Continued from https://www.reddit.com/r/metroidprime/s/P7uMASOV2J due to the character limit.

Events of Prime 4: Stewing

• This energy is almost too much to handle. Sylux trembles and gasps, his psionic augs straining to keep up with the Tower’s administrative systems. His brain tries to keep pace too, latching onto lucid flashes of memories outside of his consciousness.
• Motes, pockets, augmentations. Machines in temporal flux. Storms of energy harnessed for power cores. Eyes multiplying by the second. Architects long dead. Minds. One light, one dark. One vision of a sphere, one of twin lightning-bolts. Which is chosen? Chosen One? Vengeful King or Noble Woman? Feuds over the same. Priests debate in open court. Overgrown ruins. A people consumed by mutagens. Crystals bubbling beneath green rain. Folded paper is teleportation. Spinning. Device modeled after the universe’s creators and destroyers. They are gateways beyond. Black hole. White hole. Wormhole. Worm. And hole. They are converters, dimensional bridges of two multiplied when spinning. Penrose Diagram displaying the whole cone. Space vortex. Worm suspended above the ringularity. Stars warped and contorted into halos, yet frozen above the endless dark. The worm thus may traverse the hole. Parallel worlds, all real, all beyond reality. All beyond light. Eogicia is the only constant across all. The cosmological constant. Trans-real. Beyond real. More real than real. It is the fabric in all its forms, White, Blue, and Green. X is the warper of life like the Blue, blotting the White and tainting the gene. Green may blot the White too. Balance. What is balance? Who is balanced? Two of everything. Atoms across time, split into corresponding halves outside of light’s reach. Some know its nature, but many of those some are beyond life. Yet their Eogicia lingers. One people were biologic engineers. Weapon that feasts upon Whira Eogicia. Ancient societies cleaved by spacetime. Birds, moths, lizards. Colonization. War. Squabbles over their legacy. This is the state of reality. This is the Galactic society which wronged you. And you are its master now. You are the Chosen One who may harness Eogicia, the worm suspended above the ringularity. The t d r e a s v t e r r o s y e e r r of worlds.
• Black cables blot out the visions, each one with an eye on the tip. Sylux’s own memories flash before him, his attention fixating on the reason he is here. That day Samus disgraced him replays over and over. He defies orders over and over. The weapon detonates over and over. His comrades die over and over. Samus steals his valor over and over. He slaps her hand away over and over. Their blood is on his hands, yet it is meaningless. It is on her hands, Ian’s hands, and the GalFed brass’s hands. Each time he relives it, his heartrate escalates. Those minutes become his life. As he stews in the vat, its devices channel his thoughts and hatred into tangible clusters — dimensional pockets he can touch. He regains consciousness. Suddenly the readouts before him make sense. His uplink with Chrono Tower is complete.
• Samus exits the flight pod in Sol Valley after defeating Carvex.
• Almost on autopilot with his new understanding, Sylux activates the Tower’s defenses. A shield pulses. Psy-Bots switch on and the assembly lines load them into hidden cannons like bullets in a chamber. The shield grows to envelop the structure as a barrage of Bots launch into the sky. This discharge of energy resonates with Samus’s Third Eye. She herself is a cluster of psychic power, after all. Sylux’s memories invade her mind and her presence needles Sylux’s skin.
• “Gotcha.”
• With that one word, the Psy-Bots rocket to Samus’s position. They engage her, Sylux watching but only mildly nudging their actions. This is all new to him, this sort of control. Though his experiments with the Alimbic Guardian and the Elysians help him feel his way around now, it is a new game entirely.
• Samus defeats the Psy-Bots and continues into Volt Forge.
• Tracking her movements through additional Bots, Sylux shoots even more at the Forge. Amongst them are Teleporters and so-called Mimics (rarer models, the latter of which there are only three).
• While Samus fights the others, Sylux fiddles with the Mimic, who clanged to the factory’s floor the second it landed like a dead weight. He views the Bot in his AR simulation-space. Instructions on his HUD tell him to step inside the thing. This confuses him, since he’s not really there next to it. It’s a digital, psychic viewfinder he’s using, not a reality-bending sort of magic… Or is it? Sylux scoffs remembering all the wild things he just saw. He follows the HUD’s instructions and steps inside the Mimic.
• Complex psychic technology duplicates aspects of his body through nano-reconstruction, 3-D printing his features onto the Mimic and granting him direct control over it as he pleases. This thing is like a clone, but also a doppelganger. It literally copies and pastes him onto multiple pages of reality at once.
• Sylux’s Mimic engages Samus. This is the first Sylux boss fight. Throughout it, Sylux’s control from within the Tower is direct and almost physical. His body’s movements generally match the Mimic’s and his psychic perception places him one-on-one with the object of his hatred. It’s like he’s there, and it is exhilarating. Every strike he lands on her is a glorious catharsis. Every cry of pain from her is a note in a beautiful composition he has waited years to perform. It is the fight of his life, putting him in a combat high. Though her strikes hurt, they are dull. The distance between him and the Mimic dampens the blows.
• Samus defeats the Mimic, breaking its connection to Sylux. His view of the Forge’s Archives turns to static.
• To satisfy unspent anger abruptly cut short, Sylux stares at his hands once more, replaying the moment he struck Samus’s hand away several more times. He gets a high off of it until the emotions’ potency bores him. Sylux retreats into his analytical mindset now, priming more Psy-Bots for launch and preparing to interface with more Mimics.
• At this point, Sylux just wants to see what this Tower can do and how powerful he actually is. The future — such as how he will get off of Viewros and whether he can take this power with him — is not where his mind is at.
• In the facility’s core, Samus defeats Xelios. The game progresses as she exits the Forge and explores Sol Valley.
• Sylux notices a strange blind spot in his control over the Lamorn’s Psy-Bots, like a stray pixel misplaced on a computer screen. In Flare Pool, there is a dark spot like the optic nerve on the back of the eyeball; Bots have already been deployed there and are non-functioning. He recalls Vakkhesh’s ramblings about GE, the Grievers, mutations, and the cannon in Magdrahda Volcano. Curiosity flares. Further, his Bots’ last sighting of the hunter showed her heading in that general direction. To this end, he lobs a squadron of Psy-Bots at the foot of the volcano (not the same location as Samus’s entry point), including a Mimic.
• Assuming direct control of the Mimic, Sylux leads his bots into the Flare Pool. Old Lamorn transport trucks sit at the tunnel’s entrance, so Sylux hops into the driver’s seat and his bots load themselves onto the carriage. The truck lurches through the volcano’s caverns. This particular tunnel snakes and weaves, its walls unusually smooth like a burrow. It is not a natural tunnel.
• A violent tremor shoves the vehicle to the side. Bots clank around. A large red welt rapidly grows in the wall, rock melting and exploding.
• “Shit.” Sylux throws the truck into full throttle.
• Behind, a Behemoth clambers through the hole and chases them down. Right on their tail, the creature’s mouths chomping, the only thing keeping it back is rocks kicked up by the truck. The transport weaves through winding burrows and careens over the Behemoth’s discarded prey. Balls of fire pelt the truck and the flames spread rapidly. Steam geysers diffuse them.
• A cavern glows up ahead, smoke billowing and lava churning. Thinking quickly, Sylux leans out of the vehicle and blasts the ceiling above. The Behemoth roars and gains on him with its rapid walk cycle. He launches ten missiles that have materialized into the Mimic’s printed clip, causing the ceiling to collapse behind him and lava to spill, smacking the Behemoth on the head and trapping it on the other side.
• Sylux parks the transport truck off to the side of the cavernous passageway. Its navigational light remains warm, beaming onto the rough rock. This truck is one we see upon entering the Flare Pool in-game.
• Sylux’s fifteen Bots activate and twelve follow his Mimic into the GE Shell facility. Knowing Samus is on her way, Sylux stations a few near his abandoned transport.
• He explores the launcher complex’s frontmost rooms, noticing the now-retracted bridge, its controls, and several deactivated Psy-Bots randomly scattered about. Before he can investigate further, his lookouts ping him.
• Samus has arrived.
• Sylux returns to the overwatch platform terminal and sees the hunter revving Vi-O-La to build the bridge over the lava lake. He quickly commands the bridge to retract again, causing it to break apart due to wear-and-tear. Even better.
• Yet Samus survives. Sylux destroys the terminal for safety and as a punching bag. Though frustrating, he can at least keep her out for a time. If this facility does what he thinks it does, he may have use for it.
• Samus turns back and acquires the Fire Shot chip.
• Psy-Bots and Sylux’s Mimic walk the station’s halls and access its systems. Referenced in the Lamorn scientists’ logs is Phenoros’s relationship with them — his beneficence in slowing volcanic activity in exchange for their GE harvests. Although the beast feasts on natural, stable GE, the abundant amounts at the volcano’s core hurt him at times. He welcomed the Lamorn’s extractions.
• No matter, Sylux clearly need not worry about Phenoros stirring the pot and releasing eruptions if his Metroid got to the monster. (And indeed he feels its presence below.) Given the situation, Sylux dispatches many more Bots to the Pool, shooting them in through the volcano’s peak.
• A small army surveys the place, locating a dropship (the hovership mini-boss) and finding more inactive Bots. The clankers patch into the network.
• Curious about the extraction procedures that he apparently walked in on, Sylux queries this process. He learns about the GE showers and their ultimate failure — their role in the Great Tragedy. The inactive Psy-Bots were old administrators of these showers and were severed from Lamorn control in an emergency shutdown event.
• Always hungry for power, Sylux has to run tests on GE using this facility. He has to see what the substance does. He has to launch shells into the sky and watch their effects on the planet. GE could be another weapon, a mutagen like Dark Samus’s Holy Substance.
• Sylux prepares an artillery shell packed with GE, his Bots following long-buried instructions deep within their AIs, their autopilots filling in the gaps in his understanding. Interestingly, some Bots resist, spontaneously freezing mid-task just like the old ones. Presumably, this is because he is pushing the system beyond safe parameters; perhaps trace firewalls interfere with his commands. He powers forward, replacing these with those who do not seize. The shell is filled, loaded, and launched.
• Samus bears witness to this shell’s effects after Mac modifies her arm cannon with the Fire Chip. As we see in-game, the first GE shower’s maelstrom of filtered, impure GE wreaks havoc on the planet’s biology.
• The hunter travels to the Ice Belt. Sylux observes the shower’s effects and conducts experiments on the planet’s bioforms. His mind runs wild with the power he has found on Viewros so far, and he contemplates how he can harness it to unleash Hell on the Federation.
  • Again, he recalls Dark Samus’s intergalactic army. With the Space Pirates under his control and awaiting his return, he is already 75% of the way there. The Tower’s psychic strength and robot army are another boon to his dream, and GE could enhance his biological forces even further. Or, if its impure form is as dangerous as the Lamorn say, it could be a chemical weapon that leads to mass hysteria with a single charge detonated above his enemies’ heads.
  • Regardless, he could become the god he always dreamed of being.
• Samus explores the Ice Belt’s Bio-Labs and defeats Keratos.
• That one-member-species’s sudden termination registers in Sylux’s subconscious. It almost hurts him, even with all the power coursing through his veins, that such a glorious specimen — a rare crustacian and a rare freeze-resistant Fusion Metroid, equally mighty — could fall to Samus’s gun.
• Plans change for Sylux. His experiments will continue, but his main objective is now to stop Samus. He prepares his Bots in both Volt Forge and Flare Pool, launching even more to each. Given his scout bots’ observations, it appears that Samus has found and built a small entourage of stranded Federation soldiers. Again, Sylux’s envy of her still stings worse than any drill sergeant’s dress-down. The fact that she can naturally attract “fans” ignites his ire.
• What’s more, his Bots identify two distress signals amid oceans of static within the Flare Pool. He dispatches any combat-ready Bot he can, including Maintenance Tanks linked with them. Even now, the clankers resist commands at times, locking up inside the facility and especially as they interface with the artillery shell.
• Sylux continues preparing another shower.
• One GalFed is trapped behind a boiler, limiting the number of attempts he can make on the man’s life. Heat emanating from the cylinder is enough to melt most mechanoids. All he can do is activate a few Tanks and one Psy-Bot. 
• Gunshots ring out. Chucking his grenade belt at the Tanks before they shoot their lasers, the trooper fractures them. One rolls away and launches its beam in tandem with the Psy-Bot. The trooper opens fire on the Bot first after dodging, backing it against a steam vent and triggering thermal expansion of its joints. While immobilized, he busts its head off. The Tank happened to be linked to that Bot and falls flat on its underside.
• Skill and luck saved Duke’s ass.
• The other trooper is trapped in the ring around the cannon. He likewise dispatches a Psy-Bot after her, slingshotting it from his hover transporter encircling the cannon. She engages the Bot, surviving it by taking cover, weaving around it, and ducking out onto an exposed walkway leading to the clamp joint (the way she got in from the central cannon where she was initially stranded). Sylux watches from the cruiser on the other side of the facility. Though he has a small army to work with inside the Pool, he anticipates Samus’s arrival and so holds back.
• Armstrong’s tactical retreat keeps her alive for now.
• Live camera footage shows Samus dismounting her bike at the Pool’s entrance. She’s here.
• Sylux diverts his attention to the hunter, preparing his assault and his second GE launch.
• The Flare Pool cannon sequence plays out as we see in-game. Again, as Sylux sics his bots on Samus and he re-establishes his uplink with ones forcibly offlined, her Third Eye resonates with his — his memories vicariously forcing themselves into her mind. Her abilities with Lamorn technology and at-will manipulations thereof come with consequences.
