Metroid Prime/Headscratchers

• Why is it in prime 3 you don't have any beam switching? I loved that in Prime 1 and 2, it made combat more tactical.
  • The Trilogy versions of Prime 1 and 2 have you switch beams by holding the + button and still have you switch visors too, so it clearly could have been put in. Likely they had them stack for a more classical feel, since they stacked in every 2D Metroid game except for Super Metroid and Metroid 2. And to make combat more about your actual skill than about how well you know your enemies' beam weaknesses.
    • From a control standpoint, + was used for entry into Hypermode in Corruption. Having that also as the beam-swap would make a lot of conflict, especially for those who are a bit slow on the draw (like when you start up the game for the first time). From a technical standpoint, why would you want to swap beams - Power is slow, and Nova is a stronger Plasma. Environmentally, there was really no need for elemental beams - Plasma and Wave would work equally well on Elysia, you already have Ice Missiles if you need to freeze something, etc.
    • We have three free buttons right on the remote, sort of. It was the directional pad, the down button was being used by missiles, but there are only three beams, not counting the phazon beam, they'd fit nice and snug up there. But you're right, stacking works perfectly fine in Corruption. I just sorta missed my power beam after getting the plasma beam for the first time.

• In the NA version of Prime 1, some Space Pirate logs talk about the Metroid Prime, discussing the armor they made for it, its morphology, etc. However, the Metroid Prime lives in the Impact Crater, and the Space Pirates never make their way to the Impact Crater itself, thanks to the Chozo Artifacts. So how do they even know about the Metroid Prime?
  • They supposedly found it wandering around in a tunnel while they were drilling. This opens up the rather large plot hole of why didn't they just keep on drilling if the crater barrier isn't as impassible as previously thought, which is probably why it was changed in the European and Trilogy versions...but then that opens the plot hole of why does Prime have obviously artificial weapons (missile launchers etc.) on its first form if none of the technologically-advanced races made contact with it?
    • The first form you see isn't the first form they saw. Wasn't there a log that said it assimilated their weapons? And since they were developing Beam Troopers at some point, and the pirates with packs have missiles...
    • The problem is that that log was changed in the EU version and Trilogy, which means that canonically, no, the Pirates never directly encountered it and thus it couldn't steal their weapons. That's why this particular JBM discussion is even taking place.
      • Could just be that a few Pirates got lucky and stumbled across it, but were killed and had their weapons stolen. That would explain why they never logged about finding it: they never survived the encounter.
  • The easiest explanation to the North American is that the pirates found it but it escaped. Then the Chozo sealed it away under the temple that contained the bulk of Phazon.
    • Nah, the Pirate Logs show that the Chozo were long gone by the time the Space Pirates arrived, with the Temple and Artifacts already identified as blocking the Impact Crater prior to the encounter with Metroid Prime.
    • Except the Chozo came back briefly to seal away phazon and their own logs detail the pirate's failures. The Chozo just left because they couldn't handle being around phazon too long. Further the pirates do talk about encounters with ghosts, they don't realize those "ghosts" are the returning Chozo.
    • It makes a lot more sense that the pirates' weapons were involved in Metroid Prime's armor, since they match, but since you find identical discarded armor on Phaaze, it's clear that's no longer canon. Instead that's just a natural part of the Metroid Prime life cycle.
      • However, it has just occurred to me that A) phazon can affect machines as well as animals and B) phazon turns out to be one huge spanning conciousness. Maybe it just copied the pirates' weapons remotely and started adding it to each new phazon metroid. It'd explain those fission metroids that have weaknesses to specific samus-beams.

• If Samus loses all of her energy in Prime, she dies instantly. There's no way to finish off a foe and get some desperately-needed health. Yet in the ending, she had no problem taking off the helmet entirely. Is the air just not toxic anymore?
  • The air was never toxic - as a Chozo world, Tallon IV was always hospitable to life (see that they also lived on Zebes, where Samus herself grew up, proving that Chozo and human life have the same requirements). I've always imagined that when the suit runs out of energy, Samus has no way to move in it or take it off and it just becomes her coffin. Either that or the suit's power source explodes and kills Samus. Or Gameplay and Story Segregation.
    • I think it's fairly safe to assume that whatever's making her suit lose energy kills her. It's not like the batteries just die because she forgot to recharge it, when her energy hits 0 it's because she's either under attack or up to her neck in lava or something.
      • Except that it's possible that whatever attack manages to take the last unit of her energy, and not one whit more. Her Power Beam has infinite ammo, so she should be able to keep fighting. Alternately, she should've rigged up some way for the Power Beam's energy source to recharge her shields' energy. It would be kind of a cool mechanic if you lost the Power Beam's offensive capability and had to run away on your weaker jury-rigged backup, if someone wanted to make a "tactical" Metroid ripoff. They'd have to lose the "shoot the doors" thing, though, unless missiles would also work, or the Power Beam was still usable, just much weaker. The player might even have to choose between no Beam at all and more energy, and a weak Beam and less energy. Heck, why couldn't they use that sort of thing in Other M instead of "Concentration" or whatever system it was that had the fanboys crying bloody murder?
    • Or maybe that last piece of shield energy means the shield isn't going to save you anymore but you're still alive for now, get hit again and you'll die. Hence the warning.
  • It is explicitly shown that Samus's Suit dissapates once it reaches zero energy in the 2d metroid games, so I guess that the same applies for prime. She may be superhumanly strong, tough, and agile even without her suit, but she is still reduced to having just her zero suit (with no energy for it's shields) and her pistol, this means that whatever reduced her to zero energy can now kill her pretty easily.
  • It's said that the suit is partially organic and somewhat fused with Samus. It's possible that when she loses the energy from the suit, she loses energy as well. Like, how the Metroids kill things, by draining energy.
    • The game over screens are pretty clear on the matter: In Prime 1, you see Samus's suit screen go black in first-person and then her head tilting limply over in third-person. She is unconscious or dead. In Prime 2, we see an EKG reader flat-lining. In Prime 3, there's simply a screen with seeping blood on it. Samus clearly comes to bodily harm once the suit shuts down. With no energy, it's just a hunk of metal, and metal is easily melted by Pirate plasma shots or ripped open by the vicious creatures she always faces.
      • Which becomes funny if Samus's suit runs out of energy because she lightly grazed the side of a Geemer. Horrible way to die.

