My big thing about Samus' personality is that even WITHOUT much of a voice or even the core lore, we still got to know her so well in the Prime games. Yes, she walks around armed to the teeth, but often she doesn't use it until after she's spent several minutes playing the part of interstellar detective, archeologist, anthropologist. She examines corpses and has her suit's AI geared to provide a detailed report on cause of death. She reads through the history logs of entire species. Yes, she's killed plenty of sentient beings, herself, but it's her duty in the course of uncovering whatever terrible fate befell whichever civilization. And in combat, even when she's hurt, her voice remains calm and composed -- she doesn't cry out unless something hits really hard, and even then, it's with a rough, mature voice, not the vaguely erotic whimpering of most video game heroines. Occasionally, the flash of enemy gunfire shows us the reflection of her eyes in her visor -- large and expressive, but half-lidded, contemplative, with a warrior's clarity to keep her alive. The Samus I met in Prime is guided by her need to pay respect to fallen civilizations by learning everything she can about what happened to them. To that end, she's prepared to fight and bleed as much as she needs to -- just so that in some small way, these lost species can still have their stories told. She's the kind of person who's honed her rampant emotions into a single razor-sharp point: she's strong /because/ she cares so much, and because of that, nothing can shake her as long as she has her heart.
*Slow clap* that was beautiful. I believe that is the way we should describe Samus Aran now. ... we need explanations like this for every game character.
The notion that Samus never had any character before Other M is a lie in itself. Look at the best ending to Prime 2, when Samus has finished destroying the Ing and is walking out to her ship to leave. All the Luminoth bow to her for saving their planet, and the only acknowledgement she gives is a raised hand as she's pretty much out the door as if to say "no problem." That's a character. It's as defining as Han Solo replying with "I know" when Leia tells him she loves him before his possible death. In fact I'd probably go so far as to say Prime 2 does the overall best job of characterizing Samus through the way she reacts and interacts with the environment and events in the story.
Another example of her having character, though, is in Metroid 2. The "badass Boba Fett" that people like to think Samus is wouldn't have left that Metroid live. She felt sorry for it, so she spared its life and let it go for research. In Metroid Fusion, Samus had monologues and even argued with the computer. This is reflected in Other M. So yeah, Samus did have character, but Other M didn't ruin it. They just showed it more explicitly. Gamers just in general don't like Samus Aran; right down to the point where they don't even like her talking, despite the fact that *she's talked since the very beginning*.
***** 1. It's NOT implied that Samus felt sorry for the Infant Metroid. The Infant followed her (as described in Super Metroid) and she brought it back to the Federation so they could experiment on it. It was then revealed that the Metroid powers could be used for good... something denied by Other M in its own story by Colonel Douche (you know the guy I'm talking about). So she brought the Metroid back... but suddenly she's afraid of going against Adam's convictions which mean she HAS no conviction besides Adam... That doesn't make any sense. 2. I love Metroid and I love Samus Aran... I don't mind a character talking... I mind about a character being correctly portrayed and she's not. Not because she's talking or anything... because of the role she's playing in Other M: she doesn't accomplish anything and she can't do anything... She doesn't understand what initiative is! Something that Metroid was the prime focus! Initiative, exploration and accomplishment! I love Samus Aran because I could become Samus Aran. We were one entity, one character that we could relate on... because a game doesn't always have to deliver a cinematic experience. I don't want to spectate, I want to play. This is why I love Metroid because I'm in a world... and I speak for myself... so the voice of Samus... is mine! So yeah, I hate Samus in Other M because she's not the same way she has been portrayed in the previous games at all. And the fact she's shot in the back and likes Adam for it... No way! 3. This game also copies and pastes Metroid Fusion and Samus was more fleshed out here than Other M.
ScepticalCynic How is having a story and giving her a character that actually does stay true to the other games (rather than what you imagined it to be) smearing all over the franchise?
Because that is what YOU imagine. You imply it's true to the franchise while it's not. This game can't even connect Super to Fusion which is even more insulting. In all games, you discover the story with a visual progression and you can figure out what's happening So yeah, tell us why it's true to the franchise. Tell us why this Samus (being shot in the back) is an acceptable character.
Alexandre Armont Because if Samus had no care for the metroids and all the other creatures, how would there even be a Super Metroid? Yes, the metroid followed her at the end of 2, but she could have just as easily destroyed it right there. Samus knows her job, but she's also merciful and kind. She literally didn't complete her mission in that game to favor her own emotions. That's not to say Other M has a good story or even a better characterization for Samus; it doesn't. At all. But it doesn't shit on the franchise. It even works with the official manga. You seem to be more critical on how the story is told rather than the story itself (although to be fair, the story is awful). Everyone seems to be over-reacting with Samus' character in this game because she's being portrayed as someone who acts with emotions, which is something that is not only hinted at in earlier games, but it's also more realistic and believable, as *people do act a certain way because of their emotions*.
what standard are we going with? 6.7 out of 10 is just barely passable. im going over critic review, cause watcher review kind of biased cause people that like it seem like a fan of the game.
Khanh Nguyen Only problem is, IMDB's average critical scoring is still an imperfect system, I mean according to that, *Dark Knight Rises* is a better movie than both *Citizen Kain*, *A Clockwork Orange* and *2001 a Spaaace Odyssey*. A critics opinion is by no mean an unbiased opinion: their opinions is still subjective and is prone to be influenced by their social statues, their cultures and personnal bagage. Not to mention, a low-profile movie is bound to have less critical attention than one that was heavily advertised, hence why movies that are too "out there" like *Visitor Q*, despite being a big favourite of people working in films and old critics is only rated 6.8, thanks to his low scoring amongst more "mainstream critics", used to cater to a broader audience, and thus less inclined to rate positively productions that are too weird, while at the same time, ùDark Knight Risesù, considered almost universally to be "passable to OK at best" is listed as one of the 100 best movies of all time with a score of 8.4 Truth is, "Average Score" are pretty much meaningless, what matters are reviews, not review scores. Because one well written review made by someone who knows and studied the subject matter is worth a thousands papers written by underpayed intern looking to fill a blank in today's edition of a dailly newspaper.
Another aspect of Samus' personality that comes accross especially strong in the Prime Trilogy is her Lovecraftian inability to "not know". When faced with a mystery, she can't possibly not investigate until she knows the truth. She's seen the real universe and can't look away.
To be fair, while you are correct in your assessment. it's that single minded determination to find the truth that has allowed her time and time again to save the universe.
@Starscream91 The fact you can analyze every document and creature you come across shows us that Samus is a very factual and informative character. We wouldn't have the option to analyze everything if she wasn't.
Perhaps, the whole "have to get permission from Adam to take a piss" dynamic in Other M's plot wouldn't have been so bad if Adam was actually an interesting or compelling character, an inspiring leader, someone WORTH idealizing in the first place, regardless of his sex, but the fact that he's just another, boring, soulless military stereotype adds insult to injury.
Quite possibly the BEST example a game delivering backstory through in-play comms-chatter is StarFox 64. The banter between the core team is SO entertaining, and conversely, in the harder of the game's two possible second-to-last levels the comms-chatter of the enemy-characters served to underscore how little they were expecting you to succeed at getting that far through Andross' defenses, and thus making you, the player, feel that much more BADASS!
Course, that didn't mean we LIKED all the characters... hands up for everyone who intentionally killed Slippy? That was legitimately a strategy my brothers and I found in an old GameFAQs sheet. I think it was the second or third planet on the normal/"easy" route in SF64. Some magma monster or whatever would capture him I think. But uh... when we killed Slippy it was usually just because he was annoying.
The worst part? Sakamoto had near complete and total control over every aspect of the game. This is one person's vision primarily. This is Auteurship gone horribly wrong. Even worse, Sakamoto _hated_ the fact that everyone had their own vision of who Samus was. This demure woman, subservient to her father figure, was his _correction_ of who everyone thought Samus was. This means basically that we're never going to get a "return to form" metroid game. This is his vision. Any future metroid games by Sakamoto are going to be this. The only other metroid games we might get are if Rare are allowed to do another Prime series, which notably, Sakamoto really wasn't a huge fan of, and didn't think they fit in with Metroid in any way shape or form. This gives me little hope of them returning to Prime in anything other than the multiplayer games. After reading countless interviews, I can say with some confidence that Sakamoto thinks he has a masterpiece on his hands. Sakamoto is essentially the George Lucas or the M. Night Shyamalan of the Metroid series at this point.
+firestorm713 "This means basically that we're never going to get a "return to form" metroid game" Well, seeing as they ditched him and his interpretation of Metroid for a Prime spin-off....
It's sad, because the most interesting parts of Samus's character never even made it to Other M. They put someone completely different there. Samus isn't just a badass: she's an intelligent, cultured woman with very diverse knowledge (literature, physics, history, biology - she wrote the logbook entries in Metroid Prime herself, IIRC). Why not have a situation in which her scholarly knowledge actually helps her? Why not show a hint of some philosophy on her part? After all, she grew up with a race of spiritual enlightened aliens. If you want flaws, why not show her get overconfident because she's so used to just flattening every threat she encounters? There was so much of her character that could've been explored, with probably less work than went into writing all those boring monologues. In fact, just CUTTING stupid stuff like the infamous "need authorization to not be cooked alive" sequence would've done the game much good. It feels so bad knowing that hours of work have been wasted just to make stuff that undermined the game instead of making it better.
Antonio SCENDRATE GATTICO Thank you! Samus is so much more than just a tough girl. Shes smart, resourceful (killling bosses with exposed electrical wires) and has a interesting and unique personal story. Shes not looking for a father figure and isnt independamt because she desperately needs approval.
If anything, I'd like to see her flaws revolve more around stunted socialization as an adolescent. She was basically raised from about 10 to adulthood alone on a planet with two aliens, after all. It might explain why she seems to favor "sexy" clothing (short-shorts and a crop top) as her casual dress despite her reticence and lack of emotional attachments.
AubriGryphon True, that would also be interesting. A major point of her character is how she's so alien and different from other humans, that she is human only in looks. She is so perfect, but because of that, she barely knows what humanity is like.
I read in an article that Yoshio Sakamoto (the writer) had this to say about Other M's plot: "because of the existence of the Metroid Prime series many people might have different ideas about what kind of person Samus Aran was….So with Other M I really wanted to determine and express what kind of human Samus Aran is so that we can really tell what kind of natural step she should be taking in the future." So that just implied that a lot of the characterization in the past was just someone else's speculation as to what they THOUGHT Samus's character was Sorry Sakamoto, but if Other M is an indication of what YOU want Samus to be then I'll stick with the different ideas
Actually, the Chozo raised her from 3 years old to 14. At 14, she joined the Galactic Federation. Soon after, her adoptive family was wiped out by space pirates, and she left the federation to become a bounty hunter. The manga (only released in Japan, but you can find fan-translations online) actually covered a decent amount of her backstory and personality. Most of which was ignored by Other M =/ Between the manga and Fusion, we already had a bit of her personality. She's well-educated, but also impulsive and reckless. She's suffered the loss of almost everyone she cares about. And she's definitely suffering from either PTSD or some other trauma-related mental illness. And that's not even getting into the countless continuity errors the game causes! Mother Brain's portrayal in Other M is an almost 180 from her manga personality. In Other M, her clone became evil because her feelings were hurt. But in the manga, the whole reason she betrayed the Chozo and sided with the space pirates was because she didn't feel emotion, nor understood it. I haven't seen anyone actually talk about that.
i feel like if you want to make a silent protagonist have a personality, just giving them one would be fine, you don't have to mess with the silent part, just show it in different ways or even make a character who is physically mute, no vocal cords and/or tongue or whatever so the devs have no choice but to break canon or express the character's personality through actions rather than dialogue I JUST FRICKIN' REALIZED THAT'S BASICALLY WHAT NINTENDO DID WITH LINK!!!! except he's a selective mute, not actual mute, but still you see his personality through his actions, going on his quest to save Zelda or Hyrule or both or something else with no questions except maybe how to do it
In BOTW Link gets a couple cool snippets of characterization: He is clearly happy when he is cooking. Look at his face, listen to his chuckle when a dish turns out well. Similarly, he enjoys shield surfing - he laughs and does a spin move when you jump while doing a shield surf. And NPCs repeatedly comment that he looks like he's expecting a reward whenever you finish a quest for them.
in a Link Between Worlds, he actually do talk to NPC's we just don't get to see what he says, he just get to see their response. Aside from the few "Yes/No/Agree/disagree/followme" options.
I agree with you, my characters in my game either can't talk normally (one of my characters is a amorphic sentient gel cat, she can only say some words and mostly talk in understandable meows) or just prefer to use their fists or actions to define them. they may say a sentence or two but nothing really ground breaking. And they'll take jabs at the fourth wall for laughs
I rather enjoyed the Metroid manga that Other M is based off of--Samus is given a backstory, a personality, and a motivation. Most importantly, it sets up the world and explains just how personal the first Metroid game is. It even shows Samus having a PTSD episode the first time she meets Ridley after her parents were killed. But the funny thing is, SHE GETS OVER IT AND WRECKS HIS ASSHOLE. Using Samus's PTSD to justify the Ridley scene makes no goddamn sense, because even if you disregard the Prime games, she has defeated Ridley and he's been assumed dead two or three times now. I can't believe that such an unbelievable hack writer managed to accidentally create the most powerful female icon in gaming, but apparently he wants everyone to know that she's supposed to be a simpering weakling.
the ptsd was only introduced in passing by conjecture as part of subplot to show samus's growth. it wasn't supposed be super long lasting permanent plot device because then there would of been plot holes because of how often ridley fights samus. to be truthful the manga made it seem more like a panic attack from samus at an early point in her career that she inevitibly moves past rather than actual ptsd. Also yoshi sakamoto was only 1 of 4 a game designers its probably why his "vision" is so different from the depiction shown before he took control of series and it turns out he is gonna start working on stuff other than metroid :) so hopefully someone else will be able to take the helm
For those who defend other m saying that it gave Samus a personality, I have another counter argument. The Manga. The Manga was released 6 years before other m and gave Samus a much better personality and character than this piece of crap. We actually got to see Samus interact with other characters, we got to see her emotional struggle and how she overcomes it. That scene in the Beginning of volume 2 of the Manga pretty much did what the Ridley scene was trying to do but right. For one the scene is actually pretty intense and isn't just Samus having an incredibly vague flashback; and two, that was the first time she saw Ridley not the fiftieth time and in the end of the Manga which was also the end of zero mission, Samus beats the crap out of him while taunting him which means that by the point the games start, Samus had already controlled her fear of Ridley and the trauma he caused. Also the Manga is confirmed canon. Boom.
this is going to end up like game theory where I just keep watching different videos until I've eventually watched them all and am hanging on each episode
On your topic of adding too much or too little personality to a character I was reminded of how Isaac Clarke suddenly had a voice and a personality in Dead Space 2. The difference between having that be a bad thing or a good thing was that even though Isaac in the first game didn't talk, in the sequel he felt like the same character based on his actions. In Other M, Samus became a wimp for no reason after being a complete badass, this is why her character fell flat. In Dead Space 2, however, Isaac could still solve puzzles, fight necromorphs and protect the people he knew just like in the first game, only this time around he talked and showed more personality. I just thought I'd point out that turning a once "blank slate" into a character can be done right.
Wow this is the perfect example, you are COMPLETELY right. A lot of people are saying "oh you just can't turn voice-less characters into voice characters without pissing people off" but DS1-2 did this PERFECTLY. He felt exactly the same.
Well, technically Isaac did have a voice in Dead Space 1, but it was mostly only used to scream in terror/agony when he gets brutalized by a necromorph.
I'm glad you presented this as a learning experience. And I happen to agree with all the points you make. You kind of pointed out that Other M is the polar opposite of Super Metroid. SMet had the hidden tutorials and told the story in-game, without the use of cinematics. And now that you mention it, having the comm system active with chatter could have brought in so much more tension. There could be sequences where you need to get to the other side of a sector to save [forgettable character C], and all you can hear is his struggling while you rush to save him. build the tension, and then you could have big boss battle, or comedic payoff where the critter giving him trouble was one that Samus easily dispatches... I still think that there's potential with continuing Metroid in Project Ninja's style, especially with how they pegged the little things, like creature design, hiding items, and maintaining challenge. point is to learn from what happened and not tear it apart for it's flaws. Now, I'm going to go to Sector 0.
