Definitely. Why did Samus leave the military? Did a mission go bad? Did she disobey unjust orders and get court martialed? Did she just get sick of the bureaucracy and decide to go off on her own to help people in her own way? Maybe the Federation military routinely ignores the people living on the fringes of human space in order to protect coreworld interests and this pissed her off. There was a ton of ways they could have used her previous military experience, and subsequent leaving of said military, to build her character in a meaningful way.remnant_phoenix said:I didn't even mind the "working with her former unit and CO" angle, or the "one of the members of the unit is a traitor" angle, or "one of the experiments is an android replicant of Mother Brain" angle... it's just that NONE of these were competently written.
Instead, they decided to give her daddy-issues and unwavering loyalty to a man with the personality of wet cardboard.
Why the hell would Samus care about martial law or what the military thinks? She's not a soldier, she's an independent non-military agent. There were only like, five of them and she easily had more firepower than all of them combined. They were in absolutely no position to enforce anything upon her. Samus had all the leverage in that situation, and as soon as Adam comes along and is like "You bow your head and obey!" Samus positively jumps at the chance to do so.Hell, even the authorization thing could have worked if it had been better written. Soldiers requiring certain clearance before being allowed to use certain kinds of firepower, especially in certain, sensitive environments, is common military protocol. And Adam being all like, "This station is under martial law, and you are non-military personnel. Follow my orders, including what kinds of weapons you can deploy and when, or leave" actually makes perfect sense, but only for weapons. For Space Jump and Varia Suit? Nonsense. And the whole Varia Suit scenario? Makes Samus and Adam look like incompetent idiots.
Where is the independence? Where's the self-sufficiency and self-confidence? This woman is supposed to be a badass who works alone, doing an extremely dangerous job out on the extreme edges of civilized space, and she just bows her head and falls into line immediately at the first sign of authority? Like I said, character-assassination. It would have been *faaaaaaar* more interesting if Samus' relationship with Adam was more antagonistic. If her leaving the military had been on bad terms, or at least a negative experience, and she uses her leverage to either take command of the situation from him, or at least secure a more favorable position for herself. But she doesn't.
Basically, what I wanted was a roguish space-cowboy (cowgirl?) in powered armor. Someone confident, and comfortable in their own skin after spending most of her life living among the outlaws, aliens and fringeworld colonists at the near-lawless edges of civilized space. What I got was every single mopey, brooding anime protagonist rolled into one. A character who would rather monologue and immediately bow to authority instead of sticking up for herself, her own values, and making sure that shit gets done.
I admit it could be a cultural thing, but I still think that terrible characterization and writing can cross cultural lines.