I'd go so far as to say that the plot in most games is irrelevant to some degree. It's not what most end users are buying games for in general, though there are a few niches that buy the games for their stories. Metroid started its life as a sidescroller companion piece to Zelda, where you explore and power up to face off more effectively against your enemies and eventually defeat the Big Bad that the manual mentions. It was simple, but effective (and unfortunately dragged down by identical corridors all over the place).
The series has been taking increasingly bigger turns away from that model as the years go by, however, and skirting disturbingly close to the "games are art" fringe where consistent and fun gameplay is generally considered a hindrance to "getting the message across". The whole idea of exploring the character instead of focusing on the action is way too far into this territory, especially for a series where a fair few gamers still think the main character is named Metroid, not Samus. I'd say it could use a proper reboot to its origins of action-packed and increasingly free-roaming exploration, but Metroid Prime did that quite admirably already.
So on the whole, I do agree with Malstrom on this one. Other M is being over-hyped, Sakamoto is trying to sell us on something that doesn't sound like fun and should not be used to sell games, and fans are getting incredibly defensive mostly of anyone calling Sakamoto on his ludicrous statements.
Sky Render - Sanity is for the weak.
