I don’t know if this is just me, but I am noticing a lot of this recently from Metroid Prime 4 to Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom. In some cases, I get it; Mario, for example, isn’t really known for its story.
However, making Zelda mute for the latter game doesn’t seem right as she speaks for most of her appearances. It literally just seems like a reskin of Link. There’s an entire article explaining why Samus being mute is a problem.
Posted by Eggman2692
9 Comments
Metroid Prime 4 suffered from a lack of story. I still don’t understand Sylux’ motivations.
The Greiger story was kind of thrown under the bus. Where did Ssmus teleport to post game. Why was the federation protecting the device?
The last time Samus spoke we got Other M and people absolutely hated that game and the fact Samus spoke, people were genuinely upset that Samus had the ability to speak.
Yeah not every game needs a voiced protagonist, sorry
Its not a problem. It just is a normal style they use for games with light story or lots of solo play. And they got games with speaking progags if you wanted, Fire Emblem and Xenoblade
Silent protags are a relic and should only be used for very few specific games. Any game with a Story like you’d see in a movie or book can not have a silent protagonist
I like it. I think it keeps the games gameplay focused. You can see first hand with SIE how a focus on story has harmed gameplay experience
To me it was never a problem until Metroid Prime 4. In previous Metroid games Samus was completely alone so her not speaking just simply made sense. But with the cast of characters interacting with her in MP4 the fact that all she could do in response was nod, it definitely felt awkward.
This is frustrating in ToTK as well. Chasing fake Zelda around and Link can’t explain damn shit to people.
Silent protagonists can work but you need to build your story around that.
This is literally the polar opposite of what’s really wrong with MP4. MP1-3 proved you didnt need dialogue for samus. Instead, you as a developer let the game, level art, and sound design culminate in an impeccable gameplay experience that is engrossing as it is immersive; Prime 4 did none of this. Prime 4 is in every way, everything the original Prime fans were worried about. Dialogue detracted from the experience, and people still overwhelmingly hate miles for good reason. He’s poorly written, in a poorly executed Prime game.
If anything, the major problem of MP4, is emblematic of fears fans had going into the original Prime. Nintendo revealed that Prime 1 was going to be a FPS and Metroid fans at the time balked at the idea that metroid would become a boring, repetitive, and unispired, combat sim given its controls, when it was thankfully better. Prime released, and it turns out that it was the perfect blend of rewarding puzzles meets immersive exploration, meets mysterious bosses, THEN meets *well paced combat encounters* with lots of enemy variety.
This whole mix requires a delicate balance, and careful level design to be engaging, and this care is absolutely no where to be found in Prime 4. This was evident in the beam chips backtracking, the enemy reskins, the overabundance of scannable environmental items, the less than stellar soundtrack (or outright missing), and obnoxious companions that were more a hinderance since they were often tied to progression. *Prime 4 at its best, is the Prime that no one wanted.* Shoot the same enemies over and over to the point of monotony meanwhile the side characters add nothing, and emphatically prove how bad combat is in repetition, at the expense of everything else.
The level progression is abysmal, Prime one is now no longer the worst in terms of the end game. Also it helps not to put mobile game design in a full priced title to unlock the final boss, and to not lock a single soundtrack that makes the most boring section a little more bearable behined a 30-40 gbp/usd amiibo. Theres a reason Nintendo wont reveal sales figures afterall…
There is some of the best story in the data logs of the first 3 primes, world narrative design in gaming would not be this good until the Souls series made good use of it in 2009. So the story is amazing in the original because it is so richly contextual; the more attention you gave into, the more the environment revealed the deeper story.
In the current year, I think a lot of silent protagonists are only silent for the sake of tradition, and they suffer from trying to simultaneously be an individual within the fictional world while also representing the player behind the screen. I replayed Persona 5 and that game struggles so much to keep the plot moving without the protagonist speaking in cutscenes, and for what? Joker is obviously his own person separate from me, the player, with his own personality and backstory. So what is the benefit of every major plot beat being demonstrated via a text box that says “You explain to Ryuji what’s going on” instead of actually hearing him say it?