Zero Punctuation: Metroid Other M

[geizr]

As for the cries about deep characters and storylines, let's face it, if gamers want those they're going to see characters with troubles and aspects that are NOT pretty. If you want a Citizen Kane, a Micheal Corleone, or a William Munny you NEED to see their more negative and vulnerable aspects. Movies, books, television, plays, and comics already HAVE characters like this and games need THEIR versions of those.

We can probably even go a step further to say that we have to be willing to examine such characters empathically with the goal of exploring the human condition, rather than make condescending derision of their plight. I would think taking such an attitude and approach could have a more positive effect toward raising the artistic value of video games.

Others are noting that the writing and execution of the character is flawed, and this is part of the complaint. Even if that is given as true that Team Ninja did a half-assed job developing the character, is it not still possible to be able to deal with the spirit of the character's development even if the realization is garbled? In other words, is it not possible to still be able to examine and ask questions of the motivations, history, and personality of the character without having to require exact acumen or an execution done in accordance to a prescription? Can we not see the pattern of the forest without having to make detailed account of the leaves?

Team Ninja had NOTHING to do with the actual plot and characterization, that was all on Sakamoto (who's directed the series since its inception, minus 2 and the Prime series). As for the writing, it's mostly the actual narrative and a chunk of the script (mostly the monologues). I can't really call Samus' characterization half-assed as that was thing that shone most out of the plot. Still, a lot of people could be more constructive about their criticisms just like critics in other media are. Most people have focused on a couple of scenes at most.

Haha! So what you are saying suggests that what we are seeing now may have been the real Samus all along. We just didn't see it in the earlier games because we only saw Samus while she was shooting monsters and blowing stuff up, basically, while she was on the job. Which bring us back to the earlier point that this whole argument and fury just sounds like people's fantasy of Samus is not being upheld by reality. This is causing folks to go off on a bender.

 

[Aiddon_v1legacy]

Haha! So what you are saying suggests that what we are seeing now may have been the real Samus all along. We just didn't see it in the earlier games because we only saw Samus while she was shooting monsters and blowing stuff up, basically, while she was on the job. Which bring us back to the earlier point that this whole argument and fury just sounds like people's fantasy of Samus is not being upheld by reality. This is causing folks to go off on a bender.

Well, even Sakamoto hadn't attributed a personality to her for years. The closest we got to characterization for her was Fusion which happens AFTER Other M (well, if you don't include the official manga). However, Samus is now HIS vision and it is quite possible this is what he intended. Kinda funny considering Samus being a woman was actually done on a whim.

 

[yamitami]

Thank you for summing up my feelings exactly. Particularly the fact that it's RIDLEY who she freaks out over. If they made it Mother Brain then that would at least be within sight of believable. In sight through a long range scope, but still, a hell of a lot closer than her freaking out over everyone's favorite pterodactyl.

Then again maybe Samus just read all the Ridley/Samus fanfiction out there. Rule 34 ahoy!

Ugh... *Looks at all the Samus/Ridley Fanfiction* O___O OH JESUS!!

... Seriously did you think it wasn't going to be damaging to look? I suggest high concentrations of fluffy in character romance to try and ease the pain.

Though honestly, I was mostly surprised that, while the 'plot' of all these fics were what you'd expect, on average they were grammatically correct and properly spelled.

 

[I want to leave because extra credits is gone]

I love this show.

 

[Sudowoodo]

sorry yahtzee, bob's argument makes more sense to me in this case then your does, so it looks like i'm gonna get this one
http://screwattack.com/videos/TGO-Episode-40-Heavens-to-Metroid

I get the impression that he has barely played the first person shooter genre outside a few titles and hates it on premise. Metroid Prime is far from a typical first person shooter and doesn't even have many of the conventions that hold down the genre today.

Nothing addressed the complaints of the abysmal writing or the shitty music, uninspired atmosphere and environments, and complete lack of exploration.

Also his attempt to reason why we shouldn't be getting angry over Samus not using her suit seems flawed to me still. There is a big difference between her having it and going through an area and hurting herself rather than not having it at all and not being able to use it. Maybe I'm just not understanding this particular point. And he also condemned Ninja Gaiden's controls which have always been silky smooth. Gaiden's problem is its sometimes atrocious but not gamebreaking camera angles. Not the controls.

I'm not going to get much into he characterization of Samus, but all I'll say is that while we did see glimpses of her character before like in Metroid 2 or in Fusion where she lets the animals free, I never wanted to smash her face in like I did in Other M.

 

[Sudowoodo]

What I was getting at was bob said that the FPS genre is the most uncreative which, using examples, is incredibly false.

Also Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay, The Darkness, Oddworld Stranger's Wrath, Breakdown, and more.

 

[adderseal]

2 ZPs this week? Thank you very much!

 

[Waif]

Good stuff ^~^! Glad to see another video, and it's of a subject that I dislike >~<!

