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MTZehvor on 03 October 2017
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Snoorlax said:
MTZehvor said:

I won't disagree with the emphasis on show vs. tell, although I'd question your holding up Fusion, by far the most "tell" heavy Metroid game besides Other M, as an example of the concept. With that said, I think it would largely depend on what story they want to tell, and, to reference this back to the original point of the conversation, if it's going to be focus on the rebel Chozo faction, then the game is probably going to require a significant amount of telling to satisfy those of us who are more interested in the series' lore. While official 2D Metroid games have never included scanning before, there's a great example of it how it can be implemented well in AM2R, and while I do prefer SR slightly to AM2R, I think the scans are a major advantage that the fan game has over the official one.

I think the ideal scenario if they choose to pursue that storyline would be a very Prime-esque approach to narrative structure, regardless of whether it's 2D or 3D. Have a game with a relative easy to follow storyline on the surface, with optional ways to sate the curiosity of those who really enjoy the series' lore and want to see it expanded upon. Scanning is the best method I've seen so far of this sort of optional storytelling, but I'd be open to different ideas if I thought they were capable of expounding upon a similar amount of backstory.

Fair enough we all have our preferences however i'm sure most people remember Fusion because of it's "tell heavy" plot (and linearity) whereas pretty much nobody talks about Prime's story. One of the main reasons Metroid Dread is so desired because of the plot, we want to know how Samus' story continues so Fusion actually succeeded by ending on such a cliffhanger with is storytelling the real problem was it's forced linearity, i really don't mind linearity especially not in Fusion since it's still an awesome game but it could have used less handholding like SR.

If they fix that and continue the story Metroid Dread would be perfect.

While people do talk about Fusion's plot, and in particular how it would jump to a Metroid Dread, it's worth noting that the part that is consistently discussed is what is shown in the game; i.e. Samus telling the Federation to go fuck itself and blowing up the BSL. From my experience, no one cares much about the part of the game that's just "told" to the player, i.e. Samus' reflections on Adam, or Adam's long, droning speeches about whatever was next up on the kill list. Additionally, the end of the game winds up being a hot point of discussion because it is a cliffhanger, and, more notably, a 15 year old cliffhanger that still has shown no signs of being resolved. It's going to be a major talking point among the fanbase just because it's been such an absurdly long time. 

As for "nobody talks about Prime's story," if you were around the fanbase at the time, the cliffhanger that followed Prime 1's ending was also a major talking point until the announcement of Echoes. Prime's story isn't discussed all that consistently nowadays because, well, all the gaps are pretty much filled in. There isn't a lot left to discuss; we know the story and there aren't any major mysteries that can really be speculated on. Corruption's cliffhanger was a pretty common talking point too until Federation Force revealed that it didn't mean anything; at least, not immediately. Wait for about a year or so, and Sylux will probably become the most popular talking point as we get closer to Prime 4.

TL;DR: The type of story (Prime vs. 2D) doesn't really make a difference as to whether the story is more or less talked about; it's a matter of whether there's stuff left open for discussion/speculation. The one exception to this is something like Other M where the story is so atrociously bad it will garner discussion for years to come.