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Observe what Kraid's doing here, and then notice what Samus is not doing.
With this being the canonical end of the Metroid era, Samus must make good use of her powers and experience to survive. And for this Grand Finale, she really goes all out!
- The animations for successful Melee Counters are as stylish and epic to watch as they were in Metroid: Samus Returns. Especially against bosses, where Samus tends to climb on and absolutely waste them with barrages of beam shots/missiles as the boss tries to crush her or swipe her off, all while gracefully rolling and dashing out of the way so she can keep bringing the hurt.
- Special note goes to the Counter against the E.M.M.I. units. The timing is extremely tight, and if you don't have lightning fast reflexes, you're going to be Impaled with Extreme Prejudice. Nail that timing though, and Samus manages to escape death by a hair's breadth by sucker-punching the robot right as it's about to grab or stab her.
- Samus speaks Chozo. But it's not just Samus having much better voice acting than she did in Other M. It's what she says when Quiet Robe requests that she stop their brutal kin.Samus: Kino olo torota. Ana maril sanul bura. Almar hem gah lom. Translation
- As an added bonus, when Samus begins to speak, a new rendition of her leitmotif (a mash-up of the opening and ending themes of Super Metroid) starts playing in the background. Think about it. Her elder has just hit her with the news that a lunatic wants to butcher and dissect her, so her corpse's miracle of genetics can unwillingly participate in subjugating the universe. Quiet Robe says it in much gentler terms with all due gravitas as if he wouldn't blame her if she decided to flee this debacle. But her statement in Chozo not only reinforces her connection to them, it sends a clear message of: "this is my heritage, I know what's at stake." You get the impression Samus doesn't even blink through her visor or that she feels even a trace of fear that she won't succeed. Her victory has already been decided because her one line sounds self-assured to the point of enlightenment not hubris. She has to end this chapter of the story for all their sakes.
- The dignified way Quiet Robe pronounces Samus' full name, similar to the Chozo honorifics we can read about in all the Prime 3 Elysia scan logs. "Tah-mz Ahl-rn."
- Another awesome Suddenly Voiced moment occurs when Samus allows her Metroid powers to fully awaken against Raven Beak, releasing a furious prolonged roar as she claws into the nefarious Chozo's eye and refuses to let go.
- One for the dev team: at first glance you may think the Chozo language is gibberish like how the Luminoth language was when spoken. But more than a few linguistically-educated players
noted repeated words, patterns, and eventually found that, no, it's a full blown Conlang with its own words, rules, and sentence structure. For instance Sabalba which translates to Unfortunately/However.- And consider that all of this only applies to two or three scenes in the game (her encounters with Quiet Robe and Raven Beak). They put all that effort into making the Chozo language sound authentic and genuine just for a few scenes.
- Destroying the E.M.M.I.s. Ever since the first preview for Dread, the robotic assailants have been the most persistent threats, which definitely holds true in the real game. Samus need to run from them, hide from them, or even climb from them until you find some way to destroy them, sometimes avoiding some close calls thanks to their uncanny agility. Luckily, there is a way to actually destroy them for good. While the Omega Cannon is only able to destroy one E.M.M.I. before it needs to be renewed, once she takes that perfect shot after destroying the protective armor, she is rewarded with one of her stolen upgrades.
- In fact, to destroy the last one, she doesn't even need an Omega Cannon. Instead, she obtains the ability to absorb energy due to her Metroid genetics. It does try to disorient her with a power bomb, but she grabs the extractor needle and drains all its energy, and then obtains the power bombs after the subsequent Chozo Warrior is eliminated.
- For decades, we have been teased countless times regarding the return of Kraid. He was supposed to be in Metroid Prime only to be cut due to time constraints. We've only seen him in the original game, its GBA remake, Super Metroid, and some party spinoffs. And then, they finally implemented him into Dread. But by the time Samus finally reunites with him, she's just fully prepared to make him eat explosive steel once again, not even fazed by his roars.
- The ending of his boss fight deserves special mention. As Kraid starts sinking into the lava pool inside his lair, he attempts to get one last shot in at Samus and fires one of his stomach spikes at her. Samus just casually sidesteps his attack and watches as Kraid sinks down to his apparent death, thus putting down the last of the Space Pirate commanders for good.
