Metroid Prime 2

[FMW]

Metroid Prime 2 is a fascinating and fantastic game. A couple months ago I wrote up a post on Metroid Prime and mentioned that a thread was coming for the sequel. That time is finally come. This thread is going to keep a narrow focus, we're only going to talk about the narrative here. There are things to be said about the structure and mechanics of the game, but I'm honestly not able to fit a discussion of everything in the game in one post. We'll need to be focused. Read my Metroid Prime post before reading this, I'll reference it and expect you to keep up.

 

The narrative in Metroid Prime 2 is extremely similar to the narrative of Prime, but with a darker tone. The same structure applies, and in a broad sense the events are pretty similar too. In the past there was a golden age, but then phazon came around and ruined everything. That's act 1 (good times) and act 2 (bad times) all taken care of before the game even starts. Then act three (fixing everything) isn't told so much as it is experienced, that's what you fill your playtime doing.

 

The tools for telling the story are pretty similar too. Scanning is back and it serves much the same purpose as before. The content of the scans is differently focused this time around, the story is much less focused on the planet Aether and much more focused on the alien creatures that have been and are fighting over it. There's a full war that went down on Aether, and it's fleshed out in fairly extensive detail through scan logs.

 

Scanning wasn't the only tool Metroid Prime used to tell it's story though, it also made fantastic use of organic level design and enemy placement. Those worked really well to tell the story of a planet since different zones physically manifested the different stages of corruption and decay Tallon IV had experienced. How do you use those same tools to tell a story that's so much more traditional? It's a tricky question, but I think Retro found a good solution.

 

The beginning of Metroid Prime (Tallon Overworld) sets the tone for the entire game. It shows Tallon IV at it's best (act 1 of the story). The beginning of Prime 2 skips ahead a bit. The opening hour of Prime 2 has you combating gruesomely animated corpses and reading the final log entries of those same marines. The players gets a very strong lesson very early in the game about just how bad things are here. There isn't really a Tallon Overworld equivalent in the environments on Aether. The entire planet is either inhospitable, fortified, or corrupted. This serves to make the entire game darker. In Prime 2 you aren't fighting to restore good so much as you are smiting evil. If the first game was a story of redemption, this second game is a story of struggle. The marines are dead, the Luminoth are almost extinct. There are corpses strewn across the land liberally. Half the world eats you alive. Add to that the consideration that Prime 2 is significantly more difficult than it's predecessor and it begins to click how the different pieces of the game all contribute to a unique and very dark narrative.

 

Metroid Prime 2 very effectively uses the same narrative techniques as the first game but tells a very different story. The creatures on this barren, broken planet are aggressive and dangerous, and the environments they inhabit well justify this. The environments abandon the fire, ice, and forest lands of Tallon IV for a wasteland, a swamp, and a fortress. This leads to a more muted color palette and justifies some extremely inhospitable environmental setups. And of course the dark world contributes to this carefully cultivated hostile atmosphere hugely.

 

It's been said that Metroid Prime is the Citizen Kane of video games. I guess I can see where that comes from. If we were to extend the analogy, I'd say the Metroid Prime 2 is the No Country for Old Men of video games. It's dark, it's uncompromising, and it's expertly crafted in every respect. Just as in the original game, every element subtly contributes to the narrative showing a cohesiveness of vision almost never seen within our medium. The story it tells might not be an uplifting one, but don't let that fool you into thinking it is any less a masterpiece.

 

Up next: Metroid Prime 3. Spoiler: I don't think it's a masterpiece.

[excel_excel]

Great write up man. Never got to play Prime 2. Prime 3.....yeah. The gameplay mechanics and combat were great so the game was still fun. But yeah the atmosphere was flawed as fuck