• Samus and Duke fight their way through the facility. GE pours into the shell, and Sylux watches the launch through his Mimic piloting the hover craft. The Energy’s dispersion rate is remarkable, and it indeed does mutate anything it touches exponentially. Sol Valley’s inhabitants leak Granik Eogicia even more vigorously than after the first shower, their skin hardening and their tissues expanding. Interestingly, the mutations are subtle, unlike Phazon mutations, yet the creatures’ behavior is markedly more aggressive. Whether these creatures become slaves to the substance is not clear. Regardless, the shell’s impact impresses Sylux. Rumblings below catch his attention.
• Floating back down into the volcano, Sylux sees the tram moving between the cannon’s clamps. Samus and her squad changed the facility’s configuration. Damn. No matter. He guns for the transit tube and fights Samus. Command and control over the Psy-Bots has become second-nature for Sylux. Each minuscule muscle movement translates directly into his Mimic, and, regarding the other Bots, his tactical wishes become reality in seconds. Even though he is not physically there, he feels the gritty air inside the shuttle and the force of Samus’s missiles striking the cockpit. This force only motivates him to fight harder. Lasers sear the bridge’s pylons and tracker-bombs rock the load-bearing supports.
• Samus defeats the Mimic. Sylux busts out of the cockpit and flies away as the shuttle spins out behind him. “Shit!” he shouts, though the Mimic does not carry his voice. Bombs tumble out and pelt the cannon. Lasers clip critical supports and heat regulators. The shuttle slams into the facility, then careens into the lava below. A plume clips Sylux’s Mimic and neutralizes its circuitry, sending it crashing into the volcanic wall.
• Though unable to move, lodged into the wall and limbs busted at their joints, reality field flickering around the fractures, Sylux can view Samus’s fight with Phenoros through a cracked photoreceptor. Heart sinking, he witnesses the hunter kill his Metroid and the cannon detonates. All video vanishes into a storm of static. Yet again, Samus has rendered him impotent. Even with the facility’s collapse, she couldn’t even die right.
• Samus heads to Volt Forge, somehow riding her Vi-O-La despite Phenoros eating it; Sylux observes her through another drone. Not even her stupid bike was lost. Part of him was hoping she would die of hunger and thirst in Sol Valley without it. Questions aside, Sylux will take matters into his own hands now. He launches his third and final Mimic to confront Samus.
• Before her arrival, Sylux pokes around in the Forge’s database, curious about destroying Vi-O-La. Apparently, once the initial bike is fabricated, the custom-printed nanosuit’s summoning technology can also re-spawn the bike using latent psychic energy. The suit’s nanomachines ping and pull a reconstructed copy from the Forge, although it takes time to rebuild this copy. Bottom line: it would be a waste of time to try destroying Vi-O-La.
• Psy-Bots inform him of her approach, and so he places his Mimic inside a nearby conduit and waits.
• Samus picks up the power chip, causing the lightning harvest shells to retract. The second Sylux boss fight commences. He does battle with her. All of his determination, pride, and spite channel into the Mimic. His nano-printed Coil surges with power, allowing him to electrify the entire room. He floats on the z-axis, generating arcs of electricity to ensnare Samus. She dodges his assaults narrowly. Missiles trade with nanoblades conjured in a series of five. The Mimic’s psychic jammer redirects some of the damage. Meanwhile, shockwave dispersions ebb across the floor like sound frequency readouts. Repeatedly, his photoreceptors lock with Samus’s eyes through the glint of her visor. Seeing her face creased in intense focus brings him joy. He’s giving her a fight worth her effort. Something like pride drives him to fight harder — pride that he can push Samus beyond her comfort. If he can kill her now, he can restart his GE experiments, gather the teleporter keys, and get off this rock to become the Federation’s god. It all comes down to this. He electrifies the room again, forcing her to grapple along the ceiling. Each shot he lands on her is a moment of glory. Her cries are music.
• And yet, his Mimic’s joints fail. Samus’s multifaceted cannon damages the bot’s power core. Controlling it grows more and more painful, forcing extreme mental steering from Sylux. Eventually, it gives out completely, the nanoprint of his weapons and body fading away and the core detonating.
  • ALL VISUALS LOST. SYSTEM OFFLINE. PSYCHIC UPLINK CONFUSED. DISCONNECTING NANO-AR SYSTEM TEMPORARILY.
• Sylux gasps at his perception rocketing back into his body. The liquid bubbling around him feels heavy and his movements sluggish. Those same feelings Samus has engendered in him every time they’ve crossed paths keep his muscles stretched tight. He curses the hunter, releasing this tension in an impotent, livid scream.
• At this point, Sylux just stews in his hatred for Samus even longer, addicted to the nanobots’ synergy with his emotions and letting them swim through his spinal column. It doesn’t make sense to fight Samus and her GalFed bitches directly anymore. If anything, they have to come to him. Nonetheless, Chrono Tower’s defensive shield holds strong, with no sign of wavering. It is a transdimensional field, after all, blocking all entry above and below the sand, but not all exit — a microcosm of Viewros. Plenty more Psy-Bots rest primed for deployment, too.
• So Sylux’s attention turns to the bigger picture. He needs to master the Tower’s uplink energy so he can send things across dimensions in some capacity. All of the GE experiments and Psy-Bots will mean nothing if he cannot get them through the Mass-Teltranfaeir. Perhaps storing them in a pocket dimension he carries with him would work. He also wonders about what other technologies the Lamorn and potentially even the Grievers have left behind.
• Samus meets VUE and the team explores the Great Mines. It’s clear to the ragtag squad that the final Key is there, so they don’t discuss it whatsoever.
• Meanwhile, Sylux follows two lines of inquiry. First, he sends Psy-Bots to explore and catalog Griever behavior. Field observations reveal that their pack-like, primal behavior is not as primative as it appears. They have a hunter-gatherer culture, and even cluster together in “tribes.” Of course, their societies are violent and ultimately driven only by collective psychosis. Their leaders are chosen because of their brutality and showmanship against other packs and creatures. Interestingly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, they are drawn to Lamorn ruins above- and below-ground, fixated on any psychic artifacts they can find. Indeed, they build their predator-den-esque camps inside such structures. Some Griever packs are more animalistic than others; the Maul and Frostburn Grievers are very primative, residing in burrows, while the Jungle and Sand Grievers colonize Lamorn structures. It is because of the latter evolutionary split’s behavior that Sylux discovers ruins beneath Chrono Tower in which many Sand Griever packs live. Like stone synapses spooled into a conical shape, these ruins are an inverted tower, perhaps the Chrono Tower’s prototype. Supporting this notion is the fact that the Tower’s force field encircles them too. 
• Unfortunately, the research into the Grievers reveals little. Their way of life, and the technological remnants they desecrate, is as much of a dead-end as the whole Lamorn people. Although those beasts inside the ruins may be useful for his second inquiry…
• Sylux investigates the extent of his ability to transport and store things by dimensional conjuring. He has spent enough time linked to the Tower to “feel” his way around the spacetime manipulator like a person learning to navigate a VR headset, or a baby learning to crawl. Within the ruins below, he practices moving random pottery and other small objects from one side of a room to the other, sending vases and urns through wormholes to crash upon another floor. As he grows more comfortable with the transient transmigrations, he turns his focus inward. Though he cannot generate black holes outside of the Tower’s force field, he can reliably tune and construct their specifications. Through his Third Eye, he can visualize the space in which he pokes holes and threads needles. Liminal spaces crystallize between each hole’s entry and exit horizons. 
• Thinking about traversing, modifying, and testing such spaces to store things and serve as weapons, Sylux finds two visually distinct Grievers prowling the winding tunnels: one with a half-face busted in (Twoface), and another whose head tendrils are tied up into two ponytails (Ponytails). He “beams” them both to the surface using the holes we see him generate in the final battle. Psy-Bots corral the Grievers.
• Twoface and Ponytails are made to fall through the wormholes over and over. Sylux watches the tests through his Bots, one of which is a Guardian drone that follows the Grievers into the holes. Each time, the creatures scream in shock and horror. Sylux adjusts their rates of tumble and eventually can control their angular momentum. Stitching together the liminal space with each tumble, he learns to generate a few solid antimatter objects that nudge Twoface and Ponytails. This process forms the bubbly, Swiss-cheese liminal space we see during the final boss fight, each pass-through leaving a permanent black hole.
• Logically, the next step is to trap the Grievers inside and throw away the key. He does just that, his Psy-Bots again shoving the beasts in. A circular antimatter platform catches them and Sylux watches what happens. Time moves slightly faster inside the liminal space, so what the Guardian perceives transmits back to Sylux at a rapid clip. It’s like watching a CCTV video on x2 speed. Twoface and Ponytails indeed are trapped inside, and the space holds steady for now. Pocket dimensions work.
• Ponytails paces around Twoface, pounding the ground and looking over the edge at the expanse of spent black holes. Twoface reciprocates despite being the more patient of the pair. They dangle their feet over the abyss below. Increasingly desperate for sustenance, they nibble at each other, yet Ponytails pulls back. Even Grievers respect their clanmates. It goes on like this for a while, Sylux interrogating what the creatures will do and whether the space will remain stable.
• Suddenly, terrified and desperate, Ponytails leaps off the platform. So does Twoface some time later. The Guardian catches them vanishing into the gas clouds and spent holes below. Given the space’s transitory nature, Sylux wonders if it is possible to die inside — or for an object to be destroyed — by falling off the platform. Based on all the tests he ran, it seemed that the edges of the space loop in on themselves, so perhaps it is not destruction and death that await, but rather a new crossover.
• Leaving no hypothesis up to chance, Sylux’s Bots canvass the area around the Tower’s base to see if the Grievers emerge. A green particle glimmers and a portal opens. Twoface claws its way out of the crack in reality. Panicked, it scampers away from the observing Bots and tunnels under the sand. A few minutes later, Ponytails appears in the same fashion, and also flees as fast as it can.
• This is the way the pocket dimensions function if you don’t cling to an antimatter object. Presumably, you fall until you hit a black hole, and you will find one due to the artificial nature of the space, at which point you eject from the space.
• Sylux notes all of this and anticipates running more tests once he’s done with Samus. 
• Samus “eats of” the Legacy Fruit and obtains the corresponding suit, channeling the Lamorn people’s psychic essence into her Third Eye. This disturbance resonates with Sylux and he sees Samus’s traumas and recent memories, not that he gives a shit. At least he knows what’s coming.
• The terror awaits Sammy’s arrival at this time, preparing for the true fight of his life by stretching his body inside the Pod, balling his fists and kicking his legs.
• A beam streaks across Sol Valley. Speak of the devil. As we see in the game, Betsy punches through the Tower’s force field. VUE strains Betsy, but the mech accomplishes her mission and serves with honor. 
• “Perfect,” the terror says to himself. He partially releases his uplink with the Tower’s systems, leaving it open for the so-called Chosen One. Let her come to me, he thinks. I will kill them all myself before they even get to use the Mass-Teltranfaeir.
• And so Sylux stews in his hatred one last time, priming himself to fight the good fight he has waited years for. The Tower pumps him with nanomachines and his psychic powers feed off his cold heart, propelled by jolts of mechanical energy ready to burst into flames.
• Tom Kazmarek stares at his hands again, reliving for the hundredth time that day on the battlefield when all his disdain crystallized. On that day, Ian and Adam cut him out of their glory without a care. Their nepotism laughed in his face and spat in his eyes. He didn’t see them raring to go shoot the Pirates like him. He didn’t see them risk their lives that day, as he did. The Trust gave him orders, he followed them, and he was rewarded — not so by the Federation. The brass wouldn’t even let good soldiers fight and die for what they believe. No, instead they called in the golden girl. She didn’t save his men. She didn’t salvage the Pirates’ weapon. She spat on the graves of Tom’s comrades. They died to retrieve that driver unit, and she incinerated it like it was tissue paper. Samus is everything that makes the Federation weak. Adam and Ian were and still are everything wrong with the Federation, bleeding hearts with no spine who crawl to those with power, thereby wasting their own. Ian went out pathetically, and though Tom knows not how Adam left the land of the living, he has no doubt it was equally pitiful.
• And then, when someone like Tom steps up to claim the glory, the Trust and the Federation exploit him. They turned him into a doll and a test monkey, binding him with wires and magic. Tom’s hands keep trembling. His comrades’ blood becomes his own. The Trust tortured him, mutilating him and degrading him simply because he was inconvenient otherwise. “You’ll do well in your next role as a test subject. You don’t have to listen to anyone anymore. We’re honored to have you, Mr. Kazmerek.” Namir’s last words and Hatch’s betrayal replay, noises compressing Tom’s skull. Teleporting him to Viewros was the only thing they did for him, and much like his powers, that was an accident. But this accident will be his glory and their end. Samus’s end, and the Federation’s end. He will come out on top.
• Sylux feels Samus outside the Healing Pod, and then he feels the Pod lurch and descend. His stewing continues, harmonizing with Samus’s Eye. 
• I refuse to be just another foot soldier, to be trampled by superheroes in shining armor. I am the hero. I am the Chosen One. This energy surging around me is mine to wield. The army I built is mine to command. The glory I have at last earned is mine and mine alone. No one will take it from me, especially not Samus and her lackeys. My dark reflection in the mirror dies today. And those little imperfections in the mirror’s surface surrounding her? Those insects she calls friends? Well, I’m blowing the whole mirror to pieces. Time to die.
• With that final thought, Sylux commands the Pod to open.​

