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1* 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.
2** 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.
3*** "Hello? Senate? This is Samus Aran, Galactic Hero calling. Yeah, I need a security clearance. No, an even higher one."
4*** "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.
5*** 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?
6*** That isn't how security clearance works. People with "Top Secret" clearance are still not allowed to read the vast majority of Top Secret files. You also have to have a "Need To Know" the Top Secret information. Even if Samus does have top-level clearance, she has no "Need To Know" what is going on at the Bottleship.
7*** 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.
8*** Plus, you know, the whole 'Samus = Metroid ''killstick'' ' thing.
9** How would she be unauthorized? There was a distress signal and she answered. The bottle ship is not a military vessel so Adam's talk about outsiders holds no relevance. Maybe if he has some sort of order from a higher authority to prove the case but he did not produce anything and under a government where bounty hunting is legal Samus would be more qualified to handle a civilian issue than a general.
10*** The Bottle Ship was a military vessel under the Galactic Federation with military workers and products on board.
11** Samus answered the distress call, but in the process she had walked right into a classified military operation. Under the circumstances, he had the authority to tell her to get lost or, if he thought she was involved or she refused to leave, to detain her. He didn't tell her to leave because he trusts her and because he knows that she's very capable of handling herself if things go badly, and asked for her help because he had no idea what they were in for. The fact that Samus is also a gun-for-hire for the Federation also means that she's likely used to taking orders from military commanders, even after she left the Federation military to work on her own.
12* About the authorization system, which is allegedly due to wanting to avoid the collateral damage from such items like the Power Bomb. 1. What about non-offensive abilities like the Varia Suit, a purely defensive item with no potential collateral? 2. If the Wave Beam can cause collateral by shooing through walls, why not de-authorize it afterwards?
13* When Samus first explores [[LethalLavaLand the Pyrosphere]], why does Adam wait until near the end to authorize the heat-resistant Varia Suit until near the end? If he ordered Samus to explore it, why risk her by allowing heat damage?
14** One can figure that Adam didn't want Samus to have full run of the ship, if she could potentially be the Deleter, so he wouldn't want to authorize such unless necessary, with Samus playing everything by the book (taking the outsider comment from Adam a bit harshly) since he wouldn't trust her otherwise.
15** Adam has no reason to suspect that there's a traitor among his crew from the start. Samus figures that out on her own. If she claimed that there's a traitor (she didn't say because she didn't know who to trust), he might have decided "Hey maybe I should let her use more of her stuff so that the traitor doesn't kill anyone on my team."
16* Note that when Adam finally tells her to turn on the Varia Suit, he doesn't say "I'm authorizing the Varia feature"; he just says "Samus, activate the Varia feature". Between that and the fact that Adam does respect and care about Samus (despite it not being shown very well in the game), he probably assumed from the start that she would be smart enough to use defensive gear without him having to authorize it. Him "allowing" her to use it is more likely him coming back from checking on the status of the station and the rest of his team (if you recall, he'd mentioned that something was interfering with the marines' communication systems and he was going to be monitoring them from the command deck) and realizing that she's been waltzing through Sector 3 without using vital protective gear.
17* What possible reason could they have for having Samus have a HeroicBSOD 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, ''[[RecurringBoss many]]'' times to be capable of besting him in combat, why is there a problem now?
18** 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.''
19*** Team Ninja only handled the programming and 3-D aspects. Everything story- and character-wise was Sakamoto.
20*** Correction. Sakamoto handled the story and gameplay elements, Team Ninja brought the gameplay to life and D-Rockets handled the cutscenes and brought the story to life.
21** 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...)
22*** If there's one good thing that came out of that scene, it's Anthony getting to let loose with his BFG and [[TheCavalry save Samus]].
23*** How much "Saving" did Anthony actually do anyway? From what I saw he was taken out like a punk, pressing Samus' BerserkButton and Snapping her out of her HeroicBSOD in the process.
24** 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.
25*** 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.
26*** 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.
27*** The scene still went beyond "freaked out." How many times has Samus been scared [[{{Pun}} suitless]] like that before now? Also, the Ridley in ''Super Metroid'' was a clone!? I guess Samus isn't the only character suffering from not being badass enough. Also also, [[CanonDiscontinuity Sakamoto ignored]] ''[[CanonDiscontinuity Prime]]'' [[CanonDiscontinuity when making this game]], so I'm not sure that Samus knew about the Pirates' cloning/resuscitating abilities.
28*** She actually wasn't '''That''' freaked by Ridley, that scene went from "Ridley?!! [[WhyWontYouDie 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" "[[DependingOnTheWriter There are different emphases in the two series of games]]" "[[MST3KMantra 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]]"
29*** Regarding Prime being ignored, don't forget that they used Prime-style Super Missiles and brought back the Seeker Missiles.
30*** 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. And her suit fades away without wall contact or damage, which becomes obvious when the scene is compared to the following boss fight.
31*** 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.
32*** One possibility is that we're seeing that moment through Samus' eyes, and she's experiencing a bit of time dialation. Much like how people describe traumatic memories (like car crashes) as feeling much longer than they were, we're experiencing that first hand.
33** [[http://gamrfeed.vgchartz.com/story/81909/ptsd-or-weakness-real-experts-on-why-samus-didnt-shoot/ This article]] completely justifies Samus' hesitation and fear.
34*** 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.
35*** How exactly do you expect them to show PTSD in a sidescroller almost completely devoid of cutscenes or dialogue? I'm calling GameplayAndStorySegregation on this one.
