Metroid Prime (creature)


 * This article is about the creature Metroid Prime. For the game, see Metroid Prime.
 * For other uses, see Metroid Prime (disambiguation).

Metroid Prime (initially referred to by Space Pirates as Test subject Z-d in the first North American version of Prime) is a highly-mutated Metroid infused with huge quantities of Phazon which appears in the game of the same name as the final boss. Its influence is felt throughout the entire series, making it the main antagonist of the Prime Trilogy. Metroid Prime was the guardian of Tallon IV's Leviathan.

History
On Tallon IV, a planet inhabited by the Chozo, there was a prophecy that foretold a "Worm" would infest the planet. The prophecy predicted that the Worm would devour the planet from within and would bring a "Great Poison" along with it. However, the prophecy also spoke of a great "Defender" that would deliver the planet from evil and would confront the "Worm".

Eventually, what was foretold came to fruition. A Leviathan from the planet Phaaze crashed onto Tallon IV and released the highly-mutagenic substance Phazon into the environment. Chozo who came in contact with Phazon became corrupted, victims of "Phazon Madness" (as referred to by the Space Pirates) and lost their sanity. Known as the "Turned", they destroyed everything they could and attacked other Chozo. This madness did not end with death, as some would become dangerous Chozo Ghosts, attacking all they encountered.

Seeing the evil that was corrupting the planet, the Chozo created a temple to contain the Leviathan, the source of the Phazon, as well as the Phazon itself. They named this temple the "Cradle". They created twelve Artifacts, known as the "Cipher", that one must have to gain access to the temple and visit the Impact Crater of the meteor. Chozo Ghosts apparently attempted to undo the Artifacts (insinuating that they were controlled by Metroid Prime itself), but were unsuccessful.

However, the problems the Chozo faced did not end there. Space Pirates landed on the planet and were able to steal some of the Artifacts, causing the Chozo to scatter the rest of the Artifacts across the planet. The Space Pirates tried to comprehend the purpose of these Artifacts, though without success. They then tried to destroy the Artifact Temple, but failed again. The Space Pirates eventually found Phazon on the planet and began mining operations to harvest the Phazon under the planet's surface, using it for their experiments on both themselves and other creatures, such as Metroids. They then tried mining to get underneath the Artifact Temple's lock, but were unable to because of a force field that was generated by the Cipher. However, the Pirates did detect a powerful life force that was rapidly consuming Phazon inside the crater.

The Chozo came to the conclusion that Tallon IV was doomed to destruction unless saved by the "Defender". They frequently saw visions of Samus Aran exploring the planet. As such, they left behind upgrades for her Power Suit in hopes that one day she would fulfill the prophecy. While most of the surviving Chozo fled from Tallon IV to an unknown destination, others remained to keep watch over the planet (in life and in death).

Space Pirate Data
According to original North American GameCube version of the Space Pirate Data, Metroid Prime was discovered in a cavern by a mining crew. It quickly killed the miners, though was able to be contained by security units and drones. Studies were then conducted on the creature which led to the discovery that it was genetically similar to a Metroid, though much more "evolved". It had a limitless capacity for Phazon and was not negatively affected by the substance whatsoever. It never stopped growing and had some psychotic behavior, likely due to the Phazon.

Metroid Prime was at one time kept in a stasis tank. There was a large batch of Phazon in the room it was in and, sensing it, the creature destroyed its tank and consumed all the Phazon. It also managed to assimilate several weapons and defense systems from fallen security units and began using its new weapons against the Space Pirates. They were able to contain it, but they were not able to remove the equipment, making them an integral part of Metroid Prime's body. This ability to assimilate weapons into its own body explains how Metroid Prime was able to become Dark Samus by absorbing the Phazon Suit from Samus.

Metroid Prime eventually managed to fully assimilate the equipment, granting it incredible armor plating and powerful defense screens.

In the PAL and Japanese versions of the game, however, the Space Pirates on Tallon IV were merely aware of the presence of some large Phazon-consuming creature within the containment field of the Cradle. It can be assumed that this is now the accepted canon, since this version of events was retained in the Metroid Prime Trilogy. It is thought to have been impossible for the Pirates to penetrate the Cipher, but the NA release's data implied that the Pirates were able to breach it. The Wii editions use the revised data for all regions.

Scans

 * Genesis Chamber, Phaaze
 * " These husks are identical to the bioform you encountered within the crater on Tallon IV."

Samus's arrival
When Samus arrived on Tallon IV, the planet was heavily corrupted by Phazon. She explored the planet, exterminating many of the corrupted creatures and destroying the Space Pirate base. She eventually collected the twelve Chozo Artifacts and gained access to the Impact Crater, though she had to fight off Meta Ridley beforehand.

