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Forums - Nintendo Discussion - Metroid: Samus Returns is FANTASTIC so What's Next for 2D Metroid?

 

What should Metroid 5 be?

2D 38 26.95%
 
2.5D 40 28.37%
 
3D 25 17.73%
 
4D 38 26.95%
 
Total:141
Snoorlax on 26 September 2017
Alkibiádēs said:

I don't feel the need to buy less than stellar games just so more Metroid games get made. I don't let myself be black-mailed like that. If Nintendo doesn't want to put AAA effort in my favorite franchise then I'll just skip it and play substitutes like Hollow Knight and Steamworld Dig 2. Their loss, not mine. 

A game on weaker hardware isn't supposed to look a lot better, but here we are... 

Here are some screens from Hollow Knight and Steamworld Dig 2: 

In terms of artstyle Zero Mission does come over as more "clean" looking because of it's bright colors and 2D sprites but i've had more fun with Samus Returns than Zero Mission, SR is actually challenging and i admit that i thought the game looked pretty bad in the trailers but actually playing it on my 3DS with 3D effect on it looked gorgeous then again i would have like Samus' model to look better but everything else looks nice.

Mar1217 said:

- M2's soundtrack was facing hardware limitation. It has a lot of ear ripping tracks which shows that they were going for more than just simple melodic music + a lot of these tracks were short which means they looped often and it would probably irritated lots of people.

I'm sure it had lots of hardware limitations but c'mon Super Mario Land 1 , and 2 Links Awakening, Kirby Dreamland and Pokemon Red/Blue had very memorable looping soundtracks and i realise Metroid is supposed to have atmospheric and somber tones but Metroid 2 was just terribly lazy done, good thing Samus Returns used remixed more upbeat soundtracks of Metroid 2 and Super Metroid.

spemanig said:

If I knew what I knew before playing, I wouldn't have bought this game either. I don't think that Metroid's future looks bright after this, though compared to Other M, it's future looks like a gift from god. Then again, now I'm comparing SR to OM, so...

What Metroid would ideally do is take a page from Sonic and give their 2D games to fans like DoctorM64 who clearly have a better finger on what makes a good metroid game.

Since Nintendo's egos are too big to make that happen though, I genuinely see myself being done with 2D metroid. Metroid 5 is the last chance, but I have 0 faith in that. Verdict is still out on Prime 4, but at least I have hope there.

I think you need to be a bit more open minded.

MTZehvor said:
Welp, I was looking forward to jumping back into this discussion after work, but it appears to have largely descended into insults and hyperbole, so I think I'll try and start up a new discussion.

Welcome to the Metroid fanbase.

Mar1217 said:

Ok, then don't cry if the franchise go in another hiatus again if it doesn't sell well. You'll be part of the blame mister "BIG fan of Metroid" :)

Agreed.

Arminillo said:
For realzies tho I hope we get an M-Rated Metroid, not for language, but for just unabashedly showing the brutality implied in Super Metroid, with the dead scientists and death of The Baby.

I would love that, it seems to me that Other M was going for that route but it didn't do much good for itself either way i hope Metroid 5 comes with some more mature themes in a very Metroid-Nintendo way of course.

spemanig said:

I've gone back and forth with this, but I'm not sure how much Metroid would benefit from more explicit violence. Worse is that I'd be afraid that having an M-Rating would compell them to add uneeded violence, rather than only add it where it would be effective.

In theory though, I'm not against it. Look up Ghost Song. I think it does a great job of being an M-Rated Metroid-like game.

I also think Nintendo would rather keep the series a lower rating like they did with Federation Force, Metroid being a niche series selling low having a M rating would definitely not boost sales.

mZuzek said:
AngryLittleAlchemist said:

Then don't do it? Seriously your replies are terrible. Some of them on the other pages were equally rude but I didn't feel like pointing them out since this is you and spem discussing. But if you're going to be like that just don't enter a discussion.

Being rude is a way of life.

No, seriously, that's just how it is. I'm not about to enter a serious discussion with someone who comes into a positive thread about Samus Returns to talk about how he's not buying it because it "looks ugly" despite being a "big Metroid fan". That's not what I'm here for, I'm here for nice discussion about nice things, or even a decent discussion about not-nice things

lol You're definitely passionate but yeah there will always be some who view things "differently".

