Zodi Streams: Metroid Prime Remastered (That's Just Prime... Again!)

[LaZodiac]

Metroid Prime is one of my favorite games of all time. Released on the Gamecube way back when, I remember picking it up on the back of knowing Samus from Metroid 2 and Smash Brothers, with no expectations for what it would be. It was one of the best games I'd ever played, and arguably still one of the best games out there even today. An easy way to get into FPS titles, an evolution from 2D to 3D that lacked any of the common problems that sort of thing presents, and one of the best looking and sounding environments that little purple cube could muster.

So to say I was excited when the Remaster was announced, and we got to see how... gorgeous it was, is a bit of an understatement. I've been wanting to play this one for awhile, and while I wasn't INTENDING to stream this yet, this was always something that was in the cards. It was one of my first bigger LPs back in the day- though I've pretty much removed all those- so it'll be nice to revisit an old favorite with a fresh coat of paint and a fresh outlook on things. I've experienced a lot, will Prime 1 hold up to the test of time?

Yes obviously. What are you even asking that for.

Like always, I'll be streaming this one on Thursdays, seemingly with Yza and Robin also being there, shooting for 100% completion... with the only chance of this going on pause being when Thousand Year Door remake comes out in a month, but it should be fine. I look forward to seeing you all there!

Zodi Streams: Metroid Prime Remastered [1] Eragone With The Wind

Video Length: 3:48:57

We start off a bit slow on my part, but that's partly because I feel like this is a game you really want to just, soak in, especially this opening tutorial area. The Frigate Orpheon introduces us to all the most basic mechanics of the game- your movin', your shootin', your scannin', the works. The atmosphere is to die for, it truly does feel like you are walking into a place that has just about been destroyed, with only the barest chance of survival... and you being there has made those odds drastic go down, as they say. The only real threat here is the Parasite Queen herself, which... well, as you see, we kind of obliterate instantly. So much for "threat" huh?

Following our escape sequence- wherein we meet up with the new design for Meta Ridley and lose all our starting gear- we land on Tallon IV, our new playground. And what a playground it is, with many varied biomes that are all outright gorgeous to look at. The flora and fauna of the planet are a bit more hostile than one would like, but for someone like Samus Aran they aren't much of an issue. Our first stop is the Tallon Ruins, a desiccated region full of sand, dead trees, and a nasty amount of bugs. What was once a flourishing civilization of druidic Chozo has been laid low by some mysterious Great Poison, and it seems our fate is to stop the dang thing.

There's some minibosses here and there (Plated Beetle, the two drones and their hives) but the real centerpiece of the Tallon Ruins is at the top of it, within the sunchamber; Flaaghra, a massive insectoid plant mutated by the Great Poison into this solar power chugging monstrosity. It's the first REAL challenge you've got ahead of you, especially since it can fix any of the flipped up solar panels. Defeating it gets you the varia suit, and access to the horrifically humid Magmoor Caverns.

Thankfully for us, there isn't much of real relevance in Magmoor. It's the one zone in the game without a major boss (though cut content revealed there could have been a Mecha-Kraid, and given it has Norfair's music...) and as such doesn't really have much purpose beyond a place to find collectables and to serve as an underground network connecting all the other various regions. Fantastic music though, no notes on that one.

Finally for our excursion today we have the Phendrana Drifts, an icy tundra. It is full of nasty little creatures that require missiles or energy we don't have access to or that will go extinct preventing you from 100%ing the game. Luckily we can at least avoid that last one... we also get the Boost Ball here, so Samus can do some sick skateboard trips in ball form.

Next time... we'll maybe solve one of those other problems the little critters in Phendrana are causing us.

[Rater202]

Raz, don't compare Samus to Master Chief.

Samus would sneeze and it would kill MC.

Probably literally, given that in the canonical prequel manga that details her backstory, she's depicted as diving off a cliff, doing a whole bunch of borderline impossible aerial acrobatics, hitting the ground in a three-point landing hard enough to leave a crater, and then happily skipping off the ripe old age of five.

...Old Bird and Gray Voice did not **** around. Her Bird Dads gave her Chozo blood infusions and other mods to help her survive on Zebes and that is exactly what they did. I guarantee you that if they could have given her laser eyes they would have.

