Metroid: Samus Returns (Mercury Steam, Metroid 2 reimagining, 9/15) announced for 3DS

I would think enough time has passed for people to take Metroid Other M for what it is, an action focused Team Ninja game. It's a bad Metroid game for sure but it's no longer the last entry in the core franchise. It was a Metroid action game, an experimental blip on the radar and Samus Returns doesn't seem to contain anything from Other M.

Other M was disliked for more than just that - it undermined its own action mechanics with the control scheme, viewpoint shifting, and the way aspects like auto-aim, context-sensitive melee and Sensemove were implemented and balanced. The art direction, level design and infamous plot presentation only compounded those issues.

Even with a different team developing and a different overall structure/genre, the portrayal of Samus is still going to carry over as a potential point of contention - look at how Fusion was viewed retroactively after Other M. The aspects it did better could be recognised more clearly, but things like the Adam AI were essentially "poisoned", instead of being given the benefit of the doubt. Prime 4 and Samus Returns hopefully will go a long way towards helping erase the memory of Other M - but its failings will never fully disappear from the overall perception of the series.
 
I'm interested to see how it affects any potential post-game content; considering how it slots into the game's epilogue. Also; I'm curious as to what direction they'll take for its theme - AM2R gave it a nice synthwave-ish spin.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=9u8dfcHfX9g

In any case, I hope they keep the elegant segue into Super Metroid. "The last Metroid is in captivity, the galaxy is at peace" is a fanservice stinger it'd be very difficult to mishandle.
 
now add AM2R maps :D

(love that you'Re at it again, CartographerX)

Someone did:

CuNjJST.png


credit

Baby's cry

Nobody puts baby in a corner
 
PokéKong;241124340 said:
I find it funny that many people are worrying about MC working on this, when I'm personally more concerned about Sakamoto's involvement. Starting with Fusion the series became more guided, narrow, and focused on plot points which are apparently references to an old manga adaptation. and it all culminated in that mess of Other M when Sakamoto was given full creative reign. He appears to be listed as producer and not director this time, so that nay be a good sign.

But THIS troubles me deeply:
DCVtsQYU0AEIhDi

DCVtsSYUIAAtIMW


Yeah... and he made sure to mention this both on the Treehouse and on a developer diary video.

Yeah, I noticed that too, and it worries me as well. Other things that also worry me are Samus's action poses, Bayonetta legs, and over-the-top action QTE's. Once again, I'm skeptical of this game.

The game does make use of some Nintendo-made assets, but the big majority of the game was fanmade and it doesn't even make any use of a Metroid ROM let alone emulation. It's completely remade.

I find it a bit annoying when people compare Samus Returns to it, putting AM2R on a pedestal, but let's not downplay the incredible effort that went into it.



Haha yeah, SNES VC is exclusive to the n3DS along with a couple of games like Xenoblade.

I'm trying to downplay the effort that went into AM2R; it obviously took a lot of effort to put together, but rather I'm trying to point out to the people who put the game on the pedestal that the game was ultimately made from a template, and trying to compare it to games that are made completely from scratch is insulting.
 
PokéKong;241124340 said:
I find it funny that many people are worrying about MC working on this, when I'm personally more concerned about Sakamoto's involvement. Starting with Fusion the series became more guided, narrow, and focused on plot points which are apparently references to an old manga adaptation. and it all culminated in that mess of Other M when Sakamoto was given full creative reign. He appears to be listed as producer and not director this time, so that nay be a good sign.

But THIS troubles me deeply:
DCVtsQYU0AEIhDi

DCVtsSYUIAAtIMW


Yeah... and he made sure to mention this both on the Treehouse and on a developer diary video.

Let go of this Sakamoto obsession.

What's troubling you is a simple fact about Metroid 2. The Metroid baby is the crucial kick-off point to gaming's holy grail aka Super Metroid without which that game would not have any other narrative drive.

