Wow... well the story seems a bit on the lowside I admit. But why do I have a feeling that this was more of a getting-started game, a first in  a long-running franchise, that would explain more later on? Or am I the only one who thinks this? Still, with the sales it had, this will remain a stain in the Metroid franchise ( shame, seein g how this is IMO one of the best games this year), and not a series that gets a chance to evolve both gameplay and storywise.

There is nothing to discuss here. Sakamoto can't make a story, he can't do character development, and he butchered the Samus Aran character, and has now made the Metroid fanbase smaller than ever before. 

He should never be allowed to work on a Metroid game again, or the franchise will die.

I say it has more in common with The Room than Twilight. Only not as entertaining for the wrong reasons than either of those.

I strongly get the impression that I am going to end up doing the same when I play this.

Well, I meant to say more. She hated it so much she won't talk about the game, even academically, and literally pretends it never existed.

My brother and I have similarly shunted it out of our personal canons, but we still acknowledge that it was there.

I'm increasingly starting to think that the reason why I'm increasingly in favor of minimal, or no, story in games is that the writing has almost always been terrible in videogames, but in previous generations technical limitations have prevented us from getting the full brunt of the creators' "artistic vision." 

An SNES JRPG, for instance, couldn't afford the writers the ability to do a prolonged dramatic scene, because all but the most tolerant players would get incredibly bored within seconds:  the hero despairing at the death of his mentor would be expressed exclusively through written, skippable dialogue, and the visuals would consist of a sprite repeating three frames of animation.  Now that same scene would be told through a lengthy CGI cutscene, with voice acting, long camera shots, close ups, etc. 

The writers assume that because they can now throw more stuff at the player, the player will tolerate longer scenes, and to a degree they are correct.  But because they last so much longer now, those scenes need to be much better than in previous generations, and that is NOT what has happened.  I don't believe that cinematic scenes in games are bad per se, but I firmly believe that game creators are far too inept to take advantage of those scenes;  I am literally embarrased to show many videogame scenes to other people because they're just so badly made.

tl;dr version:  Yup.

Now THAT'S hardcore...

And this is why I compare game writing often to fanfiction, in that many of these people are similarly unpracticed and inexperienced.

I'm not impressed. I never found the Zero Suit sexy, and the pairing of those shots with the godawful narration and voice acting just made them annoying even if I would have found them sexy.

One point at least where Sakamoto deserves credit: D-Rockets wanted more gratuity