After beating Ghor for the first time in Corruption I must say I'm quite dissapointed with the character development of the hunters sans Samus in this installment thusfar. Having Samus comatose after being corrupted for, say, a fortnight would have been better than a whole month.

I was astounded to see the Galactic Federation still in one piece after having Samus off-duty for thirty days on the brink of war. Dark Samus and the Space Pirates, had they any strategical sense, could have totally wiped them out at that point. If you ask me, the time gap was too immense and in many ways estranged the opening sequences (which were excellent and well executed) from the plot thereafter.

That way we could have seen the other hunters struggling with the blight of corruption during Samus's mission, leading up to their inevitable demise at Samus's hands in a way that was more complex than Corruption has been presenting so far. Also, as a result of thin to none development on the hunters, the intents of Dark Samus in actually corrupting the hunters (apart from killing off potential threats) remain murky.

Additionally, since Samus needs, by right, to remain a stoic and near-expressionless loner herione (and an analogue to the player, who is discovering the secrets of Phazon personally as the game goes on) the hunters needed to express the harrowing spiral towards mental instability (Ghor) and possession (Rhundas) that Samus must be experiencing during the game. (The physiologically baffling and unsettling "Phazon Vomit" scene in the Bryyo Seed was well-placed and thematically welcome, though).

I suppose Retro Studios have never been called upon to produce titles based around emotional expression in the Prime series, but given how they were able to construct intricately detailed world and culture backstories in all the Prime games through scans, and took the time and effort to include the hunters in the game as they did, you'd think they'd be able to make them more emotionally involved; maybe even inciting and emotional responce from Samus. She, and the other hunters, are being hollowed out from the inside by mutagenic and radioactive goo, after all.

Suffice it to say, I think, ironically enough, that the Aurora Units have been more fleshed out instead of the actual hunters themselves.

The quest continues... Hopefully I should be able to find a willing trader before I am able to complete the final game on Trilogy on normal. I just finished assembling the 15 vouchers required to unlock all friend credit related content in the Extras menu, by gaining the "Exterminator" Friend Credit. I could have gotten the "Perfect Execution" voucher marginally earlier while I was disabling the second anti-aircraft turret, but that was a one-off, and that Exterminator credit can be done at the player's pace, which struck me as comparatively more attractive option in that sense. And believe me, that Exterminator credit is a lot easier to land than it looks: all the scorchbugs in the seed cycle around, so you can just stay at one spot in that cycle and blast them as they come, eradicating them all in about 5 minutes, maybe less.