Admittedly
I actually love the way the Metroid: Prime series tackles the atmosphere and immersion that is so paramount in the Metroid franchise. Coming from one who thinks Super Metroid was the most perfect game of all time, that has to say something.
Mood
Before I get into it, let me first talk about the things I love about Metroid atmosphere. Whether by design or hardware limitation, the early Metroid games had not an ounce of cinematics to them. It was what Half Life did to the FPS genre in an age chock full of separated levels and out-of-game cinematics. I think there’s like a grand total of, what, five two-second clips of Samus’s ship in Super Metroid?
The beauty that I see in it though, is that even without much of a narrative the Metroid games immersed me like no other game have before. In the Metroid games you never went out of body (Yes, I realize it’s a 3D platforming game). What I mean to say is that you played Samus at all times. You never just watched Samus do badass things, you were Samus, doing badass things.
While I absolutely loved the feeling of being one lonely bounty hunter diving deeper into a planet bristling with life at all levels, it never gave me a chance to dive deeper into the story.
Immersion
This is where the Prime series shines. Barring the scripted cinematics, the gameplay portions are retained with expert accuracy. They retain the heavy mood of isolation and deep cavern exploration. What the Prime series adds, though, is immersion to go along with that mood. There are so many little details and flourishes of personality that is added to the play experience that I sometimes dream of a complete remake of Super Metroid with the Prime engine.
I want to be able to see, not just imagine, how Crateria would look as I land upon it and step out of my ship for the first time. I want to see the rain pour down, making tink noises on my armor, obscuring my vision as I make my way towards a cave opening. I want to trudge around in the darkness of the Wrecked Ship. I want to be able to scan that corpse outside of Kraid’s room and be able to know, with certainty and satisfaction, that it is indeed the rotting corpse of Armstrong Houston.
I’d want to be able to discover and see all this without a voice piping in and giving me mission objectives.
Guided Tour
My main gripe with Metroid Fusion was that you were constantly being told what to do. I guess they felt like they had to baby Samus because she got into a little trouble on SR-388. The way I see it, the entirety of my familiarization with Samus is that she is a bounty hunter with such renown that the Galactic Federation gives her, and her alone, the singular mission objective of either 1.Infiltrate and destroy a fucking planet, or 2. Infiltrate and destroy a fucking species. What she does while on the job is completely up for her to decide. This is what I believe gives rise to the One Girl In All The World factor.
Friendly Competition
I fully appreciate having other bounty hunters in the galaxy and realize that there are many that are close to Samus’s skills. What irks me the most is that some of the high-flying stuff that the other hunters can do almost makes Samus look like a pussy. Of course, this can also be countered with the fact that she kicks their asses in the end using her superior skills. I haven’t seen that this interferes much with the meat of the game, lonesome exploration, so it’s not as big of a gripe for me as a CO belching out orders is.
Do Both
What I really want is for them to keep the deeper-diving story presented in the Prime series and in Fusion with the OGIATW factor of the Metroids of old. I loved the scanning of lore in Prime and learning of Samus’s history in Fusion. I just want all the hand-holding to be cut. I’d want them to use the story-telling elements and mechanics they used in both Half Lifes for situations where they wanted to reveal more about the story.
That’s one of the things I love about silent characters. They compel you to want more than just watching them, they make you want to be them.