Unnamed female Galactic Federation troopers can be heard along with unnamed male troopers in the opening to Beyond before Samus is teleported to Viewros. Not even in Metroid Prime 3 and Other M was this the case, despite both games featuring many soldiers and sometimes high-ranking people of the Federation. Although, the former game had a briefly shown, plot-relevant female non-combatant Federation worker and another named female bounter hunter working with the Federation, and the latter had Madeline Bergman, a Federation administrative figure of great relevance to the story. It was culturally revolutionary at the time, of course only because the culture was largely based on gender stereotypes of both men and women, for the original game to reveal that Samus herself is a woman, so even simply for this reason apart from others, it is odd for the series to have not featured more prominent, named female characters.
However, Nora is not a non-combatant. She is a soldier brandishing a firearm. As with the other Federation personnel Samus encounters on Viewros, Nora is familiar with the reputation of Samus although she has never met the bounty hunter. Armstrong's awe of the central protagonist is evidenced through things like her excitement during their first meeting, some of her optional lines at the base area, and the hug she gives Samus after the latter seemingly defeats Sylux once and for all near the very end of the game. Her personality is one of ebullience in most situations and one of firm devotion to seemingly anyone she harbors strong respect for.
Crucially, Nora never says she admires Samus just because she is a woman, although it is clear that she appears to be very deeply inspired by the franchise protagonist. Similarly, Nora's gender is not emphasized any more than that of the other soldiers teleported to Viewros: not at all. She is merely another GF soldier involved in the events of Beyond. This is where Nora's gender is actually most significant for the character—while Armstrong is not developed as much as she could have been as an individual (like the other NPCs), the very fact that she is a female character whose gender is not emphasized gratuitously as relates to her profession is important. Her portrayal entirely avoids conveying the erroneous perception that women are by nature typically incapable of proficiency with technological repairs or combat and Nora is just some fluke exception [1].
There are other examples in gaming of two female characters working together throughout a story to achieve some goal, such as Chloe and Nadine in the 2017 PS4 game Uncharted: The Lost Legacy. Nora and Samus are not the only such pair. But one convention that remains fairly common is having male characters in particular sacrifice themselves for others. In the Great Mines, Nora tells Samus to continue without her during an onslaught of Grievers and even intentionally seals Samus off so she cannot assist. Nora, like the other soldiers and Vue the machine, acts with the willingness to sacrifice herself for Samus leading up the very end of the game so that Samus can proceed. The end of Beyond shows Nora and all the other Federation soldiers, Vue included, hold Sylux down so that Samus can leave Viewros in a teleporter moments from malfunctioning.
It has thankfully become somewhat more common in recent years for female characters to sacrifice themselves for characters of either gender whom they are not personally connected to on the level of, among other things, biological family (for instance, this happens in the 2019 and 2020 films Sea Fever and Underwater, ironically both about an ocean setting). Nora's sacrificial behaviors are not the strongest examples of this, but they are examples within a growing trend acknowledging that women are capable of platonic heroism and self-sacrifice just like men. Not only does this more genuinely depict the versatility of women's potential behaviors, as opposed to always having them be the ones saved or having them only endanger themselves for loved ones, but it also pertains to the necessary uplifting of men—who are not obligated to sacrifice themselves for others and are not expendable because of their gender. Accordingly, Nora does not react with dismissal or any sort of gender complementarian expression when her sergeant, Ezra Duke, places himself in danger's way to ensure Nora and Samus can proceed without as many obstacles ahead of her own opportunity to hold off Grievers alone.
As simple as the character might be in certain ways, Nora Armstrong is indeed a pivotal newcomer to the Metroid series, if not always for how she is developed, then for the ways in which she is not treated as a female character. One could not know from the game itself what the exact intentions were for the character, but Nora and her relationship with Samus exemplify how women do not have to collaborate in ways that glorify someone because they are a woman, how it is of course logically possible for women to be competent soldiers, and how women have the same capacity for benevolent self-sacrifice as men. All of this is affirmed without ever drawing any exaggerated attention to her being a woman.
[1]. Besides the inherent logical errors that render all gender (and racial) stereotypes necessarily false in themselves independent of concrete examples and introspective or social experiences, if men and women were by nature different in nonphysical ways, there would not be any examples of men and women who defy stereotypes, nor could there be. Any exceptions at all from the alleged stereotypes would also require that the traits in question have nothing to do with gender:
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