MTZehvor said:

It's all good.

That doesn't necessarily make it canon, especially since certain bits of the manga (particularly Samus' trip through Norfair and how she defeats Ridley) directly contradict the events of Zero Mission. Using scans for cutscenes seems less like an indication of canoncity and more of a method to save money.

I'm pretty sure Sakamoto also straight up said the manga was canon. Metroid is filled with contraditions, so that doesn't disprove that it's not canon. It only proves how shitty a writer Sakamoto is.

I think they do provide a faithful representation of the Metroid world, and to argue the point, I'll reference an installment of a franchise which got quite a bit of recognition in the OP; namely Aliens. The hunters are sort of what the marines were in Aliens, the cocky, tough guy type who exist to get beat up and demonstrate the power of the antagonist. In the same way that the Xenomorphs ruthlessly dispatch the marines to demonstrate how powerful they are, Dark Samus corrupts the Hunters to show how powerful Phazon is.

The marines were grounded in reality though. They had hopes and fears and were vulnerable and were afraid. I don't think the Hunters are characterized nearly as well or nearly as authentically. They were just generic architypes.

I suppose there's no real easy way to argue amount of hopelessness, other than to say that most Metroid games give you the general premesis of "the world is screwed if you don't succeed." Dark Souls, meanwhile, tells you up front that the world is screwed regardless of what you do, and all you can hope to accomplish is to make the rest of your meaningless existence slightly less awful while learning about how the world got screwed up.

As for having a consistent tone, I agree to an extent. With that said, livening up the dialogue ocassionally doesn't offset a tone, if anything, it keeps things from getting monotonous. Take the Ace Attorney series, for instance. Despite consistently putting the player in very serious situations and maintaining an imposing and frequently very bleak atmosphere, it throws in ocassional laughs and jokes that help keep the mood from getting too monotonous. And it works quite well. Throwing in an ocassional joke doesn't automatically ruin a serious atmosphere, and that's all the hunters in Corruption really do (or, really, that's all Gandrayda does. Ghor and Rundas are pretty serious).

I think it would benefit from the world being that cynical. The difference between Metroid and Souls is that at the end of Metroid, you can prove them all wrong, and there's something powerful about that. In a world of utter hopelessness and dispair, Samus can perservere and overcome it all. Samus is a much stronger character (like power level wise) than any Souls protagonist will ever be. Samus will never feel as hopeless as a Souls player because she will always be more compitent than they will ever be. She is an overpowered character, a super hero. Like literally, she's basically Nintendo's Iron Man. That contrast would keep the game from ever feeling as un-metroidly hopeless as a Souls game.

Again, if the livened dialog is grounded in reality, I'm all for it. If its architype-y like in Prime 3, I'm not. Alien and Aliens both had this, but it was always remained grounded and humanized them. Also, it was there to make the characters likeable so you cared about them when they died, which I definitely don't think Prime 3 did. I like Prime 3, but definitely not for its writing.

I'd argue that giving the player the highest amount of control over the speed at which they obtain information is anything but breaking pace, but very well.

Needing to stop what you're doing to read something is the definition of pace breaking. Reading is active. Listening is passive.

...yes, but much of what you were describing was for significant portions of this theoretical Metroid game to be, essentially, a horror game.

No it wouldn't. It would make Metroid a scary game. And it should be. It was inspired by a scary movie. That doesn't mean it would be a horror game, though. Samus is much to overpowered to ever be in a horror game. 

"Most importantly, they should be fucking scary. You should see one and shit your pants."

Metroids have never been scary. Nor do I think they were ever really meant to be scary. And I don't think making them scary contributes to making a better Metroid game in the slightest.

They most definitely were meant to be scary. Everything about the way they are introduced to the player, the way they attack, the way you have to kill them, the state of vulnerability you're in when they attack you, all of it is meant to be scary. Maybe it's not scary now because we're older and 16 bit games can only do so much, but they are supposed to literally be the face huggers of that universe. So yes, making them scarier would absolutely make for a better metroid game.

You can take elements from horror movies/games without having a particularly scary experience. I'm all for Metroid taking some inspiration from the horror genre, particularly in level/art design, but I'm sure I'd be for an experience where the point is to make the player truly scared of enemies. Something like the SA-X in Fusion is what I'd argue the closest Metroid should come to horror should be. It provides tension, and makes the player wary of their surroundings, but it's not something that truly terrifies me, if for no other reason than horror tends to deincentivize exploration. I'll be far less willing to explore the dark caverns of Zebes or SR388 if I think I'm likely to be genuinely scared by what I find. Metroid is all about giving the player reason to explore.

