Attempting to Explain All of Metroid Lore in a Single Video

[Music] at some point in the great expanse of space many different advanced civilizations thrive to each experiencing their own successes and losses and for this story none were more important than the chozo having been around for hundreds of years before the events of the first metroid game and their prime the chozo had achieved technological supremacy unmatched by any of their peers in the galaxy only equaled by their formidable martial prowess though as the chozo empire continued to spread across a wide variety of planets their longevity would ironically lead to their decline as fertility rates plummeted across a civilization in turn what was once a proud warrior race would transition to that of peaceful observers the chozo choosing to utilize their vast knowledge and technology to preserve nature and help less advanced civilizations that is all except for a certain sect of the chozo called the makken who in keeping with the old ways would keep the vastly diminished militaristic aspect of the chozo alive but for now we'll just have to put them aside for the time being trust me they'll be important soon enough fast forwarding now to the events preceding the first metroid game the vacuum left behind by the expansive chozo empire has been filled by a new governing power the galactic federation made up of multiple different civilizations the galactic federation exists to bring prosperity to all its members along with keeping them safe because for most of the federation's existence one of the most constant threats to galactic peace are the space pirates who like their name implies commit all sorts of terrible acts from braiding important spacecraft to ravaging entire planets when left unchecked and sadly the next in their long line of atrocities would be the human colony on the planet k2l where a baby named samus aaron was born before even getting into the timeline of things here the foundation of metroid's lore is actually found here in the metroid origin manga normally you wouldn't consider things like this canon especially with various details directly conflicting with future details revealed in the games except with multiple aspects of it also getting referenced in the actual games themselves i think it's safe to say at least the core concept of it is unfortunately for samus k2l was a mining colony which unearthed a very important fuel source for the galactic federation leading to the space pirates utterly annihilating the colony commanded by a space pirate military commander named ridley this would be the first encounter between him and samus the space dragon thing orphaning samus before her eyes at least he'd pay for his actions with that same fuel source exploding amidst the fighting and wiping out ridley's underlings then in the rubble of the former mining colonies samus would be rescued by none other than the chozo two individuals named old bird and grey voice finding her while investigating the ruined colony to make sure she could withstand the harsher environment on zebus however samus was infused with chozo dna and subsequently trained as if she was a chosen warrior after here things begin to get a fair bit more dubiously canon when it comes to the manga but what matters is after samus becomes an adult she leaves zebes to join the galactic federation police to put her combat skills to use serving under a federation commander named adam malkovich though that wouldn't last for long as soon as samus would become entirely independent as a bounty hunter her first mission taking her back home to zebes finally out of establishing things and into an actual metroid game when it comes to canonicity in this series remakes automatically override their original source materials which in turn makes the first game in the metroid timeline a metroid zero mission returning to zebes to find it taken over by space pirates without a chozo inside a chozo built supercomputer named mother brain had betrayed the chozo and allied itself with the space pirates immediately becoming a leader among them while at this point if you look back to the metroid manga there's a couple glaring contradictions to future metroid war the manga actually does give some insight into mother brain's disposition and why she decided to betray her creators essentially over time as mother brain managed to chose civilization on zebes she began to develop a superiority complex over all those around her the ai believing that if she unites the galaxy through violence she could then rebuild galactic civilizations in a way she deems as worthy of existing and as stated in the original metroid manual it was all mother brain's idea to bring metroids into the equation on that note let's back up a bit here i'll save you all from the full explanation since it'd be better to do that when i reach the game that has it so for brevity's sake on an uncharted planet named sr-388 there exists these little creatures called metroids who have the ability to kill practically anything by absorbing its life energy in the effort of studying them after some planet surveyors lost their lives to them the federation managed to acquire some only to their dismay the space pirates would raid the vessel containing them explaining how mother brain even had metroids in the first place interestingly since metroids can't reproduce normally outside of sr-388 the space pirates found out that bombarding them with beta radiation causes them to grow and multiply quickly giving the pirates an infinite source of metroids as long as they had at least one that's about it when it comes to mother brain and metroids for now though going into samus's systematic destruction of the space pirates on zebes ridley cheats death for the first time the manga elaborating that in order to recover from the explosion on k2l he'd eaten the remains of human colonists who died including samus's parents which you know even for metroid standards it's pretty dark further into zero mission the remake added a very significant area to zebes called chozodia which from appearances looks like where most of the chozo settlement on zebus was along with where samus was raised by old bird in fact there's even a remnant of the chozo's old warrior culture with the ruins test this trial bestowing samus with a gravity suit space jump and plasma beam for the very first time so with that samus manages to destroy both mother brain and the space pirates that had taken zebus from the chozo her score with them is seemingly being settled for now from this point onwards you'd assume that the next game in the timeline would be metroid 2 and you'd be right in thinking it takes place after the first game the only thing is while all the 2d side scrollers take place one after another every other metroid game is squeezed in between them at different points the most getting put in between metroid 1 and 2 in the form of the prime series so before i get to metroid 2 let's dive into the collective