With Eyes East

Somebody stop me

Like any God-fearing millennial male, I am hopelessly nostalgic about the Xbox 360 era. And I say “era” because I also enjoyed the Nintendo Wii, and what defined both consoles – in my shining eyes, anyhow – was local multiplayer. Wii Sports, Wii Sports Resort, three Halos, two Gears, Guitar Hero. One of the highlights in that pantheon was Resident Evil 5. I knew enough about the Resident Evil brand to know that 5 was a tonal shift, from survival-horror to horror-themed action, but it was a great game. “Come on! Come on!” “Chris!” “Sheva!” “I need a herb!” Endless fun, at least when you’re trying to farm enough gold to upgrade all the guns. Still, Resident Evil 5 could be accused of starting the ball rolling off a cliff, leading to the extremely unfun Resident Evil 6 – doesn’t even control right, feels like shit to play – and then a soft reboot with Resident Evil VII: Biohazard and its current heights with the parallel remake line. The action direction ultimately proved to be wrong, but how could you blame the Capcom execs in the mid-2000s? Japanese games were dead, said Lord Inafune. Why not cater to the Call of Duty bros? Well, the bros was I. Though I’ve never really played a Call of Duty game, I was the problem.

My love for Resident Evil 5 never morphed (or mutated) into a love for the broader Resident Evil franchise. I liked its sci-fi take on zombies (secret laboratories, freaky monsters, military hardware) and even watched all the movies for some unknown reason, but never got past the first boss in either Resident Evil: Revelations (the one with Jill in a wetsuit) nor Resident Evil 2: Remake (one of the most popular games in the series). The resource management, backtracking, and pilfering just weren’t clicking with me. The feel of firing a shotgun in Resident Evil 5 is like nothing else, so I don’t want to conserve ammo all of a sudden. In other words, my preferred playstyle is “baby.” I liked video games because it’s where all the great art directors went, and I was fascinated by the development, even maturation, of storytelling in an interactive medium. But actually playing video games? Maybe that’s why I needed a co-op partner. And look at all my favorites: Mass Effect (the console simplification of KOTOR), The Last of Us (more of a movie than a game), Halo (just point and shoot), and to the subject of today’s post, Metroid Prime 3. Not a single Soulsbourne listed.

As a spectator watching video games from the sidelines, I surely haven’t missed the saga that is the development of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, first announced in 2017 and finally arriving this December, in the far-off year of 20XX. Apparently, it was rebooted behind the scenes in 2019, but that still leaves a six-year dev cycle, which is extreme even by today’s standards (insert GTA VI joke here). The reins were thrown back to Retro Studios, who originated the Prime subseries, though I’m not sure any of the trilogy’s creative leads remain, and it’s becoming clearer every day how much a studio is only as good as its talent. But no, Bungie, keep laying people off, even when they meet sales targets. This year also saw the release of a nice tribute to the work of those original developers, in the form of a very pretty artbook – my favorite aspect of Metroid Prime. Anyway, with the press getting a hands-on of Metroid Prime 4 and pushing out previews to the unwashed masses, one thing has risen above all other considerations, whether graphics or gameplay, and his name is “Myles MacKenzie.”

Before we continue, we have to flash back to the dark ages of Metroid, a series whose timeline is mostly made up of gaps. The fans are always hungry, and after the beloved Prime trilogy, were greeted by the infamous Metroid: Other M, which turned the silent badass protagonist Samus Aran into a wilting, whining child who needs a man’s help to do the things she’s always done herself. After another gap came Metroid Prime: Federation Force, which turned the relatively grounded Prime games into a cartoon. I’ll just copy/paste from the Wikipedia article and grab a sandwich:

The game became one of the most discussed and controversial games of both that year’s E3 and 2015 in general: the debut trailer received over 25,000 dislikes and just 2,500 likes on YouTube within the first day of its announcement, giving it a 90% dislike ratio, and reached 9,500 likes and 83,000 dislikes by the end of that year. A Change.org petition calling for the game’s cancellation was also created in the hours following the game’s announcement, reaching 7,500 signatures in under 24 hours. Within 2 months this petition went up to 20,000 signatures.