This is not Sakamoto going "OMG Other M, y'all!" on you. This is giving the game that laid the groundwork for Super Metroid its due finally. Metroid 2 is incredibly crucial to one of the most important and beloved games ever made.

Just get over yourself and look at what's there.
 
Yeah, that bothered me too, but I'm hoping that's just his obsession with Mommy Samus and THE BABY showing and it won't have too much of an impact in the actual game.

I mean, the baby is pretty important to Metroid 2 and Samus's "earlier" characterization. As long as we don't have some awful voiceover or shoddy dialogue we should be ok. I'm fairly ok with most of the dialogue in Fusion, because it still seemed in line with Samus's character.

From a story perspective, I really hope the developers can restrain themselves and take us back to the Metroid 1-4 style of story telling.
 
Note that they haven't said a peep about any dialogue at all even existing. The few small cutscenes we've seen had nothing.

Please stop panicking just because of some post Other M trauma you still can't shake.

You guys think this might get ported to switch?

No.

Anything is possible but no. There's no point in holding your breath.
 
Note that they haven't said a peep about any dialogue at all even existing. The few small cutscenes we've seen had nothing.

Please stop panicking just because of some post Other M trauma you still can't shake.



No.

Anything is possible but no. There's no point in holding your breath.

Plot apocalypse: baby Metroid has dialogue. GAF reaction tears a hole in space time.
 
Let go of this Sakamoto obsession.

What's troubling you is a simple fact about Metroid 2. The Metroid baby is the crucial kick-off point to gaming's holy grail aka Super Metroid without which that game would not have any other narrative drive.

This is not Sakamoto going "OMG Other M, y'all!" on you. This is giving the game that laid the groundwork for Super Metroid its due finally. Metroid 2 is incredibly crucial to one of the most important and beloved games ever made.

Just get over yourself and look at what's there.

Yup. Nobody can make a mediocre game in their career it seems.
Can we stop until this release to see if he did bad again? Some people at GAF (and im not talking only about Sakamoto here) are incapable to comprehend people can learn from their lessons.
Hell, I really hope that Tanabe, though im less confident because it was first strike first miss for him instead of multiple hits and then a miss like Sakamoto, has also learned from what not to do again afte FF, and I will be as happy as anyone for him if MP4 is a resounding success.
 
Plot apocalypse: baby Metroid has dialogue. GAF reaction tears a hole in space time.

They give it a verbal tic. Which is translated verbatim into English.

"Mama Sammy-meto? Where are we going, meto?"
"Hee-hee...Your boingy bits are so round, Mama Sammy-meto. When I grow up, I wanna look just like you!"
 
I mean, this game has literally none of the issues that plagued Other M. If it was horribly linear and had shit like the focus mechanic again instead of proper health pickups, then yes, there'd be a problem, but everything we've seen and heard makes it look like a Metroid-ass Metroid game. The only thing brought over from OM are those flashy finisher animations, but that's it.

I'll admit that I've given Sakamoto a lot of shit over the years after Other M, but this game is looking is looking to be a big apology letter, so I'm willing to forgive and move on.
 
Also they should have call it infant Metroid in english. Thats what the spanish script did with Other M, baby always sounded bad and wouldnt be surprised the word used in japanese is more true to infant.

Apart from that, Samus Returns is taking a page from Zero Mission clearly, not Other M.
 
I like to be negative, but given what I've seen, I can't really be a pessimist in this case. Game looks great. Very glad Nintendo proved my long-running scepticism wrong (this E3).
 
I mean, this game has literally none of the issues that plagued Other M. If it was horribly linear and had shit like the focus mechanic again instead of proper health pickups, then yes, there'd be a problem, but everything we've seen and heard makes it look like a Metroid -ass Metroid game. The only thing brought over from OM are those flashy finisher animations, but that's it.

I'll admit that I've given Sakamoto a lot of shit over the years after Other M, but this game is looking is looking to be a big apology letter, so I'm willing to forgive and move on
.

More people like you, we need 'em.

Benefit of the doubt. It's all that's being asked.
 
