Sanctuary Fortress

Sanctuary Fortress
The entrance to the Sanctuary Fortress.
Planet	Aether
Environment	Industrialised / Mechanized
Sub-Areas	3 Subareas: Lower level Upper level Aerie area
Bosses	Spider Guardian Dark Samus 2
Upgrades	Spider Ball Echo Visor Screw Attack
Connected areas	By elevators: Temple Grounds Torvus Bog Agon Wastes By portals: Ing Hive
Distinctfeatures	Completely mechanical area Three floors
Map	[1]

An ancient place of Luminoth study, the Sanctuary Fortress (known as the Holy Floating Fortress Horeito in the Japanese release) is the vast, technologically-advanced stronghold that comprises the Sanctuary Sector in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. It is built high on the cliffs of Temple Mountain in the northern part of the planet, overlooking what appears to be an enormous city. A-Kul's Clues refer to it as the "holy fortress". When the Ing attacked, the Luminoth used the fortress as a safe haven and defense against the Ing. Only mechanoids such as the Quad MB, Quad CM, Rezbit, Octopede, Serenity Class Drones, and the Ingsmashers remain in the fortress. Now serving the Ing, the mechanoids perceive both the Luminoth and Samus Aran as foes that they must terminate immediately (except for the Serenity Class Drones, which the Ing have not possessed, and seemingly the flying maintenance units). The Sanctuary Fortress's Dark Aether counterpart is the Ing Hive.

Areas and main rooms

The Sanctuary Fortress is clearly divided into two main subareas:

Lower level

This subarea's rooms form a "T" shape. Its tips contain the elevators to all the other Aether areas (excluding the Great Temple, which can only be accessed via the Temple Grounds).

Main rooms

Sanctuary Entrance

• Sanctuary Entrance
• Reactor Core
• Hall of Combat Mastery
• Main Research

Upper level

The upper level is only accessible through two elevators from the lower level. It contains the main gyro and the rooms where the Screw Attack is obtained.

Main rooms

• Sanctuary Temple
• Main Gyro Chamber
• Watch Station

Aerie area

It can be considered that the rooms that only lead to the Aerie are part of a separated subarea. In this case, only four rooms are part of this subarea.

Main rooms

• Checkpoint Station
• Aerie

Glitch

• One room in the Sanctuary Fortress contains perhaps the most fatal glitch in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. In Main Research, there are three sonic emitters to deactivate. If, for whatever reason, Samus leaves and reenters the room without deactivating all three locks, Samus will not be able to open the sonic door, thus she cannot continue, except for restarting the entire game or perform what is known as a Kip Dash. [2] However, if the game has not been saved after executing the glitch, it can just be restarted from the last save point.

See also

• List of rooms in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes/Sanctuary Fortress

Trivia

• The Sanctuary Fortress has two main themes: Sanctuary Fortress, which plays on the lower level, and Cliffside Two, which plays in the upper sections.
• Alternatively, the Sanctuary Fortress is commonly known as Cliffside or Cliff. Internal files for this area's assets refer to this land as CliffWorld.
• Pieces of another Quadraxis can be seen in the Sanctuary Temple.
• The advanced technology that this area presents is found nowhere else on the rest of Aether. It may be odd to some when they first find out that the Luminoth have constructed this technological marvel.
• Interestingly, when Samus rides the elevator from the Temple Grounds to the Sanctuary Fortress, she will travel downwards, yet when she looks over the elevator side of the fortress from Sanctuary Entrance, there is no structure leading upwards, suggesting that the developers overlooked this small flaw, or the elevator somehow warps, seeing that the fortress is in the sky, and not underground. The Interface Modules also call the area "Sanctuary Cliffs" and the Temple Grounds the "Luminoth Temple". The latter name further hints that this is an overlooked error. This could also mean that the Sanctuary Fortress was built into the sides of the cliffs seen in the room before the elevator, as the lower level is ultimately the one down the elevator.
• During development, Sanctuary Fortress was referred to as the "Digital World".
  • Within Sanctuary Fortress, the rain travels in unusual zigzagging paths rather than falling vertically; Retro Studios referred to this effect as "digital rain".
• This area may be one of the first places on Aether that the Luminoth colonized, because it is stated that when the Luminoth first came to Aether, they lived on the cliffsides, and the Translator Door calls the area "Sanctuary Cliffs".
• This is the only area of Aether to have three previous sentinels, likely because this is the first area settled by the Luminoth.
• The Luminoth language color for Sanctuary is cobalt.
• The Space Pirate Logs entry "Shadow War" seems to imply that this area's planetary energy was only recently stolen by the Ing (after the arrival of the Space Pirates and Dark Samus, but before the arrival of Samus Aran), as the Pirates detect an attack to the fortress simultaneously with an increase in planetary instability.

Gallery

Sanctuary Fortress' Temple.

U-Mos' hologram of the fortress.

The cityscape below Sanctuary Fortress.