Is the argument that Metroid characters are intentionally made bad in Smash because Nintendo hates the franchise?
Which...Ok, Samus has always been mediocre to awful, and Ridley was always predicted to be bad. But that's because heavier, slower characters have ALWAYS had a disadvantage in Smash. ZSS will ALWAYS be better than her armored counterpart solely for this reason. You can't change this unless you make ZSS tankier than regular Samus (which would feel weird as hell), or make heavier characters better (which requires upending the core game mechanics).
it's too many posts ago so it's literally impossible for me to go back and verify because of my crippling laziness, but I strongly believe, with great conviction, that this conversation started when we were talking about Samus and ZSS' relative strengths in Smash
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Samus does not have a good kit. Her projectiles come out very slowly and her moves don’t come out fast enough or reach far enough.
ZSS had a bad kit, but they got rid of some of the worst parts, buffed to hell and back others, and overall made her a much better character.
Likewise, Link became a much better character sheerest by changing his grab and giving him remote bombs.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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GreasyKidsStuffMOMMM!ROAST BEEF WANTS TO KISS GIRLS ON THE TITTIES!Registered Userregular
it's too many posts ago so it's literally impossible for me to go back and verify because of my crippling laziness, but I strongly believe, with great conviction, that this conversation started when we were talking about Samus and ZSS' relative strengths in Smash
No, I just dropped the tweets in the thread apropos of nothing in the hopes it’d inspire some discussion but instead people just said the tweets were indecipherable
The best illustration to me is always going to be Metroid Prime vs Other M, because the first was a version of the character produced by a reading of the text in the games up to Super, and the other is a specific repudiation of the former. "No, don't you understand? Underneath her anonymizing armor and planet-breaking skills, she's still vulnerable and has to deal with lots of issues. She's a woman, after all, and has a woman's heart." Because that's the direction the showrunners wanted us to see her from. That's the vision of womanhood they wanted to convey.
What I find really wild about Other M's narrative failures is that same guy who wrote Other M--Yoshio Sakamoto--also wrote Metroid Fusion. And I still feel like Metroid Fusion actually approached the concept of humanizing Samus and exploring her worries and flaws pretty well!
It ain't perfect, but I appreciated how Samus' concerns in Fusion largely focused on how the Federation is manipulating her, which manifests in multiple ways (combining her DNA with Metroid DNA, limiting her access to both information and specific areas on the overrun space station, and deliberately installing the Adam AI on her ship to play with her memories and emotions). It's a concern that doesn't make Samus feel weak, but instead implies some amount of justifiable paranoia. This also happens to mirror how the player probably feels as they progress further into the story and start being hunted by her X clone. The first time you play that game (and even subsequent times, as long as you wait long enough for your memory to get fuzzy), you're never really sure when X-Samus will suddenly blast through a wall and start annihilating you. I really liked the writing in Fusion, and it's just bizarre to me that Other M takes similar concepts and goes in a completely different (and totally garbage) direction with them.
Stilts on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
The best illustration to me is always going to be Metroid Prime vs Other M, because the first was a version of the character produced by a reading of the text in the games up to Super, and the other is a specific repudiation of the former. "No, don't you understand? Underneath her anonymizing armor and planet-breaking skills, she's still vulnerable and has to deal with lots of issues. She's a woman, after all, and has a woman's heart." Because that's the direction the showrunners wanted us to see her from. That's the vision of womanhood they wanted to convey.
What I find really wild about Other M's narrative failures is that same guy who wrote Other M--Yoshio Sakamoto--also wrote Metroid Fusion. And I still feel like Metroid Fusion actually approached the concept of humanizing Samus and exploring her worries and flaws pretty well!
It ain't perfect, but I appreciated how Samus' concerns in Fusion largely focused on how the Federation is manipulating her, which manifests in multiple ways (combining her DNA with Metroid DNA, limiting her access to both information and specific areas on the overrun space station, and deliberately installing the Adam AI on her ship to play with her memories and emotions). It's a concern that doesn't make Samus feel weak, but instead implies some amount of justifiable paranoia. This also happens to mirror how the player probably feels as they progress further into the story and start being hunted by her X clone. The first time you play that game (and even subsequent times, as long as you wait long enough for your memory to get fuzzy), you're never really sure when X-Samus will suddenly blast through a wall and start annihilating you. I really liked the writing in Fusion, and it's just bizarre to me that Other M takes similar concepts and goes in a completely different (and totally garbage) direction with them.
One big difference is that in Fusion Samus is left without her weapons and has her access restricted against her will. And when Ridley shows up she fucking stomps him.
