A decade after the fact, people are still mad about Metroid: Other M.
Bolstered by a massive marketing campaign, plus the natural hype that came with a new Metroid game, Other M debuted on August 31, 2010 to decidedly mixed reception. Initial positive reviews gave way to bad word of mouth, and that word of mouth came to define the game. In the years since, it's fair to say that many consider Other M a "bad game."
Much of the criticism levied at the game is centered around series frontwoman Samus Aran, and at Other M's concentrated attempt at fleshing her out more than previous games had. Many argue that her depiction 🤪in the game is sex𓄧ist, regressive, and an overall smack in the face to the character people grew up with.
"Samus Is Too Maternal!"
Other M opens after the end of Super Metroid, with Zebes destroyed and the Chozo wiped out forever. Samus is haunted by the death of a baby Metroid at the hands of Mother Brain, and carries a sense of guilt that she didn't do more to save it. She falls into a 🐟deep depression, and drifts without purpose for weeks. But when she intercepts a distress signal from a distant spacecraft, much like the signals that kicked of events of Metroid and Super Metr൩oid, she's spurred into action and heads towards the source of the signal.
Other M's is a narrative focused squarely on Samus' trauma. She's traumatized from her childhood, her upbringing, her military service, her turn as a bounty hunter... every aspect of this character is defined by awful, awful things happening outside of her contrꦏol. But the loss of the infant Metroid hits her especially hard, as she not only feels a protective instinct towards it, but a t🐲ype of kinship.
See, it's important to remember Samus' childhood when discussing her relationship with the baby Metroid. Her parents were taken from her by space pirates at young age, along with everybody else she knew and cared about in her colony, and she had to be raised by an ancient race of weird alien birds. Those weird alien birds, the Chozo, then put her through rigorous warrior training, which wasn't really intended for humans. By the time she was a teen, Samus was a traumatized killing machine with no family and no friends. She didn't get to really have a childhood, and while the Chozo certainly protected and nurtured her, they didn't do it the way♔ a human family would have.
Because of 💖that, it's easy to see how she might project onto the alien creature. It's not so much that she "wants to be a mom," like so many claim, but rather that she sees herself in the small creature. And because she sees herself as a child, she remembers the alien race that raised her, and wants to extend that same care to the Metroid. Wheꦑn the Metroid is killed, it hits so hard because she's anthropomorphized it to a degree.
This is incredibly common behavior for victims of childhood abuse, speaking as one, and it makes Samus feel more human than she arguably ever had prior. Samus wanted to be a maternal figure because she didn't get to have one, and before she got the chance, Mother Brain took it away from her. It makes sense 💛that this would break her brain.
"Samus Can't Use Her Gear!"
Much like previous games, Samus can't utilize all ofꦚ her Varia Suit powers right off the bat, and has to wait until certain story 🔥beats to use them. Only instead of messing up her suit in a crash, Samus instead just doesn't use them because... some dude told her not to.
Oof. That's certainly a choice, right?
The "dude" in question is Adam Malkovich, Samus' former commander from her Galactic Federation days. Prior to becoming a bounty hunter, Samus was a strong-willed and rebellious young Federation officer, who routinely got under her commanding officer's skin and defied orders that went against her own co🧜nvictions. Most notably, she opened fire without orders on a group of space pirates preparing to execute a child, and aided the Chozo from annihilation againstꦺ direct orders from the Army.
Adam factors into that latter story arc, as he saved Samus from Zebes during that mission. She began to run with Adam's unit, growing close to him and developing a strong sense of kinship. However, Adam dashes that against the rocks on the Lusitania - a space vessel on the fritz and in need of repair. When Adam sends one of Samus' closest friends to repair the ship, the component malfunctions and explodes - killing him. Unable to bear losing someone else, and unable to forgive Adam for not letting her save hi♈m, Samus goes AWOL.
And because the military would condition somebody she cares about to make a decisi𒐪on like this, she comes to the conclusion that she wants no part of it, andཧ does what most of us probably would: strikes out on her own.