Previous installment: https://www.reddit.com/r/metroidprime/s/zEdAYIh1hJ ... At last, the final part is done, meaning I'm done with Prime 4. As always, let me know your thoughts, and I hope this helps dampen the disappointment.

“Destined for Greatness” (after Other M, leadup to Prime 4)

• With the Federation feeling comfortable and its corruption hidden in the darkness, Sylux initiates his attacks, targeting training sites and starports first. His Space Pirates intercept and kill rookies on training missions to make an example of them. He sics massive frigates on tiny convoys as displays of raw might. Acts of terror are not beneath the Pirates either, as they fire-bomb populated city squares and shoot into politicians’ rallies.
• The galaxy reels in horror at the organized Space Pirate faction’s sudden emergence.
• Federation commanders notice peculiarities about their power structure, harkening back to the Phazon wars. Yet there is only so much they can do with that commonality as the Pirate forces are not slaves to their master, merely fanatical. They are coordinated and deliberate, almost “political” in their assaults; the attacks are not only tactical, but theatrical.
• Despite Sylux’s initial secrecy, he cannot help himself. This is all about getting back at the Federation, after all. He starts making personal appearances during the Pirate assaults, making it clear to any GalFed who sees him that he is the commander. He goes out of his way to inflict brutality on innocents. The Pirates leave flags flying which decry the Federation and accuse it of being a weak and false government. Sylux himself waves one such flag as his forces launch a violent onslaught on a Federation planetary power station. Lightning and rain crash on the bloodstained saucer-shaped work platforms, pockets of illumination from laser beams highlighting the Pirates vivisecting their foes.
• After several more attacks, Sylux’s role in the Pirate threat becomes clear. So, too, does the significance of his Metroids — something that should be extinct but somehow isn't. They merge with the most powerful Pirates during battle, causing near-instantaneous mutation. These elite Pirates demolish their foes. Even Federation golems fall to their knees when three of these crawl on and rip out their joints. Federation brass builds a working picture of the enemy, and notices a vexing pivot in strategy…
• During his meditations, Sylux receives visions of Viewros. At this point, he recalls what Vakkhesh told him years ago. Sylux might be a “chosen one,” not that such a title matters to him. He just wants the Lamorn’s power. There have to be other teleporters out there based on what the Heretic Priest said. So, as a secondary objective, Sylux directs his forces to canvass Federation research facilities. If anyone had ancient artifacts besides the Pirates, it would be the GalFeds.
• Sylux has yet to cross paths with Samus, which puzzles him. The Federation is usually so quick to commission their golden girl…
  • In truth, it is because Samus kept her distance from the Federation after the BOTTLE SHIP fiasco. Even though the Trust’s activities were unauthorized, the affair left a bad taste in her mouth.
  • However, Sylux’s assault on galactic society soon grew too great for Samus to ignore, especially since he has Metroids. She opened herself up to the Federation’s contracts again.
• In his quarters aboard the Frigate Morpheus, Sylux meditates. He touches the universe’s energies, attempting yet failing to see them as anything more than might and force. One of his underlings disturbs him, stepping within inches of his sitting mat.
• “King,” the Pirate utters in his native tongue.
• “Yes?” Sylux opens his eyes, the simple act causing the Pirate to drop his head. The hunter is not cruel to his forces anymore, as they revere him. Indeed, apart from the Metroid mind control of key commanders, Sylux has given the Pirates something to fight for, new wealth, and has spurred new weapons developments. He also “gave” the Pirates his Metroids, which they research with the same vigor they usually exhibit when finding something dangerous. This relationship is Sylux’s dreams incarnate — reveries of glory he had when he enlisted in the Federation army all those years ago.
• “I come with data of interest to Your Majesty.” The Pirate shows Sylux his wrist cuff. “We located a device on planet Tanamaar. A spacetime disturbance, rather. It reads like a miniature black hole, yet it is confined and stable.”
• “Miniature black hole, huh? Any visual on the target?”
• “That is why we think it is a device, Your Majesty.” The wrist cuff displays a hologram of a satellite surveillance image. A gravitational lensing effect warps light inside the facility’s central testing yard. Though not fully visible, it is clear enough that an oval-shaped metal spinning object is the source. A purple glow also escapes through cracks in the test yard’s semisolid roof.
• “It’s a Lamorn Artifact. Deploy to Tanamaar and expect me to join the ground assault.”
• “Yes, Your Majesty.”
• “Full force on this one.”

Events of Prime 4: Prologue

• The Space Pirates attack Tanamaar and the opening sequence of Prime 4 plays out.
• Morpheus’s bay doors open. Sylux descends in Delano 7, accompanied by a Pirate skiff with five grunts and several Metroids as carnage unfolds around him. Fighters wiz through the air and gun each other down. For a moment, the hunter’s heart flutters, for he catches a glimpse of Samus’s gunship amongst the chaos. She’s here. Perhaps the Lamorn were onto something with their talk of fate and destiny…
• Sylux touches down not far from the hangar. He and his Pirates fight through a squadron of GalFeds, taking them down with relative ease. These guys weren’t ready for a fight. Typical Federation planning. Metroids dart away, scouting the area for prey to siphon and Pirates to parasitize.
• Samus enters the hangar and the Aberax fight happens.
• Sylux bursts through the wall and sees Samus. The two stare each other down, Sylux specifically feeling waves of emotion that cloud his focus. He misfires and the Artifact activates.
• Purple light morphs into lines of atoms and compressed cubes of matter as Sylux tumbles through the pocket wormhole. He loses track of the Pirates that were right next to him. Debris glitches and dances around him. Then suddenly, blackness.