Whereas in Other M, she is complacent and isn’t turning on the equipment she already has because she is waiting on fucking orders.
The gameplay justifications are a huge part in the gameplay difference. Fusion makes you feel claustrophobic and fearful of the SA-X via gameplay. Other M tells you that Samus...is scared of Ridley via cutscenes. Someone she has killed like, six times already.
Munkus Beaver on
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Maybe there's something there, in the idea that Samus's body being really separate from her suit was first made most central in Fusion, where Samus's suit is literally stolen and weaponized against her. I'll have to think about that one...
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masterofmetroidHave you ever looked at a worldand seen it as a kind of challenge?Registered Userregular
That's also the game where it tells you that without Samus's conscious removal process the suit is integrated into her body, hence the double meaning of "Fusion"
Fusion is a a good game with a good story and i hate that Adam couldn't just stay a computer
Maybe there's something there, in the idea that Samus's body being really separate from her suit was first made most central in Fusion, where Samus's suit is literally stolen and weaponized against her. I'll have to think about that one...
I think one other very important distinction between Other M and Fusion is that, in the latter, Samus' connection with Adam ends up being the thing that saves her. The Federation thinks they have all this shit locked down and will be able to just dispose of Samus after she's served her purpose, but she turns their own trap against them and convinces the Adam AI to break its programming because of the camaraderie she used to share with the flesh-and-blood Adam. She's largely still a stoic badass (even during her internal monologues), but when she does display emotion, it's treated as a strength, not a weakness.
Whereas in Other M, her emotions are consistently portrayed as being a detriment. In Other M, her feelings toward Adam are largely what allow her to manipulated in the first place. And I probably don't have to explain how emotions are portrayed negatively in the infamous Ridley scene.
Then that works better than I thought, since it's the removal and externalization of her body, in a sense
That definitely makes her ability to lose her armor in Other M by getting upset (or shot in the back) more baffling, rather than less
You know what, Samus Returns had a really good Samus
Other M takes place well before Fusion.
And yeah Fusion has a pretty good story. And a pretty good sense of narrative gameplay integration because you start off so weak in the same that Samus is in a really bad headspace after almost dying and having all her normal equipment lost. Also Samus having literal Metroid DNA fused into her to save her life is a pretty good narrative conclusion to Samus' whole relationship to them. From "Exterminate them without a second thought" to "Wait these are living beings" to "Literally saved by metroids" and then finally "becomes part Metroid."
edit: Basically in the same way that Wyborn can talk forever about Zelda, I can talk forever about Metroid.
I luv it so much.
Gundi on
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Part of the problem is that they kinda ran out of Alien movies to spoof by Other M.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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turtleantGunpla Dadis the best.Registered Userregular
I think the reason why Fusion's writing is better than Other M's pretty much comes down the fact that Sakamoto wasn't in complete control on Fusion.
The dude was writer, director, and producer on Other M and was put in charge of a third party studio being contracted to make the game. There probably wasn't a single person there that could contradict him on Other M.
Also that Other M, as a console game, just had a bigger scope and amount of story to fuck up.
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KwoaruConfident SmirkFlawless Golden PecsRegistered Userregular
it's too many posts ago so it's literally impossible for me to go back and verify because of my crippling laziness, but I strongly believe, with great conviction, that this conversation started when we were talking about Samus and ZSS' relative strengths in Smash
No, I just dropped the tweets in the thread apropos of nothing in the hopes it’d inspire some discussion but instead people just said the tweets were indecipherable
Then that works better than I thought, since it's the removal and externalization of her body, in a sense
That definitely makes her ability to lose her armor in Other M by getting upset (or shot in the back) more baffling, rather than less
You know what, Samus Returns had a really good Samus
I'm sorry
Huh?????
I'd heard about THE BABY and all of that, but this is some bullshit I wasn't aware of
+1
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Then that works better than I thought, since it's the removal and externalization of her body, in a sense
That definitely makes her ability to lose her armor in Other M by getting upset (or shot in the back) more baffling, rather than less
You know what, Samus Returns had a really good Samus
I'm sorry
Huh?????
I'd heard about THE BABY and all of that, but this is some bullshit I wasn't aware of
Other M is very bad.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
Oh Jesus Christ I just realized why it's called Other M
Other M
M Other
Mother
Fuckin fuck.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Then that works better than I thought, since it's the removal and externalization of her body, in a sense
That definitely makes her ability to lose her armor in Other M by getting upset (or shot in the back) more baffling, rather than less
You know what, Samus Returns had a really good Samus
I'm sorry
Huh?????
