Metroid: Other M/Headscratchers

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Why didn't Samus press Adam for a reason why he was there? A General showing up is really, really suspicious for a simple SOS response.
    • Samus trusts Adam. She knew he must have his reasons for being there. Besides, almost the first words out of his mouth were that she was an outsider, and therefore not cleared to know why he was there, which kind of precludes any further discussion on the matter.
      • "Hello? Senate? This is Samus Aran, Galactic Hero calling. Yeah, I need a security clearance. No, an even higher one."
      • "Hello, Samus, this is the senator for your quadrant. We'll see about getting your security clearance at our next meeting, taking place in two weeks, after which we'll have to form a committee to study the feasibility of giving an independent bounty hunter authority over our duly promoted and designated officers. We'll get back to you as soon as we can." Seriously, people, bureaucracy. Even if Samus had that kind of pull, it takes forever to get that sort of thing done even if you're not talking about a secret project like breeding Metroids.
        • Then Adam can order her off the station, or arrest her. He can't order her around. He says he needs to ask her to work with them and follow his orders. The Marines work with Samus just fine in Prime 3. The woman is a walking WMD. She has destroyed planets. She should already have one of the highest security clearances available. And how does Adam know what her clearance is? How does he want her to work with them without telling her what's going on?
      • Once Samus agrees to follow his orders, then yes, he can order her around. Because she agreed to follow his orders. She agreed to be under his chain of command. Whether she's a walking WMD or can blow up planets is completely irrelevant to whether or not she should have security clearance. A freelance agent with that kind of power is, in fact, exactly the opposite of the kind of person you want to give a free pass on knowing all of your secrets.
      • Plus, you know, the whole 'Samus= Metroid killstick ' thing.
  • This may belong in the discussion above about Character Derailment, but what possible reason could they have for having Samus have a Heroic BSOD when she sees Ridley? In the manga, at least, it was excusable, since she hadn't kicked his giant spiky tail yet. But after she's proven herself many, many times to be capable of besting him in combat, why is there a problem now?
    • Team Ninja was in charge of actually making the scenes, and they don't exactly have a reputation for having strong female characters. A few TN members have stated they wanted to make her as "appealing" as possible. And, as you may know, quite a few men like submissive, cowardly doormats.
    • I think it's partly a Super Smash Bros reference, partly the fact that the last time she saw Ridley he was on a planet that was VAPORIZED, (Ridley never had a death as "Final" as that, even in Corruption the Screen cuts before he explodes) partly that Samus is having a really bad week and mostly because they wanted to give Anthony a CMOA (and get Samus in her Zero Suit...)
      • If there's one good thing that came out of that scene, it's Anthony getting to let loose with his BFG and save Samus.
        • How much "Saving" did Anthony actually do anyway? From what I saw he was taken out like a punk, pressing Samus' Berserk Button and Snapping her out of her Heroic BSOD in the process.
    • It's actually very simple when you think about it. She, up to that point, thought that he had been destroyed for good. After defeating him for the first time, she comes to find out, in Prime, the the pirates simply rebuilt him from his remains using cybernetics. As such, she knew they had the technology to keep rebuilding (or, in Super's case, cloning) him. As such, it didn't come as much of a surprise when she faced him in Prime 3 and Super Metroid...it probably pissed her off, seeing the creature who murdered her parents right before her eyes constantly reappear, but it reached a point that she came to expect it. But then, after beating him in Super, the entire planet they were on was completely vaporized. The Space Pirates were practically gone, and, even if there were still a few survivors, there was nothing that they'd be able to clone/rebuild Ridley from. As such, she was reasonably convinced that he was gone for good, and that she had finally avenged her family. We eventually find out that some of his DNA was extracted from her suit and he was (unwittingly) cloned, but she had no way of knowing that. Either way, when you combine that with the fact that she's still a bit torn up over the death of the baby Metroid and having deeply mixed feelings about meeting Adam again, it's actually somewhat understandable that she freaked out when he appeared seemingly out of nowhere.
        • Expanding on this explanation I have two possible theories, 1. After killing Ridley and destroying Zebes, Samus felt pretty damn sure that he was dead for good and she could finally move on emotionally, then Ridley shows up again and tears those old wounds open again. Or 2. Samus has seen him missiled in the face, missiled in the face and lazered off a cliff (and exploded), missiled in the face and falling into a deep pit, missiled in the face and exploding, and finally missiled in the face, exploding, and then having the planet its self exploding, and even after all that, here he is again. No matter what she does, he will always find a way back, pretty sure mentally breaking for a bit is acceptable.
      • Also, remember that Samus was just as surprised as the player to discover that the weird bird rabbit thing was Ridley the whole time. For this gamer, the brain breaking implications of that were enough to cause a few seconds of hesitation. combine with the above, (the voldemort esque realization that the monster that killed your parents and kidnapped your ersatz adoptive child, both in front of your eyes as you were powerless to prevent it, is alive again and wont stay dead while his victims are never coming back,) then a momentary brown note isn't unreasonable from samus.
      • The scene still went beyond "freaked out." How many times has Samus been scared suitless like that before now? Also, the Ridley in Super Metroid was a clone!? I guess Samus isn't the only character suffering from What Measure Is a Non-Badass?. Also also, Sakamoto ignored Prime when making this game, so I'm not sure that Samus knew about the Pirates' cloning/resuscitating abilities.
