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Khuutra on 25 February 2010
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Demotruk said:
Khuutra said:

The reason I included the "introductory" qualifier is that we have no idea as to whether or not the cutscenes will hold to that length throughout the game, or whether they would be a more standard Metroid-sized affair (which at this point is basically defined by the Primes). There is no indication as to whether or not this will affect the game's pacing in the long term.

Your second paragraph is faulty on two points: firstly, you're grouping Metroid 2 with the higher tier rather than the lower tier, even though it's only 200k away from the next-lowest selling game but it's like 700k away from Metroid. Metroid had the advantage of being totally unique at the time and Metroid Prime enjoyed not only a radical change to the series appealing to an underserved demographic on the Gamecube, but also benefited from aggressive bundling in North America during the first six months of its release. I should know: I was one of the people for whom Prime was their first Metroid!

Secondly, Metroid Prime had far more narrative, both mandatory and not, than did Super Metroid - you did more reading just finding the Chozo keys in Metroid Prime than you did during the entirety of Super Metroid or even Metroid Zero Mission, and the Chozo keys were not the only parts of the game that you had to read in order to progress.

Lastly, Zero Mission was not a follow-up to Metroid Fusion, it was a well-publicized remake of the original Metroid and it was known as such at the time. Its sales are its own - especially since it was hailed as being closer to Super Metroid than Fusion was. Also: we have no sales data on Zero Mission!

Again, I don't think this is an argument.

I don't consider optional background story to be narrative. Narrative is direction in a story, someone telling you something particular and expecting you to listen/read. There was nothing in Metroid Prime that you had to read beyond game instructions. There were mandatory things to scan (that functioned as buttons/keys), but you could just let go of the button immediately and not have to read anything you're not interested in, that was the point of the design.

Fine, I'm sure you can find alternative answers for why the best selling games happen to be the ones with the least narrative, but the point remains that the ones that add narrative underperformed in comparison. And yes we have sales data on Zero Mission, this isn't the only site you can find sales on:

[snip]

Thank you for the pointer on Metroid Zero Mission, I had no idea concerning its sales.

Again: my point remains the same, not only in that your grouping of the games is fallacious but also in that the correlation to which you refer does not really exist. Metroid 2 had a fair bit more story than did the original, roughly in keeping with the trend that lead to Super Metroid (which is probably why it sold a comparable amount).

And you can say what you like about Metroid Prime, but hte game had a rather tremendous amount of reading jsut oto get through - lik I said, the Chozo keys alone, much less all the necessary boss battle information (I could be wrong, but I think the Parasite Queen wouldn't be auto-targeted in the mouth unless you scanned her first). Its narrative explanation was far larger than that in Super Metroid, or in fact any 2-D Metroid except for Fusion.

Again, you are drawing a correlation that is only kinda-sorta there and is refuted under scrutiny.

And you're not addressing the other, more relevant points, like whether or not the opening is indicative of the pacing we can expect later on in the game. I imagine that, at worst, it will be like Fusion - and probably quite a bit better, would be my expectation.