[Lord Raziere]

I'm surprised thats what your commenting on Rater, but whatever. it was just a joke about people comparing MC and Samus and didn't really mean anything. its more likely that MC given his green armor and shooter origin, was probably more inspired by Doom than by Metroid, because every shooter takes inspiration from Doom, all modern shooters are descended from it, its just that influential. like, being trapped in a remote place with nothing but guns and shooting all the enemies in something non-metroidvania esque, thats probably more inspired by the Doom games, just change demons to aliens and some robots and your good. Metroid Prime is really just this weird coincidence that it came out a year after Halo 1 (2001 for halo 1, 2002 for Metroid Prime), when previously Metroid series was just a 2-D metroidvania, I don't remember of the metroid prime retrospective I watched, but I do remember from a LoZ retrospective that the gamecube wasn't actually the best times for Nintendo? like, Sony/the competition was outselling it at the time, and Nintendo was getting a bit experimental to try and catch up, it was actually a pretty weird time where they were trying to be more "adult" in some ways before the Wii came along and started printing money so they decided to never take risks ever again.

The Xbox was just this weird third thing that like, I doubt either Nintendo or Sony expected to take off at the time because they've seen other people try to make consoles that weren't them before and they outcompeted them. and development times being what they are, would be years to make a game even then, so I doubt Halo had Metroid in its inspiration because guy fighting aliens with guns is generic enough to be from anywhere and Metroid didn't dip their toes into the shooter genre until a year later. so....MC probably more of a Doomclone than Samusclone if I'm being honest. and Samus dipping her toes into shooters around time was probably just coincidental with the fact that Halo even became a thing at all.

[Rater202]

I only just got to watching the stream, needed to make a tracking post, and wanted an excuse to bring up how absolutely bull**** Samus's mods are.

[LaZodiac]

Speaking of which; Qwerty needed some RNR, so instead we did another Metroid Prime! Qwerty guesting in the background as she does personal stuff, Robin and later Yza joining.

Zodi Streams: Metroid Prime Remastered [2] Funny Rock (Evil)

Video Length: 3:47:09

Content Warning: Extreme motion blur induced by Thermo-Viser, sudden very bright flashes of light during Thardus fight.

In this episode we... do a bit more wandering around trying to find out where to go as I'd like, but it's all in the spirit of Metroid exploration so it works and it all funnels out to us doing what we need to do anyway so its all good. The main bulk of this episode is carving our way through Phendrana Drifts, obtaining the Wave Beam from an ancient Chozo temple, then raiding the Space Pirate lab and forward operating base of all they've got. We also have our first introduction to Tallon Metroids, Metroids of raised on Tallon IV and mutated with this mysterious substance known as Phazon to make them no longer function exactly as we may be familiar with. It's all pretty neat stuff.

The pirate lab and FOB are some of my favorite areas in the game from a scanning stand point. They really grow the atmosphere of the world, making it feel like a real, lived in space. It even has hints towards future bosses, which aren't entirely necessary because scanning the boss itself will reveal those same things but also it feels "right" for this stuff to exist, and it is very cool as a result. We also get our first real big instance of Pirate Lore... though I'm thinking we miiight have missed some stuff on the Frigate in the opening? Because there's some stuff- not required lore- that I think we didn't see and where supposed to, but I may be thinking of a different area. We'll see, a lot of pirate zones kiiinda look the same even with the differences in colour tone and activity.

The Thermo-Viser and the surrounding Gameplay Event that happens is perhaps one of the more... controversial segments of the game. It is tense and quite a bit of a difficulty jump and involves using a non-standard method of sight and I would say that if they removed the realistic motion blur this would be probably a lot better, though still very nerve-wracking. You can probably tell I was having a bad time (positive) by the end of it, and while I do think it is ultimately a good segment of video game I think it can be a little too punishing given there is NO save point before OR after it.

As for the boss we face- it kinda suffers from the same potential problems the Thermo-Viser introduces, in addition with "sudden burst of light extremely in your face" when you bust up any of its rocks. Quite a rude bastard! It ultimately isn't that difficult a boss, the rollout move being the most threatening in any real capacity, but if you're not careful it can take awhile to chip down, especially if you run out of missiles like I did. Thankfully I ran out near the end...

[Rater202]

As an aside, I recently encountered an argument that the original Prime Trilogy is a metaphor for cancer.

Like, Phazon is radioactive and radiation is a "theme" in a lot of works made either in japan or with Japanese input, but Prime was made by an American company and we don't put so much stock in radistion that it counts as a theme in it's own right.

