Examining the claims about Metroid Other M's alleged retcons/continuity problems.

I absolutely adore Metroid Other M, in this post I will talk about many of the things I love about the game, and in doing so, I will cover majors spoilers.

STORY/CHARACTERS:

I really love the story and how it explores more of who Samus is as a person, and expands upon aspects of her introduced in Fusion. Seeing just how much the Baby Metroid affected Samus, the fact it gave its life for her caused her to go into a depression was really interesting and a great way to show how impactful the ending of Super Metroid was. It was great to see the loose ends of Fusion tied up in this game, such as how Ridley got on the B.S.L. Station or how the Federation got DNA of the Baby Metroid (and other Zebes life forms). Also, I liked that they fleshed out more of the "corrupt" Federation introduced in Fusion.

Samus Aran:

Samus is dealing with an unusually high amount of emotional hardship in Other M, whether it's the loss of the Baby, reuniting with Adam which stirred up sad memories of why she left the Federation, or seeing Ridley unexpectedly come back (unbeknownst to her as a clone) triggering her PTSD, etc. Considering she had to handle all of this in a single mission, it really shows how strong Samus is, despite still having human flaws.

I quite liked her confrontation with Ridley, I'm glad the game touches on her mental trauma involving him.

In the beginning of Other M Samus states the explosion of Zebes destroyed the remains of Ridley, leading her to believe him to be gone for good this time. This is the only game in which Samus believes Ridley to be completely eradicated, which is why him "coming back" is what triggers her PTSD.

When Samus encounters Ridley she was tracking and expecting the Mystery Creature, so when Ridley appeared instead she had a panic attack. The scene depicts her PTSD with a visualization of Samus as a child, as that's when Ridley first wrought trauma upon her. I like this, as it shows no matter how many times she faced him before, when she believes him to be truly gone, even someone as powerful as Samus is still susceptible to human "weakness" like mental trauma.

Despite dealing with something as mentally severe as PTSD Samus still actually manages to show some strength. Samus's Power Suit requires an inhuman level of mental will to operate, so when she's afflicted with PTSD it causes her suit to become weak and it's difficult for her to maintain.

When Ridley grabs her, the left arm of her suit begins to disappear, however even though she's struggling with a panic attack Samus still manages to regain the left arm of her suit.

Samus struggling to maintain her Power Suit during her panic attack.

Shortly afterwards she loses full control of the suit and it disappears completely, however when Anthony shoots at Ridley it causes him to drop Samus, and while Anthony was preparing to run over and catch Samus, it was actually Samus herself that was able to flip (in free fall) to stabilize herself as well as fully reactivate her suit.

Samus reactivates her Power Suit in mid air to protect herself from the fall.

While Samus wasn't fully stable enough to face Ridley, Anthony decided to take Ridley on himself, shortly afterwards Anthony was knocked over the edge and into the lava below (as it seemed at time), seeing this, Samus was finally able to fully recover and take on Ridley.

At this point Samus is back to her usual self and doesn't have any issue with Ridley for the rest of the game.

It's quite impressive how she was able to do all of this all while struggling with PTSD, in fact I would say it's a near impossible feat, but Samus was able to do it.

Along with her "flaws" in this game, she also shows a lot of strength, as she's constantly the one to take charge in a situation and take the initiative (despite being under a military CO most of the time):

It was Samus who first suggested to Adam to add her on as a member of his platoon,

Samus initiates dialogue with Adam to add her onto his team.

it was her who first pressed Adam for information about the illegal bioweapon program,

she told the others to "get back" when the Cyborg Zebesians awoke and were about to attack,

she told Anthony "don't waste your plasma" when confronting the "Mystery Creature" and implied she would handle it,

Etc.

Despite being very monologue heavy you'll notice that she actually doesn't have too much dialogue, this is consistent with her previous portrayals. Instead of dialogue, for a lot of scenes Samus displays a lot of body language. Even in scenes where she does have dialogue, Samus shows her body language as well (as shown in the gifs above). I really like how she's animated in these scenes and how consistent it is with her character. Take the scenes when she's protecting Madeline and Melissa for example:

After she calls Melissa over to protect her, she moves her left arm to protect Melissa.

Similarly in this scene, after Samus catches Madeline, she moves her left arm to protect Madeline, however she also physically stops Madeline from moving forward, as Samus doesn't want her in danger.

These scenes shows how Samus will physically protect others, however she also is aware of people's mental status, and will try to protect them emotionally as well.

For example in this scene Samus needs to get Madeline's attention, Samus goes to knock on the door, however she knows Madeline is terrified, so she briefly hesitates, and instead of knocking she more gently taps the door. Samus didn't want to scare Madeline, but still needed to get her attention.