 

[Quicksilver1111]

Why they didn't use Hale, I'll never understand.

If I had to guess, I'd say it was her call, not the call of the people making the game. I'm guessing she smelled something she didn't like and decided not to get her name attached to the project.

Unlikely. She voiced Kimmy Howell in NMH2, a pretty low point as far as characters go.

 

[Warachia]

This entire debacle has actually made me wonder if the whole player-avatar idea was a good thing to begin with. Quite frankly EVERY silent player avatar (The Warden, Commander Shepard, the SMT heroes, the Dragon Quest heroes, Link, 90% of protagonists in WRPGs, etc) and even some voiced characters like Marcus Fenix or Master Chief are nothing more than Mary Sues. They're blocks we project our wish-fulfillment fantasies onto and who have NOTHING resembling discernible character flaws and because of that we seem to have been STARVED for actual three-dimensional characters with human flaws and insecurities.

We've turned into a bunch of spoiled brats who plug our ears and go "lalalalalala!" whenever negative emotions are brought up in a game's hero even if it is REQUIRED for the narrative and the character. This strikes me as players always wanting THEIR wishes while having no concern for the writers or creators. If we want to have better narratives and deeper characters in gaming we as gamers need to learn to let go of control so someone can tell a story. Which, oddly enough, is something JAPAN is better at than the West is.

It's fine having characters that are fully fleshed out, and in that regard, but is it so bad to have a character that we believe we're playing, where we can make our own choices and INTERACT with three-dimensional characters? The key word here being interact, that is why people like blank slates so much, but if you are going to make a game where the hero is a person with negative emotions and character flaws, don't make the character only character flaws, negative emotions, and nothing else. Seriously, there is not one good happy moment for Samus in other M, just depressing monologue, fight, monologue, fight, character death, and another monologue. The thing about humans is they tend to be more than just depressed 24/7.

 

[milkkart]

so what happened to this extra video then? i don't see it on the ZP page and it must be like saturday in Oz by now.

 

[Nocturnal Gentleman]

If we want to have better narratives and deeper characters in gaming we as gamers need to learn to let go of control so someone can tell a story. Which, oddly enough, is something JAPAN is better at than the West is.

This comment really bothered the hell out of me, because it shows you've clearly not touched the point and click game genre. The west has produced many games with excellent story and characters including but not limited to Grim Fandango, The Dig, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, and even the Space Quest series. There are even games outside of this type with good characters like Psychonauts and Legacy of Kaine. You can make a character with plenty of flaws and have them not be annoying as hell.
Unfortunately in many JRPGs I've played the "flawed till the point of being so annoying I want to hurt them" characters are very common. Also, the surrounding stories were crap. I'm not saying there aren't JRPGs that excel in story telling, but there are plenty of western games that do just as well.

 

[znix]

Is it just me or could the Escapist watermark stand to be moved up to one of the corners instead of being on the bottom and constantly in eye view?

 

[Monk Ed]

But Team Ninja apparently couldn't be bothered to learn anything about the franchise or the character they were working with, and thus they slapped some stereotype onto Samus and then called it a day. Add on the shoddy voice acting and it just becomes a horrible thing to do to a character that was once the best female lead in a game.

This is going to hurt, but... Team Ninja had 0 input on the story. It was written by Yoshio Sakamoto of Nintendo... the same guy who has always written Samus.

 

[Flamma Man]

This entire debacle has actually made me wonder if the whole player-avatar idea was a good thing to begin with. Quite frankly EVERY silent player avatar (The Warden, Commander Shepard, the SMT heroes, the Dragon Quest heroes, Link, 90% of protagonists in WRPGs, etc) and even some voiced characters like Marcus Fenix or Master Chief are nothing more than Mary Sues. They're blocks we project our wish-fulfillment fantasies onto and who have NOTHING resembling discernible character flaws and because of that we seem to have been STARVED for actual three-dimensional characters with human flaws and insecurities.

We've turned into a bunch of spoiled brats who plug our ears and go "lalalalalala!" whenever negative emotions are brought up in a game's hero even if it is REQUIRED for the narrative and the character. This strikes me as players always wanting THEIR wishes while having no concern for the writers or creators. If we want to have better narratives and deeper characters in gaming we as gamers need to learn to let go of control so someone can tell a story. Which, oddly enough, is something JAPAN is better at than the West is.

It's fine having characters that are fully fleshed out, and in that regard, but is it so bad to have a character that we believe we're playing, where we can make our own choices and INTERACT with three-dimensional characters? The key word here being interact, that is why people like blank slates so much, but if you are going to make a game where the hero is a person with negative emotions and character flaws, don't make the character only character flaws, negative emotions, and nothing else. Seriously, there is not one good happy moment for Samus in other M, just depressing monologue, fight, monologue, fight, character death, and another monologue. The thing about humans is they tend to be more than just depressed 24/7.