Inside, instead of the normal blue Phazon seen throughout the planet, Red Phazon could be seen. This Phazon was 86% stronger than normal Phazon, strong enough to mutate Metroids into Fission Metroids, and to cause damage to Samus' suit, despite the protection given by the Phazon Suit. As she progressed through the Impact Crater, she encountered Metroid Prime.

Battle
Samus's battle with Metroid Prime is the last in the game. Metroid Prime has two forms. When scanning Metroid Prime, a close-up of a visor-like part at the top of its armored form reveals its Core form inside the exoskeleton, as it bears some resemblance to it and the fact that the face is missing from the exoskeleton in the second part of the battle.

Exoskeletal form
The first form of Metroid Prime is completely encased in a thick black carapace, save for its glowing red eyes. It uses a shielding system where the color of the (initially) grayish-white markings on its body indicate what beam is its weakness. The same can be said of the color and nature of the beam it fires from its massive maw (which spans the bottom of its entire carapace). Purple represents the Wave Beam, blue-white represents the Ice Beam, red represents the Plasma Beam, and yellow represents the Power Beam. Samus must switch to the beam (or beam combo) required and fire at Metroid Prime's human-like visage to damage it. After a set amount of damage, Metroid Prime will retaliate by closing the lid where its visage is exposed before attempting to ram Samus, which she can avoid by entering Morph Ball form and rolling into grooves in the ground under the creature. It will also attack with Ultrafrigid Breath, Multi-Missiles, Snare Beams, and Particle Wave Projectors. As Metroid Prime takes more damage, it retreats into deeper caverns, using stronger and stronger attacks as it goes. Its movements and attacks become progressively more erratic as well, as it will shift screens more frequently and its attacks become more unpredictable. Eventually, it crawls toward one final pit and falls, and Samus follows it.



Core form
When Samus lands, she finds Metroid Prime's exoskeleton open with its top missing and the armor plating oozing Phazon. Metroid Prime flies out of the cast-off body in its second form, the core essence of Metroid Prime. In its second form, Metroid Prime is only vulnerable to pure Phazon. Aside from the humanoid face, the creature now somewhat resembles a six-tentacled squid with highly developed nuclei, similar to a Hunter Metroid and (especially) a Phazon Metroid. It will use its tentacles to shoot waves of energy throughout the room which Samus must jump over to avoid, and it will spawn various species of Metroid. There are several ways for Samus to deal with the Metroids: she can use a Power Bomb to kill them, she can run past them and use the Phazon Beam to kill them, or she can resort to standard Metroid-killing tactics and use the Ice Beam to freeze them, then shatter them with a Missile. However, this last tactic only works the first two times Prime spawns Metroids; afterwards, it only creates Fission Metroids. Whenever it creates a Metroid, Metroid Prime will also create a small pool of Phazon. After Metroid Prime creates a pool of Phazon, it may disappear from the Combat Visor and must be tracked with either the Thermal Visor or X-Ray Visor. With the use of the Phazon Suit, Samus can stand on these pools and enter Hyper Mode. She can then fire Phazon at Metroid Prime by the use of the Phazon Beam, greatly damaging it. Eventually, it will completely destabilize. Once Samus has defeated Metroid Prime's second form, it morphs into an odd-looking blob, similar to a Metroid or a Core-X from Metroid Fusion. Tentacles will come out of it and grab Samus, pulling her towards it. Samus pulls back, and is eventually separated from her Phazon Suit, which is pulled into what remains of the Metroid Prime. This leaves her in her Gravity Suit. All other sources of Phazon in the general vicinity explodes, causing the entire cavern to collapse. She calls in her ship using the obscure controls on her arm cannon, and leaps from the collapsing structure onto her hovering gunship. The Hatchling has fulfilled the prophecy.

Dark Samus
Despite Samus killing Metroid Prime and causing the cavern to collapse, the "Worm" was reborn. With the absorption of the Phazon Suit, and pieces of Samus' DNA, Metroid Prime was able to reconstruct itself into a body similar to Samus'. Because Dark Samus was once Metroid Prime, Dark Samus is technically a Metroid. She could travel across the reaches of space and was more powerful than ever before. Following her rebirth, she also seemed to exhibit intelligence at an almost human level. This sentience also made her far deadlier than the simple beast she used to be. She was dubbed "Dark Samus" due to the dark color of her suit and her malevolent nature. Space Pirates called her the "Dark Hunter" because the Space Pirates mistook Dark Samus for the original Samus, whom they already called "The Hunter". Samus learns of this in a Space Pirate facility during the events of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Dark Samus is supposedly defeated for good in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

Origins
Despite the Prime subseries being over, Metroid Prime's origins were never fully explained. According to the Page 3 of the Art Booklet packaged with Metroid Prime Trilogy, Metroid Prime was originally a Metroid that became corrupted by absorbing Phazon from the Phazon Core that was inside the Leviathan that impacted Tallon IV.