36*** 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.
37*** There's a good reason as to why it might be relevant. It's because the first Metroid games 1.) Never had this in mind (hell, the first game made us believe that she was a HE. How in the hell could we delve into all of her fears and doubts if we don't even know the true gender of the character until the end of the first game?), and 2.) Technical limitations of the NES and SNES cartridges. The Metroid games are known to be MASSIVE games with lots of gameplay hours and secrets (and Nintendo got somewhat crazy with them in their games late into the SNES' life). How could they fit in much of any character development into a game where memory and technology is limited (Super Metroid came out around the time the Playstation and Ninetndo 64 were being developed)? After Super, there was no Metroid game until Prime and Fusion, and Fusion was the first time we found out that Samus actually had any back story.
38*** 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.
39*** It's debatable whether or not the Prime series is even canon, as I've seen somewhere that Retro stated something about if the Prime games are in the main canon or something completely out of it. If they are not, then we can't base anything on the Prime games.
40*** The usual explanation regarding the canonicity of Prime is that Retro considered them fully canon, but Sakamoto didn't take them into account when writing Other M's story.
41*** One possibility is that Meta Ridley doesn't cause her to panic, because to her, that's not THE Ridley. It looks like him at a glance, but there's enough visibly different that she doesn't lose her cool. The one she fights on the Bottle Ship, though... that looks, sounds, etc EXACTLY like Ridley. Like the one who killed her parents in front of her, like the one who she saw burn to death on a planet that vaporized. That could be rhat exacerbated her panic.
42*** 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.
43*** They could have made Samus motionless in the same way that Mother Brain makes her in Super Metroid. And yes, did show reaction before, quite memorable reactions in Fusion and Prime 3.
44*** Are you implying that each other time she fought Ridley, she ''completely'' blanked out?
45*** 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.
46*** As an aside, on the one hand, it's not unlikely or unrealistic for Samus to have PTSD. On the other hand, it ''is'' unlikely and unrealistic for Samus to have come as far as she has without having an effective coping strategy to get through crisis situations or panic attacks. That's roughly how it'd work in real life. So there's a whole chicken-or-egg thing that sort of complicates any arguments.
47*** In this case, she may have choked because, as far as she knew, Ridley was SUPER dead. She may have experienced a combined PTSD moment anf "How the hell are you still alive" moment.
48*** That can be attributed to Ridley's certain death. If you recall, Samus never truly did away with Ridley until Super Metroid where he, as well as the Space Pirates, were atomized by a planetary explosion. This is prefaced at the beginning of Other M where Samus mentions that she is finally done with Ridley only for him to appear again with no explanation. Later, when she receives an explanation she decides to confront Ridley to finish him off under the coercion of Adam.
49** 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 [[{{Determinator}} 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 [[HeroicBSOD she finally snapped.]] Anthony's [[spoiler:apparent]] death snapped her out of it, just enough to fight him off as she always did.
50*** 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.
51*** 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.
52*** So he died on Zebes? A lot of things dead 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, because it doesn't work that way. She already knew seeing his clone was a high possibility and would have shown those signs earlier. Her only prior grief is over Adam and a baby. The people she is working with, Adam, the one yelling in her ear, they are the problem. After being put through unnecessary restrictions for five hours their ineptitude to clone the most dangerous thing they could [[HanlonsRazor by accident left]] her DumbStruck and {{horror| struck}}ified, which at that point, input from her semi abusive father figure only made things worse.
53** I can't believe nobody has mentioned this article.http://moonbase.rydia.net/mental/blog/gaming/metroid-other-m-the-elephant/article.html. After reading it, everything makes sense. Basically, the game's entire story depicts Samus' worship of Adam. She worships him, to the point that she loses her nerve and even her personality becomes an extension of his. Therefore when Ridley comes back from the dead, she is vulnerable. Sadly, when around Adam, she needs a "big strong man" to save her. The man she worships is around, so she relies and indeed needs him. When he is not around or can't help her, she picks up the pace, becoming stronger. Besides the abuse, when he is present, she is weakened. She can't even think for herself. And that is also why she never dons the varia suit until told.
54*** That article has been shown to death, though, if that's the one I'm thinking about. It's been used a lot to show the flaws of the game, though you've put a good spin on what it could mean when you think about what another tab on this page stated: that in Fusion, the AI DOES bring up her submission, meaning that this was clearly by design and is intended to make us ask why. Perhaps an intended plot hole in order to make us want another game that delves further into this sub plot.
55* So, in the epilogue, what was the deal with Samus [[spoiler:not donning the faster, quicker, and more agile Power Suit instead of her heeled Zero Suit during a self-destruction sequence]]?
56** 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.
57*** Plus she is known to be more agile in Zero Suit.
58*** 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.
59*** 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.
60*** 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 moot. She runs faster in the suit and can barrel through walls 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...
61* 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?
62** 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.
63*** The troopers in Prime 2 used bullets, too.
64*** As stated above, Sakamoto ignored the Prime series.
65*** 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.)
66** You're missing the point, their rounds in Prime 2 were ammo based but they were not ''regular'' bullets. This is evident from scanning the grenchler they killed.
67** The Federation Army presumably has access to inferior projectile technology than the Federation marines, since energy projectiles are seen on Federation androids ingame.
68*** In fusion the Federation supplies Samus with power ups for her modified suit so its not like they do not have the technology to do it.