      • She actually wasn't That freaked by Ridley, that scene went from "Ridley?!! He can't be!" *is slamned against wall*. She spent much of the following fight SHOOTING HIM IN THE FACE, and afterwards Ridley was so scared shitless he flew face-first through a wall trying to get away.And, slightly off-topic but for how Discontinuity Prime is, well, http://kotaku.com/5494828/metroid-other-m-and-the-great-samus-schism. What he says (emphasis mine) "Think of it as the same universe but a different world view" "There are different emphases in the two series of games" "You just keep in mind that different creators, different producers have slightly different visions and that the end product will differ slightly as a result"
        • Regarding Prime being ignored, don't forget that they used Prime-style Super Missiles and brought back the Seeker Missiles.
        • Actually, she was that freaked out. She stays completely motionless for a while, despite Anthony and Adam's desperate calls, petrified in the way one would end up committed to an asylum for.
        • It should be noted that the length of time Samus spends standing there in front of Ridley (as measured by the progress of the cutscene) is, from the moment she turns into a little girl to the moment Ridley grabs her, is fourty seconds. Even if we ignore half of that (due to being with Adam, though there's no sense that this overlapped with any particular time), that's still a solid twenty seconds of her standing there doing nothing. So I submit that "that freaked out" is a legitimate description of this.
    • This article completely justifies Samus' hesitation and fear.
      • I still don't know about that. It might fly if Samus had shown signs of PTSD before this. But she didn't. Even in Super Metroid (assuming the Prime trilogy is not canon), when she would have thought him dead, and he surprised her at Ceres, she still tried to fight him off, rather than just freezing up. The issue isn't whether she has PTSD, the issue is that it's not plausible for her to suddenly develop it like that. There is precedent for this in the manga, but at best it's still contradicted by events in the games themselves.
      • How exactly do you expect them to show PTSD in a sidescroller almost completely devoid of cutscenes or dialogue? I'm calling Gameplay and Story Segregation on this one.
        • I'm not sure how that is relevant. Yes, showing that in a sidescroller without dialog is difficult. However, that's kinda the point: because they didn't show it in Super Metroid or any other prior game, it comes right out of nowhere and seems out of place in Other M.
      • Samus didn't show any PTSD signs in the Prime series either, and those games are perfectly capable of showing cutscenes. Overall, the main issue people have with Samus freaking out is the fact that it simply contradicts how Samus has reacted to Ridley in almost every other Metroid game. Even Zero Mission, which is a remake of the first Metroid (with cutscenes!), still has Samus beat Ridley without hesitation.
        • She never showed any reaction, mostly because they weren't programmed into the games because they weren't made to flesh out her character. Other M is the first Metroid game that lets Samus show emotions and expressions.
        • They could have made Samus motionless in the same way that Mother Brain makes her in Super Metroid.
          • Are you implying that each other time she fought Ridley, she completely blanked out?
      • The problem isn't that Samus has PTSD. The problem is that the only other time in the series that she's shown to have it (the manga), a subplot is her coping and moving past it.
    • One way to look at it is that she's always been terrified of Ridley, but was able to muscle through it and fight him off through sheer force of will. With him having (seemingly) been destroyed for good, she was finally at peace in regards to her past with him, and was thus caught completely off-guard when he suddenly reappeared. The realization that the vaporization of an entire planet wasn't enough to keep him from returning hit her like a ton of bricks, thus she finally snapped. Anthony's apparent death snapped her out of it, just enough to fight him off as she always did.
      • In Super Metroid, she would have assumed that Ridley died in Metroid. An explosion wouldn't have made her think that he was more dead.
        • There's a huge difference though. In the original game, it was only Tourian that blew up. Ridley was defeated in Norfair, which wasn't anywhere near Tourian. But in Super, the entire planet went up. Also, assuming the Prime series is canon, she would have already face Ridley three times (twice as Meta Ridley and once as Omega Ridley) by then.
      • So he died on Zebes? A lot of things died on Zebes were back to bug her because of cloning. At no point does she say to herself "these idiots might have cloned that dragon" too? In Super Smash Bros Brawl Ridely really did come out of nowhere, not so much here. Finally killed him should have been moot since this was clone, something she's seen already and should have expected. If anything is breaking her down it is not PSTD it is who she's working with, especially the one yelling in her ear. After being put through unnecessary restrictions for five hours their ineptitude to clone the most dangerous thing they could on accident left her dumb struck and horrified, there is no hope for the galaxy, there never was any.
  • So, in the epilogue, what was the deal with Samus not donning the faster, quicker, and more agile Power Suit instead of her heeled Zero Suit during a self-destruction sequence?
    • She uses her regular arm to hold her cannon as she fires it. If she had changed, she wouldn't have been able to hold Adam's helmet, making the purpose of her return entirely pointless.
      • Plus she is known to be more agile in Zero Suit.
        • Calling bull on that one. The only game in which the Zero Suit is playable (Not counting the non-canon Brawl) is Zero Mission, and she's less mobile in the Zero Suit in that game.
      • Actually she is. She can jump higher than the standard Power Suit in Zero Mission and at the same height as the High Jump upgrade gives while you're in the suit. Smash Bros. Brawl also makes her more agile while she's in her Zero Suit, so that likely influenced Other M's depiction.
      • Brawl did, in Zero Mission there wasn't any feat of agility she couldn't pull off with the suit outside of pure jumping height, she jumps higher when the suit doesn't have any of its mobility upgrades. She had the space jump so that point is mute. She runs faster in the suit and can barrel through wall in it so speed isn't an issue. The cannon can open up like a pseudo claw, which if Prime 3 is ignored then maybe she would still need both hands but from the arguments on this page it apparently wasn't so it wasn't to free hands...