I'd heard about THE BABY and all of that, but this is some bullshit I wasn't aware of
She has a Panic attack when Ridley shows up. Its dumber than you'd think because Ridley is teased for hours before that with shed skins that look like juvenile ridleys and gasp every enemy you fight is a juvenile space spirate or native zebes creature. She had to expect this
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
The dumbest thing in Other M is when Samus walks into a high heat area and starts to actually die right up until Adam gives her fuckin permission to activated the Varia Suit features she already had.
Just.
Fuckin, what?!
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
Samus had murdered Ridley FIVE TIMES by the time other m takes place
Having a panic attack like, the first time they met might be one thing
Or even the first time he comes back from the dead
But by other m he's old hat
Prime posits Ridley is something the pirates make and enhance with each failure. The idea that eventually he probably will win against Samus could have been neat if explored
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
Then that works better than I thought, since it's the removal and externalization of her body, in a sense
That definitely makes her ability to lose her armor in Other M by getting upset (or shot in the back) more baffling, rather than less
You know what, Samus Returns had a really good Samus
I'm sorry
Huh?????
I'd heard about THE BABY and all of that, but this is some bullshit I wasn't aware of
There may be more to it but I'm thinking of two scenes in particular, which I will not spoiler tag because the game's a decade old, and also: who cares
1. The game establishes that Samus has a sort of psychokinetic control over her suit, but also that its stability is linked to her emotional state. When she is confronted by Ridley she has a full-blown PTSD flashback to him murdering her parents, and Adam's shouting for her to use her plasma cannon while Ridley's just beating her all to shit, and at several moments in that beatdown her armor straight-up vanishes! Not as a visual indicator of her trauma, like her transforming into a child in that same scene, but something we the viewer can parse as real where the suit becomes partially transparent and digitized or disappears altogether
2. When she's about to head into The Metroid Sector of the ship, Adam shoots her in the back, which completely shuts down her power armor and leaves her paralyzed on the ground in her zero suit
It really plays firmly into the discussion about the separation of Samus from her suit, and how the people behind Metroid want to convey Samus's femininity by means of helplessness and instability
what kind of dumbass designer went "we're creating a suit to send people into scary situations"
"better make sure it doesn't protect people who get scared!"
Well the thing is Samus is apparently awesome at it.
The Chozo by the time they find Samus are like twenty years from becoming psychic beings of pure energy. I imagine their warriors are pretty well versed in emotional control.Samus was raised to be their ultimate warrior. She is so good in zero mission she gets an awesome new suit for keeping her shit together after the crash( where she also immediately kills Rids again).
It just makes that scene worse with context from the other games
I have a podcast now. It's about video games and anime!Find it here.
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AthenorBattle Hardened OptimistThe Skies of HiigaraRegistered Userregular
It really feels like a case where Sakamoto needs some sort of controlling influence. In the early days, it was Yokoi and really the tech itself. With Prime, Sakamoto was distant on the project. Fusion, "dread," and that lineage were directly controlled by Sakamoto -- as was Other M.
Honestly? I really hope they don't have Sakamoto involved with 4 beyond a Producer credit. Given that Other M has been pretty much panned (which is VERY rare for a Nintendo game), and Federation Force was savaged on announcement, Nintendo has to know that Metroid's reputation is kind of crappy right now.
I have almost no knowledge or deep connection to Samus, which I think puts me in the layman's perspective regarding how one perceives Samus?
And I recognize she has been overly sexualized over the years.
But I have never thought her as someone who let fear into her heart.
Samus shows up and she clears house, son. She's a badass who doesn't take your bullshit.
At least, that has always been my read of her.
This is the read of Samus that game designers outside of Nintendo tend to bring to the character
If you play the Metroid Prime games, or Samus Returns on the 3DS, that's very much the Samus you will get
Also she does have a softer side, but it's not one of emotional compromise, but of compassion, as seen in her canonical love of animals (dachora, etecoons, Pikachu)
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Munkus BeaverYou don't have to attend every argument you are invited to.Philosophy: Stoicism. Politics: Democratic SocialistRegistered User, ClubPAregular
I have almost no knowledge or deep connection to Samus, which I think puts me in the layman's perspective regarding how one perceives Samus?
And I recognize she has been overly sexualized over the years.
But I have never thought her as someone who let fear into her heart.
Samus shows up and she clears house, son. She's a badass who doesn't take your bullshit.
At least, that has always been my read of her.
