Metroid Dread - 25 (SEE YOU NEXT MISSION) - It's The End

Channel:

Luna the Unicorn

Subscribers:

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Published on November 14, 2021 10:15:01 PM ● Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zS83rCuqEc

Game:

Metroid Dread (2021)

Category:

Let's Play

Duration: 45:18

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5

(The winning run starts at 20:20) (We didn't speak for most of it cause we were concentrating and were also under the assumption any run that wasn't the winning run was gonna get cut out anyway)

Because saying "Final" there would just hurt too much. ):

What a game though. What a friggin game. Even a good week or so after beating it (at the time of finally editing and uploading this), we're still not entirely sure where it ranks in terms of 2D Metroids. This game introduces so much that we can see making other Metroid games feel dated, like the slide that will make going back to Super a little harder, even if Super is balanced around Samus not being the most elegant thing in the universe to control. The challenge is just right for Dread, and controlling it feels buttery smooth. For whatever it's worth, this is the first Metroid game that's gotten me to actively try speedrunning tech on runs, like the Psuedo Beam and infinite bomb jumping.

Story content-wise it's a little on the weird side. Fusion still wins for best narrative in a Metroid game, but this game at least has a few things to unpack that we had to think on. Though to get the possibly bad out of the way, it definitely feels like the "Raven Beak is Samus' father" twist feels so limp because it's not really true in any real regard. Samus has human biological parents, and Gray Voice and Old Bird as adoptive parents. (Did you know Samus had two dads? We thought that was interesting.) Raven Beak isn't really part of Samus' life other than some vague "responsible for the whole series actually" sort of thing they just made up for this game. Yeah, he was one of the Chozo who offered their DNA to aid a young Samus but that doesn't really make him a dad does it? It's like saying a blood donor is your parent now. You could at least read that as him feeling the need to be in control of everything, thus he appoints himself the title of parenthood to create a faux sense of authority to himself but still. They make it out like it's a substantial reveal but it just doesn't feel like it.

In the end though, the story is almost an admission, or at least a way to address the writing obstacle that comes with trying to make the namesake creature for the entire series extinct, especially since this is the first 2D Metroid to outright not have any actual Metroids in it. Their way to tackle the problem is essentially to say "Samus IS a Metroid now, so now the series' title is forever appropriate." It's certainly a way to do it, and we're still not entirely sure how it plays out, apart from some possibly neat theming around the idea that the tables have very much turned on Samus since Metroid 2. Back then, she was hunting down the Metroids since there were some evil people seeking to take over the galaxy with them as a bioweapon, but now since SHE'S a Metroid, she's the one being chased like a fancy new bioweapon for a galactic conqueror to use as a tool of war. There's stuff there! But there's still a lot to think about.

A couple other small things we noticed after playing the game a couple more times since this blind run that don't really fit anywhere else in this rant:
-After the intro cutscene, Adam never refers to Samus as "Lady", which definitely seems like deliberate foreshadowing that the Adam you talk to across the game isn't actually Adam. Phrases like "accept your helplessness" and talking about how unbeatable Raven Beak is also probably meant to tip you off. Adam's a realist, sure, but he never said the SA-X was unkillable in Fusion.

-Samus' Metroidness is foreshadowed by the fact that it's never really explained why she can simply absorb the energy from the Central Units (which are essentially Mother Brains), since as you can recall from the end of Super Metroid, the baby Metroid was able to absorb a "unique energy" from Mother Brain, which bestows Samus with the Hyper Beam much in the same way Samus absorbing energy from the Central Units gives her the Omega Cannon.

Either way, we're excited to see what Metroid does next, since they've teased the idea that Metroid after this point will be unrelated to the first 5 2D games' plots. Have Samus take on new threats and make friends with new aliens, we're ALL for it. That's part of why we like the setting of Prime 2 so much. Aether is SO detached from the rest of Metroid canon that Space Pirates and Metroids are almost included as an obligation. Make new weird settings for Samus to explore in the next new 2D Metroid, THAT is part of what makes Prime 2 so neat.

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