Metroid Other M Retrospective: The Ambition Behind the Failure

august 31st 2020 marked the 10th anniversary of the release of metroid other m a game so reviled by the metroid fanbase that many have argued that it killed the franchise featuring the most linear adventure this decidedly non-linear series had ever seen a questionable story that may have irreparably damaged metroid's protagonist samus aaron and a whole bunch of other issues that i'll be digging into today other m to many fans wasn't even worthy of being called a metroid game of representing one of nintendo's core pillars it was no shock to anybody except nintendo then that this wii game suffered such poor sales that within a year new copies were essentially being given away just to burn through excess stock remember this is nintendo we're talking about a company whose games rarely drop more than 10 dollars total for years upon years and here this game was being sold within 1 year for 10 or less for what it's worth i think i agree that other m killed metroid for reasons i'll discuss today trust me i know that there have been games that have come out since this one and that doesn't mean that other m can't also have killed this franchise again you'll see soon enough so let's look at why other m failed as a project not just solely by critiquing many of the game's flaws because frankly that would be too easy but through the development team's own words thanks to interviews from the years before and since this game launched it's thanks to reading and listening about the intent behind other m that it's become clear to me that this wasn't a project that ran into development hell to the contrary it's a game that struggled thanks to the passion of the team behind it a game that would hopefully in their eyes re-envision what the franchise could be just as prime had done before it a game that as misguided as they may have been was driven by ambitious developers who truly did and do love metroid i didn't think much of other m before doing more research i brushed it off as the bad one and then when i finished it a few weeks ago i affirmed that yeah it's the bad one but it's in digging for articles interviews and quotes that i've realized that metroid is a franchise defined by its ambition arguably more than its exploration than its depiction of isolation and other m was a victim of over ambition this is the story of metroid other m a game killed by ambition we had a strong desire to make something that people would compare to a movie this quote is from yoshio sakamoto the director of metroid other m now despite what you might be thinking sakamoto isn't talking about other m here he's discussing super metroid widely considered to be one of the greatest games ever made and a game for which he also acted as director sakamoto seemingly has always been fascinated with the cinematic potential of the gaming medium a stance that has put him at odds with the entire rest of nintendo it's essentially a top-down philosophy of the company to design an interesting unique game concept first and let the story and visual style fall into place to complement that that's why zelda has a complicated series of timelines because the gameplay comes first it's why mario is constantly evolving and it's why other m isn't actually a nintendo game sakamoto's desire for other m to be this seamless game with an unnoticeable flow between cinematics and gameplay with a 2d but actually 3d control style and a dynamic camera was as alien to nintendo staff as space pirates are to us in one of former nintendo president satoru iwata's iwata asks interviews focused on other m sakamoto said when i was first thinking of the plans for this metroid game there were things that i found difficult to get people within nintendo to understand i think my idea sounded outrageous or seemed to be pipe dreams i thought i tried to have a meeting with team ninja since i've been playing ninja gaiden and it really changed my impression of 3d games other m's development became a collaborative effort known as project m between select nintendo staff and team ninja two groups that couldn't seem any further apart team ninja in addition to being responsible for ninja gaiden works on games such as dead or alive which is to say that they don't tend to make the most nintendo friendly games staff within both teams expressed this same sort of confusion not fully understanding how a fighting slash action game developer would fit into the slower paced longer ranged focus of nintendo's favorite bounty hunter and the answer is it wasn't going to other m would be an action game in more ways than one the samus we see in other m is the strongest that she's ever been mechanically since other m is a direct sequel to super metroid she's been around the galaxy a few times by now and has every power available to her or at least eventually she does more than that though she lives up to her terrifying world ender reputation by being an incredibly agile fighter that dodges deftly between enemy attacks charging enemies head-on and throwing them into walls blasting them into oblivion at point-blank with a charged shot or leaping onto giant bugs and ripping their wings off to some this may feel out of character for samus given that she's been up to this point the kind of fighter that would rather aim carefully from a distance but i think it fits perfectly well here the problem is that this new agile samus comes at the cost of some classic metroid design and even more due to some perplexing control choices the former of those two isn't that big a deal at first but is kind of antithetical to the game encouraging samus to fight enemies no longer drop any health or ammo refills whatsoever and instead samus can recharge her missiles at any point by holding the wiimote vertically while holding a and health is only refilled at one of the game's many save rooms or by doing this same missile recharge when at critical health although the game throws dozens of rooms at you where defeating enemies is required to unlock the next door other times there are whole strings of consecutive rooms with no incentive to kill everything or even anything the best you get is that sometimes when you clear a room the minimap will reveal the location of any hidden upgrades in that room but that's only sometimes so there's a bit of a disconnect between samus's newfound close quarters combat skills and her need to actually fight in many rooms that's not a huge deal and it's right at home with other metroid