Poll: Metroid: Other M killed Samus

[Gigaguy64]

You're the one who brought up Fusion, but now that you have I'll say this. Other M is almost identical, yet still manages to be worse. Right down to the story and plot twist(OH NOES THE FEDERATION IS BREEDING METROIDS!). Congrats, Sakamoto, you've made the same game twice. It plays similar with Adam (who, for the record had a terrible sacrafice) forcing you go from save point to save point for no reason other then to remove exploration, only this one is even more linear.

Yea i did, i though that was what you were talking about in response to the post you first quoted me on.

Anyway, a lot of the same concepts have been reused in the Entire metroid series.
The Entirity of the Prime series was Space Pirates using Phazon to MAKE SCIENCE and breed MAOR METROIDZZZZZ.
But remember the Federation is doing far more than just breeding Metroids.
Even more than what they were doing in Fusion.
I did still like the Prime story better than OM's even though it wasn't as noticeable.
Though now talking about OM i do agree that the Linearity is too much.(I was talking about Fusion in my earlier Regards to linearity)

As for charging, except for a few fights like the Ridley fight you almost always will be able to get enough time to charge, assuming you take enough damage that one more hit will kill you. Even then you can usually instant kill an enemy with one of your pointless flashy instant kill moves and just charge right away.

Well considering that the opponents you can instakill usually take a lot of normal shots to kill without using the Move, the instakill is hardly pointless, and i felt it was there to show off Samus's Versatility and how Acrobatic she is.

As for it being developed by Japanese developers? I still expect them to have a grasp of decent story telling and characterization. What you make isn't immediately dictated by where you come from, there have been some amazing things to come out of Japan.

right, but there are some things that are done by other Countrys just because that's how they like to do things, and its different than other Countrys so some people view it as bad or Wrong when to them, its probably the only way to go.
Like the Monologues, thats a commen thing found in Many Japanese games.
Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.

It just seems that Sakamoto is terrible at this sort of thing and really shouldn't be given complete creative control.

Well, he was given controll and some people like it.
others don't.
It really all comes down to your personal view of Samus, and like it or not, its not the Same as Sakamoto's.

The story is terrible and completely pointless. Samus serves no purpose in the storyline this time around. Everything would have happened the exact same if she hadn't been there with the sole exception that it would have taken them a few minutes longer to get into the main building. Even the ending is pointless because it isn't thanks to samus that Madeline survives, it's thanks to Anthony. Adam's sacrafice is pointless and only exists because we know he dies in Fusion. His job could have been done by throwing a bomb into sector zero or getting into Samus' ship and shooting it at it. His sacrifice could have been done in a more touching, if more cliche, way at another point in the story.

Like iv said, i felt this game was made to add more Characterization to Samus.
Good or Bad doesn't matter because that's what was done.
And in a game that shows Samus's interactions with other People it would be weird to have her do everything and leave the other characters in the dark.
And she does pretty much everything else.
And we don't know for sure if they would have ever gotten into the Ship, the only way in was through that door and Samus's weapons were the ONLY way of opening them without Damaging the Ship, which is a major point of the whole operation.
They were there to Clean out the ship but not to Destroy it or cause Major Damage.
And using Samus's Gunship would have done Major Damage to the Bottle Ship.
So someone had to go and Kill the Metroids, and Adam knowing that Samus is more Valuable than Him and wanting to protect her, decides to sacrifice himself.
Now even though i agree that he died to make it cannon to fusion, that's kind of touching to me.
But oh well, i think were gonna haft to Agree to Disagree.

 

[shadyh8er]

"She has yet to have a bad game!" - quote from Gametrailer's Top 10 Best Female characters which named Samus #1.

At least they kept their words short and sweet because they have to eat them now!

 

[Bek359]

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.

Ruined? No, it added character to an otherwise uninteresting character.

Other M made the series much more interesting and I hope to see more Metroid titles like it.

Thank you.

Glad I saved you a bit of opinion typing. It's sad how fickle many fans can be, the same fans who praised OoT as the best game ever and comparing every following Zelda game to it saying they were not as good criticized Twilight Princess for trying to be like OoT. I kinda feel bad for Nintendo, no matter how much they listen to their fans they just can't seem to please them.