69** It may have been different equipment to fit the area. The Federation Marines were being sent planetside, with little risk from collateral damage (whereas on a space station, hitting the wrong thing with an energy round could basically kill everyone),and no inclination for preservation (whereas the Bottle Ship held Federation R&D projects that they were trying to keep).
70
71* 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.
72** 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
73*** 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.
74*** It's possible that the body was designed that way for emergency situations (say, hostile incursion into the ship, or catastrophic emergency failure), so that she could act as either a defensive unit or emergency rescue able to pry open stuck doors and the like bare-handed.
75** Also, why didn't they have a remote shut-off? There should be no need to physically drag an active robot off to be disassembled.
76* 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.
77** Simple answer? The threat of a new generation of Metroids distracted her. Even the galaxy's most experienced bounty hunter messes up sometimes.
78*** Not to mention that, in Samus' book, Metroids are SERIOUSLY bad news, wheras the other possible threat was ostensibly ONE GF Trooper (IE, a relatively baseline human), who she could likely deal with later, assuming she needed to. Plus, ostensibly, a rogue GF Trooper isn't officially her problem (she's a bounty hunter, and he's not yet got a bounty on him), he may be acting under Adam's orders, and he isn't capable of rapidly reproducing and spreading.
79* 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?!
80** 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.
81** Another explanation is... Adam was making shit up. He said "It is likely that the Sector Zero Metroids are immune to ice", and the only other person to reinforce that opinion is Samus herself; neither Madeline or Melissa say anything about the uber Metroids. Samus and Adam come up with weak justifications ("It was too young" and "It was in the control group") with no evidence to support them, further indicating that the Metroids are not actually immune to cold.
82*** If you recall, Sector 0 was never opened prior to Adam entering. The reason the metroid that Samus encountered was not immune to ice was because it was actually born from the control group, otherwise known as the unaltered Queen. Which neither Samus nor Adam had encountered at that point.
83** The real question, for those who played Metroid II, 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. Hell, the Queen Metroid in this game is ''nothing'' like the one ''Metroid II'' beyond superficial appearance.
84*** Actually, there's a possible explanation for that: If you recall, Samus receives all of her Missile upgrades in ''Fusion'' in the form of data downloads provided by the Federation, and the same team later ''deliberately withheld the Plasma Beam'' from her to limit the amount of damage she could do to specimens that the Federation wanted to keep around. If they're that interested in keeping the SA-X alive for capture, then surely they would want to prevent Samus from eliminating the Metroids that are being bred in the BSL station's secret lab, too. With that in mind, they probably designed her Missile upgrades to be effective against everything ''except'' the Metroids. When Samus later regained the Ice Beam from the SA-X and combined it with the Plasma Beam, she had a tool that could damage them.
85* 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.
86** 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.
87*** 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.
88** They had to give Adam his HeroicSacrifice. Still doesn't make much sense; after all, Power Bombs are as good Metroid killers as Ice+Missiles.
89*** 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 instantly 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.
90** 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 Ice Beam 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.
91** 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."
92*** Yes, but he could've also done this ''without fucking shooting her.''
93*** 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.
94*** Even without the suit she's supposedly much stronger than him, thanks to Chozo-tampering and all that.
95** 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?
96*** 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. I seriously doubt that any weapons they could mount on those ships could do much more than scratch the Bottleship's hull.
97** I think it boils down to this: Adam knows Samus is very hard headed and stubborn so even if she did stop to listen to Adam, Samus would run off to do a pointless HeroicSacrifice just to stop the ice immune Metroids. Remember how Samus wanted to sacrifice her life to stop the X parasites in Metroid Fusion? [[spoiler: Adam]] told her that all she would wind up doing is remove the X's only threat. Herself. Adam had to do something drastic to stop Samus so that he can get her to listen and then he could do what he had to do without her getting in the way.
98** Samus didn't like the computer, at least until she realized it was Adam. She was willing to listen to Adam, and showed no signs of going against him, even when she didn't like it. When out of radio contact she went off to do her own thing sure, but if he got close enough to see, then radio contact should have been back right? So he could have at least tried talking her down before shooting, it worked before during that thing with his brother. Everyone's ignoring that point, that and ''timed''. Even explosive. Just leave the area after setting a timer, then there won't be enough damage to automatically lock anyone in.
99** If we ignore that powerbombs can kill metroids, that the Ice beam freezes things in arctic(and volcanic) areas, that Mother Brain killed the super metroid without using ice attacks, it should still be noted that Metroids can be moved around by kinetic energy. It may not hurt them, but a bomb will still force their mandibles apart, thus forcing them to release their prey. A timed mission would have worked just fine probably would not be any worse than the hell run.
100* 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!
101** 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...
102** I think 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...
103*** 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 [[IdiotBall Idiot Balls]] so huge I don't even want to think about it.
104*** Not to mention that if HAD been shot at, one would hope he would mention it to Samus when he caught up with her...
105*** 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 behavior, 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.
106*** 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.
107* 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.
108** 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.
109** 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 parents being killed.
110** 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. I do not feel offended by Samus' monologues or more sensitive side, but is hard to feel attached to her if you only get ShowDontTell.
111** 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.
112* 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.
113* 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.
114** 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 [[NightmareFuel far worse]], actually.)
115** All the computer systems were wiped clean if you remember, they had a hard time just getting part of the exposition document.
116** Actually, the memory was still intact, it was the [=CPUs=] (a.k.a. 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.)
117** 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.
118* 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.''
119** 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 HandWave, but what are you going to do?