Samus's body language in this game also shows a more playful side to her. In two scenes with Anthony, Samus is shown to have a friendly banter with him which involves her "punching"/shoving his shoulder. After Anthony helped her with the Mystery Creature and asks "You OK, Princess?", she responds with a "punch" to his shoulder:

This response from Samus is repeated at the end of the game, after Anthony "pranked" Samus with a thumbs down (calling back to when Samus used to give thumbs downs):

Going along with her body language, in Other M Samus is also shown to be very physically powerful. Samus is very fast and agile, able to dodge an enemy's attack at a moment's notice. Beyond her speed, her strength is awesome, able to literally kill enemies with a single hand and (with her grapple beam) swing around giant monsters the size of trucks. Combining her speed and strength, she is truly a force to be reckoned with.

Showcasing her kicks, grabs, arm-locks, leg-locks, flips, etc, here is a list of Samus's overblast, lethal strike, and counter moves that demonstrate her awesome power:

There's a specific scene at the end I absolutely love. After Samus has reflected on the mission on the Bottle Ship, and the decisions Adam made, she ties her hair up in a ponytail. The way this scene is done, the way Samus puts her hair up and walks away, just feels so powerful to me. I really love the scene a lot. As I myself have long hair, I find myself repeatedly recalling this scene when I put my own hair up, it really sticks with me.

Adam Malkovich:

I was happy to see Adam as a human before his death (as opposed to just his AI in Fusion), it was also cool that his design was relatively the same as the Metroid Manga depiction of him.

Manga (left) Other M (right)

Adam's design shows his face as a middle aged man who is quite stoic. With his narrow eyes, the wrinkles around them, and the "cold" stares he gives, he strikes me as a man who has seen a thousand deaths. Being a military man who's seemingly served at least 20 years, this makes sense. He is a man who buries his feelings for the sake of what he feels is the best decision. This is shown when he was "forced" to let his own brother, Ian, die for the sake of others. Despite Samus emotionally pleading with Adam about how his "little brother" was going to die, he did not let this faze him (outwardly at least), he calmly gave the order to detach his ship from the one Ian was on in order save the people aboard the Lusitania and his own ship.

Going back to current times in Other M, Adam still has his stoic "cold" personality where he doesn't let anything on the mission emotionally faze him, that is except for Samus.

Throughout the whole mission Adam is losing his men one by one, things aren't going as planned, he even is confronted with a traitor amongst his group, none of this is shown to have fazed him, however when it comes to Samus it's different. The only times in the whole game when concern and compassion are able to slip through his stoic guise is when it concerns Samus. 

When Samus confronted Ridley and had a PTSD induced panic attack, Adam asked Samus if she reads him, when she doesn't respond he stands up in his seat.

This shows he was anxious when Samus was freezing up at Ridley, and though he's normally calm, it showed how he was so concerned for Samus that he literally couldn't sit still. He continues, by telling Samus repeatedly to use her plasma beam, as he's doing so his voice is continually filled with more and more worry.

The second instance of concern/worry for Samus Adam shows is when he sees her talking with Melissa (who he knows isn't telling the truth), he says "No! Samus!" and grabs his gun and hurriedly runs to Samus's location.

I really like Adam and Samus's, albeit complicated, relationship. With Samus being the only female on Adam's squad (not only female, but also young, at the age of 15), he wanted to acknowledge that, and so he called her "Lady". He didn't choose something that could've been insulting like "little girl" or "girl" depending on the tone, he chose "Lady" something which is more dignified as well as what Samus states "delicate".

Adam is shown to have complete faith in Samus's abilities, and acknowledges she's far more powerful than he is. Shortly before his death, he tells Samus "Unlike you, I'm no galactic savior. I'm merely human", and trusts her with his final orders of saving a survivor he's located (Madeline) and killing Ridley.

He knew if he lost Samus in Sector Zero then he wouldn't be able to stop Ridley or save Madeline by himself, he knew only Samus could do this. Which is why he shoots her as he needed her to be physically incapacitated, and is why when he had his chance, when Samus was distracted by a baby Metroid, he took it. If he hadn't shot and weakened Samus then, he knew she'd just disobey his orders (as the situation mirrored the Ian situation), and go to Sector Zero alone, a place Adam knew Samus would die. He couldn't overpower her, so he had to catch her off guard. Despite shooting her being what was in his mind a necessity, he still apologized for this, saying:

"I'm sorry for getting a little rough with you. Good luck Samus"

showing he still cared for her until the very end. Not just that he cared, but he wanted her to know he cared before he died.

