The 2D Metroid saga is an all-time great work of science-fiction | Digital Trends

After more than a decade of disappointment, Metroid fans are currently thriving in the Nintendo Switch era. That’s a result of recent releases like the fantastic Metroid Dread and an excellent remaster of Metroid Prime. That list expands today thanks to Nintendo Switch Online, as Metroid Fusion is now available to play for Expansion Pack subscribers.

Out of every game in the series, Metroid II is the one that most heavily leans into the bounty hunter premise. Samus finds and kills every Metroid on the planet as a number on a hit list ticks down at the bottom of the screen. It’s a mechanical gameplay flow, almost cruel in how it reduces the species to a dwindling statistic. That monotonous loop is part of why the sequel is often painted as one of the series’ weaker entries, but it’s also perhaps its most deliberately designed one.

Her three-game arc comes to a neat conclusion during the final boss fight, where the baby Metroid sacrifices itself to protect Samus from a reconstructed Mother Brain. It’s a bittersweet moment. Samus is saved by the very “evil” species that she didn’t hesitate to wipe out for a buck. It’s the ultimate act of selflessness, one that we’re left to believe has made an imprint on a changed Samus after she escapes Zebes.

Metroid’s big picture becomes clear at that moment. The primary conflict of the series isn’t about a galactic war with the space pirates; it’s a personal one within Samus. Try as she might to distance herself from the bounty hunter who carried out a massacre, Samus can’t fully outrun her past. She’s haunted by the cost of her carelessness, so it’s only fitting that Fusion’s antagonist would be Samus herself.

Samus’ abilities are stripped by a villain named Raven Beak, a creature from the Chozo race that raised her, and she’s trapped deep beneath ZDR’s surface. If Super Metroid gave Samus a chance to heroically redeem her first mission, Metroid Dread forces her to grapple with the horror of her second one. That’s even apparent in its mirrored structure; Metroid II has Samus confidently digging down into a planet’s depths, while Dread has her escaping upwards.

The stakes couldn’t be higher, until they are. At around the midpoint of Dread, Samus learns the full extent of the consequences she faces for her previous actions. It turns out Metroids were the natural predators for X parasites, explaining why they’d never previously been a threat to the galaxy. When Samus wiped out the Metroids, it sent the SR388’s ecosystem haywire and turned the X parasites into an invasive species. Had she never done that, she wouldn’t have been infected by an X parasite.

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