So I read this article:

http://www.gamrreview.com/article/89165/women-want-what-now-female-fantasy-and-videogames/

It's a good article - probably the best I've seen on gamrreview in a while, and a sight better than the "Devil's Advocate" article it seems to be a response to, if only because it avoids the pitfalls that a lot of these sorts of articles fall into re: the objectification of the masculine form being equivalent to the objectification of the feminine form. It's somewhat problematic in that it frames guys as thinking solely with their penises, but as a response to an article where a guy does the same and worse for ladies, it fits. Go read it.

One thing that struck me as I read it was something that apparently struck the author, too: the ladies polled (not necessarily representative, but still an important indicator in many ways) do not actually care all that much for Samus Aran. The specific quote pertaining to her is as follows:

Women. Am I right fellas? Yeah, lookit this guy, he knows what I'm talking about.

Now, it needs to be laid out that this discussion isn't so much about what it is that makes an effective female character, it's about what makes an effective character period, at least in the context of video games. That said, I'd inevitably be coming at this from a masculine perspective with the baggage that that entails; in order to get a feminine perspective on this, I'd have to get the word from a lady who really enjoys Metroid games. Like any guy who knows his stuff, I cheated and went to ask my wife.

My wife, who will be referred to as Monica because that is her name, is not short-winded about this sort of thing. When we have conversations about gender in art, they tend to stretch on for hours. I was pretty surprised, then, that on this point Monica was actually fairly short-spoken and to the point. This is what I gleaned from our ocnversation:

This picture here is not Samus. This is a sexy lady in a blue catsuit.

This is Samus, and Samus will just completely ruin your shit.

The essential strength of Samus as a character is that she's a character where sex is arbitrary and inconsequential, and does not affect the character's motivations or actions at all. Beneath that suit Samus could be anyone: Samus could be me, or Monica, or you. It's one of the oldest and most respected tropes in video games, where the default assumption is that the hero is masculine simply because that's what heroes are supposed to be. Samus is a woman in an industry where heroes are largely, almost invariably, men, and of all the voiceless protagonists she's one of the only ones who goes against that mold. I can't really think of any others off-hand, though I'm sure there are some.

Does this make for a great female character? No, it doesn't. There is nothing in Samus to speak to the female experience, nothing about the character that is intrinsically female, and there is nothing to relate to as a woman. But, on the same token: there is nothing in Samus to speak to the masculine experience, nothing about the character is intrisically male, and there is nothing to relate to as a man.  It would be egregious to accuse Samus as being a "dude with tits," in that sex is entirely incidental to the character. In the context of a healthy representation of female characters, Samus would stand as an excellent example of striving for balance in a role that has been male by default since the industry's inception. Since that context does not exist, Samus is simply the biggest bad-ass in video games. People like Samus for the same reason they like Commander Shepard: when Samus shows up, you better hit the floor, because everything is about to be wrecked.

This isn't bad. For many people, including women who enjoy the ocassional awesome rampage (like my wife), this is actually fantastic. But it isn't female.

"Now hold up a minute!" you say. "Samus is definitely a lady. That 'Metroid is a GIRL?' shit didn't just spring up out of the ether. The revelation of her femininity is essential to the character!"

All right, dammit. Let's talk about Samus underneath the suit.

The essential problem with Samus underneath the suit, according to the ladies in the article and Monica, is that she only exists to reward the player, which is to say that she's there to titillate. This is problematic for a few reasons.

1. By using Samus's sex as a prize, it frames the games as being made for men. Yeah, sometimes ladies like a strong sexy girl to beat the shit out of everyone (Monica thinks The Boss is pretty much the greatest), but Metroid created a system whereby the better you do, the more sex you're rewarded. "Hey boys," some of the best-made games in history say to you, "go faster and you'll see her tits! And her panties. That's cool, right?" Maybe it is, designer-man, but it also confirms that Samus's sex isn't there as a way to go against the default assumptions abotu the gender of the faceless hero, it's there because guys like tits.

2. In addressing the player this way, it removes the sense of being Samus. I just spent eight hours kicking the crap out of monsters, and... oh. Oh now I'm waving at myself. In a bikini. Killer. Man I look fantastic. ... More seriously, the point of the faceless hero is that you can step into their shoes and lose yourself in the role. It's rare that guys can do that with female characters as well as we do with Samus, and once Nintendo turns on the T&A that sense is completely shattered.

3. In presenting Samus's sex as a prize at the very end, it reframes the character completely. The first word is very important in any story, but the last is just as important. In making the last image of Samus one where she's waving at the player in her underwear, Nintendo essentially states that this is the real state of the character. Samus isn't an unstoppable tank of destruction, Samus is a sexy lady first and foremost - but only if you're good enough to see.

The better ending, in a way.

