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The Topic
Currently, many of the Metroid franchise's feats hinge on the planet of Zebes being treated as having gravity roughly 960 times stronger than Earth's [It's actually something like 953x but I'm gonna say 960x because it's close enough]. The reasoning for this is more or less straightforward: In Metroid Prime's Observatory room, scanning the Zebes reproduction claims that it has a mass of "4.8 trillion teratons", which coupled with the radius given by the now defunct Metroid Prime website, gives such a result. Mathematically this is fine, however there are several issues that I will now get into.Something worth noting is that other planets in the Observatory are also listed as having similar masses. Most relevantly, Tallon IV, which is the game that the first Metroid Prime takes place on.
Evidence against it
- Zebes and Tallon IV are never portrayed as having high gravity. This is the most obvious one. In both Super Metroid and Zero Mission we get to walk around on Zebes and Metroid Prime is all set on Tallon IV. While Samus' jump mechanics change pretty wildly between games in the series, it's all roughly close to real life physics. While one could excuse her being able to jump around as a strength feat (that she would indeed be capable of), she would still fall at increased speeds, and so would everything else. [Not posting scans cause like, I dunno, it's literally the entire games, look up a playthrough].
- Something worth noting is that Super Metroid starts you on the Ceres Space Colony, which being inhabited would have to have normal gravity, and the jump physics there are the exact same as they are on Zebes. Additionally, both the BSL Station in Metroid Fusion and the BOTTLE SHIP in Other M have both environments fit for humans and for replicating Zebes' environments, and in neither game is there any change in gravity between them.
- Humans can live on Zebes. Well, sort of. Zebes' environment has canonically always been extremely hostile and unfit for human survival, which has in the past led to the claim that Z-2L, the human colony that was made on that planet, utilized gravity manipulating technology to survive. There is absolutely no statement of this, which makes the assumption already sort of shakey, but it can be straight-up disproved. After Z-2L's destruction Samus as a helpless, not yet genetically enhanced child survives just fine (in the short term, anyways, but 960x gravity would kill you instantly) outside of it, in Chozo areas, which are explicitly stated to not be fit for human life. Mother Brain even mentions that as she is, she'll be able to survive in Brinstar and Crateria (Which makes sense, Tourian, Chozodia and Ridley/Kraid's lairs weren't a thing yet and Norfair's heat would definitely kill her) (Ch2). She undergoes adaptation to be more fit for Zebes, but existing on it unprotected didn't immediately kill her. Speaking of adaptation, Space Pirates are explicitly seeking the same sort of adaptation to live in Zebes' environment (ch8), and yet they're able to walk on it just fine beforehand. This adaptation clearly deals with surviving Zebes' harsh environment, with stuff like acid rains and ability to fend off the wildlife being the actual threat for those who haven't adapted (Ch11), notgravity, which nobody is ever shown to be struggling with.
- Worth noting is that the two aliens that follow Samus on Zebes, Mauk and Kreatz, have absolutely no trouble with the gravity. Now, Mauk is established to be very strong, so he's probably fine, but Kreatz, not really. You could say he's got super strength too and nothing would directly disprove that, given he isn't a human, but it'd still be yet another assumption that needs to be true for the gravity stuff to make any sense.
- We know that Zebes/Tallon IV are not hyper-dense. This one is a bit weird because it relies on information from the defunct Metroid Prime website, but so do the radii of Zebes/Tallon so claiming this information isn't canon also debunks the calc itself, so I'm mentioning it. According to the Observatory, "[Zebes]'s crust is primarily Urthic ore, making it ideal for subterranean construction.", and the website straight-up has a canonical atomic weight (65.332) listed for Bendezium, which is related to Urthic ore. This is above average but not too crazy. Titanium's, for example, is 47.867. Knowing that a planet is made of not hyper-dense materials is a very big knock against the claim that it's hyper-dense.
