Kyrian007 said:
sumanai said:
Seriously, watch the videos that Warachia linked to.
I did. The guy lost his argument (when referencing Fusion) very early on when he said "and from this we can extrapolate that Samus..." and the rest is unimportant.
Okay, that's not true AT ALL. Logical extrapolation from existing and observable actions does NOT become nullified simply because it takes a smidgen of brain power to make the connection.
As the Extra Credits guys stated, "Actions" are what define a character, and we've had nearly 10 Metroid games where Samus has been defined chiefly by her actions. The problem that arises is that these actions don't sync up with the personality and actions demonstrated in Other M.
Kyrian007 said:
See, that's what HE got out of examining her actions. But about 2 dozen other interpretations of her actions are possible at least, and he refused to see that possibility. He ignored the values he didn't want and projected the values that he wanted to believe about her and let that define her since there were no contradictory insights into her character given (until OM.)
Again, I disagree. If Samus had had, perhaps, just one solitary game from the NES, I might be inclined to agree with you, but time and time and time again, Samus has been developed and fleshed out, beyond just her dialogue and characterization in Fusion.
It is not projection to say that Samus committed genocide against the Metroid race, it is not opinion to say Samus voluntarily chose a profession of isolation and danger, it is not open to discussion whether or not she's saved entire races of creatures, killed Ridley multiple times, and blew up entire planets in her wake, it is not conjecture to say Samus has endured many of these ordeals with strength, virtue, courage, intelligence, and sheer determination. Those are not open to debate; those are FACTS, facts which are reinforced from Metroid to Metroid Prime to Prime 2 to Prime 3 to Metroid 2 to Super Metroid to Fusion.
Other M is FULL of contradictions to how Samus behaves. Ever play Zero Mission? Ever fight Ridley? How did Samus look when Ridley attacked her? Bear in mind, this was when she was extremely young, and canonically this was her first mission and first time battling Ridley.
Yeah, that doesn't look ANYTHING like a Samus that's about to curl up into a ball, have a minute-long freakout hissy fit, and freeze up in fear while begging for help. That expression says so much more than a minute-long monologue; it is one of resolution, shock, anger, defiance... it is NOT one of helplessness, crippling fear, or being intimidated.
Why do you think the very phrase "actions speak LOUDER than words" exists? If Samus says "Adam is worth respecting and following" and yet Adam does nothing to warrant this, Adam's actions speak louder than Samus's words.
Kyrian007 said:
That's the same mistake all of those people made, they did not accept the possibility that they were just wrong about Samus' motivations and personality. And that possibility was always there. And Fusion (as much as everyone is pointing to it as the "defining" game) was no different, it always leaves that kind of values judgment to the player. There's always another reason she could have been making the choices she did.
Again, certain behavior don't make SENSE with Samus's new personality (such as the Zero Mission scene above). I think YOU'RE the one looking too deeply into the possibility that over 25 years of character development, which nearly every Metroid fan was in agreement about, are suddenly thrown out the window with the release of one new game because we've all been mistaken and Samus was a timid little submissive dimwit this whole time.
And many things in Fusion are NOT left "to the judgment of the player". Samus outright STATES she is "someone who dislikes taking orders"; that is a character-defining trait established in Fusion, yet in Other M she bends over backwards like a trained seal to do anything and everything Adam commands her to do, when he commands her to do it, to the point of, well, burning alive for no good reason in the lava level because he didn't tell her to PROTECT herself. That's a HUGE contradiction.
Then look at the contradictions between how your own ALLIES treat her. In Metroid Prime 3, in the military, she is respected. Soldiers come up to her and go "Wow! It's an honor to meet you!" and "You're THE Samus Aran? No way!". The game even ends with the commander in charge (hey hey! A male authority figure who gives you commands!... but his commands make SENSE!) giving Samus a very respectful and grateful salute.
Now look at Other M; she's treated like a child running with scissors. Nobody trusts her. She gets picked on, talked down to, verbally and physically abused, and even at the very, very end of the game, she gets intimidated and mocked by the military doofus that shows up. That does NOT sync up with the way Samus was treated by the military in prior games.