But it's a complete shift of character. Every single game in the series portrayed her as this fearless champion, something games with female leads lack. Suddenly, she's a robot that will die if ordered to. She went from Heero Yui to Rei Ayanami if you'll forgive the nerdiness there.

This character shift would be like if suddenly Link had Dante's personality from DMC. Or if Master Chief rolled over and cried every time another 100 marines were killed in Halo.

They added the WRONG kind of depth, adding traits to make her weak.

She was never portrayed as anything before, she was a blank slate with no personality, that champion is what you filled the blanks in with, for all you know it really wasn't her.

Look at Fusion. She states that she hates taking orders, and especially from some computer. And even when she was given explicit orders not to enter Sector 0, she did because it allowed her to survive, and regain her strength. This goes a complete 180, and not in a good way.

Fusion comes far after Other M, people's personalities can change. Perhaps she doesn't take orders from anyone but Adam and since he is not around for Fusion she doesn't take them from anyone. Just a guess.

No, Fusion comes DIRECTLY after Other M. The timeline is:

Zero Mission
Prime Series
Metroid 2
Super Metroid
Other M
Fusion

 

[sunburst]

http://screwattack.com/videos/TGO-Episode-40-Heavens-to-Metroid

/thread

1. /threading your own posts is retarded. Besides, that's like the 4th time that video has been linked.

2. Moviebob is one of the last people on Earth I'd look to for the definitive word on any Nintendo-centric argument, specifically any Nintendo-centric argument regarding feminism, and even more specifically any Nintendo-centric argument regarding feminism that revolves around a retro-controlled sequel to a classic Nintendo series. He's one of the biggest old school Nintendo fanboys I've ever seen and has never shown me he can look at things from a feminist point of view. I enjoyed that video but it's severely lacking in perspective.

She was never portrayed as anything before, she was a blank slate with no personality, that champion is what you filled the blanks in with, for all you know it really wasn't her.

Fine, let's ignore characterization through gameplay and assume we knew nothing about Samus the character before now so whatever personality they decided to go with is the real Samus. Samus Aran is officially an emotionally frail girl and not a badass bounty hunter who happens to be female. She is not and never should have been an icon of feminine strength in gaming. The badass we thought we knew was just a phantom created when we filled in the blanks with things that were never actually stated. She's simply another roadblock standing in the way of strong female characterization in the games industry. Is that what you want?

Seriously, are you listening to yourselves? What does it matter if the character we thought we knew was never beaten over our heads? How does that excuse taking an icon of strong, independent women and turning her into a submissive little girl? It's great if they want to turn Samus into a deeper character with more personality than a pistol, but they still made her into a shitty character. If they want to give Samus depth that doesn't suck, I will be behind them 100%. It's great that she's flawed and has emotions other than grim determination. It's not great that those flaws paralyze her and completely drown out any other characteristics she may have. There's really not much else I can say that hasn't already been said at least as eloquently. I will note that I know quite a few female gamers who were rabidly anticipating Other M. Every single one of them was royally pissed off when they finished it. No matter what your perspective on this is, that proves Nintendo did something wrong.

I hope Metroid gets past this and Samus becomes a more compelling character or at least reverts to a mostly silent badass. But if not, at least we still have Bayonetta if we want an example of powerful women positively defining themselves in gaming. She already has a well defined personality too so she can't be changed into a helpless little girl down the line.

 

[Gigaguy64]

"She has yet to have a bad game!" - quote from Gametrailer's Top 10 Best Female characters which named Samus #1.

At least they kept their words short and sweet because they have to eat them now!

Depends on what you mean by "bad".
I could have sworn that a Majority of the Major Critic Sites and Review Sites have been praising Metroid:Other M.
And that there is not shortage of people who Love the game, Like the Game, Dislike the Game, or Hate the Game.
http://www.metacritic.com/game/wii/metroid-other-m
Remember, Opinions are a wonderful thing and just because someone doesn't share yours doesn't mean they are wrong.

