Metroid: Other M: The Personality Assassination (Spoilers Ahead)

There has been a heavy controversy amongst the gaming world about a video game that just came out. Nintendo has finally attempted to get with the times by providing a video game experience that mixes gameplay with high-detailed cinematic cut scenes and a storyline full of raw emotion and character building. Metroid: Other M was an innovative collaboration between Nintendo and Team Ninja as they attempted to infuse personality and depth to the highly-acclaimed Metroid saga. Unfortunately though, somewhere along the lines they forgot about Samus’ history and have provided her with one of the most contradictory and left-field changes in the history of gaming. Metroid: Other M was met with the most mixed reviews in the Metroid franchise since Metroid Fusion, and a good portion of it has to do with the storyline.

Now, I will explain why I am going to personally accept Other M as a major fluke, and the sooner the gaming world sees this, the sooner we can move away from this. It has very little to do with the massive change in pace, tone, and gameplay style—but it has to do with the total negligence of who the character is and what she represents. Can you imagine what would happen if Metal Gear Solid fans saw a Metal Gear Solid which saw Ocelot in a love triangle story? It would receive the similar shock that some Nintendo fans are experiencing as they watch a usually-tough Samus have a total shift in personality—a personality that gamers on a whole have developed for our heroine since her first appearance.

“I'm also not complaining about this particular character or her strengths or weaknesses. add depth, character, emotion, what have you, i'm fine with that. As a stand alone story, Other M is OK. what [IGN Blogger] (and others) are upset about, is this is a drastic change in the existing Samus character and it seems to come out of nowhere. Some have made a good point, that we didn't really know what Samus was thinking or feeling in other adventures. fair enough. I think if Other M happened way, way sooner in the history of the character, we would accept it more readily. This is like a coming of age story. NOT a returning to fight the same enemies she's beaten time and time again to NOW feel afraid of them? that just doesn't fit. sorry.”

~~IGN User: dponiel

Samus started out as a bad-arse galactic bounty hunter with a mysterious past and with a very straightforward goal, take care of the Metroids. The fact that she was a woman was one of the biggest surprises in gaming history, if not the all-time biggest. As the franchise evolved to become the powerhouse quality grouping of games it is today, only few snippets of personality was revealed. She was a tough bounty hunter that allowed her actions to do all the talking. She never interacts much with anybody else, even when there were many more characters to talk to in Metroid Prime 3. In Metroid Fusion, she mentions how she hates taking orders, further supplementing her as a loner heroine that is much happier keeping to herself.

Despite her bad-assness, she does have some heart, as she spared the last, final Metroid in the end of Metroid II: Return of Samus, because the Metroid was a baby and was treating Samus as her mom. None of her games up to this point focused on character development, but did drop off some hints here and there as to who she was. The personality was never fleshed out, but the little snippets and small little moments made gamers aware that she wasn’t just a heartless character to control and maneuver around dangerous terrain.

“For what it’s worth, Other M is the penultimate game in the series (current) chronology. Set after Super Metroid, but before Metroid Fusion, Other M is a good way into Samus’ career as a bounty hunter. She’s got a reputation by this point, having destroyed an entire planet and destroying the whole Metroid race, the psychic brain that governed them, and the space dinosaur thing that killed her parents. That’s a lot of violence and a lot of going beyond the call of duty. It’d odd, then, that Samus is such a fragile and mewling coward in Other M.” ~~Review in Resolution Magazine

So when Metroid: Other M was revealed, I was excited because it looked like they were giving Samus a tougher, rougher edge. The trailers showed intense action, crazy-nice-looking cutscenes, and just a faster, more furious Samus running around. But as the release date loomed and the reviews were arriving, certain fears started creeping up. The game was looking like it was receiving more and more Japanese influence, when the Metroid franchise is strictly a West Coast style of product. I was afraid they were going to tweak Samus’ personality a bit too much.

“Time-wise, Other M is tucked in between fan-favorite Super Metroid and the critically beloved Metroid Fusion -- the first game that showed a hint of Samus's personal history and the introduction of Adam Malkovich, a core character in its newest iteration. This makes Other M the second-to-last game sequentially, as the bulk of Metroid games have wedged themselves further and further into the early years of Samus Aran’s story. Ironically, Other M feels like a prequel to the franchise while attempting to be the culmination of everything Metroid has been and become…… In short, you're asked to forget that Samus has spent the last 10-15 years on solitary missions ridding the galaxy of Space Pirates, saving the universe and surviving on her own as a bounty hunter. Instead, Other M expects you to accept her as a submissive, child-like and self-doubting little girl that cannot possibly wield the amount of power she possesses unless directed to by a man…..”
~~~G4TV review


Metroid: Other M is chronologically between Super Metroid and the latest installment, Metroid Fusion. So why on earth does she still have so many issues? Why on earth is she taking orders from someone else, even though it means stupidly running around extremely hot conditions but not turning on your suit? Why on earth are there cutscenes of a crying girl when she sees Ridley (again…)? And why, oh why, has our beloved Samus become watered-down to resemble a lost puppy on certain scenes? It would make total sense if the game chronologically was in the very beginning of her quest to make outer space a safer place; but after all that she has already been through, there’s no way she would still behave like the way she behaves in Other M. Her relationship with Adam was very laughable and quite inconsistent--especially with her character on the previous games.

I will repeat this again, WHY OH WHY does she freeze when she sees Ridley for like the sixth darn time!!!??

“Until Other M, Samus has existed as a silent protagonist with only the personality that we have bestowed upon her in our own imaginations. Regardless of whether or not the interpretation in Other M can be reconciled with your own perception of her, there is a moment later in the game that cannot be justified…ever. Confronted by her longstanding nemesis, Ridley, she is spliced into flashes of a little girl, crying and afraid, despite the fact she has already defeated Ridley at least FOUR times already, once when he was a powerful robot. Terrible.”
~~~G4TV review

