I graduated early from college. This might sound impressive until you realize it just meant I accidentally took too many summer classes because the fun art and photography ones were only offered when everyone else was on vacation. Fast-forward to winter 2016: diploma in hand, no job lined up, and back living at my parents’ house like a boomerang. My relationship didn’t survive the “living at my parent’s with no job” era, which, to be fair, did make things difficult. After a couple weeks of sulking and playing JRPGs like it was my full-time job, I got an interview for a design gig at a brewery across the state. I showed up in a suit and tie, while the interviewers looked like they had just come back from disc golf — brewery folk are a little different.
They offered me the job at a salary best described as “exposure + rent”, but I took it. It got me out of the house and into a new city where I… knew absolutely nobody. I rented a room in a sketchy neighborhood, with roommates who were perfectly pleasant but treated me like an occasional NPC in their much more exciting lives. My days went like this: wake up, work 10 hours, come home, eat solo, play video games alone, go to bed. Rinse and repeat. It was the loneliest I’ve ever been.
Metroid Prime isn’t just a video game, it’s a carefully engineered loneliness simulator. From the moment you step onto Tallon IV, it’s just you, your reflection in the visor, and the sound of your own breathing. No NPCs handing out side quests. No cheery merchants. Not even a friendly little robot companion to beep at you. Just silence, punctuated by the occasional alien screech reminding you that the wildlife here would rather you didn’t exist.
You play as Samus Aran, a bounty hunter who is so cool and competent that she doesn’t even talk. Not because she’s shy, but because she’s too busy scanning space moss for lore. And scanning is the real star of this game: every bug, rock, or glowing wall texture is hiding a novella’s worth of exposition. The game is also amazingly beautiful. The planet feels alive in that tragic, abandoned way — waterfalls that don’t care you’re there, ruins from a civilization long gone, and snowstorms that make you feel like the last person left at the end of the world. You’re constantly surrounded by evidence that others once lived here, but none of them are around to say hello. It’s like walking through a haunted museum, except the exhibits are trying to harm you.
The visor is the cruelest part of the design. Every time you fire a missile, the light from the explosion flashes across Samus’s face — reminding you there’s a human under all that armor, just as alone as you are holding the controller. It’s a tiny detail, but it makes the silence heavier, like the game is whispering: “Don’t forget, you’re still in here. Alone.” Combat feels great, but in that “accomplishing a small task before moving on with your day” sort of way. You’ll spend half the game strafing around angry space pirates, the other half hopping on platforms over bottomless pits.
This game is one of the most gorgeous, atmospheric games ever made, but its real achievement is how it makes you feel. Not triumphant, not heroic — just small. Alone. Like a stranger wandering through a planet that won’t remember you were ever there. Retro Studios nailed the feeling of isolation so hard that even when you beat the final boss, there’s no victory lap, just you, the silence, and the sweat on your GameCube controller.
Metroid Prime isn’t just a great game, it’s a mood: stylish, haunting, and the definitive proof that sometimes the scariest thing in the universe isn’t the alien trying to kill you — it’s realizing you haven’t spoken to another human in six hours because you’ve been scanning alien door locks.
The first couple months at the brewery were rough. The boss was a dick, my paycheck could’ve been mistaken for bird seed, and I didn’t know anyone except my coworkers and housemates. Coming home to a house where everyone hid in their rooms didn’t exactly brighten the mood, either. It got pretty bleak after a while.
Thankfully, things turned around after a couple of months. My partner and I started dating again, she graduated, and we got our first apartment together. Suddenly, life didn’t feel like a sanity test. I don’t regret taking that job or moving across the state, but let’s just say things are a lot better now. And hey—if I was struggling after a couple months of being kinda alone, I can only imagine what Samus Aran was going through on Tallon IV.
"I feel closer to Samus now."
"Go 3D go broke."
"Samus is a lonely dude."