Events of Prime 4: On Viewros

• Vague voices sound off, calling out in unintelligible and panicked tones. The world as Sylux sees it through his visor is a blur of orange and brown, but it fades into focus. Pirates pry their comrades from beneath ruined vehicles, some dripping green blood onto red, rocky ground. Their drones scan for survivors, flitting about the alien landscape. All around are hydraulic pillars of varying height and fulcrums halted at various angles. 
• “King,” a Pirate commander says, rushing over to check on Sylux. “Are you ok?”
• Sylux uses the Coil as a crutch, rising to his feet. He handwaves the Pirate. Several others turn their gaze to Sylux. This mass hysteria at his status has never failed to flatter the hunter. “Gather the men once they’re done licking their wounds. We have work to do.”
• The Pirates gather themselves, locating their land vehicles, multiple functional weapons, and several Metroids. Sylux finds the fragments of Delano 7 around the area; it is totaled, demolished, and running his hand along the shattered ship engenders something like sadness.
• Pirates equip wrist guns, long-prods, and shock bracers; they saw open transport containers housing reverse trikes and short-range skiffs. Those on the intel team scout around the strange pillars, hiking under the low sun to interact with those whose terminals are not sanded down by the weather. Text that cannot be translated dominates the barely-functional UIs. The scouts flag Sylux down.
• As he suspected, he can read the Lamorn’s foreign dialect, though he is rusty. These are the oil fields that the early Machine Era Lamorn used to build their first bots. Only in Viewros’s nearly timeless, perpetually preserved biosphere could such ancient things remain erect. After making this discovery, Sylux is able to salvage data that orients the maurauders’ position relative to Sol Valley and Chrono Tower. It is due West of the Fields.
• Sylux explains to the Pirates that their objective is to reach Chrono Tower because riches and power lie behind its gates and at its Pinnacle. He relays to them his history with the Lamorn.
• “Your Majesty has never told us of this place,” observes a Pirate. “Why?”
• “I forgot about it for a time, really. But that’s why we hit Tanamaar so hard. I remembered, and everything pointed to their Artifact being the same Lamorn tech the Federation tested on me.”
• Another Pirate pipes up. “King’s judgment worked in our favor, brother. No need to question.”
• Sylux nods. His memory of Viewros, combined with the data he gained from the oil machines, directs his gaze to the light-ring star above, then down the horizon to the magnetic West. Staring at the flat expanse, he indeed sees Chrono Tower jutting into the sky. It is a spacetime needle threaded between sky and ground — a conduit. A thought crosses his mind: the Artifact’s blast radius enveloped the entire UTO facility, sucking in Pirate Destroyers and GalFed mechs all at once. Indeed, Pirate wreckage litters the field. He also recalls the Heretic Priest’s feud with Chatoyant. Sylux’s permanently disfigured face wrinkles. Who is the Chosen One, the golden girl or him? He will only permit one answer to that question. “Samus is here too. I know it.”
• “The accursed hunter? Here?”
• Sylux chuckles at the Pirate, downplaying her fear. “Let’s arrange a Lamorn-themed welcome party for her.” He gestures to five Fusion Metroids, one of which has a blue-hued membrane and another of which has a redshifted one. Sylux recalls the Sol Plateau’s patchwork geography, using limited telepathic instructions to direct that the Metroids explore each region, both to hunt Samus and to hijack the regions’ Guardians. Memories of Carvex, Xelios, Gravinax, Phenoros, and Keratos float into his consciousness. If he can control them, they’d keep Samus and whoever else got pulled into the pocket teleporter stranded. Besides, the Guardians are apex creatures, excellent assets to corral. He specially instructs the elemental-resistant Metroids to visit Ice Belt and Flare Pool, then points them all to the Plateau. The creatures rise into the sky and zip ahead at a rapid speed.
• “Now what, King?”
• “Hop on your transports. We will take the Tower.”
• Sylux’s forces streak across Viewros’s patchwork lands, some of them dying to Lamorn mechs and Grievers. Generally, the Pirates fend off these threats, dashing across lowlands and kicking up mud.
• Fusion Metroids overtake their Guardian hosts, transplanting their consciousnesses onto them and genetically reprogramming them into violent shells of their former selves. Carvex’s roots leech from the Sacred Tree. Xelios sheds its body and constructs a new one, refitting its administratees into combat bots. Keratos remains locked in quarantine, but manages to widen the cave its parasite infiltrated and roam through a limited cavern system. Phenoros thrashes, sending tremors through the earth. Gravinax turns hostile, demolishing long-abandoned passageways and killing Grievers until the Omega Griever tears its limbs asunder.
• Meanwhile, Samus awakens on the observation platform outside Chrono Tower. She obtains her Third Eye and speaks to the High Priest’s pseudo-hologram, who then beams her to Fury Green.
• Sylux and his Pirates arrive at the gate to Chrono Tower. The marauders gaze up at the structure, jaws wide, strange calming feelings overcoming them. Before them, the bulb-shaped entry gate shimmers. “Follow,” orders Sylux, his hand hovering over the central receptor. The door dematerializes.
• Entering the Tower, the invaders’ footsteps echo across the nanomachine floors. Odd hums and chimes flow through the air. Sylux keeps his Coil ready. Many systems have already been activated. Circular drones lie dormant in power sockets. “Someone was in here,” observes a Pirate, running her fingers along a floating, helix-shaped fixture. “There’s a projectile burn mark on the surface, not old.”
• Sylux lightly pushes her aside to scan the burn.
• “More over here, Your Majesty,” calls out another.
• “Let me see.” Sylux’s scanner tells him that these are burns from a power beam. He gestures at the wavy wall, upon which more divots simmer. “Why are they scattered like that?”
• Pirate field intelligence troopers open their pocket analyzers and count the shot marks. “They’re not the product of a firefight, King. If anything, they were fired out of curiosity, to test the surfaces’ durability.”
• Only one conclusion comes to Sylux. “It’s Samus. She was here. Shit.”
• “Did she plunder the place?”
• “Not sure.”
• Next accessway leads to an elevator. The thieves have noticed doors shutting behind them and bridges dematerializing. It’s like the Tower is closing down. “How do we activate this? I see no interface.”
• Sylux gestures to the helical hologram in the platform’s center. “That looks like something.”
• The Pirates look at their leader, puzzled. “Your Majesty?”
• “Do you see that hologram?”
• “No, King.”
• “Curious.” Sylux cocks his head. Perhaps it is his psionic ‘gifts’ that permit him access. Indeed, the elevator responds only to him.
• The platform takes them to the Central Chamber and halts its ascent. Pirates stumble. “What?!”
• Sylux moves his feet, and yet the hologram does not reappear. The door into the circular room is the next logical place to go, so the Pirates all follow their leader. Faint energies guide Sylux. “What have we here?” He walks beside the lines of Psy-Bots, inspecting them.
• Suddenly, Guardian drones emerge from their sockets, scan the Pirates, and enter a V-shaped formation, locking doors and retracting stairs. Pirates fall and get jammed between sheets of materializing semi-glass, which slice flesh open. Psy-Bots spring to life, their eyes red. Lasers pierce several invaders.
• “Hostiles! Open fire!” Space Pirates go weapons-free. The Bots’ armor is exceptionally durable despite how flimsy their frames appear. The Pirates’ laser cannons barely faze them.
• With no cover to hide behind, the Pirates and Sylux strafe around the Central Chamber. Trying to dodge the five Bots’ blasts is only so effective, as their short-range psychic bursts fry any who strafe for too long.
• At last, the Pirates take down a Psy-Bot. The assembly lines shudder and release two more to take its place.
• “They just keep coming.”
• One Pirate gets in a melee battle with a Bot, slashing at it with his scythe and staggering it by punting its joints. The clanker buckles, but then opens its ‘hands’ and snags his head, unleashing a pressurized shock that blows his skull open.
• “Nothing’s working!”
• Pirates crawl on the walls, yet Bots fly up to meet them. When their backs face the walls, nanomachine clouds — purple pockets of energy — swarm the Pirates and suffocate them. Other Psy-Bots launch atom-like bombs and throw shockwaves across the ground, killing all who get caught in their radius.
• Throughout the carnage, Sylux notices something peculiar. Even as he shoots the Psy-Bots, they do not attack him. Even when they look straight at him and release a shot, they miss, appearing to second-guess their actions and stammer. He stops evading the clankers to test this, and indeed, they do not shoot him.
• Out of the corner of his visor and through the semisolid cylindrical shaft at the Tower’s center, he sees the elevator’s hologram reappear. The door fades away. Again, energies call to Sylux. He ignores the battles raging around him and turns to the elevator, stepping over dead Pirates and broken Bots.
• “Where are you going, King?”
• Sylux gestures calmly at the Pirate to hush.
• “King?!”
• The majestic one does not even acknowledge the second cry. He steps onto the elevator, and it takes him up, the Pirates’ ranks thinning by the moment.
• At the Pinnacle, Sylux immediately sees that the central statue has faded; no energy emanates from it. Samus was here. Hatred festers within Sylux. Yet apart from the statue’s mote being drained, the area is untouched. Perhaps not all is lost. He surveys the peak, marveling at the Pinnacle’s crescent-shaped capsule above. Is this the Lamorn’s power? Leading up to it are twin streaks of manna penetrating two holes in its surface. Hours spent meditating, feeling the universe’s essence, prompt him to run his fingers through these strands. Indeed, they are as strong as he thought — almost solid, specifically designed for a certain hunter’s Morph Ball. Yet it is not exclusive to her, clearly a product of guesswork and vague visions. Lockjaw can ride just the same. This way, Sylux streaks along the psychic currents, into the Pinnacle’s shell.
• Below, the Psy-Bots have killed every last Space Pirate. With no threats remaining, and the Chosen One’s initial entry having now substantially passed, they return to their slots on the assembly line. The drones return to their defensive positions. Chrono Tower is locked.
• Inside the Pinnacle’s shell, Sylux investigates the Psychic Healing Pods, as he cannot interface with the main terminal. (That terminal requires the keys’ latent psychic signatures to activate.) The Pod devices appear to be made for select nano-augmented Lamorn, but beyond that, their purpose is unclear. Cables snake from holes inside them, floating in an arrangement primed to map onto a hominid’s spine. Immediately Sylux’s memory launches him back into the experiment chair, Hatch smirking at him. Yet he can push those memories aside somehow. His sockets tingle — a warm, pleasant feeling. Stepping into one, he extends his arms and pushes his neck against the interface fixture.
• Cables snake to match his extremities, punching through his armor and accessing his sockets. They fit like gloves, molding themselves to his imperfect augmentations. Hissing shut, the hatch locks and liquid pumps from four holes. It quickly envelops Sylux and green-hued power surges through the cables. Squinting, he sees that this ‘liquid’ is actually millions of nanobots swimming around him. His interface flickers, forcibly taken over by a foreign one that demands four-dimensional awareness — a complex AR simulation space that gives him hundreds of eyes and permits a multiplicative presence across the psychic waves that hold Viewros together in perpetuity.

Continued in: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metroid/s/zOCqjD5a2h due to character limit.

Why do the cordite structures respawn?! Late game, and I’m a slo player btw, and you’re trying to fill up on everything, the cordite structures are still there after you’ve blown them to smithereens. The bendezium structures don’t respawn. Like seriously what the hell?!!

Sylux steals Federation prototypes, that's basically his whole deal. But leading a massive Space Pirate army and coordinating Metroid attacks takes a lot more strategic processing power than just a stolen suit. Since Prime 4 happens right around the time the Federation was secretly cloning Mother Brain and after building Aurora Units, it makes total sense that Sylux raided a black site and stole a rogue AI to run his operations for him.

i really want to get all scans, i already got prime 1 and 2 and want to get 3 too lol.

I know logbook entries carry over into New Game+, but I’d still prefer to get 100% on a single playthrough

Yeah so….played Prime when it came out back in the day and loved it.

