Aiddon said:
Like Bob said, I think this game has revealed some VERY troubling ideas of what a lot of gamers and even game critics/commentators ACTUALLY think about gender in gaming. Samus doesn't present herself as Gordon Freeman with boobs nor is she a Commander Shepard who, let's face facts, is a Gary Stu/Mary Sue in EVERY sense of the term. She instead is portrayed as a troubled soul who has all kinds of insecurities, doubts, and fears and despite (and indeed possibly BECAUSE of those) she overcomes her adversities and grows. I can't really name a LOT of heroines in gaming that have been portrayed like that, especially in recent memory.
Your logic would have been sound if the game had been an origin story. With that I mean, we have Samus right before she became a bounty hunter, still in the military, all green and full of insecurities. There the setting with some better writting would have shined. Now Adam autorizing makes all the sense in the world and furing the game she starts seeing that military life isn't for her, learns to be more independent and grows in the process. Hell, She blacking out at seeing Ridley would make all the sense in the world if it was the first time she met with him.
The thing is they didn't do this, they decided to set the game after she has had at the very least 6 games of kicking ass and taking names cronologically. She is a tempered war veteran that has gone to hell and back. You cannot have a veteran blacking out like a pussy, Markus doesn't flinch, Solid Snake doesn't flinch, Samus shouldn't flinch, simple as that. There is also no reason why her judgement should be clouded by Adam being there at that stage in her life, she wants her varia suit, she activates her damn varia suit and fuck Adam, simple as that. Why? Because she has been going solo for years at that stage in her life and probably hasn't seen Adam in an assload of time, when you have all that field experience, you tend to do things your way and oppose anything you consider pointless or risky, rank be dammed.
Thing is, Samus has been pussified to epic proportions. Like I already stated, had this taken place during her military years, it would have been perfect with some tweaking and a voice actor that wasn't dead inside, but with the current setting, it was set to be a plot disaster from the start, plain and simple. anobody defending this aberration of a plot either never played Metroid (no reason for you to have any preconcieved ideas) or is so much in denail that he can't admit the character has been downplpayed horribly.
Character depth and defects are OK, having them hamfisted on, specially when they shouldn't even be there or at least shouldn't pop up in the middle of a mission because of being a tempered war vet, not so much.