This is the read of Samus that game designers outside of Nintendo tend to bring to the character
If you play the Metroid Prime games, or Samus Returns on the 3DS, that's very much the Samus you will get
Also she does have a softer side, but it's not one of emotional compromise, but of compassion, as seen in her canonical love of animals (dachora, etecoons, Pikachu)
It is that softer side that saves her life in her Mother Brain rematch.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but dies in the process.
It really feels like a case where Sakamoto needs some sort of controlling influence. In the early days, it was Yokoi and really the tech itself. With Prime, Sakamoto was distant on the project. Fusion, "dread," and that lineage were directly controlled by Sakamoto -- as was Other M.
Honestly? I really hope they don't have Sakamoto involved with 4 beyond a Producer credit. Given that Other M has been pretty much panned (which is VERY rare for a Nintendo game), and Federation Force was savaged on announcement, Nintendo has to know that Metroid's reputation is kind of crappy right now.
Nintendo games getting panned is not really that rare!
The wii U had a couple really atrocious first party games (Kirby, star fox zero)
The switch hasn't really yet but there haven't been that many games for it, though Arms didn't exactly light the critical world on fire
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Which...Ok, Samus has always been mediocre to awful, and Ridley was always predicted to be bad. But that's because heavier, slower characters have ALWAYS had a disadvantage in Smash. ZSS will ALWAYS be better than her armored counterpart solely for this reason. You can't change this unless you make ZSS tankier than regular Samus (which would feel weird as hell), or make heavier characters better (which requires upending the core game mechanics).
Steam: pazython
ZSS had a bad kit, but they got rid of some of the worst parts, buffed to hell and back others, and overall made her a much better character.
Likewise, Link became a much better character sheerest by changing his grab and giving him remote bombs.
No, I just dropped the tweets in the thread apropos of nothing in the hopes it’d inspire some discussion but instead people just said the tweets were indecipherable
What I find really wild about Other M's narrative failures is that same guy who wrote Other M--Yoshio Sakamoto--also wrote Metroid Fusion. And I still feel like Metroid Fusion actually approached the concept of humanizing Samus and exploring her worries and flaws pretty well!
It ain't perfect, but I appreciated how Samus' concerns in Fusion largely focused on how the Federation is manipulating her, which manifests in multiple ways (combining her DNA with Metroid DNA, limiting her access to both information and specific areas on the overrun space station, and deliberately installing the Adam AI on her ship to play with her memories and emotions). It's a concern that doesn't make Samus feel weak, but instead implies some amount of justifiable paranoia. This also happens to mirror how the player probably feels as they progress further into the story and start being hunted by her X clone. The first time you play that game (and even subsequent times, as long as you wait long enough for your memory to get fuzzy), you're never really sure when X-Samus will suddenly blast through a wall and start annihilating you. I really liked the writing in Fusion, and it's just bizarre to me that Other M takes similar concepts and goes in a completely different (and totally garbage) direction with them.
One big difference is that in Fusion Samus is left without her weapons and has her access restricted against her will. And when Ridley shows up she fucking stomps him.
Whereas in Other M, she is complacent and isn’t turning on the equipment she already has because she is waiting on fucking orders.
The gameplay justifications are a huge part in the gameplay difference. Fusion makes you feel claustrophobic and fearful of the SA-X via gameplay. Other M tells you that Samus...is scared of Ridley via cutscenes. Someone she has killed like, six times already.
Maybe there's something there, in the idea that Samus's body being really separate from her suit was first made most central in Fusion, where Samus's suit is literally stolen and weaponized against her. I'll have to think about that one...
Fusion is a a good game with a good story and i hate that Adam couldn't just stay a computer
That definitely makes her ability to lose her armor in Other M by getting upset (or shot in the back) more baffling, rather than less
You know what, Samus Returns had a really good Samus
I think one other very important distinction between Other M and Fusion is that, in the latter, Samus' connection with Adam ends up being the thing that saves her. The Federation thinks they have all this shit locked down and will be able to just dispose of Samus after she's served her purpose, but she turns their own trap against them and convinces the Adam AI to break its programming because of the camaraderie she used to share with the flesh-and-blood Adam. She's largely still a stoic badass (even during her internal monologues), but when she does display emotion, it's treated as a strength, not a weakness.
Whereas in Other M, her emotions are consistently portrayed as being a detriment. In Other M, her feelings toward Adam are largely what allow her to manipulated in the first place. And I probably don't have to explain how emotions are portrayed negatively in the infamous Ridley scene.
yes it was cool the way she didn't have her suit fall off when she was surprised
they should do more of that
Other M takes place well before Fusion.
