Well, keep in mind: if it isn't shown, it doesn't exist. She wasn't always like this on the inside; she only became like this when they chose to show her that way.

But yes. I would have preferred Samus to stay primarily voiceless and rarely characterized. This is a change that affects my experience, and I woudl have rather it not be affected in that particular way. This coudl have been saved by a stronger (much stronger) script, and I believe that, but my ideal Metroid is nothing like Sakamoto's.

Right, that's why I was saying such things as "whether or not.." or "assume she was like this one the inside always" blah blah. But it doesn't matter because it's not how the story has been represented before, and it now completely changes the pace and representation of the story and game of Metroid. And you dislike that.

But, if she was voice acted and presented in a way that stayed true to how we're used to seeing her, and made the game flow just like the essense that you find Metroid to be, you would appreciate it then right? It's not the "damned if you do, damned if you don't" idea behind voice acting, it's getting it right. Right? Or by your last paragraph do you mean you would rather she stayed voiceless? If that is your point, I can also see that, as I would personally hate someone like Link to have a voice when I'd much rather they be my avatar in their world.

I've never been a fan of arguing. I like having conversations to learn more about what others think and to tell them all about what I think, so we walk away understanding everything better. I think a lot more knowledge and understanding gets spread around this way than the bickering of points back and forth from two sides who are more bent on proving they're right than actually learning and finding out the truth.

I think silence works well for Metroid. I think a speaking Samus can also (in theory) work well, but it would have to be handled very carefully by a very talented hand. Yes, if it was in keeping with my prior understanding of her character (and much less wordy) I would not have complained about Samus's characterization in Other M. Samus as a stoic bad-ass is A-okay, speaking or not, and I am an exception among Metroid traditionalists in that I think the idea is salvageable.

Part of my disappointment about Other M comes from the fact that I was so optimistic about the project. I thought Other M would be about Samus as a stoic bad-ass who spoke rarely but insightfully and showed her emotion through action rather than dialogue.

"Part of my disappointment about Other M comes from the fact that I was so optimistic about the project."

I remember. You were one of the big cheerleaders.

I also maintain this wouldn't be so bad if the writing, pacing, and voice acting wasn't so bad.

And too much of the script breaks the "show, don't tell" rule. If Sakamoto wanted to show Samus's maternal side, "The baby, blah, blah blah. Blah blah blah, the baby" was not it. Subtlety and subtext can be very powerful storytelling tools.

I wonder if all this maternal sentiment came from Alien franchise, which supposedly was inspiration behind original Metroid from the beginning?

I can see both sides of the arguement, I do think Samus is sussposed to be a bad ass chick with missles and lasers but I also think they should atleast develop her a little bit. This game also takes before a lot of other games in the series. Which in a story telling perspective would mean that his is before she wen't solo and before she killed so many bosses. For all we know this could be the first time in the storyline, that she fought against Ridley and was still tramatized by what it did and had a hard time fighting it  and eventually learned to cope with it in later games.

But it was so much better. Aside from the deleted scene where Ripley was saddened she outlived her daughter, we just saw her taking care of Newt, rather than just blather on.

It takes place after Super Metroid, which the first scene makes clear. That's why some have a problem, because she beat down Ridley twice, plus Meta Ridley in Zero Mission, and that's not even taking the Prime games into account.

I think that's a problem with quite a few games, and this one in particular. The developers don't take the time to step back, examine their work, and truly scrutinize it to see if they're doing things right. Only those of us with the finished product take the time to really scrutinize and analyze everything going on. It's a pity that the developers don't take more care, because the game really could have been a lot better.

Even discounting all this talk about Samus as a character and the narrative of the game, there is still the glaringly obvious plothole Smeags brought up the other day that made me do the biggest *face palm* of my life.

That being said, I'm one of the few longtime Metroid fans who had fun playing this game. I'm just weird like that.

What was that?

I'll link you to Smeag's post. It took me a few minutes to find it. It was in the Official Other M thread:

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=3628050

*insert epic face palm here because I'm too tired to grab a picture and paste it*