120** Species imprinting is a thing. Samus was raised by the Chozo, yes, but they're definitely alien. They may not have concepts like "father" or "mother", instead perhaps raising the young communally. So to Samus, Adam was the first definite "father" she had, rather than "caregiver"
121* If Samus' suit is made out of HardLight 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?
122** The X had infected it. This probably caused a few malfunctions.
123*** The suit couldn't tell the difference between her and SA-X.
124** RetCon. I think it was the Prime series that introduced the idea of the HardLight suit? Prior to that, it was just an awesome suit of PowerArmor.
125*** Prime 1 had the suit as a conventional PowerArmor 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 HardLight suit (not to be confused with the Light Suit), which came out about 9 months before Echoes did.
126** 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.
127** 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.
128*** Another possibility is that there's two variants of the Power Suit. One Hard Light version, and another physical metal version. Samus was using the HL version in Other M because she wasn't going in on an extermination mission or expecting heavy combat (she was there on a distress beacon, so she was likely expecting more of a Search and Rescue role, where a suit that could easily be switched on and off would be a benefit in the event of meeting potentially panicked survivors). The physical armor is more for missions where she knows she's going in to heavy combat against a lot of enemies and likely not encountering much else.
129* If Samus' suit disappears when she's not focusing, how did it stay on when she was unconscious at the start of the game? The whole plot is due to it remaining on in order for them to get the DNA on it.
130** It's was on in the flashback. It only abruptly failed when Samus was under extreme emotional distress. Otherwise, it stayed on long enough for them to get DNA off it.
131** What if there was a purification chamber she had to go through, which would wash off anyone's suit in seconds? Considering what we have seen of several Sci-fi games, this is the most suitable explanation.
132* [[RealWomenNeverWearDresses 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.
133** I didn't notice any change to her breasts. They were always really freaking big.
134*** Fusion's artwork suggests otherwise (blame Zero Mission)
135** Okay. Doesn't excuse the HIGH FREAKIN' HEELS, though! What is this? BULLETWITCH!?
136*** 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.
137*** 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.
138*** TN has said Sakamoto was in charge of the project. Just about everything can be laid, personally, at his feet. Presumably including Samus' feet. He certainly made a point to include Samus' mole, which he considered canon but hasn't been depicted before.
139*** As a possibility, Samus innately tends towards a slightly digitigrade stance (balances on the balls of her feet, rather than flat), either because of the Chozo biological modification or simple habit from being raised by them. The heels may simply make that more comfortable for her, since she's now having to consider that her Power Suit isn't always possible to access.
140
141* 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.
142** 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.
143** 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 personnel 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.
144*** ...That my friend, is AlternativeCharacterInterpretation. You know, we should make a drinking game on how many times we have to remind that here.
145*** 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 AlternateCharacterInterpretation. 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.
146*** OR, we can use our brains here, instead of jumping on the idiotic PTSD bandwagon. When she encountered Ridley suspended in the Orpheon, he was inactive, and the place was about to explode. She had no time to waste trying to destroy a, technically, dead enemy. When she was out of the Orpheon, and she watched Ridley escape, let us THINK: The space station has exploded, she barely made it out of the reactor shaft, all of her equipment was irreparably damaged in the explosion, the space station was currently on a crash course with Tallon IV, and then the robotic Ridley, an opponent whom she does not know the full extent of the upgrades done to his body, and the resulting combat ability improvements, flies off of the ship with no intent of fighting with her. Even the most suicidally brave person would not be moronic as to attempt to engage Meta-Ridley. She had none of her powers, her foe had unknown combat abilities, and the Orpheon was CRASHING. Ignoring the fact that Ridley is not stupid, and he would simply have stayed out of Samus' range until she burned up with the Orpheon, there was no way in hell she was going to pierce his armor with her arm cannon alone. There is no AlternateCharacterInterpretation at all here. There's just common sense.
147*** Old debate but I should note that Samus losing her equipment occurred AFTER encountering Meta Ridley as seen on https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kckgk3-6EW8&t=130s. She had her missiles & everything. If she's willing to confront Ridley at the beginning of Super Metroid with only the power beam, followed by tailing Ridley in after their fight & following Meta Ridley immediately following losing her equipment, why wouldn't she do anything upon seeing a Meta Ridley who has yet to break free while equipped as she is? The place was about to explode prior to encountering Ridley & she took her sweet time staring at him regardless.
148*** 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 pseudo-CO is yelling for you to open fire.
149*** All of this seems to be ignoring that Samus does in fact, FOLLOW RIDLEY. Her armor is damaged and Ridley's been upgraded? She's still tailing him. The only reason you land on Tallon IV at all is because Ridley was too fast or pulled some trick or something, because "Target has been lost". Samus had every intention of fighting that bastard. In addition, the done-to-death "she must have thought he was really dead" thing falls flat because not only should he have been dead a lot of times, in Prime 3 he literally falls to the core of a planet. The CORE. As in, molten metal of THOUSAND UPON THOUSANDS of degrees in temperature. That's as good as a planet exploding--in fact, it's BETTER than a planet exploding, because a planet doesn't just vaporize everything on it once it finally implodes, and Ridley's already shown the ability to breathe in space.