 

[Sylocat]

I have absolutely no doubt that Samus could be an emotional wreck under that armor, but I do doubt that she would talk about it. As far as I knew, she was a badass bounty hunter, or at least as badass as Nintendo can make one of their original characters.

I had grown fond of the no talkey, all shooty attitude that Samus had.

Given that almost all of her talking was in inner monologues (IE, not talking at all), I'd say they kept that pretty consistent.

 

[Therumancer]

I agree that it ruined the character even if I'm not a big fan. A lot has been said about this recently, and to be entirely honest the big problem is that the Samus in "Other M" is not consistant with the character from the other games.

I think what the problem is that the whole thing has fallen into the JRPG pitfall without being an RPG. That is to say that the guys writing the story and the ones who had developed the games had very little communication with each other, nor did the writer look back properly on the rest of the series. As a result the storyline and the gameplay are totally seperated from each other. Sort of like how as Yahtzee points out a snivling momma's boy like "Hope" at the beginning of "Final Fantasy XIII" will whip out a weapon and join the fray, killing monsters with ease, but then when it comes to the game itself, cinematics, and story progression it's like these things are never happening as his behavior cinematically does not mesh with the rest of the game.

By all reports the game PLAYS much like any other Metroid Game, but it's the bits that give Samus "personality" do so in such a way that pretty much contridicts what is happening in the game play, and the entire back story from previous games as well.

That said, I'm not a huge Metroid fan to begin with, and won't be running out to buy this game, but I do think this was a huge mistake by all reports. I do not however think it will kill the franchise, I just think it will be a bad game in the franchise that will hopefully be declared non-canon in short order. Other long running game franchises have had similar problems and resolved them. Metroid has been around long enough to afford a slip up, as long as they learn from it.

I'll also be honest in saying that it is possible that the designers decided to try and re-define Samus to make her "more popular" and missed the point entirely. I see this as being the "Lara Croft" complex, where as others (including Yahtzee) have mentioned she went from a coy, playful, free spirit, to a man bashing amazon rather suddenly based on changes in writing. Albiet in her case I don't think the changes ever generated this much of a negative response.

 

[Warachia]

I agree that the story and characterization were absolutely horrible, imagine for a second if Valve released half life 2: episode 3, where all cutscenes, gordon freeman is voiced by a monotone 20 something, and spends every single moment whining about his forgotten daddy issues, or how about giving Link the voice of Justin Bieber, have every single cutscene tell and retell about him whining about how his village was destroyed by moblins in the past, and that is why he is an angsty middle school crybaby now.

By your logic, these would make as great fleshing out to characters who have had otherwise no characterisation to begin with

 

[Iskenator67]

Other M was a huge letdown for me. It just revealed too much of the character and took away the mystery. That's what always intrigued me about Samus.

I fully understand where there coming from, there trying to show that Samus uses here tough image and attitude to hide the fact the she is a orphan to an alien world and has no sense of who she really is or ever will be.

If any of us were in her position we would be the same way. Imagine going through life with no sense of identity are belonging anywhere.

While this is an interesting story arc it would have been better to reveal it a little at a time and let us piece together then lay all their cards on the table at ounce.

It may be a sign that they have no idea where to go with her from here or it could be something else. We don't know.

One thing is for certain, sometimes it is better to stay in the dark friend.

 

[Lunar Templar]

this side of Samus doesn't surprise me, but they coulda left her some common sense (lava zone chase i'm looking at you)

far as i'm concerd, any one whinny about 'how they ruined Samus with other M' is an idiot and needs to read up on her back story before popping off again.
yes, its fanboy sounding, butits true, a lot of the whinning is from ppl who donno the back story,
and anything from G4 TVs fail feast that is Xplay, is ignorable anyway

What backstory? The manga that was only released in japan? Or the vague mentions of space pirates killing her family in the games that was never expanded on? What about the Chozo? That's part of her backstory too.

the manga is easy to get, google it and you should find it in to top few links (which expands on the pirate bit) as for the chozo upbringing, Other M is focusing on her military career, but yes, all of the above, i fail to see how letting her be 'human, flawed, and scarred by her past is a bad thing, since we HAVEN'T gotten any back story to speak of from the games

 

[Canid117]

Not sure if you guys have heard about this, but some girl from IGN wrote an article on how Metroid: Other M ruined Samus.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/112/1122068p1.html

Morgan Webb from G4 basically said the same thing.

