Quotes from Sakamoto, Team Ninja’s Hayashi on Metroid: Other M (minimum loading, theater mode)
“Sakamoto wanted to make a 3D action game that could be played with a single Wii remote. The concept was ‘the latest in gameplay with the simplest of controls.'” – Team Ninja leader Yosuke Hayashi
“We had decided how many buttons to use from the planning stages, and I think Team Ninja went through a lot of trial-and-error with the controls, getting them right without increasing the number of buttons.” – Yoshio Sakamoto, father of the Metroid series
“There were a lot of things that couldn’t be done here without the first-person view that Metroid Prime used. That’s why we have the search view that lets you examine your surroundings from a first-person perspective and fire missiles. I think it provides the sort of gameplay that’s only possible with the Wii remote. If you come across something that seems suspicious, that’s your cue to try switching perspectives. We intended to have a lot of that searching aspect because that’s what Metroid is known for — Metroid games have unique map structures and lots of hidden corridors, and I was worried that Team Ninja would have trouble grasping the concept at first, but the know-how involved went over loud and clear and I’m impressed with the results.” – Sakamoto
“I think Metroid is all about having suspicious-looking hiding places and finding items there. There’s nothing unfair about how we hide them — they’re hidden in places you can spot once you think it through a little, and that’s what makes finding items fun in this game… [There are] as many [pickups] as there are in any other Metroid game. I think you’ll only find about 30% of the pickups in a normal playthrough.” – Hayashi
“We’re making this game so there’s no obvious seam between the cutscenes and action parts, ensuring the player isn’t cut off from the scene and can get into the story. Doing that required us to keep that concept in mind all through the motion capture process; you can’t tell if it’s working until you actually make everything. We couldn’t re-do the motion capture afterward, so I was really anxious after it wrapped up.” – Sakamoto
“We set it up so that there are as few ‘now loading’ displays as possible. We want the player to get into the story and not feel cut off from it emotionally, so we were careful with that aspect of it. I think we’ve been able to set up the game so that players can forget that loading is taking place entirely. Even saving the game is a seamless process here, which I think makes it a very comfortable and addictive experience.” – Hayashi
“There’s a ‘theater mode’ that lets you view all of the cutscenes linked together seamlessly as a single movie. We placed just as much weight on enjoying the story as we did on the action aspects of this game, but it’s hard to fully communicate a storyline in a video game with just one playthrough. At the same time, though, it’s asking a lot of players to beat the game twice to get it all, so that’s where the idea for that mode came from. It lets you make a lot of discoveries, things you missed or dialogue that makes more sense in retrospect. I hope it helps people understand the story better.”
– Theater mode is around two hours
– Divided into chapters like a DVD
– Cutscenes and pre-recorded gameplay
– Gameplay isn’t recorded from your footage, it’s sample play data
“I wanted to do that, but we’re using our own sample play data instead because that’s also a way of giving the player hints — like, you can beat this particular boss this way too, and so forth.”
“I wanted to do that, but we’re using our own sample play data instead because that’s also a way of giving the player hints — like, you can beat this particular boss this way too, and so forth.”
“Samus has not been portrayed externally in 3D all that much, so there weren’t many previous examples of how her movements and attack stance should look. As a result, we had a trial-and-error process for figuring out how to show off her assorted actions in 3D. We originally had scenes with Samus getting blown away in flashy fashion by enemy attacks. Nintendo didn’t want that to be emphasized, but if Samus isn’t ‘selling it’ that way, then that’ll make the enemy’s attacks have less impact — it won’t mean as much when Samus defeats the enemy. Eventually Nintendo saw it our way, and we had the freedom to do what we wanted there.” – Hayashi
“In making this game, I wanted to tell action-game fans that this is Team Ninja’s newest game without feeling embarrassed to do so. At the same time, I also think that people who’ve drifted away from the genre can get a taste of what makes action games fun once again, so I’d love everyone to try it out.” – Hayashi
