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Tallon system
- Tallon IV and Zebes are in the same system, orbiting a star named Tallon. Two things here - since both planets support life (and even the same KIND of life - Chozo, humans, Space Pirates, Metroids, Zoomers, etc.), their orbits must be VERY close to each other. So close it seems unlikely they wouldn't crash into each other. And secondly, since Zebes also orbits Tallon, shouldn't it be named Tallon III or V?
- Orbits for life-producing planets I have no explanation for, but it's likely that the Chozo named Zebes and Tallon in the same way we named Earth and Sol (respectively). It's possible they didn't name Tallon IV and the name defaulted (or the Pirates simply didn't know or care for the name), but it just makes the other planets in that solar system more suspicious due to the fact that they have names.
- Do we encounter a Talon II or V, do we known what's behind Talon IV's naming theme? No, we don't but Chozo being bird people, maybe named a few planets talon for the heck of it. As for orbits, they support similar life but not in similar places or concentrations. The majority of Zebes explored is underground and its stated many native creatures across planets have been wiped out by invasive species like geemers.
- I was under the impression that Tallon IV was a 4th moon of a gas giant Tallon, right? Like Yavin IV in the Star Wars universe. It and Zebes can be on similar orbits around some star.
- For the first question, I don't see why the two planets can't be a good distance from eachother. If they're at the same distance from the star's equator and are orbiting at the same velocity, then it should be possible for the planets to never collide if they're far enough apart and their velocities remain equal. Their seasons should just be occurring at different times, depending on how far apart from eachother they are, if they're really that similar. Then again, I'm no physicist, meteorologist, nor astronomer, so I could be totally wrong...
- The short answer is its impossible, due to the way planets form and orbital mechanics work.
- They don't even necessarily have to be that close. For example, Earth is in the dead center of the Habitable Zone around Sol. Mars is on the very far end, and Venus is just beyond the inner ring of it. Tallon IV has an eccentric orbit (similar to Pluto, but not nearly as dramatic) that runs at an angle compared to Zebes. There are only two points where their orbits intersect the same plane, so they could be relatively close without coming near enough to impact. The star they orbit is also called FS-176, not Tallon, so the naming of Tallon IV is most likely the fourth planet with that type of climate inhabited by the "nature loving" Chozo.
- Simple explanation. Writers Cannot Do Math.
- I suppose this depends on orbits, but Prime 1 happens after Zebes gets blown up... Why hasn't Tallon IV been devastated by going through a massive asteroid field that used to be Zebes?
- No, the Prime series takes place in between Metroid 1 & 2, so Zebes is still there, the pirate base on it was blown up.
Left hand
- Particularly in Corruption, there are many doors that require a handprint to open. Samus must be admittedly thankful that they're all configured to read the left hand. But if that's the case, why are the majority of them on the right sides of the doors they open?
- Probably they can read either hand.
- Even better, why does Samus' hand trigger Pirate handprint scanners? They clearly have a design that doesn't even resemble a human hand, yet Samus has access throughout the entire base with her obviously human handprint. Why wouldn't the Pirates just set it up so that if someone put a human hand on one of their handprint scanners, they would LOCK DOWN THE AREA or something less idiotic?
- Samus's Chozo tech suit fakes a Pirate handprint.
- Because that would agitate Dark Samus.
Cycle
- How long is a cycle? There's a whole article on this over here.
Dark Samus and Metroid Prime
- Does Samus ever realize Dark Samus is Metroid Prime? I'm trying to think of a time where the revelation could have come up, but I don't think it ever did.
- Probably not, though their last fight in echoes would be her clue if she ever got one.
- I think you're both underestimating Samus. She's very attentive — even an overthinker at times — and she had more than enough pieces to fit together. A Phazon-addicted monster steals her Phazon Suit, and right after that a dark-coloured version of her shows up looking for Phazon? Not rocket science. The final and clearest proof would have been the discarded shells of creatures exactly like Metroid Prime on Phaaze. (They're in the Genesis Chamber if you missed them.) So yes, even though we don't actually hear her say it, it's safe to assume she knew.
- Plus, it's not like she's exactly missing out on much if she doesn't know... she found a thing that tried to kill her, the Luminoths, and the Federation, and now she's blown it up and everything else it might send after any of them. That's about all an inattentive player would know or need to know in a runthrough of the series, and whether she knew it or not, her course of action wouldn't change that much.
Pet treat
- How did that Metroid in the Agon Wastes Pirate Base eat a pet treat? Do Tallon Metroids even have mouths? It seems like that would be an unnecessary thing for a creature that consumes energy to have.