Samus explored because she has to, not because she enjoys doing it. It's her job, not her joy. Horror absolutely does not discourage exploration. If it did, Bloodborne wouldn't have succeeded as a game. Again, Samus is way too overpowered for her to be in an actual horror game. Most enemies in Metroid are just wild life, meaning most of the time, the player won't be very scared. The wild life aren't meant to look horrific. Just alien. That's what makes the contrast with Metroids so effective. They are scary, and they're likely the reason you're there in the first place. The fear may be intense, but its fleating, again like in Bioshock with Big Daddies. Only with the imagery of the aliens from Alien. Scary because they're difficult and relentless.

...I don't really see how the canon is a mess. Other M certainly makes Samus' actions look weird, but it's nowhere near as convoluted as you're making it out to be. For as long running as the series as been, its relatively simple to follow, mostly because the vast majority of the games require little to no knowledge of what happened beforehand, and most of the main antagonists don't stick around for very many games. Dark Samus was only around for two (three if you count its initial form as Metroid Prime), Mother Brain for two, SA-X for one. Ridley's obviously been around for a while but he's very rarely masterminding any of the schemes so it's not that big a deal from an "easy to follow standpoint."

There's honestly too many inconsistancies to list here, so I'll just let you have this one. But it's been a mess since before Other M, and especially after, since it completely invalidates the Prime trilogy from the canon, and creates plot holes with Super.

To illustrate my point, imagine if a theoretical Metroid 5 were announced following up from Fusion's story. What would I need to explain to them to get them ready for the game? Probably not a whole lot more other than "There's a bounty hunter named Samus who's famous for killing off a species of deadly creatures called Metroids, except it turned out that doing so messed up the food chain of a planet and allowed for a species of parasites to grow, one of which nearly killed Samus. A group called the Galactic Federation took interest in these parasites, Samus thought they were too dangerous and destroyed them. Now the Federation is pissed at her for doing so." That's a paragraph of backstory, and that's all you'd really need to know.

Metroid was never a franchise about a galactic federation being "pissed." Metroid is a game where you explore caverns, and the longer the series goes on, the stupider the excuses get because of how much of a corner they've been written into. Now they have to address the stupid "government is evil" plot line and they have to address Adam and they have to come up with another stupid reason Samus lost her powers and they have to come up with a reason for the Metroids to appear even thought they were all exterminated multiple times in the franchise. It's stupid.

Now take an actually really convoluted game, like, say...Metal Gear Solid. How long would it take for me to get someone ready for MGSIV if they hadn't played any of the past games? "Well, there's a guy named Solid Snake, who's a clone of some really totally dead famous soldier named Big Boss, and he's fighting against another clone of Big Boss who actually died before but lives on because his hand got grafted on to a guy named Ocelot. Solid Snake, meanwhile, is aging rapidly due to some problems with the cloning process and is currently fighting against some group called the Patriots who want to promote endless war because it's good for the economy, and there's these things called Metal Gears which are dangerous because they can fire nukes at anywhere on the Earth from anywhere, and everyone's trying to get their hands on the ashes of Big Boss because that will in some way further their plans, and..."

This isn't to bash Metal Gear, but Metroid's canon is honestly pretty tame and concise. There's so few overaching story themes that persist throughout multiple games that you can pretty much jump into any title and go from there with no preceding knowledge. If you're going to reboot Metroid because it's too confusing, then I hope you're prepared to reboot just about every single video game series in existence that's had more than like two entries.

Metal Gear is convoluted, but mostly consistent and has direction. Everything has a good reason for happening and leads to something else. Metroid does not have that, at all. Exterminating the entire race of monsters from which your entire franchise is based off of over and over since the second game has to be the stupidest example of bad writing I've ever scene. The Metroids were back, again, in Fusion. So WHY exterminate them? Why put yourself in the position again where you have to come up with another lame exuse for why the Metroids "aren't really extinct?"

I'd also be pretty much ok with them getting rid of Metroids. Yeah, the name Metroid might not make much sense, but hey. If we can have a Zelda game without Zelda, we can have a Metroid game without Metroids.

I'm definitely not okay with a Metroid game without Metroids. It wouldn't make sense. The only Zelda games without Zelda are direct sequels to Zelda games with Zelda. Metroid was always about the Metroids and, as far as I'm conserned, the distance from that is just proof that the franchise has lost its way and needs a reboot. Metroids should be the singular most interesting things in the game. Not some thing the franchise can live without.

But that doesn't mean the goal of the game should be to make them extint. The goal should be to achieve your mission and make it out alive. The metroids are a threat, but not to the whole fucking universe. The universe is too big for that. To a small space colony? Absolutely. But they aren't and should never be put on this pedistal as the main endgoal for the series. Just an epidemic that needs to be controlled.