  • Why the HELL are the GF troops in this game using far less advanced equipment than the ones from Metroid Prime 2 and 3? Regular bullets? REALLY?
    • In Prime 2 and 3, the troopers we saw were the marines - special forces, if you will. It makes sense for them to have better equipment.
      • The troopers in Prime 2 used bullets, too.
      • As stated above, Sakamoto ignored the Prime series.
      • I think that "ignored" is a bit strong, and even in Echoes it's been demonstrated they use bullets as Haley's scan mentioned running out of ammo (I actually think that federation regular weapons use solid rounds in a sort of energy sheath because there's no way regular bullets glow like they do in the ending.)
    • I think someone is just ignorant of the fact that Kinetic Weapons Are Just Better
    • Their secondary weapon is a Freeze Ray capable of one-shotting a fully armored soldier and freezing a lava monster solid. The bullets seem fairly powerful, too.
  • I'm fine with almost every aspect of this game. The only problem I have is that feels like it lacks the most essential part of a Metroid game: exploration. Everything you do is just "go to this objective". Yes, Prime 3 and Fusion were similar, but there was still exploration. There'd be an objective, but then there'd be an obstacle. You'd have to look around, possibly go off the given path to find the equipment to move on. Backtracking was built in. With Other M, you just march straight toward the objective. Each room on the way is a self contained obstacle. When you finally reach an obstruction requiring a new upgrade, it's just given to you. The one time you had to backtrack to get an item, it was completely arbitrary. You reach a switch behind a window and have nowhere to go, so you backtrack. You're ambushed by pirates behind clear walls, so Adam authorizes the wave beam. Okay? Why couldn't I just get that when I needed it earlier? While I do like this game a lot, I feel like it's the least 'Metroid-feeling' Metroid game to date.
    • I feel that people are playing up the linearity of the game way too much. I didn't find the game too linear. Sure, you wouldn't get as lost as you would in, say, Prime, but that's relative. I didn't like running around not knowing where to go. There were still hidden goodies to find, so you could still explore. The story just kinda keeps you on a path until the end.
      • That's a fair point. However, consider this: if you don't like running around not knowing where to go... why are you playing a Metroid game? Getting lost and learning your way around are a part of the Metroid experience. Even in Metroid II and Fusion. Exploration is about more than finding "hidden goodies". You're basically agreeing with the main point that this game is fundamentally different. The only difference is that you like what it became and he did not.
  • Why would they put MB in a body that could toss around a dude like a rag doll? That's not only completely unnecessary, but insures that if the AI were ever to go rogue that it would just be so much harder to stop.
    • Considering they're made of FUCKING STEEL, an android would likely be naturally be stronger than a human of the same size. (as for why they wouldn't use a weaker creature as the template, I doubt the Metroids would give a Zoomer or Zebesian the time of day, and using a Chozo would risk activating the Mother Brain personality which would be Bad
      • Being made of metal doesn't automatically make something super strong. There's little reason to make the mechanisms so much more powerful than needed.
  • What's the deal with Samus's actions when meeting Madeline? She was following a GF trooper, one she had reason to suspect was killing members of the facility and who had sabotaged part of the route behind himself, into the room where Madeline was hiding. After their lengthy conversation, Samus gives herself a new mission and heads out the way she came. She never secures the area, and since she never came across the trooper, it means he must be in the same room as Madeline or past her. This is irresponsible of Samus, even her belief that Adam is able to help comes into question, and sure enough, the trooper encounters Madeline moments after she leaves.
    • Simple answer? The threat of a new generation of Metroids distracted her. Even the galaxy's most experienced bounty hunter messes up sometimes.
  • So the Federation succeeded in creating Metroids that were immune to ice. Then what about the Omega Metroid at the end of Fusion, which you can only kill with the Ice Beam?!
    • All of the uber-Metroids were killed when Sector Zero exploded. Also, the people who created said Metroids were a minority group within the Federation, operating secretly because the research was illegal. Adam says that the majority of the Federation took his advice about the dangers of such a project seriously, so they probably destroyed the research that lead to Ice-immune Metroids, or classified it so high that the researchers at B.S.L. couldn't access it.
    • The real question, for those who played Metroid 2, is why were you using ice to kill an Omega Metroid. Let's just says this director has made good games but is not the best story teller, especially when it comes to consistency.
  • People complain about the Ridley scene, but there is another cutscene that is far more controversial yet receives a fraction of the attention: Why the hell did Adam shoot Samus as she was about to walk into Sector Zero?! When Samus even asks him that, he basically dodges the question and quickly changes the subject to talking about unfreezable Metroids. There was absolutely no need for him to resort to such an extreme measure (Seriously, he had to have used a very powerful round considering it knocked her out and deactivated her suit) when all he had to do was just call out to her to wait.
    • Perhaps if he just called her she would likely just ignore him, and so therefore he had to physically impede her progress. If she's down for a while, she can't easily object to what he plans to do.
      • Up to this point in the game, Samus has shown every intention of following Adam's orders (the only times she doesn't is when she isn't in direct contact with him). If he simply said, "Wait a second, before you go in there...", instead of shooting her and leaving her defenseless for a good 15 seconds as an enemy circles her body, that scene still could have maintained its dramatic impact.
