Caving experiences in space

(Some spoilers for all three versions of Metroid 2.)

Pretty cordite crystals are pretty.

Found the expedition team sent here before Samus. This is why you should just go ahead and hire her for everything instead.

Jokes aside, this was a nice somber moment. Samus Returns also adds the Galactic Federation expedition team to the game, while the original only mentions them in the manual (actually three teams one after another, each sent when contact with the previous one was lost, but in SR there's just one team), but out of the three versions of Metroid 2, AM2R gives them the most attention, with a room dedicated to what's left of them.

I feel like the last messages were a little unnecessary, and leaving what exactly happened up to environmental storytelling would have been more effective, but I can see where the decision to include those probably came from, with the scene being reminiscent of a similar situation in Metroid Prime 2. I love the scan visor in the Prime games, but to be honest I haven't been reading most of the scans included in AM2R, though I'm sure there are interesting things in them. I think it suits Prime's style of revealing the story better than it does the 2D games, with the first person perspective making it more natural for the player to have access to information the same way Samus does. Like in Prime, though, the scans are optional.

To compare with Samus Returns a bit more, though, the expedition team made it much farther down in AM2R. I think that contributes to the difference in mood when we find them, having already crawled through some very dark, dangerous, and labyrinthine tunnels ourselves and realizing they would have gone through much of the same, only to die down here. In Samus Returns the team only barely made it below the surface, and the player can stop to acknowledge them, but can also just breeze past to the next room and barely notice.

I think both work, though. It can sound callous, but the latter is pretty much how I expected them to have fared, and though Samus has certainly been shown to have some compassion for people in their situation... she's also pretty used to seeing it. The Galactic Federation, in their infinite wisdom, sent people to SR388 to hunt down any metroids still left there? To the homeworld of the possibly most dangerous creatures in the galaxy that feed by absorbing what may very well be your actual soul with just a touch and aren't deterred by protective armor even as advanced as Samus's own? Yeah. What did they think was going to happen?

Anyway, operating ancient machinery as enrichment!

And another shine has been sparked. My game bugged after completing this one so I took the screenshot as evidence in case I couldn't do it again.

Zeta time.