150*** I should note that this underestimates the powers of Phazon. Seriously, it's blatantly obvious that Ridley was somehow recovered, possibly surviving on his own & flew out himself if not Dark Samus, before being pumped full of Phazon until he becomes Omega Ridley. The fact that Omega Ridley still has some of Meta Ridley's old mechanical parts & an old wound from Norion suggests they didn't scrape some of Ridley's cells off the walls & clone him but rather retrieved Meta Ridley's body sufficiently intact. By this point, Samus has been heavily acquainted with Phazon & its healing powers & has seen Dark Samus flat out explode & reform multiple times thanks to Phazon. As heavily flawed as Other M is, this complaint is even more flawed as it fails to recognize the Space Pirate facilities nor the borderline magical substances who brought him back those previous times. Clearly there was no Phazon on Zebes & Ridley was defeated the same day Samus blew up Zebes & any remaining Space Pirates on board. It's like if I called bullcrap on the SA-X surviving the Restricted Lab in Fusion, completely forgetting Adam's explanation & that it could have been another SA-X.
151
152* On a completely different note, why did Anthony never think to call Samus back after his escape? OK, so his comm 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!"
153** He might have been cutoff from any available ones, or something to that effect.
154* Why did MB allow the Metroid Queen to kill Ridley? Sure, he was hurt badly, but he [[NotQuiteDead wasn't dead yet]], and he could still have been a help to her efforts.
155** I don't think MB has 100% control over everything.
156** 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.
157* Samus is officially 6'3'', and yet Anthony's still noticeably taller than her. How ''tall'' is he?
158** The only canon depiction of Samus's height is 6'3" in her suit as noted in Metroid 2. The Prima Guide later takes this and states that Samus is 6'3" out of her suit for Super but Prima is a non-canon source. Outside of this, Anthony is supposed to be noticeably taller than Samus, however, D-Rockets, the team who handled the cutscenes, made a mistake on said cutscene by making Anthony multiple feet taller than Samus. This mistake can possibly be attributed to the concept art where a young Samus is shown standing next to Anthony though it's noted by Sakamoto that the height difference in said concept is "Overkill".
159** 7 feet?
160** I'm pretty sure that's 6'3'' in her armor.
161** It's without her armor, the armor only makes her a few inches taller.
162** 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.
163** 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.
164*** Not really, after all there are scenes where she loses her armor and does not become shorter. And where would the extra height be? Samus's eyes line up with the visor and her boots don't have heels on them.
165*** In regards to the above, it could be that the entire sole of the boot is essentially a platform (which also explains where upgrades like additional thrusters and such could fit in)
166* 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.
167** 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.
168** 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.
169* Again, seriously: [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PD9PA1m1FD4 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?
170** 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.
171** 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.
172*** 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.
173*** Both the SA-X and Samus herself used stacked beams to attack the Omega Metroid, meaning that it wasn't just the ice beam's effect, it was also wave and plasma. The Wave beam can go through many types of solid material such as glass and walls, and the plasma beam can pass straight through organic material and carapaces. The combination of these penetrative effects '''in addition''' to the Metroid weakness of ice let the beam both pass through and damage the Omega's internal organs. Why it's invulnerable to missiles is another matter, but since the Omega is invulnerable to even a charged Ice Diffusion Missile that implies that at least the Fusion clone is resistant to any attack that does not also penetrate its shell.
174* 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?
175** It might have been a self-imposed restriction by Samus so that she could gain experience fighting as a common soldier.
176* 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.
177** 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 ObstructiveBureaucrat on it would make other top officials suspicious of them.
178*** When does it ever say anything like that in game?
179*** When Adam is recounting the creation of the bioweapons found on the Bottle Ship, most importantly the Metroids, to Samus before he detaches Sector 0.
180* Adam's [[StupidSacrifice so-called sacrifice]]. He believes the Metroids are now immune to ice, and when shown otherwise he dismisses it because it had been an infant. He does not bother to check and make sure other parts of the ship are not infested with Metroids either (like the Metroid Queen that's hanging out in another room). So he proceeds to blow up the sector from within as opposed to taking it out from space (like what happens eventually in the game) or locking the area down so he has time to do whatever else he wanted to do before safely nuking the ship from space. He blows himself up with the Metroids, and surprise surprise not only were there Metroids on the ship and subject to being frozen, but a Metroid Queen to boot. Seems like Adam acted suicidally rash and didn't put an ounce of thought into his actions. And he's supposed to have a perfect military mind?
181** It was only the Metroids in that specific area that were supposed to be immune to ice, not all the Metroids. That's what made it a priority to destroy that section in particular. The other Metroids on the base could be dealt with conventionally--the ones in that section could not.
182*** Yet how would Adam know that, especially after the baby Metroid demonstrated otherwise? It should have been enough to give him pause and get the facts straight before toodling off to blow himself up.
183*** You mean besides Adam being the one who actually says it? He knows the ones in that section are ice-immune because he's spent the whole game up to that point elbow-deep in the ship's computers, and if I recall correctly he had some knowledge going in about what was going on there.
184*** Adam does not actually know that the Metroids are ice-immune. He thinks it is very likely, a fact that is included in his dialogue.
185* When Samus is talking to MB, we cut to Adam, and he turns away from the screen while a gunshot goes off. The implication is that the saboteur killed him. Turns out he's fine, and he just rushed off to warn Samus. Of course, he could've just warned her over the radio, but that would make sense. But that's not the quibble; ''what was the gunshot''?
186** I think it's implied that the Deleter (Heh) somehow missed. At close range. With a surprise attack. And then he just left. Yeah, this game is dumb.
187*** It's possible that Adam reacted to the Deleter before the gunshot (he's a GF military man, so he may have caught on before the attack and reacted), but lost contact with her in a scuffle.