Thoughts?

I thought it was Abbie Heppe who went on a rail against Other M a few weeks back. Though it wouldn't surprise me if Webb did criticize it vocally considering her opinion on SCII's cantina stripper.

 

[Gigaguy64]

You're the one who brought up Fusion, but now that you have I'll say this. Other M is almost identical, yet still manages to be worse. Right down to the story and plot twist(OH NOES THE FEDERATION IS BREEDING METROIDS!). Congrats, Sakamoto, you've made the same game twice. It plays similar with Adam (who, for the record had a terrible sacrafice) forcing you go from save point to save point for no reason other then to remove exploration, only this one is even more linear.

Yea i did, i though that was what you were talking about in response to the post you first quoted me on.

Anyway, a lot of the same concepts have been reused in the Entire metroid series.
The Entirity of the Prime series was Space Pirates using Phazon to MAKE SCIENCE and breed MAOR METROIDZZZZZ.
But remember the Federation is doing far more than just breeding Metroids.
Even more than what they were doing in Fusion.
I did still like the Prime story better than OM's even though it wasn't as noticeable.
Though now talking about OM i do agree that the Linearity is too much.(I was talking about Fusion in my earlier Regards to linearity)

As for charging, except for a few fights like the Ridley fight you almost always will be able to get enough time to charge, assuming you take enough damage that one more hit will kill you. Even then you can usually instant kill an enemy with one of your pointless flashy instant kill moves and just charge right away.

Well considering that the opponents you can instakill usually take a lot of normal shots to kill without using the Move, the instakill is hardly pointless, and i felt it was there to show off Samus's Versatility and how Acrobatic she is.

As for it being developed by Japanese developers? I still expect them to have a grasp of decent story telling and characterization. What you make isn't immediately dictated by where you come from, there have been some amazing things to come out of Japan.

right, but there are some things that are done by other Countrys just because that's how they like to do things, and its different than other Countrys so some people view it as bad or Wrong when to them, its probably the only way to go.
Like the Monologues, thats a commen thing found in Many Japanese games.
Sometimes it works sometimes it doesn't.

It just seems that Sakamoto is terrible at this sort of thing and really shouldn't be given complete creative control.

Well, he was given controll and some people like it.
others don't.
It really all comes down to your personal view of Samus, and like it or not, its not the Same as Sakamoto's.

The story is terrible and completely pointless. Samus serves no purpose in the storyline this time around. Everything would have happened the exact same if she hadn't been there with the sole exception that it would have taken them a few minutes longer to get into the main building. Even the ending is pointless because it isn't thanks to samus that Madeline survives, it's thanks to Anthony. Adam's sacrafice is pointless and only exists because we know he dies in Fusion. His job could have been done by throwing a bomb into sector zero or getting into Samus' ship and shooting it at it. His sacrifice could have been done in a more touching, if more cliche, way at another point in the story.

Like iv said, i felt this game was made to add more Characterization to Samus.
Good or Bad doesn't matter because that's what was done.
And in a game that shows Samus's interactions with other People it would be weird to have her do everything and leave the other characters in the dark.
And she does pretty much everything else.
And we don't know for sure if they would have ever gotten into the Ship, the only way in was through that door and Samus's weapons were the ONLY way of opening them without Damaging the Ship, which is a major point of the whole operation.
They were there to Clean out the ship but not to Destroy it or cause Major Damage.
And using Samus's Gunship would have done Major Damage to the Bottle Ship.
So someone had to go and Kill the Metroids, and Adam knowing that Samus is more Valuable than Him and wanting to protect her, decides to sacrifice himself.
Now even though i agree that he died to make it cannon to fusion, that's kind of touching to me.
But oh well, i think were gonna haft to Agree to Disagree.