- If you manage to get the Morph Ball Bombs early by Sequence Breaking, during the second phase, you can bomb the corner of the screen to reveal a Morph Ball launcher. Said launcher launches Samus right into Kraid's wounded stomach hole, allowing you to bomb him to death skipping the entire second phase.
- Getting the Flash Shift before this fight allows you to trigger Kraid's 2nd phase grab sequence in a different way: Flash Shifting into his mouth and pumping it full of missiles or beam shots.
- Their reunion is a solid moment for both Samus and Kraid. On Samus' end, her calm and collected reaction is a perfect contrast to Other M's infamous scene featuring her reaction to Ridley being back yet again. As for Kraid? Not only is this a long-awaited transition to 3D, but plotwise he's been brought back yet again in a context completely alien to him or any space pirate by an unfamiliar malevolent figure, kept in captivity under clearly horrible conditions, experimented on and who knows what else, enough to make his current incarnation seem almost sympathetic. And what does he do when The Hunter, who's already put him down twice, shows up? He goes down swinging.
- When you defeat the Golden Chozo Soldier-X, Samus pulls a Metroid siphon finisher, crushing that orb of pinky vimto-hued energy in her fist and gaining a full health recharge.
- Samus' wordless Shut Up, Hannibal! to Raven Beak when he dares to command her."ADAM": Submit and offer up your power. My plan is the only way to bring order to the galaxy. Fulfil your destiny, Samus. This is an order. Disobedience will not be tolerated.
Samus Aran: (Beat) (blasts the holographic projection into holo-pixels with Super Ice Missiles, revealing the man behind the curtain) - But then Ashkar Behek, Raven Beak himself, gets to one up her, sprawling languidly as Orcus on His Throne. He tries one last time to psychologically assault Samus with the raspiest, gravelly Wham Line to end all whammies. That all her victories are due to his magnanimity. That she is nothing without him. And that he will always be a part of her.Raven Beak: You disappoint me... My daughter.
- And yet, in turn Samus's reaction is... complete apathy. She doesn't care what he considers himself, because all that matters right now is that he's threatening the galaxy and killed people she does consider family. And it's right then and there that she proves that his DNA isn't the only reason she's come out on top all these years.
- For Metroid manga readers, it's quite possible as a first-time player to roar denial at the screen and proclaim that Grey Voice is Sammy's father as you go to town on him! Mercury Steam really knew what lore buttons to press to activate a Metroid fanatic.
- The final fight against Raven Beak is full of this. For starters, Samus is up against one of her blood donors, and quite possibly the most dangerous of them. Throughout the game, he has continually and subtly taunted her while disguised as the Adam AI that she can't hope to defeat him. And for the most part, he was right. His power suit has near bottomless Aeion reserves to fuel his lightning armour, he can summon mini black holes and supernovas, charge at Samus, and unleash a Wave-Motion Gun just to name a few attacks. He can also diagonally Flash Shift and Shinespark without a sprint build-up.
- Samus using her boosters to gut-check charge shot her elder with such force that his Badass Cape and crimson stole both get disintegrated into fiery embers.
- Raven Beak busting out his enormous sable angel wings. Not only for the visual potency but also for those who remember what Old Bird told a three-year-old Samus in the manga, it's another juicy lore moment. Even after Samus shreds off his left wing with a charged shot, he keeps his gaze dead fixed upon her and just rips the other one out with nary a hint of pain.
- As Samus makes to drain Raven Beak's life he hits her with his own melee counter and Flash Shift's to strangling the life from her, explaining how her will and growth means nothing; he can simply copy her and make the ultimate army.
- Raven Beak actually chokes Samus to death. We see her armour psycho-actively acknowledging her own flat-lining vitals as her visor's light blinks out. But killing his surrogate daughter was the worst thing he could have done. Because she completes her evolution into a Metroid hybrid, transforming into the Metroid Suit — done so quickly you might not notice at first — with a full on Battle Aura and pulverizes his unbreakable' armour with one punch, letting loose with all her rage as she jabs her newly evolved claws into his face. Samus' scream alone conveys the endless fury she holds towards him. To see Raven Beak devolve from an unstoppable and arrogant warrior who trumps Samus in every battle she’s faced him in to screaming in fear and trying in vain to shake Samus off of him is beautiful.
- And Samus isn't just draining Raven Beak's energy but by the looks of it, all the ambient energy from his ship. This results in her quite literally wrestling Raven Beak to the ground with her Facepalm of Doom that results in a Colony Drop.