Goodnightmoon said:
Alkibiádēs said:

Well yes, because Metroidvania games, more than any other kind of games, are dependant on environmental atmosphere to set the mood. I just don't get that with Samus Returns. 

Looks close to Metroid Prime in 2.5D and the sense of depth is amazing, is pretty atmospheric even if the artstyle isn't stellar, it also looks way better on a 3.5" screen than on big screenshots for obvious reasons.

Indeed, it looks more like the 3D Metroids than anything else i don't know why people are shitting on it's artstyle giving the way it looks so blurry is because of it's low resolution. It's like people just want to complain because they can.



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Alkibiádēs on 26 September 2017

Comparing this to the Prime games is an insult. You really think Samus Returns looks as good as Sanctuary Fortress from Prime 2? Then I don't know what to tell you.



"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides

MTZehvor on 28 September 2017
Snoorlax said:

MTZehvor said:

There's a couple arguments that seemed kind of contradictory. Firstly, sure, you can make every cutscene skippable, but if you're trying to implement a story that's basically optional to players having a good time with the game,

Secondly, I'm not quite sure I understand the comments about "dumbing down/hindering" the experience.

I think SR did a great job of showing and not telling or scanning with cutscenes and they were all skippable. Not a single piece of scanning and reading and i skip them after viewing them the second time.

It's not that people don't want to scan it's that if you're going to tell a story by scanning everything then you basically need to force the player to stop, scan everything and tell them everything what's happened or happening by text. It dumbs down the experience because not everybody wants to stop and read they just want to continue playing. I scanned everything in Prime because i was interested in reading about the enemies, bosses and powerups but reading about the lore and the story behind them actually made it boring, why not just show it?

I think this was the main reason Prime 3 went for a more cinematic, voice acting approach and dumbed down the scanning logs.

I think to respond effectively we need to take a step back from looking at just Prime's style of storytelling and examine storytelling in games in general. Basically every video game that attempts to tell a somewhat coherent story requires the game to come to a halt; be it through cutscene, speech boxes, or dialogue trees like Fallout or Mass Effect. Gameplay gets brought to a halt regardless with any of these options, and if your concern is that you're slowing down the flow of gameplay, any of these is going to be an issue.

Then you have titles like Samus Returns and Super Metroid, which tell their stories basically entirely through environmental cues. It should be noted that, with one or two exceptions towards the end, the cutscenes in Samus Returns are entirely unrelated to the narrative; they're almost exclusively used to either introduce an enemy that you are about to fight or show that an enemy you were fighting is now dead. The reason Samus Returns can tell its story without cutscenes or basically any text is that it's a pretty simple narrative; Samus is given a mission to kill all the Metroids on SR-388, and the actual in game story basically boils down to "Samus goes ahead and kills all those Metroids." You don't need much in the way of storytelling aids like cutscenes or text boxes to help communicate that. But video games that want to tell a more complex story than that will need those storytelling aids to effectively get their narrative across. Try all you want; you're not going to be able to effectively communicate the plot of, say, Fire Emblem or Fallout simply by "showing." There has to be a degree of telling involved.

The Prime games take what is, in my opinion, a genius approach that almost serves as a compromise between these two methods of storytelling. There is a simple story on the surface of each of the Prime games that the player can follow without scanning any lore or enemies at all; in other words, you don't need to scan to understand what is happening in the main narrative. For Prime 1, it's Samus tracking a distress signal to Tallon IV, and then basically spending the rest of the game looking for Ridley and disrupting Pirate Operations wherever she finds them. For Prime 2, it's Samus trying to help save the Luminoth and destroy the Ing. For Prime 3, it's Samus destroying the Leviathans and ending the threat of Phazon. If you feel so inclined, you can totally avoid scanning and still understand the main narrative of the game without a reading a single bit of lore.

What makes the Prime approach so great, in my opinion, is that for the people who enjoy the reading, there's an entire library's worth of totally optional backstory to be found that can improve your experience with the game. The Prime Trilogy largely manages to accomplish this level of optionality by making the scan logs largely focus on backstory, while the cutscenes that the player encounters throughout the game are the real meat of the narrative. The scan logs help to supplement the game's main narrative of "Samus going to a place and killing things" by providing additional context to the location and the things she is killing, but again, it's optional. If you find it boring, go ahead and skip it. You'll be left with a story that's about as simplistic as you'll find in Samus Returns, and, hey, if that's what you want, more power to you. But for those of us who enjoy the prospect of some more complexity to things, I don't see a good reason to not have it.

