Last week we began the journey into Super Metroid with the game's opening moments in Ceres Station. The three main focuses for this series will be mood, how rooms are made to be memorable, and the purpose of upgrades. The focus last time was entirely on mood, since there were no upgrades or backtracking to be introduced in that part of the game. This week however, we will still be focusing mostly on mood, but some of the more complex elements are going to start being introduced. Without further ado, let's pick up where we left off: escaping an exploding space station.
After barely making it out of Ceres Station alive, there is no break for Samus Aran. After seeing the Space Pirate leader, Ridley, steal the all important baby Metroid in the game's opening, you need to chase after him and stop him from using it for evil. That means flying to Zebes, the planet the original Metroid took place on, and now the home base of the Space Pirates. Although returning to the locale of the first game may seem like a bit of a lazy move, the entire planet has been completely remodeled, and the concept of returning to the area of the first game is put to good use here.
Conventional game logic, and instinct, will tell you to head to the right, but you'll be met with not one, but two kinds of impassable barriers if you head that way.
There is a strange wall that you cannot pass or shoot, but you can obviously tell it's not right with the way its texture fails to match the rest of the terrain. You're only form of interaction right now is shooting, however, and since that doesn't do anything, you're out of options. Then, above you, there is a platform that's just above your jump height. At some point you'll be able to bypass these obstacles, but until then you'll have to try the other direction.
Heading left is a much more profitable venture and right off the bat you'll find something more promising.
There is a structure that seems like a door, but unlike those in Ceres Station, this one won't open automatically when you walk up to it. Those that played the first two games will know what to do, but those new to Metroid here may have to wonder for a second. And it will be just a second, because since the player only has one method of interacting with the world right now (shooting) they really only have on thing to try on this door. Doors in Metroid open upon being shot, which may seem like a silly idea to someone unfamiliar with the series, but as the player progresses, they will find many different kinds of doors, all opened by different kinds of weapons. Making it so the player has to shoot all doors to opens them means they won't be confused when they get to special doors, they'll be able to associate the doors of different colors with different weapons, and only weapons.
Passing through this door gives you access to the inside of Zebes, which is just as dead and quiet as the surface. Bugs will scatter and flee off-screen when you enter, as if they've been there undisturbed for a long time. The interior of the planet is even darker and emptier than the surface, and right off the bat you're taunted with another area you can't reach.
You have to walk over this piece of raised ground while you see what's obviously a secret tunnel running underneath. Unfortunately you can't break the blocks on the right side and Samus is too large to fit through the small entrance on the other. Instead this potentially important area is forced in front of your face while you have to pass it by. With how prominently the inaccessible area is displayed in this room, players are sure to remember it the moment they gain the ability to travel through small spaces. Since they can't do that now, however, they're forced to continue on to the right.
To the right, you're giving another taunting obviously suspicious wall that you cannot pass, and are instead forced to descend a vertical shaft. The uneasiness that comes with the feeling of descending helps add to the ominous mood the game is working on setting up right now. Once again, you're in an area full of dark, muted colors and you're completely isolated. This planet seems to be entirely dead, but you know that can't be true, so where is everybody...?
On your way down this shaft, you're giving another reminder of what you can't do. There's a door just waiting to be opened behind another gap you're too large to fit through. Seeing this door helps to build a kind of anticipation Metroidvanias can give as you see a bunch of areas you can't access yet, making you anticipate obtaining whatever upgrade will let you explore them and the rush of excitement from accessing all these new areas. The shaft continues with this as almost immediately you're introduced to another barrier you can't yet cross.
You're put face-to-face with a fearsome red door, and unlike the blue ones, it laughs in the face of your puny bullets. It will take something stronger to unlock these gates. Luckily, there is a blue door right across from it, giving you a faint glimmer of hope reminding you there still are some areas you must be able to access.
Unfortunately, that door is a blatant deception, as immediately past it is another tunnel you just can't squeeze through. And just like that, all the side rooms in this vertical shaft are completely inaccessible. Besides just having their dreams crushed, Super Metroid players have also just been introduced to a major room structure this game will use repeatedly: the shaft structure.
In a game like this where the majority of rooms scroll horizontally, the developers have an issue when it comes to make areas with sprawling paths. Horizontal rooms can usually only accommodate two doors, one on each end. Since one is necessary for entrance, paths of horizontal rooms can't branch off or offer any illusion of choice. What the developers choose to do to circumvent this is create central vertical shafts full of many different horizontal offshoots at different levels. These shafts also let the developers create that aforementioned sense of anticipation and make the world feel larger than it is. Each currently door you pass in a shaft that can't be opened could potentially contain a whole new area inside, even if really it contains a single room. This makes it so that when you're finally able to access all these new paths, it will feel like you have an endless list of places to go even when there is really only one main way to proceed. The fact that this shaft is entirely inaccessible at first insures that the player can't get distracted or lost this early into the game.
At the bottom of the shaft you're given a downward facing door, the first of its kind, and it's one you can open, meaning you get to further your descent into the heart of Zebes.
Going deeper also results in a change of scenery. Much like in Ceres station, the colors are now shifting. This time though, it's not to hype up the action, instead it's to convey the idea that wherever you are now is much more dangerous than where you were before. The red haze and fog conveys that and the sense of isolation very well. This vertical shaft is much less interesting than the one before it. There are no side doors or passages to distract the player, instead it's just a bunch of broken platforms in a shaft that takes way too long to descend. That long descent helps build the tension and the player's curiosity. Whatever you have entered now seems like some kind of ruined mechanical laboratory, a sudden change from the natural caves you were just in.