    • They had to give Adam his Heroic Sacrifice. Still doesn't make much sense; after all, Power Bombs are as good Metroid killers as Ice+Missiles.
      • No they're not. Power bombs do hurt SR388 strain metroids, BUT it takes 3 power bombs to kill even 1. These aren't the weak Tallon metroids from the Prime games here, where even the basic power beam can hurt them and a power bomb instant kills them, these are SR388 metroids, like in Super. Taking out goodness knows how many metroids with power bombs, when it takes at least 3, would just not have been feasible. With the way Other M does power bombs, what with a slow charge up to use, a very slow cooldown afterward, and it taking 3 to kill one metroid, Samus would not have made it.
    • We don't even know they're immune to the ice beam though! There is some evidence they can survive in arctic conditions. So? The icebeam freezes things in the ice sector just fine. It also freezes creatures living in fucking lava. That's not arctic. That's colder than liquid nitrogen. There's no good reason to suspect that making them less susceptible to frigid environments made them completely immune to freezing. Power bombs might not be feasible, okay, but how much damage did Adam need to cause anyway? It looked like he went in there with just rifle and sidearm. He didn't bring anything that could be set as a timed explosive? There wasn't anything on the ship that could be used as such? It was an extremely dangerous mission, granted, but there was no reason he couldn't have survived.
    • Whoever went in there was on a suicide mission. When too much damage was done, the door would seal and Sector Zero would disengage. Samus's Power Bombs would definitely cause such damage, and, as Adam himself admitted, he's not as good a fighter as Samus: he couldn't take down Ridley. It was a good tactical move he made, and on top of that, he didn't want to see Samus die. "I'm no galactic savior. I'm merely human. But I can save you."
      • Yes, but he could've also done this without fucking shooting her.
      • No, he couldn't. In the power suit Samus could have easily over powered Adam; something she was trying to do, even with it offline.
        • Even without the suit she's supposedly much stronger than him, thanks to Czho-tampering and all that.
    • If all it took to make Sector Zero detach and self-destruct was to "cause enough damage" to it, why couldn't Samus and Adam just head back to the docking bay, take off in their ships, and blast Sector Zero with enough firepower to make it do so without endangering their lives?
      • Do either of their ships have weapons? This version of Samus's ship has never been shown equipped with weapons: that's what her other ship is for. The GF ship looked more like a troop transport than a warship (why would they send a space battle-capable ship on an infiltration mission on an unarmed spaceship? All it had to do was dock). And even assuming they did have weapons, they are small, fighter-sized spacecraft. The Bottleship is enormous. This troper seriously doubts that any weapons they could mount on those ships could do much more than scratch the Bottleship's hull.
  • Why does Adam and Samus's communication system go down after the Ridley fight? The cutscene before the fight shows the earpiece falling off of Adam's ear, but why does that happen? Even if it was an accident, why doesn't he just put it back on? It's not like he's in a hurry, since he doesn't depart for Sector Zero until the conversation between Samus and MB, as the postgame sequence shows... Which in turn means he could still see and hear what Samus was doing after the Ridley fight (he hurries to Sector Zero as soon as she expresses her decision to go there herself)... But he didn't bother talking to her? Hhhhaaargh!
    • I�m still confused about that one. Probably the Deleter finished hacking the communication system. Especially considering how Samus proved herself to be an even bigger threat. Leaving her alone would be easier to deal with. Strangely enough Adam was able to hear Samus all the time...
    • This troper thinks it was just supposed to make it seem like Adam was shot by the Deleter. Chalk it up to bad implementation. Maybe it's because Adam didn't have the proper authorization to resume communications or something...
      • Yup, after watching the cutscenes again in movie mode, it's obvious they made it look like Adam is reached and shot by the Deleter. However, it seems only his earpiece gets hit and he doesn't even notice; the Deleter then leaves it at that and goes to Sector One (with Samus in pursuit as soon as she returns to the Main Sector from Sector Three), maybe thinking he did get Adam. It's the only explanation that makes superficial sense, but it requires a series of Idiot Balls so huge I don't even want to think about it.
      • Not to mention that if HAD been shot at, one would hope he would mention it to Samus when he caught up with her...
      • Perhaps he WAS attacked by the Deleter, fought him off, and then when he got back to the comm, Samus was already talking to MB? Doesn't explain why he couldn't just raise her on the comm to go, "Going to Sector Zero is a BAD IDEA," rather than going there himself, though. Hmmm...as to why he didn't mention the attack to Samus, though, that one's simple. Adam is very military in his behaviour, and one facet of that is need-to-know. Samus already knows there's a traitor. He's been monitoring her activity, so he knows that she knows. She doesn't need to know that he was attacked because it provides no useful information into the matter, so he doesn't tell her.
      • Well, it can't be. Samus actually follows the Deleter into Sector One, so it means Adam's hypotethical scuffle with him had already ended. I'm just going to assume he then authorized himself to go to the restroom (turning communications off to avoid Samus hearing him on the toilet) and came back when she was talking to MB. There, case closed.
  • Why didn't they include flashbacks to Samus past as a child? Many of the events that appeared in the manga, such as the death of Samus parents, and the training she recieved from the Chozo would have fit the game so well.
    • I don't know, but it would work. The lack of human contact and spartan lifestyle would leave Samus quite out of the loop in real life, which can explain her behavior as a new recruit and some of it later on.
    • It was said that the developers actually had to shave off a few seconds from the cutscenes that are already on the game just to get everything to fit onto the disk. Any more would have been too much for it to handle. As nice as having flashbacks to child Samus would be, the cutscenes that are on the game are much too important to the plot at hand to throw out and replace with Samus's parent's being killed.