I didn't take the baby thing as an other m reference, but really as a super metroid one. You can't really understand super metroid's plot without that piece of story.

also, sakamoto explicitly said that the story in this game is in the background, not foreground. let's not panic because we really don't need to

Sakamoto said:
"[In] this game there's a lot of background, there's a lot of lore involved in this title. But it's not like a novel or something. It incorporates the lore, but it's not integral to the gameplay experience. It's in the background more than in the foreground.
There is definitely information for the players to get that revolves around sort of the larger storyline."
 
So would this setup a super metroid remake then? Baby's fans are going to be so excited when
Oops, did I say that? I meant devastated when it DIES FOR YOU
 
Hell, I really hope that Tanabe, though im less confident because it was first strike first miss for him instead of multiple hits and then a miss like Sakamoto, has also learned from what not to do again afte FF, and I will be as happy as anyone for him if MP4 is a resounding success.
Didn't he produce the Metroid Prime trilogy? Did he have less involvement with that than he did FF?
 
They give it a verbal tic. Which is translated verbatim into English.

"Mama Sammy-meto? Where are we going, meto?"
"Hee-hee...Your boingy bits are so round, Mama Sammy-meto. When I grow up, I wanna look just like you!"

You just took that one "~censored~" conversation from Awakening, didn't you. :P
 
I always maintained that sakamoto just made a huge mistake trying to be a script writer. He still is a wicked talented game designer and I'm looking forward to Samus Returns a lot. Also happy to see Mercury Steam getting this chance.
 
I always maintained that sakamoto just made a huge mistake trying to be a script writer. He still is a wicked talented game designer and I'm looking forward to Samus Returns a lot. Also happy to see Mercury Steam getting this chance.

Sakamoto was out of his depth and element in terms of type of game, production size, and yes him pretending he was a professional writer.

The collaboration with Tecmo seemed to only pull out the worst ideas from both sides (Tecmo convincing Sakamoto to make it 3d, Sakamoto's insistence on the game only using the Wii remote and switching to first person).

Samus Returns seems closer to the type of smaller innovations and action elements Sakamoto originally envisioned for Other M. Perhaps Mercury Steam is a better collaborater​ than Tecmo. Sakamoto seems very happy to be working with them and excited for the potential future of Metroid.
 
Sakamoto was out of his depth and element in terms of type of game, production size, and yes him pretending he was a professional writer.

The collaboration with Tecmo seemed to only pull out the worst ideas from both sides (Tecmo convincing Sakamoto to make it 3d, Sakamoto's insistence on the game only using the Wii remote and switching to first person).

Samus Returns seems closer to the type of smaller innovations and action elements Sakamoto originally envisioned for Other M. Perhaps Mercury Steam is a better collaborater​ than Tecmo. Sakamoto seems very happy to be working with them and excited for the potential future of Metroid.

Well said. Obviously Sakamoto isn't deaf to the vociferous screams of the internet and is sort of playing it safe here by opting to remake Metroid 2. The good news is that his "good" production/development ideas are not being compromised this time around. I can't wait for this game.
 
Counter mechanic honestly feels like an actually fun version of the sense move. Yes, successfully doing it lets you avoid an attack and do a powerful shot, but unlike the sense move it actually requires proper timing and instead of slowing down the combat it speeds it up.
Also they should have call it infant Metroid in english. Thats what the spanish script did with Other M, baby always sounded bad and wouldnt be surprised the word used in japanese is more true to infant.

Samus refers to the baby Metroid as baby Metroid in Japanese, Engrish and all ("beebi").
Calling it a baby Metroid is totally fine. The problem with Other M was calling it "the baby" again and again like it's a human baby.
 
Counter mechanic honestly feels like an actually fun version of the sense move. Yes, successfully doing it lets you avoid an attack and do a powerful shot, but unlike the sense move it actually requires proper timing and instead of slowing down the combat it speeds it up.



