#is Metroid Fusion way more linear than every single previous Metroid games before it? sure

[maburito]

Well, the Nightmare certainly didn't stole it's name

[spinningbuster98]

Metroid Fusion Ending: The Big Dumb Ending

Fusion introduces a design element that will become a staple of every single game afterwards and that many fans dislike: the so called “final victory lap”

Essentially plenty of the game’s items are locked away by blocks and objects that require really late-game items to reach, in this case the Screw Attack, meaning that if you want that 100% item completion you’ll be forced to go through the ENTIRE game right before facing the final boss

Many fans detest this aspect of the games feeling that it’s unneccesary padding that only serves to make the game’s backtracking skyrocket for no real reason: after all Super Metroid didn’t have this

I used to agree with this assertion

Not anymore since a couple of years

Because I asked myself: why? Why do this? For what purpose from a level design standpoint?

Many fans just chalk this up to the games’ inferior level design and more linear structures when compared to Super Metroid

But...it doesn’t make sense when you really think about it

If this truly were a case of superior VS inferior level design then why do Metroid 1 and 2 also allow you to collect everything with minimum backtracking, like Super, despite those games having a lot of level design issues?

It also can’t just be a matter of linearity because Zero Mission, basically a game that can be even LESS linear than Super, also has a last minute item round up

Hell: even AM2R does this! Yeah sure it makes things more convenient by allowing limited fast travel upon reaching the third to last area, but you’ll still have to revisit each previous area to complete some “bouncing ball” puzzles that only become available upon restoring power to the systems in the third to last area. This is not how Metroid 2 worked.

So why? Why do this?

Well.... I think most people see this from the wrong perspective

My personal favorite way of playing Metroid games is by 100% them while ALSO speedrunning them (though not in a “professional” way since I’m not nearly that good)

Now I’m not trying to tell anyone here how they’re supposed to play or enjoy their games but I, personally, believe that this is the best way to experience 2D Metroid, to the point that I’d argue that they’re specifically designed for this

These are adventure games so exploration is indeed an important element, so 100% item completion is logical...but after replaying the games enough times you’ll know where everything is and so item collecting will become merely a matter of “go to X and shoot Y block to get Z”.

However these games have also undeniably always been built for speedrunning. Keyword being: built. It’s not like speedrunners have a fascination with this series just because Samus happens to run fast, the level design and movement kit of these games are all centered around giving the player a very satisfying experience if they plan on testing their own time. In general you don’t lock ending rewards behind clear times you don’t also want your game to be speedran. However JUST speedrunning a Metroid game can also be rather...unsatisfying because it will often lead you to skip over half of the content: many hidden items and puzzles will just be left there to waste

However....you can combine these two elements together

Now I don’t want to present this as some kind of revolutionary design quirk that only these games have as I’m sure others do as well, but every 2D Metroid game is designed specifically to allow you to both complete it and speedrun it at the same time

It’s something that’s difficult to explain, you kind of just have to “feel it”, but the way the areas are designed, the way the games are often paced, the way Samus moves, it’s all in service to both speedrunning and exploration done in such a way that it absolutely allows you to do both and reap the rewards of both approaches without either’s downsides

If you’re both speedrunning and collecting every item will need to be collected quickly and following a distinct route, so it’s no longer a matter of just checking something off a list

And if you’re exploring while speedrunning that means that you’re not skimming over half of the game’s content anymore

It’s essentially the “ultimate” way of experiencing these games I find, the best way of putting your skills and knowledge of the game to the test.

And this is why it sort of bugs me when people just dismiss this aspect of the games. You don’t HAVE to play them like this, it doesn’t make you any less of a fan if you don’t, but this isn’t just some weird niche way of experiencing these games that only big time speedrunners relish in. This is a big part of 2D Metroid’s core design: Fusion even locks a special ending images behind a sub 2 hours 100% requirement and so will Zero Mission, so it’s by no means some accidental or unimportant element: the developers made these games to be played in different ways and this is just as relevant as others

So what does any of this have to do with the “final victory lap”? Well if you just approach these games in a very casual way in terms of 100% item hunting, just looking for items slowly in a very lax way then this final lap will be very stupid and useless to you

But in the context of a 100% speedrun this final lap has a purpose: it’s one final challenge, one final test of your movement skills and especially of your knowledge of the map

You’re never getting everything during this section before you reach the 2 hour marks unless you map out a route that will allow you to get everything and then go to the final boss as quickly and smoothly as possible

In a game as linear as Fusion this is especially needed because otherwise it would be too easy: just follow the game’s forced path and get everything you find along the way

