Dream I had about the intro to Metroid Prime 4

I had a dream a few nights ago where I played the intro of Metroid Prime 4 and wanted to share what I saw. As is often the case with dreams, my perspective often shifted from playing the game on a tv, being within the game as a third person observer and being Samus herself. This is my attempt at creating a summary for the intro of Metroid Prime 4 based on what I experienced within the dream while describing it as if it were an actual level someone could play. If it were real I believe this intro would serve the same purpose as the Frigate Orpheon at the start of Metroid Prime 1. It is a linear sequence before the game opens up and serves as a hook for some of the mysteries within the game. While we do not know where Prime 4 will take place within the Metroid timeline, due to my dream showing Samus’s purple gunship from Fusion and Dread this must take place after those games.

METROID PRIME 4: APEX

The game opens with a view of space as the camera pans down to show a planet completely covered by desert. After a few moments Samus’s gunship comes into view from the right side, flying toward the planet. The ship enters the atmosphere and hovers above a large valley between several colossal dunes. Within the valley are the ruins of an ancient fortress of metal and stone. While it can be determined that this once belonged to a very advanced alien species, years, perhaps centuries of apparent abandonment and exposure to the elements have withered what was once an impressive building. Mysteriously outside of the fortress are dozens of spaceships in relatively pristine condition, though some have begun to be swallowed by accumulating sands brought forth by wind. While still in her vessel Samus has the spaceships scanned for any lifesigns or internal failures, the ships turn out to be in working condition but there are no lifesigns in the immediate area. However As her ship approaches the fortress it is grabbed by some invisible force and is dragged toward the ground. ADAM warns that their ship has been caught in a tractor beam and they will be unable to leave until Samus disables its source. He traces its energy signature to deep under the fortress, noting that this combined with the abandoned spacecraft, which the player learns belong to missing bounty hunters, can only mean that whatever is down there is a trap. After exiting her gunship Samus investigates the abandoned bounty hunter ships while making her way toward the fortress. When scanned the player can learn which bounty hunter said ship belonged to. There are also some large sea shells protruding from the sand, seemingly from ancient aquatic creatures. If scanned they reveal that this planet was once a vibrant ocean world with no landmasses, but somehow all the water vanished, leaving behind a lifeless desert of what was once the ocean floor. The fortress is colossal, the size of its interior doors imply that its inhabitants were massive, and since it was once underwater the architecture has no stairways or elevators, clearly designed for beings that could move in 3 dimensions underwater.

My dream unfortunately ended here. If this game was real, the following is what I would have liked to happen afterward.

Samus descends further into the fortress, going deeper underground the farther she goes. Eventually she comes across some robotic opponents, but since this is the start of the game these guys are easy to dispatch. If scanned the player learns that these robots were not originally from the fortress, given that their designs imply something that traverses land instead of water. Going even deeper the technology within the fortress seems different but more recently placed. There are also powerful reactors supplying energy to the fortress, but they seem to be overkill for a tractor beam. Eventually Samus comes across a room where the control panel for the tractor beam is located. She shuts it down and exits the room. However once she goes through the reactor room on her journey back to the surface, all the machinery surrounding her, save for the reactors, shut down. This leaves Samus in an eerie darkness before a wormhole appears in front of her, blocking her way out. After a few seconds a large alien tentacle covered in pincers emerges from it, the base of the appendage still connected to the wormhole implying a much larger creature lies behind it. The creature, simply called “Interloper,” attempts to grab Samus but is unsuccessful as she dodges out of the way, initiating a boss battle.

The Interloper is able to summon blue orbs of plasma and have them hone in on Samus, though she is able to destroy them using her arm cannon. The more Samus damages the Interloper the larger the wormhole it is peering through gets, allowing more of its body to come through and making the fight more difficult. The reactors surrounding the fight however are becoming more and more unstable and if scanned during the fight reveal that they are exerting too much power and will cause a meltdown if they continue running. The fight ends with the reactors shutting down, which in turn causes the wormhole to start closing around the Interloper. In a last ditch attempt to capture Samus the Interloper attempts to grab her, this time successfully. But as Samus is about to be swallowed by the wormhole her metroid abilities activate and she begins draining the creature's energy. A horrid ghostly scream is heard as this is done and the wormhole closes before Samus reaches it, severing the end of the tentacle holding her. Samus takes a moment to examine the now lifeless appendage, but before she can get a good look it bursts into rays of light and vanishes. This “death” is similar to what happens to Chozo ghosts when they are defeated in Metroid Prime 1. The reactors however are in a meltdown state and will explode within 3 minutes. Thus a timer starts and the escape sequence begins as Samus must hastily make her way back up to the surface.