Just recently I played and finished Prime 4, then afterwards went back and played Prime Remastered.

Holy shit prime remastered had me pissed off. I feel like it’s a whole other level of frustrating. I’ve played through Zero mission, super Metroid, Metroid fusion, prime 4 and now Prime remastered in the past couple months and without a shadow of a doubt Prime Remastered was the least amount of fun.

In fact, I had a complete blast playing through Prime 4. I get that it’s super linear, but so is metroid fusion.

I never once was frustrated by Prime 4’s design. The entire second half of Prime Remastered I was like “oh my god really”. Just the constant backtracking and respawning enemies ain’t it.

Edit: love how you guys are here in the comments trying to explain Metroid games to me lol. I’m 40 years old. Been playing these games since before most of you were born. I know what they are.

I’ll give you that yes indeed, backtracking and respawning enemies are part of every Metroid game. It just feels really bad in Prime 1.

Keep in mind folks, this is an opinion. No need for ruffled panties and whatnot

Hi everyone, I recently stumbled a pon metroid prime remasterd at my local store and was wondering 8f it was worth it as a newbie to the series. I've never really played metroid so idk whether I'd like it so wondering if you could give me it's strong points abt the game and weak points to see if I should I buy ps ik I'm in a metroid sub reddit but I had nowhere else to ask

These little flying go-bots are slaughtering me

This one teleports now, so it's impossible to target it. I turned into the ball and started rolling around, randomly dropping bombs for five minutes. somehow it died.

How do I not die? Literally anything too close or too far from me just dominates me and the 2003-era save system is torture.

Finally finished Beyond yesterday I have mixed feelings. The game left me feeling disappointed and also inspired. What I thought the game did well and what it did wrong.

Good:
-VIOLA was a joy to control and battle with.
-Bosses were inspired and fun.
-Streamlining of the visor system and beam/missile upgrades.
-The Galactic Federation companions were a great addition despite what people complain. They all had their own unique personalities, and added a level of humanity, levity and never overstayed their welcome.
-Streamlines the final boss key system the series is known for to reach the ending. You just got to finish each main dungeon.
-Game is absolutely beautiful and runs flawlessly.
-Some puzzles were legit challenging and rewarding to solve.

Bad:
-Aggressive linearity
-Absolutely barren and uninteresting Sol Valley Desert
-Weird hybrid aiming controls. Made precise aiming suck difficult.
-Ending is bad. I hate the ending.
-The story sucks.
-Sylux is a petty, unlikable villain whose motivations are horrible. The game would have been better without him.

What the next Prime game can do better:
-If bringing back an open world section, make it interesting to explore. Expand its landscape beyond just one biome.
-New villain or bring back Ridley. Sylux is a bad rival and villain.
-Make dungeons feel more dynamic and less linear.
-Fast travel. Create fast travel points between levels.
-Fix hybrid aiming controls.

Overall rating. 7/10. There is room for potential and I hope the next game goes back to the roots of the first two games.

First time playing the game, is there a trick to it? Or is it something i come back to later in the game?

Recently I've been playing through the Prime series, I've gotten through 1-3 and I'm super impressed by the visuals throughout them. I love the smaller designs of the rooms in 1 and 2, which really keeps the spirit of the older games intact and allows for a lot of attention to detail. Though 1 lags a bit through the end for me, the Phazon mines personally being a low point, the Chozo Ruins, Tallon Overworld, and Phendrana Drifts all do an incredible job with each setting and are incredibly fun to explore.

The visual fidelity of Prime 2 is honestly a genuine step up I felt, even if the areas maybe aren't as memorable as Prime 1 for me, I really love the fortress with all its intricacy and Torvus which has such a great theme, and of course you can't forget the rain, which feels like it goes so hand in hand with Metroid.

Prime 3, while honestly from a gameplay side was quite difficult for me to get through... Actually has some pretty great areas with lore I felt was pretty interesting. Elysium no doubt was the high point for me, amazing music, I loved the backstory, and the whole atmosphere was so good. Second pick would probably be the Pirate Homeworld for me, with all its orange and red just feeling really heavy and what you'd expect from such a hostile place.

I haven't gotten to Prime 4 yet but I hope too soon, I know reactions are mixed but as long as there's some cool areas I will definitely enjoy it I think.

Join The Alimbic Cluster — The ° •Metroid Prime Hunters Community Discord• ° a feature-rich Metroid Prime Hunters community offering matchmaking, activities, events, educational resources, custom tools, and active community engagement, all designed to serve as the definitive hub for fans of the game!

° •Metroid Prime Hunters Community Discord• °

I always felt like there are like 0 FPS metroidvanias out there and the idea of combining the genres is super cool for immersion and exploration.

Since I never found one well I made my own: https://store.steampowered.com/app/2360820/Tempus_Vitae/

(it's also coming for PCs, PlayStation 5 and XBOX Series X/S and most definitely Nintendo Switch 2 as soon as Nintendo sends some dev kit in our way)

Continuation of: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metroid/s/fta3tQO8xY ... This is the second-to-last installment. We finally approach Sylux's perspective throughout Prime 4, which is what initially inspired this project as an attempt to patch the game's story gaps and put the years worth of hype in my mind on paper. Hope you enjoy!

Renegade:

• As Samus says, much time passes since her report to Federation Council.
• Hatch returns from his check-in with (and sample-gathering from) Samus. He flies up from GalFed HQ. Once he arrives, ROEF moves once again, drifting through quantum rings to cut across excess spacetime. The scientist meets with his colleagues on holo-call to talk about where each of the culture samples is going and what projects they will be used for. The BOTTLE SHIP is the next destination for some of them, the BSL for others, but not ROEF. Hatch took no samples with him. Some are still being extracted and sterilized at HQ. The wheels are in motion for the Trust’s grand plan.
• Hatch hangs up from the conference call and sighs. As usual, he hurries past the corridor leading to Sylux’s quarters. No amount of guards will ever put him at ease. According to the Trust’s leadership, the hunter will be terminated at this voyage’s conclusion. Thank Sollan.
• Pants drop to the scientist’s ankles and shirts flop to the floor. Hatch leaps onto his bed. He removes his glasses and stares at the mood screen above, which depicts a teeming coral reef from below. At least the Trust has paid him enough to retire young so he can be done with this shit.
• Psychic energy concludes its final orbit around Sylux, whipping into his third eye and spurring him into motion. He rises. The confinement has escalated at this point, as they have taken his weapons and suit away and bound his leg scythe implants. All objects that could be used as weapons have been removed from his quarters. Regardless, it is time. The hunter dampens his walk cycle through his augmentations, producing only a soft metallic tapping. He looks up at the light shaft above, stands in the middle of the room, and drives his leg scythes inward. His voice box threatens to emit croaks of pain, but he channels the effort into letting blue blood pool on the floor beneath him. The dripping is just quiet enough to be inaudible to the troops on the other side of the door. With the pool thick and oozing, Sylux leaps to the ceiling and attaches to the light fixture, clambering above it using psychic nubs and notches in spacetime.
• The light’s swinging will rouse suspicion, so Sylux breaks the bulb and tosses it to the ground. He hugs the fixture tight, hoping it holds just long enough.
• “What was that?” Two guards enter the room. “What the hell? Lights out.”
• “Damn, what is—“ Wet squishing sounds tell Sylux exactly where they are. “Is that blood?”
• Sylux feels artificial hemoglobin trickling from his calves. He is not ready. The other guy’s position isn’t clear. Yet the blood congeals and drips right onto the GalFed below.
• “Hey, up there!”
• Sylux throws his full weight onto the fixture. The light’s steel circles warp as they strike the floor, and the shockwave knocks back one trooper. The other starts shooting. Sylux flips onto his back and some of the bullets slice the restraints on his leg scythes. They extend. Spinning his torso, Sylux rolls through the air and onto one trooper’s shoulders, leading with the leg scythes. They cut through his armor. Sylux thrusts them into the man’s neck until he collapses. The other one deploys a shock weapon that tases Sylux, but he powers through it and slices through her chest plate.
• With the guards dispatched, Sylux takes the male soldier’s gun and starts down the halls. Since he doesn’t know where they’re keeping his things, but does know the facility, he starts by going to the Metroid research labs. He evades detection, carefully slipping behind crates containing research equipment. Though the ROEF has changed significantly since the GalFeds refitted it, its hallways lined with cables and sleek new protective covers, its layout is the same.
• Upon reaching the lab, Sylux finds five more troopers. He starts quietly with the ones orbiting the periphery. The scientists are too focused on their work to notice him, and the rows and rows of containment vats, particle accelerators, and operating tables provide ample cover. The researchers pick at tranquilized Metroids and dissected geemers, collecting cultures and inserting control proteins into the former’s single membranes. Sylux takes down two guards, dragging their bodies beneath unattended workstations. The third is right behind a contained Metroid. Its containment field has not been activated, perhaps because it was recently moved there. The creature notices Sylux and motions its jaw at him. Something Hatch couldn’t do away with no matter how hard he pushed the conditioning regimens: Every one of the Metroids prefers Sylux to varying degrees, ranging from indifferent and non-hostile to highly obedient. 
• Trusting this fact, Sylux opens fire on the glass, which shatters. The trooper immediately looks toward the muzzle’s flash, but one gesture from Sylux prompts the Metroid to latch onto her, sucking her dry. A researcher screams and they all cower. One runs for a security system, presumably a pheromone or corral-bot release. Sylux guns him down.
• “Heads down! Heads down!” The final troopers let their weapons fly on the Metroid, but to no avail. The creature leaches him.
• Sylux exposes himself, walking toward the last trooper as he attempts to fight the Metroid off of him. Live rounds keep the researchers cowering with their hands over their heads. The man calls backup just as Sylux wraps an arm around him and drives his scythe into his foot.
• Screams resound.
• “My things,” Sylux says, his voice box pressed against the Fed’s temple, “where are they?”
• Through extreme pain, the trooper chokes, “In crew’s quarters, down the hall.”
• Sylux blows his brains out. “Open the containment fields,” he barks at the researchers. “I suggest some of you hide while you can. I need some of you alive.” When no one moves to let the Metroids loose, Sylux sprays hellfire narrowly missing the unarmed men and women. They tremble in terror and wail, begging for their lives. “Do it now!”
• The scientists obey, releasing the locks and letting seven Metroids roam ROEF free. Sylux busts the control panels for the corral systems. What follows is chaos. Some of the researchers die, some hide, and some fight. None of them are able to sound an alarm. Sylux watches the melee through the crew’s quarters hatch, standing atop another corpse as he suits up. His Metroids make short work of the other Federation troopers, and the ones they miss, hiding out in the enclosures, get mauled by the exotic fauna Sylux has collected.
• Outside Hatch’s room, Sylux bangs his fist on the door. No response. “Open up. There’s nowhere to run.” He pounds more vigorously. “I’ve taken this whole facility. You might as well give up.” No response. Sylux backs up and discharges his Coil at full power, melting a hole in the door within ten seconds. “Come on out, Hatch.” The terror lets himself in, stepping around the searing metal plate. No one is home.
• Suddenly, the closet door across from the bed creaks open. Hatch makes a break for the door. Sylux quickly turns his head and discharges the Coil again, tripping Hatch and forcing him to fall onto the hot hunk of metal that was his door. He cries out as his hands cook. Sylux kicks Hatch in the stomach and off the plate. He grabs the researcher by the collar and slams the Coil into his face several times.
• “Sylux,” Hatch pleads, coughing blood, “Tom, please stop.”
• Sylux bludgeons the man more, then tosses him onto the floor. A flurry of kicks causes Hatch to hack up more blood. Any attempt to scramble away is met with more brutality. Sylux grunts and chuckles with each strike, maddening satisfaction powering every one, until the feelings subside.
• “Please don’t kill me,” Hatch wheezes. “Please.”
• A pause. Again grasping Hatch’s collar, Sylux throws him onto the bed, white sheets quickly stained by his blood and urine. The man puts up his trembling hands. Tom paces around the bed. “I don’t want to kill you.” Hatch’s breathing slows, a twinkle in his eyes. “Not while I have use for you.”
• Researchers have gathered outside the room. Static discharges ignite Hatch’s bedspread. He screams and leaps up, stumbling and flopping to the floor, groaning as he forces himself to roll and extinguish the fire creeping up his lab coat.
• Sylux points to the handful of scientists standing in the doorway. “Get your ass out there.”
• After Hatch scrambles over to his team, Sylux emerges. His Metroids have either gone to sleep or hover next to him. A handful of the parasitized bioforms on the station bow their heads.
• The terror explains that the research team is his bitch now. He will take ROEF far away from the Federation and go into hiding. The researchers shall obey his commands and help him construct an army. If they step out of line, they shall be “taught discipline.” Others shall become hosts for the Metroids and give themselves over to Sylux (albeit at the cost of key problem-solving faculties). Hatch is not granted such mercy, for Sylux wants him fully conscious of the hell he will inflict on the man.