lore of prime starting with metroid prime 1 as opposed to the majority of metroid lore coming from manuals developer interviews or completion bonuses prime's got scans and a lot of them too practically every enemy and notable object in this game has a scan and more often than not they'll end up yielding a decent amount of lore so my work's cut out for me here plus with the trilogy version of the prime games retconning certain things to have the lord make more sense and not contradict things i'll be going off of the trilogies version of things for prime one the two series of scans i'll be focusing on will be the chozo scans and the pirate scans as they each contain a fair amount of important stuff in the chozo scans they depict the rise and fall of chozo civilization on the planet prime 1 takes place on at talon 4. at some point in chozo history right when the rays decided to abandon their warrior culture the chozo and talon 4 took things a step further by also abandoning most of their advanced technology in favor of achieving harmony with nature and they achieved exactly that from the elaborate structures they built to the way they lived their lives everything was done so that nature could flourish alongside them some members of their society even began to develop clairvoyance though with that they foresaw a dark entity coming to their world to corrupt it thus when that prophecy came to be a meteorite filled with a sentient corrupting substance known as faison would smash into the planet the faison leaking out and destroying nature wherever it spread what wasn't destroyed would be twisted beyond recognition to make matters worse so to save what was left of their once pristine paradise the faison meteorite would be sealed away it at least put a stop to the spread of faison but the threat still remained what uncorrupted chozo that were left deciding to leave the planet behind in the hopes that someone more capable would arrive one day to destroy the faison for good i've gotta say out of all the alterations made to prime's lore this one is without a doubt the most drastic since for those who don't know originally prime's lore had talonforce chozo literally ascending to the astral plane and somehow knowing about samus despite them clearly being entirely separate to the ones on zebes who raised her then onto the space pirates side of things their lore in this game isn't as important compared to that of the chozo but it does shed light on some interesting things the numerous entries focusing on how samus is utterly ripping them a new one aside prime one shows that even after their defeat on zebes three research vessels containing metroids managed to escape one of them transporting metroid to the space pirates settlement on talon 4 along with also taking an extra crispy ridley and cybernetically enhancing him and with ridley's entry in particular there's an interesting detail that's easy to miss apparently the decision to reconstruct him was ordered by a command of some sort this could mean one of two things either this soon after mother brain's defeat they've already reconstructed her and she's back in charge of the space pirates or even higher up than her the space pirates have some sort of mysterious leader or leaders personally i'm inclined to believe the latter anyways on talent 4 this would be the first instance of metroid's mutating to adapt to their new environment the subsequently named talon metroid's getting augmented further with faison to become even more formidable which leads me to the topic of metroid prime probably one of the most unexplained aspects of metroid lore how is it that a metroid got to the faison core inside of the meteorite despite the chozo successfully sealing the whole thing away after all metroids have only existed on sr-388 for a short period of time all things considered and they didn't exist anywhere else until the space pirates began to utilize them the talon 4 chozo absolutely couldn't have had them either since they seemed to be separate from others of their race and left the planet long ago too maybe the meteorite already had metroid prime when it got there there is some credence to this interpretation as later at the end of metroid prime 3 the source of all the phason meteors or leviathans did have evidence of other metroid primes developing from the metroids they're heavily mutating though once again that interpretation majorly conflicts with the timeline and because the only way that metroids could have gotten there in the first place was through the space pirates thus the only real interpretation that works is a bit of a stretch but it absolutely makes the most sense to me you see in prime 3 there's a new metroid variant called phason metroids who due to prolonged faison exposure have developed the ability to phase through reality meaning if one happened to go near the chozo seal it could have faced through it to reach the phase on core now samus never encountered phase on metroids while on talon 4 however that doesn't necessarily disprove this interpretation especially since in the pirate logs themselves it's noted that there were various instances of metroid's escaping containment so if one of those metroids happened to mutate into a phase on metroid that individual could have easily become metroid prime finally the conundrum of which came first the metroid or the egg has been resolved and following metroid prime getting blasted into oblivion in its last ditch effort of absorbing samus's face on suit along with a bit of her dna the heavily corrupted metroid would reconstruct itself into dark samus normally you'd expect thanks or move on to metroid prime 2 at this point except between metroid prime 1 and 2 there's the ds game and metroid prime hunters despite being a pretty self-contained game overall there are a couple points worth mentioning for one in this game there's the various other bounty hunters introduced who along with samus are all chasing a mysterious all-powerful relic of a long gone civilization which for brevity's sake would end up being the very thing that led to their demise an interstellar shape-shifting creature named goria following many years of their society honing their military power it all proved futile against goria the only way they were able to seal it away requiring the sacrifice of the entire olympic populace gory and the long gone olympic empire as important as they seem aren't what's really important here however as it's the hunters themselves that i'd recommend keeping in mind for now on to metroid prime 2 like hunters this entry is far more self-contained compared to the other mainline prime games meaning a lot of its lore also doesn't hold that much importance in the grand scheme of the series that's not to say it doesn't have some important details just not as many compared to prime one like talon 4 the conflict on prime 2's planet ether was also caused by a leviathan crashing into the planet only instead of how it happened before this