Learning from Other M - Metroid and How NOT to Write a Character - Extra Credits

[Music] [Music] all right we've been avoiding talking about this game for too long I think it's time we just discussed it and got it over with we've come close to talking about Metroid Other M several times since we started the show we were actually planning to do it during our first batch of episodes but by the time we got around to it pretty much everything had already been said besides we aren't a review show and we don't really do Rants and we don't plan to change that now rather this episode's going to be about what we can learn from other m going forward there are a lot of other beloved silent protagonists out there so if the industry ever decides to fill those empty vessels the way they did Samus how can they do it better before we get to the game itself we have to begin by looking at the developer chosen to breathe personality into Samus team ninja is best known for bringing ninja guide into the 21st century and for giving us Dead or Alive beach volleyball the game that popularized the term breast physics made all the more memorable by that famous decision to run their physics simulation on each breast independently that made for some creepy imagery all told probably not the best

team to take on the job of delivering a character like Samus they've never made a serious attempt at storytelling in their games before and the inexperience shows another M now obviously that observation's already been made a thousand times across the internet but if it's so clear to the rest of us I guess the big question is why did it happened in the first place who at Nintendo decided you know who we really need to bring in to tell sas' story to the world the jiggle physics guys they get women who actually thought that to tell you the truth I'm not sure anyone actually did I'm not so sure it was a conscious choice so Yosh Sakamoto approached team ninja because he loved Ninja giden understandably and planned to write the story himself a decent plan in theory Sakamoto handles the story and lets team ninja do what they do best fast-paced action gameplay and awesome visuals now here's where the problem comes in you've probably noticed over the years that team Ninja's games usually feature some pretty nice looking cut scenes this is because team ninja regularly works with an animation group called Dr Rockets who Focus exclusively on cut scene work obviously the Wii's real time rendering capacity is a bit limited so to achieve the level of fidelity they wanted they were going to have to rely on pre-rendered cutscenes

but D Rockets is a company with a cinematic background firmly rooted in the language of Cinema and moviees narrative delivery so even though Sakamoto had writing duties Dr Rockets was largely in charge of actually presenting that story to the player and with over a 100 hands on the project between team ninja D rockets and Nintendo internal political pressures were almost guaranteed to change the plan suddenly what was once just going to be a fun spin-off by team ninja with a sparse story simply meant to tie Super Metroid and fusion together had bloated into a massive multi-hour epic and the first attempt a deep exploration of Samus as a character now this is all just supposition on James's part we weren't there to see what actually happened but it does seem a lot more plausible to me than the idea that everybody got together in a meeting room and one of the brand Managers from Nintendo said hey beach volleyball guys why don't you take a crack at redefining the female Central character to one of our most beloved franchises so I guess lesson one use caution when setting up your team structure and establishing project goals you don't want to get yourself stuck in a scenario that forces you to attempt things this medium isn't particularly strong at this brings us to the actual delivery of the narrative

there's an old adage in film and literature show don't tell and there's a parallel adage in games do don't show unfortunately Other M fails spectacularly at both of these delivering almost the entire narrative through cutscenes and then going one further by delivering the narrative in those cut scenes almost entirely through samus's wooden monologue narration there's a big problem with using monologues to do this job it only allows for the exploration of a single character much of how we come to understand a person is based on how they interact with other people in other M we get a lot of long expository often redundant monologuing from Samus but since there's so little dialogue with the rest of the cast Samus ends up surrounding herself with a bunch of uninteresting disposable characters it also severely limits samus's characterization and the meaning we can impart to elements like her relationship with Adam this would have been easy to overcome with something as simple as com chatter they already established that Samus is in radio contact with Adam so why not use that rather than having Samus stand there inner monologuing each plot point to us have them talk to each other you know let him do a snake and Aon kind of thing he's the Intel she's the fire power heck samon spends a lot

of time just moving from point A to point B that's a lot of time you could use to flesh out their relationship exchanging Intel cooperating to overcome obstacles maybe some occasional idle conversation let us actually see and hear the connection they have think of how many games you've played where you got to know your squadmates better just by hearing what they shout during the action this is a huge missed opportunity when you're trying to deliver a complex narrative about a well-established character not just for Samus but for Adam maybe even more so for Adam this is supposed to be the person Samus values most probably the only man she would voluntarily take orders from but maybe with the exception of one scene near the end I never look at these two in gamee and think wow they really mean a lot to each other so lesson two when characterizing a well-known character you must use all of the tools available to deliver your narrative a few cut scene monologues are not going to cut it next let's do a little talking about the actual story itself the weird thing is when you strip the plot down to its most basic elements it actually sounds pretty awesome on the broadest level it's a story about dealing with trauma loss and consequences that are far beyond the scope of what the human mind can address

