| nuckles87 said: Prime doesn't have those moments because it has no story. It has atmosphere. And through out XCX you're constantly hearing about people dying, about how dangerous and brutal the world is, and you're fighting an alien race that has not only blown up your entire planet but is dead set on killing the rest of you. Stories like these NEED moments of levity. "This pirate was killed by a plasma blast to the sternum" doesn't really add to the darkness. Gunning down wounded enemy aliens isn't especially dark. Neither is reading reports about status reports from pirates to their commanders. Your killing enemies you have no inclination to feel sorry for anyway. It's not like your seeing dozens of civilians die. It's not like your making hard moral choices. Your killing enemies and reading logs. What Prime has is a great atmosphere that's good engrossing you in its world. But that's not the same as making a game with a super serious, grimdark storyline. It's easy to not have any comic relief when you have no plot to house it. Even friggin Witcher, Mass Effect, and Elder Scrolls have moments of levity and humor. That doesn't take away from the fact that the subject matter and happenings in these games can still be quite dark. I bring up the 90s because media from that era is known for being "grim dark" for the sake of it. We've grown out of that nonsense. |
Prime does have a story. It's just not spoonfed to the player in elaborate cutscenes.
And it adds immensely to the mood to read that the corpses I have come across were killed recently and drained of their blood, (this evokes dread) or that the Pirates I come across have broken legs and can't flee, or cannot aim at me properly because they have suffered brain damage. Even an alien foe can illicit mixed feelings when I am essentially executing wounded soldiers.
XCX has its dark moments, but its cheesier scenes prevent it from having the kind of tonal consistency a modern Metroid would need.
And I am not talking about being "grim dark for the sake of it" (Which I personally think is a rather baseless argument. Can you give examples?) but grim/dark because it suits the source material. Metroid is an intrinsically dark series. Even before Prime, Super Metroid had human corpses on its title screen. Given that this style of game has risen enormously in popularity over the last decade, and is sorely lacking from Nintendo's catalogue, it makes both commercial and artistic sense to make a Metroid reboot a thoroughly dark and serious affair.