“The entire game is one, long, character assassination of Samus Aran…. Samus may be acting in character as a whiny, cowardly, submissive, spineless woman, but if she is then she is a terrible character. If this had been a prequel to the very first Metroid, back when she was still finding her feet, then a great deal of my hatred would have been invalid, but its not. Other M takes place towards the end of Samus’ career, she’s seen and killed monsters so hideous that they’d give Lovecraft a run for his money, but one word from her former CO and she regresses to a child. I can pinpoint the moment in the game that made me give up. It was the Ridley fight. Samus must have killed Ridley about 5 times by now, and yet this is the only game where she is so frightened by his reappearance that she visibly freezes. She totally shuts down, and this prolonged hesitation leads to the apparent death of one of her old friends. This is a creature she has defeated countless times, seen rise from the dead just as many, and yet this time it scares her stiff. No. I’m not having that.” ~~~Resolution magazine review

Nintendo, I applaud you for trying to give personalities to each of your major heroes. But, you must do the research first, you cannot just nullify and neglect all the personality aspects that had been revealed before. Samus up to the point of Other M was a cold-blooded bounty hunter that clearly was able to overcome her past and is clearly able to overcome any obstacle that comes her way---by herself. She doesn’t need Adam, she doesn’t need anybody up to this point.

If you want to reveal backstory, that’s fine, but you can’t tell me that her past still hinders her abilities and skills up to this point—when she has already killed hundreds of Metroids and space pirates, when she took down the Mother Brain (twice), took out Ridley (thrice), and the infamous Omega Metroid (that difficult monster from Metroid Prime). It was a rather big slap in the face to those that have followed Samus for al these years.

“This could have been an opportunity to show her strength to a greater degree, the strength it takes to overcome fear and not succumb to it, perhaps by having Adam see through her disguise. As her mentor and her father figure, it stands to reason he knows her better than anyone else, perhaps there could have been scenes where he pulls her to one side and reveals this, talks about how he knows she’s hurting from what she’s done, asks her about how she fights the fear she must feel. She’s destroyed an entire planet, erased an entire species, these are themes that could have been handled so well, making her vulnerable and conflicted behind her armour of outward strength. It could have finally told us more about how Samus thinks. It could have been a character study. But no. What we get is a whining bitch prostrating herself before an older man with no real respect for her own achievements. Given what they had to work with, the myriad of different ways they could have taken the story, the fact that this is where they went makes me furious”
~~~Resolution Magazine review

Bottom Line: The gameplay looks like fun, but I will find it extremely hard to get past just what they did to Samus to truly enjoy this. She was much more believable and much more likable as a one-dimensional mystery, than the fleshed-out-yet-rather-infuriating incarnation that she is in this game. I am not sure why they decided to turn the franchise in this direction, what was wrong with her being a quiet assassin? I understand that sometimes change is indeed necessary, but to me Samas Aran is a female, space version of Link---a heroic figure that speaks with actions rather than words. They could have easily fleshed-out her character, but retain her appearance as a quiet, heroic, cold-blooded, brave bounty hunter that can destroy planets by herself.

But no, we get your typical female that struggles to get over her past, and despite seeing all this mayhem before, struggles to disobey orders in order to protect her own stinkin’ life. Nintendo, I like your efforts, but next time hire people that truly know, understand, and love the franchise that you have built. You can change the gameplay, but don’t change the traits. Super Mario has been transformed gameplay-wise time and time again, yet Mario never (and hopefully never will) change his character: a lovable plumber looking to save his beloved princess from a fiend that’s nothing but pure evil.Samus easily could have fit to resemble a character in a modern-day Final Fantasy game. We don't need that. They should not try to mass appeal Samus to the Japanese audience.



Samus is a bad-ass bounty hunter. Let’s please keep it that way. In the meantime, I will do to Metroid: Other M what Zelda fans do to the games Link: The Faces of Evil, Zelda: The Wand of Gamelon, and Zelda's Adventure………..pretend like they never happened.