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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Sex and the Zero Suit: Why Samus was Great Only in Metroid Prime

d21lewis on 03 August 2012
Khuutra said:
d21lewis said:
What makes Samus so different from Solid Snake? I made this argument back when Other M came out. Snake was an 8-Bit character that later got clad in a skin tight suit, had some emotional breakdowns, took orders from a member of the opposite sex, and still kicked all kinds of ass. I went into more detail back then but I won't elaborate.

Is it such a sin for Samus to have a personality? It may not be the personality that we want her to have but there's any number of female characters for us to try. That chick from Portal, that chick from Mirror's Edge, or that chick from......err....uh.......anyway, I like Metroid. It's awesome.

Samus went fifteen years never breathing a word, basically just being a Terminator. She was the perfect faceless hero.

Samus "spoke" in text in the beginning of Super Metroid.  She didn't crack any jokes or anything but she told us her story.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uR7ZqCYNXYQ

Her thing (being silent in the 80's) was basically 90% of the video game character's thing of the times.  From the two guys from Contra to Lolo and Lala.  Samus was just a cool character design that went through cleverly designed stages.  To this day, most Nintendo characters still do that.  Not what makes her special in my book.  Being able to blow up more planets than Unicron and Galactus combined is what makes Samus stand out for me.



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Khuutra on 03 August 2012
RolStoppable said:

I just chime in here, because I didn't get a response to my post despite an announcement that there will be one. *EDIT: Looks like I got one while typing this post.*

I have never viewed the "Samus without armor" reward as her sex being the reward, but rather as a glimpse at the person that wore an armor the whole game. The reward isn't to see a woman, it's seeing the character you played as. The reward is to see a more elaborate ending sequence, even if it is just a short extra scene or a slightly changed scene. Since this happens after the game is over, these scenes that show Samus without armor do not hurt the immersion of the games. For the time I play the game, I feel that I really am this character. Once the job is done, it's time to return to real world. When I see Samus without her armor, I cease to be her. And that's perfectly fine, because the game is over.

That's why I don't have a problem with these scenes. They take nothing away from the games (Metroid, Return of Samus, Super, Prime trilogy). The problem of Zero Mission's Zero Suit is the altered gameplay for that section. Fusion's problem is that Samus talks to the player throughout the game. In these moments you cease to be Samus. Other M adds extreme sexualisation of Samus throughout the game on top of her talking a lot, that's why the game doesn't feel right from the perspective of immersion. The game has also a lot more problems beyond that.

The first time I viewed Samus Aran as a sexualised character was in Echoes' ending sequence. The problem wasn't the Zero Suit, her face or her now yellow hair (her character model looked vastly different than in Prime). Her breasts got pumped up to the desired American standard size. That was pretty shocking to see, but it's just an ending sequence. The guys from Retro Studios had some fun and I never gave it any more thought. Something as short as that doesn't hurt Samus as a character. Corruption scaled her breast size back a little. What exactly was this topic about again?

Oh right, it's about the player being Samus. The immersion starts to vanish as soon as the final boss is defeated or the ship is reached within the time limit (depending on the game). Why? Because the game takes away the control from the player. Whether you see Samus in full armor or without armor in these final moments doesn't matter. This is the point in the game where you cease to be Samus, because you know that the game is over.

You are ignoring the fact that more is revealed the more skillfully you play the game; it is not a simple "Hey, here's the lady inside the suit!" It is a gradient of reveal whereby Samus becomes more and more naked the better you are. That is your reward in the aforementioned games.

You are ignoring the effectiveness of a good denouement, though I can't really blame you. Metroid Prime was the only game in the series that had a super effective denouement.



Khuutra on 04 August 2012
RolStoppable said:

I have read your other response to me, but I am not going to reply for two reasons: One, you said you aren't interested in giving me another response and two, I wasn't happy with that post of mine to begin with because it lacked coherence and flow.

As for this post, "more and more naked" is an exaggeration. At most (it differs between games) there are three forms you can see of Samus in the ending sequence. With armor, without helmet, without armor. The actual reward is the results screen though, seeing how low you can get the timer. That's why there isn't much of an incentive to replay the original Metroid over and over again, because it lacks a timer. You get to see Samus without armor, so you know that you have beaten the game below three hours, but the game doesn't display your actual time.

When is a denouement the most important? The first time you experience something. Given that the cutoff time for better endings is either three or two hours or in the Metroid Prime trilogy an item collection rate of 75 %, the vast majority of players probably doesn't see much the first time they beat the game. What you are ignoring is that your praised ending of Metroid Prime where Samus takes her helmet off requires 75 %, so there's no guarantee that everyone who beats the game will get this super effective denouement. This is a major flaw in your argument.