    • They could have at least done then with in-engine graphics. I found it very disappointing, especially because many and I mean MANY of the interviews and the infamous live-action TV commercial (past is prologue) hinted that the game was going to explore deeply into Samus past. But it barely scratches the surface. Samus talks a lot about how "her dark past left her with an uneasy soul" and also how she "lost her parents at a young age", but the game never explores that territory. We never get to know how Ridley killed her parents, how she met Anthony or Adam, how she obtained her Powersuit, etc. This would not be a problem if, as I said before, the hype and the information given in interviews of this game hadn't been so misleading. It still bugs me though, because they truly wasted a good plot. This Troper does not feel offended by Samus' monologues or more sensitive side, but is hard to feel attached to her if you only get Show, Don't Tell.
    • The answer to this is both simple and obvious. If you're telling the story of Samus, then including details of her upbringing by aliens would be a big part of that. At least mentioning that she was raised by them would be something. Even the instruction manuals of most games did that, right? Therefore, if the story doesn't do these things, then it's probably because the story is not Samus's story (or is being told very poorly). So, what are all of the flashbacks about? Adam. Metroid: Other M is the story of Adam, not Samus. It's simply told from her perspective. That's why they don't talk about the Chozo; they're important to the story of Samus but irrelevant to the story of Adam.
  • Why did the developers left the rest of the characters with so little development? I mean, some of them just say one sentence before appearing dead. Not even Anthony or Adam get enough character development. K.G is the most egregious example, his only sentence in the entire game is at the very beggining: "Got it!", during the Mission Briefing. You don't even get to see his corpse! I don't know why did they bother to even give the characters any names, they should have left them as faceless red shirts instead.
  • Why was Madeline so broken up over MB getting shot? It was just an android avatar: the actual AI could easily have jumped to or been residing in a computer (the former seems to be implied), and would most certainly have a few backup servers and maybe an extra body or two she made for herself. Really, the only way for MB to be completely killed would be to either scrub the entire Bottle Ship's computer system clean or launch it into a sun.
    • Seeing as the myriad Zebesian creatures halted their attack the instant MB's body was destroyed, it's safe to assume that the AI was destroyed when that happened. Either that, or it was powerless to act without its android body, in which case the AI was destroyed when the Bottleship was blown up days later, so even if she didn't kill it directly, Madeline took away its only means of defense, condemning MB to powerlessly wait for its demise. (Wow, that last line sounds far worse, actually.)
    • All the computer systems were wiped clean if you remember, they had a hard time just getting pard of the exposition document.
    • Actually, the memory was still intact, it was the CPU's (aka processors) that were destroyed. Though this does beg the question of how they were able to turn on the computers at all. (Or it could have been a writer who knows nothing about computers trying to sound technical.)
    • The game itself never states that Melissa was the android avatar of MB; it says that it was MB. That they put their Mother Brain AI into a female android.
  • Admittedly, this might be part of the whole backlash against Samus' new personality, but honestly the whole complete ignoring of Samus' relationship with the Chozo to focus on Adam kinda pissed me off. The Chozo raised her. They were family. They gave her the Suit and have been her companions at a distance for most of her adventures, leaving assistance and artifacts to help save the galaxy. Admittedly finding a father figure your own species has got to be a huge relief, but going so far to say he's the only father figure she's ever known? Bullshit.
    • The Chozo are also kind of extinct, with the possible exception of a few like Old Bird who are living in hiding. And the other candidate is Mother Brain, which turned into a deranged would-be conqueror of the universe and is also dead. Adam may not be the only one she's ever known, but given that he's the only one alive, it may feel like it to her in her current state. Yeah, it's a bit of a Hand Wave, but what are you going to do?
  • If Samus' suit is made out of Hard Light that goes away when she's not thinking of it, then why did they have to remove it in Fusion, which takes place after Other M?
    • The X had infected it. This probably caused a few malfunctions.
    • Retcon. I think it was the Prime series that introduced the idea of the Hard Light suit? Prior to that, it was just an awesome suit of Power Armor.
      • Prime 1 had the suit as a conventional Power Armor that had to be painstakingly taken on and off physically, as Samus removing the helmet with her hand showed. It was Zero Mission that introduced the Hard Light suit (not to be confused with the Light Suit), which came out about 9 months before Echoes did.
    • She was conscious, but infected and delirious. She must have still been concentrating on some level, likely due to associating the suit with fighting, and trying to fight the infection.
    • The bit where the suit goes away when not thinking about it put Samus at risk at least twice during this mission. It's possible that after the events of Other M Samus realised what a bizarrely terrible idea it is to have armour that disappears when you get distracted and had it changed to require a conscious decision to remove the suit.
  • Real women wear dresses plenty, but no woman would ever wear high heels in a combat zone, especially not an experienced combatant. Whoever made the design choice to, in addition to pumping up Samus's rack to Lara Croft proportions, put high heels on the Zero Suit needs to be punched.
    • I didn't notice any change to her breasts. They were always really freaking big.
    • Okay. Doesn't excuse the HIGH FREAKIN' HEELS, though! What is this? BULLETWITCH!?
      • This is Samus we're talking about, destroyer of worlds, slaughterer of Space Pirates and bane of Metroids. If she wants to try out high heel-like attachments to her suits, she's welcome to it.
