Poll: Metroid: Other M killed Samus

[jboking]

Personally, they decided that she wasn't the silent killer I knew and loved. Being scared by Ridley is ridiculous when you consider the number of times he has been 'resurrected'. "Oh my god, how did you survive....again!" If this is the cannon Samus .... I'll just be done with new Metroids. I'll go back to my Metroid II: Return of Samus now.

 

[Treblaine]

Let's not be so specific. Fans can never be pleased in general.

Well that is just a stupid thing to say, because it so obviously is not true.

Hardcore Metroid fans LOVED the Metroid Prime series to spite it being hugely different and from a new developer pre-release it was heaped with so much scorn but the thing was it was done RIGHT!

If you truly believe fans can NEVER be pleased in general then you are pretty naive and don't know what you are talking about. Clearly your mind for some reason tunes out all the times that fans praise work and only focus on the rare times they are disappointed. A strong fixation on the negative.

(obviously when you say "in general" you cannot use that to imply "every single one of millions are pleased".)

But Other M is not just bad for the fans, it is bad IN AND OF ITSELF! The fans just have extra reason to be disappointed about it.

I'd ask you to stop repeating such nonsense generalisations about fans as it spreads the false impression that it is the fan's opinion which is the one opinion that people should NOT listen to which couldn't be farther from the truth. These are the reason for the franchise's continued relevance and they key to the new releases success.

 

[Jimson]

I find it odd, that Samus is a lot MORE visceral when dealing with her enemies. Yet they undermine that by making her a patsy in comparison to the other Main character in the game (Adam)

 

[Z(ombie)fan]

oh come on really? voice acting finally being used in a nintendo game and someone moans its ruined it well excuse me princess!
that aside I think its good that nintendo are finally catching up with the times, now we just need to see some other famous characters get a proper voice:

Yes I'm looking at you buddy....

your kidding.

you... fucking... OH MY GOD. hes SILENT. that IS his character. he is the adventure boy. the kid you control and don't pay attention to. he isnt the only one is much better silent. whats wrong with silent protagonists? look at the doomguy. I wouldnt change a thing to him. there is a character there: he likes to kill monsters. there. good enough. silent protagonists work. have a couple things point to what they are, but for the love of god, DONT MAKE THE PLAYER CHARACTER TALK.

 

[RelexCryo]

Yes and no. They tried to humanize her, but they didn't do it well. They attempted to make her seem like a fragile creature who only does what's necessary in cutscenes, but during gameplay might as well be the mute murderess counterpart to Master Chief.

It's not that it ruined, or killed Samus at all. They just tried to characterize her half way.

You, and everyone else, need to stop incorrectly using the term "murder."

Murder and killing are not the same thing. The difference is justification. Considering she generally runs around killing space pirates, imperialistic invaders, and other mass murderers, she is not committing murder, generally. She is killing, yes, but not murdering. Killing Hitler, for example, would not have been murder. Killing an innocent person would be. The difference? Justification.

 

[Zeromaeus]

Did Devil May Cry 2 ruin Dante? No.
Did Ratchet Deadlocked ruin Ratchet and Clank? No.
Every series has a bad game eventually. Just roll with it and, if necessary, pretend it never happened.

 

[RelexCryo]

Yes and no. They tried to humanize her, but they didn't do it well. They attempted to make her seem like a fragile creature who only does what's necessary in cutscenes, but during gameplay might as well be the mute murderess counterpart to Master Chief.

It's not that it ruined, or killed Samus at all. They just tried to characterize her half way.

You, and everyone else, need to stop incorrectly using the term "murder."

Murder and killing are not the same thing. The difference is justification. Considering she generally runs around killing space pirates, imperialistic invaders, and other mass murderers, she is not committing murder, generally. She is killing, yes, but not murdering. Killing Hitler, for example, would not have been murder. Killing an innocent person would be. The difference? Justification.

Actually intentions and justification isn't involved anywhere in it. Murder is a purely lawful term. So, you're wrong. But they're also wrong unless there's some galactic law against killing space pirates, but given that she was hired to kill them I don't think there is in this case.

Actually, murder is not defined by government. It is a term that is several hundred years old. The meaning exists independent of government definition.

