That’s precisely what I was cautioning. We know the Bechdel test isn’t a really a check to see if the movie is feminist or even if it is misogynist. The Bechdel test is a thought experiment that helps you think about movies generally more than it is a test about any movie in particular. This is why I cautioned about applying the Bechdel test to games. If you apply it broadly you’d find a tiny sliver of games that pass it, but there are a huge number of games that don’t pass merely because there is no dialogue in them whatsoever - either there are no characters talking or the characters talk to the player rather than to other characters.
If you want to apply the Bechdel test to games then you can only apply it to games that try to be like movies, and even then I don’t think it carries the same kind of weight. Games are framed very differently than movies.
The Bechdel test points out two things to us: 1) that there are fewer female than male characters, and 2) that female characters are less developed than male characters. While both of these things are probably just as true in video games as they are in movies, I don’t see the Bechdel test having the same power to point that out.
I mentioned above one game I watched really explicitly failed the Bechdel test. It was Indigo Prophecy, another David Cage game. That guy’s attitude towards women is not stellar.
Finally, as for Metroid, most Metroid games are the silent character/empty world type. In that context I think they are remarkably progressive. The very idea that a silent protagonist using a variety of weapons to fight aliens in a hostile environment is a woman was surprising at the time the original Metroid was made and actually continues to be unusual (and I insist that Metroid “Other M” never happened).
