P.E.D. DirectCast/Metroid: Virus

Note: outdated information is highlighted with italics.
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Guess who's back, back again - I'm back, back again - with another DirectCast just for you guys. Seriously though, I do have a lot to talk about in my games - I just haven't had the time/patience to make one DirectCast detailing one of my games. That said, here's one that's been in order for a long time: one detailing one of my earliest (but now recently redone and being reworked) works - Metroid: Virus, the final chapter in the Metroid timeline, at least for the Space Pirates it is.
==Story==
Back during the events of Fusion, the Space Pirates back on the Homeworld (you guys remember, that place from Prime 3?) were pretty much thrown into a mass panic/planning stage: their HQ Zebes was completely obliterated, and their commanders were dead: Mother Brain, Kraid, Phantoon (even though he came back in Other M) were all gone. Even Ridley turning up again after his supposed annihilation wasn't enough to calm the Pirates down enough to think about what they would do after the Homeworld's mass evacuation; but eventually, after a few months out as a fleet in space, they found a place ideal for hiding out until they could re-establish their hold on the universe: Earth, changed massively due to the tectonic and atmospheric changes brought by the impact of the Leviathan Seed during the Prime Trilogy.
It didn't take Samus long to find them, though: after the events of Fusion, Samus (now wanted for questioning by the Galactic Federation for what she did back in Fusion) gets word through the grapevine that the Pirates have now set up a last fortress on the reborn birthplace of humanity; and now she's closing in to finish the war she started.
==Earth==
So as you could guess, Earth is the setting for Metroid: Virus; since Earth doesn't have much of a presence in the Metroid universe, I figured all it needed was a quick reboot (literally) and it would be a place that would fit right into the Metroid franchise no problem.
Anyways, Earth's gotten the complete Metroid makeover thanks to a conveinient excuse: during the Leviathan Storm back during Prime 3 (when Dark Samus sent out Leviathan Seeds to corrupt Federation Planets), a seed was shot to Earth to corrupt it as well, but since the Seed only hit Earth about an hour before Samus destroyed Phaaze, the corruption was destroyed before it could spread; however, the damage was already done. Earth's tectonic and atmospheric conditions were irreparably altered by the Leviathan, so much so that the Earth changed into what could be considered an amalgam of all the past areas seen in Metroid games.
There are 9 key areas in Earth's "world layout":
*Station-523, a former climate research station that's now abandoned.
*North America, a mountainous continent filled with chasms and tunnels that rival Brinstar.
*South America, a lush jungle filled with all sorts of predators and lethal creatures.
*Europe, a viscous swamp with several muddy pools that are hard to run through.
*Africa, a scorched desert with a graveyard of several wrecked galactic ships (Pirate and Federation alike)
*Asia, a tree-enveloped continent that was going to be a quarantine testing zone (Pirate approved), but now is a virtual playground for Metroids (from Larva to Omega).
*Tethys, a vast ocean that may prove the deepest body of water Samus ever entered.
*Australia, a high-temperatured lava continent which houses one of the largest Lava areas seen in a Metroid game (even Norfair can't top it).
*Antarctica, a gigantic glacier where Pirates abound and there's no visible support underneath the glacier either.
*and Lunaria, the moon base where the Pirates like to hide out and keep hidden projects.
Yeah, I had fun doing some of these areas; used to be, they had incredibly exaggerated names of themselves. Decided to scrap it though, since this isn't exactly an ancient civiliation of any kind. I'm also gonna try to keep some of the hostile species original in this, since Metroid games try to differentiate from each other; they're gonna be mostly Earth-based species, sometimes spliced together (like a shark with an octopus, but probably not that combo specifically; what is this, a low-budget Sci-Fi Channel horror movie?).
==Gameplay==
So remember how Other M tried to mix with the 2d Metroid games with the Prime 3D approach? Of course you don't, because no-one's taken the time to actually play it; that's what I'm doing for Virus, but with some twists: instead of having to switch between first and third person POV via a Wiimote pointing, it's through touch control via one of the RiiVolution Advance's two touchscreens, and you switch between the four main beams with this screen as well (beams being Power, Plasma, Nova and Annihilator); I thought initially about adding some visors to the game but decided that the only one that would get used would be the Scan Visor (only in First-Person, though). Something's gotta unveil that data somehow!