leviathan phased into an alternate version of ether moments before its impact sending the two parallel versions of the planet into dimensional flux prior to all this there'd actually been a thriving technologically advanced civilization on ether called the luminoth in fact as stated in one scan they were even one of the civilizations the chozo aided meaning the luminov had been around for quite some time so after settling on the planet and prospering their society would slowly crumble following the impact as the parallel ether or dark aether housed these sentient bug-like creatures called the ing through their massive numbers and ability to possess creatures or machines luminos society would essentially be destroyed save for the one that you meet in game and the couple that wait in stasis pods for the crisis to end oh also the space pirates are here too they don't really provide much info at all in this game aside from that mysterious high command being mentioned again though now instead of only getting hassled by metroids they get the worst of it from all sides from the ing to the federation to dark samus on that note let's talk about her for a bit serving as the main link between the prime games along with faison there's not much to say about her aside from her insatiable hunger for all thanks faison personally i think that since samus managed to break free from metroid prime while it absorbed her faison sued that kept dark samus from forming perfectly causing her to behave this way in prime too this proves to work to her detriment as the final dark samus fight of prime 2 shows her in an even more unstable form due to the copious amounts of faison she had absorbed and that's about it there after actually saving an advanced society for ones who the 100 completion cutscene of this game reveals that dark samus persisted once again setting the stage for metroid prime 3. naturally with this game taking place across multiple planets there's a lot of lore to be had in prime three so to start off let's talk about the federation still to this day probably the most we've seen of the federation and how its military operates one of the most important pieces of information are that on aurora units basically much like another certain ai aurora units are massive mechanical brains which manage many aspects of the galactic federation hell one of them even managed to devise a way to terraform an entire planet strangely enough there's even a couple cut logs in the game's data which delve into them a bit further this isn't something new as there's a variety of unused logs in the prime games and many of them warranted as they conflict with other information in the games but since these don't really do that i figured they're worth a mention in one unused log it details that aurora units are only a recent development by the federation having been invented a mere 20 years ago considering they decided not to use that it may very well not be canon but another that i have to include here is the one that talks about how the crew of the gfs olympus refer to their roar unit as other brain which is just priceless who knows considering the similarities between them and maybe the aurora units were even modeled after the chozo's advanced ai technology that led to the creation of mother brain wouldn't be the first time the federation took chozo technology and replicated it and outside of those logs also explain how in the effort to aid the recovering luminos civilization faison was discovered in what remained of the space pirate station on ether in an effort to keep up in the endless arms race between the pirates and the federation this acquisition would eventually become integrated into the faison weapon system that corrupts the other bounty hunters in prime three along with slowly corrupting samus herself then onto the space pirates prime three would continue this world building trend by revealing a ton because as opposed to acting for their own gains and other metroid games in prime 3 dark samus managed to reform into her ideal form and granting her the powers to brainwash anyone and anything susceptible to faison so while the space pirates in this game mostly just do her bidding of protecting leviathans after they impact the planet and begin spreading faison the most important thing here is undoubtedly their homeworld or well one of them to be precise and send their endless thievery across the galaxy once they take complete control over a world they never referred to it as stolen again at the pirates who live on said worlds even changing their heritage to match that of the world this can be seen in the past when the space pirates who took over zebes referred to themselves as zebesians in fact along with the previous pirate entries that give a glimpse into how brutal their societal structure can be one unused log explains how certain clans of pirates will go so far to bankrupt themselves in the pursuit of building especially powerful marauder-class ships because if they manage to make one it'll practically ensure that they'll skyrocket to the top of pirate hierarchy oh and i can't forget to mention the chozo as unlike prime 2 prime 3 delves a bit more into their past though before that i'd like to talk about another fallen empire that of the reptilica sombrio whose lore is kind of wild at one point in time like all of metroid's fallen empires they experienced unending prosperity along with many scientific achievements except instead of some cosmic horror bringing the civilization to its knees it'd end up being their own like the luminoth and the as of yet unseen yila the reptilicus sent vessels out into space right at a time when the chozos still had a strong but peaceful presence in the galaxy that chozo helping their new neighbors out like they'd helped many before only along with their help came a warning what with the ever-growing divide on brio between those who prioritized science and those who prioritized tradition the chozo recommended they achieve a balance between the two so that their prosperity could truly last sadly their advice wouldn't be heeded and what started out as a few minor conflicts here and there would develop into environment destroying war things were so bad that in the battle for supremacy brio stopped rotating on its axis altogether leaving one side of the planet scorched by the sun and the other frozen by space the only habitable land left being a small strip of land between the two extremes realizing their error far too late the remaining lords of science created various decontamination technologies to save what remaining habitable land was left which did end up working only problem was in doing so the primal reptilicus were alerted to their presence reigniting the war and resulting in all but one of the science lords dying then as the last science lord retreated tirelessly working on a device to stop an oncoming calamity foretold by a primal prophetess he'd found the primals evolved into near wild animals as