My thoughts on what what Metroid should be going forward has evolved since last year, so i decided to make a new thread.
I honestly think that Fusion and Zero Mission is where Metroid started wrong. The absolute worst decision was to canonize the manga. They should have hired competent writers to actually compose a back story for Samus that follows the way she was characterized in the series thus far. If any franchise deserves a reboot, its Metroid. Just get some good writers and start over. Do it right this time. I'm all for a Metroid game where Samus is better characterized, but it should be more like System Shock 2, Bioshock, Half-Life 2, and hell even games like Dark Souls and Bloodborne, and less like Uncharted or Metal Gear, which is what Other M was clearly trying to emulate. (not slagging those franchises, just saying that Metroid shouldn't tell its story the way games like those do) Samus is clearly not a talkative character, so keep her quiet and pensive. She can speak, but only when she has something of consequence to say, which, if the game is done right, should not be often. And when she does speak, her personality should reflect the character she's been built up to be. Very much like Ellen Ripley from Alien. Samus should not be exploring an area populated by lively characters bursting with gimmicky personality and monologues, and she should have little reason to talk back to them. Not just Other M, but Prime 3 suffered from this.
If there are NPCs in the game, they should be like characters in a Souls game or, again, Bloodborne. There to lend credence to the overall dreary tone that Metroid should hold above all else. They build the world, and that's it. No witty banter. Just dreary, even sarcastic, dialog. If you've been following the indie game Ghost Song, they have it nailed perfectly. It's inspired by Super Metroid, and it absolutely nails the atmosphere while adhering to modern advancements in game design like voice acting and story.
Not sure how to embed this video of Ghost Song. ^^^
Everything should be voice acted and instead of the outdated Prime way of scanning everything to read endless flavor text, there should be the equivalent of Audio Logs throughout the environment. Most of the information your receive should be visual, though. Once you see a federation trooper stabbed through the heart by something, you don't need a piece of scanned info reiterating that yes, this is a federation trooper and yes, it was indeed pierced by something. Samus can hack computer for world building flavor text, but that should be a rare occurrence and not nearly come up as often as they did in the Prime series. They are much better ways to build a world, as mentioned above.
In a Metroid reboot, Mother Brain should be a Shodan-like (even Glados-esque, minus the humor) villain. Cold, calculated, and intelligent. There should be genuine fear built up to the final showdown with Mother Brain, and that should be built throughout the events of the game. She is, far and away, the most interesting and underutilized villain in the Metroid franchise. Ridley is nothing more than a pirate captain, and shouldn't be treated as anything more than any other monster.
Metroids should be scary again, because they aren't anymore. They are a far-cry from what they were before, and that's because we never fight anything other than their larval states. In Alien, face huggers are just the babies. Imagine if every Alien movie after only had face huggers. We should be fighting Zeta Metroids by the middle of the game, and they should be the equivalent of Big Daddy fights in Bioshock. Extremely powerful, fast, and aggressive and extremely difficult to defeat without proper planning before hand. Most importantly, they should be fucking scary. You should see one and shit your pants. Hell, you should even see an infant Metroid and still be scared a little by the end.
Hello Shine Spark. Hello third person combat. This is what Metroid is suppose to be.
And most importantly, drop the first person perspective for a reboot. Prime had its time, and it's over. That story is done. For a reboot, make it a third person shooter platformer. Metroid was originally a 2D action platformer, so the transition to 3D should be in third person. Splatoon and games like Infamous: Second Son prove that a game like this would work from a gameplay perspective. You can be a platformer while keeping an adult aesthetic; Infamous prooves that. Just go for a realistic, retro futuristic art direction similar to the one found in Alien: Isolation, only obviously the setting would be changed to being on an alien planet, and keep the loading screens as well hidden as they were in Prime and Super. Throw the map on the bottom screen, and its a rap.
This is how the Zero Suit should look, by the way. Not the gross, sexualized, magical girl animu suit she has now. And that's it should even exist at all.
Also, I doubt there's any way to make a truly convincing, truly scary Metroid game nowadays without the game having graphic violence, which means a mature rating. If they can do it without having the game be rated M, by all means. But if keeping the franchise Rated T keeps it from being what it should be, go for the M rating. Metroid was inspired heavily by Alien, a rated R movie. Metroid become an M rated franchise is not at all a stretch.
Make the level design feel like you're exploring a complex underground tunnel system rather than a series of connected rooms. Instead of shooting colored doors to progress, create more organic barriers for progression. Hardware is more than powerful enough now for that sort of thing. And please keep the games running at 60fps.