At the bottom of the shaft is a door that leads you to the next room, where the door locks shut behind you. Some players may find this room familiar, because it is actually the the final boss room from the original Metroid. What was once a lava flooded, trap-filled obstacle course guarding the fearsome Mother Brain is now a desolate, blown-out husk after the original game's self-destruct escape sequence. You're forced at this point to keep going, and this room makes things all the more chilling as you're now travelling through what was the heart of enemy territory the last time you were here, but now it's completely abandoned.
After an uneventful walk through that room, you find yourself once again in a total change of environment. This time you're now in a pristine, mechanical elevator room. This wasn't here last time, and it certainly looks like a new addition. You have no choice but to go down the elevator, aware that at this point your past the ruins, and into enemy territory.
This elevator takes you Brinstar, the first area of the original Metroid, and in fact it takes you right to the starting area of the original game, and not much has changed. Things still seem dead even though you should be in the heart of enemy territory, but by now you'll have the sinking feeling that that is about to change quickly. Heading right leads to eventual dead ends, and just like in the original Metroid, you need to head left here to gain your first upgrade. This entire section does well to play off the nostalgia of series veterans who last saw this planet an entire console generation ago. The cameo from the starting area also lulls these players into a false sense of security since they think they know what they're doing here, and think they know what to expect.
As expected, the morph ball is sitting to the left, but when you go to grab this power-up, something unexpected happens.
Suddenly things spring to life, nearby statues turn red and face you and a security camera shines an ominous beam of light that focuses on Samus. This obvious and familiar upgrade placement was clearly a trap and now the Space Pirates don't just know that you've arrived, they're now watching you. It turns out that this planet isn't as dead as you though, and now you're being watched. Perhaps the worst thing is nothing happens yet. The devices turn on and start watching you, but nothing leaps out to confront you. Whatever is watching you is biding its time and waiting, and you don't know when it might show its ugly face.
You now have to use the morph ball to escape this small room, making sure that new players know what this ability can do before they have to use it while making a connection to all the small tunnels they saw earlier. It's not time for those tunnels just yet, as there's still more to be explored to the right. Before we head over there though, we really should take just a second to examine this fancy new ball technology.
Originally created due to sprite limitations on the NES, the morph ball is Samus' version of a crawl. By double tapping down on the d-pad, you're able to shrink into a rolling ball that's only one unit tall, meaning you can fit through many small tunnels. That's all the morph ball can do on its own, so for now it's really just a fancy key, with the one block tall tunnels being the really fancy locks.
With that out of the way, now it's back to exploring Brinstar. To the right, you'll find a room with another one of those red door dead ends you ran into earlier. But the blocks here are obviously suspicious and shooting them with your blaster will destroy them, teaching the player an important lesson. Parts of the map that stick out or seem strange will almost certainly give way to some kind of secret if you know what to do with them. Falling down this room now reveals a new passage you can only access with your fancy morph ball tech.
In this next room you get a pleasant surprise, another upgrade, immediately after obtaining one. This time, it's the missiles, a much-needed enhancement to your firepower. Missiles come with limited ammo you can refill with pick-ups occasionally dropped by enemies. They deal much more damage than your current beam, but you start out with only five, meaning they're a limited commodity, for now. Missiles have another purpose besides being extra firepower, and that is acting as keys for red doors. It takes five missiles to open a single door, which is a heck of a lot at the beginning of the game. This means you have to be very careful when you choose to use missiles for offensive purposes in the early game; it makes them a valuable commodity. Even though in the grand scheme of things missiles are pretty weak and later in the game you'll be able to spam them at almost everything, you feel like they are incredibly important early into the game because of how limited your supply is and how many it takes to open a single door.
With missiles now in tow, it's time to return up and see what you can do. Before you can do that though, the platforms that you originally just destroyed and fell through now form an interesting challenge as you try to climb up. You must shoot some blocks to destroy them while leaving enough to have a platform for yourself. It's nothing much, but it is a nice little way for this room to offer a completely different challenge ascending than descending.
At this point, the developers had a challenge to face in their design. They somehow needed to get players to figure out that their missiles will open red doors, and without breaking immersion to tell them if possible. This must be why they chose to have it so all doors must be shot by the player to be opened. Here, you see the red door, with missiles fresh on your mind after obtaining them, and you know that it has to be shot somehow to be opened, but your normal beam isn't enough. That should be enough to prompt players to try shooting at least one missile at the door, and doing so causes it to flash, but not open. That reaction should lead to successive missile shots until the door is open and the player's missile stock depleted. Luckily, past this door is a long hallway with a missile tank at the end, giving players the capacity for five more missiles. Unfortunately, due to the fact that a missile tank looks the exact same as the missile unlock and uses the exact same text upon collection, and collecting this tank will put you right back at the five missiles you started with, this may end up fooling players into thinking the only way to replenish missiles is by collecting these upgrades. Once they defeat enemies and obtain missile pickups this won't be an issue, but it still can lead to some confusion.
And now, the player has explored all they can here in Brinstar. They have no choice but the return up the elevator to the desolate Crateria and wonder what might happen...
Key Takeaways:
- Taunting the player with a bunch of passageways they can't yet reach will fill them with a sense of anticipation as they look forward to gaining access to those areas.
- In addition, placing those unreachable areas in one central location, like a shaft, it means that when the player is able to pass those gates they'll be able to return to one area and have a lot to explore, instead of having to backtrack for longer, losing momentum.
- In a lot of games, new items or abilities really just function as fancy keys for fancy locks; they don't change much about the game besides letting you bypass very specific obstacles. The standalone morph ball falls prey to this, but the missiles, despite being more obviously keys for locks, don't due to their dual-purposed design.
Of course, if there is anything you'd like to add or comment on what I had to say this week, feel free to do just that and comment. I promise we really will start covering more playtime with less words soon, but the game's opening linear path has a lot of details to be mentioned. When the game opens up the focus will become more on world design than on individual rooms so much.
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