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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Abbie Heppe (G4TV): Metroid: Other M is Sexist

Aiddon on 01 September 2010

said games also didn't really have a narrative and were BEFORE Samus had a canonical personality (though I guess Fusion DID give her one and that was made before Prime3). Sloppy? Yes, but that's how the cookie crumbles. I'm gonna chalk it up to Sakamoto trying to make Samus more human, relatable. and vulnerable rather a Mary-Sue someone can project onto.



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LordTheNightKnight on 01 September 2010
Aiddon said:

said games also didn't really have a narrative and were BEFORE Samus had a canonical personality (though I guess Fusion DID give her one and that was made before Prime3). Sloppy? Yes, but that's how the cookie crumbles. I'm gonna chalk it up to Sakamoto trying to make Samus more human, relatable. and vulnerable rather a Mary-Sue someone can project onto.


Calling the games before sloppy just to excuse this is wrong. So is pretending a player avatar is the same as a mary sue.



A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.

Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs

Jordahn on 01 September 2010

Maybe Abbie's pissed because she couldn't get a blowjob right...  Opps, I didn't just say that, did I?  That was very unChristian of me, and I apologize for that statement.

(VG Mods, please don't ban me for this.  :P )



Hackers are poor nerds who don't wash.

Mr Khan on 01 September 2010
Aiddon said:

said games also didn't really have a narrative and were BEFORE Samus had a canonical personality (though I guess Fusion DID give her one and that was made before Prime3). Sloppy? Yes, but that's how the cookie crumbles. I'm gonna chalk it up to Sakamoto trying to make Samus more human, relatable. and vulnerable rather a Mary-Sue someone can project onto.

Bingo. It's idiotic for us to debate things that happened earlier. Yes, it is ret-conning to a degree, but that's what happens with a decades-old franchise, even with one that hasn't changed hands (the fractured Zelda timeline and its infinite theories can attest to that), you wish you had done things that way before, but cannot, so you have to gloss over stuff. Certainly happened with Star Wars.

 

Her fear of Ridley isn't untoward, but it is poorly manifested in this case.



Monster Hunter: pissing me off since 2010.

Jordahn on 01 September 2010
Mr Khan said:
Aiddon said:

said games also didn't really have a narrative and were BEFORE Samus had a canonical personality (though I guess Fusion DID give her one and that was made before Prime3). Sloppy? Yes, but that's how the cookie crumbles. I'm gonna chalk it up to Sakamoto trying to make Samus more human, relatable. and vulnerable rather a Mary-Sue someone can project onto.

Bingo. It's idiotic for us to debate things that happened earlier. Yes, it is ret-conning to a degree, but that's what happens with a decades-old franchise, even with one that hasn't changed hands (the fractured Zelda timeline and its infinite theories can attest to that), you wish you had done things that way before, but cannot, so you have to gloss over stuff. Certainly happened with Star Wars.

 

Her fear of Ridley isn't untoward, but it is poorly manifested in this case.


Look at the number of MegaMan's (or MegaMen) we've had for instance...



Hackers are poor nerds who don't wash.

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LordTheNightKnight on 01 September 2010
Mr Khan said:
Aiddon said:

said games also didn't really have a narrative and were BEFORE Samus had a canonical personality (though I guess Fusion DID give her one and that was made before Prime3). Sloppy? Yes, but that's how the cookie crumbles. I'm gonna chalk it up to Sakamoto trying to make Samus more human, relatable. and vulnerable rather a Mary-Sue someone can project onto.

Bingo. It's idiotic for us to debate things that happened earlier. Yes, it is ret-conning to a degree, but that's what happens with a decades-old franchise, even with one that hasn't changed hands (the fractured Zelda timeline and its infinite theories can attest to that), you wish you had done things that way before, but cannot, so you have to gloss over stuff. Certainly happened with Star Wars.

 

Her fear of Ridley isn't untoward, but it is poorly manifested in this case.


It's actually handling it poorly that makes it the retcon. If it had been something like "No matter how many times I face him, I still remember..." and then flashing back to her as a girl, but having her get to fighting him as she did before, it would just be adding some extra information to the character, but still having her be as badass as ever (since badass is about action, not supressing fear). No need to contradict anything before then.

So it's the contradiction here.



A flashy-first game is awesome when it comes out. A great-first game is awesome forever.

Plus, just for the hell of it: Kelly Brook at the 2008 BAFTAs

Aiddon on 01 September 2010
Mr Khan said:
Aiddon said:

said games also didn't really have a narrative and were BEFORE Samus had a canonical personality (though I guess Fusion DID give her one and that was made before Prime3). Sloppy? Yes, but that's how the cookie crumbles. I'm gonna chalk it up to Sakamoto trying to make Samus more human, relatable. and vulnerable rather a Mary-Sue someone can project onto.

Bingo. It's idiotic for us to debate things that happened earlier. Yes, it is ret-conning to a degree, but that's what happens with a decades-old franchise, even with one that hasn't changed hands (the fractured Zelda timeline and its infinite theories can attest to that), you wish you had done things that way before, but cannot, so you have to gloss over stuff. Certainly happened with Star Wars.

 

Her fear of Ridley isn't untoward, but it is poorly manifested in this case.

That is the closest thing I can call this is ret-conning. With the exception of Fusion Samus didn't have an established personality (though she did have a back story) and wasn't really characterized. Before that she was just a blank slate the audience projected onto as is the case with ALL silent protagonists such as Gordon Freeman, Link, Crono, Commander Shepard and every other player-character in every Western RPG ever made ever. BUUUUUT now that the decision has been made to give her a personality we need to see her characteristics such as how she reacts to other characters, what annoys her, what frightens her, who she hates, who she loves, etc. And since Ridley is a big part of the mythos we need to see how she would react to him and the way she does is FEAR. He's her bogeyman, her nightmare, everything she hates and fears in a nice, frightening package.