See and that's the thing about linearity. Fusion wasn't too bad. It got annoying sometimes, but you weren't so firmly railroaded as you were in Other M which was just terrible. I'd honestly say that Fusion was far more fun then Other M and I am far from a fan of fusion, but this game is making me reflect fondly on that game.

Also the bottle ship serves the exact same purpose the BSL station did in fusion, unless I'm remembering wrong. One replicates Zebes one replicates SR388 so yeah. Same plot different location, one has more anime than the other. One's also less fun than the other.

Yea they are Basically the same thing.
Except the BSL had more Dedicated Breading environments, they even had Nocturnal Environments.
But i like the Style of Gameplay in Other M.
I also LOVE the Side Scrolling Gameplay found in fusion and Zero Mission.
Iv honestly like every Metroid iv ever played and i actually have a hard time deciding which style i like best.
To me fun is fun.

As for the monologues, they could have worked but they went against two major design principals. The first being the major law of a visual medium. Show Don't Tell. Most of what she talked about was EXACTLY what was going on screen. She could have perhaps given us more detail, said something more interesting, she didn't just have to narrate the scene. Or even just talked less to make it more bearable. They also really needed a better voice for her. She had a bland, monotone voice which just made it grating to the ears and hard to get into. Even if she wasn't just blandly narrating the scenes and telling us exactly what we were seeing, it would have been difficult to get into this or get into the character because she sounded like a bloody robot.

And this is where i say we agree.
all she did was repeat and give a lame explanation of something we already knew.
many parts could have been more powerful(right after Adam Died) if we had just been SHOWN them instead of having to listen to the Voice they gave Samus, which was horrible.

Also on the subject of getting into the ship, in the scene they were talking about it. They had at least two ways of getting in without causing massive damage that would have just taken longer. Samus just had the fastest way possible. So the entire game would have just taken, say, an hour or so later maybe more rather then that exact time if Samus never showed up.

Still without Samus there were many things they wouldn't have been able to do.
Like traversing the interior of the Ship and Fighting some of the Enemies.
Though thinking about it...i think a Metroid Game where you play as a member of a Squad of federation Marines investigating ancient Chozo Ruins or Space Pirate wreckage would be a cool idea.
Teamwork could be crucial to exploration, and fighting.
Like they did a few times in Other M.

 

[Warachia]

Samus may not be human but she has emotions and who's to say they were not thinking that much in to it, it seemed intentional to me.

People shouldn't have to fill in the blanks for a character, especially a main character. Filling in the blanks proved her to be a flat and boring character instead of a dynamic one.

As for the manga, video games and manga/other media, especially on Nintendo's part seem to be non cannon, take a look at the Zelda manga for example.

Just watch what this user posted...

This argument is idiotic. Where does it state that Samus is a cold blooded ***** that eats testicles for lunch? Actually, moviebob said it better than me: http://screwattack.com/videos/TGO-Episode-40-Heavens-to-Metroid

It made a one dimensional character third dimensional and suddenly that is a bad thing? Are we really that accustomed to the emotionless angry fuckheads that wouldn't smile even if they won a billion dollars while getting sucked off by Angelina Jolie and watching "insert hilarious movie title here" that we can't accept any other character archetype?

And I thank you for that man.

DAMMIT BOB. Way to miss the point again. The thing about character is you DO NOT need to give a character a personality via narrative. A character can be given a personality WITHOUT any exposition at all, let's look at Krotos for a second, in gameplay, the way he fights, moves, the weapons he uses, and his finishers, and even without cutscenes, you know this guy's a psycopath, and can fill in most of the rest of his character without needing to hear about his tragic family, SEVERAL games (and movies) characterise their characters based entirely on what they do, or don't do, which is what the previous metroids more or less did.

Also, if you want to go into character, why, in a cutscene, was she crying over past military issues, PTSD, and a metroid, (other than having a completely shallow fragile core,) and then fighting by grabbing onto a giant eye and blowing it apart, or shoving a gun down other creatures throats, and let's not forget the moment of being swallowed by a creature intentionally so that you could blow it's stomach open.

 

[jacx]

i loved metroid fusion and metriod prime and i liked her as a mute killing machine i dun like her new persona