Early Metroid Prime concept art (as shown in the image above right) depicts several "eyes" in the background that strongly resemble the optical organs found in the Leviathan Battleship orbiting the Pirate Homeworld. This could possibly suggest a correlation between Metroid Prime and the Leviathan, but cannot be proven.

In Corruption, inside the room called Genesis Chamber, seen just before the battle with Dark Samus on planet Phaaze, the remains of exoskeletons very similar to Metroid Prime's can be found, however it is unknown if they belong to the Metroid Prime found on Tallon IV or to another Prime-like creature that lived on Phaaze. Hopper and Phazon Metroids featured in Corruption also bear resemblances to Prime, suggesting a connection between them.

Dark Samus, Metroid Prime's later form, would refer to Phaaze as 'her' homeworld (in the Pirate Lore The Source Discovered). This could mean that Metroid Prime originally came from Phaaze and somehow came to Tallon IV with the Leviathan.

According to Corruption scan data, Leviathans are great organisms which possess a Phazon seed. When they impact a planet, they come close to death due to the impact. The Leviathan might then use Phazon to lure a nearby creature to defend the seed before they die; this creature will be corrupted by Phazon and will protect the core. Based on this information, it is possible that the Metroid that would later mutate into Prime was only corrupted after the Tallon IV Leviathan impacted the planet. However, since Phaaze is already known to have a large population of mutated Metroids (consisting of Miniroids, Phazon Metroids and Hopping Metroids), it is possible for the future Metroid Prime to have entered the Leviathan before it was launched from Phaaze; indeed, it seems to make more sense that the Metroid Prime was in the Leviathan for a much longer period of time than the other Guardians and therefore had a deeper connection to it and Phazon itself, as it is more powerful than the Guardians encountered in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption and possesses the unique ability to generate pure Phazon. But this possibility raises another question: how did Metroids get to Phaaze in the first place?

The following has not been explained in official canon:
 * How a Metroid was able to get inside of the Leviathan, either after crashing on Tallon IV or before. If a mutated Metroid already existing on Phaaze entered the Leviathan, the latter may have taken the opportunity to procure a Guardian before being launched into space. Due to the large numbers of Phazon Metroids in the Genesis Chamber where Leviathans were grown, one can easily imagine one of them entering or attaching to the Leviathan before it was launched. The presence of Prime-like husks also suggests that Metroid Prime or a similarly mutated Metroid had been living around the infant Leviathans, but was no longer present when Samus arrived on Phaaze.
 * The Metroid: Volume 1 manga seems to hint that Metroids were created during Samus Aran's younger years. Scan data suggests that Tallon IV was struck by the meteor around 50 years before the arrival of Samus, and if said object did indeed bring an already mutated-Metroid, this would propose that Metroids were created many years earlier than what the manga insinuates. If what the latter suggests is true however, it would make the theory of Metroid Prime originating from Phaaze less credible.
 * If a Metroid entered the Leviathan after the impact (thus giving the Phazon Core a "local predator" to attract), it would suggest that the creature in the Impact Crater was originally a Metroid present on Tallon IV. Consequentially, this raises another question, which is whether the Space Pirates brought the Metroid with them from Zebes, or whether it was in the possession of the Chozo living on Tallon IV. No Chozo lore on Tallon IV mention any Metroid being among the peaceful race during their reign, and considering that Pirates arrived on the planet many years after the impenetrable Cipher/Cradle was raised, how would one of their captive Metroids bypass the forcefield.
 * What happened to the Tallon IV Leviathan's Phazon Core. Though it has never been officially stated, most theories point to it being completely absorbed by Metroid Prime's insatiable hunger, a trait commonly found in Metroids. The fact that Metroid Prime can create pools of Phazon at will enforces this theory; the Baby from Super Metroid has also demonstrated the capacity to rob the abilities of its prey. Another theory is that the Phazon Core died of natural causes, as the official canon doesn't state the life span of a Phazon Core, and those seen in the later Prime games are relatively young.

Mike Sneath interview
"Metroid Prime shell was a lot of fun to model and the concept for this boss was very clearly layed out as Andrew did serveral different views for this design. The part that was actually more challenging was the core of the creature. The main reason the core was challenging was because there were limitations to what could do with multiple layers of transparent polygons. The core had a jelly like outer skin with a glowing brains and arteries underneath the skin. In the end I worked with the programmer who helped by giving me a couple of shaders that enabled me to work around the limitations I was running into with sorting transparent polygons."