Calling it a baby Metroid is totally fine. The problem with Other M was calling it "the baby" again and again like it's a human baby.

My only issue with the counter so far is that it seems to be pretty easy to hit. But then again, we've only seen it hitting a few, weak enemies.
 
Sakamoto was out of his depth and element in terms of type of game, production size, and yes him pretending he was a professional writer.

The collaboration with Tecmo seemed to only pull out the worst ideas from both sides (Tecmo convincing Sakamoto to make it 3d, Sakamoto's insistence on the game only using the Wii remote and switching to first person).

Samus Returns seems closer to the type of smaller innovations and action elements Sakamoto originally envisioned for Other M. Perhaps Mercury Steam is a better collaborater​ than Tecmo. Sakamoto seems very happy to be working with them and excited for the potential future of Metroid.

Great post, yes. I think Sakamoto has some disturbing views, and when given complete liberty and paired with bad partners, shit like Other M happens. But the guy /has/ to know a thing or two about good game design given his pivotal involvement in some of the best games ever.

The only thing here that reminds me of Other M are the melee counters, and here these look actually fun and like they add something valuable to combat and encounter design.

... That being said, I did laugh at him talking about the baby in that video, haha.
 
PokéKong;241124340 said:
I find it funny that many people are worrying about MC working on this, when I'm personally more concerned about Sakamoto's involvement. Starting with Fusion the series became more guided, narrow, and focused on plot points which are apparently references to an old manga adaptation. and it all culminated in that mess of Other M when Sakamoto was given full creative reign. He appears to be listed as producer and not director this time, so that nay be a good sign.

But THIS troubles me deeply:
DCVtsQYU0AEIhDi

DCVtsSYUIAAtIMW


Yeah... and he made sure to mention this both on the Treehouse and on a developer diary video.

Honestly people blow Other M way out of proportion. It's poorly told, but the story itself is fine. It tries to depict what would happen to a character whose entire life was devoted to a single cause when that cause was over. Samus feels kind of numb after destroying the metroids, especially after one saved her life, and is having an introspection of mistakes she made along the way. It's main problems are that it's overly verbose yet fails to convey enough of Samus' backstory, leading to wild misinterpretations of certain scenes.

Sakamoto is right, here. The baby metroid is an extremely important character in all of the games that take place after Metroid 2: Super Metroid revolves around Samus rescuing the baby metroid after it gets stolen and it sacrifices itself to save her in the end, Other M deals with Samus' immediate reaction to being saved by the creature she was sworn to destroy, and in Fusion Samus it saves Samus' life once again thanks to the Federation using its DNA to stop Samus' X infection. It's very odd that such an important game has spent all this time stuck on Gameboy where very few people have played it.

Sakamoto is better at telling a cohesive story. All of his games work together well. Though he is overly influenced by the Alien franchise. The Prime games, on the other hand, are pretty damn messy. They have a lot more story but all 3 games are very inconsistent with themselves and with the main titles. It seems like Tanabe wants to take the Prime series even further off in the direction started with Prime 3 with a more militaristic setting and focus on Sylux.

I think the takeaway is that story is okay, but it needs to be kept minimalistic, with Fusion being the upper limit of what people will accept. This Metroid 2 remake looks to be dialing it back further than that, though, with Zero Mission's mostly unspoken story. All of the cutscenes so far have kept Samus silent.

Someone did:

CuNjJST.png


credit



Nobody puts baby in a corner
Hmm, this person decided to use Area 6 in the comparison to Area 4. I used Metroid 2's literal Area 4. I don't think the remake's Area 4 is supposed to be Area 6. Area 6 clearly appears to be some kind of chozo-built underground tower and I doubt they'd change that. The original game had 11 areas, and that section is still pretty early in the game. The game says they are at 16 metroids left, which is correct for Area 4, though they changed that Metroid to a Zeta.

I was going to compare AM2R, but I didn't feel like trying to figure out what the correct portion for Area 4 would be. It's clear from the other Areas that AM2R was more of a straight remake adhering strictly to the map of the original while this new game is inspired by the original game but the maps are very different.
 