games the bigger problem though regards the control scheme sakamoto insisted that other m only be playable with just a wii mode no nunchuck no classic controller just a sideways wiimote this push initially confused those at team ninja until the company's current president yosuke hayashi started to see sakamoto's intent i realized that sakamoto wanted to create an action game that would appeal to modern gamers and that he wanted to do it using simple controls we've always made action games but we inevitably end up thinking of game designs that use every available button so although the player can do more things there's a tendency where the game's controls become a bit more complicated what sakamoto-san had in mind however was to make the controls as simple as those of an nes game when i asked sakamoto-san so it's an nes game with the latest technology right he replied that's exactly what it is this nes game with the latest technology concept would be one of the game's stranger marketing pushes an attempt to branch metroid out to players that perhaps didn't love the older styles and simultaneously an attempt to create an action game that could be played by people that don't usually like action games it's frankly a baffling strategy to target the opposite of your franchise's core audience especially when the plot of your new game requires those new players to have played at least one of the previous games from 16 years prior in order to fully understand so that that was that was bad planning and this strategy as you'd expect falls short at least as much as it succeeds in part thanks to other m's several conflicting gameplay sections for most of the game players hold the wiimote sideways like an nes controller where the one and two buttons fire and jump respectively and a transforms samus into and out of her morph ball except when samus is low on missile ammo or health and needs to recharge because then like i mentioned a moment ago you hold the wiimote vertically and hold a but you've got to be careful not to accidentally point the wiimote too close to your tv or else you'll go into a metroid prime inspired first person mode also did i mention yet that this game takes place in 3d meaning that you're controlling samus in a three-dimensional space with an imprecise d-pad and a camera that moves for you i respect the attempt at making a simple control scheme using as few buttons as possible but it's misguided for two key reasons for one this game released in 2010 well after it was already clear that the casual wii audience wasn't buying pretty much any wii games that weren't mario kart the fad was already over now the game did start development very early in the system's life somewhere between 2006 and 2007 but even as soon as 2008 it would have been clear enough that simplifying the controls in pursuit of a wider audience was a bad call and there would have been more than enough time to add at least nunchuck support and that's not to mention reason 2 that the years during other m's developments saw the releases of incredibly successful action games with more traditional control schemes showing a demand for those more traditional control schemes games like god of war 2 and 3 devil may cry 4 and even a new franchise introducing one of gaming's other strongest female protagonists bayonetta why didn't they make any sort of control change that fell to sakamoto's whims as satoru iwata joked and many team ninja members echoed about the game's director he certainly is stubborn about his obsessions when your own boss is calling you stubborn even jokingly that is probably not a great sign in practice this wiimote only setup only makes the controls more needlessly complex than if they just used a normal control style before samus unlocks the later upgrades for her arm cannon enemies take a good while to take down with charge shots or regular blasts alone in order to incentivize using her dodge and jump takedowns but the enemy's odd hitboxes make jumping onto enemies unreliable especially since samus doesn't have a dedicated drop shadow to indicate exactly where she's gonna land in some rooms the shadow might conveniently end up close to below her thanks to the lighting but even when you get used to controlling samus with just a d-pad you're gonna find that much of the time it'll take a try or two to successfully execute a jump attack thankfully if you're not comfortable with potentially taking some hits in order to more quickly kill enemies the tried and true method of charging your shots works just fine too or rather fine enough but still with some other m specific problems since you don't have any means of locking onto enemies when in third person samus auto targets whichever enemy is closest to her and until you find special collectibles that boost samus charge speed a bit later on in the game charge shots are gonna take a while to fire off unless you use this game's dodge feature called sense move if samus is charging her shot and you successfully dodge an enemy attack she'll instantly skip to full charge allowing you to zip around rooms wreaking havoc on any baddies foolish enough to come after you and this this feels incredible i can't say that i've ever felt more powerful playing a metroid game than in some of this game's combat scenarios now you might be wondering how you activate sense move when every one of the wiimote's few buttons is already being used it's it's gotta be b right it might not be comfortable hitting a weird trigger while holding the controller sideways but that's the only way it would make sense nope it's the d-pad when an enemy shot or attack is coming your way the game expects you to stop moving let go of the d-pad entirely and then press it in any direction to dodge in that direction on one hand i applaud them again for making such a baffling control choice work well enough but on the other it's still a baffling choice who in their right mind thinks it's intuitive in a game that gives players high speed and strong mobility options to force you to stop using that speed to best deal with enemies other m is a game that asks you to unlearn some of your gaming habits in order to best experience what it has to offer and it usually doesn't work that well when a game expects that when you're used to it it's fine enough and i do really enjoy the combat when it clicks i love seeing a more aggressive side to samus in that sense the project m team made the best out of a bad situation that they themselves chose to be in a situation that