Which brings us back full circle. Adam orders Samus to not use her gear if she wants to help his unit out, a♏nd she obliges. Why? Well, there are several reasons, and it's ultimately up to your interpretation. But the one I keep coming back to is "guilt." She feels guilt that she didn't do more on the Lusitania. She feels guilt for abandoning her father figure. She feels guilt for forging her own path, only to find and lose a surrogate child.
While it's easy to dismiss her adherence to Adam's orders as lazy sexism, I genuinely never got that impression from the game, because it makes sense why she'd listen to him. She fought his orders in the past, but ultimately couldn't save her friend and struck out solo. But on her own, she saw more suffering, more destruction, and more death. So, when she encounters Adam again, she sees a chance at personal redemption. She wonders what might happen if she listens to him, and she wonders if she can still✤ prove herself within those parameters.
Samus agreeing to not use her weapons isn't blind sexism, nor is it out of some slavish respect to Adam. Instead, it's decision dictated purely by trauma. Trauma makes you agree to things that you wouldn't always go along with, just in the hopes that maybe something will turn out differently. From that perceptive, Samus is trying something, anything, to prevent further loss.
"It's Not Like The Other Games!"
Yoshio Sakamoto, the writer and director of Other M, has been with the franchise since the beginning. It's fair to say he's largely responsible for shaping it into the series that we know and love today, as he served as the director and writer on Super, Fusion, and Zero Mission - widely considered to be some of the best games in the franch🦩ise.
Sakamoto, then, knows Samus arguably better than anyone. In 2D games with limited dialogue, he did his best to make the character compelling and interesting, and helped to steer her towards being somebody that a whole generation of players could connect to. And when finally given the chance to bring his narrative vision to a deeper, longer experience, he spared no detail - working in aspects from almost every game and the vital two-volume manga prequel. Other M, then, is Sakamoto tying up loose ends and humanizing his 𝓀character in a way that he'd never🌄 been given the chance to.
So, why did people bℱalk so hard at it? If I had to guess, it boils down to the fact that a) nobody read the manga and b) the 2D games didn't have much in the way of exposition. You had a whole generation of American players who only really knew Samus as a gruff interplanetary gunslinger, and didn't really have much in the way of understanding who she was due to a lack of backstory. Then you had the Prime games, written by a different team, not do a whole lot to change that narrative. While those games are stellar in their own right, they don't really give Samus the pain nor the pathos that define her - at least, in my opinion.
From that perspective, the whiplash makes sense. Other M is decidedly more narrative-focused than the franchise has ever been, and because Sakamoto is behind that narrative, we get his version of Samus. That version is a traumatized orphan with untold amounts of grief, guilt, and shame that lurk behind every action she makes. When you take that version of the character on Sakamoto's own terms, and don't try to retrofit it into what you thought y𝐆ou knew, it's one of the most compelling depictions of the character to date.
And it💙's that way because Sakamoto finally got his chance to show the world a big-budget ver🌸sion of his grand vision.
Looking To The Future
A decade after Other M, we're still waiting for the next console Metroid. In the interim, we've gotten two 3DS games, and only one of those is really worth playing. Fans are clamoring for the promised Metroid Prime 4, and when it finally comes out, I'll be right there on day one. I'm sure it'll be gre🦩at.
But I'm also sure it won't be as good as Metroid: Other M - at least not to me. It will likely move away from the compelling humanization of Samus Aran that this game offered. It'll probably tone down the cinematic presentation that defined the mechanics, and also told the story on a grander scale than ever before. And it will, almost assuredly, feature a more stoic, independent version of Samus. With Nintendo's notorious insistence on perfection for their mainline titles, it will likely undo everything that led to Other M's widespread backlash. And that's a shame.
It's a shame because Other M was the first time I truly connected with Samus. She🧸 was a character that was strong, but had a vulnerability to her that💛 so many of her peers lacked. She had trauma, but she wasn't defined purely by it, and actively made attempts at working with it to be a better person. As a rape and abuse survivor, I connected with that. Her struggle resonated with me. I cared about her triumphs, her failings, and everything in between.
Now, ten years later, I'm not so sure there'll𝕴 be much left for me to care about next time around.