So... how does one deal with a scene like this? It's like taking a bite into an uncut pizza made of shit; it's a menagerie of horrors, but every place looks the same. This scene does so much wrong that everything kinda builds on top of everything else. You can't talk about one stupid thing without taking a bite out of another three. There's no obvious starting point.
So here's how things are going to go. First, I'm going to do a quick pass over what happens in this scene, to give a basic idea of the horrors that await us. Then, I'll go back to the beginning and cover the myriad of ways that it is absolutely, categorically stupid. Next, I'm going to cover how this scene butchers the character of Adam. After that, I'll cover how it buries the character of Samus in a shallow grave. And then there will be one more thing to discuss, but it will really be a summation of many things from prior scenes.
Samus walks down a hall, presumably to Sector Zero. This takes a long time, because Samus has decided to creep slowly down the hall, while occasionally switching to different camera angles. Then... a Metroid appears! But it's "a baby." Naturally we flashback to Metroid II, where we see the infant Metroid hatch. In this flashback, Samus doesn't aim her gun at it, unlike the Super Metroid version.
After the flashback, Samus points her gun at it, then shuffles backwards a bit and drops her guard as the Metroid kind of floats around. Samus takes a couple of deep breaths, then raises her gun to fire. We enter pointless slow-motion because it's pointless until... she gets shot in the back. This one shot is enough to completely destabilize her power suit, as well as do damage directly to Samus herself, as she collapses to the ground.
The Metroid chirps over the barely conscious Samus, who looks up at it. After floating around, it snarls at her and charges to attack... only to get frozen. Then Samus passes out. We get a pointless shot of Samus's detailed ass as someone walks up behind her unconscious form.
Cut to an external view of the ship. We see what look like flaps or wings or something unfolding from the rear of the BOTTLE SHIP. Well, that was pointless; next scene.
We see Samus sitting against a wall, while a guy in GF armor kneels down. He says "Samus," in a very familiar voice. It's Adam.
Hurray. I'm totally glad he's not dead and dismembered and shoved out an airlock into a nearby star to be incinerated and have his atoms scattered across the universe. Joy.
Samus, waking up and breathing heavily, recognizes the voice. Adam exposits what we already know, in case you took a break between meeting Madeline and this cutscene. Samus asks why he shot her. He says that she can't fight the Sector Zero Metroids because they "most likely can't be frozen." Samus points out that he froze "that baby," but Adam "guess"es that it was larval and therefore freezable, "but who can say?"
Adam justifies this logic by saying that making bioweapons with an exploitable flaw would be foolish. And since they're obviously making lots of Metroids, then they must have overcome this flaw. He then says that genociding them was the right call. Despite Super Metroid telling us that Metroids could make for a strong power source. So Adam picks up his guns and says that these Metroids must be destroyed, since nobody has the technology to destroy them.
Wait...
Samus asks about that report he wrote about Metroids. Adam says that he wrote the report at the behest of GF HQ, and he said that the program shouldn't be implemented. He blames this facility on a rogue faction who "co-opted my report." Sure why not.
Cut to outside the ship, where we see various lights come on. Back inside, the corridor lights up. Adam then gives Samus some new objectives. He says that the BOTTLE SHIP is headed for the GF HQ. Given Madeline's info (which he did in fact hear about), this suggests MB is going to attack the GF, so he tells Samus to change the ship's course. He also tells her to go find a survivor in "Room MW." Oh and kill Ridley, not like that's going to happen. Adam also cryptically says that Madeline isn't Samus's ally.
Samus pulls herself to her feet and asks what his plan is for the unfreezable Sector Zero Metroids. Adam says that if Sector Zero takes enough damage, it will automatically detach from the BOTTLE SHIP and explode. Yeah, I've never seen a facility like that in a Metroid game. Ever.
Samus then tells Adam to let her do it, that she's the only one who can take the Metroids. Samus unsteadily walks towards Adam, begging him to let her go in. And of course, we flashback to the Ian scene from before while this happens, while she says the same thing there she did here. Adam simply says that he can't fight Ridley, that he's "no galactic savior." Which is why he's about to save the galaxy.
Adam says that she'll be OK soon. And he says, "I'm sorry for getting a little rough with you." Reflected in Samus's eye, we see Adam turn around and walk towards the door. Samus tries to run after him, and then... her suit starts fizzling on and off around her. She seems to be struggling against it, reaching out for him and calling him back, almost as though her suit was trying to stop her or something. It's not exactly clear.
