iancsamson:

When I first heard that an upcoming Metroid game would focus on narrative and the question of who Samus was, I was excited. The Metroid series tended to tell its story indirectly or through gameplay, which was always fascinating, but left a lot of mystery and possibility untold and not fleshed out, and I wanted to know more. Unfortunately, I didn’t find what followed to be satisfying, interesting, or even fitting with what we’ve seen before. So I’ve pondered a few times – if I were to answer the question of Who is Samus, how would I have answered it? So this was a bit of creative practice.

More than likely, my ponderings on Samus and Metroid won’t match up with everyone’s, but, what the heck. That’s part of the fun.

Social Graces

We know that Samus’s job and duty pits her against a horde of monstrosities completely and utterly alone, but does it make sense that she prefers this, or that she’s limited to this? She was raised by her parents and the Chozo, and her job is all about travelling from world to world. She’s probably the most worldly, or rather, most galaxyly (?) person in the series, and I imagine that also makes her an awesome person to hang with - oh, the stories she could tell. Part of my mindset on this is because I liked her portrayal in the age-old Captain N comics, it adds to her capability, it’s a fun twist on expectation, and because I think we have enough of the socially awkward alien type character.

Spirit

While we know Samus for her capacity for destruction, part of the reason she’s so able to be such a powerful warrior is because she was raised by the Chozo, a highly advanced, deeply spiritual race. Her suit requires discipline and control, and for that and to survive such horrors in her life would require a strong soul, and I can’t imagine the Chozo didn’t start raising her with these lessons. They become the core at her being - this appreciation of nature and beauty, her awareness of herself and her surroundings, a distinct wisdom that shapes her actions. But at the same time, it’s a sense of being that is constantly struggling with something that may or may not lie even deeper within her persona:

Rage

Her parents are dead. The race that raised her is dead. In them, she was able to see the best this galaxy had to offer, she saw love, she saw spirit and magic and kindness - and all that was ripped, violently away from her. Now, she’s stuck, alone, in a corrupt, ignorant, and broken galaxy. While she is usually able to maintain control, there is a part of her that is viciously vengeful, the part that is capable of genocide, the part that we see eventually unleashed in Super Metroid’s ending. It’s this conflict that I see making up much of her character, and probably would be most visible at her origins.

Joining the Federation

We don’t really see much of Samus’s Federation life, why she joined it, what it was like for her, or how it ended. There’s a lot of potential storytelling there - how does the Federation react to having someone as unique and alien as Samus on board? Do the scientists poke and prod her for having Chozo DNA? Does she constantly have to prove herself, or does she garner respect as she goes? What does she learn there that the Chozo weren’t able to teach her? And the biggest question of all: Why does she leave? And I think it would be a combination of the answers to the questions above.

The latest game implies it’s because Samus was a brat, fought against an authority that was correct, and left due to her own pride. Eh. I do think that her abilities and her attitude would have led to confrontations, conflict, and difficulties for the Federation (all of which that would have been fun to see), but not because she was unreliable or a problem, but because she was too good for them. 

They’ll end up hiring her to take on Zebes all by her lonesome, after all. Her leaving the Federation isn’t because she’s imperfect, though she is, but because she realizes the Federation is not the right avenue for her to take on the Space Pirates and fight what she sees as the worst wrongs in the galaxy. 

So those are some musings on Samus. All in all, I’d like to think the Story of Samus is about a person who’s seen the best of life, and with it now gone, she tries to find her place in a broken galaxy, searching for the best in people and some semblance of what she once had, but is constantly disappointed by what she finds - and so, keeps moving on. Even when she does find something toattach to, like the baby Metroid or her fellow Hunters or the Federation, the evil that surrounds them destroys them, once again leaving her by herself. It’s a story about optimism vs realism, about fighting against and relying on her own rage and depression, about exploring and seeing the best and the worst that lies out there in both extremes. In Fusion, we see one major step in that journey - beginning to find allies she can trust and rely on, even when the whole Federation becomes a potential enemy. But what comes next? Can Samus save the galaxy from itself? Perhaps it’s the kind of question we’ll see answered if the series continues.

Full images can be seen here.