gets worse when you factor in the first person mode samus can only fire missiles when the player aims the wiimote at the tv and locks onto an enemy except samus can't move while in first person mode because that was too similar to the prime games many enemies bosses especially need to be pumped full of missiles if you want to defeat them which means that other m asks the players to swap between holding the controller sideways and quickly pointing at the screen finding the finicky cursor aiming at an enemy to lock on and pressing a to fire a missile all while being unable to move from the moment you switch camera styles and this was their idea of simple what for what's meant to be such a simple control scheme this is all very unintuitive and can disorient even the most experienced players if you're not locked on when in first person mode you'll fire a regular arm cannon blast instead of a missile and once you unlock the more powerful super missiles later on you'll have to hold the a button like you're charging a charge shot but specifically when locked on to charge a super missile or else you'll be charging that charge shot thankfully while you can't move in first person mode for no good reason you can dodge attacks with a sense move but not by pressing the d-pad like you'd expect given that that's how it works sideways because that would be too simple for this simple control scheme instead you dodge by shaking the wiimote at the exact right moment which briefly jerks you back into third person to show you the flashy dodge animation only to plop you right back into first person usually looking in a different direction rather than auto locking to the enemy you were just dodging clunky is an understatement in order to get around the self-inflicted wound of designing a 3-dimensional game with 8-directional digital movement and in order to further push other m's seamless cinematic approach sakamoto focused his efforts as the director more on the cinematic side of the game than dealing with the gameplay issues that he'd created the team chose to automate much of the game on the back end to take some facets out of the player's concern and help those less experienced with action games more easily immerse themselves since move was part of this push as were the scripted camera angles as hayashi discussed in the iwata asks interview by automatically changing the camera angle on the game side we can stop the player from feeling restricted in this way and can allow them to enjoy being immersed in a 3d world that's not limited by two axes in many curving corridors the player can continue holding their d-pad without having to adjust to the new directions as samus will more often than not automatically stick to the movement axis she's on it's not perfect but it's more competent than i think it's given credit for these camera angles for what it's worth also really do drive home the emotional intent of any given area it's easy to forget that other m takes place entirely on a spaceship thanks to the organic simulations the magma chambers the area's diversity but it's those brief moments that you see the darkness of space just across a window pane from samus that you get to take in a bit more of your adventure and its scope it's really the only time that other m starts to live up to being the cinematic alien video game that sakamoto seems to have really wanted as the game ever so fleetingly nails its sense of place and that feeling of being microscopic helpless in the greater universe especially in that final two or three hours other m starts to come together as a game greater than its many many flaws it became a game i was excited to play as the feelings of isolation and exploration were magnified by these sweeping camera shots it's during these few fleeting moments that i started to realize that writing aside and trust me we'll get to that aside soon enough other m might have been a few years ahead of its time with its production values and cinematic intent at least in the world of gaming it makes a compelling argument towards being one of the wii's best looking games as it is but there's an incredible attention to detail with the game's presentation maybe a bit too much so of the game's nine or so hour run time just under two hours of that consists of cinematics making other m that full movie that sakamoto had wanted to express even before super metroid its production both for its cutscenes and gameplay sections was overseen by the game's cinematic director ryuji katara who particularly emphasized this need for cohesion because it was important to make the action parts and the cinematic parts seamless i couldn't just go ahead and work on the cinematics by myself i'd be shown the game during development and if sams's movement was faster in game for example i had to adjust the cinematics to match the game outside of a few times where the game trips up when loading between areas they really did succeed at this seamless integration that came at the cost of maybe a bit of sanity though as other m quickly ran past the storage limits of a single layered wii disk by its release other m would fall just below the metroid prime trilogy like the whole three game compilation disc as the second largest wii game ever made larger than xenoblade larger than brawl 75 percent bigger than the following year's skyward sword at the end of development the team rather than rushing to finish unpolished elements like developers usually do had to make second by second and frame by frame cuts to cinematics to squeeze just under the max file size of a double layered disc this goal quickly became obsessive one of the game's cinematic producers hirakatsu nagasawa noted that over 10 000 emails were sent regarding the cinematics alone with everybody from sakamoto to team ninja chiming in if a scene didn't quite fit samus character huh makes you wonder how they never ended up fitting samus character since other m's development was so open and freely structured everybody's input was valued equally and according to nagasawa and other developers this free-minded system led to meetings that would last as long as eight hours with team members eating two or three full meals over the course of a single meeting even on the gameplay side according to team ninja's chief programmer tayo aramaki different programmers would excitedly add their own flavor to the game design's vision there were quite a lot of programmers working on this project and everyone felt let's try making a better game so the project