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[Doom]

Before it was sort of a dull trend only punctuating my disappointment that we haven't fought Kraid in three dimensions yet.

Now it's just sort of actively terrible and silly.

I'm not gonna call Samus mai waifu, but I am in the camp that she's a stoic badass. She's infiltrated super-structures that span planets, annihilated an entire super-violent species and regularly duels with straight up Ghosts and Godzillas.

Everything I'm about to say is with a grain of "ain't played it yet" salt. Also applies to Prime 3. More mature storylines from Metroid? I'd rather see more nuanced storylines. More of the universe revealed and all that... maybe actual bounties hunted. I sort of liked what Fusion tried to do. I loved what Prime did, though in Prime 2 they got scared and backed off from the Federation stuff. But Metroid tends to deliver on excellent atmosphere, exploration, gameplay... that sort of thing. The quality of Samus crying or inner monologing could be improved, but I think I liked the Zero Mission and Super Metroid approach: keep it minimal. I think that's the only true outrage you can take from Other M's characterization: we really haven't figured out how to direct beyond a sprite cooing at the player, taking a laser beam for them, and static-flickering off screen dramatically?

The series seems to be stagnating quite a bit. The last two Prime games are considered questionable and Other M may shape up to be a joke. S'why I'm wary to go purchase it... short? Questionable quality? $50? Booo-urns. But as it is, they should probably stop racing to do new Ridley fights and maybe crack some quality ground, rather than some ground that's new for the sake of new.

Or at least make a 3D Kraid Fight.

[spoiler]Apparently Nightmare is in Other M, demanding at least a rental on my end.[/spoiler]

[Shinra]

It's probably been said a couple times before in this thread, but seriously, Samus kills Ridley in every fucking game.  Without the slightest sort of emotional reaction.

Corollary: when was the last time you cared about Ridley showing up in a Metroid game?

Never, because Samus never broke down and cried?

Ok, let me tell you a story:

I like zombie movies. A lot. I've seen pretty much every big, highly acclaimed zombie movie, and I've tried to get my wife interested in zombie movies because we share so many other interests. So we watch the -Of the Dead series together, and 28 days/weeks later, and a few other movies, and I finally manage to get ahold of a copy of a movie I've been trying to watch forever, Zombie, the italian cash-in on the Of the Dead franchise.

So we watch the movie, and almost every female character dies a grisly death, frozen up and crying every time a zombie comes anywhere near them. My wife was PISSED. This is just a cultural difference in our film and their film - in our film, the strong female is a common character. By our standards, a strong woman might not even be a strong woman - but at least she's not standing there, waiting for a man to save her.

That's why Samus is pissing everyone off so much. The very idea that a character who has represented strong women in gaming (however unintentionally) for the last 20 years needs men to tell her what to do and men to save her from enemies she has bested, alone and utterly without support, a half a dozen times is the height of absurdity.

I hate to bust out the Japan is a nation of misogynists card, but we should have known when a japanese man said he wanted to explore Samus as a woman, that something like this would happen.

[Büge]

As a thought experiment, I imagined Chun-li in place of Samus, Bison as Ridley and Ryu as Generic Dude. It made my stomach turn a little.

[Detonator]

"Yes, yes, I killed your parents.  What is it with you women, anyway?  I killed MY parents too and you don't hear ME whining about it!"

[Bongo Bill]

Personally, I'm in it for the gameplay. I've long since made my peace with the fact that game writing is frequently awful, and I fell asleep in my chair the last time I tried to think of something I'd be less interested in than arguing about whether something is sexist.

I've heard the gameplay is really good this time around. I'll let you know when it comes in. Try not to make this thread too awful in the mean time, 'k?

[Zaratustra]

Samus is taking combat lessons from Princess Peach, I guess. CRYING FIT ATTACK

Oh well, at least they didn't cut holes in her armor to show huge tits.

[Frocto]

My beef with that ridley cutscene is that samus should be dead if she stood around for that long. The characterization stuff is less important to me

[Zaratustra]

Ridley is like, "Uh... do you want me to come back later?"

[Classic]

I dunno. You can show fear by having a flashback, having a close-up as the heroine shakes off the memories and then a slow circle-strafe as they face off. Ridley, he's dangerous. Samus knows she wins this because she's careful, and focused perfectly on destroying him.

