Ghor

Ghor is a cybernetic Bounty Hunter, capable of merging his body with a large armorsuit. He appears in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and is voiced by Edwin Neal.

Biography
Ghor is a veteran of the liberation war of Wotan VII. During the war, Ghor was heavily injured and was forced to modify much of his body with state-of-the-art cybernetic replacements. As a result, only 6% of his original body remains. However, Ghor retains his personality and is known for his empathy, compassion, and sense of humor. Gentle and intelligent, he helps the weak, poor, and troubled by working as a Bounty Hunter for free or giving bounty money he earned to the victims of his targets.

Ghor also has a large armorsuit which doubles as a gunship and provides him with strong armaments, making him formidable in combat. Merging with his suit causes his personality to shift dramatically, making him aggressive and violent. Ghor works very well with anything mechanical, so he is often hired for missions requiring computer infiltration or manipulation.

Without his armour, however, he appears to be fairly weak; Samus is easily able to fend him off with a few shots when he confronts her in the chamber beneath Skytown's Aurora Unit. This is further reinforced by his lore that states he is "not the most skilled of fighters."

Aiding the Galactic Federation
Ghor, along with Rundas, Gandrayda, and Samus Aran, is asked by Fleet Admiral Dane of the Galactic Federation to help stop the Phazon corruption of the Aurora Units. He travels to the GFS Olympus with the other Hunters and heads for the Ready Room there. Samus first sees him undergoing a biohazard scan in the Security Station and later officially meets him in the ship's Ready Room. Once the Space Pirates attack the ship and the planet Norion below, Ghor helps defend the ship by confronting the infiltrating Space Pirates. He then goes to Norion to help the Federation ground troopers and protect the base.

On the planet, he fights the various Space Pirates and defeats a Berserker Knight when Samus meets him on the planet. He tells Samus to fix one of the planet's broken generators while he continues battling Space Pirates. It is notable that if Samus scans the first Berserker Lord then quickly brings up the info on what Ghor is battling by scanning it, the scan will give information on a Berserker Lord even though it is a Knight.

Once the four Bounty Hunters reach the Control Tower to activate the cannon that will destroy the approaching Leviathan, Dark Samus appears and fires a burst of Phazon at them, causing them to fall unconscious.

Two weeks later, Ghor awakens. Due to Dark Samus firing Phazon at him, his body is now self-producing Phazon, though with no apparent negative effects. The Federation gives him a Phazon Enhancement Device to use this Phazon and sends him to the planet Elysia to give the Aurora Unit there a vaccine to cure it of Phazon corruption. However, he is unable to successfully control the Phazon inside his body and becomes corrupted by it.



Corruption
Samus Aran is sent to Elysia's floating city, SkyTown, to find out why contact was lost with Ghor and to vaccinate AU 217. When she lands in SkyTown, she finds his face being displayed on various computers and eventually finds his armorsuit being repaired by Repair Drones.

Samus finds the AU and enters a maintenance tunnel that leads to the port where she can input the vaccine. After she does, she is confronted by Ghor, who uses his Plasma Cannon to destroy vital circuitry that connects the Aurora unit to the Skytown network.

Aurora Unit 217 then tasks Samus with retrieving Ghor's Plasma Cannon to repair the circuitry. Soon afterwards, Samus's gunship sends her a transmission stating that an unknown entity is attacking the hull of her ship. Once Samus arrives to stop Ghor from destroying her gunship, he tells her that she is "just in time", and then deals a vicious blow to Samus's ship.