So even if we DID have her face Ridley multiple times we do need to see what her reactions are towards him. It's not handled expertly like some narratives, but it helps characterize our heroine



Jordahn on 01 September 2010
KylieDog said:
Jordahn said:

Maybe Abbie's pissed because she couldn't get a blowjob right...  Opps, I didn't just say that, did I?  That was very unChristian of me, and I apologize for that statement.

(VG Mods, please don't ban me for this.  :P )


And this is why you have an empty say on what is sexist or not, thus cannot criticise Abbie and at the same time have any leg to stand on.

Oh, I have a lot of legs to stand on because both extremes can be just as rediculous.  One extreme is no excuse for the opposite.  My statement is only an example of sarcasm in reaction of stones unneccessarily being thrown.



Hackers are poor nerds who don't wash.

darkheart709 on 01 September 2010
KylieDog said:
Mr Khan said:

This is going to lead to some interesting things. Somebody just had their imagination of Samus trampled on, and this is the sort of reaction you get. This is what comes from defining things that were previously left to the players' imagination (though not entirely, because these elements of Samus' past have been indicated before)


Sorry but no.

 

They made good points with good arguments to support them.  When she has defeated Ridley multiple times already why break down and cry now?  That is retarded, as is dying from lava when your suit can protect you but don't want to offend some guy so wait for him to give the ok.

At the beginning of the game she is pretty confident that Ridley is dead, she defeated him then blew up the planet he was on. To her the nightmare that has caused her so much pain was finally gone, then she see him again alive and well. Its underatandable that she'd be upset.



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Killiana1a on 02 September 2010
jarrod said:
Killiana1a said:
jarrod said:
Killiana1a said:

Samus has faced Ridley how many times now? Twice? So why did Sakamoto go and make her have a PTSD flashback?

Because she thought he was dead actually.  And from the manga (and implied in the cutscene flashback) Ridley terrorized her as a child, and Samus literally fears Ridley.  There's an element of shock here, and element of phobia, and maybe the team could be at fault for getting that across properly... but having a character break down for 30 seconds is sexism? Inappropriately misusing the term, as it's clearly being here, fundamentally devalues it. And in an industry that is seriously rife with legitimate sexism that too often goes overlooked or unsaid, I'd say that's even doubly sinful, especially when we're talking about a series that was arguably one of the standard bearers and trailblazers for positive female characters.  Even games like Tomb Raider or Street Fighter II were more exploitative than this is.

I have yet to remember games where my male protagonist broke down in a PTSD flashback.

Yes, thanks for bringing up the history that those of us who do not read the manga, but play the games do not know. Sakamoto should have done more backstory in Metroid, Metroid 2, Super Metroid and all of Metroid Prime to show us why Samus had this breakdown.

Sakamoto's fault entirely. I don't blame Team Ninja as Metroid is Sakamoto's baby.

Tomb Raider and Street Fighter can be overlooked as just another game by the boys for the boys. Metroid: Other M tries to take Samus seriously and in doing so, it appears as if it's characterization of Samus is hitting on the core of her womanhood by having her cower.

If she faced her childhood fears twice in Ridley, then why did Sakamoto have Samus breakdown during the third time? Doesn't make sense.

I haven't either, but PTSD doesn't exactly gel with juvenile male power fantasy, so I'm not exactly surprised.  Then again, I tend to shy away from action/hero/war/fantasy games, and the games I do enjoy tend not to deal with scenarios where PTSD would be a likely element.  A 30 second freakout just doesn't seem like a such a big deal to me though, and certainly not sexist.  A male would fit into the exact same scene, identically as presented even, and no one would ever say that.

Also, Sakamoto didn't work on Metroid 2 or the Primes, just the original, Super, Fusion and Zero Mission.  8-16bit cartridge games don't exactly give all that much room for narrative excess, though he did consult heavily on the mangas, which Nintendo considers canon.  They should probably release them here honestly, they're not bad fanservice.

'By the boys, for the boys' is probably the worst excuse I've ever heard for the permissive sexism this industry is plagued with.  That sort of boys club mentality is precisely the problem.

And as far as the freakout itself, Samus thought she'd killed Ridley and blew up the planet he was on.  In the manga he'd told her as a child he can escape death by consuming the flesh of others, the realization of that being true likely just heightened the shock and may have helped trigger the response.  That's how PTSD works, it's not predictable, and anything could trigger it really.  Plus it's also not like we really saw Samus response one way or the other in Metroid 1 or 3, though she did also inexplicably pause for several seconds when first encountering Ridley in Super Metroid , which allowed him to roid-nap the baby and take it off the space station.  Perhaps that was the 16bit portrayal of shock/hesitation/panic/PTSD? 

"By the boys, for the boys" is expected. Do you expect all female characters in video games to be wearing Hillary Clinton pant suits?

Likewise, where is the backlash against male protagonists  who are utterly absurd caricatures? Funny how no one bitches about Marcus Fenix having hands bigger than his head, Kratos depicting males as steroid popping psychopaths, the Mafia series pushing male Italian stereotypes, and on.

In terms of realistic depictions of the sexes, video games hasve never been kind and have a bad habit of making caricatures of both sexes.

As for the manga, there are many who could care less. Videogames are still considered a niche, nerdy hobby. Comic books the same way. Manga is an extreme niche hobby up there with ham radio operation.

Players only care about canon consistency from game-to-game. The rest is just details.

If Yoshio Sakamoto was going to introduce canon from the manga, the least he could do is let us know. Why I am so pissed and others are too is Sakamoto pulling a rabbit out of his hat with Samus having PTSD moments that none of us who played from Metroid through Metroid Prime expected.