I'm sure most of you are aware that one inspiration of Metroid was the movie Alien. The heroine as a main character was relatively strange back then, believe or not, and the name Ridley/Ripley is the main connection, but the two works are contemporary and the concept is similiar, as well.
Just as the Bible is the source of more literary constructs than most people realize, Hollywood is the origin of a great deal of our imaginative forays in literature and games.
My thought after watching the horrible Alien3 again, and the goreless Alien4 on tv, is that much of what has happened in the Metroid series has followed the Alien series. Not in a line-for-line copy sense, but in a 'oh yeah, thats a good basic concept' sense.
1. Alien creatures so dangerous they can only be considered biological weapons, that external forces wish to control.
2. Proliferation and 'evolution' of said alien creatures in M2. Not only the queen of A2+4, but also the modified dog-shaped alien in A3. A queen specifically appears in A2 and M2.
3. Return to the basic concept of one unkillable alien in A3 as in A1, just as Super Metroid returned to the original format.
4. One of the alien/aliens becomes non-hostile with the heroine. In M3 because of previous events, and in A3 because the heroine is the "monster's mother." Interestingly, this concept appeared in M2 long before being specifically stated in A4, a reversal of the trend.
5. The "death" and rebirth of the heroine, followed by a blending of the heroine with the alien on some level.
6. The amazingly stupid mutated SA-X at the end of M4 could only have been inspired by the freakish half human-half alien at the end of A4. It was very cool and scary in A4, it didn't even make sense in M4.
7. A clear stress is made in A4 that the real enemy is in fact the political agents who wish to control the creatures rather than the creatures themselves.
So what is next for the Metroid storyline? If we continue the Alien connection, we'll note that Prime in fact introduced the the Klackons (sorry, SPACE PIRATES) intentionally blending their DNA with a byproduct of the still unindentified Metroid Prime.
(Prime still exhibits all of the characteristics of an X, intentionally mutating indigenous life to create stronger hosts to copy, assimilating Pirate weapon systems, copying the supposedly inviolate Metroid, and possessing the capability to copy Phazon-Samus)
This is a weak parallel with the half-alien at the end of A4. Unfortunately, the scary part of that movie is the humanity behind the evil of the genetic experiment failures and the half-alien itself. This is going to be hard to implement into the Metroid storyline, since it's ultimately about empowerment and neat destruction of evil, and not the horror and powerlessness of having a freakishly twisted body.
If the Prime team is smart, they'll run with this half-breed concept and turn the Phazon-Samus into something truly horrific instead of the joke at the end of M4. It should start as a genuine person with a human mind and a normal body. Over the course of the story, it gets progressively twisted into something unspeakably hideous by the uncontrollable influence of the Phazon, the bloodlust of the alien genome, and the rejection of all sentient life.
3d would allow them to do something that might not work well in 2d, which is turn Phazon Samus into a kind of Shiva-the-detroyer form with multiple arms/appendages, a somewhat human main body, but a huge mass of random alien tissue forming her remaining body and means of attack.
Just as the Bible is the source of more literary constructs than most people realize, Hollywood is the origin of a great deal of our imaginative forays in literature and games.
My thought after watching the horrible Alien3 again, and the goreless Alien4 on tv, is that much of what has happened in the Metroid series has followed the Alien series. Not in a line-for-line copy sense, but in a 'oh yeah, thats a good basic concept' sense.
1. Alien creatures so dangerous they can only be considered biological weapons, that external forces wish to control.
2. Proliferation and 'evolution' of said alien creatures in M2. Not only the queen of A2+4, but also the modified dog-shaped alien in A3. A queen specifically appears in A2 and M2.
3. Return to the basic concept of one unkillable alien in A3 as in A1, just as Super Metroid returned to the original format.
4. One of the alien/aliens becomes non-hostile with the heroine. In M3 because of previous events, and in A3 because the heroine is the "monster's mother." Interestingly, this concept appeared in M2 long before being specifically stated in A4, a reversal of the trend.
5. The "death" and rebirth of the heroine, followed by a blending of the heroine with the alien on some level.
6. The amazingly stupid mutated SA-X at the end of M4 could only have been inspired by the freakish half human-half alien at the end of A4. It was very cool and scary in A4, it didn't even make sense in M4.
7. A clear stress is made in A4 that the real enemy is in fact the political agents who wish to control the creatures rather than the creatures themselves.
So what is next for the Metroid storyline? If we continue the Alien connection, we'll note that Prime in fact introduced the the Klackons (sorry, SPACE PIRATES) intentionally blending their DNA with a byproduct of the still unindentified Metroid Prime.
(Prime still exhibits all of the characteristics of an X, intentionally mutating indigenous life to create stronger hosts to copy, assimilating Pirate weapon systems, copying the supposedly inviolate Metroid, and possessing the capability to copy Phazon-Samus)
This is a weak parallel with the half-alien at the end of A4. Unfortunately, the scary part of that movie is the humanity behind the evil of the genetic experiment failures and the half-alien itself. This is going to be hard to implement into the Metroid storyline, since it's ultimately about empowerment and neat destruction of evil, and not the horror and powerlessness of having a freakishly twisted body.
If the Prime team is smart, they'll run with this half-breed concept and turn the Phazon-Samus into something truly horrific instead of the joke at the end of M4. It should start as a genuine person with a human mind and a normal body. Over the course of the story, it gets progressively twisted into something unspeakably hideous by the uncontrollable influence of the Phazon, the bloodlust of the alien genome, and the rejection of all sentient life.
3d would allow them to do something that might not work well in 2d, which is turn Phazon Samus into a kind of Shiva-the-detroyer form with multiple arms/appendages, a somewhat human main body, but a huge mass of random alien tissue forming her remaining body and means of attack.
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