rapidly swelled with ideas they weren't just programming what they were told to every one of them would also construct various things on their own in order to try and make the game more fun i think they slowly overdid it however and i felt we were rather flooded with ideas there was a lot of trial and error on this project experimenting with how to record these ideas and how we can fit them into the game it's in this pursuit of constant innovation and addition that i would argue the game lost much of its metroid identity other m is as i noted earlier far and away the most linear game in this series which wouldn't inherently be a bad thing if that linearity still fit a similar style of exploration instead though the team built to this vision of the adventure first and then afterwards packed in as many little secrets and collectibles as they could without really thinking about what would be a rewarding progression for the player since samus already has all of her super metroid abilities available to her at the start the player never unlocks any new powers outside of energy and missile tanks to grant samus more health and ammo and items that speed up her charge shots charge times say that one five times fast god and since the game locks away most of samus's powers only to spoon feed them to you later trust me we're almost getting to that part for the vast majority of this game you're barely going to be collecting things as great as this game may look without that feeling of progression by way of collectibles and thanks to enemies no longer dropping health or missile refills these wide rooms and sprawling camera shots only serve to highlight how empty most of other m is sure that is part of the intent here to make a game that puts you more directly into the suit of our bounty hunter and helps you feel her isolation but a game that's intentionally barren still feels barren it's not an easy line to walk even collecting what few upgrades there are doesn't feel satisfying either thanks to the muted atmospheric sound design i swear to god it took me about three to four hours half of the game to hear a single song outside of the title screen theme so much of this orchestrated score attempts to underscore samus's internalized thoughts the silent front that she puts on in front of others and to again highlight that isolation that she constantly feels both inside and outside of her mind but in doing so it loses part of what makes metroid metroid i understand that desire to push towards a more atmospheric soundtrack to better fit the vibe of the game and sure many of the stellar soundtracks of the classic metroid games may have been a bit too bombastic for the more muted other m i've seen this same sort of soundtrack struggle with my favorite franchise ratchet and clank and i've seen the poor fan base response that comes with moving away from an electronic sound design into a bigger budget orchestral score that better fits the sweeping ambition of the game in question i i can't believe i just mentioned ratchet and clank in a metroid video but here i am welcome to the golden boat good to have you there's a happy medium somewhere in there though and other m fails to find it thanks to sakamoto's specific vision while sakamoto's internalized vision of samus eventually gelled with the other key members of the team nagasawa noted that they'd sometimes have to adjust the bounty hunter's facial expressions frame by frame in order to simultaneously fit the vision of both sakamoto and kitara sakamoto himself even jumped in and fine-tuned the cinematics while counting down the amount of seconds he had left before the disk space would run out no example better shows the nature of sakamoto's whims than the full day of trial and error over one specific piano melody as sakamoto provided vague critiques about specific sections of a song over email while he was back in nintendo's kyoto offices he requested the melody at the start of that day with a deadline of naturally the end of that same day his response upon listening to it was this part is wrong so we did it again and we sent it to him and his response was this part is wrong as well this kind of exchange continued over and over until about 8 p.m and even the piano player started saying i just don't understand then at the end we ask sakamoto's son to listen to it he said it's become really good i moved i could almost cry the word obsessive is used to describe sakamoto no fewer than seven times during this single iwata asks interview with team ninja iwata went out of his way to note that sakamoto is the same within nintendo as he was on this project even on a franchise as simple as warioware iwata continued sakamatsu-san seems to have a specific image of what he wants to do but he certainly doesn't express himself clearly that's why he is unable to communicate his image from the start so that other people understand he does have a distinct image in his head however so when he's shown something that's even a little different to this image he's very clear about saying ah no that's not right perhaps the most striking thing to me is that despite all of these insane levels of fine tuning and vague tweaking most of the team that's been interviewed has expressed that development was pretty smooth that team ninja and nintendo fit together like they were the same company based on how highly these two studios have praised one another i wouldn't be surprised if other m's smooth collaborative development is part of the reason that nintendo began to reach out and collaborate with more studios like platinum and even western teams like ubisoft from mario plus rabbids but the thing is metroid is a franchise that's at its strongest when the developer's ambition comes with a bit of hardship it took a full year of pre-production for super metroid to even get started and like many games development ended with the whole team sleeping in shifts on couches at the office metroid prime was essentially scrapped and restarted after a poor internal showing huh that rings a bell even the original nes game was an absolute mess behind the scenes until about three months before release when sakamoto and the cavalry at nintendo came to turn what had been made into something that at least resembled a playable game this isn't exclusive to metroid of course some of the most beloved games both of all time and in recent years were complete dumpster fires even weeks before release according to directors and staff that just tends to come with the