Metroid Prime (Exo)
"The form of the Metroid Prime that Samus first encounters. It can become invulnerable to all but one of Samus's weapons at a time. The body color alternates between yellow, purple, white, and red, with the color indicating the weapon that can deal damage. After taking a certain amount of damage, the Metroid Prime exoskeleton reveals its core essence.

GCN Metroid Prime

Metroid Prime (Core)
"The core form of Metroid Prime after losing its exoskeleton. It can make itself invisible for a set time, which requires Samus to make a visor change. Normal hits do not have any effect on it--the Metroid Prime can eventually be defeated by using the Phazon Beam while standing in a Phazon puddle."

GCN Metroid Prime

Etymology

 * Wormwood, αψίνθιον (apsinthion) or άψινθος (apsinthos) in Greek, is a star, or angel, that appears in the Biblical New Testament Book of Revelation, also called the Apocalypse.
 * Although the word wormwood appears several times in the Old Testament, translated from the Hebrew term לענה (la'anah), its only clear reference as a named entity occurs in the New Testament, in the book of Revelation: "The third angel blew his trumpet, and a great star fell from heaven, blazing like a torch, and it fell on a third of the rivers and on the springs of water. The name of the star is Wormwood. A third of the waters became wormwood, and many died from the water, because it was made bitter." (Revelation 8:10–11, New Revised Standard Version).

Trivia

 * Metroid Prime's prophesied Chozo name, "The Worm", may had been partially inspired by, Wormwood; a biblical star that is very reminiscent to Metroid Prime's occurrence and the blight it brought upon Tallon IV.
 * When Metroid Prime's exoskeleton is hanging from the ceiling it strangely looks like a face.
 * The creature's head resembles the head of a Beam Trooper.
 * The Metroid Prime's core form, along with the Fission Metroids, are chronologically the first Metroids in the Metroid series to achieve complete invulnerability against their species' greatest weakness: cold temperatures (though this was an unintentional benefit acquired from mutations caused by Phazon). Years later, during the events of Metroid: Other M, the Galactic Federation would successfully replicate this resistance on the Metroids located in the Bottle Ship for the bioweapon program Project Metroid Warriors.
 * Metroid Prime can become vulnerable to cold when its carapace markings switch to a white-blue coloration. At this point it can be temporarily immobilized with the Ice Spreader.
 * Disturbingly, in both forms, Prime's face looks strikingly humanoid, albeit without a mouth. Andrew Jones did a 1,000 self-portrait series of himself and later claimed that "my portraits are quite a departure from my metroid concept work, but I think you would be surprised that there are a few of the portraits that were the inspiration behind the final bosses in prime 1 and two."
 * Oddly, some of Metroid Prime's weaponry seems to be mechanical (for example, it's unlikely that it could generate Missiles by itself). In the NTSC release, this was explained in that Prime assimilated some Space Pirate technology. However, this is retconned in the Trilogy and PAL releases, so where Prime absorbed the weapons from is unknown.
 * Metroid Prime in its Core form closely resembles the look of the heads of the alien creatures from the movie Independence Day. Another similarity is that, like Metroid Prime, these aliens use an organic exosuit, concealing their true form.
 * The theme of Metroid Prime's core essence was remixed for the second phase of Gorea's battle in Metroid Prime Hunters.
 * When battling Metroid Prime's core form, Samus can stand on its discarded shell, completely avoiding the shockwaves. Also, there is a twig on the side of the room opposite the discarded exoskeleton. When standing on this twig, it seems as though Samus is at ground level, though the shock waves Metroid Prime uses don't affect her when standing on it either.
 * Metroid Prime's exoskeleton resembles Stephen King's IT's final physical form. IT's final physical form was that of a giant spider that resided in the sewers. They were also both purely evil alien creatures. Another similarity they seem to share, is they both assumed three distinctive key forms during the course of their cycle; Humanoid, Physical, and Incorporeal. ​​
 * Metorid Prime's forms consisted of Dark Samus, Exoskeletal, and Core Essence. While IT's forms were that of Pennywise the Dancing Clown, Spider-monster, and IT's Deadlights.
 * Metroid Prime's core form artwork also shows three heavily mutated nuclei, also noting the resemblance between Prime and the Phazon Metroids.
 * Metroid Prime bears anatomical similarity to the Hopping Metroids encountered in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.
 * The form Metroid Prime takes on after death slightly resembles a Core-X from Metroid Fusion.