Anthony Higgs:

Absolutely fantastic addition to the Metroid series, and may even be my second favorite character in the series next to Samus. There's so much great about him, I remember so many of his lines:

"Man! You got no style! I think I gotta teach you a lesson about subtlety! Come on!"

"Fancy meeting you here princess, remember me?"

"I wanted to give you some cover earlier, but this thing takes for ever to charge, I'll save the next shot for you...not that you'll need it!"

Etc.

I love that he's a genuine friend for Samus, and they have a playful friendship, like the scenes when Samus "punches" his shoulder.

Anthony is also a very optimistic person, he's almost always smiling, and he always finds a way to inject some levity, no matter how serious a situation is, such as his suggestion for Samus to blow up the door they couldn't open (despite not getting Adam's approval) where he chuckles afterwards:

Despite his optimistic and somewhat carefree attitude, he also knows when to be serious and not push things too far, like when he asked Samus what would happen if a situation similar to the "Ian incident" happened again, and he said "Best just forget about it"

I love the thumbs up and smile he gives Samus near the end, seems like such a great friend!

James Pierce/The Deleter:

I found James to be interesting, not only because he's a traitor seemingly working for the "Ringleaders", but also because of his personality. He has a rather charismatic charm to him, and I'd imagine that's what made him right for the role of a traitor. Someone with his type of charisma can probably make others feel at ease or comfortable around him, which makes him feel more trustworthy.

An example of this is when Lyle is freaked out by a Brug and begins to needlessly shoot it to death, it was James who told him "Enough!" and reached out to touch Lyle's shoulder to make him feel at ease and to stop shooting.

When Samus encounters James at the Exam Center he can be seen doing something under the computer (likely trying to erase evidence), after Samus walks in he gets up to greet her, but before he does he snidely glances at the computer he was just at, then says "Hey, Samus." as if he hadn't just been compromising key pieces of intel, very cheeky. 

A few moments later when Maurice is checking the computer James was just messing with and realized the CPU had been destroyed, the shot cuts to James, who gives a suspicious look.

I've always felt the way James murders K.G. was one of the most brutal kills in a Nintendo game. It's not particularly graphic, but it's just done with such a cold and heartless feel. The way James just so casually kicks K.G.'s body into the lava is just chilling.

I also find it interesting he was only 20 years old, which makes him younger than Samus.

Lyle Smithsonian & Maurice Favreau & K.G. Misawa:

While I don't find them as interesting as the others, I do like certain aspects of them, such as when Lyle first encounters the Brug, he says "Stay away from me!" and proceeds to kick the Brug and shoot it up, laughing while he does it. I like K.G.'s design, however, one of the things I liked most about them was their artworks, as I didn't realize Maurice was as old as he was, and once again, I like K.G.'s design in the art gallery the most, he looks like one of those "smart" anime protagonists. Overall, I would've loved to have seen more of them.

Madeline Bergman & M.B./Melissa Bergman:

I really liked the twist of Melissa being an android of Mother Brain. It's especially interesting in a meta sense, that Mother Brain was Samus's "mother" on Zebes and you could say she "failed" as a mother to Samus, now the roles are reversed. Now Mother Brain (Melissa) is the daughter, with Madeline being her "mother", in this instance Melissa is the one who felt her "mother" failed her. It's as if no matter what role she takes, mother or daughter, she's destined for evil. I really liked Madeline's role as "Mother Brain's" mother, and I find her role as one of the creators of Melissa interesting (making her a parallel to the Chozo who created the original Mother Brain). It's sadly ironic that the love Madeline showed to Melissa may have been what shut Melissa off from humanity and caused her turn to revenge, as it was the love from Madeline that turned to hate when she felt betrayed by her "mother". I would love to see Madeline appear in another Metroid game.

Story:

There is one specific aspect of the story I want to write about that I didn't already cover.

I loved importance of the S.O.S. Samus received, "Baby's Cry". When Samus says she felt the S.O.S. was "crying" specifically for her, this would be more true than she probably thought. This specifically relates to the Baby Metroid, who tragically died at the end of Super Metroid.

In Other M the Federation members who were illegally conducting bioweapon experiments were able to get DNA samples of many creatures as well as the Baby Metroid from Samus's suit. One of their major goals was to create a Metroid Warrior program, and in order to do so they used the DNA to clone the Baby Metroid. They then had that Baby Metroid grow into a Queen, where they would then take its babies and experiment on them, eventually finding a way to get rid of their weakness to cold.

