1. Sorry, bad mood from those that want to just demonize those that don't like this direction. Plus I'm annoyed you insist I can't know about PSTD just because I got a few details off. Not everyone with a personal experience with something becomes omniscient about it.

2. I won't speak for others, but zero personality is not how a lot of us see her. We see her as a badass stoic, not just a bland action character. We'd watch Steven Segal movies if we wanted that.

3. If it's a cultural interpretation, that's misunderstanding, not shoehorning.

4. That is NOT what I wrote. I wrote that whatever trauma was shown in the manga, she did get over in scenes shown that took place before this one. Nor did I claim that if she had PTSD, it shouldn't show up randomly. I'm stating it DID not show up randomly. It just showed up now, but without any context to make it fit. That is why Sakamoto should have at least retconned the past encounters to show Samus at least having some problems with Ridley before.

Master Chief, Marcus Fenix, and Gordon Freeman are characters?

But i'm saying how would acknowledging the Prime games really have an impact on Other M's story? The only problem they might pose is that obviously a great many Metroids were bred by the Space Pirates, so the events of Metroid II could have been pointless (though you have to stretch your imagination to make Metroid II make sense in the first place, given that there had to have been more than the 30-some Metroids that game portrayed).

Whether he considers them to be canon may very well be a non-issue

Well, for the sake of being on-topic, Samus beat up Ridley a lot in those games, and every time it looked like he was really finally for-sure dead

And yes, the advent of the freaky-deaky Metroids bred by the Space Pirates and spawned by Dark Samus would also be relevant

1) Don't worry about it, and I'll have to admit that I kinda got a little overly tweaked about the PTSD thing. I'm sorry if it felt I went off on you earlier.

2) Stoic and badass, I understand. I also think a lot of developers saw her that way. I do think that the fact that she never said much or showed much personality made it easier to show her this way, and so it became who she was. But don't you think she was also like an Avatar for the player, like Link is? Where you also somewhat throw your own emotions and thoughts into who she is and how she reacts? Maybe it was just me, haha, but i did!

3) Lets say that Samus was the epitome of a stereotipical "I need a man's help to do anything" woman. Now, that would sure as hell be bad characterization due to the portrayal of her previous persona, but is it sexist? What about all the guys who fit into idiotic stereotypes? They're just characters meant to fit into the story the game is trying to tell. I don't think the developers are trying to generalize all women/men in that regard. Horrible characterization? Sure. Sexism? I still don't see it quite like that.

4) I must have misunderstood your point then. When I was making the case for PTSD I was assuming it was under the principle that PTSD was for sure supposed to be the developer's interpretation of it. If the developer made no notion twoards PTSD and it was only fans making that claim, then yeah it doesn't fit at all.

If PTSD was Sakamoto's reason, then the reason her PTSD hasn't seem to show up before is because Sakamoto never had control of her personality in recent times (with technology allowing such advances). I believe he was trying to show his idea of her personality in Fusion, again, I never played it, but Other M was his first time to really show what he saw Samus as. So he took the opportunity to show us that she has PTSD (Assuming that's what he meant) over Ridley. that's fine. Bad characterization, maybe. Not fitting with other recent games? That's coz Sakamoto had no say in those games, and he would rather toss them aside to show his Samus instead.

1. Then I think it was just a clash that can happen, especially with such a heated topic. Plus it's hard to tell a polite tone from a mean one on the internet, and that leaves room for communication problems.

2. I've actually known about her past in the manga. I knew the chozo raised her. I also knew she could talk and have feelings. Fusion made that clear. And Zero Mission has one of my favorite moments, showing Samus's carving in the wall she made when she was a girl, of her and her chozo adoptive family. Sakamoto made both those games, so I'm not against Samus as a feeling person.

Prime had one of the most iconic badass moments, in a cutscene. A rock from the rock boss (can't remember his name) flies around and hits the back of Samus's helmet. She turns back, just to see what it was, but when she realized it was nothing, she just moved on.

So I saw her as like Vampire Hunter D. Not unfeeling, just the strong, yet still caring, type.

3. I think it's the downgrade that seems sexist, especially when it seems that Sakamoto apparently wants to appeal to lady gamers. So it seems sexist to assume they want a weaker and more talky Samus.

4. Again, that could work, but only if he had shown flashbacks to at least show Samus had some problems even in those other games. Heck, I would have shown Samus being frozen with fear in a flashback to when she was a soldier and this was the first time since she was a girl that she faced Ridleyh, and then show her still a little fearful in flashbacks from the other games, just to show she isn't totally over this, but still have her just half freak out in the current game.

On that note, I would also have the weapon authorization have real reasons, such as a room that will totally explode if you use missiles, so she shuts them off whenever she's there, not just shuts them off until she's told she could use them.

Reading through all the comments and differing opinions, a question arises that I cannot answer myself.

Is it acceptable among fans of a videogame series to see their gaming icon be completely redefined by one of the co-creators of the series even though his vision is at odds with her portrayal in past games going back to the 1980s?

This fundamentally gets down to who defines gaming icons? The gaming public who made the series a phenomenon? The creators of the series?

Well if people buy your work in droves because of X, then trying to turn it into Y might be a legal right of the owner, but to expect people to buy it won't work.

My sentiments exactly. If you do a complete 360 from the portrayal of Samus from Metroid through the Prime series, you should expect a bit of blowback.

Newton's Third Law of Motion applies: To every action there is always an equal and opposite reaction

It just taps into the old problem of divided fanbases. Look at other franchises and characters that have changed over the years: Sonic, Mario, even Donkey Kong has divisions in the fanbase between the Country lovers, Country haters and Arcade lovers, and Jungle Beat lovers