When you brought up the Zelda cartoon I thought you were going to be like a lot of forum posters who basically bring it up to say that Link should *never* talk or have a personality because he'd inevitably end up like that. I'm glad to see you didn't quite go that far- it's more that a bad characterization is worse than no characterization. It's quite possible that both Samus and Link might end up with better defined personalities in the future.
Actions define a character, indeed. To such an extent, in fact, that inanimate objects can often be seen as having character of their own, such as a "temperamental" old car or fidgety PC. You don't dialogue to define a character when their actions are enough to give you an idea of the personality which would lead to them.
I actually like the "WELL EXCUUUUUUSE ME PRINCESS" i would love to see it in the games as the only piece of voice acting shoehorned in as much as possible.
+HK Normann I don't think voice acting would be a good idea, but it would be hilarious if someone said that in a zelda game and they were shunned for referencing the cartoon.
I hate to be 'that guy', but Team Ninja only handled the design and gameplay aspects of Other M. The story was mainly written by Yoshio Sakamoto, who works for Nintendo. This fact alone refutes the entire argument of Team Ninja having no experience writing a game leading to Other M's downfall. The writing was still bad, but you're blaming the wrong people here. The rest of the video is spot on, though.
And, uh, not to be 'that guy' either, but he never blamed them for the writing. He brought up the way that the story was presented, not how it was written, and he pointed to the cutscene company that worked with Team Ninja, not Team Ninja itself.
Spencer Timm Guess I worded it wrong, but Nintendo is responsible for the crappy story. This saddens me, but Sakamoto is essentially the George Lucas of the Metroid franchise.
You still kinda ignored what I just said. Nintendo chose the wrong company to present the story. From the things that the team said just now, they were saying that the core story - a woman dealing with trauma and overcoming it with an old trusted friend - was good, but the way that it was presented killed any proper impact it could have had. Which Nintendo is responsible for only in the way that a publisher picking a bad production company is responsible for the 'ruining' of their product.
Spencer Timm That's not the point I'm trying to make here. I'm saying that the writing itself was bad. Team Ninja presented what was given to them how Sakamoto wanted it. To use the George Lucas analogy again, look at the romance scenes in Attack of the Clones. yeah, it was all dudded up nicely, the production values were good, and it all looked nice. But the writing was so poorly written that it outshone the rest of the scenes. If you write poorly, and give what you've written to a production company, no amount of polishing whatsoever is going to make it work. You can't put a pink ribbon on a pile of feces and call it 'presentable'. I give Team Ninja props for what they tried to do with what they were given. The design and what not were solid, but man, that script. That, and the D-Pad to move throughout a 3D world was a bad move.
Too add more to the George Lucas comparison, Sakamoto reportedly also acted like a huge control freak and frequently badgered the art and cutscene department to make sure they followed his GLORIOUS VISION™ exactly to the letter.
Well EXcuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me, Princess
Metriod: Fusion is hands down my favorite metroid game to date. I happened to LOVE the story, even going as far as to explain how you could be regenerating health and energy from the monsters you killed and best of all the "survival horror" elements in this game. Everyone who played this will remeber that one room with all those super bomb blocks before you had access to the super bombs...
"Can you deliver a good story without giving a back-story for the main character? hint: yes" YOU HERE THAT SUPERHERO MOVIES!?!?! I DON'T NEED TO KNOW HOW BATMAN BECAME BATMAN OR HOW SPIDERMAN BECAME SPIDERMAN 100 MILLION FRACKIN TIMES!
Wind Waker did Link's personality best. He's fucking dumb. He's strong. He's determined. He's lazy, but he knows how to wreck shit. Did they need him to talk? No.
In my experience, there should be no segregation between gameplay and story. At least for a game like Zelda, where most of the time, your outlook of Link is depicted by how you play him. Story isn't just defined by cutscenes and dialogue, but by all-out interaction. Your slim depiction of story and its interaction with gameplay does the medium a disservice. Look at Portal and any other game with its level of interaction and you'll see often times that a character's personality as well as their attributes are quietly determined by the obstacles they must overcome. Therefore, I think your observation of Link from Wind Waker is a bit shallow. I don't think he's dumb, the puzzles he solves are outright essential for the story progression in many cases and in understanding how someone just doesn't walk in and take stuff out of the dungeons on their own. I think a better observation is that he doesn't know what he's getting himself into most of the time because admittedly, he's very brave and brash about dangerous situations, but to say he's not smart or cunning in the least is a bit detrimental to the fact that he uses tools, not just his sword, to solve his situations.
You wanna know something weird and terrifying? That interpretation of Link is actually the most accurate thing ever created. Think about it: He's a snarky jackass who's confident in his proven skills and only butts heads with Zelda because she's an actual human being (Hylian, whatever) rather than a cardboard cut out like Princess Peach. See, that incarnation of Zelda doesn't take his shit and actively did her part as any hero would, meaning Link can't as easily impress her with his general antics. What does this all mean? Well replace Link with *you*, i.e. the person playing as him and objectively think about how you react as you play the game. Bad writing aside, many of his mannerisms are comparable to those of gamers: a love for looking cool and showing off, a genre savvy eye roll at the ridiculousness of a situation, smack talk at some opposing force that annoys you. That Link does all these things, hell, replace the stupid catch phrase with any personal utterance you may have and you'll start to see a bigger connection. They obviously didn't intend this when making the show, but it's quite hilarious when you realize it: Link is basically being portrayed by a self aware gamer.
I don't know. Maybe because it's a 3D game controlled with a D-Pad, combat is reduced is quick time and auto attacks, there is a stupid first person mode, no music outside of old arrangements, no new powers or enemies, there are only three zones which are very cliche, it's linear in a series known for exploration, the art direction is shit, and the voice acting sucks. So what is good about this game again?
Smash Monkey If you think Other M is bad just because of Samus' characterization, you have no idea what "bad" really means. Other M will always be mediocre. Not "bad," nor really "very good." Any other review is unfair.
Smash Monkey Additionally, it really IS your fault for bringing expectations into a game. I wasn't ever a big fan of Metroid in the past, and personally, I despise any game with no narrative. It comes as no surprise to me that many of the Metroid games I do play bore me to tears. Why? Zero narrative. Just platforming and shooting baddies for the originals, and 3d puzzles and shooting baddies for the wii/gamecube shooters. Other M stands apart from all of the others in that it tried to execute a narrative? Did it do it excellently? Of course not. Did it do it poorly? Not at all. I disagree with the opinion of the extra credits crew in that I NEED to make the assumption that a blank slate is always worse than a character given personality. A blank slate character - Mario, Link, Samus -- they are nothing to anybody who respects narrative without some semblance of detailed and personalized world out there for them to explore. Portal had the fantastic GLaDOS, without which, the game would be an indy puzzle game and NOTHING more. Link has several worlds, all filled with interesting landscapes and interesting people. Mario has nothing, so I have never liked it. Metroid had nothing, so I never liked it. The fact that a fleshed out character CAN be worse than a blank slate character is NO MORE to the point than is the fact that a dictator COULD be worse than a corrupt republic. The scope and range of what can be accomplished with blank slate characters is minuscule, tiny. Developers like Nintendo use them because they are safe, easy, they work perfectly with well-fleshed out worlds as back drops. The scope and range of what can be accomplished with personalized characters is FAR greater. That's not to say that it can't mess up -- in fact, it means that you can mess up a lot more. It also means that you can succeed a lot more. The ambitious will always go for a fleshed out character -- there's more at risk, but there's more reward possible. As for Samus Aran, like I said, I never cared for the previous games, even Corruption, which I enjoyed. Just my own personal opinion, but no narrative = I don't care. Videogames to me, are interactive stories. Not just interactive art (they are), but interactive stories, a special kind of art focused on narrative to tell the tale of some human's (regardless of species) travels. When we say "she's a blank slate" we don't mean that she's never been fleshed out. We DO mean that she's never been fleshed out enough for me to care. To scrounge for characterization on the few interactions she has had with killing aliens in 2d sidescrollers is sad, because a lot of it is almost entirely unintentional on the part of the developer (that is, I don't think Bungie wants you to think Chief is super deep and complex when he misses a shot --> "Did he do it on purpose?" "Why would he miss?") I would rather have the character talk out his problems, monologue or otherwise. Moreover, saying that monologue is a poor tool for narrative is to reject the very model for narrative development that most people use in real life when interacting with one another. We monologue, in our heads, about other people, all the time. It doesn't work in literature because its too to the point, we get all the details and we don't much otherwise care. There's nothing to "read" into, if you will. With movies and videogames, you have landscapes, sounds, expressions, music, actions, all of that as a back-drop to a monologue, in order to tell a more complex, vivid tale. No, Other M was no Mass Effect, but it was a lot more enjoyable than every other Metroid game for me, because it was at least ambitious enough to try to have a narrative, and that narrative was decent.
Part of what makes Link such a popular character is the fact that he doesn't talk (aside from the occasional "hnnngh" or "HYAH!"). The actions link takes and his resulting personality are more to do with the person playing, what actions they choose to take, and what their personality is. Hence the name, "Link". :) Some people may wish otherwise, but I hope that if voice acting is ever added to The Legend of Zelda, Link remains silent.
"That one time where Link WAS fleshed out, characterized, given loads of personality" My brain: *_Oh boy, I'm so hungry I could eat an O C T O R O C K_*
+Fangle Spangle pfft. what could possible be so bad tat you need a tri-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH AaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
plus in Fusion their boss want keep that x snot, and she said : fuck that! not on my watch. plus a kreeper ripley appear and she did not freak out. how badass is that
The thing is, it was MUCH more sparse in Fusion. You got occasional glimpses into her thoughts, which more served to tell the story in the game. Given it being 2d and handheld, it couldn't rely on visuals and dialogue to do so without bogging down the experience with exposition. Other M, being voiced, 3d, and done up with prerendered cutscenes, could use the action, dialogue, and environment to tell the story. But they decided to go with monolog. It's not so much that she didn't have a voice before, more so that her voice was more internal, and observatory. In small segments (as in fusion) this works. Making that her ENTIRE speaking personality (Other M) doesn't
ShotgunVsHeart By that reasoning, the characters in any game made prior to voice sampling are silent characters, like the cast of Final Fantasy 6. She also speaks in the opening to Super Metroid and there's actual (bad) voice work.
I can't help but feel Metroid Fusion did the relationship between Adam and Samus far better and with much less. All we get from them is about a dozen, one-sided "go here do this" conversations, some monolouges on elevators, a cut-away conversation between Adam and an unnamed government official, a handful of instances where Samus disobeys orders, a final confrontation and a resolution. You could probably squeeze all that into 10 minutes if you watched it all in one go. Metroid Fusion was only a 3-5 hour game and it knew it had limitations and so it embraced that. It's got practically the same premise as Other M (Samus goes to large space station/ship where the different sectors represent different habitats while under the supervision of "Adam") but Fusion just quietly outshines Other M in every way. I just really liked Fusion.
I remember in Super Metroid- when Mother brain killed the baby Metroid and samus had that moment on her knees- breathing heavy. I could feel the weight of that moment- when she stood up and her theme began to play I imagined her angry, I was angry because the only friend you had besides the birds and monkey was dead- and when she started blasting M Brain with the hyper beam I could feel the anger- it was hectic, you felt powerful, you felt like you were doing what one would do in the situation- be mad and wreck shit. I knew Samus was angry because I felt angry, I knew Samus was badass because I felt badass. Everything that had transpired, the metroid saving you, dieing, samus breathing, the music playing, you blowing Mother brain up with the Hyper beam, that's how you tell a silent narrative. The actions and events that happened back to back is what told me the story, you as the character felt what Samus felt. Or atleast I did. If anyone says "Samus was a blank slate." I disagree to as much an extent as I can, if you thought she was a blank slate you're wrong, she was a badass who cared, because the game made you feel like a badass and it made you care. I hope I'm explaining my point coherently, I'm not the best when it comes to such things.
Kid Icarus Uprising's narrative is a great example. Conversations are good at delivering the information to the player while keeping their attention with humor. Idle conversations are just humor that builds on the characters' relationships.
I am WAY late to the party, but I'd like to point out a couple sentences from the Super Metroid guide book. "She's the most accomplished bounty hunter anywhere. But even though she weeds out dangerous and evil characters from the galaxy for a living, she also truly cares about the safety of all law abiding life forms." And "She'd rather forego collecting bounty than to see harm come to an innocent life form." I think those couple sentences do more for Samus as a character, than did the entirety of Other M.
I actually wrote a bit about Other M in a recent essay I wrote during by second year of college. I pointed out that Samus showed a lot more, genuine emotion in Metroid Prime 3, which you can see by reading her body language and how she responds to her friends being picked of one by one. All without saying a word!
The two things that anger me the most in other M are: 1. When you encounter the full grown Ridley ... Everyone who knows Samus back story just a little bit, knows that Ridley killed her parents und it was an horrible experience. That's why she hates him and the Space Pirates so much (ok and a few other reasons). By the time you met Ridley in other M you killed his former reincarnations five times. Oh boy and she literally goes full berserk on this purple asshole ... And other M wants me to believe that she gets a childhood trauma back flash because she encounters him now ... bullshit 2. The neural connection to the Power Suit.The power Suit is a bio-mechanical symbiote that is mostly connected thru an interface an her back (the pinkish patterns on the back of the zero suit). In the Prime series we have seen that if this part of the suit takes gigantic amount of damage the suit can malfunction. E.g. in Prime 1 when Pirate Frigate Orpheon explodes. This explosion catapults Samus across a huge hallway and smashes her back in the power cord of an elevator. This causes that some suit upgrades to malfunction. For the note this was only the Varia suit which has only half of the protective abilities of the Gravity suit. So, and other M wants me to believe that a shot in the back from standard freezer gun of an federation trooper can cause the Gravity suit to have a system failure ???
What you said about Anakin before the Prequels: it even works a little by just pretending you don't know: Did Anakin want revenge on Obi-Wan? Did he want to do the right thing? Was he tricked and so on. Imagining back the mistery is so compelling to me. Even though I have no problem with the Prequels
Story mistake aside, gameplay dissociation aside, series dissonance aside, my number one problem with this game is the treatment of Samus. Other M's interpretation of her was so radically different from the Samus that came out of nowhere as a surprise female character so long ago and still managed to become a fan favorite, and in such a radical direction. I'm glad this video touches so heavily on that, as I feel it was the true nail in the coffin for this game.
This is essentially my complaint with what I've seen of Other M - I still haven't gotten around to playing it, which I need to fix. There was a ton of potential there - even most of the story beats could be used well. Take the Adam unlock order thing. Have him remind her to limit her firepower and warn him when she escalates, since if they wanted the station blown up they could just do that from the outside. Specifically call out no power bombs. Have him chew her out after going through that room without her varia suit - he said limit her FIREPOWER, not her armor! Why would she endanger herself like that!? And then, at the end of the game, when everything has gone to pieces... a button prompt to drop a power bomb shows up. That change alone redefines the relationship between them, to one where she's restricting herself because he *asked*, even to the point of being slightly dumb... and where he genuinely cares about her well-being. As a fan of the artform (and the series, admittedly!) it's frustrating to see potential missed like that.
Fuck that, the DiC cartoon's Link was fucking awesome. He may not be how Link seems in the games but HE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE. He's in his own setting doing his own thing, starring in a comedy cartoon series based on the Zelda franchise (which was extremely young at the time the cartoon was made, btw). The Zelda cartoon is awesome for being a cheesy 80s cartoon full of personality. Link and Zelda's relationship in it was hilarious.
When I played the NES games and saw Link on the cover, that is definitely how I imagined him being. Snarky, funny, and witty. The cartoon was terrible, was Link was spot on to me.
You bring up the "Ultimate Warrior Concept". It was a funny show, hell it lasted for seasons and even got hauled over into the Captain N show. Popularity is not going to be argued with, but now as we've matured we understand what the problems are and realize why he was left behind. I don't even think they parody his line in any Zelda game in history.
