And another thing (more Other M)

[kane_magus]

While I'm still in rant mode here and all...

People seem to be getting hung up over this whole "Samus doesn't use her weapons unless Adam authorizes them" thing. They make this out to be like Samus is being all subservient and a boot lick to Adam, as if she needs a big strong man to tell her when she can play with her toys or whatever other complete BS as that.

No, Samus is in essence saying, "Nah, I don't sweat this. Sure, I could use all my super powered gear from the get go if I wanted to, but I don't really need it. I can still kick ass and take names without it. I'm going to let Adam call the shots just to show him that I'm not the same stupid teenager I was when I last saw him."

It's like an exercise to herself. She wants to see if she can work together with a team and take orders precisely because she's been working mostly solo missions up to this point.

Also, compare this to a real life military exercise.

Private Grunt: "The bad guys are over there!"

Commander: "Good, let's go in and take them out."

Private Grunt: "But... but we got nukes, sir! Why can't we use our power bombsnukes on them?"

Commander: "I'm in charge here and we will use our nukes when I authorize it, and not before. Besides, if I let you use your power bombs, you risk blowing us all to kingdom come." (Not that a military commander generally has to justify his orders to subordinates, mind you.)

Except that Samus isn't being all whiny about it like Private Grunt there. She says "Yes, sir. I won't use my power bombs. I chose to accept your authority as a commander, and I will abide by that." She's not licking his boots or anything. She's just being a good soldier.

One may wonder why she's allowing herself to take orders from this guy. Well, apparently a lot of people who played the game seem to have missed it (or else, on the other extreme, they are fixating on it to the near exclusion of anything else), but this guy is established as being an important person to her. He is a father figure to her, and she respects him, even though they last parted on less than ideal terms. She's not going all Electra Complex on the guy or anything, she's simply being respectful of him and wants him to think well of her as well. Why people have such a problem with this is beyond me.

And, most importantly of all... she still kicks ass. She doesn't need her plasma beams and super missiles and all that stuff to do so. Sure, when a situation comes up where she needs them, Adam usually says* "Hmm, this looks like a situation where you can use those things, so I will authorize them." And having that stuff afterward just makes it easier for her to be badass, but it's not like she somehow wasn't a badass before she got them. In fact, she was even more of a badass because she willingly chose to refrain from using them.

Yeah, sure, this is just a handwave. But at least I'm not treating the whole thing as though it were some crucial plot point that ruins the entire story and by extension the entire game and by extension the entire Metroid series forever and ever.

* - With the exception of not authorizing the Varia suit the instant she entered the volcanic area, which was pretty stupid. But even still, she made it through there just fine without it. That was done purely for gameplay reasons, similar to why Samus herself didn't immediately activate the Gravity suit later on, after losing contact with Adam, when she first encountered those weird gravity rooms.

Comments

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

I suppose in a way of mild defense of these people, this is the first time Samus has answered to any superior officer isn't it? Before this she was, essentially, an independent bounty hunter.

Keep in mind I haven't played many of the games beyond Super Metroid for any length of time. (I plan on going through the GC games after christmas.)

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

From what I gather, most of her missions have been given to her by the Galactic Federation, but they were acting as clients at the point and not as her superiors. I don't remember the specifics of it, since it's been a little while since I played Prime 3, but she was working directly with the Federation in that as well, at least for a time. But again, I think that was simply another bounty hunter/client deal, rather than her being directly under military command.

Other M is a unique case. Samus received a distress signal and went to the Bottle Ship on her own. When she arrived, she saw that Adam and his team were already there (a team that she had coincidentally trained and worked with back when she was younger and in the Galactic Federation military herself, apparently). She decided to unofficially (re)join the group and accept Adam as the commander. It wasn't something that was forced upon her.

The main "problem", such as it is, is that in the previous games, aside from Metroid Fusion, they never had Samus talk or emote or anything of that nature. So people built up a persona for Samus that has now, in their eyes, been retconned out of existence, simply because she's not acting like the T-800 or whatever, and has been replaced by what is, in their eyes, a submissive, frail, self-doubting, girly-girl who freezes up and cries at the drop of a hat and needs a man to coddle her and so on and so forth nonsense. She freezes up exactly once, during the aforementioned Ridley encounter which, given the circumstances, is understandable. She cries exactly once, when (spoilers, block text to read) Adam, her mentor and father figure, goes off on his suicide mission (end spoilers), which again, given the circumstances, is perfectly understandable (at least as long as you're not flat out dumb that is, I guess).

[owsf2000.livejournal.com]

The other point to all this whining over the game being "ruined" however is that they were going to say this no matter what imo. This whole thing with Samus taking orders is little more than an easy strawman for them.

I saw people start wailing over the game as soon as they heard it was going to be an on-rails shooter without even hearing about what it was going to be like or how the game would otherwise play.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

And, of course, it ended up not being an on-rails shooter. Not even remotely.

It basically plays like... well, like a Metroid game, with a bit of flashy dodging and optional cinematic finishing moves tacked on.

[kane-magus.livejournal.com]

WTF? That spoiler stuff was supposed to be black text on black background, and it showed up as such in the preview.

But here now, randomly looking at it almost a year later, it's not blocked out at all. What bullshit.