The Worst Video Game Story Ever: Metroid Other M

You know, I can't predict what catches my interest. Sometimes it's just a result of me revisiting something fond from childhood. Sometimes it just pops out of nowhere. What I wanted to do this month was write the finale of the "Were they in love" mini-series. Then this happened. 

A few weeks ago, I had this sudden urge to learn more about the Metroid video game series.

Metroid is a series of video games produced by Nintendo. It's not as recognizable as games like the Mario, Pokémon, or even the Zelda franchise. But Metroid has its followers who appreciate the games for what they are.

My first exposure to Metroid (as it is with many people) was when I played a lot of Super Smash Bros Brawl in high school. Smash Bros. is a crossover fighting game staring mostly Nintendo characters. One of the characters featured in the game is Metroid's protagonist, Samus Aran. She interested me because (also like many people) I didn't realize at first that the person in the suit was a woman.

The big twist of the first Metroid game was that Samus was

a girl the whole time.

I did some research onto what the Metroid series was about, and it sounded really cool. All the games star Samus Aran, a bounty hunter taking missions across planets in an untamed galaxy, blasting creatures and surviving on her own in space.

There's a lot to admire about the Metroid series. The gameplay of self-guided exploration of mazes and monsters was revolutionary yet timeless, nowadays referred to as the "Metroidvania" style (the "-vania" part comes from the Castlevania series, which plays similarly, except you're out to kill Dracula). 

I tried playing Metroid: Zero Mission, a remake of the first Metroid game for the GameBoy Advance, but unfortunately the style didn't quite click with me. I'm much more of a fan of simulation and strategy games that tell grand stories. The Metroid formula places you on a mission with no tutorial and little to no exposition, to really put yourself into the mind of a lone warrior fighting through alien planets.

The part I most appreciate about Metroid is the aesthetic, which takes many 

cues from Ridley Scott's horror masterpiece, Alien (1979).

As much as I respect the Metroid series, it just wasn't for me.

So let's jump back forward in time to a few weeks ago. I had this sudden impulse to learn more about Metroid. As much as the gameplay wasn't my taste, that didn't stop me from wanting to know more about the world and characters. It combines creatures (which I love) and science-fiction (which I don't trust you if you don't love). 

That's when I learned about Other M.

Would you believe me if I told you the "M" stands for "Melissa?"

Other M is known as the most story-driven of all the Metroid games. I saw a few clips of the cutscenes, was left dumbfounded by the low quality of voice acting, and knew I had to see the rest. Fortunately, some dedicated gamers upload entire "movie" versions of video games, and I found a two-and-a-half hour cut of the Other M cutscenes. 

So, throughout the week, I casually watched the "movie" cut of Other M. 

At first, I was interested to see just how bad the voice acting could be. Even if it was bad, I would still enjoy what's practically a movie about some cool action in space, right? There are some amazing video games out there with excellent story and characters, so maybe Other M could be really be a hidden gem.

Well...

I'll keep it simple and do a reader-friendly list of why Other M's story sucks.

1. SAMUS NEVER SHUTS UP.

Stiff voice acting aside, almost all of Other M's cutscenes are overlaid with Samus' boring inner thoughts. Sometimes, exposition is important in a story. After all, you need to catch the audience up on what's important and welcome them into the world. This is especially the case with Other M, because it's technically a sequel.

But holy moly. There can't be a single moment of pause without Samus' dull voice relaying what she's thinking or what's happening in front of her, all the while, her lifeless eyes stare bored into nothing.

That's it, that's the whole story.

Exposition is important, but don't forget that sometimes, less is so much more. 

For example (spoilers if anyone cares about this 10 year old video game):

In one of Samus' many flashbacks, she mentions how when she was a recruit in the Galactic Federation (basically the space cops of Metroid), she had a surrogate father-daughter relationship to her commander, Adam Malkovich. It's a running gag that instead of giving him the "thumbs up" to confirm her understanding of a mission, she would always give him a "thumbs down."

Just a teen rebel bickering with her dad before going off to kill giant space demons.

Honestly this should have been the whole story.

During the course of the game, Samus and Adam meet again, and through clunky dialogue and exposition, they reaffirm their vague father-daughter relationship. Then Adam dies in the most goddamn self-serving sacrificial way possible. 

At the game's epilogue, after returning to a civilized planet and recovering from the story's events, Samus looks into the sunset and gives the sky a thumb's up. Symbolically acknowledging the impact Adam had on her life, and proving to herself, and his memory, that she will live on.