And I know this can be very daunting, trust me I’ve been there. But this doesn’t require you to be a literal master like some guys on YT, all it requires is for you to be good with movement and to memorise the map, which can actually be easier than it sounds because of how replayable the games are and Fusion’s linear nature alraedy giving you a clear path 90% of the time

Now despite this....I have issues with Fusion’s approach. Specifically with the way it hides items

Fusion is probably the most cryptic game in the series when it comes to item collection. It’s certainly customary for the series to hide items behind breakable blocks with no visible marks or behind fake walls or such. But Fusion does this A LOT more than the others. The main issue being that this game doesn’t have a good equivalent to the X Ray Scanner from Super. The closest that you get are Power Bombs which can at least reveal any block they can’t break...but they can’t reveal fake walls and even then what this all means is that, if you wanna 100% this game without resorting to a guide, you’ll have to plant Power Bombs every 5 fucking seconds in every single room in the game while keeping your eyes peeled for any tiny block that may get revealed as breakable in the process. Now nowadays I know where everything is so it’s no problem but during my first few playthroughs I DISTINCTLY remember just how slow, meandering, frustrating and just overall boring this process could get, it’s borderline pixel hunting! And yeah getting everything in such a cryptic game is certainly a big satisfaction but they should probably chilled a bit there

....oh you must be wondering by now why I titled this “The Big Dumb Ending” eh?

Well it’s got nothing to do with the gameplay side of things. No I’m talking about the story

Fusion is...a bit of a fandom dearie when it comes to its story I believe, with some even considering it the best story in the franchise

And while I wouldn’t consider it awful or even bad by any means I have come to believe that it’s...pretty overrated honestly.

The thing about Fusion is that it’s at its best when it affects gameplay and the game world in interesting ways, but when it comes to the actual plots you actually get various issues that can be pretty easy to miss given how often the game just throws new stuff at you

Funnily enough I’ve come to realise most of these issues upon seeing peope criticizing Dread’s story and comparing it unfavorably to Fusion’s. Don’t get me wrong: Dread has its issues too but one thing I noticed is that some of Dread’s narrative hiccups are actually also present in Fusion except they tend to be way worse there

Let’s make a few examples:

Dread shoves Kraid as a boss with little to no explanation as to how he got there on ZDR. It’s forced and kinda muddles things....but I’d argue it’s not that big of a deal since the game does give you some vague hints that can allow you to for your hypothesis regarding his presence: you can notice wall paintings in Ferenia depicting Space Pirates fighting Mawkins impying that the two races have battled in the past. In Dairon you can even spot the silouhette of what appears to be Draygon in a giant testube. Raven Beak at one point even mentions cloning Samus, implying he has access to cloning tech and with Dairon being a biological lab and the Mawkin having encountered the Pirates before AND the game’s official site at one point describing Kraid as “a creature that looks like Kraid” it’s not impossible nor improbable to imagine that that is not the Kraid we know but rather a clone. It’s not a full answer but Metroid as a series has often worked with implying things with its environmental storytelling rather than outright stating them so I can’t fully fault the approach. Plus: it’s just Kraid. He may be iconic but he’s not really important either to the plot nor to Samus

On the other Fusion shoves Ridley and a bunch of Zebesian Space Pirates on the BSL.

This is...horrendously stupid and forced on so many levels.

First off: how can they even be here? Zebes exploded, Ridley in particular was blown to pieces by Samus in Super and THEN Zebes blew up for good measure. They should be a bunch of atoms floating in space. The game makes absolutely ZERO effort to explain their presence here, neither through implications or direct narrative. I could at most excuse the Zebesians by imagining that maybe some of them could have been away from Zebes at the time, but Ridley is inexcusable. And don’t you Other M me, that game came out 8 years later and introduced a lot more issues than it fixed, plus it’s THIS game’s job to clear out its issues or at least reassure the player that they’re not issues but rather unanswered questioned that will be cleared by a later game

But the worst thing is that Samus doesn’t react nor comment at all on their prsence

She will take the time to ponder about Adam or the animals but NOT about the evil aliens she thought she had killed? About the guy who MURDERED HER FAMILY!?

Not only is this baffable it actually feels super forced from a narrative perspective: the game plays the revelation that the BSL had an illegal Metroid breeding program as the tipping point for Samus, the moment she realises that this section of the Federation is corrupt...but honestly she should’ve come to this conclusion at the beginning upon encountering Ridley and the Zebesians, which clearly indicated that the BSL was up to some shit because there should be no good reason for housing dangerous criminals on your innocent research lab. Yet the game ignores all of this, making this blatant attempt at a callback an actual fucking plot hole that makes Samus look blind at best

Raven Beak is sometimes criticized because his plan involved letting Samus live, which fucked him over in the long run. And yeah it’s partly your usual villain cliche but it has an actual in-story reason beyond simple arrogance, much like how Dark Samus in Prime 3 had an actual reason for letting Samus live at the start which in the end proved to be her demise

The evil Federation guys in Fusion on the other hand?