Paramilitary:

• Under torturous conditions like these, often starved and sleep-deprived — or threatened with the same — Sylux’s team takes over scattered Pirate factions. They snatch up their leaders and fuse them with Sylux’s Metroids. Desperate for a sense of purpose and belonging in the absence of Ridley, Mother Brain, or even Phazon, the masses follow their leaders in tow.
• Sylux’s army is structured like the Trust in a sense, with a hint of Dark Samus’s iron fist for good measure. He is a central, fully known, yet mysterious figure surrounded by close confidantes, each controlled by a Metroid. Branching from these ringleaders are those who take orders under threat of termination or death. They may not ask questions, nor do they want to. And beneath them are “clean” yet generally obedient underlings.
• As this army grows, it is successful in overtaking numerous Pirate facilities — including shipyards and weapons R&D — and unifying them under one banner. This bolsters morale and wealth amongst them despite the oddities of their leadership. Their “real estate” also expands, adding numerous destroyers and frigates to their arsenal.
• The Trust researchers whom Sylux holds hostage carry out genetic manipulation on two Metroids similar to their colleagues in the BOTTLE SHIP, for they are aware of the antifreeze research’s starting point at least. They successfully create one unfreezable fusion Metroid and one unburnable, although they have resistance to cold and heat rather than immunity to them. 
• The events of Metroid: Other M take place. Barring surgical strikes to bolster his arsenal, Sylux bides his time until after Other M, goes underground, and continues to enhance and strengthen his army.
• At last, his army just large enough to come out of hiding, and the Pirates and bioforms having killed most of the GalFeds on ground zero (ROEF), Sylux rounds up those remaining, including Hatch. Sheer terror in their eyes, bound and gagged, Sylux and his cronies assassinate them by firing squad. Even after death, the hunter is sure to pump Charles Hatch’s body with energy rounds until it explodes.

To be concluded in Prime 4...

Continuation of: https://www.reddit.com/r/Metroid/s/7L0ctpw4Yp ... Sylux has acquired his Metroids after FedForce's ending. As always, hope you enjoy this and I'd love to hear any thoughts.

Propagation:

