Nintendo Narratives, Take 2
Yoshio Sakamoto, director of Metroid: Other M:
What I hope to achieve with Other M is answer those questions — you know, who is Samus? What is her background? Who are the characters that made her what she is? All these questions and more will be answered.
E3 2009: Metroid: Other M Heavy on Action and Story : IGN Wii
Maybe the Nintendo Narratives I spoke about recently could be coming to an end after all.
What I really hope this indicates is a shift in Nintendo’s internal priorities that separates casual gaming experiences like Wii Fit and Wii Sports from their hardcore gaming franchises like Metroid and Zelda. Nintendo will certainly leverage the draw of those franchises for other properties (see Link’s Crossbow Training), but maybe, just maybe this means they won’t forget about the details and qualities that make for a great, traditional, “hardcore” game either.
Update 6/12: Kotaku published an article today with a few more tidbits from Sakamoto-san that I found of interest:
Interviews about Mario and Zelda games with Nintendo developers typically focus on gameply [sic], but story and character were what Sakamoto wanted to emphasize, noting how the game fits into the timeline between the Super Nintendo’s Super Metroid and the Game Boy Advance’s Metroid Fusion: “With Fusion, that game was very story-driven. In that game, I believe I was able to explain Samus as a character, as a person, not just somebody in armor. And I was not only explain [sic] Samus but the characters around her… with Super Metroid I showed, through her relationship with the baby Metroid, some of her maternal instincts. Between those two stories I feel I was able to explain Samus as a person. But because Metroid equals Samus, I’d like to develop her character further, as a soldier, as a human, also as a woman. That’s what they’re hoping to do with Other M.”