You know I can't believe you never brought up the example of Jak and Daxter. Game 1 no voice barely any backstory and barely knowledge about anything of the character. Jak 2 came out gave him a voice, some personality and his backstory was already somewhat fleshed out. Game finishes and gives us a shit load more about him. Jak 3 came out more personality and even more backstory by the end of it. And guess what they did a fucking fantastic job in doing so.
+Raging karma They never brought it up because their argument wasn't that development was bad or that silent characters should be left alone, it was that trying to establish a personality is a risk because when you do a personality on a silent character badly it can make the character inconsistent. While having a solid, established, personality is great, sometimes less is more and leaving details up to the player's imagination can add a lot to a character if done well. Which goes against the argument people often make for Other M that "any personality is better than keeping no personality".
One of the industries most famous icons is a silent protagonist, yet he's still referred to as one of the best characters with a (so far) excellent story, Gordon Freeman.
Silence doesn't necessarily mean they lack personality. Look at Link and Chell. Both don't talk (much in Link's case), but they clearly exhibit personality, based on either their actions or what reactions they provoke.
True, but I didn't like Half Life all that much BECAUSE Gordon Freeman is a nobody. I still prefer a protagonist with a voice in a game that takes itself seriously. Portal is one of the few exceptions because, we return to it over and over again for GlaDos, not dumb, deaf, mute and possibly potato-brained Chell lol
Turtoi Radu 1)Skyward sword. Several times in the beginning (before you ever get to the ground) he stands there while a group of bullies pick on him. He does nothing at all until Zelda comes to rescue him. Really pathetic, TBH. 2)Just a joke. But he does start almost every game sleeping, so it can be inferred he is lazy.
The "Man with no Name" is considered to be one of the most iconic fictional characters in recent history and he doesn't even have a name let alone a backstory. Why haven't I seen your channel before?!?! Subbed.
samus has depth as a character. you just need to be observant to see it. small things like when she closed the dead Federation troopers eye in prime 2 and the fact she accepted a near suicidal mission in prime 2 for the sake of helping the luminoth and the universe show who samus is. things like that, her keeping the baby metroid in metroid 2, loads of stuff in fusion etc actually show quite a lot about her character.
Honestly, my biggest issue was just how weird the baby imagery and the implicit "woman as mother" angle felt, focused on someone whose entire maternal expression to date has been approximately equivalent to taking a stray kitten to a shelter.
Hey, EC, I'm an aspiring game developer and your videos have taught me quite a lot about game design and how to make a good game. Thank you guys so much. You guys could be the thing that turns the game industry on its head (in a good way) in the next decade, and allows younger gamers to garner a meaningful experience from video games, and actually learn something from them instead of new curse words. Thank you guys so much for that, and keep up the good work!!! :D :D :D
Small problem with your analogy to Link... He's a separate Link in every game (With few exceptions) And I don't think the Link in the cartoon is the same Link as any of the Links in the games...
Hyrule Historia (The official big book on The Legend of Zelda) Explicitly states that a number of Links are, in fact, different Links. Heck, the A Link to the Past Timeline takes place in a world where Link DIED in Ocarina of Time... The only time we've had a dead Link as the main Character in a Zelda game was Majora's Mask!
Yes Link IS NOT THE SAME in every game (with exceptions, like Majoras mask). But that argument further only empower he's argument, even tho Link is always another character (with VERY similar personality, brave, and little bit naive maybe? etc.) we still like him and we still expect the same thing out of him. That guy says two word in most of the series and that's "yes" and "no". If you pile up single word that explains his personality that's not so many words. Therefore probably not that important to mention because it is kinda obvious that it empowers the argument that "less is more" and much of back story (like the cartoon tried) is not needed or better than none.
I sort of hoped he wasn't talking about Link from the cartoons, but rather another equally loved, speaking,"fleshed-out" version... Yes, the CD-i Zelda games. "OH BOY" -Link
This reminds me a lot about J R R Tolkien. He knew that once you explained something, it was no longer interesting, and shouldn’t waist time on describing it in greater detail.
Man, as a writer, these videos are a treasure trove (not of games, but for anything). Also, I played this game and shamefully loved it simply for the fact it showed Samus (literally) ripping monsters apart just as I visualized as a child playing Super. But then I hated it when I realized it was maybe essentially saying that Prime 1-3 never happened. Prime had tons of character! Just some of the 3 second cutscenes showing her from an angle and coldly, ruthlessly confident she was... Link is shown being afraid all the time, even unconfident.
You know iv watched your channel on and off never really thought of subbing but this, this right here. I have new found respect for you guys im subbing right now. Keep up the great videos!
I have one: Other M Samus is actually a clone of the real Samus created by the the creepy quarantine officer from the beginning of the game. He augmented her personality, gave her a voice modulator, and replicated the Power Suit. Also, the entire mission took place in an alternate universe. Adam was none the wiser.
Coming back to this after having watched Geek Critique's video on Fusion, one thing I've noticed is how Fusion actually avoids a lot of other M's mistakes. It doesn't do the best job of telling story through gameplay and using comms chatter to flesh out its characters, but it at least made a pretty good attempt. One of the main things that distinguishes Fusion from its predecessors was its focus on more linear progression, which was likely done to accommodate for the fact that it was developed for handhelds and thus had to be designed so it could be played in short bursts. As such, one of the major themes of the game is the loss of agency and the loss of self - Samus loses her signature suit, is infused with Metroid DNA, and is forced to take orders from an AI. Likewise, those decisions are further reinforced by the gameplay, aesthetics, and level design - it eschews the labyrinthine caves of the previous three games for more artificial environments, and the fusion suit is used to justify the loss of previous upgrades, the introduction of Samus' ability to hang from ledges, and the fact that she can't tank hits like she used to. There's also the aspect of the SA-X encounters, which are predicated on the fact that you can't take it head-on. Your only option is to run. There are even a few times where you have to make use of the fact that Samus can grab ledges and SA-X can't. Even when the game does opt to tell rather than do or show, it takes the comms chatter route, focusing on Samus' interactions with the station's AI and the Federation scientists overseeing the station. That combination of focusing on character interaction and intertwining the gameplay with the story and overall themes really comes together in an interesting, if somewhat frustrating moment. The game offers only one major sequence break - normally, after getting the speed boost, you need the diffusion missiles to return to the sector's navigation room, but there's an exploit to get there beforehand. The developers knew this was possible, and programmed a special bit of dialogue in - the station's AI congratulates you for figuring out how to get back without the diffusion missiles, and a federation scientist offers access to a classified area of the station, only for the AI to refuse to carry out the order and tell Samus to go back and try to find the diffusion missiles. All in all, Fusion succeeded at what Other M failed to do - telling the story of a Samus who's been stripped of her agency and forced to act under a commanding officer, and how we see her act in such a situation is far more in line with what we'd expect of the Samus we've seen in previous games - she's reluctant to take orders, and as the game goes on, things further and further off the rails, straying from her objectives as new circumstances arise, and eventually abandons the mission entirely, opting to blow up the station in order to destroy the X parasite once it's discovered that the Galactic Federation plans on weaponizing it.
hey im not trying to get under anyone's skin but the all american cartoon of link gave him a little too much character and started to express a david hasselholf appearance with some of his so-called ''humor'', soooo thanks to you my eyes and ears are bleeding now q(T.T)p
1000000% Spot on with character analysis dude. You're really smart. A character fleshed out badly CAN BE much worse than a character not fleshed out at all.
I was and am one of the few defenders of Other M. That being said, I always used the "Blank Slate" argument when it came to defending the game. I'm so happy and glad to finally see someone on the internet give me an intelligent comeback to the argument. It helps me understand more and more why people hate the game so much. And, even though I defend the game, i'll still admit that Samus was handled horribly. I agree with nearly everything said in this video. But there is one thing that a lot of people keep on ignoring: Samus ISN'T a silent protagonist. In Super Metroid, she gave an opening monologue, and in Fusion, she couldn't shut up. It just really bothers me. Also, people should stop hating on a game that has a terrible story but excellent gameplay. The game is so much damn fun to play, and they nailed the Metroid atmosphere.
SamVision Really? I thought it was pretty fun. The only mechanics I didn't like so much was having to "recharge" my health and missiles; and having to go first person sometimes. I don't know why they didn't just go with a drop system, or why they couldn't just let you interact with things normally and use missiles outside of first person, but generally speaking, combat was fun and fast-paced.
Prepare for a long comment about other M's gameplay. When you say the game's gameplay was fun, let me add an asterisk to that statement. The BOSS BATTLES were fun. Sticking your arm cannon up ridley's mouth, fishing vorash out of the lava, shinesparking directly into nightmare, and leaping and dodging all over the place to avoid phantoon's fire orbs makes me feel like a badass. Hell, I even liked the high octane action of the tractor boss. If the game were just one big boss rush absent of all story or context I would say the game could be seen as a good distraction rather than a hot cancerous mess. I will not however, argue that the gameplay as a whole was good. Because many of its elements were distinctly the opposite of metroid, and it's combat outside boss battles was too messy or too simple to ever be all that engaging. Let me explain. Doors randomly shut without any reason for them needing to do so, you're far too frequently forced into linear, scripted sequences that will often times amount to little more than going in circles (you do this both times you go to sector 2 btw). It's not a terribly explorey game. I can't go back to acquire pickups that are now available to me when I activate new abilities because the game doesn't really open the entire thing up to you until the end. Some areas are always going to be inaccessible at every point in the game, even during the epilogue when you're just item hunting. There's no reason for this. Even in Fusion and Prime 3, when they restricted your access to certain areas, there was always a believable plot reason for it, and they were infrequent enough not to get annoying. Like the power outage in fusion knocking out all the powered doors, or ghor totaling your ship so you need to wait for it to repair before you can continue planet hopping. Other M rarely, if ever, provides decent justification for severely hamstringing your access to large areas of the bottle ship. Which is just stupid. Bactracking and item hunting are a core element of every metroid game and taking that away from the player at any point without reasonable justification is simply irritating and definitively not metroid. The combat straddles somewhere between obnoxiously precise, and hand holdlingly forgiving to the point of boredom. Early in the game, special tech is the only reliable way to kill enemies, and often times pulling off this tech involves jumping on top of an enemy which raises your chances of taking a hit. Which is especially annoying because there aren't any health and ammo pickups this time around. By end game, you're so ridiculously overpowered, which while I believe being ridiculously overpowered is normally a good thing in a metroid game, the sensemove makes you basically immortal and just causes combat to become boring. And that's not even taking into account the fact that power bombs in this game are screen nukes and you have an unlimited number of them. And don't even get me started on the awkward missile mechanics this game has, there are so many better ways to implement this it's not even funny. Forcing the player to literally rotate their hand 90 degrees and shift camera perspective is not a good way to implement such a basic mechanic. But that's all I'll say about that since I've probably already gone on too long. And all this isn't even taking into account some of the other stuff the game messed up that isn't ludo-narrative like the downright comical aesthetic choices and art style, and the over reliance on assets and elements from super metroid and metroid fusion. I also disagree on the game nailing metroid's atmosphere, but I've probably already bored you at this point. Let me know if you want some more specifics. I hope I've given you some food for thought though, because it's rarely explained in detail why the gameplay isn't really all that good.
Ya got left hangin', bud. Lots of games are the opposite of Metroid and are still fantastic games. A game like Bioshock was exceedingly linear and it was still a classic. That doesn't justify the fact that this game SHOULD have been more Metroid-y and I will take points off for its linearity, but it doesn't make the game bad. Sensemove was overpowered, but honestly, having an easy game doesn't necessarily make it less fun. Just look at the Kirby franchise. Easiest platformers around, yet still some of the most fun ever. Though I do prefer the thrill of being in danger and having combat challenges, it's not nearly a dealbreaker. I don't know how the hell you're holding your controller, but if you have to rotate your hand 90 degrees to point the wiimote at the TV, you're doing something horribly wrong. That might be why you're having control issues. The gameplay is average at its very worst, and it doesn't make up for its muddled and ridiculous storytelling, but everyone always exaggerates its faults. Honestly, it sounds like you just came off of TheGamingBritShow's Other M videos before writing that post and were looking for any way to insert his opinion in the comments section here and pretend it's yours.
When you talked about the Comms chatter about your squad members, the best example is probably republic commandos, the way everyone interacts with each other, and their personality shows perfectly too, I know more about a bunch of clones who have the same face, then most of the blank slates that are some main characters
Mario also had a cartoon. I once bought a DVD with a few episodes of it. Sad to say, Mario came up short in that compared to how he was in the games. I honestly prefer the almost-completely-silent Mario over that one.
Actually, Mario with a voice has worked before. The old Nintendo power comics about him painted him as a no nonsense leader and a smart fighter. It didn't clash with anything shown in the actual games and it made for an entertaining experience.
That thing James brought up about Samus and Adam being in constant communication being a good way to characterize them both is actually the exact same thing that was implemented in Kid Icarus: Uprising. Unsurprisingly, it was a really effective way of making the characters stand out without forcing exposition through cutscenes. I'd like to see a lot more of that in future games.
When I played Other M, I didn't care too much about how she was portrayed until a single scene of the game... when she finds Ridley and gets paralyzed, in that moment, I went out of myself and screamed to loud voice: WHY SHE GETS PARALYZED?, SHE HAS FACED HIM... 1,2,3,4! TIMES, IS THERE ANY REASON WHY SHE FEARS HIM NOW?!, that, for me, was the most senseless moment of the game.
Amen. Even if it's a reference to the rarely-distributed Metroid manga that implies that Ridley killed Samus's parents. Nevermind that in that manga, she overcame her trauma. Nevermind that in the previous Metroid games she killed Ridley multiple times. Honestly, she should have seen Ridley and gone "Oh for- CAN'T YOU STAY DEAD?!" and then started blasting him with missiles.
As much as I hate necroing, it's worth pointing out that Samus actually has PTSD courtesy of Ridley's assault on her home colony of K2-L. PTSD is something that can't really be cured for good, and considering that his death on Zebes in Super Metroid was his first TRUE death, Samus wasn't expecting him to reappear on the Bottle Ship. Combine sudden reappearance of arch nemesis with ptsd and well, I for one can imagine the reaction would be really fucking severe.
Metroid 1/Zero Mission: reks Ridley Prime 1: reks Meta Ridley Prime 3: reks Meta Ridley Super: reks Ridley Other M: OMG RiDLYe PTSD Fusion: reks X parasite Ridley One of these things is not like the other...
the back story given in metroid involving the chozo and the nature of samus's life and suit are quite detailed . i had the pleasure of playing echos and it was amazing
I personally just ignore most of the story parts in Other M (with the exception of the pieces that point to my pet theory of Adam having set up the entire thing to gain access to the Metroid lab and being the true... *shudder*... Deleter) and focus on the game itself. As far as I'm concerned, Other M is a fantastic game, and it is incredibly unfortunate that they made the cutscenes unskippable. I have a friend who's a huge Metroid fan who refuses to touch the game due to the crappy cutscenes, and I suspect he's far from the only person out there who feels that way.
On the contrary, he's fortunate to not touch this game because he's probably a real Metroid fan. Tell him there's no point to the exploration because of the Concentration AND... because the Hard Mode removes all "exploration" elements. If you choose to ignore the story, then you ignore the purpose of this game: telling a story. This game has no reason to exist. AND you'll find better than this if you haven't played a "better" action game already.
Alexandre Armont Well, I found Concentration to be inconvenient and a very temporary solution at best. I didn't play on Hard Mode. As I said, the gameplay was excellent if you tuned out the story.
Yeah, spamming the SenseMove is excellent. There's no challenge, the Special Moves remove any sense of progression with the Power-Ups, the game pads itself in order to activate the power-ups. I'm sorry but you need to see some analysis. It's nothing more than a guilty pleasure. ;-)
Alexandre Armont You're implying that challenge is the only reason to play the game and the only way to feel progression. Challenge is only good if it serves a purpose. If you're an expert in the Metroid games, yeah, having lots of challenge makes the game more enjoyable, but if you were like me, and Other M was the first Metroid game I ever played, unnecessary challenge is a hindrance in the game. Since Other M's main intention was to bring newcomers to the series, a lower challenge is the best option.
Other M is based off of a "retcon" type manga which has Samus' character and the story of other M. I think Gaijin Goomba had a video in it. I saw the manga in a library and read it. It's pretty good, but you can get more info from him.