in space Sounds like a game I want to play unfortunately the execution of that story Falls far short and what we actually end up seeing is a tale about samus's desperate need for approval from a male authority figure coupled with an hour and a half of exposition intended to catch new players up to speed on the series and tie Super Metroid and fusion together this desire to tie games and a series together for new players is often a trap that developers fall into it's ruined more than a few games new players and Veterans alike are better served by delivering a good story with accessible characters that doesn't require the player to understand the rest of the series trying to deliver a compact version of the entire series story to date with each game is just going to be a handicap to your story so lesson three Focus Less on bringing us all up to speed and instead focus on delivering a solid accessible story that doesn't clash with your previous titles but can still stand on its own then there's also the fact that we almost never see any narrative created out of the actual gameplay itself and the only time we do it doesn't make much sense in Other M we see Samus refuse to use life-saving equipment until she's arbitrarily authorized by her commanding officer who doesn't technically have any

organizational authority over her she just likes the guy it's not that trying to give a plausible story reason for why Samus doesn't have access to all of her equipment from the start as a bad idea I mean I actually like that idea but you can't decide you're going to give story reasons and then do it half ass we're never given a good reason that makes sense for Samus to nearly kill herself following arbitrary orders and this flawed execution leaves us with a character that doesn't quite match the Samus we've come to understand over the years more on that later and the execution probably wasn't helped much during the game's localization whenever you hear phrases is like a certain blank popping up a lot in the game it's often an artifact from a language where the subject of a sentence is often dropped or implicit phrases like that and terms like a deleter are pretty big Clues to me that other M needed a little more work in their transition from one language to another suffice it to say Lesson Four if you're going to give a backstory to a beloved character work very hard to get it right and make sure it's well localized for any Market that you're going to bring it into I know it's not always feasible cost-wise but I'm going to say it anyway it's really not a place you want to cut corners on a brand worth this much now now samus's

General demeanor in Other M has been discussed to death all over the Internet and we'd be here all day if we try to get into that here really if you saw our true female character's episode you can probably guess our stance anyway so let's just save everyone some time go Google Other M story and you'll find a wealth of arguments for both sides all I'm going to say is this at the end of the day I have a hard time believing that the Samus we're shown in this game is the same woman who has until now completely wrecked the space pirat [ __ ] on a regular basis I'm not saying Samus should just be a total badass ice queen all the time and never show weakness or emotion cuz that would be silly a character without human flaws is a bad character but the specific weaknesses she's given here and their place in the story don't sync up with the rest of her character now that's reason enough to complain but why all the Hue and cry around this game when as an industry we regularly fall short with our female characters well because it's Samus often I hear the argument defending other M's portrayal of Samus that Samus was a blank slate before this everybody keeps saying she was such a great character before but she was barely even a character how is that better this Samus has personality itions flaws how can

Other M not be true to samus's character when she was hardly a character to begin with I have two problems with that line of reasoning first just because Samus hasn't always had a voice or a detailed backstory doesn't mean she was a completely blank slate as we've said before actions define a character we don't know a lot about Samus but we can make a few reasonable guesses just by looking at the meager story details and game events here's what we know we know she's chosen a career in bounty hunting dangerous work and that she prefers to operate alone we know she's got access to and working knowledge of in Firepower and whoever she is she's proven herself capable of single-handedly storming and toppling heavily defended bases and installations on multiple occasions and we've also seen that she has a softer side through her interactions with the baby Metroid infusion even hinted at a close personal connection she once had yes it's all very vague and sparse but there's a character in there but those arguments I quoted earlier also suggest something else that any backstory or characterization is inherently better than none and I don't buy that let me ask you two questions first can you deliver a good story without giving a

backstory for the main character hint yes second remember how interesting Anakin Skywalker in the Clone Wars used to be back when we knew only vague details about them I mean are you happier now that all the blanks have been filled in for you badly kind of makes you miss those days before we knew back when they had the potential to be something interesting and great or heck I got a better example let's shift our gaze just slightly to look at another popular Nintendo character silent protagonist hero just like Samus we don't actually know much about him but we've spent enough time with him over the years to see that he's a brave determined little guy and guided by Destiny to defend the land of Hyrule time and again some games give him more personality but never much but some of you may remember that there was that one time when link was fleshed out characterized given loads of Personality remember that well excuse me princess excuse me princess well excuse me excuse Excuse excuse exuse exuse hey excuse exuse me

princess but we don't like that guy do we that guy is an idiot nothing like the link we've pictured all these years he's not the link we've come to know more personality is not inherently Superior to less now that's not to say you shouldn't ever try and add depth to characters like these but a character fleshed out badly can be far worse than a character that's barely been fleshed out at all so final lessons for bringing narrative to a long-standing series just because you want to add narrative to the series doesn't mean you have to shoehorn in a bunch of backstory for the main character and keep in mind every everything you've established about the character before even the little stuff just because the character hasn't spoken doesn't make them a blank slate I think that's everything sweet closure thanks for letting me get that out of my system hopefully this will help to get everyone thinking for when somebody decides to tell the Star Cross tale of how Mario and Peach first met see you next week [Music] [Applause] [Music] a

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