188* So Adam goes into Sector Zero, is killed when it blows up, and his remains, if any, are somewhere within a very large volume of space, inside the remains a very large debris-filled section. So how on earth was Adam in Fusion based on him? Was it scanned before this mission, somehow? If it's protocol to upload the minds of great leaders and scientists, wouldn't the political faction behind the bottle ship do their best not to give the Adam AI to the rebellious bounty hunter they can't control?
189** Probably they periodically scanned his mind--the AI, for example, doesn't seem to know how Adam actually died. And the whole Bottle Ship fiasco, which came away with two credible witnesses and lots of evidence, probably destroyed a lot of the clout that political faction had. Or at least, they weren't the ones who decided what [=AIs=] went with what agents. Or maybe they figured the AI and Samus would both be destroyed when the BSL went up.
190* So how did DNA get onto Samus's suit anyway? The Metroid games are not known for their gore after all. Samus shoots hot power beams and cold ice beams to defeat her foes. The hot beams would destroy the DNA outright and the ice would contain it. No mess, no fuss.
191** Missiles.
192** The Metroid DNA? They show it in the opening cutscene: the infant Metroid is blasted by Mother Brain and basically pops, sending tiny bits of it all over.
193* If Samus's suit disintegrates then why/how does it needed to be "polished?"
194** Whenever Samus turns the suit back on, it's put back in the same shape it was in last time it was turned off, including any accumulated dirt, fluids, etc. Just like how you keep the same energy and missiles after cutscenes where the suit disappears.
195** Also, DNA could be left on the Suit because of physical contact. Say Ridley nicks her with his tail, and some loose scale fragments or other biological material gets left in/on the suit. A Metroid grabs her, and some of their goo/saliva/digestive enzymes get left when she shakes it loose. Etc.
196
197* How can Adam see what Samus sees? It's not like her power armor is Federation-issued.
198** Samus's suit can assimilate Federation and Space Pirate technology, and she received transmissions from the Federation in ''Prime 3''. The communication might be two-way.
199*** Except the Prime games supposedly don't count.
200*** That is not true at all. They count fine, everyone is just completely misinterpreting an interview where the guy says that Prime is a ''different part'' of the series. At no point does he say that Prime isn't canon.
201*** Sure as sure, but if it's a ''different part'' as you say then would that not mean the same as not happening (as far as Other M is concerned)? After all this is the ''first time'' Samus joined forces with the Federation.
202*** No. "It's a different part of the series" does not mean it didn't happen. And I don't recall Samus saying it's the first time she joined with the Federation, considering the game itself shows Samus working directly for the Federation in the backstory.
203** "First joint mission after becoming a freelance bounty hunter", that line in itself causes many problems but most relevant here is that it throws ''Metroid Prime 3'' out the window if true. Of course, her "excitement" over having a CO throws out ''Fusion'' as in that game she said she was not particularly fond of [=COs=] and did not like following orders.
204*** This seems to be an issue I see frequently. A Joint Mission is not simply a mission where you work with others. It's a mission where you work with a team appointed under a single commanding officer towards a singular goal. Prime 3 has Samus assist the Galactic Federation as a hired gun alongside other Bounty Hunters with separate goals.
205*** The entirety of Prime 3 is not a joint mission, sure. But Samus works together with the Federation to invade the Pirate Homeworld and discover the location of the Leviathan Seed. That seems like a joint mission to me.
206*** ''Fusion'' comes after--it could well be that her distaste for [=COs=] came after ''Other M'' (or possibly is because of ''Other M''). As for the other? Eh, one line that I could argue a few different ways. ''Prime 3'' was, for the most part, less a joint mission and more Samus doing her thing on her own with occasional support from the Federation. She wasn't taking direct orders from Admiral Dane, for instance, and did most of what she did on her own initiative. ''Other M'', in that case, was the first time she'd put herself under direct command for the duration of a mission, whereas ''Prime'' was when she was one of several bounty hunters independently contracted by the Federation.
207** Okay, working off the logic the entirety of ''Prime 3'' was less a joint mission and more Samus being assigned to do a task in Federation territory she ''still'' ends up going on several joint missions with the Federation. Exiting Olympus to Norion, activating the planetary defense system, protecting the demolition troopers, leading the way to the source of phazon, all were done beside fleet troopers and marines.
208*** Simply working beside other troops does not a Joint Mission make.
209*** Then how is Other M any more of a joint mission than the Pirate Homeworld in Prime 3? Samus does pretty much all the exploration of the Bottle Ship on her own, all the Federation members do are just shoot Ridley a few times and die, or in the case of the Deleter actually try to kill everyone. If simply working with troops doesn't make it a joint mission, then Other M is certainly not one.
210*** Other M is one because it follows the military definition of a Joint Mission. Samus isn't a hired gun here, she isn't exploring by herself, and isn't left to do whatever she wants. She is taking orders from a direct commanding officer alongside other troops toward a singular goal, and has to go and do whatever and wherever the CO tells her to. To put simply, a join mission would be "go turn on the power without shooting anyone and then wait for order" while what she did in other games was "turn on the power, by whatever means necessary".
211*** But... that's exactly what happens in the opening to Prime 3.
212* So where are the people that run the BOTTLE anyway?
213** To expand on this, the entire population of the [=BOTTLE SHIP=] was violently killed. Why aren't there more than two bodies?
214** What, you don't think all those monsters get hungry?
215*** And I guess they licked the ship clean too.
216*** Unless they were cool with an M rating, they wouldn't show blood all over the place.
217* Why did no one on the bottle ship think to put kill switches on the clones and such? Or did all their top scientists graduate from the Space Pirate University?
