Actually, Metroid had some pretty robust writing outside of Metroid Prime. Said writing just wasn't in the actual games. (You also seem to be forgetting Fusion exists.)

Also, Jesus Christ, how did this thread get duplicated like four times?

They are pretty terrible at everything. Nintendo used to be the finest game design out there, until they started to copy themselves tirelessly.

@hailinel said:

The dumb part is, I tried to create the thread, and my browser literally said it timed out, and suggest I resend the data. Doing that somehow created 2 copies. I'm sure at no other point did I refresh the page. Posting is abysmal right now, but I should always remember that my browser/GB site error messages always lie when they say something didn't work. The post basically always goes through.

Anyway Hailinel, would you mind discussing this in the other poll thread? @mb@chaser324@mattyftm@gamer_152, would you mind locking this one as well? (Scratch that, you guys are faster than me, this is the only one left so please don't delete it)

To address your point, Hailinel, yeah, Metroid Prime and Fusion are the first times Metroid has had a story explicitly told within the game instead of mostly in outside materials, and yeah, Fusion's story is actually quite good. Since Adam is just an AI in that game, she doesn't act like a total wimp around him, and most of that game is right on par with Super Metroid in terms of level design. I remember people not liking how it railroads you into where to go next, but whatever, fuck those people, they're delusional if they think they are still in the era of allowing significant sequence breaks (Super Metroid) or going really wherever the fuck you want in any order (NES Metroid and NES Zelda). Even though advancement is pretty linear in Fusion, you can still backtrack for upgrades whenever you want, which is better than Other M, where I seem to recall it blocked your backtracking pretty much constantly.

Still, I feel weird about liking Metroid Fusion, now that I see Other M as a more fully realized version of the same idea. Other M also has a space station specimen containment thing, complete with SUPER SECRET NO ONE SAW THAT COMING Metroid wing, which you also have to jettison away from the station after spending all of 30 seconds there, and you also interact with and reminisce about Adam a bunch, and you also fight Nightmare, and you also fight a large Metroid at the end even though you jettisoned away the Metroid wing. It retreads a lot of ground, and if Fusion was the prototype for Other M, I feel a little dirty liking it. And that amount of reused premise ideas is almost as bad as the ending of Phantom Hourglass being nearly word-for-word the ending of Link's Awakening (which at least made sense in Link's Awakening, where the island is clearly weird as fuck, and LA basically spoils its own ending if you read certain Gossip Stones in the overworld, whereas the ending of Phantom Hourglass comes out of fucking nowhere).

To expand on my earlier post, as I've given it more thought:

I don't agree. For one thing, you seem to be forgetting completely about Metroid Fusion, and there was plenty of canonical writing in the Metroid series that was just never included in the actual games. Other M's script was not well written, but the story that it conveyed was a solid one. (Also, Metroid isn't an EAD series.) And frankly, Retro has written some pretty dumb stuff when it comes to Metroid Prime. You have to admit that Dark Samus is silly, as is the sentient Phazon planet Phaaze. (Hey, Phaaze blew up! And all Phazon is suddenly gone! What?)

As for Zelda, while it does repeat the same formula often, the writing isn't necessarily bad. And they have gone some interesting places in the past few games. Not every game in the series is up to the same standard, but even a game like Twilight Princess (which people give so much shit) at least shook things up a little bit. Not a great deal, and it's certainly not the most original story out there, but I would hardly call it terrible.

Outside of Zelda, EAD games in general (i.e. Mario, Zelda, Pikmin, etc.) don't place a strong emphasis on story outside of Zelda because that's not their primary concern. Even for Zelda titles, Aonuma and others have stated that story isn't the first thing that they consider when developing a new game. The initial development emphasis is on gameplay. That's just the way that EAD operates. It's not that their writers are terrible. It's that in terms of game design, story is not their top concern.

I don't really think Nintendo is bad at writing, I think Yoshio Sakamoto is bad at writing.

@hailinel said:

Yeah, Metroid has historically been R&D1 or SPD, but there isn't a convenient umbrella term for all of the internal Nintendo dev teams that just go by "Nintendo", compared to the outliers like Intelligent Systems and AlphaDream. I'd edit my original post, except polls are still uneditable, I see.

I think it's fine for the games to be light on story when there is clearly very little exposition and universe-building. How does the Mushroom Kingdom operate? What does Mario do when Peach isn't kidnapped? The platformers don't address those questions because they're pointless, and when they try to address them in Paper Mario or Mario & Luigi games, it's kind of silly because the whole thing is this strange cartoon world. Donkey Kong similarly doesn't require story, so it's a pity they passed it off to Retro, and didn't instead acquire some other dev to do it.

But there is more establishing of setting and exposition in Zelda and Pikmin. And while Star Fox hasn't really had the same developer twice, EAD was responsible for Star Fox 64, the most highly acclaimed entry in the series. If they had kept Zelda in a rather simple, cartoonish world like the NES, SNES, and Game Boy games, it might've been fine. But Ocarina of Time (and all future Zeldas) have so much exposition that it sets the expectation they are something of a story-driven game, and it's been really hit or miss.

People criticize Samus for being a wimp in Other M, but that's just not the case. There's a clear reason why she chooses to be beholden to Adam's orders. One that would have likely gone over better with a lot more people had the writing not locked her armor upgrades behind the same reasoning she's prevented from using her weapons.

And yeah, Other M does recycle elements that originated in Fusion, but for everything it recycles, it introduces its own elements and lore, as well. MB and Madeline, for example, I think are really good additions. I also liked the idea of the other GF troops on board and the whole Deleter subplot (which people criticized for not spoon-feeding them the perpetrator, I guess?), but I would have liked it if the troops aside from Adam and Anthony had been fleshed out a bit more. And Other M doesn't reuse the Evil Samus Clone idea that had already been done in both Fusion and Prime 2 & 3. As for backtracking in Other M, the game opens up in the epilogue and allows you to go wherever you want, including regions of the ship that were blocked off during the main game because they required power bombs to access.