- Well, it's got indegestion, so obviously not good for it.
Dark Aether's Phazon origins and inconsistency with the other games
- How does Echoes make sense in light of Corruption? Allow me to explain.
In Prime, an asteroid came and hit Talon IV. The asteroid started spreading Phazon, generated by some creature. The Chozo built the Cipher to contain the spread of Phazon, saving the planet from being consumed. From Corruption, we know that this asteroid was a Leviathan sent out by Phaaze that just so happened to hit Talon IV. The Leviathan, doing its usual thing, sought out a strong native creature and infested it with Phazon to protect the Leviathan's core. That creature was likely a Metroid the Chozo had around, hence the Metroid Prime. That's the standard pattern of the spread of Phazon, which the Chozo stopped with the Cipher. That all fits together reasonably well.
So what the hell happened on Aether? A Leviathan crashes into the planet, OK. And this... causes the planet to split into two. It also somehow causes the creation of "dark" forms of life on the dark form of the planet.
I mean... Phazon can do that? In both Prime and Corruption, all it did was manipulate and corrupt life forms. Sure, Thardus was a bunch of rocks given sentience by Phazon, but that was through careful experimentation by the Space Pirates. What happened on Aether was completely random and not in keeping with anything that happened in either other game in the sub-trilogy.
There's no Leviathan seed. The closest you might be able to say is that Emperor Ing counts, but even that's iffy. While there is Phazon present, nothing really seems to happen because of it, outside of Dark Samus using it to sustain herself.
The closest guess you might be able to make is that Phazon somehow interacted with the special energy of Aether, causing this unique event. The stuff Corruption says about where Phazon comes from and how it's spread really does make Echoes seem very strange and contradictory.- In the first Prime game, Phazon was shown to have the capability of corrupting ghosts, as it was stated in the Chozo lore that Phazon actually drove their spirits mad. So the idea that Phazon had a unique interaction with Aether's planetary energy, causing it to split into two dimensions, seems fairly plausible by comparison.
- A scan in Corruption stated that Aether was already dimensionally unstable before the Leviathan hit it. Something about that light powers the moths’ technological wonders.
- If you want my headcanon about it, my guess is that Dark Aether is actually subspace, i.e. the dimension where starships go to circumvent the "no-going-faster-than-light" rule. Aether occupied an unstable region of space, and the Leviathan's impact caused it to occupy both dimensions at once. It damages Samus because of the extreme amounts of radiation (or dark energy, or whatever) there. As for where the dark lifeforms came from, that's explained in-game: they're native wildlife of Aether possessed by the Ing. As for the Leviathan seed, it's implied to be the Sky Temple, with the Emperor Ing as its Core Guardian.
Elevators
- In the Prime series, all of the elevators go down, if you're going to a new area. Now, this would be fine, but you go down, don't flip, and then you're in open sky! This bothers me to no end, and it gets really rattling in Prime 2, when you take an elevator down and end up at the summit of a MOUNTAIN!
- Presumably the "going down" loading cutscene only shows part of the trip- there are likely some parts where the elevator goes sideways, or there are boring empty corridors between elevators that we don't need to play. Also, some elevators DO go up.
- I always wondered how anything can survive riding the elevators in Prime 2: Echoes. The damned things are rocket powered, and they go from zero to full speed and then back to a full stop instantaneously - by rights the passenger(s), even those in super-powered armour, ought to be smeared across the ceiling or splattered on the platform. Apparently nobody ever explained inertia or momentum to the Luminoth...
- Well, when heading downward, they actually use the rockets to slow down. Yes, upwards should be a trip into splatter land, but not downwards.
- This is a world with space ships. I'm sure whatever stops the spaceship from splattering the pilot all over the walls can be adapted to rocket powers elevators.
- The Sanctuary Fortress isn't at the summit of the mountain, it's built into the cliffside. The Temple Grounds, on the other hand, have cliffs all around the edges. They may very well be on a plateau on top of the mountain adjacent to the one the Fortress is on (you have to cross a bridge to get to the Fortress proper).
- And that would be Jossed by the map itself. If you zoom out far enough, it shows you the placement of the levels in accordance to the other levels, the areas within the levels, and the height of the levels themselves. The Sanctuary Fortress is the highest on the map.
- Yes, but the entrance of the Sanctuary Fortress is low; you then cross a bridge to a second cliff, where the actual fortress is.
- In fairness, Retro themselves presumably realised these issues, phasing out elevators in Prime 3 in favour of Samus's ship (for both single-planet and interplanetary travel) and things like the Pirates' shuttle trains.
