@Aviator How can a woman grow some? Its impossible.

Also, how about Adam denying her the ability to use the Varia Suit? I mean its not a danger or "health and safety" problem against other civilians, like for example, Power Bombs. But yet, when Samus goes into the lava area, she more-or-less goes on a suicide mission until half-way through Adam THEN authorizes use of the Varia Suit. Its also the same with the Grapple Beam, its not going to kill anyone, I mean really...

I'm sorry, but if I were Samus (I think we all would right?) I would disobey Adam and use the Varia Suit anyways so my butt don't get cooked.

Its little things like this that make Metroid: Other M a bit of a "WTF game".

What the article does is connect pieces from the game at face value. It doesn't interpret things. It says 'okay, this is here, adding this to here = this.' Okay yes, the game doesn't setup the idea of Ridley killing Samus' parents, but him causing her to freak does by some stretch of the imagination make sense.

Him shooting her, leaving her helpless against a baby Metroid is almost torture. They need to retcon this, or write themselves out of it in the next game. It's a bad and creepy situation that shouldn't be going on.

Also, if you take everything into account, and subscribe to the argument, the story for the most part, is actually told pretty well. That's scary in its' own right.

A baby...

USE YOUR PLASMA BEAM

But you realize that this, by definition, is what characterization is. It's painting Samus as an individual. That is to say, she doing things and saying things and acting in ways that you and I might not. Because she's not you and I. And she's not Mario, or Master Chief, or Alucard. She's an individual who is going out of her way to respect the chain of command even when it places her life in danger. Whether or not you would act that way is beside the point. It shows Samus as having an unhealthy desire to atone for her past transgression(s), and that's a defining character moment for her.

In reality, yes, we'd just use the Varia Suit and get on with our day.

In the game, and in any form of art, you need to establish what makes Samus Samus. And that's--for better or worse--exactly what they were trying to do.

I don't think the hell run had anything to do with the story. It's just a part of every Metroid game.

That was fun -he's right about most of that. I believe it's more likely a culture gap. Everyone wanted to see Lara Croft, and Sakamoto gave us Lynn Minmei.

I would rather see a shotgun pointed to my head than some generic Lara Croft clone. Nevertheless, i'm really starting to consider skipping Other M, if it really has such a bad story and breaks peoples consoles.

Breaks whose consoles? All I've heard of is the save game glitch, but that didn't break any consoles, did it? I played through it without experiencing that bug myself. Also, the story was actually the main driving force that made me beat the game in under a week. I thought the ending was lousy emo JRPG crappiness, though, and some of Samus's lines were really cringe-worthy. At any rate, it's definitely worth a rental. :3

That was a really interesting article. I don't have an issue with the way she's characterized, but it would have been nice if there had been some, at least subtle, acknowledgement that this relationship wasn't healthy. To create some sort of divide between Samus glamorizing it in her own mind and the outside some acknowledgment (through something as subtle as tone of music/lighting could work or other character's responses) that YOU shouldn't be glamorizing this relationship, because she is broken because of it. I think then it could have been seen as a powerful story of a human figure with human flaws as opposed to slipshod writing.

I haven't played the game, so maybe it does do that on some level. I'm inclined to feel that if it did, more people would have noticed.

I've seen some posts on the tech forum of this site concerning the issue. It seems that dual layer disks cause serious problems in some older Wii models. I bought my Wii day one and it doesn't read Brawl anymore, so i'm not sure if this game is worth the risk.

I had the same problem. It is worth the risk, but its just a pain in the ass when your Wii stops reading all your game discs, and you have to send it to Nintendo for it to be fixed which really cuts into your game time, and there's the possibility you lose your save data while they're fixing it... on second thought, it ain't worth it, unless your Wii is a newer version.

However, this is getting rather off-topic.

That's a well written article, and a well argued point. I think the problem is that the writers were hacks though, I suspect they just didn't really think about the implications of their writing at all. It makes me lament how close video games sometimes come to telling an interesting story before failing dismally. Just think that with a few rewrites we could have had either:

a) A genuinely warm and likeable father figure in Adam, and non-abusive relationship, meaning that his sacrifice is more dramatic and Samus' future independence and loneliness are more understandable
b) A genuinely subversive plot, where the plot somehow acknowledges that the relationship is abusive, but Samus can't see it (maybe by having Anthony try to make Samus see the reality of it, which would also help his characterization as more than just 'black tough guy'). This would also make Anthony's death even more dramatic, as it would cut Samus' only chance to snap out of her nasty relationship with Adam.

Two potential plots that both would have been more mature and interesting than any video game plot I can think of, without changing the excellent gameplay at all. There really is no reason why we should be subjected to awful video game plots, except the laziness/lack of talent of the writers

Agreed. This is one of Nintendo's biggest series. Go all out with the best guys for the job or don't bother. Especially since this is the only major Nintendo series with any real confirmed timeline.

There was only one writer for Other M though...the series creator. The man who loves Samus Aran more than anyone in the world. Yoshio Sakamoto.

Also, here's another analysis. This one's from a while back and I'm surprised I missed it.
http://www.endoftheweekpodcast.com/apps/blog/show/4796504-the...

This one actually goes into the psychological aspects of it. NOW THIS is how it should've been written.

Yeah. All they really had to do was play Bad Romance during the credits and everyone would have been fine.

Heaven.

Just finished reviewing the game! Read it here.