- And since that's not enough to completely kill Raven Beak yet, (he's not even close to crumbling into dust like Mother Brain was) there's one last phase to this fight... sort of. While weakened, an X Parasite infects and begins to assimilate him, warping him into a form that's nearly unrecognizable as Raven. It looks like the X infected Kraid off screen at some point, and only when the Kraid-head splits do we see his head inside it. How does Samus win? By charging up a single Hyper Beam and completely destroying the giant amalgamation. Then when it turns back into an X, she atomizes that parasite. And she could have simply absorbed the purple X because of her Metroid genes, but it seemed like she was so fed up with her poor excuse for a surrogate father that she wanted to make sure he was gone for good.
- Indeed, it really called to mind a great line from the third act of Braveheart:
Robert the Bruce: I don't want anything from you! You're not a man! (...) And you're not my father. - The series tradition of an Escape Sequence kicks in, but this one's different from the rest, because you've got an 11th-Hour Superpower of a full Metroid Samus. Not only does her heads up display completely disappear to incline to the player that she might as well be invulnerable during this, but holding the fire button releases an unstoppable Hyper Beam that tears through chunks of the terrain and obliterates everything that dares stand in your way. If you're feeling lazy and don't want to fire the Hyper Beam, you can just sprint into your enemies and they die upon touch as if you're under the power of a Super Star. Not even the Unlimited Hypermode made her this absurdly overpowered, though it did come with the caveat that her powers were also completely uncontrollable and would've stranded her had it not been for the Quiet Robe X-Parasite's Big Damn Heroes.
- Raven Beak is easily one of the best, and most successful villains in the whole series. Throughout the entire game he's had Samus fooled with his ADAM disguise, flawlessly luring her through a crash course with the EMMIs and other such bosses to unlock her Metroid powers. Furthermore, if only for a brief moment, he is one of the few villains to defeat Samus in combat, and is the only one to do so twice in the same game! In spite of his maliciousness and cruelty, Raven's ego may genuinely be without question.
- Awesome and appropriate his ego may be, there's a sweet sort of justice in the fact that it defeats him twice over. By letting the X free for Samus to mow down, he not only allows her to get stronger, enough to tap into the Metroid powers that ultimately defeat him, but he also saves her life. Think about it: Quiet Robe's X copy views Samus as a Metroid and therefore a threat that must be exterminated. However, the X also assimilated Quiet Robe's Thoha genetic material that instills docility in Metroids. Whether it wants to kill her because it's an X, or save her because it's still Quiet Robe in there somewhere, the result is the same: it has to be absorbed by her to stop a rampaging Metroid monstrosity. By callously letting the X free to annihilate the world of ZDR and offer Samus target practice, he made sure she'd not only defeat him, but live to tell about it!
- Quiet Robe's sacrifice also earns a spot here. In Fusion, the SA-X seemingly sacrificed its life so that Samus could kill the Omega Metroid, but this was apparently incidental and a result of its primal hatred for its predator. Meanwhile, Quiet Robe was already murdered well before an X Parasite inhabited his body and likeness, and while he did re-enable the remaining E.M.M.I., he also appears at the end waiting on Samus' ship knowing she'd accidentally drain it dry with her newfound Metroid powers. In a case of either his own Heroic Willpower, or the X Parasite learning morality and responsibility from Quiet Robe, he then willingly reverts back to his parasite form to be absorbed, curing Samus of her Power Incontinence and allowing her to escape ZDR's explosion.
- Adam also briefly earns a moment in the ending. In Prime 3, when she was corrupted with too much Phazon, Samus' ship didn't even recognize her and let her on-board anymore. Here, after an entire game of being out of action thanks to Raven Beak pretending to be him while he had no communications with Samus past the intro, he doesn't shut her out, waste precious time questioning what she's become or otherwise; he simply tells her to stop before she absorbs the ship's energy, before letting Quiet Robe pull the Big Damn Heroes, someone he could've warned her about but didn't. Seems that for all the risks he warned her of at the start of the game, he took the biggest gamble himself and probably let the parasite-infested Chozo onto the ship.
- Ridley never appears in the game. Ever. While it may be a bit of a downer for his fans, it's awesome in-universe in that, after all the carnage and nightmares he's caused the galaxy, the dragon is finally gone for good.