Adam gets into the airlock while Samus bangs on the glass. Adam turns around and says, "No objections, right lady?" To which Samus, while crying, eventually gives the thumbs down. As expected. And then Adam walks off into the light, the blast doors sealing behind him.
Cut to an exterior shot of Sector Zero detaching. Back inside, we see Samus slowly walking away while generic sadness music plays. Sector Zero explodes off screen and the ship shakes for no adequately explained reason. Well, I hope the Deleter's not around while Samus's suit is on the fritz, or Adam will have just gotten her killed, won't he?
Samus then begins a solid minute of monologuing about how important Adam was to her, how much pain his death caused, all while a montage of clips of Adam plays. Samus eventually ends this by saying that Adam taught her clarity. And she thanks him, presumably for the sacrifice, though given the relationship, I can't rule out that she's thanking him for shooting her so that he could make her decisions for her. And she reassembles her suit.
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have officially hit rock bottom. This game cannot possibly get worse, and it doesn't.
I will say one, and exactly one, positive thing about it. Let's say that your suspension of disbelief somehow managed to survive the last hour and a half of total character assassination, horrible writing, terrible plotting, and the various other failings of this "story". Then you watched this scene without being reduced to a crying lump begging for the pain to end or exploding into a fit of apoplectic rage at the writers for believing that someone could be entertained by this. In short, if you are still somehow with this scene, if you're still into the story... then it probably works for you.
If you can get past everything horrible this scene does, and don't spend any time really thinking about it, simply accepting the abject bullshit it spews forth as the truth, then it works as a semi-effective scene of a character selflessly sacrificing his life for another.
This is Fucking Stupid
This scene is a Goddamned fractal of idiocy. No matter how hard you look, no matter how closely you examine it, every part has just as much stupidity as the whole. So I'm just going to start from the top and work my way down again.
It starts from the very first minute when we have solid 30+ seconds of Samus walking. It isn't technically all cutscene, but it may as well be; the "gameplay" segments consist of you either standing still or walking forward slowly. That's right; the only direction that actually works is forward. This doesn't build tension, even with the random camera angles thrown about. 10 seconds would build tension; 30 seconds goes too far.
Next, the random Metroid. Why is there a Metroid outside of Sector Zero? Yes, I know Sector Zero has Metroids in it, but they would be in it, not just outside it. And yes, I know that there are Metroids still outside of Sector Zero as we'll see later. There's no reason for that either, but that's a different scene's stupidity. My point is how did this Metroid get here, when the other non-Sector Zero Metroids are far, far away? Not only that, having this Metroid here only serves to force them to have that line later about how larval Metroids maybe kinda sorta possibly can still be frozen.
Even more, the only way to get here is to go through Sector 2. The Cryosphere. And we've already established that this particular Metroid is still susceptible to cold. So it must have come from Sector Zero. How'd that happen if Sector Zero is secure?
Then Samus gets shot... WITH WHAT?! What kind of weapon takes out SAMUS ARAN IN ONE SHOT?! The blast looks like it came from one of the GF freeze pistols. Are you telling me that Samus can absorb tons of fire from Space Pirates, but the GF has a simple pistol that can fry Samus in a single shot, to the point where her suit deactivates and she is rendered unconscious? Mother Brain's Hyper Beam attack is the most damaging single attack in the entire Metroid series, and it only did 3 blocks of damage (6 without the Varia). SA-X couldn't kill Samus that fast.
This is nothing more than complete and utter bullshit made necessary by the ridiculous construction of the scene. The writers need to stop Samus from just walking into Sector Zero, and they won't allow Samus to be stopped by mere words (despite all evidence to the contrary, but more on that later). So they need Adam to be able to completely disable her. Enter the Mary Sue Cannon of Disabling +12: one shot disables any protagonist for an arbitrary period of time.
It has been speculated that Samus magically knew that Adam shot her, and thus her suit deactivates because she lost her will now that Adam's turned against her. Sorry; not buying it. Why? Because even if Samus's suit deactivated from that, it would be after the shot hit. Her actual body wouldn't sustain damage from it. She should have just stood there in her Zero Suit. And hell, that would have made sense, as well as justified the Metroid thing. Adam shoots her, she drops her suit and faces him, the Metroid starts sucking her life, which forces Adam to shoot it. She's weakened, but doesn't suffer the indignity of being completely taken out by Adam's Mary Sue Cannon of Disabling +12.