218** How do you put a kill switch on a living being?
219*** Implant it with an internal bomb? There's several ways you can kill something that isn't doing what you want, and you don't even need space tech to do that. Just look at the chopper scene in Ground Zeroes.
220** Because it was poorly plotted? No, let's go with that, they were all educated in the Space Pirate method of lab procedure and manufacturing. Space Pirates have infiltrated the federation, call it WildMassGuessing or {{Fanon}} if you want but it's the only way the very idea of the bottle ship makes sense.
221* If this game is suppose to be more "realistic" then why are there power tank parts and missile tanks on the bottle ship?
222** Because its not trying to be realistic, that's just something defenders of the game say to point out lack of drops from enemies and other things people complain about.
223* This is kind of meta, but why do people claim that one can better understand ''Other M'' if they read the Metroid Manga? Other than having some similar ideas there is not much to tie the two together.
224** Mainly because the infamous Ridley scene can be linked to a similar instance in the manga where Samus sees Ridley for the first time since she was child. Also because ''Other M'' appears to use several concepts from the manga, such as Adam's design. More thematically, it's also to try and say "see, Samus wasn't a tough-as-nails bruiser here, she could often break down!", though I wouldn't take that argument because I also think the manga has major flaws. A precedent depiction doesn't make it a good depiction.
225** Funny thing is, ''Other M'' metaphorically spits on the manga's storyline by changing Adam's encouragement to starting her bounty hunting career to his disapproval and makes Samus a "soldier" under his command when she never was in the manga, their conflicting jurisdiction with her being in the police being a plot point, and by disregarding the fact that Samus overcomes her fear of Ridley before the manga's over. People are just desperate to defend ''Other M'' and are probably just using secondhand details they heard about the manga without having read it themselves. If people really cared about the manga they would have voiced their protests when Zero Mission made zero effort to stay consistent with it.
226* Samus' suit's different sensors can detect hidden items and what item works on what, but it can't detect from the beginning that [[spoiler: MB is an android]]?
227** Adam had not authorized the scan visor (or thermal, or x-ray), just like he had not authorized the grapple beam or space jump.
228** Samus is (somewhat) human. Sometimes, humans just don't think to look for certain things. Samus sees what she thinks is a human, where she expected to see a human--and a particular human at that--and makes an assumption that this is the human she was looking for.
229* So [[spoiler: the Queen Metroid drains Ridley.]] Fair enough. But then how does [[spoiler: Ridley's carcass get to the station in ''Fusion''? Ridley should have collapsed in to a pile of dust under his own weight.]]
230** Perhaps it did not, maybe the Federation just cloned him again and the one in the freezer was in the process of undergoing its Metamorphosis before the X came and ate it up.
231** There's a likely reason why the Ridley corpse is in cold storage in Fusion: the cleanup crew that took the body away from the Bottle Ship most likely froze it solid to ensure it doesn't crumble so they could safely pick it up and move it.
232* Infant Metroid, the baby, ect...why? It was an infant at the start of Super [[http://cdn.wikimg.net/metroidwiki/images/2/29/Metroid_Life_Cycle_m2_Sprites.png but in accordance with the life cycle]] it was grown up by the end of Super Metroid. In fact, it was bigger than the queen! Samus had to roll up into a ball to fit inside her but that Metroid covered Samus entirely as it shielded her from Mother Brain...hence it was the [[TitleDrop Super Metroid]], no longer an infant or baby.
233** It's an easy enough mistake to make, the mature form looks the same as the infant form other than being larger. Metroids, as is shown in the above life cycle, change radically as they mature into Alpha, Gamma, Zeta and Omega forms
234* Baby's Cry distress signal; Why is the bottle ship sending out such a high-profile SOS when the last thing it would want is a random element possibly taking their research?[[spoiler: (Nightmare, Metroids, Mother Brain, Cloning.)]]
235** The space pirates do not have the only science team with vapor for brains.
236** Madeline sent the signal after shit hit the fan and people started dying. She's more worried about getting out alive than not getting caught.
237** Additionally, Samus's narration stresses that Baby's Cry is an urgent "all capable units respond" distress signal. ''Hunters'' and ''Prime'' establish there are other independent contractors out there who would be ''salivating'' at the chance to save a Federation black site and trade their silence for a blank cheque. Why is Samus the only one who responds?
238** Space is ''big''. It's entirely possible that Samus's ship is simply the only one near enough to respond.
239*** Also, Samus may be one of the only Hunters out there that'd go at such a signal. Others may be more cautious (not going to go in to an unknown signal where God knows what's in there), ideologically uninterested (someone like Sylux, who HATES the Federation, or Spire who wouldn't have any interest as it doesn't get him any closer to his goal), or simply disinterested because there's no clear gain (nobody's offering cold hard credits, and there's no guarantee the Federation may even pay them for responding to the signal).
240* Why is Adam surprised that Samus was at the bottle ship given the SOS? Responding to distress signals is part of Samus's MO.
241** Maybe he's not as familiar with her modus operandi as a bounty hunter.
242** Because he didn't expect her to be there. Just because Samus responds to distress signals doesn't mean Adam is going to expect she is going to respond to ''this'' one, and it's a secret base--if ''anyone'' showed up there unexpectedly, they'd be asked why they were there.
243** Secret base or not it still released a distress signal. This is the ''same plot'' as Prime 1 actually, that the Pirates sent out an open distress signal and Samus started shooting them and wrecking their things after responding to it.