In your case, if you enjoy learning about the enemies but find the lore boring, then hey, just stick to scanning the enemies. If the game's backstory isn't interesting to you, then feel free to ignore it. It's not required to enjoy the game. You don't need to stop at all if you don't want to. With the possible exception of understanding why Samus would go into the Impact Core at the end of Prime 1, everything that Samus does in the Prime series is logical and understandable with or without scanning.

I'm also going to disagree with your assessment of Prime 3, because Prime 3 has arguably the most complex lore in the Trilogy, and, at the very least, is certainly far more complex than Prime 2's. There's quite a few twists and turns in the story of the ancient Bryyonian civilization, and the story of Skytown's Elysians is very indepth on its own, to say nothing of the backstory provided by the Pirates on their homeworld. Prime 3's lore may have taken a backseat due to the heavier focus on cutscenes, but it's by no means simplistic.



MTZehvor on 28 September 2017
Alkibiádēs said:
Mar1217 said

 

Oh no, not the ''I'm a big fan of *insert name of your interest here*" so that you can shield yourself from everyone else opinion. That's a lame excuse. + Stating yourself as a BIG Metroid fan but then your not even playing the new released game makes it coming off contradictory with what you stated.

P.S : On a subjective standpoint, SR graphics and art direction are a sight to behold that surpass easily any 2D Metroid with Super Metroid/Fusion coming close since I even am a fan of 2D sprites style myself. Then, the 3D function enhance a lot of the experience with everything in the background poping up beautifully.

I don't feel the need to buy less than stellar games just so more Metroid games get made. I don't let myself be black-mailed like that. If Nintendo doesn't want to put AAA effort in my favorite franchise then I'll just skip it and play substitutes like Hollow Knight and Steamworld Dig 2. Their loss, not mine. 

I'd highly recommend playing the game, or at the very least, seeing if you can look at a friend who's playing it or something; the game legitimately looks much better running on a 3DS than the upscaled screenshots online can communicate. You can't really get a real feel for what it looks like just by looking at screens. I can't speak for the comparison to Hollow Knight, as I haven't gotten a chance to play it yet, but I would say without hesitation that Samus Returns looks better than Zero Mission. It's that significant of a difference from screenshot to actual game running.

On top of that, the gameplay is so on point (I'd argue the best Metroidvania title in at least a decade) that it would be worth playing even if it was just straight up stick figure art or something.



Pemalite on 28 September 2017
Snoorlax said:

Samus Returns proves once again that Nintendo hasn't lost it's magic even though the game was developed by MercurySteam we all know how Castlevania Mirror of Shit turned out to be. So yeah with Nintendo & Sakamoto's guidance MS gave us another great 2D Metroid. Oh, and for those wondering... No, it's not AM2R..

Umm. If Nintendo didn't make the game, doesn't that mean Nintendo shouldn't be the one credited with it's success? MercurySteam should be?
Ergo, Nintendo hasn't "regained" any magic.

Nintendo's stance on AM2R was bullshit. They should have hired the developer and licensed and released the game proper.

Mar1217 said:

2) I'm expecting a remake of Super Metroid, if there ever was to be a new 2D Metroid game to be honest.



Super Metroid is a perfect game.
Re-release it, possibly update the visuals... (I don't think it even needs a visual update!) But leave it the hell alone.

Make a completely new damn game instead.



--::{PC Gaming Master Race}::--

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Chrizum on 28 September 2017
mZuzek said:
MTZehvor said:

*loads of text about lore and storytelling in gaming and what not*

Maybe I shouldn't be quoting this post, because if I'll be honest I barely read the first or second lines... not to be disrespectful, it's just, it's 5:30 AM here and I'm way too tired to read lol (that is to say, I hope I find the energy to read your post tomorrow).

But, basically what I've been doing these last few hours to stay up so late was playing Prime 3. It's been about a couple of years since I played it and I felt a second playthrough was long overdue - it's the only (good) Metroid game I am yet to beat twice. I have to say, the game's opening wowed me quite a lot, I remembered it being impressive but even then it blew my expectations away, I love the way it sets the game up and from then throwing you straight into Bryyo (the most interesting planet imo, I even had a thread for that today) makes it even better.