It also took some doing to decide how the jumps would work in this game: 2D games had Space Jump somersaulting, 3D games had a double jump; Other M did the somersaulting, but I decided I would jump the shark (heehee) and try something new. Samus has a different way of jumping in Virus: She starts with a standard jump, then gains the Space Jump Boots which give her another (double jump), then the Gravity Boost (a triple jump, thanks to a low power jetpack), and finally the Screw Attack (which adds forward somersaulting, 3 more jumps for the price of one; you can jump up Space Jump Walls with it, though, and that's an endless climb).
==Space Pirates==
The Space Pirates being the central enemy in this game means that they've got a presence EVERYWHERE on Earth, despite how frail some of them are; they have a facility in almost every area (except Station-523, that's pretty much empty of anything) meaning that there's no area in the planet where you don't have a chance of running into them (kind of like the X in Fusion).
The Pirate strongholds in each area are different, usually conforming to the enviroment in some way:
*North America has a Pirate outpost/comms hub, serving as a relay station between facilities.
*South America has Pirate teams forming lookout posts and scoping out the ruins that lie in them, for another potential base.
*Europe has an experiment lab in the middle of the continent-spanning swamp, where some Metroids can be found (larval and infant stages only, so Samus isn't in immediate danger)
*Africa has the Pirates raiding the downed ships and a base in the form of one of their own parked warships.
*Asia was a Metroid containment and combat area, but since an incident occured, the Metroids have been evolving like crazy and roaming free like never before.
*Tethys has some forgotten Pirate experiments and some flooded old attempts at floating bases.
*Australia has a geothermal power plant which generates the fuel for every base on Earth (or Geoterra-523)
*Antarctica has the Main Research Facility, Combat Training Arena and various other facilities inside; in a nuthsell, it's the biggest Pirate base on Earth.
*and Lunaria has that one weird Moon Base with a few regular Pirates around, but strangely only a few. (I know, I'm being coy, but I have to; it's the last area to be visited).
These bases are all gonna be assaulted during the course of the story, but Samus isn't gonna be the only one doing it; the secondary antagonist is no friend to any of the forces on Earth, neither Pirates or Samus. Speaking of which...
==Firewall==
Firewall is the name for the secondary antagonist and recurring boss in the story, and he's one creation that I made specifically for Virus; he takes on a role akin to that of the SA-X in Fusion and Dark Samus in Echoes, in which he's a recurring second antagonist that Samus has to fight a couple of times.
The story behind Firewall is one I had fun with, honestly: back when the Leviathan Seed first crashed into Earth, Firewall was just an ordinary human in the Federation until he got caught up in the destruction caused by the Leviathan and was left a crippled mess (both legs gone, badly damaged arms, it wasn't pretty); the worst part was that his sanity started to unravel after that, and it got even worse when he realized the damage the Leviathan did to his planet. Eventually his highly unbalanced mind came to a single conclusion about Earth's state: it could only be reborn if all alien influence/presence was removed from Earth completely. So after some painful surgery to literally get him back on his own feet, and some extensive upgrades, he grew from a simple cyborg to a dangerous killing machine, capable of destroying almost anything that came his way. Needless to say when he found about the Pirates setting up base on Earth (which wasn't long before the events of Virus) he wasn't happy about it; in fact he's on his own campaign against the Pirates, killing pretty much any of them he sees.
Samus will definitely give him a run for his money, as well as be a major turning point in his career of keeping alien "viruses" out of Earth.
==Conclusion==
Of course that's not all I've got planned for Metroid: Virus, but it's a brief overview at the most; there's plenty more stuff to come: many different enemy species, the Pirate Data, and various other stuff have yet to be done. So stay tuned, or don't. It's entirely up to you, but I do encourage you to do so.
Guess who, fanboys? 19:22, September 23, 2017 (UTC)
Category:P.E.D. DirectCasts