territory and metroid especially thanks to its non-linearity and focus on exploration can not be an easy series to develop for and it's these sort of struggles that help buff out the impurities for other m2 have had a relatively smooth collaborative development cycle where everybody's contributions were equally valued means that nobody really had the chance to step back and fully grasp what it was they were making and if it was really the kind of game that fit the mission statement of such an iconic franchise because everybody was so ambitious so excited to pack more into this already full game nobody was there to question if it was all that good sakamoto is a man that knows exactly what he wants but often struggles to explain those desires in a way that's decipherable outside of his own mind it's this cold stern external front standing between outsiders and sakamoto's complete thoughts which fittingly enough also perfectly describes other m's depiction of samus aaron remember those control issues i mentioned at the start of the video i wasn't just referring to the physical controller or sakamoto's obsessive control tendencies other m runs into control issues narratively too and these are more than anything what defines this game despite having all of her power-ups carried over from super metroid upon answering a distress call on the galactic federation's secret ship the bottle ship samus chooses not to use those powers at the request of her former commanding officer adam malkovich who just so happens to have responded to the same distress call adam is just about the only human that samus has ever trusted acting as a father figure who took her under his wing in her days as part of the federation except we don't ever see that even in flashbacks we only see adam as a commander who singled samus out for her slightly different way of thinking compared to other soldiers by no means a justification for her incredible affection for the guy especially when his stone cold demeanor and lack of trust in her is the reason she left the federation metroid other m proudly displays some of the most egregious examples of tell don't show that i've seen in any piece of media there are more of samus's robotic internal monologues than there are collectibles there are lazily thrown together themes of corruptive greed right at the very end like a dollar store metal gear and samus and adam's relationship is never really given time to live up to the hot that sakamoto clearly thought it was despite being at her most powerful mechanically and despite taking place at her most powerful point in the series story samus regresses as a character into a meeble little girl with daddy issues even in situations where samus could be more effective or better help the other federation troops in adam's unit she just stands by helplessly and waits for adam to give the order all because he's afraid that her powers may possibly damage the ship or hurt somebody mind you had samus left the federation because she accidentally hurt somebody and adam could no longer trust her that could have made this contrived plot point into something and given samus more room for character growth but that's not what the flashbacks show us or rather i suppose tell us and if adam was just talking about the powerbomb sure yeah that thing could destroy an entire ship given the chance lock that one down for now but samus the badass solo galactic savior is so bound to her respect for the officer whose command she left due to her losing respect for him that she even turns off the non-combat features in her suit such as the varia and gravity suit abilities that have absolutely no potential negative impact other m forces you to go against one of your most basic gaming instincts making samus walk through several magma chambers constantly losing health due to the sweltering heat for an entire section of the game until adam decides 15 minutes later to authorize her various suit the only thing the various suit does is reduce her incoming damage and protect her from heat damage there is no earthly reason to put either samus or the player in such an asinine situation later on samus can only watch in what i assume is horror as anthony one of the federation troops and one of samus's old friends is being mauled by a giant alien until adam oh so graciously allows her to use her grapple beam to get up to anthony and save him it's just why why would you write this it would have been far better writing for samus to continually push back against adam's command to drive tension between the two and it would have made it feel much more earned when samus finally activates many of her suitabilities without adam's command sakamoto claimed that i wanted to create an intriguing depiction of samus humanity showing that she's not just cool but also kind and sympathetic and perhaps a little immature in her passion and earnestness and at points his vision succeeds at depicting her as all of these things she is kind when speaking to the bottle ship's lone survivor she's immature half the time she deals with adam it's certainly not the character of samus that we as players would expect but with a better writer this sort of characterization could have fitter part of the problem also comes with other m's placement in the metroid storyline taking place after samus had already defeated the space pirates twice she had killed every last metroid she had destroyed two planets and she had saved the galaxy a few times over and that's not even mentioning the prime games which sakamoto despite what many online like to believe considers a valid part of the metroid timeline it just doesn't make much sense for samus to regress at this point in her life even if interacting with her former commander could be seen as a sort of triggering event for that regression no scene quite encapsulates this regression better than the infamous ridley scene throughout the game up until this point samus had encountered this cute little furby looking creature only to begin chasing it when it evolved into a violent killing machine when samus encounters the creature for a third time she completely freezes up as she discovers that the whole time this little furby thing was ridley the same creature that killed samus's parents right in front of her the space pirate that had taunted her throughout her entire life samus's arch nemesis was a furby to some extent sure her freezing up would have made sense after all for one he's a giant flying dragon thing that's horrifying and to think