Nobody ever seems to mention that the plot is practically a mirror world interpretation of Fusion, which was originally Sakamoto's work, but was not a new plot. Adam, the AI, was the same Adam portrayed in Other M, but was the original, not a nicknamed AI. And it worked better, because the AI was limiting Samus' capabilities to keep a mercenary, who to that point had been loyal to the Federation from learning secrets that might shake the loyalty and lead her to destroy the station, or become a whistleblower, or worse, turn on the federation. There was a press release by Sakamoto berating Retro Studio's works with the franchise, including Fusion. Then again, I'm basing this off of memory, and I could have read that on Kotaku before I realized they were basically vidyagame tabloid. Also worth noting, the boring ass monologue crap was still present in Fusion.
You apparently forgot that Sakamoto is a raving chauvinist, and that he thinks that us gamers cant handle the puzzles of exploration. Also, the Adam AI in Fusion was the mind of the real Adam digitized. Also, Other M makes the events in fusion seem redundant, because if Samus learned the corrupt plan of the Federation in Other M, why was it a surprise in Fusion? As for the monologue being present in Fusion... you must not even realize that monologue requires speech. The story is given through the thoughts of Samus, and it works better as a portrayal of her character than the monotone brooding present in Other M
thrasher698 I felt the first part went without saying. Also, I hadn't completed Fusion, but I'm not too concerned about spoilers, I didn't really plan on downloading an emulator or getting a GBA.
"A few cutscene monologues isn't going to cut it." I normally would agree but take a look at the Bosch Monologues of Freespace 2 at how to do this correctly. The videos are on TH-cam as usual.
I know this is old, but to be fair to Team Ninja, their involvement in the game was mostly to make the 'game' part of Other M. The 'story' part of Other M is done by the guys that did a lot of the older style 2D games like Fusion (but not the first person Retro Studios games). Credit and anger where credit and anger's due. A lot of Samus's faults in the game really rely on her being portrayed through the lens of Japanese gender dynamics and what makes a 'strong' woman (but still has her being a woman) as filtered by her male writing staff. Whether or not this is inherently bad or not is a topic for another day, I'm sure, and whether or not a man can write for a woman or vice verse is another topic too, but that's what you got. But if you watch almost any anime where there's a 'strong female' protagonist, the tropes in play for Samus's personality aren't even remotely unique to this game. Again, you can argue if these tropes are bad or not, but that's a can of worms I'm not prepared to even attempt to open here.
The Metroid series was inspired by Ridley Scott's Alien series, even if they made Samus a cardboard cutout of the weird Ripley in Alien Resurrection, it would've been alot better than this incompetent moron we got instead. Men can write some damn fantastic female characters, just look at James Cameron, who wrote and directed Aliens as well as Terminator 2. You can't possibly tell me that Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley aren't iconic as good female characters in fiction. Japan's views on gender roles is a terrible excuse, seeing as Japanese writers were responsible for Metroid Fusion, Super Metroid, Metroid: Zero Mission, and the Manga, all of which actually showed Samus as not only a character, but the complete polar opposite of this inept failure of a portrayal. Gameplay-wise, and alot of people like to overlook this, It wasn't a "true" Metroid either. Show me another Metroid game that threw the concept of exploration out the window and made it mechanically impossible to resort to going back to a previous area for possible hints as to whats stopping your progress in your current area? Other M is the first game in the series that is 100% linear, even going as far as locking doors as you pass them to make sure you always move forward.
I am glad to see an objective point of view on the story of Other M. While I agree with a lot of your points, I think that having more interactions with the rest of the crew would actually give her a chance to explain a bit more, without a cutscene, why she freaked out so much after seeing Ridley. There actually is a semi-justifiable reason, and another video on TH-cam actually goes into that detail of it.
voice acting just isn't going to work with nintendo characters, unless they had voices from the very beginning. These characters have already been firmly established. Other M proved that the Samus that WE thought we knew is actually not the same samus that the creators intended us to know. giving her a voice just made it extremely apparent. Silent nintendo characters are a good thing. I've said many times that having a silent character in a game is very key to immersion. If the character you are playing as has a voice then that means the developers are not allowing YOU the player controlling the character to be immersed into the game. Because they are telling you what they want the character to be depicted as, therefore removing you from the game. And then it becomes more like a movie than a game. Metroid is a franchise that lives off of immersion, other m totally removed that.
It's very difficult to get emotion from text alone. At the end of Majora's Mask, the Happy Mask Salesman says something along the lines of "So, all the evil has left the mask after all". This is a point where voice voice acting could be a ton of good, because it makes us realize how he intended to use the mask. Voice acting CAN work, if done properly, even on for the protagonists that have been more or less mute from the beginning. There are two things that can depict emotion and intent. First of which is tone, and second, is facial expression. Let's for a moment, think of Half-Life 2 as a movie, how the hell would Gordon communicate with the other characters? When used properly, it can work, and to a spectacular success, and when used poorly, it fails so hard, it like a nuclear reactor meltdown.
For all those people saying that Samus had 23 years to get treatment for PTSD and that she should have shrugged it off by the events of Other M. You obviously don't understand how PTSD works or what it is. You can get treatment and symptoms may subside, but all it takes is one action, one moment to bring the memories of the original event to the surface and cause traumatic stress. It would make sense for Samus, as a person with feelings and personality, to continually suffer from PTSD even with treatment. Considering the job she does and the events that happen to her. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that she has vivid nightmares of past missions and not survivng. Just because she has kicked ass doesn't make her immune to this kind of trauma, it makes her even more susceptible in fact. As they keep throwing her into what are effectively suicide missions.
For cripes sake, Ridley killed her parents! "Remember that one time when you were a little girl and a flying dragon brutally mutilated your parents?" "Oh, that? Meh." "Meh?" "I mean, c'mon, they were just parents. It's not like I'm the only one who has them at some point."
The problem with that is that she never breaks down in earlier titles. She's fought him before, and if she had the level of PTSD that she does in other M she would have gone through that exact experience in other metroid games. The tech limitations of the other games might have stopped Nintendo from doing this before, but it still doesn't excuse the fact that even though this is the 6th (or so?) time she's fought him, she's JUST now having her first breakdown. That doesn't add up. Trying to add a way to show drama through an irrational fear and subsequent breakdown is a GREAT way to show Samus' flaws (like Indiana jones and snakes), but the instigator of the breakdown should be something that the player hasn't seen her face yet. Making it something like Ridley is a cheap and unwelcome surprise to the player, since Samus has never before shown this particular weakness.
E Lee You seem like you haven't played Metroid: Other M and for that, I envy you. To clarify, in Samus's time in Adam's elite army group, the soldiers would all salute by giving the thumbs up, which you'll note is already incredibly dumb. Samus however, being the sole female member, decides to give her salute as a thumbs down which apparently has something to do with that. Apparently both her and Adam saw this as a sign of respect. Seriously, this game's writing is so much worse than the reputation says.
The dialogue thing you were talking about, happened a lot in Kid Icarus Uprising, and when I say a lot is A LOT, the characters doesn't stop talking(if you progress throught the game fast enought) and this happens in every single chapter during the game, and for me even if we are talking about Metroid, Kid Icarus is One of the best games of this Console GEN.
I'd also like to add that the PTSD stuff with Ridley would've made WAY, WAYYYY more sense if they just did a quick intro video at the beginning of the game of young Samus' parents being killed by Ridley like in the manga. The game may not have to require a huge backlog of exposition but I think that would've really made that scene flow much better.
This was a great video as someone who's obsessed with giving my own characters backstories but whose favorite character is Link. Excellent points made!
That's great. But I think we also should pay attention to when Link is characterised the least. This allows us to base our emotions off the world around us, and especially the people in it. This makes it easier for us to see the entire picture and the message the developer wanted us to see.
I see that, but in my mind, a more characterized link allows us to connect, or "link" to the character, giving him a better personality, I had hell of fun with the NPCs and just looking at link's personality shine in Wind Waker, and the DS games. (Spirit tracks DOESN'T suck btw) In my mind, I can connect more to something with personality better than a blank slate I can project myself onto.
here's the thing, link does have some personality in wind waker but it's not much, I think you missed the part of the video where he says that, sure he got mad at times or happy, a little embarassed at the beginig when he got his clothes but that's hardly a completely fleshed out character, how he reacted to tingle? neutral, about the girl inloved with a moblin? neutral
They weren't saying that he didn't have a personality in the games, they were saying that when you fully flesh out a once mute character with a previously speculated personality through speech instead of actions there are issues.
"Can you deliver a good story, without giving the backstory of the main character" Yes... Yes you can. Allow me to intreduce a couple of games that proves that. Little Nightmares, Inside, Limbo, Ori and the blind forest, Ori and the will of the whisp, are games that nothing is said at all. Yet we invest our self in to that world and characters. (And I accedently typed Orin and the will of the princess, when the whole link thing came up. >_< )
8:31 Wait a minute, what game was THAT image from?! I don't recall a single map, Samus model, or weapon in any of the 3D Metroid games that looked like that...
i like how alot of people do not know about the metroid manga because Other M is the first game to try and put a load of characterisation in but not the first time they have
The primary issue with Other M is that it finally fleshed out Samus for the general gaming audience, and the aforementioned audience didn't like the portrayal. History and character wise, she was spot on - go read the Metroid manga if you don't believe me. The issue is that the canon Samus didn't match the mental image players had created via the previous games that showed her as a blank slate. While I disagreed with a lot of this video, the tidbit about there being no com-banter between Samus and Adam I agree was a huge oversight.
Samus was slightly blank, it gave us enough info to get us started but not enough to make her a character so it left it to our imaginations. It's a lot like Charizard, It's a fire-breathing dragon and our mind portrays things we like onto it and the same is with Samus. We portrayed her to things we liked and thought were interesting which satisfied us all but giving her a character took away our portrayals of Samus.(slightly) Blank slates came if done correctly could please everyone because they all imagine the character differently, For all we used to know, Samus was an awesome space bounty hunter who works alone, something our minds can change to suit what we think is awesome.
justus4justice One game: Metroid Zero Mission. It took the manga canon and implemented that in ONE SECOND and it fleshed out Samus much better(and I'd argue much more) than Other M. You know what that moment is? Her reaction to Ridley getting a two seconds tops sequence of images setting up the fight with Samus striking a defensive pose. That was it. But much more than ANY other boss. Just by that you could infer that A) Ridley or his species had a big damn reputation making Samus react in caution(who so far did not even flinch at anything she saw), and/or B) Samus had a personal history with Ridley or his species, possibly a traumatic one. But Other M spells it out. And that's the biggest sin in any visual medium, even moreso in an interactive audiovisual one. (Also it's not consistent with her having killed him before and her therefore knowing for a fact that Ridley is not beyond her capabilities.)
While I agree with her history being reflective of the manga, her character is not. At the point in her life that Other M takes place, she does not fear Ridley. She does not follow Adam's orders. Those things are referenced at the end of the manga itself, not to mention that the last chapter ends at the beginning of Zero Mission. Other M is post Super Metroid. She has long gotten over much of what they portrayed as a flaw for her. I agree that at one point (like when she was 16 and Adam was her direct CO) she may have acted like the showed her in Other M, but this is post Super-Metroid. She's fought Ridley multiple times and won, she's killed Mother Brain, and she and Adam are pretty much on equal footing. For a story during this part of the timeline, her actions didn't make sense.
Um.. actually.. those Manga were made not-canon by nintendo a looong time ago, and were what team ninja used mostly to try and write her character... yeah...
Point about the value of a lack of backstory and why something isn't necessarily better than nothing reminds me of the Forerunners from Halo. I found them utterly fascinating when we knew very little about them beyond their most crucial contributions to the plot and a few snippets about the Didact and the Librarian. Now, after Halo 4 and 5 and all of 343 Industries' added lore? Not as much, although their tech and aesthetics are still extremely cool.
I never played Other M. I'm usually the one not to judge a book by it's cover, but from the gameplay and cutscenes I've seen, I didn't like it at all. I also heard that the gameplay was good but the story isn't, but from what I've seen, I didn't like the gameplay either. Once I get my hands on it I'll see if my predictions were right after all.
My big thing about Samus' personality is that even WITHOUT much of a voice or even the core lore, we still got to know her so well in the Prime games. Yes, she walks around armed to the teeth, but often she doesn't use it until after she's spent several minutes playing the part of interstellar detective, archeologist, anthropologist. She examines corpses and has her suit's AI geared to provide a detailed report on cause of death. She reads through the history logs of entire species. Yes, she's killed plenty of sentient beings, herself, but it's her duty in the course of uncovering whatever terrible fate befell whichever civilization.
And in combat, even when she's hurt, her voice remains calm and composed -- she doesn't cry out unless something hits really hard, and even then, it's with a rough, mature voice, not the vaguely erotic whimpering of most video game heroines. Occasionally, the flash of enemy gunfire shows us the reflection of her eyes in her visor -- large and expressive, but half-lidded, contemplative, with a warrior's clarity to keep her alive.
The Samus I met in Prime is guided by her need to pay respect to fallen civilizations by learning everything she can about what happened to them. To that end, she's prepared to fight and bleed as much as she needs to -- just so that in some small way, these lost species can still have their stories told. She's the kind of person who's honed her rampant emotions into a single razor-sharp point: she's strong /because/ she cares so much, and because of that, nothing can shake her as long as she has her heart.
Amaizing words man, totally agree with you, i felt the same when playing the prime saga, but you've already said it all.
I agree with you. And don't forget that she actually saves an ancient civilization from extinction in Metroid Prime 2.
*Slow clap*
that was beautiful.
I believe that is the way we should describe Samus Aran now.
... we need explanations like this for every game character.
Holy mother of Batman's mother, that was beautiful.
Totally agree, pffft, let's hire the idiots from jiggle physics deluxe to capture that. They seem to know what they're doing... ._.
"We don't like that guy, do we? That guy is an idiot."
Well excuuuuuuuse me, princess!
well EXCUUUUUSE me, princess.
That was painful to watch.
The notion that Samus never had any character before Other M is a lie in itself. Look at the best ending to Prime 2, when Samus has finished destroying the Ing and is walking out to her ship to leave. All the Luminoth bow to her for saving their planet, and the only acknowledgement she gives is a raised hand as she's pretty much out the door as if to say "no problem." That's a character. It's as defining as Han Solo replying with "I know" when Leia tells him she loves him before his possible death. In fact I'd probably go so far as to say Prime 2 does the overall best job of characterizing Samus through the way she reacts and interacts with the environment and events in the story.
Another example of her having character, though, is in Metroid 2. The "badass Boba Fett" that people like to think Samus is wouldn't have left that Metroid live. She felt sorry for it, so she spared its life and let it go for research. In Metroid Fusion, Samus had monologues and even argued with the computer. This is reflected in Other M.
So yeah, Samus did have character, but Other M didn't ruin it. They just showed it more explicitly. Gamers just in general don't like Samus Aran; right down to the point where they don't even like her talking, despite the fact that *she's talked since the very beginning*.
***** 1. It's NOT implied that Samus felt sorry for the Infant Metroid. The Infant followed her (as described in Super Metroid) and she brought it back to the Federation so they could experiment on it. It was then revealed that the Metroid powers could be used for good... something denied by Other M in its own story by Colonel Douche (you know the guy I'm talking about). So she brought the Metroid back... but suddenly she's afraid of going against Adam's convictions which mean she HAS no conviction besides Adam... That doesn't make any sense.
2. I love Metroid and I love Samus Aran... I don't mind a character talking... I mind about a character being correctly portrayed and she's not. Not because she's talking or anything... because of the role she's playing in Other M: she doesn't accomplish anything and she can't do anything... She doesn't understand what initiative is! Something that Metroid was the prime focus! Initiative, exploration and accomplishment! I love Samus Aran because I could become Samus Aran. We were one entity, one character that we could relate on... because a game doesn't always have to deliver a cinematic experience. I don't want to spectate, I want to play. This is why I love Metroid because I'm in a world... and I speak for myself... so the voice of Samus... is mine! So yeah, I hate Samus in Other M because she's not the same way she has been portrayed in the previous games at all. And the fact she's shot in the back and likes Adam for it... No way!
