No matter the video game franchise you’re a big fan of, there is at least one title in them that doesn’t live up to expectations or just completely falls flat on its face. Mario, Zelda, Halo, Gears of War, Metal Gear, Mortal Kombat, and so on and so forth, each franchise has something they’re not proud of. And for the franchise that gave us Samus Aran, metroid Other M is the “black sheep” (we don’t mention Federation Force…) that to this day gets fans angry in terms of how it turned out. The irony though is that Reggie Fils-Aime felt it would be something really special for the series.
This comes not from his recent book, but from his time on Kinda Funny GameCast. He made the following statement on it:
“I really thought that that was going to be a defining moment for the Metroid franchise. It was giving much more of a perspective about Samus. I really thought that was going to be a killer moment in the franchise’s history, and it wasn’t. It didn’t deliver – not the business results, it really didn’t touch the player the way we hoped it would.”
In a “higher-ups” meeting after the game failed to perform, he stated that the game’s “long time to get things rolling” approach didn’t help, and the dialogue was too much at times. Fans would note that the incoherent plot, and the way they portrayed Samus as “submissive” were more prevalent issues. Thankfully, we did get better results with Metroid Dread, and maybe Metroid Prime 4 can pick up the momentum even more.