But Phazon is also corruptive and mutagenic. It gets in you and it changes you into something else. It steals and twists your body, turning it against you, and the way Samus looks near the end of the third game when she's almost completely corrupted when you get glimpses of her eyes at least... Yeah.

Spoiler

Show

Planet Phaze itself is even basically a metastasized tumor, a malignant mass that sends off bits of itself to infect, corrupt, and take over other bodies by means of reproduction.

So Phazon is cancer... And Metroid Prime is a the fear of cancer: She starts out in a very crablike form, of course, before trying to take over Samus' body and eventually twisting into a corrupted, dark mirror of Samus. In short, what will happen to her if the phazon corruption runs it's course.

Edit: When I was in middle school, some people compared my laugh to the Joker. This was just when The Dark Knight came out.

Edit 2: I am so far behind on Metroid but regarding the Wheel of Time discussion, "Gendered Magic" is a thing in a lot of folklore mythology... But Wheel of Times gets it wrong.

Cultures with gendered magic tended to depict individuals who we would now call transgendered, intersex, or nonbinary as being especially magically powerful because they're capable of using both, and magically powerful figures are sometimes depicted as blurring the lines.

I recall reading that there exist older versions of Arthurian legend that depict the prototype-Merlin as not an old man but a slender, waifish figure and the proto-Morgan as a bearded but otherwise feminine woman as shorthands for their magical power.

Naturally, such things tend to get buried.

Also, I keep thinking about the beginning segment and how shocked/angry Samus is to see Ridley... And how she's not on a mission in this game, she was just responding to the distress beacon. So the bit about how her ship tracked the target to Tallon IV... She's on this planet solely to try and kill Ridley.

Given that Ridley is canonically the one entity that Samus legitimately hates (at least until she meets Ravenbeak) and also the only thing she's afraid of... Yeah.

Edit: Raz, conisder the reason Jenova didn't take off as the breakout character was because most people don't have my brain bug?

[LaZodiac]

As an aside, I recently encountered an argument that the original Prime Trilogy is a metaphor for cancer.

Like, Phazon is radioactive and radiation is a "theme" in a lot of works made either in japan or with Japanese input, but Prime was made by an American company and we don't put so much stock in radistion that it counts as a theme in it's own right.

But Phazon is also corruptive and mutagenic. It gets in you and it changes you into something else. It steals and twists your body, turning it against you, and the way Samus looks near the end of the third game when she's almost completely corrupted when you get glimpses of her eyes at least... Yeah.

Spoiler

Show

Planet Phaze itself is even basically a metastasized tumor, a malignant mass that sends off bits of itself to infect, corrupt, and take over other bodies by means of reproduction.

So Phazon is cancer... And Metroid Prime is a the fear of cancer: She starts out in a very crablike form, of course, before trying to take over Samus' body and eventually twisting into a corrupted, dark mirror of Samus. In short, what will happen to her if the phazon corruption runs it's course.

Edit: When I was in middle school, some people compared my laugh to the Joker. This was just when The Dark Knight came out.

Edit 2: I am so far behind on Metroid but regarding the Wheel of Time discussion, "Gendered Magic" is a thing in a lot of folklore mythology... But Wheel of Times gets it wrong.

Cultures with gendered magic tended to depict individuals who we would now call transgendered, intersex, or nonbinary as being especially magically powerful because they're capable of using both, and magically powerful figures are sometimes depicted as blurring the lines.

I recall reading that there exist older versions of Arthurian legend that depict the prototype-Merlin as not an old man but a slender, waifish figure and the proto-Morgan as a bearded but otherwise feminine woman as shorthands for their magical power.

Naturally, such things tend to get buried.

Also, I keep thinking about the beginning segment and how shocked/angry Samus is to see Ridley... And how she's not on a mission in this game, she was just responding to the distress beacon. So the bit about how her ship tracked the target to Tallon IV... She's on this planet solely to try and kill Ridley.

Given that Ridley is canonically the one entity that Samus legitimately hates (at least until she meets Ravenbeak) and also the only thing she's afraid of... Yeah.

Edit: Raz, conisder the reason Jenova didn't take off as the breakout character was because most people don't have my brain bug?

I really like this cancer idea you've presented.

I'd actually heard about that RE gendered magic, and I quite like it as well!

Anway, new stream happened.