they began to fight each other in the absence of a common enemy there's no happy ending here either since with an accident exposing its hiding place the primals hunted the last science lord down too the phazon brought vial of eiffen years later only further corrupting the reptilicus into the mindless enemies you encounter on brio if anything their main impact now is the federation-wide adoption of fuel gel replacing the aflorite mind on k2l it's pretty dark stuff only equaled by the depressing lore of the chozo settlement on elysia unlike normal chozo lore this time things aren't even depressing due to the chozo instead what's depressing is the eventual fate of their creations let's rewind a bit nearly a thousand five hundred years ago the chozo came to elysia to establish a research-focused colony that looked out at the stars to study the universe around them in the effort of doing so and decreasing the amount of work that went into maintaining such an elaborate floating settlement the chozo created sentient robots to aid them in their 400 years of study the research stations discovered many things and nothing more spectacular than a seemingly living planet that was found immeasurably far away though unfortunately when it came time for the chozo to leave they never managed to find out more about this mysterious cosmic entity the robots being left behind by their creators to continue their search along with keeping the settlement running for any future seekers of knowledge as the years went on the robot slowly began to run out of resources many of them resorting to hibernation in order to preserve what remained even more depressing is that meanwhile all this was happening that same sect of chozo who created them would end up being the same chozo who'd settle on talon 4 and we all know what they'd go through for a brief period of time there was hope though as the galactic federation discovered the settlement and began trading supplies with the robots for the knowledge they guarded however this would be short-lived as soon they'd discover that same living planet the chozo were so curious about only that in reality that planet was the source of all faison it hurtling pieces of itself in the form of leviathans at other planets in order to reproduce elysia would sadly be no exception to this a leviathan impacting the planet followed by hordes of space pirates who while controlled by dark samus would eliminate any opposition to the spread of faison what remaining sentient robots left on elysia getting wiped out in the process god metroid lore is depressing we're not even remotely done either with all that covered there's one last key figure in metroid prime 3 dark samus and the planet which faison comes from face seemingly serving to execute the will of the planet in prime 3 dark samus shows a lot more of her personality in this game a pirate logs detailing her to be as ruthless as she is cruel any opposition getting killed on site it's also worth talking about phase a fair amount because there's some things i should explain remember the explanation i gave for how metroid prime was able to form and well it's essentially proven on phase since with the pirates releasing vast amounts of metroids to the planet with a new metroid mutation producing new metroids on its own prime 3 gives you a front-row seat to how a metroid could have become metroid prime starting with a phase-on metroid and prime3 hopping metroids were introduced strange little insect-like creatures that appear to be an older mutated stage of phase on metroids that sees them losing their flying abilities to a tough exoskeleton and razor sharp legs then while only alluded to if one of these hopping metroids absorbs enough faison they can then grow into a metroid prime as evidenced by multiple metroid prime husks in the genesis chamber on face of course you could argue this only enforces the theory that a metroid prime went to talon 4 along with a leviathan but again that can't be true due to other facts in the series it clashes with that is unless the leviathan happened to pull some bs like the one that hit dark ether and somehow traveled back in time to hit talon 4 with metroid prime in fact another lore tidbit in prime 3 explains that once a leviathan has impacted a planet it'll attract a native creature to itself in order to be heavily mutated into a suitable guardian plus interestingly in an unused log and a last-ditch effort dark samus was planning to sacrifice faze altogether in order to send hundreds of leviathans out into the galaxy which if cannon could have been seriously dire though anyways was samus defeating dark samus and the stolen aurora unit she possessed the faison scourge was finally over the main overarching threat of the prime series leaving along with it except as seen in a brand new 100 completion cut scene there's an entirely new plot point coming from a character most people probably forgot about that's right prime hunters is actually relevant again was psylux one of the bounty hunters from that game following samus after the end of prime three clearly being set up as an antagonist for metroid prime four psylux is a mostly unknown bounty hunter who for some reason hates the federation with a burning passion and much of his technology actually being stolen from the federation and outside of that there's not much else we know about him which feels absolutely intentional on the dev side of things much of it being saved for prime 4. only before i get ahead of myself here there's a little bit of prime content left in the form of metroid prime federation force taking place directly after prime 3 and showing a recovering federation pursuing the space pirates in the aftermath of the faison crisis what lore exists in this game is fairly brief basically in utilizing the technology of a long extinct race on a planet called bion space pirates have developed the technology to increase the size of individuals this being done on members of their military and even on some of their metroids in fact if they even manage to capture samus who only ends up getting saved by a member of the federation force who infiltrates the doom's eye an all-powerful battleship capable of crippling the federation while technically this would be the second instance of it happening in a metroid game taking the timeline into account the pirate entry that details a metroid and printing on a pirate researcher would make it the first baby metroid to do so preceding the one samus would soon meet honestly that's about it one other interesting thing to note being that with master brain and the final boss of federation force there's a good chance the pirates based it off of mother brain or aurora technology alluding that there could be more like it within their ranks though only time will tell in terms of that once you beat federation force if you manage to save a metroid egg after completing the 17th mission a secret bonus cut scene at the end of the game reveals silux infiltrating