Metroid: Other M has received a lot of flak and a lot of praise for it’s re-envisioning of iconic bounty hunter Samus Aran. On one side, fans believe that the game undermines Samus’s image as a courageous hero. Her admiration of Adam (a man of all things, amirite?) and obeying his orders is seen as reinforcing an old stereotype that a woman needs a man, and that her infamous freeze-up against monster space pirate leader Ridley is a massive character derailment for the once fearless mercenary. On the other side though, are those who can now relate to Samus, and like the fact that she no longer is just an emotionless killing machine. She has problems like everyone else, and so, to many, she has become less of a mary-sue type character, and more like someone you could actually care for.

As some warning, there will be spoilers in this article. The thing with Ridley seems to be pretty common knowledge by now, same with Adam, but just in case it wasn’t and you don’t want anymore spoiled you have been warned.

Metroid: Other M’s is billed as looking at Samus’ with a new perspective. One of those new perspectives is her relationship with the real Adam Malokovich. Adam was introduced in Metroid Fusion as a computer program named after someone significant to Samus and in Other M, we find out just how significant he is.

The game starts off with Samus’ recapping the ending of Super Metroid where the baby metroid sacrificed itself to protect Samus and give her the power to destroy Mother Brain. When recovering in a Federation base she seems very depressed and many people were stunned at the fact that someone like Samus Aran would be “depressed” over something that should seem trivial to Samus. Even I who enjoyed this new more “tragic” Samus was a bit curious as to why the baby’s death would cause her so much guilt.

After refreshing myself on Samus’ earlier exploits I think I came to a reasonable conclusion. The baby, the events of Super Metroid, and the baby’s death were all her fault and she knows it. Chronologically, every game except Fusion is before Other M in this order: Metroid, the Prime Trilogy, Metroid II: The Return of Samus, then Super Metroid. In the first Metroid game she was ordered to destroy the space pirate’s based on Zebes. In the first two parts of the Prime Trilogy Samus was simply ordered to investigate the planets Tallon IV and Aether and while removing the space pirates and various baddies weren’t explicitly part of the mission eliminating the space pirates is always on the Federation agenda.

Metroid Prime 3: corruption is probably the best example of Samus’ being a stickler for orders. This time she was under the direct orders of the Federation and she followed her orders to the letter. She even included killed her friends and fellow bounty hunters Rundus, Ghor, and Gandrayla for the sake of the overall mission. The ending for the game had Samus silently reflecting on them and show signs of remorse and while people have expressed their dislike for how chatty Samus is in Other M, it becomes pretty easy to imagine the massive monologue Samus was having to herself at that moment.

Metroid II: The Return of Samus is the first game showing Samus violating Federation orders in that it introduces a baby metroid that Samus is unable to kill. This sets up the events of Super Metroid where the baby under Federation care is stolen by Ridley during a space pirate raid. This time she is ordered to retrieve it and the end results include the destruction of the planet she was raised on and the death of the baby metroid she grew attached to who sacrificed itself to save her.

Her disobedience had really messed things up and has resulted in a loss of identity. While surely we all consider her to be the great galactic hero, she isn’t so sure. Is she a hero? She obeys orders so that means she is doing what’s “right” but obeying these orders has resulted in the death of friends from Prime and the destruction of Zebes. Is she a villain? Zebes is gone because she disobeyed orders and would have been spared perhaps if she had just killed the baby metroid.

By the start of Other M, she is just exiting the competence stage of Erik Erikson’s 8 stages of psychosocial development and is now entering the next stage of “fidelity” stage of identity confusion. Samus knows what she is good at, but is now wondering what should she do with that talent as both sides haven’t proven to be absolutely right.

Here comes Adam Malkovich, a character who Samus explicitly stated she viewed as a father figure (get the Biblical reference?) and provides her with a guiding voice, both figuratively and literally as he gives orders to Samus via the command deck.

When Samus meets up with up with Adam and the rest of platoon 7 ( a holy number for those wanting to play the religious reference drinking game) it becomes clear that subconsciously she feels like she needs to reconnect to her roots in order to find out who she is. To Samus, that means working together with a squad, following the orders of Adam, and no powers unless authorized as that seems to be standard Federation protocol (which quite frankly is the only reason I can think of for Samus not simply turning on her varia suit in the lava sector).

In various flashbacks we discover what Samus was like in her Federation days and she compares herself to what boils down to a spoiled, bratty teenager towards Adam. Acting rebellious in small ways like giving the thumbs down instead of the thumbs up and begging Adam to order her to save Adam’s little brother.

Keep in mind that Samus does in fact say “order” as she is fully engrossed in her in “competence” stage and stays there for quite a while. She even mentions that it was bratty of her to try and defy Adam while he stood there making probably the most difficult decision of his life by letting his little brother die in order to save everyone else. That particular event is even implied to be why Samus left the Federation and that from the first game all the way to Other M we are looking at bratty, spoiled Samus and a possible interpretation could be that she is going out of her way to do the “right” things in her various games as an attempt to continue to defy Adam.

By the end, Adam defies the Federation in order to save it. The Federation wanted to use unfreezeable metroids as bioweapons which the vengeful MB was going to unleash to destroy them and Adam foils her plan by sacrificing himself and ridding the universe of metroids…again. Before he does though, he provides the catharsis that Samus needs. He reaffirms her that she is a galactic savior, a hero, a good guy (er…girl, er…person).