Sounds great. Except...Samus' inner monologue is there to explain the symbolism for you. It takes out all the emotional weight out of the scene.

Actions speak louder than words, especially in a visual medium like a video game. So if you have the budget to create these gorgeous looking cutscenes, why would you cheapen it by having a narrator explain to you what's going on?

No shit.

2. IT'S SEXIST

This one didn't come as a surprise to me. After all, the story was written by a dude in the year 2010. 

I mentioned before that Metroid took a lot of inspiration from the 1979 movie Alien, which is iconic for the lead character, one of the most effortlessly badass woman in all of cinema. 

Alien never made a stink about having "the first female hero," she just was.

 

That's the fun part about science fiction and imagining the future: You can make the world however you want it to be. For some sci-fi visionaries, like the creator of Star Trek Gene Roddenberry, that meant enlightened future where women and people of color can be high-ranking officers on a starship. 

Instead of having a visionary (and freeing) sci-fi story, Other M constantly reminds us that Samus is a woman. Male characters give her cheeky nicknames like "Princess" and jokingly flirt with her, and she just lets them. Pretty much nobody with the Galactic Federation treats her with respect, despite the fact that Samus is an established bounty hunter who has survived countless encounters with deadly creatures.

And of course she won't shut up about BABIES.

Not human babies - an alien baby that Samus befriended in the previous Metroid story. The alien baby was supposed to kill her, but formed an odd bond with her instead, which ultimately proved its worth when the baby sacrificed itself for Samus. She's a space explorer who shared an unlikely but useful friendship with one of the species she was meant to destroy.

But in Other M, Samus won't stop dwelling about it in her monologue, like she's grieving the loss of an actual loved one. It's honestly ridiculous listening to Samus repeat the phrase "the baby" over and over again. 

The first female Nintendo main character, and all the writers want to do 

is give her some sort of "Mom" arc. Because that's all women are good for,

right?

Don't get me wrong, I love a good inter-species-adoption story, but the way they centered Samus' entire motivation around it was way too much. It's as if the writer of the story went with the assumption that "women are emotional and they happen to be sex objects," and used that as the basis of Samus in each scene. Even though she's still a kick-ass bounty hunter, relying on these tired female-coded tropes undermines everything that was awesome about Samus in the first place.

3. IT'S UNDERWHELMING

I'll be honest, but not a lot really happened in this story. There's gorgeously animated cinematics, but the story they wrote does not match the visuals. 

To boil it down, Other M is the story of Samus investigating a distress signal, running into some old friends from the Galactic Federation on an uninhabitable planet, and along the way learning the truth about a scientific experiment gone wrong that the Federation tried to bury. There are keystone moments, like the aforementioned death of Adam Malkovich, but every other plotpoint seems underdeveloped. 

It's hard to explain the story in-depth without getting into the weird complexities of Metroid lore (there's a lot), but trust me when I say that pretty much every other character in the plot feels tacked on. 

Rest in Peace my expectations.

The director and writer of Other M, Yoshio Sakamoto, has gone on the record saying that he was pleased with how the story turned out, because he wanted a story that explored Samus' character and backstory. Maybe for a game and a world like Metroid, the less that is explored, the better. When you introduce more human characters into a game series that puts more emphasis on exploring the alien and the inhospitable, it kind of kills the fun. 

I also suppose he was operating under the assumption that any female-driven narrative must rely on the protagonist's maternal instincts, or her relationship to the men in her life. On its own, it's not entirely a bad thing, but as one of the few female Nintendo characters that has a franchise of her own, and is established in the other games as a strong no-nonsense space warrior, it's not a good look.

In conclusion...

There's a lot about Metroid that doesn't connect with me. But as an enjoyer of good stories, it doesn't take a lot of brain power to figure out why Other M was criticized, and an attempt to have a story-driven Metroid game was never made again. 

Sakamoto's intentions for the game seemed very pure - he wanted to write a detailed female character going on an epic quest. Despite his best efforts, the final product feels insincere at best, and hilariously awkward at most. 

So if I ever feel like laughing at storytelling that's so forced and unimaginative, I'll definitely return to Other M.

For our viewing pleasure...the Other M "Baby" Supercut

Oh, just in case I discouraged any of my readers of finding good storytelling in video games, here's a short list of some of my favorites:

• Pokémon Mystery Dungeon: Explores of Time / Darkness / Sky
• Fire Emblem: Three Houses
• Drawn to Life: The Next Chapter
• Firewatch
• Tales of Vesperia