So there you go. Keep writing.

whoa. whoa. whoa. Miyamoto was talking specifically about Mario not about games as a whole.

“I’ve always felt that the Mario games themselves aren’t particularly suited to having a very heavy story, whereas the Zelda series is something that lends itself more naturally to that idea.” - http://www.wired.com/gamelife/2009/06/shigeru-miyamoto-interview/

This is why it’s dangerous to put words in mouths of others. next thing you know Miyamoto is branded a “games aren’t art” freak and there are few crimes worse than that in the gaming press.

Games are a completely new medium for storytelling and meaning-making, and one that is poorly understood. This is why Hideo Kojima, despite his kudos for experimenting with and developing the stealth genre, continues to tell his stories through cutscenes (while ironically wondering if there’s another way of doing so). The work of ludic media artists like Jason Rohrer and Daniel Benmergui and persuasive game development from people like Ian Bogost are exploring how we can take those implied themes that emerge almost by accident from design and readily build a game specifically about expressing these.

Unfortunately, until we figure that out, story will always be secondary to gameplay. Nobody is going to read the story if the game stinks, which is why Miyamoto is quoted as saying ‘the less story, the better.’ Trying to smoothly integrate cutscenes with play is therefore a valid experiment, though one whose results and extent of ludic storytelling simply cannot be discerned from a 2 minute trailer.

I personally think no one has any right to complain or “be fearful” about Other M. Metroid is one of Nintendo’s “lower-selling” (aka <2M) franchises anyway; it’s just a matter of popularity. What I mean to say is that those who call themselves “fans” usually don’t even deserve to say they are because they have none or very little knowledge of the series. It’s a repeat of history: the game will be amazing, just like Prime was. And all the naysayers will promptly shut up and love it. Nintendo will continue to make the games and we’ll continue to buy them.

Also — there’s absolutely NOTHING wrong with writing a critical essay about games or even a particular one. They are art, no matter what anyone else says, and art is meant to be enjoyed, reflected upon and thought about, even if that wasn’t its original intention. So don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. ;)

–Infinity’s End

P.S. - I personally met Mr. Flores at an Anime Con a while back. I have a signed copy of the Samus drawing you used for your headliner image hanging on my wall. :)

Ideally, we talk about works like Metroid from multiple perspectives, take chances, build arguments. There is no right answer however. This isn’t math class after all. And in these types of readings, its important to remember that what I or someone else might argue is present, doesn’t mean it was intentional but quite the opposite. The ability to discover meanings that weren’t meaningfully put there are incredibly vital, because everyday we commit subconscious acts that say quite a bit about us and our relationship with the world around us.

“The suit empowers her while also masking her female identity beneath a generic male template of power that relies on technological augmentations: again, the disruption of the natural order.”

I would argue that the power suit doesn’t take away from her identity as a female. It’s just the nature of the powersuit and conventions in the genre that have newcomers thinking that Samus was a man until the end of the game. There’s no way to make a powersuit ‘feminine’ unless you make one of those hyper-sexualized powersuits that are really quite distasteful. Sure PSS doesn’t have the female curve that ZSS does but the power suit itself is pretty utilitarian in design I would argue.

You do, however, make the point that the weapon choice is masculine in nature and while I would on a personal level disagree. I will concede it’s a stronger argument.

narrative storytelling (with text conversations, even) has been done with metroid fusion rather successfully - and if the video trailer is any indication of what the game has in store, it appears that the developers are taking the events of that game as canon and fleshing out exactly why samus had such a thing for her now-deceased former commanding officer within the galactic defence forces (or whatever the thing is called). i look forward to this, as further humanizing what would otherwise be a chick in a suit can only add to the depth of her character. while i do appreciate the inferential clues to her personality and so forth that are presented throughout the metroid series, if further exporations of samus’ character can be achieved without being detrimental to the overall game experience, i welcome it.

While you did present an entirely valid argument with a number of valid concerns about what the Metroid series has been and where it might be going with the next installment, I believe that all of the greater statements made by the game about feminine heroism and the chaotic nature of life likely began as a simple byproduct of Nintendo’s primary concern of making an entertaining game. While over time the developers may have realized that these concepts which they may have inadvertently stumbled upon were rife for exploring in future titles, I believe that Nintendo will always first and foremost be concerned with making a game that is fun that can exist within the Metroid universe as opposed to a game that can be considered “true” to the series. I mean, being familiar with the company and looking at every one of their franchises there’s the very clear theme that nothing supersedes gameplay. Even looking at Nintendo games that intend to explore certain stories like Other M is promising to do, it always seems that when Nintendo is involved the gameplay becomes more developed than the story. I think that in the case of the Metroid series, using Super Metroid as an example, the great story about very complex themes showed up as a result of good game design and not necessarily a hugely thematic script because they allowed for a huge amount of inferential leaps to be made in the minds of the players by showing many of the games events in scripted actions rather than telling them through text.

So I suppose what I’ve been trying to say is that while you present very well your concerns about the upcoming Other M–and I actually agree with you that the story presentation seems so far a great deviation from how the wonderful franchise has presented itself in the past–I think that the only worthwhile concerns about this game should be about how it _plays_. Playing Nintendo games has always been about fun and enjoyability paramount to all other aspects of the experience. I think that if Team Ninja and Nintendo decide to experiment with how they tell the story in this game then that falls well into their justified creative license. It may turn out to be an unfortunate decision or it may be a particularly fortuitous one, but my sole concern is about how the game will play. I do not see anything wrong with Nintendo changing things up for this installment in the series as long as the product ends up being good.