Don't bother, I tried telling Aiddon the same thing and has apparently ignored me and seems to have ignored my previous wall of text pretty much saying the same thing you are.

"It's interactive, etc."

 

[lumenadducere]

But Team Ninja apparently couldn't be bothered to learn anything about the franchise or the character they were working with, and thus they slapped some stereotype onto Samus and then called it a day. Add on the shoddy voice acting and it just becomes a horrible thing to do to a character that was once the best female lead in a game.

This is going to hurt, but... Team Ninja had 0 input on the story. It was written by Yoshio Sakamoto of Nintendo... the same guy who has always written Samus.

Wow, really? That...I mean...wha-

*head explodes*

That's incredibly disappointing. Now I'm curious as to what caused the shift.

 

[rabidkanid]

The identity of the Assassin "Deleter" was actually told to you, just not directly. MB kills him after Samus leaves the room. If you've played the game you'll know what I'm talking about. the story can get bad at times, but I wasn't distracted by it. I was more concerned with the gameplay than the story and I've run into a few issues with it that it seems nobody bothers to mention. Also, everything that Yahtzee said has been said by someone else already.

I completed the game today, died around 8 times total, 80% collection rate. Deaths were due to the insta kill scenes, 1 death at the Ridley fight and 1 at the end due to poorly implemented forced first person fighting scene.

I actually really enjoyed the game on the whole and the good parts of the game make up for the bad. It's not perfect by any means though.

Another thing, the reason why the one character had to sacrifice himself in order to detach the part of the facility was because the only way to detach it was if the inside of the facility sustained enough internal damage. There was no handy dandy button on a wall somewhere that could have been pressed to detach it safely. The things inside the facility could NOT be defeated by any means that Samus had, she would have been killed.

 

[Monk Ed]

The identity of the Assassin "Deleter" was actually told to you, just not directly. MB kills him after Samus leaves the room. If you've played the game you'll know what I'm talking about.

That was my favorite part of the plot, and I thought it was really well done. Initially I just assumed that it was KG, because he was the only one listed as missing and I had forgotten his true fate, (but that's what made him such an excellent red herring). Then I read the answer and reasoning on wikia and was like "Whoa, that makes so much sense!" I love mysteries where the answer is not handed to you, but you know it when you find it.

 

[Razhem]

If we want to have better narratives and deeper characters in gaming we as gamers need to learn to let go of control so someone can tell a story. Which, oddly enough, is something JAPAN is better at than the West is.

This comment really bothered the hell out of me, because it shows you've clearly not touched the point and click game genre. The west has produced many games with excellent story and characters including but not limited to Grim Fandango, The Dig, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, and even the Space Quest series. There are even games outside of this type with good characters like Psychonauts and Legacy of Kaine. You can make a character with plenty of flaws and have them not be annoying as hell.
Unfortunately in many JRPGs I've played the "flawed till the point of being so annoying I want to hurt them" characters are very common. Also, the surrounding stories were crap. I'm not saying there aren't JRPGs that excel in story telling, but there are plenty of western games that do just as well.

Wholesomely agreed and it was the point Aiddon decided to ignore. The japanesse way of making somebody tridimensial lately is making them an angsty emotional train wreck. I don't know about you, but last time I checked, in the real world you avoid those types of people simply because they annoy you to no end with their ramblings. Like I said, if after 8 years you are still in utter emotional chaos, chances I have no intention of relating to you unless this is a Silent Hill game and you are giving me the ride of my life.

Also, this works in a JRPG simply because there, the narrative is the whole incentive, you NEED a strong narrative for it to work. An action shoter doesn't have that requirement, here it only makes you move your head in disgust at how 5 seconds ago you were blasting everything to high hell with finishers lack queen badassia only to have it stop, have her exposition and mope for 5 minutes while Adam bitches. A silent protagonist is not a bad thing by a longshot, and if the best you can come up with is the japanesse emo stereotype (because I've seen it enough to see it for what it is, lets stop acting like it had any real thought or depth put into it, 50 bucks say you are a Sasuke fan, or at least were till the series started getting... variable) chances it's how it should remain.

Finally, read the goddamn manga, there you have all the backstory Samus ever needed and it makes sense from an emotional, localization and temporal perspective and fits in quite nicely in the whole narrative. The story of Other M basically decided to jam the whole manga Samus growth story down your throat in a timeline where it doesn't make any sense and that's why its a wreck, she supposedly already went trough most of that when she was a teen.

 

[Calibanbutcher]

Best review in a long time.
I literally laughed out loud.
Shame on me for saying that

This. A really good one. I almost stoped to be his fan.

Why?
And what does "stoped" mean?
Do you like Metroid Other M so much?
Are you really so much of a pansy that you can't take it when someone says that the game is bad, or why didn't you like it?