After a long development cycle, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond is finally here. Samus Aran’s latest first-person adventure picks up where Metroid Prime 3: Corruption left off 18 years ago, taking her to a brand-new planet and giving her some nifty new tools to explore it. There are several layers to her story, but the overarching conflict revolves around one of Metroid’s most iconic villains: Sylux.
Uh, who is that again?
Even if you’ve played the mainline Metroid series to death, there’s a good chance you don’t know much about Samus’ archnemesis. The mysterious character has crept around the series for nearly 20 years, but we’ve only ever seen his face in one spinoff game. Despite that, Metroid Prime 4 assumes you’ll know who he is right from the jump, only introducing him with a matter-of-fact title card before we’re tossed in the middle of his assault on the Galactic Federation, flanked by Space Pirates and Metroids. So, what’s the deal with this jerk anyway?
If Sylux is totally new to you, there’s a good reason for that. The villain has popped up in three Metroid games, but two of those appearances were as vague teasers in secret endings. Nintendo has essentially given him the Thanos treatment, implying that he’s the true big bad Metroid has been building towards for a long time. Of course, that building was done in some truly weird ways.
Sylux first made his debut in Metroid Prime Hunters, a multiplayer-focused shooter released on the Nintendo DS in 2006. That game introduced several original bounty hunters to the series as a way to avoid deathmatches where a bunch of Samuses shoot one another. Sylux looked similar enough to Samus to fit in, clad in a blue-and-green armor suit and equipped with his own electrified arm cannon, the Shock Coil.
Hunters doesn’t give us a lot of backstory to go on otherwise. We know that he’s a bounty hunter who is trying to find the secret of the Alimbic Cluster, a spot in the Tetra Galaxy that’s said to hide some kind of “ultimate power.” Sylux pursues it, alongside other mercenaries, but Samus ultimately fends them off in the game’s single-player story mode. Other than that, we know that Sylux is a skilled tracker who hates the Galactic Federation for unknown reasons. (Though you don’t need a lot of reasons to hate a shady space military group that goes on to destroy the galaxy’s ecosystem.)
Hunters also gives us a glimpse at Sylux’s ship, the Delano 7. That detail is important, because it plays a big role in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption’s secret ending. If you finish that game with 100% item completion, you get a secret scene where the Delano 7 appears to be stalking Samus’ gunship. It was a huge teaser in 2007, implying that Sylux still had a score to settle after the events of Hunters. That was 18 years ago, and there haven’t been many chances to follow up on that, since Metroid: Other M and Metroid Dread both take place long after the events of the Prime series.
Sylux did make one more crucial appearance post-Corruption though, but you can’t be blamed if you missed it. Metroid Prime: Federation Force, a critically panned multiplayer spinoff for the Nintendo 3DS, gave players an even bigger tease as to where Metroid Prime 4 was heading. But you’d only find that out if you cleared a bonus objective in that game’s 17th mission, requiring each member of your squad to rescue a Metroid egg. If you do that and finish the game, you unlock a scene where a mysterious figure breaks into a Galactic Federation research center. The figure walks up to a Metroid egg in captivity and then presses a button on their wrist, activating a laser that hatches the egg into a baby Metroid. The camera zooms out ever so slightly to give us a glimpse of a blue arm. That’s Sylux, baby!
You’ll want to know all of this headed into Metroid Prime 4: Beyond because none of it will be explained to you there. If you have prior context, though, you’ll at least know why Sylux has an army of tamed Metroids by his side. The implication is that he stole a few creatures from the lab in Federation Force, and that those creatures bonded to him. (We know Metroids imprint on the first thing they see after hatching, thanks to Metroid 2: Return of Samus.)
Is Sylux’s grudge against Samus tied to the events of Metroid Prime: Hunters? Does his history with the Galactic Federation run deeper? You’ll have to find out for yourself in Metroid Prime 4: Beyond (but don’t expect too many revelations).
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Author: 360 Technology Group
