Spoilers ahead for Metroid Prime 3 and Halo Combat Evolved.
I’ve been playing through the Metroid prime series to get ready for when I eventually manage to snag myself a switch 2 and a copy of the new Metroid Prime 4, which I’ve been incredibly excited for ever since the infamous “4” trailer.
This is my first time actually playing through MP3 though, for some reason it fell off my radar and I never got around to playing it until now. It’s definitely my least favourite of the rest of the prime games (including hunters) but that by no means makes it a bad game.
Anyways, I digress. I got to skytown (that’s the ancient Chozo ruins floating above the gas giant) and started exploring. I was immediately struck by how beautiful and peaceful the vibes here were, with the music matching perfectly.
However, the tone shifted dramatically when I opened the door to a room and a space Pirate who’s body was slumped against the other side of the door turned to dust as it fell through the newly opened portal.
I entered the room and it was littered with the corpses of space Pirates who were very clearly trying to escape some terriible fate. The music abruptly transitioned from the serene melodies to this dark, heavy and hugely atmospheric ambiance that left me feeling on edge as the scattered pirate bodies lay sprawled on the floor, desperately reaching for door ways or slumped against the walls lifelessly.
I activated my scan visor which confirmed my suspicions. These pirates were desperate in their attempts to flee. The scans revealed that the these pirates died in terror, punctuated by fangs with all life sucked out of them. Some scans revealed that they resorted to friendly fire and even (TW) suicide in an effort to avoid their fate. (Which I assume was once again related to the space pirate’s hubris in breeding and controlling Metroids… probably of the Phason variety)
This scene really stuck out to me as a really overt and well executed sci-fi horror scene the likes of which I’ve never seen in another Metroid game. It genuinely left me uneasy and on the edge of my seat the entire time I was exploring this section, even though I was pretty sure I already knew what was behind this massacre.
This scene really reminded me of a similar scene in Halo Combat Evolved in the mission “343 Guilty spark” where the master chief is exploring a location which is meant to be swarmed with covenant forces and a UNSC strike team trying to claim the facility.
Instead he’s met with eerie emptyness, blood soaked walls, distress signals, distant firefights which always mysteriously disappear without a trace once you approach and one very distressed marine. But most unsettling of all, despite all the blood and the distant firefights there are no corpses to speak of… in fact the only signs of life in the entire facility is that one marine who was driven to madness by the horrors he’s seen.
Eventually you reach a door which was hacked by a marine, and open it. The corpse of a marine falls through the door and the chief catches him and gingerly lowers him to the ground after checking his sixes to ensure the room is clear. The chief find’s the deceased marine’s field recording and watches it.
Interestingly, the marines find the exact same thing as the chief. An eerily empty facility with blood soaked walls and no sign of life, save for a single deceased Elite who had his insides scrambled and was marred by plama burns (friendly fire).
The door that needed to be hacked to gain entry was especially strange. The covenant took great care locking it down as best as they could, despite apparently nothing of note being in the room beyond.
When they eventually manage to break the encryption they’re met with a seemingly empty room but soon the horror known as the flood reared its ugly head.
These two scenes in two completely different games have such wild parallels and it’s really clear to see that Retro Studios was very inspired by Bunjie. I love the way both games handle similar ideas in different ways. Halo slowly feeding you the clues through subtle environmental cues which are easy to miss on a first playthrough then showing you a very clear Cutscene before unleashing an onslaught upon you vs. Metroid where it makes you investigate the area like a detective at a crime scene and piece the puzzle together yourself, slowly building the tension until the metroids are finally revealed.
Did anyone else pick up on these parallels and what did everyone think about them?