In a sense the S.O.S. signal, Baby's Cry, was the Baby Metroid crying for its mother, Samus. As the Queen Metroid (clone of the Baby) is one of the final bosses in the game, it's a truly tragic "reunion" Samus must go through.

GAMEPLAY:

The sense move (dodge) and lethal strike/overblast (takedowns) really shows how physically powerful and agile Samus is, the animations have this really kinetic feel that just feels amazing when you pull them off, and no matter how many times I play through the game, I never get bored of seeing them, they impress me every time.

I love shooting enemies with beams to weaken them, switching to first person to knock them down with missiles, then running up to them to perform a lethal strike. Switching from third person to first person (and vise versa) is rather seamless. It's great that when you initiate first person, the game slows down to give you time to adjust your aim (it's also neat how you can still dodge in first person). Another thing I love doing is jumping on an enemy, doing an overblast, and as Samus is jumping off the enemy switching to first person and shooting a missile before landing, feels great.

Diffusion Beam was one of my favorite abilities created for this game, I loved just how explosive it made charge shots. I was really happy to see it return in Metroid Dread.

It was awesome seeing the return of Seeker Missile, and its first appearance in a non-Prime game. Speaking of missiles, I love how after firing one Samus has to "cock" her arm cannon like a shotgun to "reload". The Super Missiles in this game have so much power they physically push Samus back which I thought was a neat touch.

ENVIRONMENTS:

From jungle zones, volcanic zones, snow zones, desert zones, etc, the game has quite diverse environments (albeit artificially re-created), so there's a lot to choose from when discussing what I loved.

Overall I quite liked the aesthetic and look of most areas, but I will focus on several places in particular I really liked.

I loved this part where the camera pans out of the corridor and you get to see Samus from a window view.

This red clay area has to be one of my favorite spots in the game, it just looks awesome. With that waterfall, it's just beautiful.

Not entirely sure how to describe it, but there's this one circular room in the game that is sort of a tall spiral with a dark blue/purple aesthetic. It just looks great to me. Also, I love how when you come back later with speedboost you can run infinitely around the spiral in circles and/or jump all the way to the top via shinespark.

Outside of these artificial zones, there's a lot of the actual ship that's great. The green lights in these rooms give a great aura to the place.

There's a lot of rooms in the game that add to the feeling the Bottle Ship was lived in by real humans, whether it restrooms, vending machines, residential areas, trash compactors, etc, it all helps bring the Bottle Ship to life.

MUSIC/SOUNDS:

The music in Other M stands out from most of the other scores in the series, likely due to it having no involvement from Kenji Yamamoto or Minako Hamano, the long time composing duo of the Metroid series since Super Metroid. Most of the previous Metroid scores had a heavy amount of electronic/techno or organic sound to them, while much of Other M's score sounds very orchestrated or metallic.

Other M also has a lot of battle music, which have a very fast past rhythm to them, I quite enjoy these "metallic rhythm" songs, as it really suits the fast paced action of the game. I also believe it is fitting to have a lot of "metallic" songs considering the game takes place in the Bottle Ship, which is comprised of many hallways, corridors, and other structures comprised of metals and only had artificially created "organic" zones. It also helps that Samus's suit is metallic, so her feet also produce a "clank" sound when running across most of the game. With all of this "metal" it could give the game a very man made feel, which is fitting to the story. Even though I say it's largely a "metallic" soundtrack, it does still have some "organic" songs as well.

The game has a lot of songs I really like, such as this one when exploring the Exam Center. It really has this air of "mystery" to it, I also like the parts that sound like a bird "hooting" (or whatever that sound is lol).

https://youtu.be/r_yuz1M6T68

This next song plays right after Samus is given a final mission from Adam, and it sounds just so epic, climatic, and triumphant.

https://youtu.be/Bxv4odiTNQg

I really love this one, perhaps the most "Kenji Yamamoto-esque" song in the game. It has that really good techno/electronic and mysterious vibe.

https://youtu.be/ypdvQQg3tyg

I love how much build up is in this one, it really feels like you are entering the finale of the game, like you are about to uncover a major plot. Really great.

https://youtu.be/DTtNrVnHdFw

This is one of my favorite Sector themes, it really has that fitting "jungle" sound, as well as that classic "Metroid" feel to it.

https://youtu.be/ZFuWLWtcDqc

I could put a lot more songs here, but I just wanted to highlight a few, so as to not make this post any longer.

IN CONCLUSION:

There is so much more I could write about what I love, however that would make this post far longer than I want it to be.

Overall, I think it's an incredible addition to the Metroid series, and I'm happy to see its legacy in games like Samus Returns and Dread where Samus is still as agile and physically powerful in these games as she was in Other M.

See you next mission!