Not at all. One game offers the reward of closure (and foreshadowing) directly proportional to your own investment in the title. The other games offer you a pixellated lady to stare at.

There is balance in the denouement and the unlocking of it, where the people most effected would see it the first time anyway because they explore more by nature. It's rather ingeniously built.

But, again

You are focusing on only the tiniest sliver of the matter at hand



Khuutra on 04 August 2012
RolStoppable said:

Why is it that you make it seem like players who try to get a low time in a Metroid game do so in order to see Samus without armor? There are players who are done with a game once they have beaten it and there are players for whom the game only really starts after they have beaten it. For them beating the game isn't enough, so they challenge themselves.

Nobody (that I know of) beats a Metroid game within the cutoff time the first time they play it. Metroid is what you could call a badge of honor game. One you can use to show off your gaming skills. The reward isn't seeing Samus without armor, the reward is the satisfaction that you can beat a game fast that many find difficult to beat within a low time or to beat at all. Like I already said, the original Metroid didn't display the time it took you to beat the game. However, Samus without armor was proof that you did it below three hours.

So what is the big picture in this topic? The original post was huge and not everything sticked after I read it; and I am not going to read it again.

You are confusing the way the reward system is constructed with the way players interact with it. Those are not the same thing, and I never said people play it quickly to see Samus with her clothes off.

I was talking about the way Metroid Prime's reward system was set up, especially in the context of the scan system rewarding the player with more behind-the-scenes goodies the more they unlocked. The more a person cared abotu the game, the more likely they were to get Samus with her helmet off, the more likely they were to empathize with her in that moment. It has nothign to do with time-based Metroids. It is all about Metroid Prime, and how its reward system is crafted to be emotionally resonant according to a player's investment.

I don't think "sticked" is standard English, it should probably be "stuck", and the big picture of the topic is what makes Samus an effective character (hint: it has nothing to do with her being a lady, thoguh that can be considered an ancillary niceness)

Also that's awful, for God's sake I read that horrible post of yorus like three times while I was replying to it



d21lewis on 04 August 2012
Khuutra said:
RolStoppable said:

I just chime in here, because I didn't get a response to my post despite an announcement that there will be one. *EDIT: Looks like I got one while typing this post.*

I have never viewed the "Samus without armor" reward as her sex being the reward, but rather as a glimpse at the person that wore an armor the whole game. The reward isn't to see a woman, it's seeing the character you played as. The reward is to see a more elaborate ending sequence, even if it is just a short extra scene or a slightly changed scene. Since this happens after the game is over, these scenes that show Samus without armor do not hurt the immersion of the games. For the time I play the game, I feel that I really am this character. Once the job is done, it's time to return to real world. When I see Samus without her armor, I cease to be her. And that's perfectly fine, because the game is over.

That's why I don't have a problem with these scenes. They take nothing away from the games (Metroid, Return of Samus, Super, Prime trilogy). The problem of Zero Mission's Zero Suit is the altered gameplay for that section. Fusion's problem is that Samus talks to the player throughout the game. In these moments you cease to be Samus. Other M adds extreme sexualisation of Samus throughout the game on top of her talking a lot, that's why the game doesn't feel right from the perspective of immersion. The game has also a lot more problems beyond that.

The first time I viewed Samus Aran as a sexualised character was in Echoes' ending sequence. The problem wasn't the Zero Suit, her face or her now yellow hair (her character model looked vastly different than in Prime). Her breasts got pumped up to the desired American standard size. That was pretty shocking to see, but it's just an ending sequence. The guys from Retro Studios had some fun and I never gave it any more thought. Something as short as that doesn't hurt Samus as a character. Corruption scaled her breast size back a little. What exactly was this topic about again?

Oh right, it's about the player being Samus. The immersion starts to vanish as soon as the final boss is defeated or the ship is reached within the time limit (depending on the game). Why? Because the game takes away the control from the player. Whether you see Samus in full armor or without armor in these final moments doesn't matter. This is the point in the game where you cease to be Samus, because you know that the game is over.

You are ignoring the fact that more is revealed the more skillfully you play the game; it is not a simple "Hey, here's the lady inside the suit!" It is a gradient of reveal whereby Samus becomes more and more naked the better you are. That is your reward in the aforementioned games.

You are ignoring the effectiveness of a good denouement, though I can't really blame you. Metroid Prime was the only game in the series that had a super effective denouement.

Is it really "She's more naked the better you are" or is it "Here's her in armor", "Okay now you can see part of her face", "Okay now you can see her out of the armor". 