But no, we have to stick with the ball-crushingly stupid.
Also, great engineering there, Chozo: making the suit deactivate when a simple freeze gun is employed. That's wonderful suit design guys. Also, I wonder why a single shot with ice missiles didn't work on SA-X in Fusion? Maybe because that game was made by people who weren't blithering idiots and incompetents.*
Now, on to the unfreezable Metroids. There are only two games in the entire franchise where freezing Metroids is absolutely required: Metroid 1 and Zero Mission. You could technically lump Metroid II into this, as the baseline Metroids still need the ice beam to die, but most of the Metroids in that game aren't baseline. In Super Metroid, you can kill any Metroid with a series of Power Bombs. Not the most elegant solution, but it does work. Also, "the baby" was invulnerable to ice (and Power Bombs), but Mother Brain still managed to kill it. Missiles are good enough in the Prime games.
By all rights, we should be following the Super Metroid rules: if you hit them with big explosives, they will eventually die. But no; this game treats unfreezable Metroids as though they're indestructible. Well guess what: a big enough explosion seems to do the job, because that's how Adam kills them.
Of course, that's Adam's big explosion; Samus can't possibly create big explosions...
But now, back to pacing. Samus's heavy breathing dialog really stretches this scene out. Her halting, out of breath commentary just makes it take forever to deliver her lines. Combined with Adam overexplaining everything, and it makes this scene just drag on for way too long.
After a bit, Samus gets to her feet. And this shows exactly why the writers put heels on her; so that even when she's exhausted and panting for breath, she's still posing for the camera with her ass sticking out. Thanks, Team Ninja. The heels also make the entire scene of her trying to walk after him broken; she's supposed to be trying to overcome the fatigue brought on by Adam's Mary Sue Cannon. But instead it just looks like she's desperately trying to balance on 4-inch heels.
Now we move on to Adam's "plan". His plan is to go into Sector Zero and blow shit up until it detaches. Um, Adam... you have a ship. A ship with guns on it. Why don't you launch your ship, fly around to where Sector Zero is, and shoot it from the back until it detaches. Or what, did you bring the only military dropship that doesn't come with weapons? Does the GF buy their dropships from the same place as the Terran Confederacy? Does Samus's ship not have guns on it either?
So let's assume that we're in stupid-land and GF dropships don't actually have guns (even though the GF's Anhur-class ship in Echoes
had guns on it). Hey Adam: ever heard of a FUSE? What, were you and Captain Janeway both trained at the same academy where they forgot to teach you how to rig up explosives to explode when you're not there? And don't tell me that Adam doesn't have explosives or something. If they forgot to bring explosives with them in their dropship, I'm sure they could rig something up with its engines or fuel or something. Failing that, I'm pretty sure that they could find something explosive lying around on the ship.
Now, you might say that Sector Zero is crawling with unfreezable Metroids, so you can't go in there to plant explosives. Well, if that's true, then here's what will happen in Adam's plan. Adam will open the inner airlock door to Sector Zero, a half-dozen unfreezable Metroids will enter the room, and he will be a corpse in a few seconds. Which means that the only place he can damage is the airlock area.
If damage to the airlock area alone is sufficient to trigger the self-destruct (which makes sense), then you could just drop the explosives there. Put them in the airlock, set the fuse for 1 minute, exit, and open the inner doors. Problem solved.
If you have to get farther in to do enough damage, then the Metroids must be at least somewhat contained, or else Adam's plan would fail immediately. Though MB might just release them when it detects someone entering the sector. Even so, it gives you time to set the charges and haul ass for the airlock. Indeed, you could still have Adam die in this situation. He goes in, sets the charges, but Samus has to watch as the Metroids grab him on the other side of the airlock. And he chooses not to unlock it, to keep her safe.
See? Same outcome, but without the Goddamn stupid. Yes, Adam doesn't get to walk off like a hero, but he would still get to die like one.
No, this is all nothing more than a shoddy contrivance. The writers want Adam to have to restrain Samus, so all of the logical, non-stupid alternatives are dismissed so that they can go with that. No need to bother expending effort to make the story make sense; no, just declare that it happens this way.
Comments
