'Any objections, Lady?': On linearity, subservience and feminine agency in Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Other M

The Metroid series has stuck pretty consistently to the structure that came to define the Metroidvania genre: explore an unknown world alone without a set path; reach obstacles that can’t be passed yet; defeat a boss or find an item that acts as a key for that obstacle, and repeat until the credits roll. The song remains the same through almost every game in the series, from Metroid through to Super Metroid and even the perspective and genre-shifting Metroid Prime — it’s the formula.

As well as bringing this genre into the world, Metroid’s other lasting impact on the medium was in its reveal of Samus Aran being a woman, at a time where female protagonists in games were exceedingly rare. To make the protagonist a woman in a game that gives the player the freedom and trust to explore at their own will, rather than leading that player exclusively along a predetermined linear path, is to push against not only the expectation of heroes being male, but also that of women holding less agency than men. And yes, I am explicitly stating that the freedom granted to Samus Aran by the non-linear design of Metroid is a feminist choice. Welcome to Mothership.

All that said, not every Metroid game follows this formula, with the series’ two linear exceptions — Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Other M — approaching the relationship between Samus’ feminine agency and the games’ linearity in differing ways. While Other M’s narrative mirrors Fusion in a lot of places (set on an abandoned Federation space station, stalked by a mysterious foe, with illegal Metroid breeding by the Federation), the core thread tying them together is the importance of Samus’ commanding officer, the “perfect military mind,” Adam Malkovich. Both games are commonly thought of as the black sheep of the series for their linearity, but there’s much more going on under the surface regarding their portrayal of Samus as an independent bounty hunter — or not — that separates them.