She went from wearing a bathing suit in Metroid I to wearing a 2-piece in Metroid II to wearing a space bikini in Metroid three and finally to covering up everything except her face.  If anything, she's gotten more conservative than ever.  I still think that (as stated in the OP), it was just a limit to the technology of the time.  That's why Mario Wears a hat and has suspenders. To show Samus as a lady on the 8-Bit NES, she either had to wear a dress like Princess Peach/Toadstool or they had to go the Sigourney Weaver in Aliens route and show her in her space underwear.  With the progression of technology, they gave us more realistic (and feminine) animation, a voice, and finally, a personality.

And I still feel that giving us a flash of her face in Metroid Prime did just as much to show us that we were controlling a female as anything else that's being criticised.  And again, I liked seeing a breif glimpse of her face.  It let me know that I wasn't just controlling a floating cannon on the arm of a robot.  It reminded me that this was a strong woman capable of solving any crisis. 

As for the super effective denoument comment:  Some games of the day gave you more story depending on how good you were at the game.  8-Eyes, Batman Returns, Axelay, and even Metroid Prime come to mind when I think of games that did this.  The thing is, I never saw the "good ending" of Batman Returns, Metroid Prime,  and 8-Eyes until youtube.  I can imagine it being frustrating for a gamer if they played 30 hours of Super Metroid and didn't get to see the Metroid attack Mother Brain or if they'd played through Metroid 2 and didn't get to see Samus run off with the Baby Metroid.  I never got to see the end of Metroid Prime until youtube.  I felt pretty shitty knowing that there was a pretty significant portion of the Metroid story (or at least that's what I thought) that I wasn't able to see the whole story.  Showing "more Samus" doesn't add or detract from the story.  It's nothing significant.  It's just a nice little bonus for speed runners or completionists.

I've lost focus.  Too many distractions.



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menx64 on 04 August 2012
RolStoppable said:
Seeing Samus without her armor at the end of a game hardly differs to seeing bigger mansions in Luigi's Mansion after completing the game with more money. The former can be interpreted as reward for men who like to look at women while the latter can be interpreted as reward for people who like to look at big houses. Taken to the extreme, the former is sexist while the latter makes greedy bastards who like to walk all over others to get richer feel good. But...

They are just video games. Essentially, you get to see more the better you played. And that's it.

We live in the age of the internet which is full of porn. It's outright ridiculous to view Metroid games as designed for men just because you can see Samus without her armor at the end of the games. The implication is that guys play a video game for a couple of hours to see a short scene or picture of a woman without her armor. What a load of nonsense. That's not why anybody plays the games. It also doesn't make Samus worse as a character. She's a woman, why shouldn't we be allowed to see her? What's wrong with her being portrayed as beautiful on top of being powerful? The only people who could have problems with this must be feminists or ugly chicks.

But this defense only applies to the first three Metroid games and the Metroid Prime trilogy. When Samus hops around in her Zero Suit or when she talks during the middle of the game as in Fusion, Zero Mission and the worst offender Other M, that's when her character is damaged in various ways. The games shouldn't be interrupted by dialogues and monologues, because these things weren't in the first batch of games. They do not belong in the Metroid series and additional information must be fed to the player like it was done in the Metroid Prime. Echoes and Corruption have characters that give you instructions which is still acceptable, although preferably Metroid games should be without them. Isolation and loneliness are staples of the series, after all.

As for the Zero Suit specifically, it's easily the worst section in Zero Mission. I don't think anyone really likes it, it's simply accepted because it doesn't take away too much from an otherwise well made game. Other M is wrong on so many levels, but that has been talked about enough in the last couple of years. Simply put, Other M is a different game in a Metroid coat.

Lastly, I have no idea where I am going with this post, but I have written all this and don't want it to go to waste. So here it is, all posted.


I for one dont believe the other m was that wrong. The problem with the other M is basically that it doesnt match with what the previous games tried to convey. For me, the past games were created with the fundamentals of isolation, exploration and a silent character. Nintendo has said several times that Link doesnt talk because that would affect the relation between the player and link, which it makes sense in some ways, but in regards to metroid her silence was only a way to create a more isolated world, a world were words, personalities or thoughts were not necesary. The sole purpose of Samus was to carry various suits on her shoulders, similiar to a pupet.  The Prime series continued with that legacy of silence that was abruptly broken by the other M. The other M tried to expand what zero mission first showed us, a samus that even if she was following orders was able to think, to express herself even if she didnt say anything to anyone but herself.



Menx64

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amp316 on 04 August 2012

The problem with Other M isn't that Samus was made into a more female character for me. The problem was that she was a dumb female character that was willing to burn to death and not use the very equipment that would protect her from doing so without taking orders from a man. Other M makes her look like a hot, dumb, and subservient plaything instead of the badass that she always was.



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Tag "Sorry man. Someone pissed in my Wheaties."

