Of Metroid and Final Fantasy

 I'm not done with Final Fantasy XIII yet, so I can't leave final impressions out in the open. I'm 30 hours in and am sort of lost as to where I should be going. What I should have done was make sure I went out of my way to find teleport stones, but I only hit two of them and I feel stupid for following the game for this long without telling the story to go sit in a quiet corner somewhere. Something really doesn't sit right with me when it comes to this game's design, and I'm pretty sure I know why, but I did promise myself I would finish it before jotting down my final thoughts. At the very least, I'm actually playing it through and not completely hating it as much as VIII. It's very playable, and it's not going out of its way to tell me that I'm stupid for playing it.

 The way that the series has changed in order to get to this point has to do with evolution, or a the very least, an attempt to see what else the series could become if a few experimental concepts were fleshed out completely. From the sounds of it, this is the way the new Metroid game is going to go, and it doesn't all have to do with Team Ninja. A recent Kotaku post revealed that we may be getting a different side of Metroid entirely, and its even more striking than Samus getting a real storyline.

 Giving Samus more direction doesn't sit right with me, but it's not in the way you would think. I'm just worried that the way good franchises are being handled these days when it comes to writing, something bad is going to happen. We've already seen it in the last Prime entry, but story and Samus don't play well together. There's something outside of the heroine that makes the universe seem...cheap. Metroid, Super Metroid, and Prime established a very dangerous atmosphere that puts Samus on such a rare pedestal. It's not unlike Ellen Ripley. The galaxy is extremely dangerous, and by the time Super Metroid was over, the impression that the gamer leaves with is that of an adult galaxy where unknown things can be terrifying alongside the known and already deadly creatures. Samus stands out where others in the galaxy cannot, and it's for that reason that we're comfortable with her being alone during the ordeals. If anybody else took on what she has, then there would be a lot of dead bodies. Even in the Prime Trilogy, where things sort of lighten up and get a little more personable and colorful, there's still this sense of Pitch Black mythos flying around with the light and dark stuff.

 It's hard to explain, but Metroid is a series that is sort of....bleak. The lack of story sort of goes alongside that, providing the harsh details while never giving the universe a personality outside of wonderful and hostile. When Samus shows up, it means things are screwed beyond repair. I just don't see a cinematic version of Samus being in the best interests of the series because you'd have to write it an awful lot like a cross between Alien and Riddick. Somebody is going to say something really stupid, or somebody is going to want to pull a Kojima and decide that some absolutely random ass version of Samus' background must be included.

 On the other hand, this is something that Metroid also needs. Samus is the hero, and unlike Link, this is the exact same badass we've been following through every adventure. We know very little about her, yet at the same time, we know so much that tying some of it together is only natural. We're expecting to get an action packed blockbuster game that's meant to take advantage of Samus' draw and give her some character at the same time. That's something we need. We need Samus to be a tiny bit more of a character, and then she can go on her way as a silent protagonist once more.

 So long as her character doesn't get trampled in the mud with bad writing, the changes made to the Metroid formula aren't going to kill the series. It can always go backward into the original formula. I read one reader response from the above article that called the idea, basically, frightening. Why? Is it a bad thing to explore what different kinds of action it can bring to the table? Even IF it was an on-rails shooter, as long as the game was a great rail-shooter, I don't see a problem with this. No one said that these changes would be permanent to the series, and trying out something new isn't going to ruin this franchise. It's possible that Team Ninja may try something out that becomes an excellent compliment to the main formula and remains for future games.

 Basically, skip the game if you don't like it. It's one game in a franchise that isn't going to die out anytime soon. No one said anything about Metroid being changed for good, it's certainly a good thing to try a game out that may get newcomers on board with the series, and it looks like it's going to be an entertaining game so far. There are no downsides to this. The same argument was made when the series made it to 3D, and even then, 2D versions still manage to come out. Digg It Stumble it ! Reddit