Murder in religion
This section may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this section if you can. (July 2010)

One of the oldest known prohibitions against murder appears in the Sumerian Code of Ur-Nammu written sometime between 2100 and 2050 BC. The code states, "If a man commits a murder, that man must be killed."[citation needed]

In Abrahamic religions, the prohibition against murder is one of the Ten Commandments given by God to Moses in (Exodus: 20v13) and (Deuteronomy 5v17) (See Murder in the Bible). The Vulgate and subsequent early English translations of the Bible used the term secretly killeth his neighbor or smiteth his neighbour secretly rather than murder for the Latin clam percusserit proximum.[11][12]

Later editions such as Young's Literal Translation and the World English Bible have translated the Latin occides simply as murder rather than the alternatives of kill, assassinate, fall upon or slay.[citation needed] Christian churches have some doctrinal differences about what forms of homicide are prohibited biblically, though all agree murder is.[citation needed]

In Islam according to the Qur?an, one of the greatest sins is to kill a human being who has committed no fault. "For that cause We decreed for the Children of Israel that whosoever killeth a human being for other than manslaughter or corruption in the earth, it shall be as if he had killed all mankind, and whoso saveth the life of one, it shall be as if he had saved the life of all mankind."[Qur'an 5:32] "Those who invoke not, with Allah, any other god, nor slay such life as Allah has made sacred except for just cause, nor commit fornication; - and any that does this (not only) meets punishment. "[Qur'an 25:68]


-wikipedia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murder#Murder_in_religion

Murder is not defined by government. For example: Let's say that the current government of a monarchy that believes in divine right defines murder as the act of killing any government official, but declared that the act of killing a civilian is perfectly fine as long as it is carried by a government agent, i.e., a representative of the divine right. The government's attempt to define murder this way does not make it so. Murder, simply put, is often used as a legal term, but this is an inaccurate usage. It is fundamentally a term used in ethics, not legality. How a government chooses to define murder does not define it's nature.


The problem with defining murder as being whatever the government says it is, is that you are literally implying that morality and human ethics are defined by the government. You are implying that whether morally abhorrent acts such as killing innocent people or raping children is good or bad is defined by the government. It is extremely impractical to say that morality is defined by government when so many governments in the world are dictatorships.

 

[Herianden78]

HAHA. No. No it didn't.
It's just that Nintendo can't win when you think about it. People wanted Nintendo to add voice acting and emotion to their franchises. They listen and the fans hate it.

I Personally never wanted to see voice acting in the Metroid games. I LOVED Metroid Prime 1 and 2, but i couldn't stand 3. I loved the atmosphere the first two had but 3 always came off cheesy and forced. I'd like to see the people that said Nintendo should pull this crap so I can punch them in the face.

 

[Zeromaeus]

Did Devil May Cry 2 ruin Dante? No.
Did Ratchet Deadlocked ruin Ratchet and Clank? No.
Every series has a bad game eventually. Just roll with it and, if necessary, pretend it never happened.

Metroid has already had two bad entries that people have mostly tried to forget, one of which keeps getting referenced by plot despite the fact that it'll probably never get remade and like half the fanbase has played it. It really didn't need a third.

Uh... what two games are you talking about? I know not of a bad Metroid. (I haven't played Other M yet and probably never will)

 

[Treblaine]

oh come on really? voice acting finally being used in a nintendo game and someone moans its ruined it well excuse me princess!
that aside I think its good that nintendo are finally catching up with the times, now we just need to see some other famous characters get a proper voice

Riiiiiigh. So IMMEDIATELY after Nintendo monumentally fucks up giving a voice to one of their star silent protagonists, you expect them to repeat the mistake? Also, you are using a fallacious straw man argument that people are disappointed JUST BECAUSE they speak.

No. Fuck no.

People are pissed for WHAT she says! Beyond mere fan expectation, looking at her objectively what she now says and does makes her an incredibly unlike-able and un-endearing character.

I don't get people's obsession with having a chatty protagonist for VIDEO GAMES! You are controlling the action, the more they do in cutscene that YOU can't do in gameplay just reduces immersion. Most games (except RTS games) are told from 2nd person perspective and a quiet or silent protagonist aids that greatly. Chatty protagonist can lead to huge handbreak turns from 2nd to third person perspective and with monologuing in there can swerve it back to first person perspective (I'm not talking camera position, I'm talking narrative structure).