      • Team Ninja would likely be the culprit. They're known for forcing sex-appeal and the like even when it doesn't make any sense.
  • Why do people think that Samus had no personality before Other M, or if they do, think that she was so very stoic? She's expressed emotion, personality, and thoughtfulness many times throughout the series before now (sparing the life of the baby Metroid, saving the Etecoons and Dachora, her monologues in Fusion, etc.). Am I the only one who imagined Samus' personality all along as more or less what it was portrayed in this game? Now, to be fair, the writing had its flaws; I'm sure some have noticed my argument against the Ridley cutscene. Yes, this part was a bad idea. But it was just that - a bad idea. It didn't ruin Samus or the series. Even the authorization thing can be overlooked for the sake of gameplay. But why are the only sides of this argument 1. "Samus was a ruthless and stoic killing machine, and Other M ruined her!" and 2. "Samus had no personality at all before, so stop whining"?
    • So that the former side wouldn't start arguing as much.
    • Although most of what happens in Other M does nothing to contradict the minor bits of character development she had throughout the series, the fact is that she never had a very deep personality to before Other M. Fusion gave her the most character development before Other M, but even that wasn't that much. Even with every character defining moment in the series (Prime included), we really had was a vague idea of what type of character she may be.
    • "Am I the only one who imagined Samus' personality all along as more or less what it was portrayed in this game?" You and Sakamoto apparently. The problem is that you're misunderstanding the hatred for the character in this game. It's not "Samus was a ruthless and stoic killing machine, and Other M ruined her!" It's "Samus was a strong, courageous, larger-than-life, and independent character, and Other M ruined her!" The problem with your and Sakamoto's vision of the character is that it relies upon facts not in evidence. We always see Samus operating alone; the reasonable assumption from this is independence. We see Samus throwing herself into situations that entire fleets can't handle; that suggests larger-than-life aspects as well as serious balls. And so forth. The Samus Aran presented in Other M is not strong, courageous, larger-than-life, or independent. She's weak, easily frightened, a mere human, and codependent. If that is your vision for Samus Aran, there is no evidence for it within any game that isn't Other M.
  • What's with the whole "Ridley has returned from the dead lots of times, so why is she freaked out this time?" If you follow the continuity closely enough, this is the first time he's returned from the dead, and the first time he's returned, period, without some sort of advance warning -- an early appearance before the proper battle, logs, etc. In Metroid: Zero Mission (or Metroid NES), he's apparently killed... but logs before his appearance in Prime show that he actually survived. And she still freezes up the first time she actually sees him, flying away from the Freighter. Next, in Metroid Prime 3, he shows up in the attack on Norion before you actually fight him... and although he's defeated, it's hinted he survived -- you never see him disintegrate, and Samus' Ship doesn't count him as killed in its statistics. Then, in Super Metroid, he does indeed return in an initial battle, confirming that he survived. Then he's killed, and just to be sure, the entire planet he's on is destroyed. Then he comes back from the dead here, with no warning. Yes, he's survived against odds before, but, canonically, this is the first time he actually outright resurrected. Which changes everything, since the difference between "How does he keep surviving?" and "NO! I killed you! This is impossible!" is pretty stark.
    • I'm quite sure she assumed he was dead in Metroid. It's not like flew away after the battle, or even expected him to.
    • You're wrong about Prime. Ridley appears in person aboard the Orpheon, while the logs detailing his survival are found inside the Pirate base on Phendrana drifts, a full two to three hours after the fact. In fact, the "Fall of Zebes" log found before Ridley is encountered even implies he's dead by claiming that all ground personal that were on Zebes are considered dead by the crew of the Orpheon. Furthermore, Samus doesn't "freeze up" when she encounters him, she simply reacts with surprise for a moment and cautiously waits to see what he's going to do, completely different than allowing him to attack her.
      • ...That my friend, is Alternative Character Interpretation. You know, we should make a drinking game on how many times we have to remind that here.
      • I apologize for my error with Ridley -- I haven't played the relevant portions of Prime in a while... but that does nothing to invalidate my original point, and, as pointed out, what you state is Alternate Character Interpretation. She freezes and fails to attack upon seeing Ridley, allowing him to get away -- anything about why she did it is guesswork. It could be as you said... but it could be because she was simply shocked and horrified to see him after his apparent death, or an attack of PTSD -- either of which would fit perfectly with her reaction in Other M.
        • There's a difference between not attacking right away while your target is at a distance, and outright freezing while your target is bearing down on you and your CEO is yelling for you to open fire.
  • Samus apparently has PTSD. But if that's the case, shouldn't she have frozen up several other times throughout her career, not just when facing Ridley? (I admit, I am not terribly familiar with PTSD. If I'm wrong, feel free to correct me.)
    • It depends on the cause of the PTSD. Since Samus' PTSD stems from Ridley killing and eating her parents in front of her, only things that remind her of that even would trigger it. Facing Ridley is the only example shown in canon, but other things that could cause her to freeze up would be seeing another member of Ridley's species or returning to the ruins of K-2L. Someone taunting her about it could even trigger it.
    • She likely would have found it difficult to discuss the topic, narration-wise. The oh-so ci
  • Oh great, if Wikitroied is anything to go by, this game canonically renamed the Infant Metroid "Baby". Naming an Infant Metroid, "Baby" is about as inventive a name as Blud Shinigami who likes to eat Blood Bananas, which are bananas made of blood.
    • It's like naming a biomechanical being that looks like a brain and is meant to care for and watch over things Mother Brain!