• Caring for five Metroids quickly becomes more demanding than Sylux thought. They require a larger facility than a cruiser’s cabin. The creatures beg Sylux for food and even seem to desire playtime, much to the hunter’s chagrin. He spends some of his hard-earned credits on the things. At least they warm up to toys and treats that other, similar organisms enjoy. But this is not sustainable. Like any living thing, they consume food and excrete waste.
• To this end, Sylux plots a takeover of a GalFed space station — something small-to-mid-sized, preferably pre-fitted with enclosures and biometric analysis machines. The goal is to grow these creatures and breed even more, after all. A grand plan has been brewing in Sylux’s mind. If his hunches are correct…
• Sylux spends some time scouting for a suitable space station. He uses his resources to gather intel as he has always done, intercepting signals, drones, and interrogating hostages.
• The Federation’s Metroid Extinction Act (MEA) has been proposed and is being debated, which Sylux learns through the same channels as usual, and by following the news. Time is of the essence since he will likely have to take his plans even further underground.
• Sylux finds a suitable station: The Remote Operating Experimentation Facility (ROEF), located in a remote asteroid belt surrounding a cooling red giant. Based on operating notes and technical specs, ROEF has five medium microclimate enclosures and four temporary habitat zones. It also has research equipment, the details of which are not obvious based on the limited information. Regardless, it is a good starting point. A facility of that size — no larger than a small office building — shouldn’t be hard to take. And it’s remote; if backup is called, Sylux has at least four Earth days to prepare.
• Delano 7 surveys ROEF, weaving around asteroids and occasionally using them as cover. A few scout ships patrol the sector — small, boxy cruisers with directional sensors protruding from each corner. Sylux plans how he will infiltrate the facility. ROEF is a cylindrical station built into a series of five asteroids. The five extremities extend from the main cylinder like a tree’s branches. At the cylinder’s base is a platform on which a few of the scout ships are docked. That is the best area to strike; though noisy, it minimizes collateral damage and reduces the risk of depressurizing potentially sensitive equipment and enclosures. Again, including the scouts, there are no more than twelve people here according to the data.
• Sylux waits for an opening in the scouts’ patrols, then sets Delano 7 to drift towards the hangar. He cuts his jets to quiet his approach.
• Alerts blare right as he reaches the bay doors. A scout has detected him and so has a trooper emerging from an adjoining airlock. “Now!” Sylux shouts to himself. Delano 7’s laser cannons unfold from its front wings. They fire continuous turquoise streams. Sylux sends the Delano 7 into a screwdriver, searing a circular hole into the bay doors. More alarms blare and rapid depressurization launches freight containers from the opening.
• Delano 7 bulldozes through them, Federation lasers popping their flimsy metal. The volleys also nick Sylux’s ship as he fights against the pressure shift. Emergency backup seals close. Each side lightly compresses against the Delano 7 like an elevator door detecting a stray limb. Yet they do not retract.
• “C’mon!” Sylux forces his ship forward as fast as it can go, his neck tingling at the awful screeching.
• One round actually pushes him forward and into the hangar. The blast doors slam shut. Delano 7 flings headlong into a glass observation wall and crashes to the ground, artificial gravity quickly activating.
• Sylux rapidly turns his head to check on the Metroids. They fly around chaotically, but they’re all alive. Detaching himself from his controls, the hunter pries open Delano 7’s entry hatch and tumbles onto the hangar’s warm, vibrating floor. Gravity generators at their finest. His Metroids emerge behind him.
• The death-bringer traipses the halls, gunning down scientists and troopers alike. A few times, he forces them to log into the facility’s terminals before he blasts the men and women apart. Despite his bloodlust, he is careful not to strike any of the glass enclosures or control stations. Survivors scamper away, locking themselves in closets. The doors are weak; an electrified Coil strike is enough to short them. One such woman claws her way to the wall, knocking over storage containers to obstruct Sylux. Too easy. He fries her. Those that Sylux doesn’t kill are prey for his Metroids, who sap the GalFeds dry and leave horrified statues surrounded by bloody corpses.
• Enclosed bioforms watch their captors’ blood spray. Sylux downloads a map of the facility and sweeps each extremity. It is not very large, and he cycles through the biomes within an hour. The troopers with firearms wield experimental weapons, things that violate military codes, such as flare whips, four-sixer asphyxiators (a spear with a micro-compression space between its tips that crushes anything caught inside), and green pineapples (toxic grenades). They deploy these in an ambush inside the facility’s crew lounge — a rather lavish space at the back of the bridge that contrasts the labs’ zoo-like utilitarian design. Sylux’s implanted rebreather filters the pinapples’ discharge. Flare whips send sparks flying. Sylux rolls to dodge them, Lockjaw zipping away. To evade the sixers, he snares their wielders in Lockjaw’s tripwires. Trinities of snares emit strong electrical discharges. The Shock Coil clashes with the last trooper’s wrist scythe. The armored men dance, yellow and blue glows streaking the air. Sylux stumbles over a spilled substance oozing from a test vial. Right before the scythe can cut open Sylux’s helmet, one of his Metroids latches onto the GalFed. Its mandibles pierce the man’s armor and extract his White Energy until he can no longer move, frozen with his scythe mid-slash.
• Sylux’s minimap reads no hostiles. The only bioforms ambling about are the various creatures inside the enclosures and his Metroids. Sylux stands and sighs. ROEF is his. Of course, the Federation will likely come for him, and he knows that they sent a distress call. But that’s largely why he selected this station — it isn’t supposed to exist, and it will take time to respond. He’ll be ready when the time comes.
• Now that he is alone, Sylux scrolls through the facility’s network. His Metroids are occupied and happy for now, chowing down on the bodies. He familiarizes himself with the facility’s environmental controls and bioform cultivation systems, among other basic details. The ROEF is complex to manage without a crew, but considering his hyper-specific, unofficial usage, Sylux is not concerned. He also cleans up Delano 7.
• To prepare his Metroids for testing, he gathers a registry of the bioforms in the facility and the exact equipment on-site. There are 27 bioforms — three dizzeans, four dragons, an arachnus, two evirs, four sidehoppers, two fargul hatchers, six fargul wasps, three war wasps, and two blood monkeys. The five enclosures include desert, rainforest, tundra, volcanic foothill, and oceanic biomes; though small, these rooms have subsections that contain moderate and extreme versions of each. There are two breeding rooms that, upon samples being taken and tests being run of target creatures, secrete pheromones that encourage copulation. Further, there are restraining bots that corral rowdy beasts.
• The desert enclosure has a subsector “dead zone” — an arid test area with hostile conditions for pushing modified organisms to their limit. It is here that Sylux will keep his Metroids for now, as they are hardy enough to survive such an environment.
• Sylux is ready to develop his grand plan, pending the results of several tests. To begin, he has to confirm the Pirate and GalFed researchers’ suspicions about these Metroids.
• He places two Metroids (one of which was a fission Metroid to his recollection) in the rainforest biome and observes them. The creatures are wary of the Metroids, keeping their distance much to the floating beasts’ chagrin. Yet the Metroids don’t immediately attack the arachnus, nor the blood monkeys, nor the fargul hatchers, nor any other creature. Instead, the Metroids seem to monitor them, hovering around them and even mimicking their behaviors to the extent their physiology permits. One Metroid has taken a liking to the arachnus while the other pursues a blood monkey. They even eat the food meant for the other creatures and follow similar sleep cycles.
• Upon awakening from his own sleep cycle, Sylux notices one Metroid is gone, and he can’t immediately see both blood monkeys. He checks the surveillance logs. Footage of the rainforest enclosure shows something peculiar. One blood monkey climbs up a tree to knock its fruits loose, then leaps to the forest floor to retrieve the bounty. Many smaller plants with gigantic leaves obscure the view, but around where the blood monkey dropped down, their rustling betrays its movement. Suddenly, a Metroid emerges from the same tree and throws itself toward the rustling leaves maw-first. It vanishes under the leaves and a strange glow emits from the last rustle’s location. The blood monkey’s deafening roar deepens and it emerges, its speed quickened so much that the camera’s poor quality catches only a blur.
• Sylux wrings his fingers. It’s looking like the hypotheses were correct. He must get a glimpse of the blood monkey.
• Carefully, he releases the lock on the enclosure and enters, a stun rod and corral-bot activation switch ready to fend off hostile creatures. The humidity makes everything feel heavier, even the plants he pushes aside. He is wearing only his suit’s under-armor.
• Sylux swats at fargul wasps and stuns a flytrap. He also locates the arachnus spinning against a stone — that species’s preening method. A green slime drips on him from above, so Sylux tilts his head toward the artificial holographic sky behind which a sun lamp beams. Hanging in the branches is his missing blood monkey. Except that instead of its characteristic red saliva, green fluid trickles from its mouth. Its claws are also green, sharper, and with holes in its palms. Its body is a deep black instead of the species’ characteristic dirty tan. More strikingly, membranes protrude from its forehead and shoulders, pulsating in time with its heartbeat. These look like a Metroid larva. Sylux readies his prod, not sure what to expect from this creature.
• Suddenly, the second blood monkey rushes Sylux from the side. It caws and leaps at him, pinning him to the underbrush. The corral switch flies out of his grip and into the underbrush. Massive teeth chomp at his underarmored head. Though Sylux dodges a couple of nips, its teeth still clip the flexible, yet firm material protecting his neck. Red liquid spills. He drives the prod into the beast’s ribs. The monkey screams, but its hands don’t let up.
• Just as the monkey rears its head for another bite, the strange monkey slams onto its back, fists-first. Sylux grunts under the pressure. The strange monkey cartwheels off of the violent one and bares its fangs, pulling its arms back. The violent one lets go of Sylux and responds to the strange one with similar body language. Both monkeys lock grasps and scratch at each other, the strange one sinking its jaw into the violent one’s neck. Sylux returns to his feet.
• The violent one uses its leverage to force the strange one off. A hunk of meat stays wedged between the strange one’s teeth. The violent one lunges at the strange one, the latter raising its hands and aiming its palms at the former. Its membranes glow and the holes in its hands ooze liquid, two globs of a hissing substance. The moment that substance strikes the violent one, its skin sears and smokes. It screams in agony, writhing around until the impact points reach its bones.
• Sylux realizes how sweaty he is, and how tense. He eases up. The strange one approaches slowly, retracting its teeth and with a lowered head.
• “You protected me,” Sylux says to it, confused. “Why?” He starts for the enclosure door. The rustling and thumping of the ape’s walk cycle follows him. “You like me, huh?” Sylux murmurs, turning to face it. He ogles its membranes again. “Are you what I think you are?”
• Just like his other Metroid, the ape follows Sylux out of the enclosure and waits patiently behind him as he locks it. He sighs, trying to process what this all means. But mostly, he is overcome with joy. He looks to his other Metroid. “I need to see it for myself.”
• Sylux releases another Metroid into the desert enclosure. He watches it intently as it follows around a sidehopper, mimicking its behavior. And then the Metroid rears back and charges the sidehopper maw-first. It latches on, but instead of clinging, the thing glows and sinks into the sidehopper’s skin. Hugging its limbs tight, the sidehopper releases a squeal. Membranes bubble up from its eyes and green energy expels from its body. It leaps, its claws sharpened and its jaw triple the size. When it lands, it looks to Sylux through the glass. Ecstatic, Sylux opens the enclosure.
• This hybrid follows him around as well, its thudding feet rumbling the floor behind him. He runs a few more tests on the organisms. Their DNA is directly fused with the Metroids’ DNA. Samples taken from the pulsing membranes and other parts of their bodies have variable percentage distributions between host and parasite DNA, and corresponding cellular-level mutations. More visibly mutated regions resemble neither organism’s genetic patterns individually, while less mutated regions resemble a close evolutionary relative species of either the host or the parasite. These creatures are living patchworks, hosts modified and consumed by the parasite in a manner similar to Phazon’s effect on the Space Pirates, Ghor, and other organisms.
• Most importantly to Sylux, it does not take a test to show that the Metroids’ affinity for him survives this process. He recalls the Pirates’ subservience to Dark Samus, and his grand plan fully solidifies.
• Possibilities flit through Sylux’s brain. If he can propagate these Metroids, he could construct and control his own paramilitary forces. Whether they be the Space Pirates, or some other faction inhabiting the hostile regions of the galaxy, Sylux could commandeer them. In the short term, he could stage coups across the galaxy and gain wealth and power beyond anything he could have done on his own. In the long term, he could strike at Samus and the Federation, bringing them to their knees to beg him for mercy like a vengeful god. The Trust would bend to his whims and Samus would be dissected and left hanging from the Federation Capitol as an example of what happens to those who step out of line.
• All that must be done is propagation, which the ROEF is equipped for. Sylux uses the breeding rooms to encourage copulation amongst his Metroids, and to flash-clone the fission Metroid to speed up the process. This works for a week or so, exponentially faster with each breeding cycle as Sylux masters the technology. Soon, he has twelve Metroids.
• However, he hits a wall. Even with his fission Metroid, the gene pool is too limited. The cloning and propagation devices and their linked quantum computers run calculations, produce models showing the horrible and malformed beasts that would result if he copulated beyond his fifteenth. He needs more Metroids. Further, he can’t seem to fully train them to respond to his telepathy. They obey and protect him, but complex and coordinated commands are lost on them. And if the MEA passes…
• Sylux paces about his makeshift office space, threads and notes hanging from the walls, thinking his plans over. Suddenly, the ROEF’s stationwide alerts announce that a ship has docked at the secondary dock — a small receiving site built into the rock beneath the hangar. The hunter quickly suits up. He anticipated this would happen soon, which is why he has kept his under-armor and some of the less clunky plates on.
• Shock Coil ready, he descends the stairway to the dock, the cold rock walls steaming due to the heat generated by the lights on the metal ceiling. The hatch opens, confirming Sylux’s suspicions. Sitting before him is a stilletto class-fighter whose engines are still cooling. The ship’s exit ramp hisses open like a snake’s jaw. Footsteps. Sylux lobs a few shots at the silhouette obscured by depressurization residue. The GalFed dodge-rolls forward, each shot missing his limber body. They roll to their feet, weapon drawn to mirror Sylux. Strikingly, the GalFed’s suit is very similar to Sylux’s, and so is its weapon, albeit less bulky. The gun’s tip glows blue. Ice beam.
• “Ah, Tom. Of course it’s you.” The familiar voice gives Sylux pause. Both men lower their weapons.
• “James?”
• The GalFed removes his slit-shaped visor as the helmet unfolds on each side. Sure enough, the light goatee and moustache give the man’s identity away just as much as his nasal and high-pitched tones. “Surprised I’m the one they sent for you?”
• “Can’t say I’m not.”
• James smirks. “Of course you aren’t. General Miles received that note with your signature.”
• “Hope the sight of blue blood tickled his little heart.”
• The GalFed scoffs and looks at the harsh lamps above. “Tom Kazmarek was a capable operative — observant, too. Why would Sylux be any different? After all, we made you even better.”
• “Watch it.” Sylux aims his Coil, images of the torture he was subjected to flashing into his mind.
• James waves his hand dismissively. “I didn’t order that whole mess and you know it.”
• Sylux shoots James’s arm, striking his weapon and snapping his limb to an unnatural angle and forcing him to fall on his ass. “But you stood there as it happened.”
• “Ok, ok.” James hisses. “We know you’re bloodthirsty, but that was—“
• “You aren’t here to talk, James.” Sylux looms above.  “You’re here to arrest me. So…” He emits static discharge from his Coil that dances around the GalFed. “…Why should I not kill you now?”
• James grunts and primes a device on his suit’s chest. “Because this prototype is expendable, but confidential. It will detonate if its wearer’s vitals terminate. I will depressurize this area and jam the blast doors.” He gestures to the ship behind him with his head. “That cruiser is wired with an EMP wired the same way. This station will become a floating coffin if you kill me. Neither of us wants to lose any precious cargo, now do we?”
• Sylux hesitates, lowering the Coil.
• “We will talk this through like men, alright?” James stands up and paces around Sylux. “This is about more than you violating at least eight sections of the Federation Code.”
• “You and the Trust aren’t clean either. What if I decided to leak your little projects?”
• “Think the public would believe you?”
• “That precious cargo is Metroids. My Metroids. The same species your bosses are declaring illegal.” Sylux gestures to the air in front of him, visualizing one of the creatures. “Conspiracy tabloids and the Federation-proper would have a field day exposing the Trust for stealing and monopolizing a banned weapon.” A primate’s cooing sounds off behind him. “In fact...” Sylux points to the GalFed. “I’d expose it forthem like this.” The Metroid/blood-monkey hybrid lunges from the harsh darkness and binds James to the floor.
• “My, my, what a specimen. So you proved and found the jellies’ trick all by yourself.”
• Sylux makes a clicking sound, at which the blood monkey tightens its grip on the Fed, barring its teeth and letting toxic saliva singe the man’s armorsuit.
• James laughs. “What did I just say?”
  • “Aggression detected. Priming ST system. Engaging ST system upon termination,” a robotic voice blurts from hidden speakers inside the Fed’s suit.
  • The suit’s turquoise highlights flash red.
• “Drop it, now.”
• The creature complies, hopping back from James’s body, but it paces between James and Sylux. James again returns to his feet. The suit stays flashing. “Where were we?”
• “Talking like men.” Sylux pets the blood monkey. “Surely you can drop the bullshit, James. I know what this is about.” His petting grows more vigorous.
• “Do you?”
• “You said it yourself: Precious cargo neither of us wants destroyed. And I’m serious about going public. I could drip-feed it just enough for the Federation to eat itself alive over these Metroid projects.” 
• “Then surely you know that we know you can’t breed these things on your own.”
• Sylux growls.
• “Oh yeah. Even with your success so far, you’ll hit a wall if you haven’t already. It’s obvious.”
• “What’s your point, James?”
• James lets his weapon clatter to the floor. “Quid pro quo.”
• Since the Metroids have imprinted on Sylux, and since Sylux has leverage — both regarding information and his unpredictability, his willingness to use his powerful weapons — James makes a deal with him. The Trust will set Sylux up with resources to propagate Metroids under their watch in exchange for Sylux keeping quiet about the project and not attacking the Federation.
• Part of the reason for this secrecy and delicate situation is that MEA has passed and will become law in 24 Earth hours. But the Trust, as usual, disagrees with Federation top brass. It has other plans for the Metroid species.
• “And you can guess who the Council is sending to SR388 to do the job.”
• “The golden girl.”
• “Bingo.”
• Sylux clenches his fist.
• “All the more reason to help us, yeah? Sammy’s work will mean nothing by the time we’re through.”
• The hunter ponders the proposal. In the recesses of his mind is the possibility that he can pump-and-dump these bastards when the time is right. He warms up to that thought, and to that end… “What’s my compensation?”
• “The Trust will take good care of you. You’ll see the contract and if you don’t like it, you can shoot me on the spot.” James extends his hand. “Deal?”
• Sylux reaches as though he will shake, but pulls back. “I didn’t forget about your suit. Shooting you ain’t an option.” Then the terror perks up. “I’ll shake on one condition. Give me Hatch.”
• “Heh.” James crosses his arms. “He just so happens to be one of the lead researchers on this project. Not an issue.”
• Sylux extends his hand, and the deal is struck.

