Empowerment has always been a defining characteristic of Metroid. Playing as Samus Aran, gamers have undergone the transformation from immobile weakling to near-omnipotent force, several times over, as they have delved deeper and deeper into the series' many foreboding caverns. What made this process unique was that it was not merely the result of ascending through numerical levels, nor only a matter of amassing health and ammunition expansions, but rather it involved learning new, gameplay-altering abilities. The design of Metroid's worlds has been shaped around these abilities in order to craft gameplay sequences out of open exploration without relying exclusively on basic devices such as locked doors and keys.
Metroid's sublime intertwining of level design and character abilities was at first groundbreaking in the 1986 original, before becoming fully and magnificently realised in 1994's Super Metroid. Following an eight year hiatus, the formula made a very welcome return in both Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime. However, the relatively prolific output of Metroid games from 2002 to 2004 seemed to raise questions regarding how much further this template could be fruitfully applied. Some began to bemoan the contrivances that routinely robbed Samus of her abilities, leaving players to gradually reclaim them (along with a few new ones) throughout the course of her adventures. What once had been fresh and exhilarating was now starting to feel like going through the motions.
Metroid Prime 3: Corruption attempted to disrupt the kind of progression established in its predecessors by leaving a significant number of Samus' core abilities intact through the game's opening sequence, meaning that those left to be acquired during the game proper were somewhat more original in nature. Furthermore, the Corruption/Hypermode mechanic promised a very different take on the theme of empowerment. Rather than Samus simply becoming incrementally more powerful throughout the course of her adventure, she now had intense destructive power accessible to her at almost any time, but this came at the price of health and a risk of death if overused.
Ultimately, Corruption was less than entirely successful in its attempts to freshen up the series. The ostensible risk-reward element of Hypermode failed to truly materialise, with its meaningful use remaining mostly situational. Perhaps more crucially, the original abilities severely lacked the broad applicability of their 2D era-rooted forebears, feeling more and more like elaborately disguised versions of the keys and locks that the series had commendably avoided depending on in the past.
With the franchise currently experiencing what could most optimistically be called a period of transition, it is unclear how Nintendo will approach any potential attempts to reinvigorate Metroid. Perhaps the most challenging, and indeed crucial, part of any such effort will be truly renewing that sense of empowerment players felt when progressing through Zebes in the series' younger days. Ingeniously designed new abilities are clearly a major element in the solution to this problem, but they must fit into a framework that is embedded in the Metroid legacy in order to successfully channel the spirit of Samus' past adventures.
There may be clues to how this could be achieved successfully in some of the most memorable moments in Metroid history: those where Samus' power is taken away from her. One of the most celebrated parts of the brilliant Super Metroid is its finale, when Samus found herself at the mercy of Mother Brain until being rescued by the matured Metroid larva. This act of self-sacrifice also granted Samus immense power, which she then used to swiftly annihilate her long-time foe. While this moment was weakly reprised at the climax of Metroid Fusion, the theme of losing power only to emerge even stronger than before was explored much more thoroughly in Metroid Zero Mission.
Shot down while trying to escape Zebes, Samus lost the use of her Power Suit and found herself back on the planet's surface with little more than her wits to depend on. After an extended sequence of carefully sneaking past patrols, judiciously using a stun pistol, and running like hell, there has scarcely ever been a more empowering feeling in video gaming than reclaiming Samus' suit, and then being able to obliterate her erstwhile tormentors with delightful ease.
This duality of tense exploration punctuated by periods of cathartic destruction could be integrated throughout a new Metroid game to significantly alter and enhance the template set by the NES original, while also maintaining its key elements. Granted the ability to switch between Samus' armour-clad guise and her "Zero Suit" (as it has become widely known through Super Smash Bros. Brawl), players could utilise a combination of the strength of the Power Suit and Samus' innate agility to bypass/destroy enemies, solve puzzles, and gain new items that enhance Samus' abilities in both guises.
Designing a world to explore in both Samus' Power and Zero Suits has the potential to streamline and transform that other perennial element of Metroid games: re-traversal of the environments. Scenarios could be constructed such that certain areas are populated with undefeatable foes (given the weapons available to the Power Suit at that time), forcing players to carefully bypass them using stealth as Zero Suit Samus. This process would naturally be quite time-consuming and require skilful manipulation of Samus in her lither, more graceful form. However, various Power Suit upgrades acquired later on would then grant players the ability to tear through these previously implacable layouts of platforms, hazards, and enemies with relative ease. In this way, journeys back across the game world would be rendered brief compared with the amount of gameplay time spent experiencing those areas initially, and also capture that same sense of sudden empowerment felt at the end of Zero Mission.
Zero Suit-specific sections could also benefit the construction of an appropriate difficulty curve, something that has occasionally been a casualty of Samus' empowerment during the course of previous games. But Samus need not only shed her trademark armour just for a few stealth-based situations. Environmental puzzles and even boss fights could task players with creatively combining the abilities of both the bounty hunter's guises in order to progress.
Indeed, the Zero Suit could have its very own sequence of upgrades, including stealth enhancements (such as a limited camouflage tool), new riffs on existing Power Suit abilities (such as grapple-swinging and wall crawling), and entirely new items that would differ dramatically from the modular Power Suit upgrades that Metroid is known for. Such a progression would serve to keep the Zero Suit-specific areas fresh deeper into the game, but also generate a parallel path of empowerment for Samus that would gradually broaden the applicability of her lightweight form beyond a few isolated sections, ultimately permitting players to utilise her talents when and where they see fit. Meanwhile, the Power Suit could be allowed to enjoy some of the series' most familiar abilities from the outset, eliminating the sometimes laborious and predictable process of reacquiring them as in previous games.
Drawing heavily as it does on Zero Mission, this concept is most applicable to a new two-dimensional Metroid game. However, the stealth elements could also work as a vehicle for bringing Metroid into 3D from a third-person perspective for the first time. In either case, the dual-faceted gameplay described above offers one way in which the Metroid formula could be meaningfully reconfigured while remaining firmly rooted in the series' heritage, and thus truly renew its essence of isolation, exploration, and empowerment.