the federation in order to hatch the metroid egg and supposedly obtain it for himself there's no question that when it comes to prime 4 they're really putting in the work with setting it up since assuming it still takes place before metroid 2 that and all the other instances of space pirates using metroids for their own gains would lead to the federation taking drastic measures returning to the mainline 2d metroid games after the prime series we find ourselves in metroid samus returns a remake of the original metroid 2 which overrides it with a few retcons due to the vast amount of suffering caused by the metroids the federation determines that the risk they pose to the galaxy far outweighs their very existence samus being sent to their home planet of sr-388 to exterminate every single one the thing is as it turns out sr-388 is actually an abandoned chozo colony or at least it seems that way during samus's exploration of the planet's extensive underground and only on sr-388 do metroids experience their full life cycle their usual jellyfish-like form actually only being a larval stage in fact through their continued feasting on the life energy of other creatures metroids malt through various stages from their larval stage to alpha metroids to gamma metroids to zeta metroids to the extremely formidable omega metroids starting out as insect-like with their alpha and gamma stages somewhat corresponding to the advanced mutated forms of phason metroids the latter two stages of the metroid life cycle see the creature become akin to a massive bipedal dinosaur in appearance that's not it either as in the ant colony-like structure metroids follow one singular metroid will become the queen metroid serving as the only member of the non-mutated species capable of reproduction now the question is why is it that metroids are only capable of reaching these forms on sr388 well to answer that i'll need to delve into the true origin of the metroids when the thoha clan of the chozo first arrived on sr-388 they had the full intention of turning the planet into a prosperous colony only upon exploring it they discovered a truly devious creature enter the x-parasite a shape-shifting gelatinous organism that is by far the apex predator of sr-388 not only can it reproduce asexually in a rapid fashion but their ability to adapt by transforming into more dangerous versions of creatures they've consumed makes them immensely dangerous to make matters worse if they so choose the x will also simply mimic their hosts perfectly after consumption meaning if one ever got off of sr388 an intergalactic society just one parasite could lead to the collapse of everything upon seeing the x's fast capabilities for destruction the thojozo knew they had to do something leading to them using their technology to create an organism that usurped the x and sr 388's food chain the metroid intentionally created in a fashion that made them docile in the presence of the thoja metroids did their job perfectly by nearly eradicating the x altogether it was only some time later when a new problem began to surface at this point the chozo had made their dreams of creating a thriving civilization on sr 388 a reality with a variety of mining robots extracting the mysterious aeon energy found within the planet and the organisms that live on it and whether it be due to the environment the aeon or both the metroids began to enter metamorphosis their subsequent forms becoming incredibly aggressive to everything including their masters they may not pose as widespread of a threat compared to the x but even then the thohan knew that in the wrong hands the metroids have unlimited potential for harm so after sealing off the stronger metroids underground the thoha decided to enlist the help of the militaristic machine in hopes that they too will understand the graveness of the situation led by a particularly ruthless chozo named raven beak they did understand the thoha's plight only whereas to the peaceful foja the metroids represented potential disaster for the galaxy the mocking saw them as perfect killing machines capable of uniting the galaxy if utilized correctly and turned to get what they wanted every thought would be killed by the makken raven beak leaving the planet with full intentions to return soon with the capabilities to capture all the metroids needless to say it's a lot to drop in a couple unlockable images but the chozo memories and samus returns solved one of the greatest mysteries of the metroid franchise that's not all either since where the original metroid 2 ended after defeating the queen metroid and samus acquiring the infant metroid as she saw herself in the now orphan creature samus returns squeezes a bit more into the game up until this point there hasn't really been that much of a connection between the storylines of the prime games and the mainline 2d ones both plots coexist sure but they don't really have that much bearing on each other well that all changes here because replacing queen metroid's spot as the game's final boss samus encounters ridley for what is now the fourth or technically fifth time if you count the two fights in prime three as separate clearly visiting sr 388 to obtain more metroids for the space pirates this readily serves as a transition between the cybernetically enhanced meta ridley or omega ridley and the ridley that appears in super metroid interestingly ridley actually has aeon energy here like the creatures of sr-388 do though that could easily be due to him eating some of them and well with the last metroid taken to a laboratory by samus that pretty much solves the metroid crisis an entirely new crisis beginning to form in its wake leading directly into super metroid since ridley probably followed samus after she routinely blasted him super metroid is much like zero mission in that most of the lore here comes in the form of environmental storytelling and information within the game's manuals so first as we're going back to zebes with the space pirates rebuilding their base there in this game i want to talk about the wrecked ship before anything without a doubt one of the stranger areas of the game the wrecked ship is strongly implied to be chozo and origin hell when they brought it into xero mission a direct ship was located in a part of chozodia thus keeping that in mind there's a pretty good chance that the chozo settlement on zebes actually started from them crash landing there the culprit of said crash landing appearing to be none other than fantune let me explain when it comes to metroid lore the true identity of fantune varies depending on where you look according to some sources fantune is the ghost of the ship who's influenced by mother brain is a psychic manifestation of mother brain herself or is an extra dimensional entity who feeds off of the ship's energy while the second interpretation definitely works i find the third one to be the most fitting as if fantune had been feeding off of the ship's energy when the