Friday, September 17, 2010

Thoughts on Metroid: Other M

I must say that Metroid: Other M has me very confused.  On some levels, its very good, on others, not so much.  I’m torn because while the flaws are more than a little glaring, I don’t think that they entirely detract from what the developers did get right, and thus the product as a whole.

I guess I’ll start from the top.  Metroid: Other M, was co developed between Nintendo and TECMO/Team Ninja (of Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive fame), and released right before PAX10 (those bastards :p).  With story by series creator Yoshio Sakamoto, it bridges a minor story gap between Super Metroid (SNES) and Metroid Fusion (GBA).  Now that is an interesting point, in and of itself.  While some of them may contain stories, many Nintendo franchises, the most obvious being the Legend of Zelda series, do not actually contain any real continuity between each entry into the franchise.  Metroid has been the only outlier, and proof that it can be both a blessing and a curse, as it were.

I’ll be straight up here.  There is a story, and its good, but its badly executed.  In this game, we learn about Samus Aran’s backstory, specifically the time she spent in the military, before leaving to become an independent bounty hunter.  This information is told to the player as flashbacks during the current mission: the investigation of the Bottle Ship, a seemingly abandoned research station.  Big hint, metroids are involved, though as always it isn’t readily apparent until well into the game, and even then there aren’t that many…

Anyways, the story is good, but its presented badly, and depending on your point of view, potentially hurts the Samus character.  When Samus gets to the Bottle Ship, she meets up with a squad of marines lead by her former commander and surrogate father, as it were.  Most of the flashbacks seem to be about their surrogate father/daughter relationship, despite the fact that is her commanding officer, and Samus is the rookie in the unit.  In fact, despite the Federation being composed of many worlds and races, the military is shown as being primarily human, and male, like the Empire in Star Wars (realistically because Lucas didn’t have the budget, which in canon became Palpatine being a bigot).  Due to Samus being female, it seems, in the cut scenes and her own inner monologue at least, that she is treated differently because of it, and she acts out in a typically (teenager-like) rebellious way.

Why would it matter?  Presumably, that far into the future, gender in the military shouldn’t mean anything at all.  In fact, much of science fiction deals with this exact thing.  As bad of a movie as it was, Starship Troopers displayed it perfectly, a co-ed military where no one bats an eye at the female troops, and everyone is expected to pull their own weight, or risk injury and death.  There is no “just one of the guys” or “girls club”, everyone is just a trooper.

I realize that Japan is still a little wonky when it comes to gender politics, but this is science-fiction/fantasy.  It is a work of fiction where any world the creator wants can come alive.  There are no constraints.  There are no rules except the ones the creator decides to impose on the creation.  There is no need to be burdened with real world expectations when the creation isn’t the real world.

One of the biggest strengths of the genre/style is, since the world isn’t real, the ability for it to deal with real world issues without actually talking about them.  Religion, human/alien rights, foreign affairs, torture, anything can be talked about.  Anything can be made relevant, because just about everything can be relevant.  Yet here in Metroid: Other M the creator is regressing back to gender politics, possibly without even realizing it.  Why?  This is a game made by the Japanese  for the Japanese and, especially, the American market.  And in the US, gender is practically a non-issue, at least in fiction.  It may work in Japan, but we Americans, while still a little iffy on the subject of women in the military, are more than happy with women as protagonists, antagonists, action heroes, and even in the military (in fiction anyways).

Now that isn’t to say we don’t have our issues with female characters in leading roles, but science fiction seems to be one of the few places where we Americans can seem to drop many of those pretensions.  The love interest?  No longer required.  Emotional instability?  Guys hagve I too.  Being saved by a man?  She’s got a gun and martial arts.  Subserviant to someone or something?  She commands an entire fleet of armed-to-the-teeth battleships.

In the previous Metroid games, Samus Aran has always been displayed as the strong and silent type.  Now, the fact that all but one of those games had zero dialogue to begin with helped maintain that appearance.  Samus Aran is a bounty hunter, she goes into hostile environments, alone, with nothing except her power suit and her training as a former military trooper in order to survive.   And she succeeds time and again.  And the plot of Metroid: Other M effectively turns her into someone who emotionally stunted, distant, and has “daddy issues”.  Now admittedly, Samus’ backstory is tragic, with being orphaned by a pirate attack.  But her early life after that was spent training to take revenge on the pirates, which any term of military service would only reinforce.  Yet, as I stated earlier, during the flashbacks to her time of military service she is shown acting like a petulant teenager opposite squad mates and a commander who treat her differently because of her gender.  During the game itself, she is shown being indecisive, and even freezes when faced with threats that she’s already faced before.  This is not the character we’ve seen over the series, and is quite possibly a step back for her as well.

I understand Sakamoto has a story to tell, but in the end he just seems to have failed because he fell back on using gender politics in a genre and universe that, generally speaking, had seemingly not even included them in the first place.  The only thing that can really save it, story wise, is that we’re really only seeing a microcosm of the universe.  We deal with only a small handful of characters, but at the same time we see a lot of the universe in other ways.  Things end up muddied, and in the end we are left with a story with a strong primary plot thread, but the peripheral things like this end up being unneeded, negatively impact the character, make the plot unnecessarily melodramatic, and paints the author as potentially chauvinistic and/or mysoginist, more out of cultural naiveté than actual intention.