Samus’ mission here was originally to see if there were any survivors on the BSL.  Then it’s implied that the evil government guys got interested in the X and stopped sending her upgrades in order to prevent her from engaging the SA-X

Here’s the issue: this story should have logically ended by the time Samus frees the animals. Because by then every human on the station has been confirmed dead by Adam. So...mission accomplished. Let’s go home. There’s literally no more reason to stay here. Oh sure Samus wants to eradicate the X, but instead of limiting her power ups why not just straight up order her to leave so that the Federation can totally bomb the station from orbit thus absolutely destroying every X? It certainly sounds way more logical than trying to kill them one by one. It would have certainly prevented Samus from discovering their little Metroid pet project

(There’s also other minor stuff like the Omega Metroid for some reason only being vulnerable to cold and not missile which is literally the opposite of how it worked in Metroid 2 and is given no explanation but whatever that’s its own can of worms)

However by and large my biggest issue with Fusion...is its ending

First off: Metroid games usually have some form of sense of anticipation towards their endings, something that makes you feel like you’re gradually getting closer to the climax: Metroid 1 and Super had you fight a number of Pirate leaders before you could access Tourian. Metroid 2 had a literal countdown in the form of the Metroids you had to kill, Dread has a bit of an issue with having a rushed ending but the EMMIs served as a countdown as well

Fusion’s ending sneaks up on you: Samus just happens to stumble upon the secret evil lab which had only been foreshadowed one about an hour ago then, in quick succession, we get the big info dump about what the evil Federation guys want to do, then we get Adam coming to his senses I guess, then the final battle with the SA-X, then the escape sequence and finally the final monologue (that was translated wrongly and created a 20 plus year long misconception but whatever) where Samus quickly mentions that “Oh gollee jee! I didn’t know that the Federation frequently uploaded the minds of generals to computers! That’s why Adam is still alive!”

It feels...not just rushed but anti-climactic and flaccid. Like the game suddenly ran out of ideas and just said “ok it’s ending time”

But my absolute biggest issue with this ending, and the entire game for that matter, is the scene between Samus and Adam

Putting aside just how rushed and sappy it feels that the AI that reminded Samus of Adam GASP!! Was actually Adam all along!! Helping Samus out from beyond the grave! What a coincidence!

As I said in another video one of this game’s main themes is Samus going from a position of vulnerability to gradually becoming stronger thus allowing her to violate Adam’s orders repeatedly

And it all leads to this: a big confrontation between the two, with Adam locking Samus in a room

....and it’s solved by Samus accidentally triggering Adam’s repressed memories (I guess?) thus having him open the doors and giving her one last order on how to solve this mess

I hate this

very

very

much

After an entire game dedicated to Samus growing stronger and slipping away from Adam’s control in the end she doesn’t beat him through her wits or through her powers. She doesn’t even INTENTIONALLY trigger his real personality, as she only called him Adam by reflex. Samus here is basically resorted to begging with the AI and she’s only freed because he LETS her go. Samus, in this moment, is essentially stripped of her agency and Adam regains control over her and the game doesn’t treat it as a negative because it’s too focused on its sappy narrative about how special Adam was for Samus and how much of a surprise it is for him to have been essentially resurrected in such a way

I once saw an old forum dating back to 2007 where old time fans were criticizing Fusion and Zero Missions for being unneccesary sequels after Super had essentially ended the story and for feeling like fan fiction

And while I don’t agree with this opinion in the general sense I do believe that this scene gets pretty fanfictiony in a bad way. Samus is not only at the mercy of Adam, a new character that’s been introduced not only to the series but to her backstory, but she’s also being presented as not only weaker when compared to him but also dumber: Adam points out that if Samus went along with her original plan of blowing up the station to take out the X she wouldn’t actually be accomplishing much as there would still be X on SR388 and she would only be sacrificing her life for nothing. This is a mistake that is pretty weird for a hardened and professional bounty hunter like Samus to do, one that I could excuse as being due to her missing a crucial detail due to the stress of the situation but I’d say it’s pretty obvious that it only exists so that Adam can present a better plan and show just what a brilliant military mind he is! Even if it means making Samus look like a fool in the process!

And doesn’t all of what I’ve just said reawaken memories of a certain other game...?