So that brings us to the biggest question, which is, if every game treats Samus this way and manages to undermine the idea behind the character at the end, why are so many impressions of her so positive? One answer is that most people don't play well enough to see Samus in her catsuit, though that only applies to the older games: you can't get through Zero Mission or Other M without seeing Samus naked and painted blue. More, a couple of games in the series - Other M and Fusion - try to characterize Samus. Fusion did a better job of this than Other M did, but both of them take away from the essential strength of the character as has been established for the better part of three decades.

Why then, does Monica like Samus? The answer is pretty simple:

"Metroid Prime."

Full disclosure: Metroid Prime was the first Metroid game that she played, and it was the first Metroid game that I played. Her understanding of Samus's character is rooted in the first Retro Studios title, and so is mine. For her, it's an essentially perfct example of the faceless hero. Here's why.

Aw yeah. Here's the good shit.

Metroid Prime is often acknowledged as an essentially perfect game; when it comes down to lists of the best games of all time, they will inevitably include both this game and Super Metroid. There are, however, a few key elements of Prime that place it above Super, at least in terms of characterization for Samus.

1. Samus is characterized in how others react to her. This serves the dual purpose of preserving her own silence and establishing her place in the narrative of the world around her. All of her characterization is completely optional, and if you don't choose to read all the pirate and Chozo logs then you'll never see any of it, but if you do then you learn a great deal. You see how Samus is feared, gaining an understanding of how unstoppable she is by how unstoppable she's perceived to be; the Space Pirates call her the Hunter, and their logs grow increasingly panicked over the course of the game as you cut a hot swathe across the surface of the planet. You'll read about the Chozo who anticipated her coming, framing her as a child of prophecy for the people who raised her. None of this says who she is; all it does is establish what she does, and how others see her, as a Destroyer and a Savior.

2. The quest, in a way, becomes intensely personal. This is true of Super Metroid too, to a degree, but much moreso in Metroid Prime. Tallon IV is a decrepit ruin once inhabited by the people who raised her. Samus arrives on the planet for very practical reasons, which it to stop the Space Pirates from building an army of Metroids. By the end, though, that isn't the whole of it: she's fighting against the desecration of a holy place, one sacred to her own people, and seeking to root out the sickness that killed them. When Ridley dies, it isn't the end; there's still one more thing that needs killing, even with all the pirates dead. It coudl be argued that all of this is still practical, but the ending tells us otherwise. More on that in a moment.

3. Samus's sex is incidental to the character. Samus is referred to with female pronouns only very, very rarely; far more often she is called "The Hunter" or "The Hatchling," exemplifying the roles she plays in the respective mythologies of the Space Pirates and the Chozo. THis is true throughout the whole game, and never falters. It's the most consistent representation of the character in the history of the franchise.

4. The player is Samus. The Metroid Prime games put players in Samus's suit very literally, which is one of the virtues of the first person perspective, and there are dozens of touches to drive that point home. Steam fogs up the visor that you're looking through, and your peripheral vision is always limited by Samus's helmet. When there are flashes of bright light directly in front of the player they will see a momentary impression of the face inside of the helmet, and if one is paying attention it's a woman's eyes, but for the most part this is never noticed, only adding to the immersion. There is nothing here to break that sense of continuity, nothing to put an end to the power fantasy and the danger that the player experiences.

5. Samus is a completely unstoppable engine of destruction. Granted this is untrue in only three Metroid games (Fusion, Other M, and Zero Mission), but this is another element of consistency that's so important for this kind of character. She is never depowered, not really; she loses parts of her suit, but she never comes across an enemy she can't kill, and she's never weak. Weakness is not an essential part of the narrative at any point; in many cases this would be boring, but for Samus it fits like a glove, and serves to empower the player as it should, be they female or no.

6. The ending, at long last, is relatable. As with other Metroid games, you are rewarded for your performance with an expanded ending. Metroid Prime, though, never offers up Samus's body as the prize: you will never see her in her underwear, nor will she ever wave at the player. What you get instead is this:

It's a simple, quiet moment, where Samus watches the destruction of the largest temple on Tallon IV, watching one of her people's homes falling into ruin. It's rather poignant and sad, and the expressions she goes through say everything they need to: the fight is over. The ghosts have been laid to rest. We can stop. This reflect the feeling of the player, who's been trudging along the surfce of the world rooted in Samus's perspective and has come to the end of a difficult series of battles; if they're the kind of player to collect enough things to get this ending, they also know what it is that they've been fighting against this whole time, and for what reason. Your investment in the game directly reflects in the ending that you get, so that it answers aloud to your convictions and the trials you've gone through.

And it doesn't matter that Samus is a woman at all. That she is a woman is clear, but it's as incidental to the character as it should be, and never gets in the way of the player experience. This fails to make her a compelling female character, certainly, but as voiceless protagonists go she is peerless.