"There are like ten games a year that sell over a million units."  High Voltage CEO -  Eric Nofsinger

amp316 on 04 August 2012
RolStoppable said:
amp316 said:
The problem with Other M isn't that Samus was made into a more female character for me. The problem was that she was a dumb female character that was willing to burn to death and not use the very equipment that would protect her from doing so without taking orders from a man. Other M makes her look like a hot, dumb, and subservient plaything instead of the badass that she always was.

Samus is at her best whenever she is like a robot who only fights against evil and for her own survival. Nothing more is needed for a great video game character.

Nothing else is needed, but the main character being a sexy female never bothered me any.  Lara Croft is a perfect example of how you can have a sexy, intelligent, and tough female character in a video game that works.  Lara isn't a clueless bimbo that takes her orders from men.  No way!   



Proud member of the SONIC SUPPORT SQUAD

Tag "Sorry man. Someone pissed in my Wheaties."

"There are like ten games a year that sell over a million units."  High Voltage CEO -  Eric Nofsinger

Khuutra on 04 August 2012
RolStoppable said:

http://gamrconnect.vgchartz.com/post.php?id=4708859

You're doing yourself no favor by arguing absolutes. That's not why people pick up Metroid, no, because sex has never been leveraged to sell Metroid outside of Japan (and Other M) but it is why many people try over and over to cut down their times. This was much truer in the NES and SNES eras than it is now, but it definitely happened.

You're doing yourself no favor by arguing absolutes. There it is, you said that people played it quickly to see Samus with her clothes off.

Your love for Metroid Prime is rooted in it being the first Metroid game you played and the first one you beat. That's where your attachment is coming from. That's also where the love for Super Metroid is coming from, because for many players it is the first Metroid game that they could beat (it was much easier than the original Metroid). Of course, both are among the greatest games of all time, this plays a significant part too.

What makes Samus a great character is that she is controlled by the player and not the other way around. She was great in Metroid Prime, yes. But she was also great in Metroid, Return of Samus, Super, Echoes and Corruption. For the most part in Zero Mission too.

You wrote a huge essay of an original post to declare Samus "not great" in games other than Metroid Prime, because there are ending sequences showing her without her armor. That's just too funny. Negligible and tiny parts of ROMs that many people may never see suddenly make a character "not great". And then you call my posts horrible. You didn't just make a mountain out of a molehill. You made the Himalaya out of a grain of sand.

Ahp! You got me. I did indeed say that some people play quickly to see Samus take her clothes off. It was true, in the early 90s; I knew a few of them myself. Still, I said I didn't say it, when in fact I did. So I suppose you get a ... point?

And do not try that ridiculous "it's your favorite because it was your first" garbage with me, you insult me and belittle yourself in doing so; I have shown over and over on this site that nostalgia has little or nothing to do with the games that I like and when I approahc new games it is almost always with a fresh perspective and willingness to see what makes them work. The specific points of greatness that I pointed out about Metroid Prime are primarily unique to Metroid Prime (though of course goign after the baby Metroid becomes intensely personal, too). When I call Metroid Prime superior to Super MEtroid, it isn't necessarily as a game, it is in reference to the treatment of the character of Samus, which is measurably different.

Samus never really ceases to be the player in Metroid Prime, nor is she ever leveraged as a reward; the game treats her with more respect, and treats the player with more respect in the bargain.

You acknowledged that the post was not good.

There is nothing wrong with a serious attempt to look at the way a character is treated in the context of the reward systems in her own games and the larger framework of the archetype of the faceless hero in video games. It is no more "tiny parts of ROMs that many people may never see" than words in a book are "flecks of ink that most people will never look at." It is a concrete state of being in the games, and if you think it's not worth actually taking the time to look at these things then don't participate; there are people who are willing to, and I could be devoting energy to them, instead.



Khuutra on 04 August 2012
amp316 said:
The problem with Other M isn't that Samus was made into a more female character for me. The problem was that she was a dumb female character that was willing to burn to death and not use the very equipment that would protect her from doing so without taking orders from a man. Other M makes her look like a hot, dumb, and subservient plaything instead of the badass that she always was.

Other M had a plethora of problems not directly related to the problem of breaking away from the faceless hero archetype, yes, that is very true.

I still hold that it is evidence that the people holding the reins of the franchise do not know how to make her into an effective female character. We have an entire game dedicated to exploring the emotional depths of Samus, and it turns out all of her feelings are womb feelings. You and I agree this is bad; I'm just taking my conclusions a step further from that.

My solution is for Nintendo to step back from that, excise the characterization of Samus they've tired to establish in FUsion and Other M, and return to the respectful, solitary, powerful treatment she was given in Prime, where it was so easy to identify with her constantly.