that you've finally avenged your dead parents to finally make peace with that only to find out that their killer who you saw die in front of you is alive and well yeah that's gonna set off some ptsd however her reaction here is far different than just getting caught slipping for a second she's completely immobile for several agonizing seconds as she imagines herself as a child staring ridley down completely terrified and wholly intimidated by his presence not only does this completely betray samus's shono weakness character that this very game is trying to portray by having her keep her armor on at all possible times as a physical protection for her insecurities samus has fought ridley five times in the metroid games alone by this point in metroid one prime one prime three and in metroid 2's 2017 remake as a way to call back to the fact that yes sakamoto fully feels that prime is part of the metroid cannon before finally killing him in super this isn't just her freezing up either because her frozen state ends up getting anthony attacked as he tries to protect her and he gets sent flying down into the magma to what's likely certain doom not only is samus paralyzed with fear now she's gotten her friend killed thanks to her inaction once the fight starts samus absolutely destroys ridley in one of the more thrilling fights in the entire metroid franchise but even before ridley slinks away and escapes it's already too late it's this scene that cements that in sakamoto's eyes samus has never been a strong character she's been a little girl playing dress-up to say that this portrayal is insulting that gaming's first high-profile female protagonist is as much of an understatement as saying that i like to talk now to his credits sakamoto was prepared for some rather hesitant response to other m by the metroid fan base i think there will be some people harboring negative assumptions about this game such as what's this metroid game full of cinematics all about or this will probably be another game for hardcore players by posing the question can't we make a wider range of people happy with the style of metroid game though i really feel we challenged ourselves with this game alright for one a metroid game full of cinematics is the opposite of what would be for hardcore metroid players but that aside i think sakamoto misses the mark just a bit with this comment any negative assumptions about other m warranted as they may have been were proven correct not because a metroid game full of cutscenes and dialogue couldn't potentially work but because other m is an incredibly badly written game of the two hours of cutscenes i'd be hard-pressed to say that much of it is consequential samus voice actress was directed primarily by sakamoto himself despite there being a language barrier and she was directed to speak in a very intentionally robotic voice for many of samus's verbose monologues seriously i hope this actress was paid by the word because holy crap samus loves to loop around to her point in the most circuitous path possible and this monologuing is never paid off in a logical way if other m had been a frame story told after the fact in a sort of captain's log style these monologues would at least make a bit more sense but as it is we're told what samus is thinking as a way to connect to her to humanize her and it only drives us further away from her the plus side is it's hilarious to see her giving a full sermon to herself in real time while somebody else is standing there watching her in silence hey uh you you okay samus why am i still alive the reason i haven't given a more direct point-by-point retelling of the plot is that most of it frankly doesn't matter samus follows adam's orders to different parts of the ship uses a new ability only when adam authorizes it and repeats oh and also there's a whole subplot about a galactic federation trooper planted in adam's group to sabotage the rescue mission and leave no survivors this rogue soldier is referred to by samus as the deleter which is incidentally the least badass name imaginable for an assassin since furby ridley i'm just kind of dropping this in here because i outright forgot it was a thing until i rechecked my notes because even better than the bad name the plotline itself is dropped midway through the game and never addressed again it took the game's strategy guide to actually reveal which soldier the deleter was eventually samus meets a battleship scientist named madeleine bergman who reveals that the ship's true intent was to manufacture bio weapons for the federation more specifically the federation was cloning metroids using the guts of the baby metroid killed at the end of super since samus's power suit had some of those metroid guts on it even worse they were making these metroids immune to their only known weakness freezing also some of ridley's dna was by chance on samus's suit as well which is how he got cloned and speaking of ridley it's right around when samus tracks him down to finish the job that i realized yet another crippling flaw with other m which is that samus doesn't actually do anything in this game like she fights a lot of stuff sure but almost every single one of the plot significant events is left to somebody else when samus encounters stage 2 ridley she walks out into the open like a chump gets pinned down and then struggles not to get stabbed in the face until anthony scares ridley away with his plasma cannon samus goes to destroy the metroid clones only for adam to tase her and do it himself going on a suicide mission to defeat the creatures that samus has spent her whole life fighting while she cries and begs him not to go samus heads over to kill ridley except ridley actually already got killed by a queen metroid before samus could even get there even the final shot in the main game isn't fired by samus it's fired by the real madeleine bergman at the fake medal in bergman that we met earlier who's actually a physical manifestation of the mother brain ai raising the clone metroids known as mb if that sounds like it doesn't make sense yeah i'd be all for establishing other strong characters in the metroid universe but a none of these characters come back except for adam in name only in metroid fusion and b it shouldn't come at the cost of weakening samus hell adam's depiction in other m commits a deeper sin than just hurting this game because it makes fusion a bit weaker looking at that game i preferred seeing samus interact with fusion's ai version of adam not knowing