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Sky Render said:
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.

I don't get this. Isn't this kind of backwards, purist logic exactly what Nintendo has stood against these last years? Iwata has been talking about filling the gaps in Nintendo's oeuvre for some time now - this new game is likely to be one step in that process. Don't go begging the question by asuming the game will be worse or less appealing because it is headed in an ostensibly different direction - especially since the series was never that popular to begin with.

Also, that is the most ludicrous statement about game art I have ever heard. That's like saying one of the chief aims of an art film is to present the audience with a muddled picture (I know there are films that do this - the point is that they are exceptions). Hell, Metroid Prime is perhaps the most artistic of any Metroid game, and it plays and flows better than Super Metroid, to boot. Great atmosphere, level design, and delivery is what makes for both of the games' immersiveness, and those are the things that - at least I - value the most.

'Cinematic gaming', I think, is the term that you are looking for, and it is something else entirely. Granted, it appears to be the kind of experience Sakamoto is aiming for with Other M, and I admit am worried (for many reasons), but I won't judge the game before it is even out. Perhaps it will pull it off well, as a few games have, or it might be a good game otherwise.