chozo were still riding it through space it could have very well cost them the crash kickstarting their entire settlement on zebes in the first place regardless elder god or not fantune is clearly allied in some degree to the space pirates and super metroid with its depiction on the boss statue blocking access to taurean moving on from that it's also worth noting that next to the space pirates rapidly producing more metroids by bombarding the last metroid with copious amounts of beta waves they also seem to have attempted to clone their own metroids as evidenced by the mocktroids samus encounters and meridia now fast forwarding to the end of the game after samus finally killed ridley for real this time mother brain returns with a vengeance the pirates augmenting her with possibly chozo technology in order to stand a chance against samus though ironically her blatant abuse of beta waves on the infant metroid proved to backfire against her as the side effect of massive growth made the infant metroid strong enough to siphon energy from mother brain to save samus and well that's about it leaving her home one final time with the animals saved zebus explodes taking mother brain with it okay here we go subsequent to the massive bookend that is super metroid when it comes to a lot of samus's arc next in the timeline is metroid other m now game flaws aside other m is in a weird position when it comes to metroid lore since as opposed to other inconsistencies in the metroid games that usually got fixed with remakes or re-releases other m has multiple glaring contradictions to previously established information for instance the game kinda ignores the clear autonomy and functioning society the space pirates are shown to have throughout the prime games simply dumbing them down to feral animals that were only being controlled by mother brain i guess you could excuse this as them being like this prior only instead of mother brain it was ridley or high command who controlled them but it still doesn't really work in my eyes it could be interpreted that zebesians are just fundamentally different compared to other space pirates which yeah in terms of their appearance they are the flaw with that as space pirates have been shown time and time again to be especially enthusiastic about genetic modification even when it comes to themselves leading to there being no definitive appearance when it comes to space pirates believe me there's even more too but that's not what i'm here to talk about despite these clear oversights other m is still a canon game it's just when it comes to canon here you kind of have to pick and choose aspects that don't conflict with the other games and disregard the rest what's important is while uncovering the secrets of the battleship with the federation platoon led by adam malkovich it's shown that the federation has secretly been developing bio weapons remember redly i know samus does in that funny scene well as the federation managed to get a bit of his dna off of samus's suit this game shows the strange life cycle of his species as the ridley clone goes from a furry bird like creature to the purple menace we all know too well and that's not all because in salvaging the dna remains left under suit the federation also managed to make more metroids this just goes to show samus needs to fix the washing machine on her ship i wouldn't be surprised if they managed to recreate mother brain out of the gunk on her suit oh wait alright i'm half joking there but yes mother brain does kind of return in this game in the form of melissa bergman or mb who was an advanced ai created as a sort of mother brain replacement so that the researchers could control the metroids through her of course while her strong telepathy definitely helped it was less that mb was a powerful android that led to her being able to control metroids and more that the infant metroids imprinted on her after hatching though that's enough on her since mb isn't all that important in the grand scheme of things who is important another m is adam who along with originally being samus's commanding officer as seen in the prequel manga has long been a figure samus looked up to in admiration plus in a series of cutscenes this game elaborates on why samus became a bounty hunter as she didn't agree with adam sacrificing his brother for the greater good which makes it all the more sad for her when he meets his untimely death in other m trust me this will be important for the games to come and after all that the last notable thing in other m is its final boss fan tune since the game gives pretty much no explanation as to why it's here i'll have to once again refer to other sources like the art book like it's super metroid appearance fantune could be here for one of two reasons both of them working in their own way if you go with phantom being created by mother brain's presence then boom there you go it's here due to mb's residual effect or if you go with what i think and that fantune preys upon ships then that also explain its appearance honestly who can say maybe it's just here for some good old-fashioned revenge that's about it with other rem though and now we're in the home stretch with the last two games in the metroid timeline in metroid fusion pretty much exactly what the though had chozo feared the most came to fruition an x-parasite outbreak all it took was one individual too as with an x-parasite infecting samus while she helped some researchers obtain wildlife off of sr-388 it led to the destruction of her iconic ship and nearly her death the only reason she didn't become a mutated husk was the last resort decision to inject samus with a vaccine created from some remaining cell cultures of the infant metroid oh excuse me have i been saying that wrong this whole time i meant the baby this would have a few notable effects on samus one was that the x were entirely purged from her body the only flip side is as if she wasn't already a genetic mess samus is now part metroid in making her capable of absorbing the ex along with creating a vulnerability to the cold ironically if that ex-parasite hadn't chosen to infect samus they would have probably destroyed galactic civilization at some point only now that samus has gone through this major change the x have never had a larger threat to their existence so we'll get back to that in fusion the organization samus has been sent to aid is called biologic space laboratories or bsl who in actuality seem to have acquired some of what was left of the experiments on the bottle ship luckily this time bsl is a purely research oriented organization and not one with the intentions of creating bio weapons and unfortunately for them as the federation sent the remaining x along with samus's contaminated suit back to biologic the x would create the sax and utilize samus's old abilities to free the rest of the x into the station upon arriving at the infested station samus has to adhere to the directions of her new ship's computer