I have to say though, all the scanning became really, really tedious after a while. There's a side of me that just wants to ignore it and run past everything, and I do have more fun when I do that, but I can't help but feel I'm doing something wrong so inevitably I stop to scan everything again, and it's pretty annoying how every little thing you have to scan takes a good 3-4 seconds to do it. In any case, I do appreciate a lot of what scanning brought to Metroid in regards to deeper lore about the civilizations, locales and creatures (I also don't like how it takes away a lot of the mystery of a lot of things, but I've already talked about that earlier). I just think it's not balanced well enough if it comes at the cost of the gameplay's pace.

I think the game that perfected this was actually AM2R. It had a logbook just like the Prime games for you to know more in-depth stuff about the planet, but 1. it scanned automatically in parallel to your gameplay, and 2. it was only used for big lore stuff rather than, you know, every single thing in the whole game. I think that was the way to do it, because it essentially makes the feature a lot more optional in the sense that it doesn't detract from the gameplay ever (so you only get to it when you really want to), and it retains a lot of the mystery of the little things by only talking about broader stuff. I just think moments like the one there in Bryyo when you enter a crashed ship and find a dead body would have a lot more impact if instead of you just looking around for stuff in the scan visor, seeing a dead dude and knowing about how he died, you just entered the ship, didn't pay much attention and eventually found a dead dude and wondered how did that happen (same applies to every "dead body" situation in the Prime games ever).

(edit: also, automatic log scanning means you'll never be missing out on important lore just because you didn't find it or read it out of order or whatever.)

If anything, I'd still keep active scanning around for creatures in general (enemies, bosses, what have you) because it's nice to have more knowledge on those and it would be weird to just have it show up on your logbook midway through a battle or something.

Agreed 100%. The lore is really cool but the constant scanning takes me out of the game. When I replay Prime 3 (first have to finish 1 and 2...) I'll not bother with scanning again.



miqdadi on 28 September 2017
spemanig said:
d21lewis said:

Yeah. It should have been saved for a console launch. As good as it is, it's going to get lost in the shuffle of other big games and the Switch. Plus I think the price is a little much. You can get more "cutting edge" games for much more powerful hardware with $40. I love it so far but this game is kinda set up for failure.

I'd be very surprised if this game did not sell very well, all criticisms aside.

Well as in 1m+.

Well if it does sell that much then there is a chance Nintendo will reconsider, originally they were planning for Metroid to be a main series, I sure hope you are right 



Volterra_90 on 28 September 2017

I've played it for about 3 hours, and I'm greatly enjoying it. I understand some of the issues with the game though. Counter-attack is a cool move and gave the game a more action-based approach, but everything in the game charge at you, so at times it's probably a bit chaotic and unfair. But I'd love that they keep that mechanic, but they must perfect this. Aeion skills are cool, except for the scan skill. I think it's better to reward exploration to the players with a map station. Scan skill should be just to find weak points, because bombing randomly in previous Metroid games was tedious.

I love the art style and graphics of the game, and the soundtrack, something I always expect about a Metroid game. I'm playing it with headphones and I think it's the way to go. The combat is greatly improved, with free-aiming included but limited in a way that you have to stand still. Exploration and level design is pretty great. And, yeah, teleportation rooms are limited and I think that necessary to avoid a long backtracking, since the game is pretty huge. Surprisingly huge. Maps are really big.

I haven't had some boss fights atm, except for the Metroid ones. It's pretty satisfying to counter-attack them and bombard them with misiles, but it could be a bit repetitive in the end, unless they implement some new attacks and mechanics to the Metroids. But, yeah, it's a proper 2D Metroid game, and very good at that I must say.



MTZehvor on 28 September 2017
mZuzek said:
MTZehvor said:

*loads of text about lore and storytelling in gaming and what not*

Maybe I shouldn't be quoting this post, because if I'll be honest I barely read the first or second lines... not to be disrespectful, it's just, it's 5:30 AM here and I'm way too tired to read lol (that is to say, I hope I find the energy to read your post tomorrow).