Wednesday, September 8, 2010

PAX Impressions

Note:  I'm posting this now, Wednesday morning, but it was written Sunday night.

So tonight, as I write this, my trip to PAX has ended.  I have only six to seven hours on a plane left to go in the trip itself.  I saw a lot of new things, a lot of cool things, and a lot of things that I would have liked to have seen if I had been willing to spend the time in lines.

Its such a shame that Portal 2, Dragon Age II,  and the now mythical Duke Nukem Forever were all effectively behind doors with constant long lines. Brink and Deadspace 2 had long lines the entire time as well, but other people could see them being played.  Brink, I can’t speak on, because I didn’t watch any play.  Deadspace 2, I wanted to play, but I didn’t want to stand in line, and if I couldn’t play, then I didn’t want to see it, because I will definitely be getting Deadspace 2 when it comes out.

I was able to watch people playing Marvel vs. Capcom 3, its awesome that Deadpool is in the game, but either no one has figured out how to use him yet, or his move list isn’t that great, as I didn’t see any moves that used his swords, just martial arts and guns.  Christ Redfield seemed to be favorite, with multiple special attacks that used his guns, as well as a grenade launcher as his super.  The other major characters I saw played were the expected: Ryu, Iron Man, Captain America, and Wolverine, with movesets similar to how they appeared in Marvel vs. Capcom 2.  I didn’t see enough players using Trish or Dante to really tell how they played.   One thing I did notice though, is that there were only two or three stages being played on, and all of them seemed to include Servbots hanging around in the background, I wonder if Servbot will be a hidden “for fun” character again, like he and so many others were in Marvel vs. Capcom 2 were.  Though my limited time at the Capcom booth did see me buying a Servbot bobblehead, because Servbot is awesome.

I passed by the console freeplay area and managed to see real Steel Battalion controllers and games, though I wasn’t able to play, and later had a 4 player game of Scott Pilgrim vs. the World going, playing as Stills, and Stills ranked highest after each of the three stages we played, even if I did end up also being the most revived character as well…

A few times throughout the convention, I also stopped and played a few games of Monday Night Combat(!).  I made a good showing of myself as an assassin, though I didn’t play in any of the tournaments.  At the very end of the convention, I did get to play two games against the developers, and our team managed to get its ass handed to it both times.

I also spent way too much time sitting at the MSI booth in hopes of winning high end PC components, and came away empty handed.  What really added insult to the injury was that there were a few people that won things multiple times.  MULTIPLE TIMES.  It was most displeasing.  But the guys at the booth were cool, and MSI itself hasn’t done me wrong yet, not with the motherboard on my old desktop, or the netbook that I’m typing this one.  If I decide to build a new desktop, they’re not that far down on my list.

I spent a bit of time at the Squard Enix booth.  They were showing some new game called Wakfu, which didn’t know what to make of.  Some kind of isometric, grid turned-based strategy game with a rather colorful art style.  There was also Front Mission Evolved, which trades the turn-based strategy gameplay for third-person action, involving mechs.  They were only letting it be played as Free-For-All Deathmatch, so there was no indication of what the single player portion of the game will be like.  It played pretty well, but the graphics didn’t look bad, but it could look better.  I’m sure the Xbox can output better.

Last at the Square Enix booth was what is probably the first public showing of Final Fantasy XIV, unless you count the opening of Open Beta, which began just before two or three days before the show.  I played during the last phase of closed beta, and managed to get into the open beta beta before having to catch my flight to come to PAX.  They were allowing people to play through any of the three opening tutorial sections, and gave them FFXIV branded flashdrvies containing the character they created.  I will say that I care about the game, and I plan on buying and playing it, but straight up, no one seems to care about it.  Which leads me to my next point.

There were several MMOs that either premiered, or had their first major public showing at PAX, but I will get to that later.  I have a bit of a bone to pick with the subject of MMOs, especially in conjunction with the games media.  I will discuss this at length in another post.

Anyways, I also attended several podcast panels:  the Giantbombcast, Rebel FM and Geekbox, as well as the Gamespy Debriefings.  All of them are super super guys.  I managed to get pictures with everyone from the Bombcast except for Brad Shoemaker, as well as Rebel FM’s Arthur Gies and Anthony Gallegos (sp?).  As well, since the Bombcast was the last major event of the first night, I , along with several others, followed them out afterwords.  Vinny Caravela was cool, and I can sort of see why some people (on a handful of podcasts I’ve listened too) seem to have man-crushes on Jeff Gerstmann.  Anyways, closed down two bars, and I only actually had one beer.  Not even a buzz, and beer still tastes like crap, which is probably part of why I don’t drink.  Well, that and having friends that aren’t bar hoppers.  It was an experience.  As a side note, other people I saw at these panels were Scott Bromley, Ryan Scott, Jeff Green, and the great Michael Pachter, who seems to actually be a nice guy.

All in all, it was a good trip, and I’m sad its just about over.  If I come back again, I definitely need to drag my friends with me, as well as bring a larger amount of available cash for souvenirs.  But this also means that they didn’t get any free swag off me, unless they want the freebie Fallout: New Vegas T-shirts I got.  More time to see more of the city would have been nice too.  I probably would have made the trek to get a picture of the Space Needle if I knew where it was in relation to the convention center.

All in all, I would like to come back, and will try to, should the opportunity arise.  And if I do, I should definitely have a smartphone that isn't on AT&T.