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d21lewis on 04 August 2012
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Khuutra said:
RolStoppable said:

I just chime in here, because I didn't get a response to my post despite an announcement that there will be one. *EDIT: Looks like I got one while typing this post.*

I have never viewed the "Samus without armor" reward as her sex being the reward, but rather as a glimpse at the person that wore an armor the whole game. The reward isn't to see a woman, it's seeing the character you played as. The reward is to see a more elaborate ending sequence, even if it is just a short extra scene or a slightly changed scene. Since this happens after the game is over, these scenes that show Samus without armor do not hurt the immersion of the games. For the time I play the game, I feel that I really am this character. Once the job is done, it's time to return to real world. When I see Samus without her armor, I cease to be her. And that's perfectly fine, because the game is over.

That's why I don't have a problem with these scenes. They take nothing away from the games (Metroid, Return of Samus, Super, Prime trilogy). The problem of Zero Mission's Zero Suit is the altered gameplay for that section. Fusion's problem is that Samus talks to the player throughout the game. In these moments you cease to be Samus. Other M adds extreme sexualisation of Samus throughout the game on top of her talking a lot, that's why the game doesn't feel right from the perspective of immersion. The game has also a lot more problems beyond that.

The first time I viewed Samus Aran as a sexualised character was in Echoes' ending sequence. The problem wasn't the Zero Suit, her face or her now yellow hair (her character model looked vastly different than in Prime). Her breasts got pumped up to the desired American standard size. That was pretty shocking to see, but it's just an ending sequence. The guys from Retro Studios had some fun and I never gave it any more thought. Something as short as that doesn't hurt Samus as a character. Corruption scaled her breast size back a little. What exactly was this topic about again?

Oh right, it's about the player being Samus. The immersion starts to vanish as soon as the final boss is defeated or the ship is reached within the time limit (depending on the game). Why? Because the game takes away the control from the player. Whether you see Samus in full armor or without armor in these final moments doesn't matter. This is the point in the game where you cease to be Samus, because you know that the game is over.

You are ignoring the fact that more is revealed the more skillfully you play the game; it is not a simple "Hey, here's the lady inside the suit!" It is a gradient of reveal whereby Samus becomes more and more naked the better you are. That is your reward in the aforementioned games.

You are ignoring the effectiveness of a good denouement, though I can't really blame you. Metroid Prime was the only game in the series that had a super effective denouement.

Is it really "She's more naked the better you are" or is it "Here's her in armor", "Okay now you can see part of her face", "Okay now you can see her out of the armor". 

She went from wearing a bathing suit in Metroid I to wearing a 2-piece in Metroid II to wearing a space bikini in Metroid three and finally to covering up everything except her face.  If anything, she's gotten more conservative than ever.  I still think that (as stated in the OP), it was just a limit to the technology of the time.  That's why Mario Wears a hat and has suspenders. To show Samus as a lady on the 8-Bit NES, she either had to wear a dress like Princess Peach/Toadstool or they had to go the Sigourney Weaver in Aliens route and show her in her space underwear.  With the progression of technology, they gave us more realistic (and feminine) animation, a voice, and finally, a personality.

And I still feel that giving us a flash of her face in Metroid Prime did just as much to show us that we were controlling a female as anything else that's being criticised.  And again, I liked seeing a breif glimpse of her face.  It let me know that I wasn't just controlling a floating cannon on the arm of a robot.  It reminded me that this was a strong woman capable of solving any crisis. 

As for the super effective denoument comment:  Some games of the day gave you more story depending on how good you were at the game.  8-Eyes, Batman Returns, Axelay, and even Metroid Prime come to mind when I think of games that did this.  The thing is, I never saw the "good ending" of Batman Returns, Metroid Prime,  and 8-Eyes until youtube.  I can imagine it being frustrating for a gamer if they played 30 hours of Super Metroid and didn't get to see the Metroid attack Mother Brain or if they'd played through Metroid 2 and didn't get to see Samus run off with the Baby Metroid.  I never got to see the end of Metroid Prime until youtube.  I felt pretty shitty knowing that there was a pretty significant portion of the Metroid story (or at least that's what I thought) that I wasn't able to see the whole story.  Showing "more Samus" doesn't add or detract from the story.  It's nothing significant.  It's just a nice little bonus for speed runners or completionists.

I've lost focus.  Too many distractions.