Samir M Soni

Excellent article, great review of Metroid history, and I agree that the word needs more Samus. Samus has always been one of my favorite Nintendo characters, and her many appearances in Smash Bros. games and elsewhere has always been welcome.

I think that Metroid Prime was good, but Metroid didn’t quite make the transition from 2d to 3d as well as Mario did. Prime didn’t even really feel like a platformer to me, so I would like to see it replicate the play-style and 3rd person perspective of Mario 64 (so I could at least see where I’m jumping).

I’d also like to see the Metroid saga take a darker, more adult-oriented turn. The appearance of bodies was a nice touch to include in sci-fi horror games marketed to kids, but more gore might appeal to those of us who played as kids, but are now grown and ready for more gritty environments. Furthermore, a bit more moral uncertainty to Samus’ immense power might be interesting. Really, I want to see a remake of Super Metroid (arguably the best game in the franchise), in which scanning can be implemented to fill out the story (minimalism to game narratives only works these days with interesting art styles, like Inside or Gris). Rather than the simplistic “humans good, Pirates bad” dynamic of the original, we could humanize the Pirates to a certain extent, showing their xenophobia and pursuit of power by any means necessary as both the only philosophy they can conceive of and a response to the actions of the Federation. Pity for the Pirates fits well with the precedent set by Metroid Prime and fear of the Federation would fit well with the Federation ship Samus finds crashed on Zebes (the Federation sent a ship to commit genocide against the Pirates, so they shot the ship down).

Great article. I just wanted to give a few observations on the games I’ve played.

Bioshock Infinite: The many-worlds interpretation has been explored by a lot of movies and literature and some video games before Bioshock Infinite (eg. Singularity), so the philosophical questions I was most interested in with this game involved power and gender theory. The main character is the villain from another dimension, but his overbearing desire to protect his damsel in distress creates a lot of problems for everyone (similar to The Last of Us). The sequels show an independent Elizabeth kicking butt as she travels to Rapture in the future, where the first two Bioshock games were set.

SOMA: Thanks for including this game. I think this magazine needs more representation when it comes to indie games. Really, there are a ton of indie games that address such concepts (The Talos Principle, Cradle, The Void, etc.). I found the same things interesting, but I’d like to add one more. When the player character switches from one robotic body to another (and he does so periodically throughout the game), the previous body (along with the character’s consciousness) is left behind, trapped until its battery runs out or he is depowered and effectively destroyed. So the question is, when a brain is copied, is it ethical to destroy the previous version? The thought of another me trapped alone and forgotten in an underwater lab still haunts me.

Chrono Trigger: Good that you brought up Chrono Trigger. It bugged me that in CT you could go to the future, collect an item, then go to the past and collect the past version of the same item, and still have both items!

Well said! I think dystopian objectivism has been getting more popular lately, but critiques of capitalism that follow the same lines have been around a lot longer than Ayn Rand’s work.

Interesting article. Metroid Prime 2 had big shoes to fill: Prime 1 was not only remarkably acclaimed and successful, it adeptly broke from the traditional minimalism of Metroid games by filling out a lot of the universe, primarily through Space Pirate lore (the Pirates call Samus “The Hunter,” not just because she is a bounty hunter, but because she is so feared that she become a god-like figure, held in awe by the entire species). This game seemed to expand the universe farther by breaking from the Pirate – Human – Chozo dynamic.

Immersion in a hostile world has been a core component of the Metroid franchise since the very beginning, and it is central to the sci-fi horror theme that all the games play up. The atmosphere of one area on Zebes in Super Metroid (a masterwork of game design and storytelling), for example, is toxic, until you get the Varia Suit to protect you from heat. As such, the hostile environment is merely repeating the formula. Nevertheless, in certain respects, it hardly seems like a Metroid game at all, given the introduction of new species. It put me off, really, since I was hoping Prime 2 would expand on the depth and complexity of Space Pirate culture from Prime 1. All in all, narratologically, the whole game felt like an aside within the greater Metroid universe, and I felt little investment in Aether, the Luminoth, or the Ing.