3. This game also copies and pastes Metroid Fusion and Samus was more fleshed out here than Other M.
ScepticalCynic How is having a story and giving her a character that actually does stay true to the other games (rather than what you imagined it to be) smearing all over the franchise?
Because that is what YOU imagine. You imply it's true to the franchise while it's not. This game can't even connect Super to Fusion which is even more insulting. In all games, you discover the story with a visual progression and you can figure out what's happening
So yeah, tell us why it's true to the franchise. Tell us why this Samus (being shot in the back) is an acceptable character.
Alexandre Armont Because if Samus had no care for the metroids and all the other creatures, how would there even be a Super Metroid? Yes, the metroid followed her at the end of 2, but she could have just as easily destroyed it right there. Samus knows her job, but she's also merciful and kind. She literally didn't complete her mission in that game to favor her own emotions.
That's not to say Other M has a good story or even a better characterization for Samus; it doesn't. At all. But it doesn't shit on the franchise. It even works with the official manga.
You seem to be more critical on how the story is told rather than the story itself (although to be fair, the story is awful). Everyone seems to be over-reacting with Samus' character in this game because she's being portrayed as someone who acts with emotions, which is something that is not only hinted at in earlier games, but it's also more realistic and believable, as *people do act a certain way because of their emotions*.
I see he's pretending that the Mario Bros. movie doesn't exist. Just like I pretend the 'story' in Other M doesn't exist.
lol game movies rarely does well, the only good one that come out so far is the halo( and it was not that good)
+Khanh Nguyen I dunno, the Ace Attorney movie by Miike was pretty good
what standard are we going with? 6.7 out of 10 is just barely passable. im going over critic review, cause watcher review kind of biased cause people that like it seem like a fan of the game.
Khanh Nguyen Only problem is, IMDB's average critical scoring is still an imperfect system, I mean according to that, *Dark Knight Rises* is a better movie than both *Citizen Kain*, *A Clockwork Orange* and *2001 a Spaaace Odyssey*.
A critics opinion is by no mean an unbiased opinion: their opinions is still subjective and is prone to be influenced by their social statues, their cultures and personnal bagage.
Not to mention, a low-profile movie is bound to have less critical attention than one that was heavily advertised, hence why movies that are too "out there" like *Visitor Q*, despite being a big favourite of people working in films and old critics is only rated 6.8, thanks to his low scoring amongst more "mainstream critics", used to cater to a broader audience, and thus less inclined to rate positively productions that are too weird, while at the same time, ùDark Knight Risesù, considered almost universally to be "passable to OK at best" is listed as one of the 100 best movies of all time with a score of 8.4
Truth is, "Average Score" are pretty much meaningless, what matters are reviews, not review scores. Because one well written review made by someone who knows and studied the subject matter is worth a thousands papers written by underpayed intern looking to fill a blank in today's edition of a dailly newspaper.
+noddwyd He is actually ignoring "Super Show" told the story back in the late 80s/early 90s.
Another aspect of Samus' personality that comes accross especially strong in the Prime Trilogy is her Lovecraftian inability to "not know". When faced with a mystery, she can't possibly not investigate until she knows the truth. She's seen the real universe and can't look away.
To be fair, while you are correct in your assessment. it's that single minded determination to find the truth that has allowed her time and time again to save the universe.
@Starscream91 The fact you can analyze every document and creature you come across shows us that Samus is a very factual and informative character. We wouldn't have the option to analyze everything if she wasn't.
I know this is supposed to be a serious video, but that link part killed me. XD
Exxuuuusssseee me
I spent 7 years trying to forget that link.
Well EXCUSE ME... I see your point
EXXXCCUUUUSSEEEE MEEEEE
I had no idea such an abomination existed. So glad I never saw it.
Perhaps, the whole "have to get permission from Adam to take a piss" dynamic in Other M's plot wouldn't have been so bad if Adam was actually an interesting or compelling character, an inspiring leader, someone WORTH idealizing in the first place, regardless of his sex, but the fact that he's just another, boring, soulless military stereotype adds insult to injury.
Wel excuuuuuuuse me, Princess!
LOL
“Did you even _go_ to OCS, you complete and utter *_boot?!”_* - JoshScorcher “the FieryJoker”, regarding Adam
Quite possibly the BEST example a game delivering backstory through in-play comms-chatter is StarFox 64. The banter between the core team is SO entertaining, and conversely, in the harder of the game's two possible second-to-last levels the comms-chatter of the enemy-characters served to underscore how little they were expecting you to succeed at getting that far through Andross' defenses, and thus making you, the player, feel that much more BADASS!
Course, that didn't mean we LIKED all the characters... hands up for everyone who intentionally killed Slippy?
That was legitimately a strategy my brothers and I found in an old GameFAQs sheet. I think it was the second or third planet on the normal/"easy" route in SF64. Some magma monster or whatever would capture him I think. But uh... when we killed Slippy it was usually just because he was annoying.
Kid Icarus Uprising?
The worst part? Sakamoto had near complete and total control over every aspect of the game. This is one person's vision primarily. This is Auteurship gone horribly wrong. Even worse, Sakamoto _hated_ the fact that everyone had their own vision of who Samus was. This demure woman, subservient to her father figure, was his _correction_ of who everyone thought Samus was.
This means basically that we're never going to get a "return to form" metroid game. This is his vision. Any future metroid games by Sakamoto are going to be this. The only other metroid games we might get are if Rare are allowed to do another Prime series, which notably, Sakamoto really wasn't a huge fan of, and didn't think they fit in with Metroid in any way shape or form. This gives me little hope of them returning to Prime in anything other than the multiplayer games. After reading countless interviews, I can say with some confidence that Sakamoto thinks he has a masterpiece on his hands. Sakamoto is essentially the George Lucas or the M. Night Shyamalan of the Metroid series at this point.
+firestorm713 If _Retro_ are allowed*
Chris McCartney ^________^; what are you talking about....I totally didn't just confuse two game companies because they start with r........
+firestorm713 Wasn't Gunpei Yokoi initially responsible for the metroid series direction? I know he was involved in Super and no doubt in Metroid 2.
Keanotix That I am less sure of.
+firestorm713 "This means basically that we're never going to get a "return to form" metroid game"
Well, seeing as they ditched him and his interpretation of Metroid for a Prime spin-off....
It's sad, because the most interesting parts of Samus's character never even made it to Other M. They put someone completely different there.
Samus isn't just a badass: she's an intelligent, cultured woman with very diverse knowledge (literature, physics, history, biology - she wrote the logbook entries in Metroid Prime herself, IIRC). Why not have a situation in which her scholarly knowledge actually helps her? Why not show a hint of some philosophy on her part? After all, she grew up with a race of spiritual enlightened aliens.
If you want flaws, why not show her get overconfident because she's so used to just flattening every threat she encounters?
There was so much of her character that could've been explored, with probably less work than went into writing all those boring monologues. In fact, just CUTTING stupid stuff like the infamous "need authorization to not be cooked alive" sequence would've done the game much good.
It feels so bad knowing that hours of work have been wasted just to make stuff that undermined the game instead of making it better.
Antonio SCENDRATE GATTICO Thank you! Samus is so much more than just a tough girl. Shes smart, resourceful (killling bosses with exposed electrical wires) and has a interesting and unique personal story. Shes not looking for a father figure and isnt independamt because she desperately needs approval.
If anything, I'd like to see her flaws revolve more around stunted socialization as an adolescent. She was basically raised from about 10 to adulthood alone on a planet with two aliens, after all. It might explain why she seems to favor "sexy" clothing (short-shorts and a crop top) as her casual dress despite her reticence and lack of emotional attachments.
AubriGryphon
True, that would also be interesting. A major point of her character is how she's so alien and different from other humans, that she is human only in looks. She is so perfect, but because of that, she barely knows what humanity is like.
I read in an article that Yoshio Sakamoto (the writer) had this to say about Other M's plot:
"because of the existence of the Metroid Prime series many people might have different ideas about what kind of person Samus Aran was….So with Other M I really wanted to determine and express what kind of human Samus Aran is so that we can really tell what kind of natural step she should be taking in the future."
So that just implied that a lot of the characterization in the past was just someone else's speculation as to what they THOUGHT Samus's character was
Sorry Sakamoto, but if Other M is an indication of what YOU want Samus to be then I'll stick with the different ideas
Actually, the Chozo raised her from 3 years old to 14. At 14, she joined the Galactic Federation. Soon after, her adoptive family was wiped out by space pirates, and she left the federation to become a bounty hunter.
The manga (only released in Japan, but you can find fan-translations online) actually covered a decent amount of her backstory and personality. Most of which was ignored by Other M =/
Between the manga and Fusion, we already had a bit of her personality. She's well-educated, but also impulsive and reckless. She's suffered the loss of almost everyone she cares about. And she's definitely suffering from either PTSD or some other trauma-related mental illness.
And that's not even getting into the countless continuity errors the game causes!
Mother Brain's portrayal in Other M is an almost 180 from her manga personality. In Other M, her clone became evil because her feelings were hurt. But in the manga, the whole reason she betrayed the Chozo and sided with the space pirates was because she didn't feel emotion, nor understood it. I haven't seen anyone actually talk about that.
i feel like if you want to make a silent protagonist have a personality, just giving them one would be fine, you don't have to mess with the silent part, just show it in different ways
or even make a character who is physically mute, no vocal cords and/or tongue or whatever so the devs have no choice but to break canon or express the character's personality through actions rather than dialogue
I JUST FRICKIN' REALIZED THAT'S BASICALLY WHAT NINTENDO DID WITH LINK!!!! except he's a selective mute, not actual mute, but still you see his personality through his actions, going on his quest to save Zelda or Hyrule or both or something else with no questions except maybe how to do it
botw tho
In BOTW Link gets a couple cool snippets of characterization:
He is clearly happy when he is cooking. Look at his face, listen to his chuckle when a dish turns out well.
Similarly, he enjoys shield surfing - he laughs and does a spin move when you jump while doing a shield surf.
And NPCs repeatedly comment that he looks like he's expecting a reward whenever you finish a quest for them.
Yes, that's the kind of ways we should give personality to silent charatcers
in a Link Between Worlds, he actually do talk to NPC's we just don't get to see what he says, he just get to see their response. Aside from the few "Yes/No/Agree/disagree/followme" options.
I agree with you, my characters in my game either can't talk normally (one of my characters is a amorphic sentient gel cat, she can only say some words and mostly talk in understandable meows) or just prefer to use their fists or actions to define them. they may say a sentence or two but nothing really ground breaking. And they'll take jabs at the fourth wall for laughs
I rather enjoyed the Metroid manga that Other M is based off of--Samus is given a backstory, a personality, and a motivation. Most importantly, it sets up the world and explains just how personal the first Metroid game is. It even shows Samus having a PTSD episode the first time she meets Ridley after her parents were killed. But the funny thing is, SHE GETS OVER IT AND WRECKS HIS ASSHOLE. Using Samus's PTSD to justify the Ridley scene makes no goddamn sense, because even if you disregard the Prime games, she has defeated Ridley and he's been assumed dead two or three times now. I can't believe that such an unbelievable hack writer managed to accidentally create the most powerful female icon in gaming, but apparently he wants everyone to know that she's supposed to be a simpering weakling.
the ptsd was only introduced in passing by conjecture as part of subplot to show samus's growth. it wasn't supposed be super long lasting permanent plot device because then there would of been plot holes because of how often ridley fights samus. to be truthful the manga made it seem more like a panic attack from samus at an early point in her career that she inevitibly moves past rather than actual ptsd. Also yoshi sakamoto was only 1 of 4 a game designers its probably why his "vision" is so different from the depiction shown before he took control of series and it turns out he is gonna start working on stuff other than metroid :) so hopefully someone else will be able to take the helm
For those who defend other m saying that it gave Samus a personality, I have another counter argument. The Manga. The Manga was released 6 years before other m and gave Samus a much better personality and character than this piece of crap. We actually got to see Samus interact with other characters, we got to see her emotional struggle and how she overcomes it. That scene in the Beginning of volume 2 of the Manga pretty much did what the Ridley scene was trying to do but right. For one the scene is actually pretty intense and isn't just Samus having an incredibly vague flashback; and two, that was the first time she saw Ridley not the fiftieth time and in the end of the Manga which was also the end of zero mission, Samus beats the crap out of him while taunting him which means that by the point the games start, Samus had already controlled her fear of Ridley and the trauma he caused. Also the Manga is confirmed canon. Boom.
this is going to end up like game theory where I just keep watching different videos until I've eventually watched them all and am hanging on each episode
Kyle Williams Did you onoe that Game Theory was inspired by Extra Credits?
On your topic of adding too much or too little personality to a character I was reminded of how Isaac Clarke suddenly had a voice and a personality in Dead Space 2. The difference between having that be a bad thing or a good thing was that even though Isaac in the first game didn't talk, in the sequel he felt like the same character based on his actions. In Other M, Samus became a wimp for no reason after being a complete badass, this is why her character fell flat. In Dead Space 2, however, Isaac could still solve puzzles, fight necromorphs and protect the people he knew just like in the first game, only this time around he talked and showed more personality. I just thought I'd point out that turning a once "blank slate" into a character can be done right.
Wow this is the perfect example, you are COMPLETELY right. A lot of people are saying "oh you just can't turn voice-less characters into voice characters without pissing people off" but DS1-2 did this PERFECTLY. He felt exactly the same.
Well, technically Isaac did have a voice in Dead Space 1, but it was mostly only used to scream in terror/agony when he gets brutalized by a necromorph.
I'm glad you presented this as a learning experience. And I happen to agree with all the points you make. You kind of pointed out that Other M is the polar opposite of Super Metroid. SMet had the hidden tutorials and told the story in-game, without the use of cinematics. And now that you mention it, having the comm system active with chatter could have brought in so much more tension. There could be sequences where you need to get to the other side of a sector to save [forgettable character C], and all you can hear is his struggling while you rush to save him. build the tension, and then you could have big boss battle, or comedic payoff where the critter giving him trouble was one that Samus easily dispatches... I still think that there's potential with continuing Metroid in Project Ninja's style, especially with how they pegged the little things, like creature design, hiding items, and maintaining challenge. point is to learn from what happened and not tear it apart for it's flaws. Now, I'm going to go to Sector 0.
When you brought up the Zelda cartoon I thought you were going to be like a lot of forum posters who basically bring it up to say that Link should *never* talk or have a personality because he'd inevitably end up like that. I'm glad to see you didn't quite go that far- it's more that a bad characterization is worse than no characterization. It's quite possible that both Samus and Link might end up with better defined personalities in the future.
Actions define a character, indeed. To such an extent, in fact, that inanimate objects can often be seen as having character of their own, such as a "temperamental" old car or fidgety PC. You don't dialogue to define a character when their actions are enough to give you an idea of the personality which would lead to them.
I actually like the "WELL EXCUUUUUUSE ME PRINCESS"
i would love to see it in the games as the only piece of voice acting shoehorned in as much as possible.
+HK Normann I don't think voice acting would be a good idea, but it would be hilarious if someone said that in a zelda game and they were shunned for referencing the cartoon.
someone make a rip off called "excuse me simulator"
Instead of “Hnggh” there should be a tiny chance to say “Well EXCUUUUUUUUUSE ME PRINCESS”
I hate to be 'that guy', but Team Ninja only handled the design and gameplay aspects of Other M. The story was mainly written by Yoshio Sakamoto, who works for Nintendo. This fact alone refutes the entire argument of Team Ninja having no experience writing a game leading to Other M's downfall.
The writing was still bad, but you're blaming the wrong people here. The rest of the video is spot on, though.
And, uh, not to be 'that guy' either, but he never blamed them for the writing. He brought up the way that the story was presented, not how it was written, and he pointed to the cutscene company that worked with Team Ninja, not Team Ninja itself.
Spencer Timm Guess I worded it wrong, but Nintendo is responsible for the crappy story. This saddens me, but Sakamoto is essentially the George Lucas of the Metroid franchise.
You still kinda ignored what I just said. Nintendo chose the wrong company to present the story. From the things that the team said just now, they were saying that the core story - a woman dealing with trauma and overcoming it with an old trusted friend - was good, but the way that it was presented killed any proper impact it could have had. Which Nintendo is responsible for only in the way that a publisher picking a bad production company is responsible for the 'ruining' of their product.