Games are NOT supposed to be just TV series with sections of gameplay replacing the commercial breaks. Cutscenes are supposed to supplement the gameplay, not the other way around.

Ideally the story should not be told in mini-movies but by the game itself.

Video Games continued resorting to Cutscenes reminds me of the early days of Film where they'd literally cut to a title card spelling out what is happening in prose; falling back on an older form of expression as expression in this form is so unfamiliar.

I'm not saying developers shouldn't use it, just that it shouldn't be depended upon. Star Wars' opening crawl is a great way to start a movie but if every 20 minutes there was a new text crawl to explain the plot that would be too much. Games should have an opening cinematic and very few after that and usually only to bookend gameplay rather than punctuate it.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

I find it kind of sad that one of the strong women in gaming has been reduced to a stereotypical japanese game-female full of emotional conflict, angst and an inability to be decisive unless controlled. Would it really have been hard to make Samus come off as the cold as ice bounty hunter that we all play her as? To make her a strong and independent woman?

Perhaps I am exaggerating, but the feminist in me gets a little upset when things like this happen. Why did Samus Aran have to be characterized as a fourteen year girl?

 

[Zeromaeus]

Did Devil May Cry 2 ruin Dante? No.
Did Ratchet Deadlocked ruin Ratchet and Clank? No.
Every series has a bad game eventually. Just roll with it and, if necessary, pretend it never happened.

Metroid has already had two bad entries that people have mostly tried to forget, one of which keeps getting referenced by plot despite the fact that it'll probably never get remade and like half the fanbase has played it. It really didn't need a third.

Uh... what two games are you talking about? I know not of a bad Metroid. (I haven't played Other M yet and probably never will)

Metroid 2. A great idea marred by bad music, gameboy graphics that left everything looking almost completely identical, even moreso then the NES game, and a layout that was so confusing that even having a map made it hard to know what the fuck. To be honest if there has ever been a game in need of a remake this is it. Game number two is Metroid Prime Hunters which was just...not very good.

Return of Samus wasn't that bad. Hard to get around maybe, but not bad. This strange Prime Hunters you mention though, what is it? It sounds familiar, as though I forcibly removed from my mind, replacing it with memories of better Metroid games that serve a purpose that isn't introducing characters Nintendo wanted to replace Samus with.

 

[Zeromaeus]

Did Devil May Cry 2 ruin Dante? No.
Did Ratchet Deadlocked ruin Ratchet and Clank? No.
Every series has a bad game eventually. Just roll with it and, if necessary, pretend it never happened.

Metroid has already had two bad entries that people have mostly tried to forget, one of which keeps getting referenced by plot despite the fact that it'll probably never get remade and like half the fanbase has played it. It really didn't need a third.

Uh... what two games are you talking about? I know not of a bad Metroid. (I haven't played Other M yet and probably never will)

Metroid 2. A great idea marred by bad music, gameboy graphics that left everything looking almost completely identical, even moreso then the NES game, and a layout that was so confusing that even having a map made it hard to know what the fuck. To be honest if there has ever been a game in need of a remake this is it. Game number two is Metroid Prime Hunters which was just...not very good.

Return of Samus wasn't that bad. Hard to get around maybe, but not bad. This strange Prime Hunters you mention though, what is it? It sounds familiar, as though I forcibly removed from my mind, replacing it with memories of better Metroid games that serve a purpose that isn't introducing characters Nintendo wanted to replace Samus with.

Honestly they picked either the wrong time or the wrong console to release RoS. If they'd waited and put it on the GBC it would have been better, or if they made it work on the NES. It was mostly the lack of colour that murdered it. Then again if not for it we wouldn't have the iconic varia suit shoulderpads. So in a way it is a lot like DMC2. It's an often over looked, sometimes referred to as "bad" number in the series (number 2 to boot) that added important things to the series. Uncanny.

Huh. Never noticed that before. That game also served to establish the life cycle of a metroid, which has (sadly) only been used once since at the end of Fusion. Well, as long as you know the ending, you never even have to play Return of Samus either. Just play the beginning of Super Metroid and you're given a free pass to skip it. They really should remake it, though. Maybe in 2.5D. Like Shadow Complex, not what Other M seems to be.

Shadow Complex. The best Metroid game that wasn't a Metroid game.