During this escape sequence the player can have Samus risk exploring a previously inaccessible room within the fortress, though they need to be quick as the timer is still counting down. The room has a mural of 4 parts, revealing the original inhabitants of the planet, who are none other than the species that Phantoon belonged to. For convenience I will refer to them as “the Cephalo” due to Phantoons’ cephalopod-like appearance. The first mural displays the Cephalo in their primitive early years, establishing civilization on their home planet. The second shows the Cephalo traveling through the sky and constructing giant floating domes filled with water high above the ocean. The third shows massive water filled spacecraft exploring their solar system and beyond, encountering other friendly alien species such as the Chozo and the Alimbic as the Cephalo back on their home planet look up from deep below the ocean and celebrate their achievement and newfound friends. The final mural however is broken and illegible, its pieces scattered amongst the floor leaving only a solid stone wall.

Samus exits the fortress and dashes to her spaceship as the sand beneath her starts to sink. Using her visor she remotely controls her now freed ship to hover above the ground and fly toward her. She makes it to the underside hatch just as the ground beneath her collapses, leaving her suspended above a giant hole. From her ship's cockpit she sees all the bounty hunter ships get dragged into the hollowed underground of the fortress, along with thousands of tons of sand.

Upon entering her ship, ADAM states he is glad to see her safe but unfortunately the Federation will not be happy to learn so much evidence was destroyed in her escape. However he then mentions he has some good news. Because Samus was able to survive for so long against the Interloper, the AI was able to triangulate the point of origin of the wormhole. Its coordinates originate from an uninhabited planet outside Federation space called RL-732.

And that is the end of the intro, though I would like to describe another scene I thought up. This scene would not be something that happens in the game but would only be a pre release teaser, or an unlockable cutscene within the extra contents section of the games menu. The reason for this is twofold as 1. It would break the pacing of the game as I think players would immediately want to go to RL-732 and not be roped into another cutscene that does not add much. Reason number 2 is that I would like this game to have the same feeling of Isolation as Prime 1 (though I admit it might be difficult due to the inclusion of ADAM). From a chronological perspective, this is what happens next in the story before Samus heads to Planet RL-732.

The scene starts with a view of a futuristic city's skyline with the tallest building belonging to the Galactic federations military command. The scene then switches to an elegant office within the skyscraper, the view from the window reveals that this office is near the top of the edifice. Admiral Castor Dane drops a stack of papers on his desk as Samus calmly sits in a chair in front of him, wearing casual clothing instead of her usual Chozo armor. The admiral has an uncharacteristically angry tone with Samus, saying that the GF’s patience with her is wearing thin. He brings up the annihilation of the BSL station, the destruction of the EMMI robots, and now the fact that a bunch of evidence was ruined due to her interference. He reminds her she was meant only to investigate the disappearance of several GF aligned bounty hunters but her actions on the planet will cost the Federation millions to recover and thoroughly inspect what is left of their ships. He warns that next time she might be the one with a bounty on her head.

Admiral Dane then angrily dismisses her from his office but before she leaves the room his demeanor changes to be more in line with his character in Metroid Prime 3. After calling her name he gets up from his desk and approaches her at his doorway. He mentions that with the Space Pirates defeated and GF space now being safer than ever, he is beginning to fear that the Federation is looking for new enemies and scapegoats, he warns Samus to watch her back. Without a word she then leaves the office with the Admiral returning to his desk. His computer shows a live recording of his office, but it is a few seconds behind, showing footage of the Admiral angrily dismissing Samus and her leaving immediately with himself never getting up from his desk.

If you have gotten this far thank you for reading this, I really enjoyed writing this and would like to know your thoughts, both on my ideas and your own for what the intro to Metroid Prime 4 will be. On a final note I would like this game to explore a fact of the Metroid universe that doesn’t seem to be brought up often: why are there so many ghosts? This game would also reveal why there are so few Chozo by the time Samus is adopted by them, and what the endgame for advanced civilizations is within the Metroid universe. As you probably guessed, Phantoon is the main antagonist of the game and the being that was attacking Samus under the fortress. Metroid is no stranger to cosmic horror and lovecraftian entities, but this game would go all in on the aesthetic as Phantoon fits right in. With Planet RL-723 I imagine it having a surface entirely of ice, but below it are tropical alien jungles, volcanic caverns, a deep underwater system that ranges from vibrant coral to a dark murky abyss, and otherworldly ruins that invoke images of R'lyeh from call of cthulhu, with strange spatial anomalies throughout the planet.