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Gallery | REMics – Rewriting Metroid: Other M page 02 |
Part 2 of this creative exercise of rewriting Metroid: Other M. This time, we focus on the secondary characters, and what purpose they serve for the world-building and for Samus.
PART 2: The Good and Bad of the Federation
First off, we’re dropping everyone but Anthony and Adam. The Federation troops in Other M served little purpose, no one cared when they died, and ultimately were completely forgettable.
So, what purpose should they serve? Samus is the center of the story, but to truly explore her, we need to manifest elements of her personality, her wants, needs, desires, in other characters, and that is best done with Foils. Foils are their own characters, but, even as allies, they’re there to challenge the protagonist – To force them to face different points of views and personalities, and in doing so, reveal more about both.
To that end, these foils should also be very different from each other and different from the main character in ways that make interactions interesting and even fascinating – different values, different world views, different interests. Samus may be used to the alien, but now she has to deal with the human.
These Federation soldiers serve world-building too. It’ll also be our first real look at the people and culture of the Federation. And this is important since the Federation is not only Samus’s greatest ally, but also her rejected past, and also her upcoming enemy. Each of these soldiers could embody a different aspect of the Federation, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the hopeful.
- The Rookie
We know that Samus has saved the galaxy, more than once, but we rarely get to see how normal people have been affected by her. In Metroid Prime 3, we worked alongside the Federation, and every Federation trooper reacts to Samus in a sense of awe and wonder and respect that I thought was so very fitting.
To that end, one of the characters would be a newer recruit who is completely enamored by Samus. She’s the ultimate celebrity to him, with him asking for her autograph, staring in awe of her with a giant smile on his face, taking sneak photos whenever he’s able… He represents the good that Samus has accomplished, the idea of being a hero that she’s completely rejected for herself.
He’d annoy her at first because he keeps insisting she’s amazing and flawless, which only makes her think of her faults. At a dark moment, the Rookie tries to lighten things up-
Which angers her. She tells him that he’s naive.
To which he reveals how much she changed his life too – how she’s the reason he’s in the Federation, and so many others are as well. They want to make the galaxy a better place. Because she had traveled alone, she never got to see that she had been having a positive impact.
And rather than avoiding him, she actively starts to offer advice, training, and she opens up.
And at the Ridley battle, he’ll be with Samus instead of Anthony, and the scene will play out like a parallel to the Baby Metroid’s sacrifice. Except this time around, Samus saves him, as if making right what went wrong at the end of Super.
Don’t worry, we’ll talk more about this scene later.
- THE XENOPHOBE
The next character would be an ‘opposite’ version of Samus, with a similar backstory to her, but gone in a harshly different direction. The Pirates killed his parents too, but he didn’t have the Chozo, Adam, or anyone to turn to but his own hatred.
So he suppressed his tragedy, letting the rage build up. It was enough to push him to the Federation, and he always went for any mission that let him kill as many Space Pirates as he could. He represents the xenophobic side of the Federation, and sees Samus as someone who could cleanse the Federation of the true menace.
It’s something that Samus… takes the time to think about. Maybe she shouldn’t have saved the Metroid. She already knows there’s dangers out there that must be destroyed, so maybe… she can let go of the tragedy of the baby’s death by simply not caring about some stupid monster anyway.
This guy travels with her when she uncovers Ridley’s first form, this time there’s a few of them, and Samus approaches them the same way she did the baby Metroid. And at first, it seems like the creatures befriend her-
Until asshole guy shoots at it, killing all but one that runs off.
Of course, it evolves, and once again resembles the Ridley of old, a creature of rage and violence. The Xenophobe ends up killed by him in an equally grotesque manner, thus continuing the cycle of violence.
In a way, this retroactively gives Ridley a bit of a tragic backstory that mirrors Samus’s own, and is a bit of a hint that the Federation may have earned the hatred of the Space Pirates.
- THE SCIENTIST
The next character is a Federation scientist, who represents another dark side of the Federation – the ones who are actually fascinated by the monstrous experiments that the Pirates performed, as well as what’s being done on the Bottle Ship.
His mindset is closer to Mother Brain’s, in that he finds scientific progress for the sake of his nation more important than individual lives or ethical practices. You could say he’s a human version of the infamous Pirate Research Team.
He treats Samus like a mere tool, nothing but a weapon to wield or an oddity to observe. In her vulnerable state, Samus follows his orders like she does Adam’s. But unlike Adam, the Scientist’s orders are self-serving and irresponsible. And as they grow more irrational, Samus learns to differentiate them, and rebuild her own independence.
Eventually he goes too far, initiating an experiment that goes badly, and Samus saves his life. Thanks to her, he learns and realizes just how much harm these experiments did and could cause – That the ends don’t justify the means.
Honestly, the Xenophobe and the Scientist could or could not be redeemed or live or die at the end. The Xenophobe could come to change and grow thanks to Samus’s influence, or the Scientist could steal the tech and sabotage the mission so he could try to get away with the bioweapons. Or both could betray them to illustrate the Federation’s corruption. Or both could be redeemed to show Samus’s effect on the galaxy.
What matters more for this story is that we see Samus facing various aspects of the Federation, the light and the dark, and growing from the experience. While the original Deleter subplot perhaps intended to showcase the Federation’s corruption, far too much of it was offscreen and the subplot kind of petered out without any kind of revelation to Samus.
Next time, we’ll talk about the most important Federation characters, Anthony and Adam.
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