Battle
After crippling Samus's ship with his mech, Ghor throws it at the gateway to the landing pad, smashing the wall and trapping Samus. As she remotely pilots her Gunship away, Ghor activates a large frontal shield, and with a maniacal laugh, he begins repeatedly charging Samus as well as attempting to crush her with a thruster-enabled leap that creates a seismic wave upon impact. When Ghor charges at Samus, she can freeze the Fuel Gel on the landing pad with an Ice missile, which makes Ghor slip, lose control, and crash into one of the walls so that Samus can attack his generator. Another way Samus can get at Ghor's generator is by locking on to him and strafing around him when he gets close during his charge. Samus will then have a short time to shoot at the generator before he recovers and turns around. When the generator on the back of Ghor's armorsuit is damaged to a certain degree, the shield deactivates, and Ghor will fire shoulder missiles and a large plasma beam until the shield is reactivated. He will repeat this attack pattern until his main reactor (his head) is severely damaged.

When the shield is permanently destroyed, he vents out energy that seemingly evaporates all Fuel Gel in the dock, and a small reactor will drop down from the undercarriage of his armorsuit. Samus can only hit it with ground-based attacks -- in other words, the Morph Ball. However, caution is required while in Morph Ball mode, as Ghor will attempt to grab her from afar using a hookshot launched from his arm and proceed to smash her against the floor. Bombs are preferable to the Hyper Ball because while Ghor takes limited damage from the Hyper Ball, Samus will still lose 25-50 units of energy. Hitting the small reactor with a fully charged Boost Ball is effective as well. After Samus has hit the mini-reactor several times, Ghor will lose his frontal armor and become desperate; when the damage to his machine becomes critical, he'll enter Hyper Mode and use every weapon at his disposal until Samus finishes off his main reactor. Ghor will then try to change his armor into its gunship mode and escape, but it explodes, leaving Ghor floating in the air. His body trembles and he seems to gasp as a wraith-like Dark Samus absorbs the Phazon in his body, consuming him completely despite Samus's efforts to stop her by firing at Dark Samus's ghost-like form. On wings of darkness, Dark Samus soars away from the landing pad, leaving behind only Ghor's Plasma Beam.

Ghor makes one last appearance in the special ending of the game, in which Samus takes a moment to mourn her fallen comrades on the same landing site where she fought him.

Logbook entries

 * GF Lore, Hunter Ghor: "Subject is a veteran of the liberation war of Wotan VII. Only 6% of subject’s birth-body remains: the rest is state-of-the-art cyberware. Despite his career and heavy cybernetic modification, subject is known for his high level of empathy and compassion. Ghor is rather gentle and approaches situations logically, but is not the most skilled of fighters. Intel suggests he even has a sense of humor. Subject has often championed the weak, poor, and downtrodden, working for free or giving bounty money earned to the victims of his targets. Subject can merge his cybernetic body into larger mechanisms, including gunships and fightercraft. This merging will alter Ghor’s personality and he will become incredibly aggressive and violent. Data indicates a high proficiency with computer infiltration and manipulation. High level of mechanical empathy with artificial intelligence."


 * Hunter Ghor: "Ghor is a cybernetic bounty hunter, capable of merging his body into large mechanisms. The most common of these is his armorsuit, which doubles as a gunship and provides him with a formidable combat arsenal. The merges are often accompanied by a shift in personality, replacing his normally calm demeanor with an aggressive attitude. He demonstrates a high proficiency with all things mechanical and is often called upon for missions requiring computer infiltration or manipulation."


 * Ghor: "Ghor’s energy shield is capable of repelling all weapon fire, but the back-mounted generator is exposed to attack. Overloading the generator could expose the well-protected critical systems behind his battle armor. Ghor’s arsenal is considerable. Plasma-based beam weapons, attack claws, and a multimissile system are at the cyborg’s disposal in battle. These battle systems can be combined and fired at once as a devastating alpha strike. Target is also capable of a high-speed ramming attack, although this is potentially dangerous if performed over a slippery surface."

Other
This is the music heard when battling Ghor:.