But, even if you're right (and I don't believe you are), and we all were wrong, and this is the "real" Samus... well, then it's not an improvement in the slightest. Rather, as a girl gamer with barely a single strong female game heroine to relate to and admire, it's an enormous and regressive step back that paints Samus as a stupid Bella Swan that's in dire need of male acceptance while struggling with mommy issues and needing brave, swarthy men to keep saving her when she starts acting hysterical. So even if this was the very first game to come out, and Samus had no prior characterization, the personality they saddled her with is derisively, if unintentionally, sexist, demeaning, unlikeable, annoying, and dis-empowering, and that's regardless of gender. People would say Master Chief lost his balls if he did the same thing.
Kyrian007 said:
Prime is irrelevant in judging Samus character in OM, it happens after OM and therefore any personality it assigns her could have come after any learning experiences she may have had in OM or afterword.
Once again, this is incorrect. The Prime Trilogy takes place between Metroid 1 and Metroid 2, which themselves take place before Super Metroid, Fusion, and, of course, Other M. That was confirmed in the Metroid timeline in my Prime trilogy game, as well as by both Nintendo and Retro Studios, so, well, that means you have two options now.
1) Take the Prime games into consideration, which hurts your arguments that she learned from Other M to become the more mature person you JUST admitted she became in the Prime games...
or
2) Throw out the Prime games entirely, because their depiction of Samus and the views others have of her does not correlate to Other M's portrayals.
Kyrian007 said:
And by the way, there's nothing wrong with making those kind of value judgments about undefined characters, people do it all the time. The folly is finding fault with the storyteller when you find out you were wrong about the personality you projected on a blank slate character.
We've been over this. She was not a blank slate character. She had an actively established and explored personality in several of these past games preceding Other M. Watch the Extra Credits episode for more examples.
Kyrian007 said:
I didn't imagine Samus as such a potentially flawed and emotionally scarred character, but then again I didn't whine and cry when I found out she was.
Then you obviously were clueless about Samus as a character. I wouldn't cry and whine if Batman suddenly started wearing Wonder Womans's outfit and lady's make-up due to psychological trauma from his parent's death years ago, not if I had no idea who Batman was. But, well, Batman as a character is very much established, and fans would most CERTAINLY whine and cry about it because they DO know Batman's past, and a twist like that would not be widely accepted. Samus, once again, WAS defined in prior games, and these alterations should be criticized and addressed.
Kyrian007 said:
Ultimately when a previously un-defined character...
We've been over this... saying she was undefined is untrue and shows you either didn't play enough Metroid games or didn't pay close enough attention.
Kyrian007 said:
...is finally given a personality and backstory, one is left with 2 choices. Enjoy the story for what it is (and hope it gets better as it goes along as I have,) or pack it up and go home.
So, are you seriously telling me Metroid fans have two choices? Like it, or shut up and go away? You must not do much creative work, because that's the WORST way to handle feedback. If people had done that, they would have murdered the Devil May Cry series when DMC2 came out, sucked horribly, and people demanded a return of the more beloved Dante and gameplay for DMC3. When Twisted Metal went sour with TM3&TM4, fans complained bitterly, and the series returned to its successful, critically acclaimed roots with Twisted Metal Black. When Mortal Kombat went on a tailspin with terrible games, they rebounded with the newest game, to high critical and commercial success, under the motto, even, of "give the fans what they've been asking for."
If you love a brand, as I do, and love a character, such as Samus, keeping silent or pretending to like it is the WORST thing to do. As someone that adores Metroid, adores Samus, and respects Nintendo, I would say it's actually our duty to inform them directly about how we feel.
And I have. I've e-mailed them. I told them precisely what I did, and did not, like. After all, the creator of the game asked as much of me. The creator, Yoshio Sakamoto, flat-out ASKED for feedback. Your advice (enjoy it or move on) goes contrary to his wishes.
Kyrian007 said:
If someone doesn't like Metroid anymore because they can't respect or identify with Samus I don't have a problem with that. It kills immersion when you can't identify with a character, that's why videogames are so full of silent protagonists.
I would actually say the era of the silent protagonist is nearly gone. I can almost count on one hand all the "silent" protagonists we have left (Gordan Freeman, some Halo heroes, Link), but nearly everyone else in this modern gaming age is voiced or given personalities. The reason we continue to play games like Gears of War, God of War, Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, etc., is because you can STILL identify and relate to certain characters, even if they have expressive personalities.
