Ever since the release of the original Metroid, the series’ protagonist, Samus Aran, has been a near silent protagonist. In the 2D games, Samus communicates to the player via in-game text usually during the prologue section, and was even fully voiced in Metroid: Other M. Though, following the release of Metroid Prime, it did present a unique opportunity to give Samus more speaking roles, but Nintendo never took advantage of it. However, according to a former Retro Studios audio designer, there is a good reason for this.

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In a recent episode of Kiwi Talks, Clark Wen, the former audio director of the first Metroid Prime and Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, explained that Samus was much more vocal in the original cut. Wen wanted Samus’ grunts when taking damage to feel recognizable to players in-game, but when the voice clips were submittend to Nintendo, the studio rejected them, stating that the voice was too “sexual and sensual sounding.”

According to Wen, the voice clips were never meant to be in the final version of the game and served as more of a placeholder. Nintendo eventually landed on Jennifer Hale, who provided the majority of Samus’ audio during the Metroid Prime trilogy. In a way, it makes sense that Nintendo chose to veer away from the original audio, considering that Samus isn’t meant to be an inherently sexual character.

As she’s presented in practically every game in the series, Samus’ character is typically very stoic. Players almost never see Samus outside of her various power suits and what little they do see of her true form is usually during death animations in games like Super Metroid and Metroid Dread.

In any case, it will be interesting to see what the future holds for the Metroid series going forward. While Metroid Dread has garnered a significant amount of success, many fans are wondering when Metroid Prime 4 will release. Given that it has been over 1000 days since Metroid Prime 4 was mentioned by Nintendo, many Metroid Prime fans are calling for some kind of update regarding the game’s development.

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Source: NintendoLife