Spencer Timm That's not the point I'm trying to make here. I'm saying that the writing itself was bad. Team Ninja presented what was given to them how Sakamoto wanted it.
To use the George Lucas analogy again, look at the romance scenes in Attack of the Clones. yeah, it was all dudded up nicely, the production values were good, and it all looked nice. But the writing was so poorly written that it outshone the rest of the scenes.
If you write poorly, and give what you've written to a production company, no amount of polishing whatsoever is going to make it work. You can't put a pink ribbon on a pile of feces and call it 'presentable'. I give Team Ninja props for what they tried to do with what they were given. The design and what not were solid, but man, that script.
That, and the D-Pad to move throughout a 3D world was a bad move.
Too add more to the George Lucas comparison, Sakamoto reportedly also acted like a huge control freak and frequently badgered the art and cutscene department to make sure they followed his GLORIOUS VISION™ exactly to the letter.
Well excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me
welll excusssssssssss me princes
Excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me, princess
Oh boy, I'm so hungry, I could eat an octorock!
Well EXcuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuse me, Princess
Princess meeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee excuse well.
Metriod: Fusion is hands down my favorite metroid game to date. I happened to LOVE the story, even going as far as to explain how you could be regenerating health and energy from the monsters you killed and best of all the "survival horror" elements in this game.
Everyone who played this will remeber that one room with all those super bomb blocks before you had access to the super bombs...
I actually got a gameboy micro off amazon just to replay that game! Checking in to say its still awesome!
Fusion gave me nightmares for 2 years when I was in middle school because of the horror elements, namely SA-X.
Oh, yeah, well, SOMEONE in that room had the fucking power bombs.
The PolterGhost It's okay.. I'm safe down here... OH JESUS! GOD! NO!!
I need to play this one still.
"Can you deliver a good story without giving a back-story for the main character? hint: yes"
YOU HERE THAT SUPERHERO MOVIES!?!?! I DON'T NEED TO KNOW HOW BATMAN BECAME BATMAN OR HOW SPIDERMAN BECAME SPIDERMAN 100 MILLION FRACKIN TIMES!
Thank goodness that the mcu won't show us Ben's death for the 20th time.
Wind Waker did Link's personality best.
He's fucking dumb.
He's strong.
He's determined.
He's lazy, but he knows how to wreck shit.
Did they need him to talk? No.
Yeah, like almost short-bus dumb.
Gameplay/story segregation.
In my experience, there should be no segregation between gameplay and story. At least for a game like Zelda, where most of the time, your outlook of Link is depicted by how you play him. Story isn't just defined by cutscenes and dialogue, but by all-out interaction. Your slim depiction of story and its interaction with gameplay does the medium a disservice. Look at Portal and any other game with its level of interaction and you'll see often times that a character's personality as well as their attributes are quietly determined by the obstacles they must overcome. Therefore, I think your observation of Link from Wind Waker is a bit shallow. I don't think he's dumb, the puzzles he solves are outright essential for the story progression in many cases and in understanding how someone just doesn't walk in and take stuff out of the dungeons on their own. I think a better observation is that he doesn't know what he's getting himself into most of the time because admittedly, he's very brave and brash about dangerous situations, but to say he's not smart or cunning in the least is a bit detrimental to the fact that he uses tools, not just his sword, to solve his situations.
Metroid Prime is how you do it. Or Half-Life 1. Being able to decide the amount of immersion you face.
You wanna know something weird and terrifying? That interpretation of Link is actually the most accurate thing ever created. Think about it: He's a snarky jackass who's confident in his proven skills and only butts heads with Zelda because she's an actual human being (Hylian, whatever) rather than a cardboard cut out like Princess Peach. See, that incarnation of Zelda doesn't take his shit and actively did her part as any hero would, meaning Link can't as easily impress her with his general antics.
What does this all mean? Well replace Link with *you*, i.e. the person playing as him and objectively think about how you react as you play the game. Bad writing aside, many of his mannerisms are comparable to those of gamers: a love for looking cool and showing off, a genre savvy eye roll at the ridiculousness of a situation, smack talk at some opposing force that annoys you. That Link does all these things, hell, replace the stupid catch phrase with any personal utterance you may have and you'll start to see a bigger connection.
They obviously didn't intend this when making the show, but it's quite hilarious when you realize it: Link is basically being portrayed by a self aware gamer.
Clyde I think that's quite a bit of a generalisation of gamers when you realise there are millions of us.
What we can learn from Other M
1)It's fucking awful
2)Do everything opposite and you'll have a good game.
It was a 3D game you controlled with the D-Pad. Nothing was good about this game.
It's not a matter of opinion. If think Other M was good in anyway, you have no idea what good is.
I don't know. Maybe because it's a 3D game controlled with a D-Pad, combat is reduced is quick time and auto attacks, there is a stupid first person mode, no music outside of old arrangements, no new powers or enemies, there are only three zones which are very cliche, it's linear in a series known for exploration, the art direction is shit, and the voice acting sucks. So what is good about this game again?
Smash Monkey If you think Other M is bad just because of Samus' characterization, you have no idea what "bad" really means. Other M will always be mediocre. Not "bad," nor really "very good." Any other review is unfair.
Smash Monkey Additionally, it really IS your fault for bringing expectations into a game. I wasn't ever a big fan of Metroid in the past, and personally, I despise any game with no narrative. It comes as no surprise to me that many of the Metroid games I do play bore me to tears. Why? Zero narrative. Just platforming and shooting baddies for the originals, and 3d puzzles and shooting baddies for the wii/gamecube shooters. Other M stands apart from all of the others in that it tried to execute a narrative? Did it do it excellently? Of course not. Did it do it poorly? Not at all.
I disagree with the opinion of the extra credits crew in that I NEED to make the assumption that a blank slate is always worse than a character given personality. A blank slate character - Mario, Link, Samus -- they are nothing to anybody who respects narrative without some semblance of detailed and personalized world out there for them to explore. Portal had the fantastic GLaDOS, without which, the game would be an indy puzzle game and NOTHING more. Link has several worlds, all filled with interesting landscapes and interesting people. Mario has nothing, so I have never liked it. Metroid had nothing, so I never liked it.
The fact that a fleshed out character CAN be worse than a blank slate character is NO MORE to the point than is the fact that a dictator COULD be worse than a corrupt republic. The scope and range of what can be accomplished with blank slate characters is minuscule, tiny. Developers like Nintendo use them because they are safe, easy, they work perfectly with well-fleshed out worlds as back drops. The scope and range of what can be accomplished with personalized characters is FAR greater. That's not to say that it can't mess up -- in fact, it means that you can mess up a lot more. It also means that you can succeed a lot more. The ambitious will always go for a fleshed out character -- there's more at risk, but there's more reward possible.
As for Samus Aran, like I said, I never cared for the previous games, even Corruption, which I enjoyed. Just my own personal opinion, but no narrative = I don't care. Videogames to me, are interactive stories. Not just interactive art (they are), but interactive stories, a special kind of art focused on narrative to tell the tale of some human's (regardless of species) travels. When we say "she's a blank slate" we don't mean that she's never been fleshed out. We DO mean that she's never been fleshed out enough for me to care. To scrounge for characterization on the few interactions she has had with killing aliens in 2d sidescrollers is sad, because a lot of it is almost entirely unintentional on the part of the developer (that is, I don't think Bungie wants you to think Chief is super deep and complex when he misses a shot --> "Did he do it on purpose?" "Why would he miss?") I would rather have the character talk out his problems, monologue or otherwise.
Moreover, saying that monologue is a poor tool for narrative is to reject the very model for narrative development that most people use in real life when interacting with one another. We monologue, in our heads, about other people, all the time. It doesn't work in literature because its too to the point, we get all the details and we don't much otherwise care. There's nothing to "read" into, if you will. With movies and videogames, you have landscapes, sounds, expressions, music, actions, all of that as a back-drop to a monologue, in order to tell a more complex, vivid tale.
No, Other M was no Mass Effect, but it was a lot more enjoyable than every other Metroid game for me, because it was at least ambitious enough to try to have a narrative, and that narrative was decent.
Part of what makes Link such a popular character is the fact that he doesn't talk (aside from the occasional "hnnngh" or "HYAH!"). The actions link takes and his resulting personality are more to do with the person playing, what actions they choose to take, and what their personality is. Hence the name, "Link". :)
Some people may wish otherwise, but I hope that if voice acting is ever added to The Legend of Zelda, Link remains silent.
ASecretGeek Wish granted.
You stole my reply lol
Phillips CD-I: Are you sure about that?
"That one time where Link WAS fleshed out, characterized, given loads of personality"
My brain: *_Oh boy, I'm so hungry I could eat an O C T O R O C K_*
9:43 OH GOD! TRIGGER WARNING! TRIGGER WARNING!! D:
+Fangle Spangle pfft. what could possible be so bad tat you need a tri-AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHH AaAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH
+Fangle Spangle #Triggered
Technically, Samus did speak before Other M. She had an internal monologue in Fusion, and she speaks in the supplementary material (comics and manga).
you do know they ment actual voice sample right? as in able to hear ;)
as in not text you can read with a voice in your head.
plus in Fusion their boss want keep that x snot, and she said : fuck that! not on my watch. plus a kreeper ripley appear and she did not freak out. how badass is that
The thing is, it was MUCH more sparse in Fusion. You got occasional glimpses into her thoughts, which more served to tell the story in the game. Given it being 2d and handheld, it couldn't rely on visuals and dialogue to do so without bogging down the experience with exposition. Other M, being voiced, 3d, and done up with prerendered cutscenes, could use the action, dialogue, and environment to tell the story. But they decided to go with monolog. It's not so much that she didn't have a voice before, more so that her voice was more internal, and observatory. In small segments (as in fusion) this works. Making that her ENTIRE speaking personality (Other M) doesn't
ultimateninjaboi A valid point. You need to use the right tool for the job.
ShotgunVsHeart By that reasoning, the characters in any game made prior to voice sampling are silent characters, like the cast of Final Fantasy 6. She also speaks in the opening to Super Metroid and there's actual (bad) voice work.
I can't help but feel Metroid Fusion did the relationship between Adam and Samus far better and with much less. All we get from them is about a dozen, one-sided "go here do this" conversations, some monolouges on elevators, a cut-away conversation between Adam and an unnamed government official, a handful of instances where Samus disobeys orders, a final confrontation and a resolution. You could probably squeeze all that into 10 minutes if you watched it all in one go. Metroid Fusion was only a 3-5 hour game and it knew it had limitations and so it embraced that. It's got practically the same premise as Other M (Samus goes to large space station/ship where the different sectors represent different habitats while under the supervision of "Adam") but Fusion just quietly outshines Other M in every way.
I just really liked Fusion.
4:13
Xenoblade in a nutshell.
"YEAH! You can't have rainbow without Reyn, baby!"
"Dunban, should we talk to him about this?"
"Let it be, Melia."
I thought of Xenoblade too.
"I'm really feeling it!"
"Yay, Shulk. Good for you."
"Good thing I'm here, right? Hey? Anyone?"
+Yaq P. I thought of star wars republic commando
I remember in Super Metroid- when Mother brain killed the baby Metroid and samus had that moment on her knees- breathing heavy. I could feel the weight of that moment- when she stood up and her theme began to play I imagined her angry, I was angry because the only friend you had besides the birds and monkey was dead- and when she started blasting M Brain with the hyper beam I could feel the anger- it was hectic, you felt powerful, you felt like you were doing what one would do in the situation- be mad and wreck shit.
I knew Samus was angry because I felt angry, I knew Samus was badass because I felt badass. Everything that had transpired, the metroid saving you, dieing, samus breathing, the music playing, you blowing Mother brain up with the Hyper beam, that's how you tell a silent narrative. The actions and events that happened back to back is what told me the story, you as the character felt what Samus felt. Or atleast I did. If anyone says "Samus was a blank slate." I disagree to as much an extent as I can, if you thought she was a blank slate you're wrong, she was a badass who cared, because the game made you feel like a badass and it made you care.
I hope I'm explaining my point coherently, I'm not the best when it comes to such things.
Kid Icarus Uprising's narrative is a great example. Conversations are good at delivering the information to the player while keeping their attention with humor. Idle conversations are just humor that builds on the characters' relationships.
I am WAY late to the party, but I'd like to point out a couple sentences from the Super Metroid guide book.
"She's the most accomplished bounty hunter anywhere. But even though she weeds out dangerous and evil characters from the galaxy for a living, she also truly cares about the safety of all law abiding life forms."
And "She'd rather forego collecting bounty than to see harm come to an innocent life form."
I think those couple sentences do more for Samus as a character, than did the entirety of Other M.
I actually wrote a bit about Other M in a recent essay I wrote during by second year of college. I pointed out that Samus showed a lot more, genuine emotion in Metroid Prime 3, which you can see by reading her body language and how she responds to her friends being picked of one by one. All without saying a word!
The two things that anger me the most in other M are:
1. When you encounter the full grown Ridley ...
Everyone who knows Samus back story just a little bit, knows that Ridley killed her parents und it was an horrible experience. That's why she hates him and the Space Pirates so much (ok and a few other reasons). By the time you met Ridley in other M you killed his former reincarnations five times. Oh boy and she literally goes full berserk on this purple asshole ... And other M wants me to believe that she gets a childhood trauma back flash because she encounters him now ... bullshit
2. The neural connection to the Power Suit.The power Suit is a bio-mechanical symbiote that is mostly connected thru an interface an her back (the pinkish patterns on the back of the zero suit). In the Prime series we have seen that if this part of the suit takes gigantic amount of damage the suit can malfunction. E.g. in Prime 1 when Pirate Frigate Orpheon explodes. This explosion catapults Samus across a huge hallway and smashes her back in the power cord of an elevator. This causes that some suit upgrades to malfunction. For the note this was only the Varia suit which has only half of the protective abilities of the Gravity suit. So, and other M wants me to believe that a shot in the back from standard freezer gun of an federation trooper can cause the Gravity suit to have a system failure ???
What you said about Anakin before the Prequels: it even works a little by just pretending you don't know: Did Anakin want revenge on Obi-Wan? Did he want to do the right thing? Was he tricked and so on. Imagining back the mistery is so compelling to me. Even though I have no problem with the Prequels
Story mistake aside, gameplay dissociation aside, series dissonance aside, my number one problem with this game is the treatment of Samus. Other M's interpretation of her was so radically different from the Samus that came out of nowhere as a surprise female character so long ago and still managed to become a fan favorite, and in such a radical direction. I'm glad this video touches so heavily on that, as I feel it was the true nail in the coffin for this game.
This is essentially my complaint with what I've seen of Other M - I still haven't gotten around to playing it, which I need to fix. There was a ton of potential there - even most of the story beats could be used well.
Take the Adam unlock order thing. Have him remind her to limit her firepower and warn him when she escalates, since if they wanted the station blown up they could just do that from the outside. Specifically call out no power bombs. Have him chew her out after going through that room without her varia suit - he said limit her FIREPOWER, not her armor! Why would she endanger herself like that!? And then, at the end of the game, when everything has gone to pieces... a button prompt to drop a power bomb shows up.
That change alone redefines the relationship between them, to one where she's restricting herself because he *asked*, even to the point of being slightly dumb... and where he genuinely cares about her well-being.
As a fan of the artform (and the series, admittedly!) it's frustrating to see potential missed like that.
Fuck that, the DiC cartoon's Link was fucking awesome. He may not be how Link seems in the games but HE ISN'T SUPPOSED TO BE. He's in his own setting doing his own thing, starring in a comedy cartoon series based on the Zelda franchise (which was extremely young at the time the cartoon was made, btw). The Zelda cartoon is awesome for being a cheesy 80s cartoon full of personality. Link and Zelda's relationship in it was hilarious.
When I played the NES games and saw Link on the cover, that is definitely how I imagined him being. Snarky, funny, and witty. The cartoon was terrible, was Link was spot on to me.
You bring up the "Ultimate Warrior Concept". It was a funny show, hell it lasted for seasons and even got hauled over into the Captain N show. Popularity is not going to be argued with, but now as we've matured we understand what the problems are and realize why he was left behind. I don't even think they parody his line in any Zelda game in history.
Zetta Toad Oh... You beat me to it.