Recovery system
- How on earth does the recovery system for long-distance falls in the Prime series work? You miss your jump, poor Samus goes hurtling off into the great beyond, and then you're instantly transported back to the platform you jumped from, with nothing more than a cute little "oof!" noise to mark the mishap. (Hell, Samus yells louder and takes more damage if she trips over a Zoomer.) Since long-distance falls kill you instantly in Hunters, the magic recovery business in the other games makes no sense at all.
- The best part being that this problem was introduced with Prime II: Echoes, the original Metroid Prime was designed so there were no infinite fall areas to worry about, at least that you could reach.
- Just remember that in this series, Hunters is essentially too bollocksed up to really count. Especially with random things like taking appreciable fall damage.
- It works the same way it works for Link.
- I have a theory regarding this. Essentially, every time you fall in either series, you lose health and are then returned to the start point before where you fell, yeah? Easy fix: In Zelda games, Link is warped out of certain death, but the spell needs life energy to run so fast. Same deal for Metroid, except it only pulls from the suits shields to activate the teleport module. The only hole in this logic is why she couldn't just use the short range teleport all the time, but probably doesn't to conserve her shielding. Also, the 'oof' probably means it doesn't cancel the kinetic motion. so she still smacks the ground at her maximum fall speed, which her suits inertial dampers took on.
- Time distortion/reversal. Can only be used for a short period and explains why you return to the platform, but can't hop over to the next platform with it. It can also be linked to a save point which provides the extra power to bring you the farther distance.
- Also, what I consider disturbing is that some places are technically not bottomless pits (take some Temple Grounds cliffsides, and some of the locations in Corruption, save Sky Town for its cloudy surface)
- I am going to assume Gameplay and Story Segregation. Samus never misses those jumps throughout the canon course of the story because doing so would be fatal (just as she never dies against bosses in-universe even though you, as the player, may see it happen many times). They don't make it a full game over because that would be too annoying, and you lose energy as a gameplay penalty for screwing up instead.
- Clearly the player's lost sync with Samus. "No, it didn't happen like that..."
- I always thought she takes damage on the trip back to where she was. It's been established that her suit protects her from any type of fall damage, but she could have battled some enemies while taking a long path back. This would be too annoying for the player, so they went with a time-lapse and skipped the boring trek to where you just were each time you fall.
Metroid Prime?
- Metroid Prime, the main villain of the trilogy named after it, can't be an actual Metroid, right? I mean, Metroids were created BY the Chozo, so there's no way a meteor they've never heard of or seen could have one inside it.
- I think the Metroid got in there, was mutated by the Phazon, and Space Pirates provided him some weapons. I think.
- My theory is that there wasn't a Metroid inside it. The Leviathan crashed into the planet and enthralled a Metroid already there as its Guardian, the same thing that happened to Mogenar, Helios, and Ridley. This Metroid ended up eating the Leviathan core and fusing with it, becoming nearly unrecognisable as a Metroid. Chozo lore never mentions that the Worm came with the meteor, just that it appeared afterwards in the Impact Crater. The only problem is that there is no evidence of Metroids on Tallon IV prior to the meteor. That doesn't necessarily mean there weren't any, but it's hard to prove.
- This is why the retcon of Trilogy and the PAL version regarding the Pirates' knowledge of Prime's existence creates more problems than it solves. The original NTSC version explained why there was a mutant Metroid in the Impact Crater, as well as why it had "mechanical" weapons as well as organic ones.
- None of the weapons are explicitly mechanical. Given what some other fully-organic bosses pull, the only evidence we have that Prime's weapons are mechanical is the NTSC version saying they are.
- Prime 3 shows that there are Metroid Primes on Phaaze. I'm guessing one got in before the Leviathan "launched" and made it to Tallon IV. It became the guardian, absorbed Phazon faster than the core could produce, absorbed the core, and essentially began self-producing Phazon. Still doesn't explain the mechanical weapons, but the retcon may have removed the fact that they're mechanical in nature and not natural.
- Those Primes were probably evolved from the Pirate's Metroid stock. Dark Samus knew how powerful Phazon Metroids were. She just killed any that mutated enough to reach Prime level because she didn't want to be challenged.
- My guess is it's not ACTUALLY a Metroid, but its behaviour is similar to a really large, planet-munching Metroid, so they just called it the Metroid Prime.
- It could very well be a Metroid. Remember the variety in Metroid II: Return of Samus and Metroid Fusion? You have the Queen, the Omega Metroid, and all those other weird looking ones in the background of Fusion when you discover Metroids were being bred.