244*** And those pirates were ''also'' surprised to see Samus there, and if any of them were in any shape to talk they probably would have said something like "Samus? What's she doing here?" "They sent out a distress signal," does not in any way imply that nobody should ever be at all surprised by who shows up.
245* Adam would have expected that there could be others, after all he would have heard the baby's cry SOS and would know that anyone could have arrived. Humanity is not alone in space after all.
246** And if anyone else had shown up, Adam would have asked what they were doing there, too. How is this difficult to understand? When someone shows up at a secret military base for any reason, the people who run the military base are going to ask them questions about what they're doing there.
247** It is difficult to understand that it is a secret military base, what with the lack of military personnel and that it is run by a woman emphatically not in the military. Even if the military knew some secret about it, even if Adam is surprised that someone showed up, he should have figured out what they were doing there. Distress signal.
248*** When the military sends out a distress signal they expect other military personnel to respond to it, not a random bounty hunter. Same reason the Space Pirates were surprised, she's not who they were expecting to show up.
249* Why are there ranks of distress signals? This is not the first time that Samus received an SOS from the Federation or otherwise that were in just as bad shape or worse then the bottle ship, so hearing that there is a higher rank of SOS just sounds absurd.
250** 'Baby's Cry' is just InsistentTerminology. It serves the same purpose as any given SOS.
251** Different "ranks" would make sense, because not every emergency is the same. You'd want a different response if the emergency was, "Engines down, don't have the parts to make repairs, but life support is operational," as compared to, "We're under attack!" In one case, nearly any ship could come by in help; in the other, anything other than a combat-ready ship is just going to get itself killed.
252* Where does Samus's armor go when she is not wearing it?
253** In this game, at least, it's some kind of hard light construct, so when she's not wearing it, it just doesn't exist.
254*** If so then what generates the Armor?
255*** Probably some module in the Zero Suit.
256** It goes into her gunship, that is why the armor was destroyed when the ship was shot down while she was not wearing it in Zero Mission. That explanation works just fine with every other Metroid game so even if ''this one'' seems to imply otherwise it is irrelevant.
257** On that note why doesn't she take off the armor more often. It's not only bulky and probably uncomfortable there are scenes like when she's talking to MB that would likely have been better handled in Zero Suit.
258*** One imagines when you're on a space station filled with alien monsters, you'd want to keep your armor on pretty much the whole time.
259*** Could be that her armor is a sort of psychological security blanket or disassociation tool (IE, when she's not in tha armor she's still somewhat that directionless, uncertain orphan girl, but once the armor goes on, she's Samus Aran, THE Hunter, bane of Zebes and scourge of the Pirates). She may simply be more at ease within the metal embrace of the Power Suit.
260* Minor one: How can you have geothermal energy on a space station? '''There's no GEO for the THERMAL to come from!''' Just plopping a bunch of lava in there isn't any good; you need a way to keep it nice and toasty, thereby pretty much canceling out any energy you may produce.
261** The BOTTLE Ship is a science vessel so they could be... testing geothermal facilities in a controlled environment. Yes, the fact that it would take more energy to keep the lava from melting the ship and just to keep it hot in the first place makes this a questionable endeavor, but the Galactic Federation, or whoever is responsible for making the BOTTLE Ship, are idiots anyway. Alternatively, Team Ninja had no idea what they were doing when they put that in.
262** Put some radioactive material under the lava, problem solved. Radioactive decay produces a lot of heat.
263** ''Or'' it could be like those hybrid-electric cars that recharge the battery a little when you hit the brake. Just because they're pumping energy into a system doesn't mean they can't reduce costs by getting some of it back out again.
264* Speaking of the armor (among other things), wouldn't it have been a really good idea for Adam to pull Samus aside at the beginning and say, "Okay, so you're working with us. What's in that suit of yours?" She tells him, he authorizes what he thinks will help (the suits, at minimum, and possibly the increased mobility stuff), tells her what he's not going to authorize, and then: "This other stuff... if you find a need to use it, give me a call." Concentration makes it a little less terrible, but still...
265** It's possible Adam was either A) already aware of most of the core systems in Samus' suit, and B) operating under the assumption that she'd activate various basic subsystems on her own
266* Why, exactly, doesn't Samus pump Little Birdie full of beams/missiles until the creature's guts are strewn across the floor and it is unquestionably dead? And even if Little Birdie hadn't done anything openly hostile in its first appearance yet, Samus has reason to assume that its cries can drive other creatures into a berserker rage after the Kihunter Nest battle. In addition, there's nothing to suggest Little Birdie is as resilient as Ridley is. Killing it at that point could have helped Samus avoid multiple encounters from that point onward, not to mention possibly foiling the Deleter's plot.
267** Because Samus isn't a psycho who's going to blast some random creature just because a player with a decade's worth of hindsight already knows that it grows up to be a clone of Ridley. You're asking her why she didn't make a decision based on information ''she did not have''.
268* What's up with that first shot of the opening cutscene, showing all the space rubble getting hit by meteors? Is it the BOTTLE SHIP after the endgame? Is it the Ceres colony after ''Super Metroid''? Was it supposed to be a new setting for K-2L? It goes totally unexplained.
269* Why is Anthony Higgs the squad's [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Take_point point man?]] He's the biggest guy in the squad with the slowest-firing weapon ever created in the history of mankind, and it's his ''job'' to be standing between the rest of the squad and restricting their line of fire while being expected to return fire first. Buh?
270** The "slowest firing weapon" isn't his primary weapon. He's got a machinegun and a freeze gun just like the rest of them do, too.

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