Before Other M, I expected Adam to have a Brooklyn Accent. "Any objections, Lady?" lol In Fusion I always read him saying it like that.
You know I can't believe you never brought up the example of Jak and Daxter. Game 1 no voice barely any backstory and barely knowledge about anything of the character. Jak 2 came out gave him a voice, some personality and his backstory was already somewhat fleshed out. Game finishes and gives us a shit load more about him. Jak 3 came out more personality and even more backstory by the end of it. And guess what they did a fucking fantastic job in doing so.
+Raging karma
They never brought it up because their argument wasn't that development was bad or that silent characters should be left alone, it was that trying to establish a personality is a risk because when you do a personality on a silent character badly it can make the character inconsistent. While having a solid, established, personality is great, sometimes less is more and leaving details up to the player's imagination can add a lot to a character if done well. Which goes against the argument people often make for Other M that "any personality is better than keeping no personality".
like Dead Space 1 and 2
like Dead Space 1 and 2
+Raging karma um are you going to mention the other jack and Dexter game? what was final frontier I think.
ChrisRidge The final frontier really didn't add anything to his character. The game was ok but not worthy of mentioning.
Nintendo throws us all for a loop and gives the Breath of the Wild Link the same "excuuuuuuse me" voice
One of the industries most famous icons is a silent protagonist, yet he's still referred to as one of the best characters with a (so far) excellent story, Gordon Freeman.
Silence doesn't necessarily mean they lack personality. Look at Link and Chell. Both don't talk (much in Link's case), but they clearly exhibit personality, based on either their actions or what reactions they provoke.
True, but I didn't like Half Life all that much BECAUSE Gordon Freeman is a nobody. I still prefer a protagonist with a voice in a game that takes itself seriously. Portal is one of the few exceptions because, we return to it over and over again for GlaDos, not dumb, deaf, mute and possibly potato-brained Chell lol
Turtoi Radu Link is unsocial. He also has sleep problems.
Turtoi Radu
1)Skyward sword. Several times in the beginning (before you ever get to the ground) he stands there while a group of bullies pick on him. He does nothing at all until Zelda comes to rescue him. Really pathetic, TBH.
2)Just a joke. But he does start almost every game sleeping, so it can be inferred he is lazy.
coastersplus Ah. Good morning Crono! =D
The "Man with no Name" is considered to be one of the most iconic fictional characters in recent history and he doesn't even have a name let alone a backstory.
Why haven't I seen your channel before?!?! Subbed.
"Well , excuse me princess!"
"We don't talk about the dark times."
samus has depth as a character. you just need to be observant to see it. small things like when she closed the dead Federation troopers eye in prime 2 and the fact she accepted a near suicidal mission in prime 2 for the sake of helping the luminoth and the universe show who samus is. things like that, her keeping the baby metroid in metroid 2, loads of stuff in fusion etc actually show quite a lot about her character.
Honestly, my biggest issue was just how weird the baby imagery and the implicit "woman as mother" angle felt, focused on someone whose entire maternal expression to date has been approximately equivalent to taking a stray kitten to a shelter.
Hey, EC, I'm an aspiring game developer and your videos have taught me quite a lot about game design and how to make a good game. Thank you guys so much. You guys could be the thing that turns the game industry on its head (in a good way) in the next decade, and allows younger gamers to garner a meaningful experience from video games, and actually learn something from them instead of new curse words. Thank you guys so much for that, and keep up the good work!!! :D :D :D
Its 9 years later and they've become strictly a history show that does gaming content on a side channel
Small problem with your analogy to Link...
He's a separate Link in every game (With few exceptions) And I don't think the Link in the cartoon is the same Link as any of the Links in the games...
It's the same Link in every game.
No...
No it isn't...
It's a different Link in every game...
Then show some proof that it is a different link in every game, not say, "It isn't the same link in every game."
Hyrule Historia (The official big book on The Legend of Zelda) Explicitly states that a number of Links are, in fact, different Links.
Heck, the A Link to the Past Timeline takes place in a world where Link DIED in Ocarina of Time...
The only time we've had a dead Link as the main Character in a Zelda game was Majora's Mask!
Yes Link IS NOT THE SAME in every game (with exceptions, like Majoras mask).
But that argument further only empower he's argument, even tho Link is always another character (with VERY similar personality, brave, and little bit naive maybe? etc.) we still like him and we still expect the same thing out of him.
That guy says two word in most of the series and that's "yes" and "no".
If you pile up single word that explains his personality that's not so many words. Therefore probably not that important to mention because it is kinda obvious that it empowers the argument that "less is more" and much of back story (like the cartoon tried) is not needed or better than none.
I go back and watch these old Extra Credits cuz well, they're just *so* much better.
I sort of hoped he wasn't talking about Link from the cartoons, but rather another equally loved, speaking,"fleshed-out" version... Yes, the CD-i Zelda games.
"OH BOY" -Link
This reminds me a lot about J R R Tolkien. He knew that once you explained something, it was no longer interesting, and shouldn’t waist time on describing it in greater detail.
If you slow it down to half speed he totally sounds drunk.
He does xD
I died
LOL he dose!
lol.awsome
well, that was awesome.
Man, as a writer, these videos are a treasure trove (not of games, but for anything).
Also, I played this game and shamefully loved it simply for the fact it showed Samus (literally) ripping monsters apart just as I visualized as a child playing Super. But then I hated it when I realized it was maybe essentially saying that Prime 1-3 never happened. Prime had tons of character! Just some of the 3 second cutscenes showing her from an angle and coldly, ruthlessly confident she was... Link is shown being afraid all the time, even unconfident.
I remember when link was given a personality, it was called The Wind Waker
You know iv watched your channel on and off never really thought of subbing but this, this right here. I have new found respect for you guys im subbing right now. Keep up the great videos!
Metroid Timeline Theory!: The Samus in Other M is an impostor. yeah.
Yeah, probably.=D
I have one: Other M Samus is actually a clone of the real Samus created by the the creepy quarantine officer from the beginning of the game. He augmented her personality, gave her a voice modulator, and replicated the Power Suit. Also, the entire mission took place in an alternate universe.
Adam was none the wiser.
makes sense.
Plot Twist: Real Samus was the Deleter and was trying to rescue Clone Samus from her own stupidity.
The PolterGhost Nice one!
Coming back to this after having watched Geek Critique's video on Fusion, one thing I've noticed is how Fusion actually avoids a lot of other M's mistakes. It doesn't do the best job of telling story through gameplay and using comms chatter to flesh out its characters, but it at least made a pretty good attempt.
One of the main things that distinguishes Fusion from its predecessors was its focus on more linear progression, which was likely done to accommodate for the fact that it was developed for handhelds and thus had to be designed so it could be played in short bursts. As such, one of the major themes of the game is the loss of agency and the loss of self - Samus loses her signature suit, is infused with Metroid DNA, and is forced to take orders from an AI.
Likewise, those decisions are further reinforced by the gameplay, aesthetics, and level design - it eschews the labyrinthine caves of the previous three games for more artificial environments, and the fusion suit is used to justify the loss of previous upgrades, the introduction of Samus' ability to hang from ledges, and the fact that she can't tank hits like she used to.
There's also the aspect of the SA-X encounters, which are predicated on the fact that you can't take it head-on. Your only option is to run. There are even a few times where you have to make use of the fact that Samus can grab ledges and SA-X can't.
Even when the game does opt to tell rather than do or show, it takes the comms chatter route, focusing on Samus' interactions with the station's AI and the Federation scientists overseeing the station.
That combination of focusing on character interaction and intertwining the gameplay with the story and overall themes really comes together in an interesting, if somewhat frustrating moment. The game offers only one major sequence break - normally, after getting the speed boost, you need the diffusion missiles to return to the sector's navigation room, but there's an exploit to get there beforehand. The developers knew this was possible, and programmed a special bit of dialogue in - the station's AI congratulates you for figuring out how to get back without the diffusion missiles, and a federation scientist offers access to a classified area of the station, only for the AI to refuse to carry out the order and tell Samus to go back and try to find the diffusion missiles.
All in all, Fusion succeeded at what Other M failed to do - telling the story of a Samus who's been stripped of her agency and forced to act under a commanding officer, and how we see her act in such a situation is far more in line with what we'd expect of the Samus we've seen in previous games - she's reluctant to take orders, and as the game goes on, things further and further off the rails, straying from her objectives as new circumstances arise, and eventually abandons the mission entirely, opting to blow up the station in order to destroy the X parasite once it's discovered that the Galactic Federation plans on weaponizing it.
that zelda bit aaallmost made me cry...FROM PAIN...its okay eyes the horrid is all over now (*_*)
hey im not trying to get under anyone's skin but the all american cartoon of link gave him a little too much character and started to express a david hasselholf appearance with some of his so-called ''humor'', soooo thanks to you my eyes and ears are bleeding now
q(T.T)p
1000000% Spot on with character analysis dude. You're really smart. A character fleshed out badly CAN BE much worse than a character not fleshed out at all.
I was and am one of the few defenders of Other M. That being said, I always used the "Blank Slate" argument when it came to defending the game. I'm so happy and glad to finally see someone on the internet give me an intelligent comeback to the argument. It helps me understand more and more why people hate the game so much. And, even though I defend the game, i'll still admit that Samus was handled horribly. I agree with nearly everything said in this video.
But there is one thing that a lot of people keep on ignoring: Samus ISN'T a silent protagonist. In Super Metroid, she gave an opening monologue, and in Fusion, she couldn't shut up. It just really bothers me.
Also, people should stop hating on a game that has a terrible story but excellent gameplay. The game is so much damn fun to play, and they nailed the Metroid atmosphere.
SamVision Really? I thought it was pretty fun. The only mechanics I didn't like so much was having to "recharge" my health and missiles; and having to go first person sometimes. I don't know why they didn't just go with a drop system, or why they couldn't just let you interact with things normally and use missiles outside of first person, but generally speaking, combat was fun and fast-paced.
If you liked it that's cool, but for me the gameplay was decent at best and in no way made up for the story.
Prepare for a long comment about other M's gameplay.
When you say the game's gameplay was fun, let me add an asterisk to that statement. The BOSS BATTLES were fun. Sticking your arm cannon up ridley's mouth, fishing vorash out of the lava, shinesparking directly into nightmare, and leaping and dodging all over the place to avoid phantoon's fire orbs makes me feel like a badass. Hell, I even liked the high octane action of the tractor boss. If the game were just one big boss rush absent of all story or context I would say the game could be seen as a good distraction rather than a hot cancerous mess. I will not however, argue that the gameplay as a whole was good. Because many of its elements were distinctly the opposite of metroid, and it's combat outside boss battles was too messy or too simple to ever be all that engaging.
Let me explain. Doors randomly shut without any reason for them needing to do so, you're far too frequently forced into linear, scripted sequences that will often times amount to little more than going in circles (you do this both times you go to sector 2 btw). It's not a terribly explorey game. I can't go back to acquire pickups that are now available to me when I activate new abilities because the game doesn't really open the entire thing up to you until the end. Some areas are always going to be inaccessible at every point in the game, even during the epilogue when you're just item hunting. There's no reason for this. Even in Fusion and Prime 3, when they restricted your access to certain areas, there was always a believable plot reason for it, and they were infrequent enough not to get annoying. Like the power outage in fusion knocking out all the powered doors, or ghor totaling your ship so you need to wait for it to repair before you can continue planet hopping. Other M rarely, if ever, provides decent justification for severely hamstringing your access to large areas of the bottle ship. Which is just stupid. Bactracking and item hunting are a core element of every metroid game and taking that away from the player at any point without reasonable justification is simply irritating and definitively not metroid.
The combat straddles somewhere between obnoxiously precise, and hand holdlingly forgiving to the point of boredom. Early in the game, special tech is the only reliable way to kill enemies, and often times pulling off this tech involves jumping on top of an enemy which raises your chances of taking a hit. Which is especially annoying because there aren't any health and ammo pickups this time around. By end game, you're so ridiculously overpowered, which while I believe being ridiculously overpowered is normally a good thing in a metroid game, the sensemove makes you basically immortal and just causes combat to become boring. And that's not even taking into account the fact that power bombs in this game are screen nukes and you have an unlimited number of them. And don't even get me started on the awkward missile mechanics this game has, there are so many better ways to implement this it's not even funny. Forcing the player to literally rotate their hand 90 degrees and shift camera perspective is not a good way to implement such a basic mechanic. But that's all I'll say about that since I've probably already gone on too long.
And all this isn't even taking into account some of the other stuff the game messed up that isn't ludo-narrative like the downright comical aesthetic choices and art style, and the over reliance on assets and elements from super metroid and metroid fusion.
I also disagree on the game nailing metroid's atmosphere, but I've probably already bored you at this point. Let me know if you want some more specifics. I hope I've given you some food for thought though, because it's rarely explained in detail why the gameplay isn't really all that good.
Ya got left hangin', bud.
Lots of games are the opposite of Metroid and are still fantastic games. A game like Bioshock was exceedingly linear and it was still a classic. That doesn't justify the fact that this game SHOULD have been more Metroid-y and I will take points off for its linearity, but it doesn't make the game bad.
Sensemove was overpowered, but honestly, having an easy game doesn't necessarily make it less fun. Just look at the Kirby franchise. Easiest platformers around, yet still some of the most fun ever. Though I do prefer the thrill of being in danger and having combat challenges, it's not nearly a dealbreaker.
I don't know how the hell you're holding your controller, but if you have to rotate your hand 90 degrees to point the wiimote at the TV, you're doing something horribly wrong. That might be why you're having control issues.
The gameplay is average at its very worst, and it doesn't make up for its muddled and ridiculous storytelling, but everyone always exaggerates its faults. Honestly, it sounds like you just came off of TheGamingBritShow's Other M videos before writing that post and were looking for any way to insert his opinion in the comments section here and pretend it's yours.
When you talked about the Comms chatter about your squad members, the best example is probably republic commandos, the way everyone interacts with each other, and their personality shows perfectly too, I know more about a bunch of clones who have the same face, then most of the blank slates that are some main characters
Mario also had a cartoon. I once bought a DVD with a few episodes of it.
Sad to say, Mario came up short in that compared to how he was in the games. I honestly prefer the almost-completely-silent Mario over that one.
Actually, Mario with a voice has worked before. The old Nintendo power comics about him painted him as a no nonsense leader and a smart fighter. It didn't clash with anything shown in the actual games and it made for an entertaining experience.
I was stating what I personally thought.
Well, just in case, direct me to what you're talking about and I'll see how it compares.
Just google something along the lines of Nintendo Power Mario comics and you're bound to find it.
Googled it.
I honestly couldn't get past the first page for some reason (Not 'cause of hardware, just a mental thing that I have no clue about ATM)
The Mario & Luigi franchise IMO is the best example of characterization of the universe.
That thing James brought up about Samus and Adam being in constant communication being a good way to characterize them both is actually the exact same thing that was implemented in Kid Icarus: Uprising. Unsurprisingly, it was a really effective way of making the characters stand out without forcing exposition through cutscenes. I'd like to see a lot more of that in future games.
When I played Other M, I didn't care too much about how she was portrayed until a single scene of the game... when she finds Ridley and gets paralyzed, in that moment, I went out of myself and screamed to loud voice: WHY SHE GETS PARALYZED?, SHE HAS FACED HIM... 1,2,3,4! TIMES, IS THERE ANY REASON WHY SHE FEARS HIM NOW?!, that, for me, was the most senseless moment of the game.
Amen. Even if it's a reference to the rarely-distributed Metroid manga that implies that Ridley killed Samus's parents. Nevermind that in that manga, she overcame her trauma. Nevermind that in the previous Metroid games she killed Ridley multiple times.
Honestly, she should have seen Ridley and gone "Oh for- CAN'T YOU STAY DEAD?!" and then started blasting him with missiles.
As much as I hate necroing, it's worth pointing out that Samus actually has PTSD courtesy of Ridley's assault on her home colony of K2-L. PTSD is something that can't really be cured for good, and considering that his death on Zebes in Super Metroid was his first TRUE death, Samus wasn't expecting him to reappear on the Bottle Ship. Combine sudden reappearance of arch nemesis with ptsd and well, I for one can imagine the reaction would be really fucking severe.