Gamers love Change.org. Anyway, Metroid got its groove back with 2017’s Metroid: Samus Returns, a dress rehearsal for 2021’s Metroid Dread, the best-selling game in the series. In between was the announcement for the then unsubtitled “Metroid Prime 4,” and fan excitement was at a fever pitch. After waiting for almost a decade, the game barely feels real. Miracles do happen (fans waited almost 20 years for Dread), but as Daniel Kaluuya says in Nope, “What’s a bad miracle?” The previews by outlets like IGN and Polygon, as well as smaller YouTube people, generally agreed that Metroid Prime was back, but there was one small problem. Apparently, there’s this fucking guy who follows you around and fires off quips so fast he’s interrupting himself. Humdingers like, “It’s about to get real nerdy in here!” which might beat out “Remember me?” a famous line from Other M spoken by a character you’ve never met. Bear in mind, this is a series about a lone heroine exploring the ruins of dead alien civilizations. She’s usually alone, and when she has to speak, she speaks alien.

This guy, Myles MacKenzie, is a Federation engineer, recalling the subject of Federation Force. Worse, interspersed with the comical one-liners, he’s giving sassy directions and needs to be rescued. Yes, he’s an escort quest, and he’s telling Samus where to go and what to do like an unending tutorial, which would seem to break the immersion in what some might argue is an “immersive sim” – if Metroid wasn’t already an example of a different subgenre. People who play Metroid want to figure things out for themselves, and they want to be alone. Over the years, I’ve read and listened to impassioned accounts of the core gameplay loop, that you see a door in some out-of-reach area, move on, get an upgrade elsewhere and realize, “I can use this upgrade to reach that door!” It’s the 8-bit solution to “exploration,” now going strong for almost 40 years – but for an annoying sidekick.

I bought a GameCube to play Metroid Prime. I was a kid, so I was working dollar by dollar to reach the goal. After puttering around for a while in the pack-in game, Super Mario Sunshine, I finally got my little hands on the original Prime, and had a blast shooting through the spooky opening level – an abandoned space station – and the first boss, the awesome Parasite Queen. Then we go down to the planet, Tallon IV, and it’s no longer a linear shoot-’em-up, it’s the gameplay loop described above. Except, this is before I’d read any thinkpiecery about Metroid; before I even knew the term “game criticism.” I was an impatient kid, terrible with puzzles, and one of the things I didn’t like about video games was the liminal feeling of loneliness often generated by inhabiting these weird virtual worlds. I never finished the game – never got close. Years later, I played a lot more of the second sequel, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, which was a tonal shift not unlike Resident Evil 5, and in the same direction. Still, I loved it for the same reason I was intrigued by the first two Prime games: the art, and Samus, of course. Only, this one was accessible enough that I could actually experience those two things.

The argument here is “get good,” but if that’s my only recourse, I’d sooner elect to stop playing video games. And I kind of did. When my co-op partner and I graduated high school and went to different colleges, I had my abortive experiences with games like Revelations and success with easy games like the reboot Tomb Raider series before putting off the next generation of consoles altogether. Around that time, I was more interested in film and television, though I always kept my eye on the gaming world – Metroid especially. Someday, I told myself, I’d give Metroid Prime another go, as well as Super Metroid. I’m an adult now. I have the patience, now I just need the time – and a Nintendo Switch.

I do have a Switch now, though Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is optimized for the Switch 2. Damn-it-all. I’ll be playing the outdated version, unless I buy another console to play a Prime game. So, what do I make of this Myles MacKenzie guy? Yeah, you probably already guessed. While I think I’d be okay with the loneliness of Metroid now, I’ve always liked companion characters, from The Last of Us and BioShock Infinite to Peter Jackson’s King Kong: The Official Game of the Movie. “Jack! Where are you?!” That was great. I mean, Myles seems way more annoying than Ellie or Elizabeth, and yet, there’s something appealing about the archetype he represents. He wears glasses, and he’s a nerd, but specifically, he’s a nerd juxtaposed with the most badass woman in the galaxy. In other words, he’s Kamiya and Teppei in Zeiram. He’s Rock in Black Lagoon. He’s… third example not found. It’s one of my favorite character dynamics, and it’s so rare.

Hey, space nerd!

So, once again, the angry god of video games has corrupted a high-profile title in order to cater exclusively to me. To be clear, I have never asked for Metroid to be less lonely and exploratory (at least, not publicly), though the early ideas in Prime 3 for Samus to be an actual bounty hunter in gameplay had me swooning. I’m still happy to simply not play Metroid games, though I’ll give Prime 4 a shot, for old time’s sake. I feel like, man, I got all the way through Alien: Isolation – why can’t I do this?!

PS. I’m sure it’s been said, but the only thing we know about Sylux is that he hates Samus and the Federation, so it’s only natural that we have Federation representation. Let’s see how ol’ Yoshio handles “Samus Aran: Space Cop,” but I’ve always loved the design of the Federation Troopers. Definitely a big part of Prime 3 for me.