who in a massive turn of events later on in the game turns out to be adam or at least a copy of his mind that was saved by the federation as it does for all high-ranking military officers throughout the station it seems bsl may not be an entirely peaceful organization either since with them salvaging some things from the bottle ship like nightmare and even the emaciated corpse of the ridley clone it only gives the x more firepower against samus though by far the most incriminating thing here is a secret part of the station entirely focused on breeding metroids the researchers even managing to make a metroid who reaches its omega stage in a matter of moments i don't know about you but that sure doesn't sound like it has any peaceful applications to me looks like the corrupt part of the federation shown in other m is still going strong however with the subsequent destruction of the station as it was sent crashing into sr-388 both the x and the metroids were made permanently extinct along with all life on the planet good thing the animals somehow didn't get infected so now in the final metroid game in the timeline we reach metroid dredd the game that aside from the open plot thread setting up prime 4 pretty much resolves most of the main metroid story taking place on the mock and planet of zdr is an unknown source learned samus there by showing the planet had live x parasite specimens let's set the stage for what's about to happen once again utilizing completion based lore like samus returns we learn a fair bit about how the mocking lived their lives before the events of the game possibly being the only remnant of the chozo's once widespread military ways the rogue tribe made their home on zdr honing their military strength and using the local wildlife for bioweapons research to be frank not much else is known about the tribe's early history the only other tidbits about their society that have been shown being that following tradition and members of the makken will even hunt beasts many times their size armorless just to prove their strength or to train what we do know is under the rule of ravenbeak machine society was as strict as it was brutal because the ravenbig powers everything the mocking leader not showing any hesitation in casting his fellow mockin aside if they dissent whatsoever through acts like those the mocking were hardened into a united military force one that didn't always work under fallen tensions either it may be more on the obscure side but as shown on the walls of an elevator room and dread the mokken have fought against the space pirates before specifically the zebesians this leads me to believe that before the pirates managed to take over the planet with mother brain the mock and most likely hope the foha and zebes fend them off which if anything would give a reason for ravenbeak to be present on the planet when samus was first brought there though i'll go over all that in a bet jumping ahead to after they slaughtered all the chozo and sr-388 upon returning to their home planet to prepare for ravenbeak's plan of taking the metroid the lonex parasite managed to stow away by mimicking one of the machines soon much like what happened in fusion this would result in an unstoppable outbreak of x the mocking pain dearly for their actions as all of their population would succumb to the parasite all except for ravenbeak whether it be due to sheer strength or plain luck the last mocking managed to quarantine all the x in a secure location called elune the only other chozo left on the planet being the one thohugh raven beak spared a quiet robe finally with that settled the raven b could now go back to getting the metroids the only problem was and all the time it took to contain the x samus had already gone to sr 388 to exterminate all but one of the metroids of that one that she spared also meeting its end like we all know for the time being ravenbeak's plans were utterly crushed if only there was some surviving dna of the extinct metroids well i don't think i need to explain how that problem would be solved now what was once the one person who'd ruined everything for raven beak had become the only hope for his planned success the best part is he didn't even have to chase after her raven big using footage of the x currently in containment to lure the bounty hunter to him except before that the federation would send seven near-indestructible robots called emmy to the planet to search for the x and extract their dna if found upon arriving raven peak put the near into near and destructible by making quick work of wine and researching it along with quiet robe in order to take control over the rest quick side note apparently the emmy were originally made by some company named the axelian star corporation as seen in the picture that shows them getting reprogrammed which following that would then lead to the beginning of the game with samus being sent to see what happened to the emmys real quick before moving on i wanted to make a quick mention of the beeping sounds the emmy makes since coincidentally they're the same sounds mercury steam used in the remix of caverns 1 from metroid 2. [Music] honestly it most likely means nothing and the company just decided to reuse the sound effect because it fit well but man wouldn't it be insane if that implied the federation was actually watching samus through emmys as she went through sr 388 as if metroid 2 didn't already have a creepy enough atmosphere jumping ahead a bit into the meat and potatoes of dread let me address two specific bosses before i go any further first of them being the various central units samus encounters on zdr in the actual game itself they merely exist to manage their area and emmy but what with them clearly being the same type of supercomputer as mother brain this raises some questions considering this is the first time in metroid that more organic chozo supercomputers like these have been shown there's a possibility that the technology used to create mother brain could have actually been mocking an origin and if that isn't the case there's also a very likely chance that mother brain had some relation to the mocking regardless what with her being depicted on the fresco that showed the mocking fightings of bezier pirates not to mention going back to how mother brain intended to unite the galaxy through violence that mindset isn't all that different compared to that of ravenbeak so the two even intending to go about it the same way by using metroid's this could easily be a coincidence to be fair but evidence points towards otherwise who knows maybe the machine are the reason mother brain went rogue in the first place though i'll admit that one is a bit of a stretch then on to this game's version of metroid prime and that there's next to no explanation for it let's talk about craig why is he here how is he here when did the mocking even manage to bring him here there's no definite answer to any of those questions but i'll try to narrow things down