But, basically what I've been doing these last few hours to stay up so late was playing Prime 3. It's been about a couple of years since I played it and I felt a second playthrough was long overdue - it's the only (good) Metroid game I am yet to beat twice. I have to say, the game's opening wowed me quite a lot, I remembered it being impressive but even then it blew my expectations away, I love the way it sets the game up and from then throwing you straight into Bryyo (the most interesting planet imo, I even had a thread for that today) makes it even better.

I have to say though, all the scanning became really, really tedious after a while. There's a side of me that just wants to ignore it and run past everything, and I do have more fun when I do that, but I can't help but feel I'm doing something wrong so inevitably I stop to scan everything again, and it's pretty annoying how every little thing you have to scan takes a good 3-4 seconds to do it. In any case, I do appreciate a lot of what scanning brought to Metroid in regards to deeper lore about the civilizations, locales and creatures (I also don't like how it takes away a lot of the mystery of a lot of things, but I've already talked about that earlier). I just think it's not balanced well enough if it comes at the cost of the gameplay's pace.

I think the game that perfected this was actually AM2R. It had a logbook just like the Prime games for you to know more in-depth stuff about the planet, but 1. it scanned automatically in parallel to your gameplay, and 2. it was only used for big lore stuff rather than, you know, every single thing in the whole game. I think that was the way to do it, because it essentially makes the feature a lot more optional in the sense that it doesn't detract from the gameplay ever (so you only get to it when you really want to), and it retains a lot of the mystery of the little things by only talking about broader stuff. I just think moments like the one there in Bryyo when you enter a crashed ship and find a dead body would have a lot more impact if instead of you just looking around for stuff in the scan visor, seeing a dead dude and knowing about how he died, you just entered the ship, didn't pay much attention and eventually found a dead dude and wondered how did that happen (same applies to every "dead body" situation in the Prime games ever).

(edit: also, automatic log scanning means you'll never be missing out on important lore just because you didn't find it or read it out of order or whatever.)

If anything, I'd still keep active scanning around for creatures in general (enemies, bosses, what have you) because it's nice to have more knowledge on those and it would be weird to just have it show up on your logbook midway through a battle or something.

I wouldn't mind active scanning, although personally I'd prefer having the option to do either. For me, there's an element of manually scanning things that feels like I'm actually the one discovering things rather than having it just be given to me.

With that said...maybe I just don't have any sort of completionist tendencies, but if scanning is tedious for you, then...don't scan? Especially if you're playing Prime 3, where your scans carry over from one game to the next. If you keep scanning and feeding that niggling little voice in your mind that says to do stuff that makes you enjoy the game less, then it's only going to get stronger and you'll just have less fun with the game across the board. Ignore it for long enough, and it'll go away; there's no reason to do something you hate just to satisfy a weird little desire that you'd rather not exist anyway.



Alkibiádēs on 28 September 2017
MTZehvor said:
Alkibiádēs said:

I don't feel the need to buy less than stellar games just so more Metroid games get made. I don't let myself be black-mailed like that. If Nintendo doesn't want to put AAA effort in my favorite franchise then I'll just skip it and play substitutes like Hollow Knight and Steamworld Dig 2. Their loss, not mine. 

I'd highly recommend playing the game, or at the very least, seeing if you can look at a friend who's playing it or something; the game legitimately looks much better running on a 3DS than the upscaled screenshots online can communicate. You can't really get a real feel for what it looks like just by looking at screens. I can't speak for the comparison to Hollow Knight, as I haven't gotten a chance to play it yet, but I would say without hesitation that Samus Returns looks better than Zero Mission. It's that significant of a difference from screenshot to actual game running.

On top of that, the gameplay is so on point (I'd argue the best Metroidvania title in at least a decade) that it would be worth playing even if it was just straight up stick figure art or something.

I'm not saying the gameplay is bad, that part looks good, but for me, art-style is everything in a Metroidvania game. It sets the tone. That's why I love Steamworld Dig 2 and why I'm very eager to get into Hollow Knight. 

I own a 3DS and there's not a single game on it that I think looks even remotely pretty. Too many polygonal games, I wish Nintendo didn't abandon sprite-based graphics. 

Many GBA games look better to me than 3DS games, and that's a difference of two generations... I'm so happy the Switch is an actual powerful handheld. 



"The strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must" - Thoukydides