• Tallon IV and Zebes are in the same system, orbiting a star named Tallon. Two things here - since both planets support life (and even the same KIND of life - Chozo, humans, Space Pirates, Metroids, Zoomers, etc.), their orbits must be VERY close to each other. So close it seems unlikely they wouldn't crash into each other. And secondly, since Zebes also orbits Tallon, shouldn't it be named Tallon III or V?
  • Orbits for life-producing planets I have no explanation for, but it's likely that the Chozo named Zebes and Tallon in the same way we named Earth and Sol (respectively). It's possible they didn't name Tallon IV and the name defaulted (or the Pirates simply didn't know or care for the name), but it just makes the other planets in that solar system more suspicious due to the fact that they have names.
    • Do we encounter a Talon II or V, do we known what's behind Talon IV's naming theme? No, we don't but Chozo being bird people, maybe named a few planets talon for the heck of it. As for orbits, they support similar life but not in similar places or concentrations. The majority of Zebes explored is underground and its stated many native creatures across planets have been wiped out by invasive species like geemers.
  • For the first question, I don't see why the two planets can't be a good distance from eachother. If they're at the same distance from the star's equator and are orbiting at the same velocity, then it should be possible for the planets to never collide if they're far enough apart and their velocities remain equal. Their seasons should just be occurring at different times, depending on how far apart from eachother they are, if they're really that similar. Then again, I'm no physicist, meteorologist, nor astronomer, so I could be totally wrong...
    • They don't even necessarily have to be that close. For example, Earth is in the dead center of the Habitable Zone around Sol. Mars is on the very far end, and Venus is just beyond the inner ring of it. Tallon IV has an eccentric orbit (similar to Pluto, but not nearly as dramatic) that runs at an angle compared to Zebes. There are only two points where their orbits intersect the same plane, so they could be relatively close without coming near enough to impact. The star they orbit is also called FS-176, not Tallon, so the naming of Tallon IV is most likely the fourth planet with that type of climate inhabited by the "nature loving" Chozo.
  • I suppose this depends on orbits, but Prime 1 happens after Zebes gets blown up... Why hasn't Tallon IV been devastated by going through a massive asteroid field that used to be Zebes?
    • No, the Prime series takes place in between Metroid 1 & 2, so Zebes is still there, the pirate base on it was blown up.

• On Corruption, there's a green door toward the end of the GFS Valhalla. Why would the Galactic Federation put a door on one of their own ships that can only be opened by a Space Pirate mining laser?
  • Same reason the Space Pirates have doors in their bases them that can be opened by Samus' guns; the proper occupants have proper keys, and Samus' Whatever Beam just happens to be able to break the shield and make the door open manually. Why they are all appropriate colors? I dunno, maybe it's some enhanced reality stuff.
    • Presumably the Pirates carry some sort of keycard with the door's lock frequency coded in One is seen operating a terminal that Samus must drain of energy instead, and they mention in Echoes that they actually do have access to a "dark weapon" which they used to open the Dark Aether portal. Samus's suit just tells her that "this door requires some form of heat signature to open" and Samus just finds the Plasma Beam a hell of a lot more convenient than having to loot a keycard off a dead Pirate (which usually disintegrates, anyways).
    • To me, the worst offenders of door/lock logic were the ones on the Space Pirate ship at the start of the first game. Never mind how contrived a coincidence it is that the mechanisms for unlocking them would just so perfectly match Samus' Morph Ball form...who the hell came up with the idea of using a metallic sphere of ANY sort as a door mechanism!? Apparently Science Team isn't the only ones with vapor for brains.

• Particularly in Corruption, there are many doors that require a handprint to open. Samus must be admittedly thankful that they're all configured to read the left hand. But if that's the case, why are the majority of them on the right sides of the doors they open?
  • Probably they can read either hand.

• How long is a cycle? There's a whole article on this over here.

• Does Samus ever realize Dark Samus is Metroid Prime? I'm trying to think of a time where the revelation could have come up, but I don't think it ever did.
  • Probably not, though their last fight in echoes would be her clue if she ever got one

• In Prime 1, it's stated on scanning the Beam Trooper Pirates that the Pirates have reverse-engineered Samus' weapons and applied them to the Pirate armor, or just the Pirates themselves to genetically alter them. By reverse-engineer I assume they mean they can now use them, not "now they'll be weak to only one beam." What in the hell is the point of this experiment then when all the Beam Troopers fire yellow blasts that only resemble the Power Beam at best, and just a generic blast of energy at worst, while never taking on the properties or colors of the other beams?