... Until the idiot man breaks her concentration by running up.

You can almost imagine that's what's going on... maybe...

[Royal☭]

Best way to represent fear in a creative work is to show your lead as a weeping child.  Works every time.


Seriously, I think what irks most people is that these cutscenes are not just bad, but they're breaking up the gameplay to show us bad cutscenes.  Metroid seemed to resonate with people and be successful without Samus saying anything or going into too much narrative detail.  Other M essentially breaks the regular flow of gameplay up to show us some narrative bits, and it's worse when those narrative bits really, truly suck.  It is nice to explore the world that Metroid is set in, and I think Prime did it in a way that was non-invasive to the gameplay.  They were just optional text entries you could ignore if you wanted to just focus on exploration and shooting.  It's when that experience is broken up so the writers can give us these ridiculous scenes that a game starts to fall apart.

[Brentai]

ridiculous, duck-like

Wait a minute, Ridley's a dragon.

So if he's become a duck now, that would make him...


OH FUCK NO WONDER SHE'S GODDAM TERRIFIED!!!

[LaserBeing]

Best way to represent fear in a creative work is to show your lead as a weeping child.  Works every time.

Considering she is remembering trauma that happened when she was a weeping child, it's not as inappropriate as you make it sound.

[Brentai]

I don't think he was saying it was inappropriate, just banal.

Let's just agree though that we're only debating the purpose of the writing, not the quality of it, because I don't think anyone here is going to argue that it's not horrible.

[LaserBeing]

Yeah no argument there.

[Catloaf]

I hate to bust out the Japan is a nation of misogynists card, but we should have known when a japanese man said he wanted to explore Samus as a woman, that something like this would happen.

  (EDIT:  Who changed scruffy to Golgo?)
Japan has no strong women in its pop culture.  It never has and at this rate never will.  There are a few moments when I think that there is one.  But then I remember that Major Kusanagi Motoko is oversexualized as all the rest.  If a female character in japan has any amount of bravery, it will either falter with a plot-armor weak point, she's written as a completely gender neutral character and the plot wouldn't change in the slightest if she had a penis instead of tits, or she's half-naked and constantly jiggling in erotic poses that she has no reason to be in.

The offending scene could've played out mostly the same and kept Samus' dignity.  Just change the "Waah! Mommy!  Daddy!" to "No. No. No. Mother fucking no.  I killed you already!  I killed you twice!  I killed your brain in a robot body!  Why won't you die!"  It doesn't need to be angry.  She could've still frozen up in shocked disbelief.  But no, Nippon's salary men can't stand the sight of a woman not being either an object or a weakling.  Not that I'm blaming Japanese men more than Japanese women, who are just as bad out of sheer laziness in that about half of them aspire to be housewives and virtually none of them would ever consider marriage to a man who fails to make significantly more money than her while still demanding equal pay.

I don't really mind the scene all that much.  But goddamn Japan is dragging its feet when it comes to equality despite being on par or better in many other areas when compared with other wealthy nations.

[Rico]

we should have known when a japanese man said he wanted to explore Samus as a woman

Strangely I had an entirely different initial reaction.

[Dooly]

So, uh, the game's pretty fun outside of the cutscenes, right?

[A²]

As a 1st Party Nintendo Title, the game is required to be massively fun, writing aside.

[Detonator]

Seriously, I think what irks most people is that these cutscenes are not just bad, but they're breaking up the gameplay to show us bad cutscenes.  Metroid seemed to resonate with people and be successful without Samus saying anything or going into too much narrative detail.  Other M essentially breaks the regular flow of gameplay up to show us some narrative bits, and it's worse when those narrative bits really, truly suck.  It is nice to explore the world that Metroid is set in, and I think Prime did it in a way that was non-invasive to the gameplay.  They were just optional text entries you could ignore if you wanted to just focus on exploration and shooting.  It's when that experience is broken up so the writers can give us these ridiculous scenes that a game starts to fall apart.

I think some people should just play the fucking game instead of judging it based on a couple of youtubes.

[Smiler]

Even if this is a 1st party Nintendo title, everyone needs to remember that it was developed by Team Ninja. Think about what that means for a second.