Quote:
Originally Posted by Phyrior
The -PROBLEM- had more to do with cultural views than anything else.
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I heard people say it was just a cultural gap often enough that a while ago I looked up Japanese reviews. They said basically the same thing American reviews said. Nice graphics, decent gameplay although some people dislike the flipping to and from first person, the decision to cut out the exploration made it feel less "Metroid," the voice acting felt awkward (it was less an issue there, but yes there were complaints), and the story was just plain bad as well as being too long. Fan reviews were harsher in Japan (it's got a D on their equivalent of Metacritic's user-score section), just like in America. People everywhere wondered wtf was up with the Ridley meltdown. I'm sure differences in culture influenced how it was received, but the writing just wasn't well-received anywhere.
Nintendo spliced together the cutscenes and most important dialogue to give us a "theater mode" that proved there's more than two hours of story in the game. Sakamoto had never written more than a few lines in the past. The biggest problem was really simple - a guy with almost no writing experience was writing a two hour long "movie," and he had enough non-writing victories under his belt that nobody was willing to tell him his script was bad. Worse, for some reason he decided to ignore almost everything in the Metroid lore he didn't write himself. So we got a movie where Samus' entire past with the Chozo (invented by Benimaru Itoh) never got touched on, aside from a badly-done reference to how Ridley orphaned her (which confused Japanese fans as much as American ones. The manga detailing how Ridley killed her parents is obscure there too. Not that Sakamoto really did justice to the manga, it's hard to believe that the character portrayed in it would ever have trouble facing Ridley again by the end of the story).
There is no justification for Samus not using non-lethal ordinance like the Varia suit or grapple beam. Adam didn't even tell her not to use those, and the "it could damage the structure" explanation doesn't fly with heat shielding. Furthermore, she disobeyed direct orders in Fusion and in the manga that Fusion, Zero Mission, and Other M referenced, so we know that while she'd follow orders up to a point there's definitely times when she goes "well these orders are bullshit" and disobeys. The "can't use weapons because Orders" justification could have been implemented well. But here it wasn't. And while I'm normally pretty generous with plot holes that justify game mechanics, when the story adds up to over two hours I start getting more critical.
Has Samus always been sexy? Sure. But people have looked at the world record speedplays of the original Metroid games, timed the "alternate endings," and done the math. They made up less than 1% of the game. It was there, it was cool, but it was a very small part of the games. And those scenes were at the very end. There's a big difference between an armored soldier taking off their armor after battle to relax, and someone running around in a latex suit during combat. Don't get me wrong, I
love my fanservice, but that doesn't mean it's always appropriate in every single movie/show/game. In Metroid the fanservice was handled well initially, but it's getting more awkward now that everyone who worked on the series but Sakamoto has died or moved on. Luckily he's said he's done with the series, so maybe someone can turn this ship around.