Again, I'm a woman... 99% of all video games star male characters. Does that mean I can't relate to Solid Snake, or immerse myself as Cloud in Final Fantasy VII, or understand and enjoy playing as a hyper-macho Gears of War meathead? Can a man never enjoy or understand a Tomb Raider game because Lara Croft is female, with a British voice, and a background different from their own?
Kyrian007 said:
But finding fault with the story team for somehow "not getting the character right" when they were the first ones to define her character... that's pretty ridiculous.
So's claiming that Other M was the first one to define her character. Seriously, play more Metroid games. There exists more than Other M. Refresh your memory about certain events if you have, or at least pay attention to the story between blasting monsters. Just because the games didn't have 2 hours of cutscenes and the gameplay was king did not mean the story, and Samus's character, was non-existent.
Kyrian007 said:
Despite other problems that they had with the storytelling (the framing device for removing Samus powerups and the pushing the "baby" symbolism so hard a 6 year old could understand it) one thing they couldn't get wrong was Samus' character.
And yet, they did. Oh, boy did they ever.
Kyrian007 said:
They were the first to define it in such detail that the player could not define it themselves any way they wanted.
Again, that was never the problem. She's been defined very clearly in the past in a way that players can't define certain details for themselves (such as "I dislike taking orders")and we were more than okay with that. It's the contradictions and regressive treatment she received that upset most of us.
Kyrian007 said:
Maybe they shouldn't have, and just should have left her a blank slate.
She wasn't a blank slate.
Kyrian007 said:
But I won't blame them for trying something different. Choosing not to innovate in any way would have denied us the entire Prime series and leads to the kind of thinking that produces "Game X" "numbered sequel" X's Revenge. We see far too much of that these days.
I only partially agree. I AM a game designer as my chosen profession, and innovation is the lifeblood of the industry. But there's also such a thing as reasonable innovation and unnecessary alterations.
See, for all that Prime did differently, the guts of the game are near identical to Super Metroid. The music, sound effects, non-linear exploration, puzzles, powers, enemies, upgrades, and atmosphere are pure Metroid. The way the game is played is exactly the same as Super Metroid, just from a first-person perspective. Was it a gamble? Yes, but Metroid fans such as myself enjoyed the game because it was still everything we wanted from a Metroid game. Our fears that it would become an action-driven shooter game that shunned exploration, self-discovery, speed running, and puzzle-solving were proven unfounded.
Guess what Other M is? An action-driven shooter game that shunned exploration, self-discover, speed running, and puzzle-solving in favor of a catastrophically bad narrative, bloated cutscenes, arbitrary linearity (complete with pointless dead ends and hair-pulling, pace-killing pixel-hunts), and that blasted authorization system that robbed any self of self-empowerment or reward from the game (earning a suit feature or power is always more rewarding than having some guy restrict them then give them to you piece-meal when he FEELS like it).
Sure, making a game that looks, sounds, feels, and plays unlike any Metroid game in the past is a gamble. But it was also a stupid gamble. They tossed out the things people loved, things even MODERN games took inspiration from (you'd better believe Batman: Arkham Asylum followed the Metroid formula to a fault). That's like going to Vegas to the roulette table and betting your life savings all on black. Yes, it's a gamble. Yes, that boldness is commendable. No, it's still a stupid, stupid thing to do.
Ultimately, you just echo everything Movie Bob has said in the past, and his entire argument hinges on the fact that he believes, as you seem to, that Samus has no prior characterization, that she was a blank slate, and that Other M was the bold, innovative attempt to fill the void, and thus SOMETHING is better than NOTHING.
I don't believe that. I, like others, don't believe ANY character development is better than little to none, just as I also don't believe that Samus lacked character development in the past nor that she lacked an established personality. Several people have countered and deconfirmed that misinformed perception, from the Extra Credits people, to the Elephant in the Room article, to the Heavens to Bob rebuff, to even the Prime guys at Retro Studios (who had some amazing interviews about how hard they worked to show off Samus's personality through body language, clever cutscenes, and gameplay).
This woman, this strong, smart, capable, amiable, powerful, independent, confident warrior woman with a zest for life and a penchant for doing the impossible, as has been established in prior games... this woman does not exist in Other M. And the gaming world is the lesser for her absence.