Samus's greatness is rooted in the fact that she is the perfect embodiment of an archetype, and Metroid Prime does that characterization best in that it never deviates from it. There are no sexy flashes of Samus when you die. There's no T&A when you beat the game skillfully (in fact there's quite a bit of body horror instead). There is nothing at all to remove her from the player. You are Samus, and she is you, woman or man.

Where other games in the series fall short, where the character of Samus falls short, is in the attempt to take away the essential appeal of the voiceless hero, to establish her as a female character and failing badly at it, to bombard her endlessly with her sex rather than the strength of her gender. Did anyone see a need for the suitless section in Zero Mission? Was there any point to the dozen ending pictures in Fusion that showed Samus in various states of undress? Was portraying Samus's essential femininity as being rooted in her uterus to the benefit of Other M? No. All of these things fall short, and the further Nintendo deviates from what makes this character great the less we are able to relate to her, and the more it erodes at her legacy. Over time we are goign to be faced with the grim reality that no one can relate to Samus, because she is not designed to be a character with a voice, and the people in charge of her voice have proven incapable of making it effective.

Samus will never be a great female character. She has, however, proven herself a great character on her own merits.

But that was only once, and ten years ago. It's time to bring that back, Nintendo.

Ho... Hmm...

There is much to reflect on, here.

I would say, in a pre-Other M world, that this whole affair is a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing. Her sexualization was incidental, simply an expansion upon the reward that was offered up in the first game, which itself was a last-minute addition for shock value. It was a way of saying "you've reached a better tier of reward," without explicitly saying so. Indeed, in Metroid Prime 2 & 3, the bigger reward wasn't getting to see more of ZSS, but getting the sequel hook instead.

Other M is a whole separate discussion, of course, one in which we both have made our opinions well known over the years, and where a lot of the apparent sexism can be attributed merely to lack of context (in why exactly she froze up over Ridley) and cultural blind-spots (over the unflinching obedience to Adam). The only indisputably egregious matter there is the heels in the Zero Suit

Of course, your argument asks for more games in the vein of Metroid Prime, something i would very much want (best game EVAR), but i feel that a lot of this hardly qualifies as sexism, but something that sorta looks like sexism if you squint at it right.

Great read Khuutra! I'm not sure what I can add to it apart from the fact that you made me want to play Metroid Prime again.

Personally, I've never cared that Samus was a women or even human.

I just play the awesome games. Of which they have all been very good, even Other M.

"Beneath that suit Samus could be anyone"
I sense a Batman reference.

I've thought about this myself (struggling with the Samus is a girl but it shouldn't matter thing) and I like this conclusion.

I think the point is to not exploit the idea of her femininity unduly, which is part of the problem with Other M, intending to play up how feminine she is. The "rewards" of seeing her without her suit i have less of an issue with, one because her style in them is never entirely inappropriate (e.g. she always wears under her suit what she should wear for the kind of work she does. Skintight or not, the only problem of the Zero Suit is the heels, but biosuits are a staple of science fiction, and her other undersuits are nothing worse than you would see from the many female athletes currently competing in London. Having it as a "reward" isn't particularly sexist, because there is little enough that can be done with her exposed form. JUSTIN BAILEY was worse in that regard, and that was an easter egg rather than a reward.

The key is that her femininity should not be made into more than a novelty, into a defining trait of the character

Playing through Prime was like playing through Half-Life, in respect to protagonists.

Which makes it automatically awesome.

This. I have never really cared about samus being female to point where when I list great female characters, I almost always forget her. The time Woman Samus became "There" in a sense is when Brawl decided to Seperate the characters and almost individualizing them as 2 different people.

Hah. I'd never clued in that the reason why Samus isn't widely lauded as the crown princess of gaming characters is because she's essentially androgynous. That makes sense.

Small anecdote: My sister, watching me go from Metroid Prime to Metroid Prime 3 was disappointed, because the motion capture used in the small scene whenever Samus steps into her gunship shows a distinctly feminine grind to her gait. Add my sister to the list of women who feel that every step Samus takes from androgyny diminishes her.

Also interesting that you should mention Commander Shephard. Another standout female character who does a lousy job representing women because she has to stick to the same script as Man-Shephard. Fem-Shephard only stands out because of the exceptional job Jennifer Hale (also the voice of Samus in the Prime trilogy, what a coinkydink) does voicing the character, making the male version seem like a cheap imitation.

I just watched Kill Bill, and none of the killers in those films pulled off "tough woman" nearly as well as Jennifer Hale can. The female action hero role is a really difficult pair of shoes to fill, probably because there's so little demand for the archetype. So video games just use Jennifer Hale for it every single time.