Trivia

 * Ghor can be seen undergoing a biohazard scan in the Security Station on the G.F.S. Olympus when Samus first enters the room. He can be scanned while he is in the containment area. He can be seen scratching his head, even though his brain appears to be encased.
 * Dark Samus utilizes Ghor's large, spinning Plasma beam in conjunction with a Dark Echo during the battle against Samus on Phaaze, as well as other attacks belonging to the other bounty hunters. Dark Samus most likely acquired their attacks from absorbing them with her ghost-like form.
 * Ghor has three locations where he can be scanned, whereas Gandrayda has two and Rundas has three (possibly four including his scan before he is battled).
 * It is stated in Pirate logs that Ghor went to the Pirate Homeworld after being corrupted and became a Pirate Commander along with Gandrayda, as Pirate Lore makes references to 'Commander Ghor' and 'Mistress Gandrayda' returning with Dark Samus.
 * Noticeably, Ghor's voice becomes deeper when he is inside his armorsuit. This is due to the fact that his armorsuit alters his personality, making him violent.
 * Samus uses Sense Move on Ghor twice whereas she uses it once on other beings.
 * When Samus meets Ghor before she repairs the Aurora Unit in Sky Town, he says, "The network's been severed. You have no chance of destroying the Seed, unless you restore the Aurora Unit." When he says the part, "unless you restore the Aurora Unit", his voice seems a bit more gentle than before. This can either be due to the game giving the player natural information on what to do next, or because Ghor's good side came through for one last time, allowing him to tell Samus the best thing to do in order to return SkyTown the way it was (most likely the latter, as Aurora Unit 217 would have told Samus how to fix it anyway).
 * The door he uses to escape from Samus in this scene opens when he clicks his fingers, but it does not open even when the AU regains control of SkyTown.


 * Ghor is also the name of one of Afghanistan's provinces, which dates back to 5000 BCE.
 * Originally the Fuel Gel seen during the fight was strongly believed to have leaked out of Ghor's suit. However, if the cutscene is looked more closely, Samus Aran's gunship sputters liquid out of its thrusters.
 * Ghor is the only of the three hunters not to have an entrance theme.
 * Ghor's appearance strongly resembles that of a Space Pirate Militia.
 * Ghor appears to be inspired by the Star Wars character General Grievous.
 * In turn, SkyTown resembles Cloud City from Star Wars. This could also mean that Ghor may have been inspired by Jango Fett's cloned son Boba Fett. Boba Fett was seen on Cloud City helping the imperial empire to overrun it and take care of Captain Solo in cabonite. This may be similar to how Ghor was helping the Pirates to overrun SkyTown and destroy Samus and the Aurora Unit.


 * Ghor's armorsuit resembles Metal Gear Rex from Konami's Metal Gear series.
 * Ghor is the second boss to be fought on a Landing Site in Corruption; the Berserker Lord is the first.
 * When Ghor becomes fully corrupted, his appearance only changes slightly, as opposed to the drastic changes of other corrupted creatures. This may have to do with Ghor being 6% organic. Ghor's brain turns a darker shade of red. His armorsuit also changes, acquiring blue sections with red dots; its 'claws' have also turned blue. Blue Phazon projections are also present on Ghor's body.
 * For some reason, Ghor has two PED symbols: one on his chest and one on his back under his neck. This could be the fact that he is both organic and mechanical, or the fact that Ghor himself and his amorsuit were corrupted so he needed two PEDs to help control the Phazon.
 * Shortly before Ghor is devoured by Dark Samus, his armor explodes in a very similar manner to the Game Over of Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion and Metroid: Zero Mission, where Samus' Power Suit explodes, leaving her in her Justin Bailey or Zero Suit.
 * The scene where Ghor battles the Berserker Knight in his armorsuit is similar to the climax of Aliens, where Ripley battles the stowaway Queen Alien with a cargo loader. The armorsuit resembles the cargo loader and the Berserker Lord resembles the Alien Queen.
 * Ghor also appears in an unlockable Diorama in the Bonus Gallery. He is being attacked by Samus Aran, and strangely the Chozo Ghosts from the first Metroid Prime appear to be praying in a circle around them.