that he was a complete prick for his entire life up until the moments before he died there's just so much wrong with other m narratively that even as fine as the gameplay can be it's so difficult to take this game seriously as a metroid project and i'm not a metroid purist or anything i've only become a fan of these games in the last decade or so from the dropped plot lines to the sloppily implemented parent and child theming between samus and adam the mother brain and the baby metroid madeleine bergman and madeleine bergman or the fact that the game takes place on what's named the bottle ship there's never any payoff and it just feels like amateur hour work because of it it tries to juggle so many different plot points and themes and it was a brave enough game to take metroid into uncharted waters but it ends up dropping so many of those themes and it ends up sinking under the weight of sakamoto's unbridled unfiltered drive samus despite being up to this point her most awesome from a mechanical point of view ends up being her weakest narratively and instead of touching on this dichotomy as part of the plot it's left as a glaring hole even though this game was so ambitious in its pursuit of a seamless cinematic adventure at the request of sakamoto himself although he meticulously counted cutscenes frame by frame as if they were fighting game moves although he pursued and expected perfection from the staff in pursuit of what he described as the ultimate metroid game it ended up being his own writing his own shortcomings and his own imperfection that damned the entire project i think that we've been able to create a game which might be able to produce some significant reactions from gamers i'm really looking forward to listening to any opinions from the metroid fans as well as any players that have other m as their first metroid game so i'm really looking forward to receiving many opinions either good or bad following the release of metroid other m it received a mostly lukewarm reception from critics many enjoyed the seamless integration between the cutscenes and gameplay sections and many appreciated the gameplay as well but most of them tore into many of the same narrative issues that i've discussed here other m was immediately torn even more to shreds by metroid players the ones that even bought the game that is despite selling an estimated 1.3 million copies over its lifetime the vast majority of those sales came at heavily discounted prices in the months and years after its release even as early as the 2010 holiday season just a few months after the game came out other m was being discounted to almost half price at retailers and sites like amazon and by the following holiday season new copies were being sold at gamestop for 6.99 and elsewhere at 10 or less in an interview with kotaku less than three months after other m's released nintendo of america's president reggie fisime said we believe that it could be should be a million unit title we're not going to get there not through the holiday and we are doing a lot of thinking as to why reggie added that the game was nearing half a million total sales it would take until may 2012 after all of those discounts for the game to get that extra half million sales that nintendo was expecting over a year and a half prior after these interviews though we got silence as if the series was floating aimlessly through the immense vacuum of space among the leftover debris of the 40th planet samus accidentally destroyed last month even sakamoto the outspoken director who said he looked forward to hearing players thoughts on other m good or bad was essentially silent for seven years after other m's release metroid fans were treated to six distinct metroid games a compilation and some pinball for some reason in the seven years from 2002 to 2009 in the 10 years since other m's release we've had two two new metroid games one of them was metroid prime federation force the 2016 co-op revival of the dormant single-player franchise where the nicest thing that i can possibly say is that it absolutely was not the right game to deliver after six years of fans begging for a proper metroid game again of course nintendo knew this and did it anyway with reggie saying in another interview with kotaku following federation force's hilariously bad reception at e3 2015. look we know that the fans want a straight samus aaron game we also know that the best way to launch a game like that is to surprise and delight them to give them a launch date in an environment like this let them play it versus what other companies do which is to announce a project that you may not see for five six years it's just not the way we do things at e3 two years later nintendo surprised and delighted the world by announcing a straight samus aaron game was in development without any launch date that we likely wouldn't see for five six years so that was a lie unless the perennial rumors of a metroid 5 finally end up being true or we get a port of the prime trilogy to switch to celebrate the upcoming 35th anniversary of the franchise it's likely that we won't see another metroid game until 2022 at the earliest thanks to the whole prime 4 was cancelled then production restarted under a different studio whose team hadn't worked on a metroid game in over a decade and where most of the staff that worked on those previous metroid games had left years ago thing as you can tell i'm hopeful so when looking at all of this together from the damage that other m did to samus's character to the attempt at reaching a wider audience ironically leading to the franchise's worst sales performance at the time all the way to the drought of metroid titles in the year since i don't think it's unfair at all to say outright that other m killed metroid but the thing with this franchise much like the titular aliens like ridley and like many of metroid's most iconic characters is that nothing stays dead forever this is purely conjecture on my part but sakamoto's ambitions were seemingly crushed by the response to other m and he ended up reverting back to a general producer role for mini-game compilations like rhythm heaven and warioware in fact he hasn't directed another game since as metroid is a series so intertwined with one stubborn man's obsessive ambitions the seven year gap between other m and the next proper metroid game starts to make sense as does the 8 year gap between super metroid and fusion before it as much as most metroid fans despise other m and as easy as