Y Cant Metroid Talk
This week, Anthony John Agnello delivered an On The Level looking at how Metroid Prime’s opening introduced the Scan Visor and with it a new, more wordy language for the series. His dissenting opinion about a major part of a true classic spurred a ton of great debate down in the comments. PaganPoet thought the flood of new information was an inevitability of modernization:
I happen to think Metroid Prime did what was best to progress the series: divulge more information about what’s going on with a healthy dosage of fan service, but do so in a way that is consistent with the mood of the game. I think keeping everything as mysterious as the first few entries would have led people to getting bored with the formula. But by taking a note from survival-horror games and having your hero discover the setting’s story through computer logs and environmental scans (the sci-fi equivalents of audio logs and crumpled up handwritten notes), the feeling of solitude that has been so key to the series remains intact.
For Jakeoti, Prime’s attempt to keep its text in line with the series’ mood was a success:
I will say that, whether scanning and information is invasive or not, the game does go the right route of having the text be cold, distant, and emotionless. It’s well-written in that it is as basic as it can be, without sounding stupid. A different game might have had the scan function be an easy way for some comic relief, supplying more snarky commentary, like Goombella from Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door. But whether it’s some all-knowing Chozo encyclopedia in Samus’ suit, her ship, or even just her who’s doing the talking, the logs sound so distant that the sense of cold isolation still remains.
That said, there are still a few bits of comic relief, especially when scanning Pirate logs. Science team does indeed have vapor for brains.
Wolfman Jew agreed and elaborated:
I always got the impression that Samus was writing at least most of these, as they feel more like field journals that try to understand what makes these giant plant monsters tick. Plus, I don’t really see how, say, explaining how the Pirates died on the Frigate is exactly ruining the mystery. We know that there may be limbs or incredible force or acid involved, but “parasite” is a pretty ambiguous term for explaining what killed an alien terrorist with a laser cutlass.
I do get the idea that demanding text does kill the mystery, and sure, it does limit the unknowable, incomprehensible tone that permeates much of the Metroid series. But there are a lot of empty gaps in the events of the Prime trilogy, even if you scan everything. Phazon, outside of its mutagenic properties and “origin,” remains enigmatic. Exactly how the Chozo fell on Tallon is hinted at but never concretely explained beyond being pushed out through the corruption.
Also, just on a technical level, I think if you’re going to include an option like the Scan Visor—and you really should, as it helps make the first-person aiming about more than just shooting and furthers a sense of exploration, both things deeply important to what Metroid Prime was—you also need to be able to use it on anything the player might want be interested in. It wasn’t just about scanning a lock or getting hints; it justified the move to 3-D by making players try to analyze the world through the visor in a way that was comparable to what they may have done with Super Metroid’s map.