Metroid 1/Zero Mission: reks Ridley
Prime 1: reks Meta Ridley
Prime 3: reks Meta Ridley
Super: reks Ridley
Other M: OMG RiDLYe PTSD
Fusion: reks X parasite Ridley
One of these things is not like the other...
the back story given in metroid involving the chozo and the nature of samus's life and suit are quite detailed . i had the pleasure of playing echos and it was amazing
I personally just ignore most of the story parts in Other M (with the exception of the pieces that point to my pet theory of Adam having set up the entire thing to gain access to the Metroid lab and being the true... *shudder*... Deleter) and focus on the game itself. As far as I'm concerned, Other M is a fantastic game, and it is incredibly unfortunate that they made the cutscenes unskippable. I have a friend who's a huge Metroid fan who refuses to touch the game due to the crappy cutscenes, and I suspect he's far from the only person out there who feels that way.
On the contrary, he's fortunate to not touch this game because he's probably a real Metroid fan. Tell him there's no point to the exploration because of the Concentration AND... because the Hard Mode removes all "exploration" elements. If you choose to ignore the story, then you ignore the purpose of this game: telling a story. This game has no reason to exist. AND you'll find better than this if you haven't played a "better" action game already.
Alexandre Armont
Well, I found Concentration to be inconvenient and a very temporary solution at best. I didn't play on Hard Mode.
As I said, the gameplay was excellent if you tuned out the story.
Yeah, spamming the SenseMove is excellent. There's no challenge, the Special Moves remove any sense of progression with the Power-Ups, the game pads itself in order to activate the power-ups. I'm sorry but you need to see some analysis. It's nothing more than a guilty pleasure. ;-)
Alexandre Armont
I think it's a great game, you do not. Let's just agree to disagree.
Alexandre Armont You're implying that challenge is the only reason to play the game and the only way to feel progression. Challenge is only good if it serves a purpose. If you're an expert in the Metroid games, yeah, having lots of challenge makes the game more enjoyable, but if you were like me, and Other M was the first Metroid game I ever played, unnecessary challenge is a hindrance in the game. Since Other M's main intention was to bring newcomers to the series, a lower challenge is the best option.
Other M is based off of a "retcon" type manga which has Samus' character and the story of other M. I think Gaijin Goomba had a video in it. I saw the manga in a library and read it. It's pretty good, but you can get more info from him.
"Actions define a character", Batman is right
WHO'S BINGEWATCHING THE EXTRA CREDITS SERIES EIGHT YEARS AFTER RELEASE?! ME, THAT'S WHO.
now let me watch in peace, please. Thank you.
Nobody ever seems to mention that the plot is practically a mirror world interpretation of Fusion, which was originally Sakamoto's work, but was not a new plot. Adam, the AI, was the same Adam portrayed in Other M, but was the original, not a nicknamed AI. And it worked better, because the AI was limiting Samus' capabilities to keep a mercenary, who to that point had been loyal to the Federation from learning secrets that might shake the loyalty and lead her to destroy the station, or become a whistleblower, or worse, turn on the federation.
There was a press release by Sakamoto berating Retro Studio's works with the franchise, including Fusion.
Then again, I'm basing this off of memory, and I could have read that on Kotaku before I realized they were basically vidyagame tabloid.
Also worth noting, the boring ass monologue crap was still present in Fusion.
You apparently forgot that Sakamoto is a raving chauvinist, and that he thinks that us gamers cant handle the puzzles of exploration. Also, the Adam AI in Fusion was the mind of the real Adam digitized. Also, Other M makes the events in fusion seem redundant, because if Samus learned the corrupt plan of the Federation in Other M, why was it a surprise in Fusion? As for the monologue being present in Fusion... you must not even realize that monologue requires speech. The story is given through the thoughts of Samus, and it works better as a portrayal of her character than the monotone brooding present in Other M
thrasher698 I felt the first part went without saying. Also, I hadn't completed Fusion, but I'm not too concerned about spoilers, I didn't really plan on downloading an emulator or getting a GBA.
"A few cutscene monologues isn't going to cut it."
I normally would agree but take a look at the Bosch Monologues of Freespace 2 at how to do this correctly. The videos are on TH-cam as usual.
I know this is old, but to be fair to Team Ninja, their involvement in the game was mostly to make the 'game' part of Other M.
The 'story' part of Other M is done by the guys that did a lot of the older style 2D games like Fusion (but not the first person Retro Studios games).
Credit and anger where credit and anger's due.
A lot of Samus's faults in the game really rely on her being portrayed through the lens of Japanese gender dynamics and what makes a 'strong' woman (but still has her being a woman) as filtered by her male writing staff.
Whether or not this is inherently bad or not is a topic for another day, I'm sure, and whether or not a man can write for a woman or vice verse is another topic too, but that's what you got.
But if you watch almost any anime where there's a 'strong female' protagonist, the tropes in play for Samus's personality aren't even remotely unique to this game.
Again, you can argue if these tropes are bad or not, but that's a can of worms I'm not prepared to even attempt to open here.
the game was mediocre at best... and far to easy.
The Metroid series was inspired by Ridley Scott's Alien series, even if they made Samus a cardboard cutout of the weird Ripley in Alien Resurrection, it would've been alot better than this incompetent moron we got instead.
Men can write some damn fantastic female characters, just look at James Cameron, who wrote and directed Aliens as well as Terminator 2. You can't possibly tell me that Sarah Connor and Ellen Ripley aren't iconic as good female characters in fiction.
Japan's views on gender roles is a terrible excuse, seeing as Japanese writers were responsible for Metroid Fusion, Super Metroid, Metroid: Zero Mission, and the Manga, all of which actually showed Samus as not only a character, but the complete polar opposite of this inept failure of a portrayal.
Gameplay-wise, and alot of people like to overlook this, It wasn't a "true" Metroid either. Show me another Metroid game that threw the concept of exploration out the window and made it mechanically impossible to resort to going back to a previous area for possible hints as to whats stopping your progress in your current area? Other M is the first game in the series that is 100% linear, even going as far as locking doors as you pass them to make sure you always move forward.
I am glad to see an objective point of view on the story of Other M. While I agree with a lot of your points, I think that having more interactions with the rest of the crew would actually give her a chance to explain a bit more, without a cutscene, why she freaked out so much after seeing Ridley. There actually is a semi-justifiable reason, and another video on TH-cam actually goes into that detail of it.
voice acting just isn't going to work with nintendo characters, unless they had voices from the very beginning. These characters have already been firmly established. Other M proved that the Samus that WE thought we knew is actually not the same samus that the creators intended us to know. giving her a voice just made it extremely apparent. Silent nintendo characters are a good thing. I've said many times that having a silent character in a game is very key to immersion. If the character you are playing as has a voice then that means the developers are not allowing YOU the player controlling the character to be immersed into the game. Because they are telling you what they want the character to be depicted as, therefore removing you from the game. And then it becomes more like a movie than a game. Metroid is a franchise that lives off of immersion, other m totally removed that.
It's very difficult to get emotion from text alone. At the end of Majora's Mask, the Happy Mask Salesman says something along the lines of "So, all the evil has left the mask after all". This is a point where voice voice acting could be a ton of good, because it makes us realize how he intended to use the mask. Voice acting CAN work, if done properly, even on for the protagonists that have been more or less mute from the beginning. There are two things that can depict emotion and intent. First of which is tone, and second, is facial expression. Let's for a moment, think of Half-Life 2 as a movie, how the hell would Gordon communicate with the other characters? When used properly, it can work, and to a spectacular success, and when used poorly, it fails so hard, it like a nuclear reactor meltdown.
I have just three words for you:
Kid Icarus: Uprising
There.
***** That would be the writer's fault and not Nintendo's.
***** Oh, um, didn't notice when you did... Sorry.
***** Actually, she did, though it was through only text, which is a horrible way to sell emotion. And so is monotone.
"More personality is sometimes better"
Cartoon Link: "WELL EXCUUUUUSSE ME!"
For all those people saying that Samus had 23 years to get treatment for PTSD and that she should have shrugged it off by the events of Other M. You obviously don't understand how PTSD works or what it is. You can get treatment and symptoms may subside, but all it takes is one action, one moment to bring the memories of the original event to the surface and cause traumatic stress.
It would make sense for Samus, as a person with feelings and personality, to continually suffer from PTSD even with treatment. Considering the job she does and the events that happen to her. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that she has vivid nightmares of past missions and not survivng. Just because she has kicked ass doesn't make her immune to this kind of trauma, it makes her even more susceptible in fact. As they keep throwing her into what are effectively suicide missions.
For cripes sake, Ridley killed her parents!
"Remember that one time when you were a little girl and a flying dragon brutally mutilated your parents?"
"Oh, that? Meh."
"Meh?"
"I mean, c'mon, they were just parents. It's not like I'm the only one who has them at some point."
The problem with that is that she never breaks down in earlier titles. She's fought him before, and if she had the level of PTSD that she does in other M she would have gone through that exact experience in other metroid games. The tech limitations of the other games might have stopped Nintendo from doing this before, but it still doesn't excuse the fact that even though this is the 6th (or so?) time she's fought him, she's JUST now having her first breakdown. That doesn't add up. Trying to add a way to show drama through an irrational fear and subsequent breakdown is a GREAT way to show Samus' flaws (like Indiana jones and snakes), but the instigator of the breakdown should be something that the player hasn't seen her face yet. Making it something like Ridley is a cheap and unwelcome surprise to the player, since Samus has never before shown this particular weakness.
got to love how other m craps on the chozo though. Not even mentioned once. thats a major helper that tore the game in my opinion.
Should I thumbs this down to show respect?
You thumbs this up to agree with the opinion in the video, and thumbs down to disagree.
E Lee You seem like you haven't played Metroid: Other M and for that, I envy you. To clarify, in Samus's time in Adam's elite army group, the soldiers would all salute by giving the thumbs up, which you'll note is already incredibly dumb. Samus however, being the sole female member, decides to give her salute as a thumbs down which apparently has something to do with that. Apparently both her and Adam saw this as a sign of respect.
Seriously, this game's writing is so much worse than the reputation says.
That is so silly. I'm not going to lie, that made me laugh a little bit.
What a beautiful critical analysis of execution and character detail! A+ definitely!
The baby.
It's called the Super Metroid goddamit!
The dialogue thing you were talking about, happened a lot in Kid Icarus Uprising, and when I say a lot is A LOT, the characters doesn't stop talking(if you progress throught the game fast enought) and this happens in every single chapter during the game, and for me even if we are talking about Metroid, Kid Icarus is One of the best games of this Console GEN.
That was conversation, not narration
comment that isn't an essay
Jose Membreno Yeah, emotions concerning this game are absurdly high. Either people defend it to their graves or hate it as if the game were the devil
***** USE YOUR PLASMA BEAM!!!
SuperDuckyWho NEVER!!!
Jose Membreno I'm batman.
I'd also like to add that the PTSD stuff with Ridley would've made WAY, WAYYYY more sense if they just did a quick intro video at the beginning of the game of young Samus' parents being killed by Ridley like in the manga. The game may not have to require a huge backlog of exposition but I think that would've really made that scene flow much better.
9:48 I can taste the vomit in my mouth already
This was a great video as someone who's obsessed with giving my own characters backstories but whose favorite character is Link. Excellent points made!
Actually, here is a link with personality that was done well: Wind waker. Toon link has personality yet he never speaks, so ARGUMENT DISPROVED
That's great. But I think we also should pay attention to when Link is characterised the least. This allows us to base our emotions off the world around us, and especially the people in it. This makes it easier for us to see the entire picture and the message the developer wanted us to see.
I see that, but in my mind, a more characterized link allows us to connect, or "link" to the character, giving him a better personality, I had hell of fun with the NPCs and just looking at link's personality shine in Wind Waker, and the DS games. (Spirit tracks DOESN'T suck btw) In my mind, I can connect more to something with personality better than a blank slate I can project myself onto.
here's the thing, link does have some personality in wind waker but it's not much, I think you missed the part of the video where he says that, sure he got mad at times or happy, a little embarassed at the beginig when he got his clothes but that's hardly a completely fleshed out character, how he reacted to tingle? neutral, about the girl inloved with a moblin? neutral
They weren't saying that he didn't have a personality in the games, they were saying that when you fully flesh out a once mute character with a previously speculated personality through speech instead of actions there are issues.
"Can you deliver a good story, without giving the backstory of the main character"
Yes... Yes you can. Allow me to intreduce a couple of games that proves that.
Little Nightmares, Inside, Limbo, Ori and the blind forest, Ori and the will of the whisp, are games that nothing is said at all. Yet we invest our self in to that world and characters.
(And I accedently typed Orin and the will of the princess, when the whole link thing came up. >_< )
9:45 It burns
8:31 Wait a minute, what game was THAT image from?! I don't recall a single map, Samus model, or weapon in any of the 3D Metroid games that looked like that...
Next up: Learning from Federation Force.
...I guess Nintendo didn't learn from Other M. Or Paper Mario Sticker Star -.-
_"Coming up next in "Dead Nintendo Series", we take a look-"_
i like how alot of people do not know about the metroid manga
because Other M is the first game to try and put a load of characterisation in but not the first time they have
Chrono Trigger - that is all
*static* "WELL EXCUUUUUSE ME-"
I died laughing at that, I did not see that coming
The primary issue with Other M is that it finally fleshed out Samus for the general gaming audience, and the aforementioned audience didn't like the portrayal. History and character wise, she was spot on - go read the Metroid manga if you don't believe me. The issue is that the canon Samus didn't match the mental image players had created via the previous games that showed her as a blank slate.
While I disagreed with a lot of this video, the tidbit about there being no com-banter between Samus and Adam I agree was a huge oversight.
Samus was slightly blank, it gave us enough info to get us started but not enough to make her a character so it left it to our imaginations. It's a lot like Charizard, It's a fire-breathing dragon and our mind portrays things we like onto it and the same is with Samus. We portrayed her to things we liked and thought were interesting which satisfied us all but giving her a character took away our portrayals of Samus.(slightly) Blank slates came if done correctly could please everyone because they all imagine the character differently, For all we used to know, Samus was an awesome space bounty hunter who works alone, something our minds can change to suit what we think is awesome.
justus4justice One game: Metroid Zero Mission. It took the manga canon and implemented that in ONE SECOND and it fleshed out Samus much better(and I'd argue much more) than Other M. You know what that moment is? Her reaction to Ridley getting a two seconds tops sequence of images setting up the fight with Samus striking a defensive pose. That was it. But much more than ANY other boss.
Just by that you could infer that A) Ridley or his species had a big damn reputation making Samus react in caution(who so far did not even flinch at anything she saw), and/or B) Samus had a personal history with Ridley or his species, possibly a traumatic one.
But Other M spells it out. And that's the biggest sin in any visual medium, even moreso in an interactive audiovisual one. (Also it's not consistent with her having killed him before and her therefore knowing for a fact that Ridley is not beyond her capabilities.)
While I agree with her history being reflective of the manga, her character is not. At the point in her life that Other M takes place, she does not fear Ridley. She does not follow Adam's orders. Those things are referenced at the end of the manga itself, not to mention that the last chapter ends at the beginning of Zero Mission. Other M is post Super Metroid. She has long gotten over much of what they portrayed as a flaw for her. I agree that at one point (like when she was 16 and Adam was her direct CO) she may have acted like the showed her in Other M, but this is post Super-Metroid. She's fought Ridley multiple times and won, she's killed Mother Brain, and she and Adam are pretty much on equal footing. For a story during this part of the timeline, her actions didn't make sense.
Um.. actually.. those Manga were made not-canon by nintendo a looong time ago, and were what team ninja used mostly to try and write her character... yeah...
Point about the value of a lack of backstory and why something isn't necessarily better than nothing reminds me of the Forerunners from Halo. I found them utterly fascinating when we knew very little about them beyond their most crucial contributions to the plot and a few snippets about the Didact and the Librarian. Now, after Halo 4 and 5 and all of 343 Industries' added lore? Not as much, although their tech and aesthetics are still extremely cool.
I never played Other M. I'm usually the one not to judge a book by it's cover, but from the gameplay and cutscenes I've seen, I didn't like it at all. I also heard that the gameplay was good but the story isn't, but from what I've seen, I didn't like the gameplay either. Once I get my hands on it I'll see if my predictions were right after all.