(Spoilers for AM2R, and also the original Metroid 2 and Samus Returns)
I skipped over posting about running into some more Galactic Federation soldiers, but I did find and visit the landing site of their ship(s - there's two teams, and you get to explore the research team's ship) before going to the Distribution Center and getting my swimsuit.
Things haven't been going much better for the ones who didn't go caving, huh?
There's lore, though. The crew members being named after characters from Alien was a nice touch, considering Metroid's origins. Also the guy getting eaten by bugs on the roof of the ship was called Dutch.
I think these logs, and the earlier individual soldiers' last word ones, are one of the things added in later updates after Nintendo told the original developer to stop working on the game, and fans of the already fan-made game figured out a way to continue from there. As such a blatant reference to other franchises it does read as a decision more likely found in a fanwork, but I thought it was pretty fun. That patch adds a lot of other things, too, that I've been enjoying while playing, like those nonhostile flying critters (Septoggs, or the bugs eating Dutch's corpse, I suppose) found in almost every area which are a welcome indicator that at least I'm not about to get ambushed by a Metroid right away (since Metroids are not found in the same room with other animals or they'd just eat the other animals) and additional save rooms I'm also thankful for.
Oh, never mind this room must just be here for a free energy tank. :)
Descending even further after the Distribution Center, I found the search&rescue team's camp in the lava caves just before the nest.
And even some of the team itself still alive! Fighting the first Omega Metroid as it molts from a Zeta. But I only got there in time to watch them die, too late to save them. It's a well executed scene, and the scan for the team just ending in "There are no survivors." was pretty chilling.
I'm... gonna call bullshit on them having made it this far, though. The research team I found earlier did have a direct tunnel from the surface that they couldn't get back through because it had collapsed in one of the earthquakes (SR388quakes?) that for me have had largely positive effects, opening new paths forward. The search&rescue team's ship is farther away at the landing site and you can't explore its direct surroundings for perhaps their own tunnel down, and perhaps the team got to this location through one of the caves in the background instead of by crawling through all the dangers that even I've been struggling to fend off with my advanced borderline-magic tech and superhuman space birb strength. But either way they're so far into the Metroids' territory that even these four people still being alive is a miracle.
And even some of the research team got improbably far, like this one guy I found high up on the cliffs around the Tower that I had to ascend using either Space Jump or Spider Ball (I took the map screenshot just now so it's more explored than it could have been on my first visit to the area, ignore that). The entrance to the area is the indigo blue tunnel at the bottom right.
It's sad that you had to die here and that while trying to find an alternate route to the surface you ended up only going deeper down into the caverns, but... how did you get up that portion of the rock wall where it goes so concave you'd be crawling along a ceiling (right past a cave with a hungry Gamma Metroid waiting just inside), or through the long, narrow gauntlet just before the area, where the floor is lava and critters are jumping at you from it and from above? I can Shinespark through it, but I'm also Samus Aran. What's your secret?
I'm griping (I like griping), but I did enjoy exploring the ship, and the ambience was really on point in that area and the visuals gorgeous, and I appreciate these added pieces of worldbuilding. The landing site is a whole new area that doesn't even exist in the original Metroid 2 or in the official remake (Samus Returns). The Federation teams are largely forgotten in those games and out of the three versions of Metroid 2 are only this fleshed out in AM2R.
I feel like maybe there's a reason the Federation is so out of the spotlight in the other two, though, mostly appearing as just a background entity as Samus's employer for this mission. The story itself is about her and the Metroids, and about the most direct confrontation between them, as two of perhaps the most deadly forces in the galaxy that have both been used as weapons in the wider-scale war. The Space Pirates call Samus 'The Hunter' - a nickname she probably takes pride in having earned from the people that she has once been a victim of and who now fear her so much that they (or at least the lower ranking soldiers who aren't too proud to) admit that out of the two of them they are the prey. The Metroids are terrifying predators, the ultimate bioweapon, so dangerous in the wrong - or potentially even right - hands that the Federation has ordered them to be exterminated to total extinction. The story is about Samus alone descending into the lair of monsters like Samus alone can. The Chozo are another "character" whose part has been expanded on in both remakes, but that reflects the expanded and more defined role they've gotten in the series as a whole since the original Metroid 2's release, and the closer connection they have to both sides of this conflict.
But, this is a version of the story where the Federation troopers get more than a footnote of attention, and I do like that there is a version that does that. These people are victims of their higher-ups' thoughtlessness, we might as well spare them a thought or two. Does it distract a bit from what I personally believe to be the core of the story? Maybe, but some of the changes Samus Returns makes can be said to do the same. At the end of the day I'm glad all three of the games are different and that each remake takes things in a little different direction than the other when they do change or add things, and I don't think there's any point in fighting over which remake is the only good one or if both suck because they didn't get the original, as all three still exist, so - holy shit, three cakes. Samus Aran is a space folk legend whose adventures get told a little differently each time and by different people to different audiences around different space campfires.
I do like comparing them, though, so I'll continue to do that, as I think all of them are great in their own ways and I find interesting what each of those ways is.
No comments:
Post a Comment