it would be to just dunk on this game relentlessly taking a step back i start to feel for sakamoto he fell into the role of director on these games somebody pulled somewhat against his will into even working on the original game to begin with he became a sort of stepfather to metroid as he learned to truly love this franchise and later he would describe it as his life's work he's a man that knows what he wants but doesn't know how to fully explain those desires he's an atmospheric storytelling style of director in a company based on the concept of gameplay first not to mention he's one of the few nintendo employees that admits that he plays non-nintendo games for inspiration he's an emotionally open man who weeps upon seeing his vision brought to light only to be completely humbled as that vision was justified or not vilified even more than samus herself i think that sakamoto may be the most interesting character in metroid other m absolutely deserves the criticism it gets but i can see why metroid died for as long as it did afterwards if all of you hate this video and call me a talentless piece of for making it you could be damn sure i wouldn't talk about metroid again anytime soon and this video isn't my life's work it's not a project that i spent three years slaving over as part of a larger series that i've spent 20 years on it's not something that i'm analyzing frame by frame to make it as perfect as i feel it can be okay actually it might be that last one now that i think about it but you get what i mean just as metroid other m lived and died by its ambition the series went dormant thanks to sakamoto's crushed ambitions until that drive was revived by an eager spanish developer pitching a remake of metroid fusion when sakamoto heard of this pitch he met with the team at mercury steam previously known for the castlevania lords of shadows subseries and because of their deep affection for metroid and their meticulous attention to detail he worked with them to remake the one 2d metroid that he'd had no hand in metroid 2. yet again acting as an adoptive father to something he hadn't drafted himself sakamoto oversaw the development of samus returns in order to bring it more into line with the rest of the franchise just as he'd done with the original metroid back with 2004-0 mission of course i'm not here to talk about samus returns but there's one comment sakamoto made around the time of this game's press cycle that's really stuck with me when asked about the possibility of a metroid television show similar to netflix's castlevania adaptation sakamoto stated when it comes to expanding the metroid franchise beyond the medium of games i feel the position i'm in now doesn't make me the best person to tell that tale we got that right i can't help but think that sakamoto sounds humbled by other m's reception here if not maybe humiliated after making a full-scale metroid movie and building it into a game that attempted to garner wider appeal he found that one of the most iconic and influential franchises in gaming history is actually pretty niche and that maybe he'd lost sight of the franchise perhaps after both other m and the prior cancellation of the long rumored metroid dreads sakamoto's decided to leave larger stories to stronger storytellers it's hard to say until we get an idea of what his next metroid project may be but i would like to think that samus returns is a step back in the right direction for the series the question then becomes should sakamoto even return to a directorial role for future games given his stubbornness and imprecise criticisms can a man nearing retirement age lead a development team to a proper non-linear 2d metroid when the only metroids he's made this century have been rather linear affairs or should he leave the work to one of the hundreds of indie developers that have stepped up to the plate this past decade and made metroidvanias that have rivaled and to some even surpassed sakamoto's best work maybe this will be a bit controversial but i think i'm willing to give him one more crack at it before i write him off and i think you should be too it very much feels like he's a man who's learned from his mistakes he's taken his licks and he was willing to come back for more to prove to us but more importantly to himself that he still understood this wonderful franchise and that he could still find a way to incorporate storytelling and characterization in a much more subdued much more metroid and much less ham-fisted style hopefully sakamoto will have the chance to do it again and with a new project this time rather than just a remake if so i'll look forward to experiencing first hand seeing if that game lives up to much of the series pantheon or if like other m it pays the price for its ambition [Music] thank you very much for watching this video if you've made it this far i'd like to think you enjoyed it but be sure to continue the discussion in the comments and let me know i'd also like to give a special thanks to a handful of people that contributed to this project first and foremost thanks to each of the voice guests featured in this video i know you're seeing them on screen right now but i want to note them anyway so a huge thanks to the crazy even creepy elliott prime hylian rayar reviewing some call me johnny token geek and that trav guy i also want to thank mikino's mykonosfan once again for his help putting this project together thanks to my busy schedule these longer form projects simply wouldn't be possible without him tag-teaming the editing process with me you can find a link to each of these folks channels in the description and i truly cannot recommend enough that you check each one of them out lastly i want to thank my dedicated patreon supporters for helping make this sort of project possible including goldstorm 07 matthew0606 wolfkosan and buckleschuklow among others as always until next time stay golden

Channel: The Golden Bolt

Views: 58,573

Keywords: the golden bolt, metroid, metroid: other m, metroid: other m retrospective, metroid: other m 10th anniversary retrospective, metroid: other m review, metroid: other m development, metroid: other m what happened, what happened metroid: other m, metroid other m, why is metroid: other m bad, metroid other m review, metroid: other m interview, other m, other m retrospective, other m review, why is metroid other m hated, death by ambition, metroid: other m death by ambition

Id: ZEVPphRK7_o

Length: 48min 54sec (2934 seconds)

Published: Wed Sep 09 2020