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Hive Mecha Scene

I want to discuss how the Hive Mecha battle in a Metroid show would translate into a scene: Of all the bosses to discuss, this one seems silly, but hear me out.

Samus enters the Hive Totem chamber, and then poisonous water floods the room, leaving only a small platform to be safe on. The Hive Mecha opens one of its three ports, releasing a swarm of Ram War Wasps. They swarm around Samus at all angles, flying around, disorienting; Samus tries to aim for one but misses, then feels compelled to aim for another that crosses her field of vision.

All the while, the War Wasps ram into her, throwing Samus off-balance and messing with her aim, her focus, her concentration. Samus switches focus to each attacker, only to get sidetracked all over again; She almost falls into the poison, maybe does and climbs back onto the pedestal. She wastes a few missiles, maybe even a Super Missile; But it's clear Samus is wasting firepower, her focus should be on precision, not a more powerful blow against individual War Wasps that don't need much damage. And missiles are slow, unlike the faster and responsive power beam.

As that surprisingly good music plays in the background, Samus crouches and closes her eyes, concentrating; This isn't working out. She then flashes back to her childhood on Zebes, a moment with Old Bird. Old Bird tells her a classic story; Something along the lines of some entity, who attempts to take on a whole group of things it wants.

But it gets distracted, sidetracked, the things keep evading it. Instead of focusing on just one, it focused on all of them, and its greed proves its undoing; It comes away with none of the things, because its attention was split across getting all of them at once, instead of having the patience to do one at a time.

Samus opens her eyes; She knows what to do now. Straightening up, she hyper-focuses on one, single, Ram War Wasp; She lets the rest attack her, tanking the damage as she tracks this specific wasp with her arm cannon, and then bam! She fires, obliterating it.

Onto the next one; And then the next. Every now and then she moves to the side to dodge a ramming War Wasp, but otherwise, Samus remains patient, methodical, and still. She doesn't waste any energy flailing about, she knows progress is progress. Cue a montage of her doing some sick sharpshooting, until all of the War Wasps are dead.

Samus scans the Hive Mecha now that she's free, and cue the explanation of its symbiotic relationship with the War Wasps, its purpose as a security system, as well as the vulnerability of the ports it deploys War Wasps with. Knowing what to do now, Samus fires a missile into its port, destroying it.

The Hive Mecha switches to the second port, releasing another batch of War Wasps. This time, Samus is prepared, going into Morph Ball mode. She baits them; Every time a War Wasp lunges, Samus Boost Balls out of the way, leaving behind a bomb in her place that blows up the War Wasp. Cue the following explosions, the War Wasps just don't learn unlike Samus.

The second batch is finished, Samus destroys its following port. The third port opens-

And Samus fires a Super Missile right into it, destroying the War Wasps right as they emerge; Spawncamper. A few War Wasps make it out, some aflame, but Samus finishes them off from afar like an Olympic marksman. With all its defenses destroyed, the Hive Mecha deactivates, and the room drains itself; Samus is free to continue her progress in exploring the Chozo Ruins.

If you played the boss fight yourself, you can tell: This scene implements the intended strategy for the Hive Mecha. You focus on an individual War Wasp, shoot it, and then another comes to take its place. I think translating the in-game strategy into a methodology Samus herself has to adopt in the episode would help to diversify the boss battles in the show; If all of them are adapted, they need different ways to make them stand out, beyond just having different appearances! It’d be repetitive if she just shot them the whole time.

Plus, it shows Samus’ cleverness; She’s a strategic fighter who analyzes and breaks down her opponents, instead of going gung-ho on them; She adapts to her surroundings, hence all of the transformation and upgrades. That’s what the scan visor represents, it’s what the puzzle nature of the series represents, and it’s why she lasts while others don’t.

And the way she approaches the same problem in different ways until she can bypass it entirely (such as the Hive Mecha ports) shows Samus is creative and can come up with work arounds, which also hearkens back to the sequence breaking built into the games’ DNA. Her methods develop as her familiarity and understanding does; So in a way it’s like character development, as Samus learns a lesson she applies to future scenarios.

And in the end, Samus holds dear to her heart the lessons and childhood she got from the Chozo, applying it to a Chozo ‘test’ in the present. I could see this scene, simple as it is, capturing the basics and fundamentals to a lot of Samus’ character; AKA the core mechanics, which is what an early boss fight does.

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