- While it is contrived, one could claim that the gravity is coming from the remainder of the planet, and that Bendezium is simply the outlier in terms of weight. However, the website claims that "Bendezium is an extremely dense solid", thus making it very clear that it's on the higher end of material weights on the planet, not the opposite. There's also the fact that we have data on many other materials that make up the similarly allegedly super-heavy Tallon IV: these include Brinstone, "a stable solid with above average density" and a "compact atomic structure", at 99.987 atomic weight, Cordite, which is also fairly normal in weight, and Sandstone, which is actually a real-life material that they describe pretty accurately. So we know for sure that all of Tallon IV's makeup (as far as interactable materials go, but it'd be silly to assume those all just so happen to be the exception) is actually fairly normal in terms of density.
- Samus struggles with high pressure. This is a pretty consistent thing. Whenever there's water in Metroid, Samus struggles to move within it, and needs to find the Gravity Suit (or a similar item in one game) to jump around it freely. This counts for water on both Zebes/Tallon IV and normal planets (Notably Fusion is set in a human-inhabited station and water there still slows Samus down). The potential claim that this is all gameplay mechanics doesn't make much sense, given that finding a way past this hurdle is a required part of progression and a commonly stated function of the Gravity Suit/Gravity Boost, but it is also directly debunked by Samus & Joey, where Samus is indeed shown to have trouble moving around in deep water pressure (this was hundreds of meters deep into an ocean of sulfuric acid, which is roughly twice the specific weight of water). Obviously, none of this would be a problem if she really could freely move around in 960x gravity.
- Something else worth noting is that any time Samus has to deal with a Gravity Manipulation ability (which is fairly often), she struggles with it until she acquires the Gravity Suit. Now of course you could claim that all of these abilities are just way beyond 960x in intensity (The S&J gravity bomb definitely is), but I'd say it's definitely worth noting how she's never portrayed as having some massive leg up (beyond her sheer durability in S&J) against such conditions.
- Zebes and Tallon IV's environments does not fit their alleged gravity. This is minor but a planet with incredible gravity would not have precipitations or tall cliffs, which are both very prominent features of both planets.
What to make of Zebes/Tallon IV's weight, then?
Metroid Prime's script has gone through a lot of revisions and rewritings throughout the years. First the NTSC script, then the drastically altered PAL script, then the Trilogy release which changed a few things, and recently Metroid Prime Remastered also did a few touch-ups. Throughout all of this, Zebes and Tallon IV's weights have never been changed. I've seen some people use this to debunk the idea that they were an accidental mistake*, since Retro/Nintendo would have had plenty of time to rewrite them.And sure, that's true. But why would they even look? What was rewritten across the various releases of MP1 was mostly lore inconsistencies regarding the Chozo and Phazon, and everything else was barely changed. Fairly good odds they don't even know what their stated weights imply for their planets, and odds are they don't really care. As beloved as its worldbuilding is, Metroid Prime's usage of scientific terms is rarely very accurate (Just look at the stuff relating to antimatter in Echoes), and it's not exactly obvious to the layman what the normal weight of a planet should be and how it would impact its gravity.
*If you change "trillion" to "billion" in the listed weight for Zebes, you get 4.8x10^24 kg, which is not only a remarkably reasonable weight that is very close to Earth's, it's also the same as the German script for MP1, which directly says 4.8x10^24 kg, and very similar to the very thorough stats listed by the JP Super Metroid guidebook, which says 4.974x10^24 kilograms. Worth noting that the latter actually introduces Zebes being the second planet from its star FS-176, which would later be referenced by a few things including Metroid Prime itself. It's not impossible that they meant to carry the data over and just screwed up the conversion. Now I want it to be clear that all of this is just a theory and very much not a primary argument, that would be the fact that extreme gravity Tallon/Zebes is very inconsistent. I am simply giving a possible explanation for this inconsistency that isn't just "yeah there is more evidence of this than that so we go with this and not that".
Conclusions
All feats relating to Zebes' gravity, which are the MHS+ speed rating, Zero Suit Samus' durability, Ridley's plateau explosion and all LS feats in the series are no longer viable. We are currently working on replacements, so the profiles will not be edited yet.Agreements: Armorchompy, CrimsonStarFallen, Chariot190, Tllmbrg, JJSliderman, CloverDragon03, thetechmaster36, Deagonx, SamanPatou
Disagreements: SomebodyData
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