"So what if it sold horribly? It was a darn good game, so we're making sequels!!"

[A Black Falcon]

Again with the witty retorts.

Unlike what you seem to think, you are the only person here who frequently seems to find me annoying, as far as I know, so no, it's not especially accurate. :)

Well said. If Retro had wanted to tell a good story then they would have found ways to do it, but as it is they weren't trying to be Metal Gear Solid with Metroid Prime. They did say that they were going to try and tell a good story with MP2, though. If they had the cinematic presentation of Zero Mission coupled with the substance in their stories, it could make for one awesome, well-presented plot.

But how would they have that much substance? As you say, they don't want this to be like MGS where you spend hours and hours watching cutscenes... any move in that direction might make the story easier to follow, but it'd also almost have to mean that there would be a simpler backstory (though it could mean a more intricate plot ocurring during the game), I'd think.

Nintendo really isn't against story-telling. Eiji Aonuma (Zelda) and Yoshio Sakamoto (Metroid) believe that story-telling is a very important part of games nowadays, which they proved with their last few titles (Wind Waker, Metroid Fusion, Metroid Zero Mission). It's pretty much just Miyamoto that thinks story is not very important.

If that's true, then why do most Nintendo games not try very hard to tell stories?
They're more against it than not, I'd say.

*cut long paragraph* But anyhow, just plan cinematics ala MGS are not the answer, but neither are boring pieces of text strewn about all over the place.

It really depends on the game. Ideally most types of games should have stories... and depth in stories is good, in my opinion. As long as it's interesting I don't mind at all having more to read. I doubt you're saying that books lack emotion (obviously false), so are you saying that the way it was written wasn't good enough? Hmm... I don't know. It seemed (in the history sections) like it was trying to explain what happened... emotion? Sure there is some. Not as much as some games, probably, though. But the story it tells is good. I loved the whole scan visor aspect of the game... a lot of the things it tells you are, imo, definitely worth the time it takes to scan everything. :) ... but that might be an aspect of liking adventure games, I think it helps when you can get textual (or voice) descriptions of objects or events... Eternal Darkness, for instance. The text descriptions of objects and stuff was one of my favorite aspects of that game.

And for 'telling a great story' you know which game I'll mention again, but I doubt that that'll make anyone here go and try to find it, so what's the point... :(

I'll just do this.
http://www.gamefaqs.com/computer/doswin/...24697.html
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages4/187975.asp