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Zodi Streams: Metroid Prime Remastered [3.1] Goasts

Video Length: 2:06:13

[3.2] Engage Normal Drive

Video Length: 1:19:32

What happens when a lady who's forgotten much of the critical path ends up having to fumble her way through it, a resurfacing fear of under-water, and just general tiredness due to insufficient meals? Streams like this.

... god it really is just like old times. None of y'all where even there way back when, I think.

Anyway, actually talking about the stream! We get the Ice Beam and the Gravity Suit and god that's really it huh. We get a few missiles and at least two energy tanks so that's good, and we're RET2GO for the next chunk of the game. Not much otherwise, but still a good one I think. At least as near I can tell everyone had fun.

[Lord Raziere]

Edit: Raz, conisder the reason Jenova didn't take off as the breakout character was because most people don't have my brain bug?

oh that wasn't my real answer. the real answer is that if Jenova was more popular, more people would be horny for her own whole domme alien mind control mutation deal rather than horny for Sephiroth's bishounen deal, I just didn't say that because Robin was there.

[Rater202]

Still far behind but regarding the "Biology" segment a the start of the second Stream and your comments that the Power Suit isn't biology...

Chozo technology includes both bio-mechanics and techno-organics, that is to say, biology treated like technology and technology that behaves like it's alive.

The Chozo powersuit is confirmed to be partially organic and has, in fact, been shown absorbing or copying traits from organic organisms in the past even before the one-two punch of Samus's X-infection and Metroid cellular graft fuses it to her body and thus gains the ability to partake of her X-assimilation abilities.

[LaZodiac]

Still far behind but regarding the "Biology" segment a the start of the second Stream and your comments that the Power Suit isn't biology...

Chozo technology includes both bio-mechanics and techno-organics, that is to say, biology treated like technology and technology that behaves like it's alive.

The Chozo powersuit is confirmed to be partially organic and has, in fact, been shown absorbing or copying traits from organic organisms in the past even before the one-two punch of Samus's X-infection and Metroid cellular graft fuses it to her body and thus gains the ability to partake of her X-assimilation abilities.

What moments are those because I can't remember'em.

Also this gets brought up in the third stream but that raises a question; IS it likely that the Gunship has a Moya equivalent in it?

[Rater202]

What moments are those because I can't remember'em.

Well the most well known is probably when it gets supercharged by the remains of the Baby at the end of Super Metroid.

Getting a bit ahead of where you are now, in Prime Three Samus gets the Ice Missiles by copying the inborn cryokinetic abilities of another Hunter.

I will answer the gunship question when I get to it.

...AlsoTell Robin that I too immediately thought of Steamed Hams at the words "localized entirely."

[LaZodiac]

Well the most well known is probably when it gets supercharged by the remains of the Baby at the end of Super Metroid.

Getting a bit ahead of where you are now, in Prime Three Samus gets the Ice Missiles by copying the inborn cryokinetic abilities of another Hunter.

I will answer the gunship question when I get to it.

...AlsoTell Robin that I too immediately thought of Steamed Hams at the words "localized entirely."

Okay so, MY input on the baby is that it's not a property of Samus's suit so much as it is a property of the Metroid- it gave all that energy it drained from Mother Brain to Samus and it super charged her beam and then it was Time To Go and the Mother Brain got her face blasted through.

It has admittedly been a long time since I've played Prime 3 so I don't remember how she gets the ice missiles from ol' Rundus.

I will do so! Her response was "good" and I am imagining it in the Zelda Faces of Evil "good : )" voice clip, just for comedy's sake.

[Rater202]

Having done a bit more double checking

Spoiler: End game spoilers

Show

The Phaozon suit in this game isn't technological, but the result of the Power Suit being "Virally infected" by the Phazon-mutated Omega Pirate.

So that's a clear-cut case of the Power Sit just straight up eating something biological that it was exposed to to upgrade itself.

Edit: Zodi, you didn't post the "horror happens despite smart choices" examples in the thread.

@Raz: Consider that in a lot of situations, if smart choices were made there'd be no movie. There's a reason why slashers tend to go after drunken, horny, pot-smoking teens.

Though I do recall Halloween 4 where when word gets out that Michael Meyers is in town the general response is to not only protect his likely main target but to call the state troopers and form a mob to hunt him down and kill him. Didn't work out too hot, he got a couple of people, the state troopers took their sweet time getting into town, and the mob killed a dud due to mistaken identity but come the climax of the film the mob, the sheriff, and the state troopers converge on Michael's location and proceeded to dust the bitch.