Okay, here are the maps with correct AM2R comparisons. I color-coded the AM2R areas to the same colors as the Metroid 2 map.
twJ7rh4.png


Once again, keep in mind that the Samus Returns maps are incomplete and are even bigger than what I have here. Any place where the map does not have a white border is a place where the map expands but has not been visited yet.
 
Honestly people blow Other M way out of proportion. It's poorly told, but the story itself is fine. It tries to depict what would happen to a character whose entire life was devoted to a single cause when that cause was over. Samus feels kind of numb after destroying the metroids, especially after one saved her life, and is having an introspection of mistakes she made along the way. It's main problems are that it's overly verbose yet fails to convey enough of Samus' backstory, leading to wild misinterpretations of certain scenes.
Question: What in Other M's story specifically shows Samus feels numb because of destroying the Metroids?

The mistakes that Samus thinks of in Other M aren't related to the Metroids. They're related to Adam. She thinks leaving Adam's squad in the GF army was wrong. She thinks objecting to Adam's decision to not save Ian was wrong. There is no indication her angst originates from the events of the original Metroid trilogy. It's all newly introduced backstory that has nothing to do with the Metroids or Space Pirates outside Ridley's impact on her childhood.

Your post describes a version of Other M that I frankly never saw. There's a difference between not communicating something well (Ridley killed Samus's parents when she was young and it traumatized her) and not communicating something at all.
 
Samus doesn't seem to give too much of a fuck about the baby Metroid anyway, considering the first thing she does with it is give it to scientists to experiment on it.
 
Great post, yes. I think Sakamoto has some disturbing views, and when given complete liberty and paired with bad partners, shit like Other M happens. But the guy /has/ to know a thing or two about good game design given his pivotal involvement in some of the best games ever.

The only thing here that reminds me of Other M are the melee counters, and here these look actually fun and like they add something valuable to combat and encounter design.

... That being said, I did laugh at him talking about the baby in that video, haha.

You are like the second person saying that and I'm like wtf is that a meme? When Sakamoto had complete liberty he did Metroid 3, Metroid Fusion, and Metroid: Zero Mission. He's a strange eclectic guy who's always made games against the grain. That makes him special - even if he has one or two disagreeable games.

Other M was ambitious and maybe Nintendo wasn't ready to make a game like that. But hopefully they learned what some people would like or dislike.
 
Samus doesn't seem to give too much of a fuck about the baby Metroid anyway, considering the first thing she does with it is give it to scientists to experiment on it.

Well, that's kinda obvious since she only realizes that the baby cares about her when it saver her in Super Metroid.
 
I don't really care for the new Metroid Prime but this was a legit surprise.

Great to see that Nintendo is working on 2 Metroid titles when people thought the franchise was dead after other M and Federation Force disappointed a lot of players.

I will keep an eye on this game and might play through the orignial Metroid ll as some sort of celebration.
 
Samus doesn't seem to give too much of a fuck about the baby Metroid anyway, considering the first thing she does with it is give it to scientists to experiment on it.
It's kinda funny how Super Metroid makes it seem like the relationship between Samus and the baby Metroid is entirely one-sided. Poor thing saved her life on SR388 and was repaid by getting tossed in a tube and being offered as a living battery.

Though to be fair, Samus did go against her mission to keep it alive.
 
It's kinda funny how Super Metroid makes it seem like the relationship between Samus and the baby Metroid is entirely one-sided. Poor thing saved her life on SR388 and was repaid by getting tossed in a tube and being offered as a living battery.

Well she saw the metroid endgame, and animals often lose their parental imprint - can you imagine that happening when it's an omega or a queen?
 
Well she saw the metroid endgame, and animals often lose their parental imprint - can you imagine that happening when it's an omega or a queen?

You know, that made me realize something.

Why did the Baby Metroid not grow into the other stages and instead just became massive?
 
Top Bottom