to the most likely explanations first and what's the least likely scenario in my eyes let's say this crate is the same individual samus has fought twice already for the mocking to have brought him here it mean the x epidemic didn't take the planet in one fell swoop but was something that spread through the society over time only seeing how fast the x took over the entire planet following their release and game that doesn't seem to be very likely second let's assume this is a clone of crade or just another member of craig's species in this scenario things fit much better into the set timeline if he's a clone the mocking could have easily gotten a sample before or after crates defeated zero mission and if he's just another member of the species well they could have gotten them anytime after all there were those smaller crates that appeared earlier in the series third let's say this crate isn't the same one but also didn't come from an outside source instead let's assume that krait is in actuality a creation of the mock-in that they clone and give out as a bio-weapon health selling bio-weapons like craig could be the way the mocking have survived being separate from the rest of the chozo with the only other information the game gives it being a completion art that shows the mock and restraining him there's no telling which of these interpretations could be true thinking logically it's probably the second one but man it'd be crazy if it was the third or well the secret fourth interpretation that he was just put in because the devs thought it'd be cool let me know what you think in the comments when i look in there after this video is up it'd better be full of creed versations regardless that's enough crackpot theories out of me jumping ahead to the latter half of metroid dread as samus learns the truth about her predicament from quiet robe only to then watch him get assassinated by a robot sent by raven big her animosity towards him continues to grow and upon reaching him at the end of the game a lot gets dropped to say the least back when samus was first infused with chozo dna on zebes she didn't only receive thohe dna from grey voice but also mocking dna from ravenbeak this is incredibly significant in numerous ways since while her though genes allowed her to temporarily keep her new metroid dna at bay her mocking dna is the main reason metroids have been hostile towards her for the entire series so in combination with that and their fight to the finish samus's metroid dna overcomes her though genes to transform samus into the last living metroid of life-draining powers and all interestingly during the transformation we see that metroids are also capable of draining energy from machines as samus causes etorosh to plummet honestly if raven beak hadn't let samus complete her metroid transformation and just extracted the dna in their first encounter things would have worked out much better for him in the end now there's not much left here in dread in terms of the horrifying monstrosity created by the unique purple x how did it manage to get crate's dna well when you go back to craig's room following the release of the x the spike embedded in the wall is missing alluding to this purple x being the culprit then right before samus leaves zdr for good it's shown that in extremely rare cases the absorption of memories by the x can backfire if the victim is strong enough the x that absorbed quiet robe sacrificing itself in order to give samus control over her metroid powers thus with yet another planet destroyed this is where the current metroid timeline ends that's not to say there aren't more unresolved plots though while yeah dread does wrap up nearly all of samus's arc dating back to the very beginning there's still some open plot threads left like the federation for example we've seen numerous circumstances where it's been shown that there's corrupt individuals within the massive organization so that could easily be the focus of an upcoming game or the space pirates we haven't really seen them in a while so maybe the combination of super metroid and whatever happens in prime four will see them annihilated but if not that could also become the next focus plus considering how reclusive modern chozo are there could very well be more of them outside of the now extinct mocking and thoha it's genuinely rare that you see such an old long-running series like metroid resolve things so neatly hell maybe the 2d games will start to focus on some as yet unseen plot point that's separate from all that only time will tell oh wait how could i forget and the most important lore drop in the entire series metroid prime pinball reveals that the whole metroid universe is a big pinball machine [Music] well unless you've been following me for a bit i bet you didn't expect me to make another video like this anytime soon it may have taken me over two years to do another one but i told you guys i'd make more if you all wanted it considering that my last lore video was currently the most popular thing on my channel i think it's safe to say you all did thus next to my usual reviews and retrospectives i'll be bringing in my style of lore videos as an all new series on the channel do make sure to let me know what other series you'd like me to cover in this fashion i already have a few candidates in mind though remember these won't be able to come out all that frequently even with me focusing on the most important lord bits and leaving some of the lesser skins from prime out it still took me over five months to make this one in the end while i don't say it enough if you want to support this new series or my other content do consider subscribing even when youtube decides not to send out notifications it's still the best way to make sure you'll see my new stuff when it comes out but for those who went the extra mile and supported me on patreon i'd like to give a heartfelt thank you to everyone who's decided to contribute you guys are the best if you want to help me continue making unnecessarily complex videos like these and receive a special thank you amongst a lot of other bonus stuff do check out my patreon a link in the description i seriously forgot how fun it is to make these types of videos hope you're all excited for more if you want to know where a lot of the footage in this video came from a lot of it's from my streams as i went through a couple metroid games for the first time over on my twitch if you're interested in watching those after this i'd recommend checking out my vod channel so that being said i'm the rpg monger and don't forget that each and every one of you are fantastic you

Channel: The Rpg Monger

Views: 178,192

Keywords: Metroid, Samus, Ridley, Kraid, Lore, Analysis, Explained, Mother Brain, Space Pirates, Raven Beak, Mawkin, Thoha, Prime, Zero Mission, Samus Returns, Fusion, X parasite, Dread, The Rpg Monger, rpg monger

Id: 1J4u9ugavGk

Length: 44min 30sec (2670 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 17 2021