      • Mother Brain does use the "Mother" part creatively. It's not called "Central Command Brain" or anything.
    • Hilariously sarcastic comment aside...yeah. It's not so much that it's been canonically renamed "Baby"...it's simply what Samus has taken to refer to the Infant Metroid as. I mean...based on your argument, it's not like "Infant Metroid" is any better, so what's the big deal?
    • Gratuitous English.
    • The stupid thing is... it's not a baby anymore. At the end of Super Metroid, it's all grown up and gigantic. The only reason they used the term "infant Metroid" was so that we knew which Metroid they were talking about.
  • On a completely different note, why did Anthony never think to call Samus back after his escape? OK, so his com link wasn't fully functional, but according to Adam, they still had functionality in the nav rooms. Why did he never stop by one, plug in, call Samus, and say, "Hey there. You alright, Princess? Hopin' you made it out OK with old lizard-breath back there. Anyway, I managed to escape. I'm keepin' an eye out for KG and James, but if you need me for anythin', we can meet up in Sector 1, alright? Drop me a line sometime!"
    • He might have been cutoff from any available ones, or something to that effect.
  • Is anyone else here annoyed that Samus didn't really DO anything? The Queen Metroid froze Ridley, Adam destroyed Sector Zero, Anthony stopped the ship, and the GF troopers and Madeline stopped MB. The only thing Samus really did was stop the Queen, but that was with the help of Anthony too.
    • When This Troper posted this idea, he wasn't talking about sexism. He was talking about the fact that you, the main character, are essentially useless. In a game, you want a sense of accomplishment, and knowing that the game would go on about the same had you not been there, really puts a damper on that. The problem would still exist even if the hero was a guy.
      • Looking at it that way focuses way too much on the ends. It's not the destination that matters; it's the journey. Adam certainly COULD have stopped the Metroids alone, but without Samus to kill the Queen, MB could just arrange for new ones to replace the ones in Sector Zero anyways. Without Samus to cripple Ridley, he could have gone on to cause a whole lot more havoc across the ship. Without Samus to find Madeline, the Metroid Queen might have found her first and killed her, and then it's questionable if MB could have been stopped. In general, just because Samus herself didn't end most of the major situations doesn't mean she wasn't important.
        • That doesn't change what he was talking about: the lack of a sense of accomplishment for the player. Did Samus kill MB? No. Did Samus kill Ridley, when all good narrative sense would at least allow her to get some payback for Anthony? No. Did Samus destroy Sector Zero? No. Did Samus stop the Deleter? No. All of the major plots are ended by people other than Samus Aran. You know, the player character.
  • Why did MB allow the Metroid Queen to kill Ridley? Sure, he was hurt badly, but he wasn't dead yet, and he could still have been a help to her efforts.
    • I don't think MB has 100% control over everything.
    • Ridley's scream makes any creatures nearby go apeshit. If anything, this effect probably hampers whatever control MB has over the Metroids and Zebesians. Sure, they might lose some overall combat effectiveness without that berserker boost, but MB probably thought that having control was more important.
  • Samus is officially 6'3, and yet Anthony's still noticeably taller than her. How tall is he?
    • 7 feet?
    • I'm pretty sure that's 6'3 in her armor.
    • It's without her armor, the armor only makes her a few inches taller.
    • Armor or not, Zero mission shows the height difference isn't too great, their shouldn't but much of one at all now that her "zero" suit has heels. He'd probably be between 7'1-7'4.
    • It's fairly clear that in Other M, the armor adds a good 8-12 inches to her height. She's taller than Adam in her suit, but she shorter than him out of it. Similarly, she's much shorter than Anthony when she's out of the suit, yet nearly his height while in it.
  • Why wasn't this game set before the Original Metroid/Zero Mission? Up until it was officially announced to take place after Super Metroid, I was under the impression that Other M would be Samus' very first mission, before she became the bounty hunter we all know and love. For a game that was supposed to delve into Samus' backstory and personality, along with flashbacks to Adam, wouldn't it make a lot more sense to take place in the years before Samus decided to operate solo and not have it be the second-most-current game in the series? It also feels like a lot of the story complaints would, at the very, very least, have a much better excuse if it was simply set as Samus' "first" first mission.
    • Because the director wanted to reference all his other titles, presumably a prequel that early would have a hard time referencing Super Metroid and Fusion without feeling too weird.
    • I really don't know how you got that impression. We see the scene where the baby metroid is killed by Mother Brain. That happened in Super Metroid. We had Adam saying "Any objections, lady?" so it was set before Fusion. I figured that would mean it was connecting Super Metroid to Fusion in some way. Which it did.
  • I have been looking over most of the negative reviews that loads of people have been posting about Other M, and, to me, I find it a wee bit frustrating that all they focus on is the story and character, and that it was poorly written, thus them immediately calling it a Franchise Killer. Now I won't try to defend the story or characterization, as, while I didn't have a problem with it, I fully understand many of the problems the fans have of it, but how is this enough to warrant the game getting poor reviews? As far as I could tell, the game played extremely well, looked pretty good, had super-smooth controls, and overall, was a really solid action game and a big risk and success for the series as far as gameplay is concerned, as you still looked for items, but with more action. Why is this shoved aside in the reviews. Does gameplay just not matter anymore? Is the story alone enough to sink a game into the 3.0-6.0 range? If so, I am incredibly disappointed in not just the fanbase, but gamers in general, as this has also happened before many other times i.e. Metal Gear Solid 2, a game that was bashed for similar reasons.