And yeah Fusion has a pretty good story. And a pretty good sense of narrative gameplay integration because you start off so weak in the same that Samus is in a really bad headspace after almost dying and having all her normal equipment lost. Also Samus having literal Metroid DNA fused into her to save her life is a pretty good narrative conclusion to Samus' whole relationship to them. From "Exterminate them without a second thought" to "Wait these are living beings" to "Literally saved by metroids" and then finally "becomes part Metroid."
edit: Basically in the same way that Wyborn can talk forever about Zelda, I can talk forever about Metroid.
I luv it so much.
The dude was writer, director, and producer on Other M and was put in charge of a third party studio being contracted to make the game. There probably wasn't a single person there that could contradict him on Other M.
Also that Other M, as a console game, just had a bigger scope and amount of story to fuck up.
They are definitely difficult to decipher
I'm sorry
Huh?????
I'd heard about THE BABY and all of that, but this is some bullshit I wasn't aware of
Other M is very bad.
Other M
M Other
Mother
Fuckin fuck.
She has a Panic attack when Ridley shows up. Its dumber than you'd think because Ridley is teased for hours before that with shed skins that look like juvenile ridleys and gasp every enemy you fight is a juvenile space spirate or native zebes creature. She had to expect this
Just.
Fuckin, what?!
Its a ghost
Having a panic attack like, the first time they met might be one thing
Or even the first time he comes back from the dead
But by other m he's old hat
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Prime posits Ridley is something the pirates make and enhance with each failure. The idea that eventually he probably will win against Samus could have been neat if explored
And I recognize she has been overly sexualized over the years.
But I have never thought her as someone who let fear into her heart.
Samus shows up and she clears house, son. She's a badass who doesn't take your bullshit.
At least, that has always been my read of her.
that's very much the popular perception of her
turns out the guy who created her just thinks of her as his soft delicate anime wife
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Well fuck that guy. Samus should go beat him up.
He also made Warioware and is why classic wario games sort of vanished
There may be more to it but I'm thinking of two scenes in particular, which I will not spoiler tag because the game's a decade old, and also: who cares
1. The game establishes that Samus has a sort of psychokinetic control over her suit, but also that its stability is linked to her emotional state. When she is confronted by Ridley she has a full-blown PTSD flashback to him murdering her parents, and Adam's shouting for her to use her plasma cannon while Ridley's just beating her all to shit, and at several moments in that beatdown her armor straight-up vanishes! Not as a visual indicator of her trauma, like her transforming into a child in that same scene, but something we the viewer can parse as real where the suit becomes partially transparent and digitized or disappears altogether
2. When she's about to head into The Metroid Sector of the ship, Adam shoots her in the back, which completely shuts down her power armor and leaves her paralyzed on the ground in her zero suit
It really plays firmly into the discussion about the separation of Samus from her suit, and how the people behind Metroid want to convey Samus's femininity by means of helplessness and instability
"better make sure it doesn't protect people who get scared!"
Any of the armor designers for the Galactic Empire and stormtroopers specifically.
This is the read of Samus that game designers outside of Nintendo tend to bring to the character
If you play the Metroid Prime games, or Samus Returns on the 3DS, that's very much the Samus you will get
Well the thing is Samus is apparently awesome at it.
The Chozo by the time they find Samus are like twenty years from becoming psychic beings of pure energy. I imagine their warriors are pretty well versed in emotional control.Samus was raised to be their ultimate warrior. She is so good in zero mission she gets an awesome new suit for keeping her shit together after the crash( where she also immediately kills Rids again).
It just makes that scene worse with context from the other games
Honestly? I really hope they don't have Sakamoto involved with 4 beyond a Producer credit. Given that Other M has been pretty much panned (which is VERY rare for a Nintendo game), and Federation Force was savaged on announcement, Nintendo has to know that Metroid's reputation is kind of crappy right now.
Also she does have a softer side, but it's not one of emotional compromise, but of compassion, as seen in her canonical love of animals (dachora, etecoons, Pikachu)
It is that softer side that saves her life in her Mother Brain rematch.
more of samus being an unsocialized weirdo that can't relate to people but likes animals and murding giant brains
http://www.audioentropy.com/
Nintendo games getting panned is not really that rare!
The wii U had a couple really atrocious first party games (Kirby, star fox zero)
The switch hasn't really yet but there haven't been that many games for it, though Arms didn't exactly light the critical world on fire
it's nothing revolutionary but it is a fun game
http://www.audioentropy.com/