Tendo City

This is a "confirmed" rumor, but if it is true, it's not good news for the game, certainly. Oh, it could be great, but... Namco? They make some good games, sure, but I've never been much of a fan of Namco. They make some good games, but more that don't interest me much... and this game is going to be held to a VERY high standard, considering how unbelievably great the original Metroid Prime is. The original is one of the greatest console games ever made, after all! I will withhold judgment on this one until the game actually releases, but this definitely reduces the hype, for me at least.

The other part of the rumor is that the Switch will also be getting a Ridge Racer game. Huh. Ridge Racer is alright, but definitely isn't a series I have ever loved, so I was fine with it going away... but if it does come back I hope the game is good.

Well, they did a lot of the coding for the latest Smash Bros, but the design still seemed to be handled by Sora.

I know a lot of the original Prime team left Retro for the greener pastures of... Recore? (Wait Recore? Is this right? Oh... oh that's disappointing.) The problem is, will the story actually be any good at all, or will it get directed by people who still don't "get" the character and who will make the story as per Japanese modern anime trope checklist?

Dark Jaguar Wrote:Well, they did a lot of the coding for the latest Smash Bros, but the design still seemed to be handled by Sora.

Yeah, there they just did the programming, Nintendo / Sora did the design. This is, it seems, different, and an actual Namco-developed game. And that's the problem, while they can be a fine developer I definitely don't trust them to get Metroid Prime right! They'll need to prove themselves on this one, I'll only believe it'll live up to the greatness of its predecessors if it actually happens.

Quote:I know a lot of the original Prime team left Retro for the greener pastures of... Recore? (Wait Recore? Is this right? Oh... oh that's disappointing.)

It is true that Retro has lost a bunch of the staff who made the Prime games, but even so I'd trust them more with this one than Namco...

Quote: The problem is, will the story actually be any good at all, or will it get directed by people who still don't "get" the character and who will make the story as per Japanese modern anime trope checklist?

Yeah, this is something to definitely worry about. At this point I'd be more surprised if it DIDN'T have that kind of stuff in it than if it did, which is pretty sad considering what kind of game Prime is.

Samus Returns was decent, with a few notable improvements to the core design and some new puzzle elements, but generally they don't outweigh the finely crafted AM2R. I honestly think Nintendo's current strategy of farming out Metroid games to outside developers is a good idea. I want to be proven wrong, and have Namco craft some amazing experience here, but unfortunately Nintendo in spite of their princess tropes seems to somehow have managed to be the MOST progressive Japanese company when it comes to women. That's a sad state of affairs.

Just as a reminder:

This is what Namco thinks a strong woman is.

Yes, as bad as we are, Japan is definitely a more sexist place than America. In videogames, the idea that there is something wrong with automatically sexualizing every or almost every significant female character in a story, game, what have you, is often not even considered... there's a lot more to say about that subject (such as that it's not always about Japan in general but also about otaku audiences, etc.), but I'll stop with that for now.

Otherwise, what I played of Samus Returns -- and I admit, I stopped for no good reason -- I liked. It's pretty good, with great graphics and music, good controls (apart from the melee counter thing, which I don't like), and good classic Metroid level designs. I haven't played AM2R, though, so I can't compare them.

Quote:but unfortunately Nintendo in spite of their princess tropes seems to somehow have managed to be the MOST progressive Japanese company when it comes to women.

I don't see how this could be true, considering that half of Nintendo games (to only slightly exaggerate) involve rescuing princesses, Nintendo makes their own stereotyped anime-style games now full of oversexed female characters -- see Fire Emblem (particularly from Awakening on, but some of it's there before that too) and Xenoblade (especially from what I hear about the new one...), most obviously. I know the competition isn't much better, but seriously, Nintendo is pretty bad here too.

I'm talking Nintendo proper, but you're right that Intelligent Systems and Monolith are guilty of the same issues.

France also have similar problems.

Everybody does to some degree, Trump won after all. (Or for another Ubisoft example, remember when they said that some Assassin's Creed game didn't have a female protagonist (option?) because making female character models was too hard, or something like that?) But East Asia's sexism is demonstrably worse than the West's. The Middle East is even worse for women than that, though...

By everybody I assume you mean every country? That is very true.

Yeah, every country.