I want to vent about Metroid Prime 4.
Nintendo had spent nearly two decades dangling Sylux like some mysterious bogeyman in the shadows of the Metroid Prime series. He was teased in Hunters, cameoed in Corruption, and even got a secret ending in Federation Force. Fans were told he was dangerous, enigmatic, and brimming with hatred for Samus and the Galactic Federation. And then Prime 4: Beyond finally arrives, and what do we get? A wet noodle of a backstory and a finale as coheret as a Reddit creepypasta written by a 12-year-old.
Sylux Has No Arc
The game kicks off with an attack on the planet Tanamaar, only for the master teleporter to whisk Samus, Sylux, and five Federation troopers off to planet Viewros. Why? Because the writers needed everyone in the same sandbox without bothering to justify it. Instead of building tension through pursuit or infiltration, the plot just presses the “teleport all characters to the plot planet” button.
For most of the game, Sylux doesn’t even show up in person. Every encounter is a decoy. You fight shadows and holograms but never the man himself until the very end. Where the game could have developed Sylux as a character, the narrative blue-balls the player until the fight at the very end. By the time the real Sylux appears, there’s no real sense the game was building into the conflict. It just kinda, sorta just happens.
Compare the implementation of Sylux it to how Nintendo has historically set up Metroid villains:
SA‑X (Metroid Fusion): Introduced as an unstoppable doppelgänger, stalking Samus through corridors. Every sighting builds dread until the inevitable showdown. The anticipation is baked into the player’s fear.
Metroid Prime (Metroid Prime): The original game didn’t just drop the monster on you. It built anticipation through lore entries and environmental storytelling. You read Chozo logs and Pirate data files detailing Phazon experiments gone wrong, hinting at the abomination lurking deeper in the mines.
Dark Samus (Prime 2 & 3): A thematic mirror born of Phazon, corrupting environments and escalating menace with each appearance. By the finale, defeating her is synonymous with purging corruption from the galaxy.
Ridley (series-wide): The mythic nemesis who killed Samus’s parents. His screech, his persistence and his ritual reappearances all build anticipation.
The Flashback Farce
If Metroid Prime 4 is 100% complete, a secret cutscene detailing Sylux’s backstory as a Federation field captain will play out. Therein, his reckless attempt to claim a Space Pirate superweapon left him as the sole survivor of his platoon, and caused him to blame the incident on Samus and the Federation.
Before we even address Sylux himself, let’s talk about how idiotic that ground war was. We are witness to rows of Federation troopers clashing with Space Pirates on an open field like Helm’s Deep in space. It’s cinematic spectacle, sure, but it makes zero tactical sense. The Federation is a spacefaring superpower with orbital bombardment and aerial superiority. Why would they line up infantry like medieval peasants? Because the developers wanted a cliché battle scene.
Also, did anyone writing this scene take a moment to think about the fact that the Zebezians are called “Space Pirates”. Not “Space Legion,” not “Space Marines.” Pirates. The Zebezians have always been portrayed as a criminal syndicate, like a glorified mafia or Yakuza in space. They raid, they smuggle, they experiment with bioweapons, but they are not a disciplined warfaring race. Treating them like an organized army with ground formations and battlefield discipline is a fundamental misread of their identity.
The Pirates in earlier games were an anarchic menace: scattered bases, grotesque experiments, and ambushes in the dark. They were terrifying because they were unpredictable, not because they lined up in neat ranks like some Napoleonic infantry. Whoever wrote them as a warfaring race in Prime 4 missed the point entirely.
Regardless, Sylux’s backstory reveal is an even greater insult. He was once a Federation field captain and during this ground war, he disobeys orders and tries to seize a Space Pirate superweapon. This gets his entire squad vaporized. He survives and, for no reason, blames Samus and the Federation and vows revenge.
That’s it. That’s the grand motivation we’ve been waiting for since 2007.
Needless to say, this is laughably weak. His hatred isn’t born of betrayal or corruption, but purely out of his own incompetence. He was told not to advance, he advanced anyway, and his men died. That’s not tragic; that’s Darwin Award material. And then he hates Samus, who just shows up and offers a hand help him up. He smacks it away. It’s petty, incoherent, and beneath the scale of the Prime saga as far as villains go.
After years of buildup, Sylux’s arc collapses into lazy writing and incoherent spectacle. He’s nowhere close to rivaling Ridley, Dark Samus, or the SA-X as an existential threat. No, he is just a stupid officer who disobeyed orders for no reason, lost his squad, and decided to blame Samus and the Federation for his own blatant incompetence.
Sylux is the weakest “big bad” the series has ever produced.
NEXT: ‘Metroid Prime 4’ - Fans Are Not The Intended Audience
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That is catastrophically awful writing. I remember being indoctrinated to separate the art from the artist and that obviously doesn’t work. SJWs writing the story are often the touch of death. It wastes all the technical effort and gameplay. So Sylux blames all his problems externally and refuses to take accountability? Sounds like the writers projecting.
Of course many feel imposter syndrome, they’re phonies!