What’s next?
Why can’t Metroid crawl? Well, she’s not only crawling, she’s walking and running: away from the past. Nintendo has noted multiple times since the reveal of Metroid Dread that they want to move on from the actual Metroids, and they’re really hashing that out on Twitter this week.
Teasing some story bits, Nintendo leads with this:
“The floating entities known as Metroids have the ability to absorb energy from other organisms. They were created by the Chozo to defeat the X Parasite on Planet SR388. Since then, some have tried to weaponize this creature, leading to several conflicts.”
Okay, so that’s dealing with bits of lore we knew about, but still cool to rehash nonetheless. Given that Metroid roughly translates to “Ultimate/Great Warrior” in the Chozo language, the weaponization of the species and the adorable way in which it followed Samus around in past games was one of the more meaningful story beats. About that.
Here’s the follow-up tweet, and the bigger confirmation:
“During the events of Metroid II and Super Metroid, a young baby Metroid imprinted itself upon Samus Aran, considering her its mother. It later bravely sacrificed itself to save Samus. At the time of Metroid Dread, the Metroids no longer exist.”
So Super Metroid makes it clear that we’re dealing with “the last Metroid in captivity.” At the end of the game, it sacrifices itself. Cut and dried, right?! Well, there could be any number of anime/dramatic reveals that could claim “actually, there’s more!” But in this case, including the events of Metroid Fusion, Nintendo is claiming that they “no longer exist.”
Whether the Metroid and Samus link is given a neat little bow through flashbacks or some other “they’re back!” method is yet to be known, but at face value, this tweet may have confirmed something meaningful.