    • My two cents? The fans, and pretty much almost every gamer apparently, are naive and have no idea how to handle a situation like this, thus completely lose their sense of scale once something that they didn't expect happens.
    • This is just my opinion as a Troper, but I don't like having to question the game's logic while I'm playing it. The game was fun to play,but as a fan who played the earlier Metroid games(not counting Prime), this game had me going "Huh?" whenever there was something being explained in-game. It's probably me, but it doesn't matter how good gameplay in a game is if the story has too much Fridge Logic for me to really enjoy the game. One of my biggest pet peeves in games is having stories or plotlines that contradict previous game canon and seem to be there just for the hell of it.Change in games is fine as long as it makes sense. Samus freaking out after see Ridley even though she killed him more than once in earlier games as well as listening to Adam despite being an independent agent that can and will most likely deal with the situation on the Bottle Ship better than a bunch of Space Marines that can't even get a door open in the beginning of the game without her help and not even show thanks, does not make sense.
    • I will agree that the gameplay was superb, but... when the game makes so much of an effort to focus on the story (hell, there's a "Movie" mode where you can watch the entire story without ever actually playing the game), you expect the story to be good and consistent with other entries in the series. I do agree that people focus too much on the game's story, but it's also not something that should be ignored when reviewed.
    • Ignoring cutscenes, this troper wouldn't call the gameplay "superb" either. The movement feels clunky due to no control stick, the first-person missile mode is annoying, "search mode" is a Pixel Hunt joke, upgrades are just handed to you instead of giving you the satisfaction of finding them, many enemies feels tiresome to fight due to a complete over-reliance on the Sense Move and its peculiarities (such as making Samus roll where you might not want to go) and he auto-aim on enemies... it all adds up to a mediocre game experience, even before mentioning the plot.
    • Attention is put toward play in reviews, even many cutscene complaints are really about the concentration mechanic. The story gets so much focus because there are adamant defenders of the Post Traumatic Stress Disorder case pushing for awareness, arguments over whether or not it was a realistic depiction and whether or not a game where you fight space dragons should feel obligated to tackle such issues. Some were fine with what they knew of Samus and wanted more open progression, thus they were going to bash the cutscenes and plot regardless, Prime 3 got the same before it proved to be not as cinematic and linear as feared.
    • A review is a person's opinion. If they find the story bad enough to knock the score into that range, they're entitled to that opinion. And like others have said, the gameplay is anything but superb. It feels like rather than doing something fun, it just takes Super Metroid and Metroid Prime, and then sticks them together. The end result feels unfocused and inconsistent, and makes for a weaker game. Now if you could shoot missiles in 3rd-person, or move in 1st-person, it would work great. But constantly switching is terrible, and I can't help but feel like if they made Other M before Prime, it would be completely 3rd-person.
  • Again, seriously: Killing Metroids without freezing them is nothing new. In Metroid 2, the higher Metroid forms were killed with missiles only. Did the writer just assume nobody has played Metroid 2?
    • Super Metroid had inconsistencies with Metroid 2 despite being a direct sequel. The hand waves for that weren't until Prime 3(written by a different team). Other M isn't even consistent with Prime 3 despite coming right after it. This director is pretty creative in level design but isn't known for consistent narratives.
    • Like you said, the higher Metroid forms were--and they need specific environments to evolve into those forms, and those other forms have other weaknesses--they gain an immunity to cold, but become vulnerable to other attacks. I had presumed that Adam was talking about regular floating Metroids which had somehow retained their normal resilience in addition to losing the vulnerability to cold.
      • Adam is able to freeze a Metroid, however, with the justification that "It's in its larval form," and the Metroid larval form is the floating jellyfish thing. I guess Fusion already made Other M's mistake (The Omega Metroid at the end is only vulnerable to the ice beam), but it still irks me.
  • Is there any particular reason Samus, with her high-tech unparalleled super suit was just another soldier in a GF Police unit, albeit one reporting directly to a general? That would imply that they're some sort of special forces, but Samus isn't given any special responsibilities different from the other grunts, from what we see. And if they're special forces, why is Samus childish and immature? Adam is her first and only commander, but her first posting is in SpecFor even though she's obviously psychologically unsuited for it?
  • Who ordered Adam's team to the station? If they were some of the GF higher ups, and they had time to insert the traitor, why not just manufacture some pretext for them to not be there? They probably couldn't stop Samus, but if they have enough clout to make an entire secret space station, they can stop one squad from investigating. Adam even explicitly explains that They used the report he wrote explaining why the project was a bad idea, which means that they know he is opposed to it. The story can't even decide if he stumbled upon the joint after hearing the distress signal, or was sent there.
    • There is a split in the Federation. The Bottleship is an illegal research facility, not officially sanctioned by the Federation government. It's probably true that one or two higher-ups in the Federation are in on it, but they'd be in a minority. Getting one traitor onto the team is probably all they could do discretely. The last thing, after all, that they want is to have their identities revealed, and getting too Obstructive Bureaucrat on it would make other top officials suspicious of them.
  • This is more a Headscratcher for the fandom than anyone else, but what's with raging hardon people have for wanting Jennifer Hale voicing Samus? Look, I like and appreciate Hale's work. I really do. But come on; do we need all of the badass female characters to have the same voice?
    • It's not so much about "all of the badass female characters" having the same voice, it's that Hale was already voicing Samus in the other games, as I understand it, and fans wanted that continuity of character.
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