit of Ridley)

Now, since this is inference there’s a fundamental ambiguity here. I personally tend to interpret Samus as being someone who finds socializing with her fellow sentients to be a stressful experience, such that going out into the wild for a week is a form of decompression and relaxation, but this isn’t the only plausible interpretation, and honestly I probably go to that interpretation because I don’t cope well with that kind of social interaction, rather than it actually being a better interpretation. One could plausibly interpret Samus as someone who, say, is actually fairly intensely social and just rates (Insert mission objective here) as more important than her own personal comfort. (In this interpretation, it would be assumed she instead decompresses from her missions by partying with her must-exist-in-this-interpretation large circle of friends) That’s certainly an excellent justification for her chasing Ridley in Metroid Prime, for example, and if we ignore Other M entirely I can’t think of a Metroid game that could be said to contradict that particular interpretation. (And Other M doesn’t count because it contradicts literally every other game on so many levels; if one game doesn’t fit while the rest are consistent with each other, you toss that one game as an inconsistency)

(Well, actually, another reason I take my interpretation of Samus is that she was raised by Ascetic Space Bird Monks, but then again plenty of people rebel against their upbringing. It’s perfectly possible to say Intensely Social Samus was driven crazy by the Chozo expecting her to be an Ascetic Space Bird Monk But As A Tiny Human, and even suggest that she takes being Intensely Social even farther than she would’ve otherwise as pushback against that whole thing)

BUT

While there’s room for interpretation and murkiness on details, Samus across the games has a fairly clear sketch of a certain range of plausible personalities. This range is also further reduced if we actually, for example, acknowledge Samus’ monologues from Fusion, which make it clear Samus concerns herself with the big picture (Suggesting that she sticks out her missions at least in part because often The Fate Of The Galaxy hinges on them kind of thing), and also seems to indicate (Consistent with her observed behavior), that Samus isn’t someone inclined toward negotiation as a problem-solving mechanism -that is, she doesn’t even countenance the possibility of trying to talk the incoming Federation goons into not trying to weaponize the X, going straight to ‘I need to make sure it’s not possible for them to try’- and that she’s got a bit of a philosophical streak to her, of exactly the sort one might expect of someone raised by Ascetic Space Bird Monks.

But even without the Fusion monologues, it’s not actually that hard to dig up a coherent personality for Samus, consistent with what we see across most of the games and compelling in its own right. It just takes a mentality that, while unusual for most writing/reading, is completely consistent with how the Metroid series prefers to convey its stories.