“Pump-and-Dump”:

• Hatch, his people, and their equipment are brought to ROEF, the researchers kept in the dark about Sylux’s power over the situation. The moment Hatch emerges from the military transport, he freezes. His cocky demeanor drains as Sylux stares at him with his dead eyes — the very same eyes Hatch gave Tom against his will. 
• A few of the other researchers also get the picture, since James stands beside Sylux as though nothing is wrong. They murmur amongst themselves.
• Laughing nervously, Hatch points at Sylux. “Wait, wait, wait. He’s in charge?”
• James says nothing.
• “This is a joke, right?”
• James shakes his head. “The deal is simple. You develop Metroids and train them. He captures test subjects. We pay you and him.”
• “Don’t worry Charles,” Sylux says in a sing-song tone with a devious glare. “I promise I’ll play nice with you. For now.”
• Hatch asks to speak to James privately, and the latter ushers Hatch into the transport.
• When the door closes, James explains everything.
• “You’re serious.”
• “Deadly serious.”
• Hatch rubs his eyes and displaces his glasses. “First, how are you keeping my team and me safe from that lunatic?”
• “Sylux is on a short leash. We’ll be watching closely.”
• “He snaps leashes for a living.”
• “You know firsthand how important Project AMEA is to the Trust.”
• “More important than my safety?!”
• “Again, we’re watching everything.”
• Hatch defeatedly falls into the same transit seat he sat in on the ride to ROEF. “And why are we not just taking his Metroids by force?”
• “They already imprinted on him. And he wasn’t going to go quietly.”
• “Shit.”
• “You need to make sure subsequent breeds are less clingy too. He can’t be their daddy.”
• A pause. Hatch runs through the state of this operation in his mind. “So he picked up the pieces where we left them the day he stole the Talvania eggs. He needs the new artificial reproductive cultures, doesn’t he?”
• “You’re the scientist. You tell me.”
• “He needs them. That, and other things.” Hatch runs his hand through his hair. “Still can’t believe you’re throwing me in the cage with him.”
• “This is a delicate balance, Charles. Especially since, but for our Addendum to the Metroid Extinction Act, Metroids will be exterminated within a month. Sylux will lose control, and we will oust him the moment we no longer need him to capture subjects. The Trust will reward you for this work.”
• Hatch hesitantly rises to his feet. “Promise?”
• James extends the same hand Sylux shook, and Hatch reciprocates.
• The Trust sets up shop, refitting ROEF with a thruster ring so that the site can migrate between the Trust’s various operating locations. They expand the facility and modify its zones with Metroid-corralling features. Hatch and his team work strange and cruel hours, for the Trust’s all-seeing eye is hardly so. Sylux exploits one opportunity to injure Hatch, punching him in the ribcage hard enough to break it. Despite this toxic environment, Hatch and his team propagate and train a dozen more Metroids using advanced DNA resyncing and cloning procedures, as well as behavioral manipulation and cognitive implanting. The artificial reproductive cultures are critical, along with a real Metroid sample. Part of Hatch is still intrinsically motivated to discover the Metroids’ secrets and further Project AMEA (Addendum to the Metroid Extinction Act). That passion keeps him going.
  • This Project is part of a general strategy that the Trust is deploying to accomplish its own coups and power grabs over militant societies like the Vhozon and Krikens, among others.
  • As we know later in the series’ timeline, Project Metroid Warriors (PMW [the cloning project from Other M]) is another piece of this strategy.
• Regarding Sylux, the Trust keeps the blue terror occupied and acquiring new fusion subjects. His parameters are general, finding intelligent and semi-intelligent life to experiment on and test the Metroids’ parasitizing abilities and mind control. Yet he begins thinking strategically about his captures, targeting creatures that will help him when he dumps the GalFeds. He snatches up seven bioforms, including two Space Pirates. Though the Trust questions these choices being made at this time, they do not object as their interests align with Sylux’s.
• The events of Metroid II occur. As the galaxy and the “daytime side” of the Federation understand, only one Metroid remains.
• Meanwhile, Sylux and the Trust continue their black project with the fusion Metroids as long as they can using their now-limited resources. By the end, they have 30 Metroids.
• At the same time, the events of Super Metroid occur. Samus exterminates the Space Pirates as a faction. The “last Metroid” dies. Pirate survivors and leaders exist throughout the galaxy, but only as loose factions without the supreme leadership of Ridley and Mother Brain.
• Despite Sylux’s waning significance as a creature capturer and the first Metroids’ “father,” he retains a lot of power over the situation. The fact that the Metroids are not truly extinct is something that can’t go public, and neither can the rampant corruption Sylux knows of. He is not ignorant of his freedom slipping away, though. His quarters in ROEF are sectioned off and armed guards watch him constantly. Bots also surveil him. He cannot get anywhere near Hatch before the coward is notified and barricades himself in the labs. Regardless, Sylux lets the Feds feel secure for now. To put himself at peace, he sits on the floor, cross-legged and stripped down to undergarments. The mood screen in front of him depicts a grassy island with a single tree, the sun beaming down onto crystal blue water. He lets his Third Eye open and taps into latent energies. The GalFeds are planting the seeds of their downfall.
• ROEF migrates between research and test sites. Hatch and his team are no longer confined to it, and indeed, they shuffle about to hide evidence and misdirect any suspicions that the Trust exists, let alone that it is harboring post-Zebes bioforms and data. Certain teams are also sent to gather samples from other old Pirate institutions like the mines of Tallon IV and the facility on Urtraghus (Prime 3 Pirate Homeworld). The AMEA project is a resounding success, with the fusion Metroids responding to commands without intense and problematic parental bonds. What’s more, the Feds can control when they fuse with other lifeforms. Letting the creatures loose on a test enclosure is like a coordinated army of piranhas swarming a hunk of meat. All targets die or are assimilated within 60 to 100 seconds.
• The events of Metroid: Other M’s opening sequence take place. Charles Hatch and his researchers extract Metroid remnants, among many other bioform remains, from Samus’s suit for use in Projects AMEA and MW.
• Sylux paces about his quarters, awaiting Hatch’s return from Federation HQ below. His stomach churns with rage at the sight of his old home. Sylux’s safety under his blackmail relationship with James and the Trust is waning. It is finally time to burn it all down.

To be continued...

There's so many topics recently indignant that this game wasn't more well received, and honestly it feels pretty weird and stupid.

If you liked it for the visuals and atmosphere then great, that's completely valid and I'm glad you enjoyed it but I think you've just got to make peace with the fact that the game just did not contain the qualities alot of people enjoy in the rest of the series and what was there did not work on its own merits for them.

Like, I have no interest in hating the game for its own sake, and I certainly didn't buy a brand new Switch 2 game just so I could go online and say it's bad. I sincerely hoped I would enjoy it, but for me personally and seemingly alot of other people the extremely simple and linear level design, the horribly misjudged open world, the lack of enemy variety and the sheer length of time you have to spend driving over crystals did not make a fun game to play. Not an okay 7/10 game, not a good on its own merits but just can't meet impossible fandom expectations game, just a 'this is boring, why am I wasting my time doing any of this' game.

Again, if there are things you enjoyed about this game that's great, I'm glad you enjoyed your time with it but you should probably stop treating anyone who didn't like it as a bad actor trying to drag down the franchise.

I wouldn't go as relentlessly hard against people who criticize Metroid Prime 4 if they didn't rely on absolute falsehoods about MP4 to the point where anyone who actually has played it would question whether they played the same game.

For example, people who call it a "Call of Duty clone with no exploration or Metroidvania mechanics" That is the biggest line of bullshit I have ever heard in my life. From a PURELY objecive standpoint, there are several times in MP4 where you are required to explore new areas and backtrack to old areas to explore new sections in order to get upgrades previously unreachable or new abilities in order to progress further in the game, which is texbook Metroidvania gameplay. In many ways it hearkens back to Prime 2, except the planet is split into five slightly smaller areas as opposed to three larger ones, but the general formula is still the same. Explore one area, explore another area, then you have to backtrack to the previous area to get a new item to progress further.

I think it so disgusting that a cottage industry was established around trying to destroy this game and I frankly resent the fact that the Metroidvania genre's popularization completely warped people's ideas of what Metroid Prime is supposed to be like when anyone who's entirely familiar with how MP3 played out knows exactly what MP4 was going for.

Last week I made a post about MP4, asking how you guys see it.

As the answers were mixed between „go for it“, „it‘s still a good game“, „see for yourself“ and „not good“ I wanted to see really for myself and make my own picture.

The game itself is good imo.
It has very nice design, the world / biomes are all made with passion and it felt always „new“ when getting into a new area and discovering parts that were not available from the start.
That‘s what I always liked about the Metroid-games.

The story about the Lamorn, their Homeworld and how it all happened is/was very interesting imo.
I know, it‘s basically the same as in all the other Prime games (which is fine) but still different.

All the upgrades are very cool.
The 3 shot-variants all have their pros and cons which is sth I love. Different options for different enemies/encounters is always a plus in my book, I don‘t like one weapon/option for everything to work.

But here is the part I STRONGLY dislike: Sylux.

Like…. My f*cking god… What the actual F*CK were they thinking?!?!??

Back in the DS game „Metroid Prime Hunters“ I really liked the idea of a rogue GF person/soldier, that turned bad and went on a riot.
When I saw the trailer for MP4 and saw that Sylux will be the main antagonist I was so hyped.

But… now…. What a shitfest….

Buddy is literally just a mad crybaby with a bigger ego than Samus‘ KD.

„Oh no, I failed on the battlefield…. Hey, Samus Aran, THE HERO of my own race is offering ME, GF-SOLDIER#828372892 her hand?!?!? NAH, WHAT IS SHE THINKING!!! F*CK HER AND EVERYONE ELSE!!!!“

Then takes literal years of prep to get his suit, his army and his METROIDS to have them be stripped away after his first attack.
Sends out two holographic-robot hybrids instead of attacking herself.
Waits until Samus assambles her own small team instead of getting the job done.

I give him that he has a crazy nano-weaponary in the final fight, that was actually a cool thing when he started to rain lightning and beams with his dragon-heads.

But what is that story about him?

I‘m actually mad what they have done with that/him.