At this point, Samus has already abandoned the use of authorization to save the ones she cared about and Adam has proven to her that she doing the right thing isn’t about following orders but it is simply doing what you can to preserve life. Adam was strongly against the use of bioweapons because he felt like it was an exploitation of life and as mentioned, saving his little brother would have endangered the lives he was sent to save which could ended up killing everyone. This sets up for Metroid Fusion where Samus actively works against the Federation who was trying to use the X-parasite and SA-X as a replacement bioweapon for the metroids.

Adam however isn’t the only major significance in Samus’ past. If Adam represented where Samus would be in the future, Ridley of course represents the demons of Samus’ past. When he re-emerges into Samus’ life as the creature that haunts her, he literally appears as a demon walking out of the flames of Hell. Here is where Samus freezes-up.

Samus suffers from a condition known as post-traumatic stress disorder. As Dr. Grohol, a mental health expert stated when asked about the scene in question: “Mental disorders like PTSD are recognized disorders of brain and behavior that have decades worth of research and are based upon thousands of peer-reviewed studies. It is no different than having a disease like diabetes or Parkinson’s.” When asked about why can’t Samus just “get over it” his response was: “One does not simply ‘get over’ a mental disorder because these are not choices we make in the first place. Who would consciously choose to be depressed, or to have PTSD? It’s an absurd argument.”

However some still argue that Samus has fought Ridley before and never suffered this so why now? The answer is quite simple when looking back at Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development. In those stages, a person has to choose between either a positive or a negative aspect of each stage and Ridley has represented the negative aspect of each and every stage.

The first stage of development is trust vs. mistrust. When Samus was a child and the space pirates invaded, this is of course in the manga, she went up to Ridley and offered to his friend, not frightened by his appearance. Ridley returned the kindness by killing her parents and implanting her PTSD. It can be reasoned that her Chozo training has taught her to repress it, as contrary to what Dr. Grohol has stated, but we don’t really know the effectiveness of the fictional Chozo training.

The second stage deals with autonomy vs. shame and doubt or asking yourself if you can do something on your own or will you always need people. While Samus did defeat Ridley in the first Metroid game, his constant resurrection is forcing Samus to analyze whether or not she can really defeat him on her own. So far in the Metroid games before Fusion, whenever Samus defeated Ridley, he always came back stronger. In fact, once in Prime 3 and twice in Other M her life is owed to a team mate; Rundus and Anthony Higgs respectively. Again in Prime 3 she even needed the aid of Phazon to defeat Omega Ridley. By the time he is back in Other M, Samus has doubts if she could really defeat Ridley on her own.

By Other M, Samus had thought she had finally defeated him by not only destroying the remnants of the Space Pirates, the one’s responsible for rebuilding Ridley each time, but also blew up the planet with his remains. She could have never thought that the Federation would clone Ridley from tissue splattered on her suit and I think it is safe to assume that Samus’ freeze up was caused by her having let her guard down against the fearsome space pirate leader.

Which leads into stage 3: questioning whether you are good or bad. It is possible to believe that Samus blames herself for the events of Super Metroid. By saving the last baby, she violated orders (which in her own view is bad) and allowed the Federation to start researching them as bioweapons (which is bad in both her’s and Adam’s eyes). Also, to Samus the baby metroid was the last survivor of an attack on its planet and in Samus’ eyes that made her Ridley. Not only that, who of all things should steal the baby metroid? Ridley. Ridley in this case is representative of Samus’ guilt. Whenever Samus seems to mess up, Ridley is there to remind her of it.

Stage 4 of Erikson’s developmental stages deals with questioning whether you are successful or worthless. While Samus is definitely a very competent warrior and bounty hunter, Ridley will forever remain that unchecked mark on her kill list. I think what hit Samus the hardest in Other M was Ridley’s return from Hell even though he has lost his main way of coming back, the space pirates.

The fifth stage, where Samus is currently at in Other M, is asking the question “who am I and where am I going?” As Adam sacrifices himself he tells her that only she can defeat Ridley. Whether or not this is because Samus is the strongest warrior in the galaxy or it is because Ridley is her demon and no one but her can defeat him is up to you, but if one thing is for certain it reaffirmed Samus that she is a hero, someone who is good, and now it was time to put the past behind her.

Sadly, for Samus that day will come for her much later in Metroid Fusion.

So take it as you may, because of Metroid: Other M, many things have been revealed about Samus. I don’t think she is or ever was how some people projected her to be. While she definitely has a lot of positive things going for her that have helped her become iconic in the gaming universe, she did so mostly by keeping quiet and letting the players place her thought in by proxy. Other M finally lets us see who Samus really is as a human being.

I think the realization of Samus’ psychology can also give us insight into ourselves much better than other game characters can. How independent are some of us really? Only doing anything of importance because someone told us to? How many of us try to look like we’re doing “good” because that’s who we are trying to be instead of actually “being good”?

Samus Aran and the Metroid series pushed boundaries by having the first female action hero and so it continues to by offering one of the most down to Earth, human characters in a video game. Whether that is a good thing because it pushes games as a storytelling medium or a bad thing because it takes away some sense of immersion, is entirely up to each person. I however, like this “flawed” Samus over “perfect Samus” any day and would be overjoyed if more games really took a focus in giving us more flawed heroes instead of the pantheon of static heroes who always do the right thing no matter what.

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