They are great at scenarios. They are terrible at characters. But I haven't played a Nintendo game since...well, fuck, Wind Waker probably. So my assumptions about them are based on opinions formed when I was barely a teenager.

They are great at scenarios. They are terrible at characters. But I haven't played a Nintendo game since...well, fuck, Wind Waker probably. So my assumptions about them are based on opinions formed when I was barely a teenager.

I wouldn't say terrible but definitely weak

A bit surprised at the amount of 'Yes' votes at this time. Then again, I can imagine a majority negative opinion after Nintendo's recent narrative efforts of Metroid: Other M, The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword, and Mario & Luigi: Dream Team.

Calling Nintendo's writing "pretty terrible" is a bit too strong for me. They hardly ever try. The times they do, their efforts range from serviceable, to boring, to poor. Lately, they are writing too much as evidence in the verbose and repetitive dialogue of the Golden Sun games, the Maio & Luigi games, the Legend of Zelda games, and Animal Crossing: New Leaf. However, they also write some enduring characters as people are fans of characters from Fire Emblem: Awakening and Animal Crossing: New Leaf.

Nintendo's writing quality is all over the place; the same as the company and its products, really.

I still just don't buy the weird father-figure angle for Adam, or why she respects his wishes at all. Her formative years were spent with her actual father, and then with a bunch of Chozo. Adam came along when she was already an adult. I'm not sure I'm even cool with Other M's implications that she was some sort of soldier for hire for the Federation for a while, fighting alongside a bunch of GF soldiers and taking orders from a CO. Everything else in the Metroid fiction seems to imply that her life mission was to basically go and do what she felt the Chozo would want her to do, and at most she would do contract work for the GF, operating independently, which makes sense given her one person ship and the part where her armament is leagues better than GF troopers would have. It's canon now, I guess, but I don't even really understand what was achieved by adding this military service part of Samus' history, other than shoehorning in Adam.

Anyway, I don't see why she is required to turn off any of her suit in Other M. It was an open, public distress call, so fuck those guys; she can do her rescue operation, they can do theirs. The fact that her equipment stays locked off even when the plan immediately becomes "HEY HOW ABOUT WE ALL SPLIT UP AND GET PICKED OFF ONE BY ONE AND SAMUS IS NEVER AROUND A TROOPER FOR MORE THAN 20 SECONDS" is just asinine; if they think she's that likely to cause collateral damage and friendly fire, why give her back any of her weapons ever? It's such a dumb explanation. As for the "Samus suddenly having a speaking part", my issue isn't that Samus suddenly has emotions, it's that she has all those emotions towards this poorly written CO character that is generally flat, and it's never sufficiently justified why he should even have her respect. Go watch any number of award-winning military-based movies. There are SO MANY better ways to write a commanding officer than the generally bland, devoid-of-any-remarkable-features Adam. Also the script is terrible in general, and is written like an anime in the sense that anime and Other M tend to have way too much voiced internal monologue.

The problem with the Deleter subplot is partially that they didn't tell you the perpetrator. They emphasize it a lot in the early goings when you discover the first body, but:

1. you don't know any of the characters besides Anthony and Adam, so who the fuck cares if the Deleter is one of the other guys
2. it turns out it's one of the other guys
3. so they just use the whole subplot to cheaply make you distrust Adam and Anthony a couple times
4. it actually would've been way more interesting if Adam or Anthony were the Deleter and Samus discovers this
5. the whole subplot is irrelevant to Samus except for the one boss fight against the construction vehicle thing
6. and then the whole subplot is irrelevant as it doesn't succeed, Samus isn't even present for the Deleter's demise, and the Deleter never really made a serious attempt on Adam or Anthony's life, the only 2 characters that you actually care about

I agree that MB and Madeline was pretty good, though they introduce Madeline super late and neither of them really get a ton of screen time.

Say what you will about Evil Clone Samus, at least they sufficiently explain it, in terms of "Metroid Prime recognized it was beat, so it copied Samus in its death throes, and reconstituted itself as a Samus clone that was at least on an even playing field in terms of combat tactics and adaptability". The SAX explanation in Fusion as about as good, while the explanation of Dark Link in the Zelda series is more or less nonexistent.

@bisonhero: Adam is also her former CO and, as rules of the Galactic Federation dictate, because they have jurisdiction over the mission, Samus is required to follow Adam's directives if she wants to participate in the mission. Even if Samus had never served in the military and never met Adam before that day, she would have still been required to agree to Adam's mandate if she wanted to participate in the mission on board the ship. His status as a father figure, flawed or not, has nothing to do with that. If Samus had said no, her only other (legal) option would have been turning on her heels and leaving.

And because Samus is on a mission under GF military jurisdiction under Adam's command, that means she can't run around the ship blasting away with any weapon she has at her disposal. She's obviously not a callous idiot and wouldn't do anything that had the potential to harm innocent bystanders, so it's not like Adam had any reason to worry about her fucking things up, but again, it's part of mission protocol. In that respect, Adam doesn't treat Samus any differently than he treats his own men.

As for the Deleter subplot, Samus did have thoughts that Anthony might have been the traitor, as fleeting as they were, but felt foolish about that particularly after he helps her out with Ridley. And Samus had reason to suspect Adam was up to no good when MB fed her information on the metroid project that used a report he had authored. Obviously, both notions turned out o be incorrect. But the remaining troops were never given much personality, and so when the identity of the Deleter is uncovered, the impact is lessened. It would have been more effective had James, Lyle and the others been given stronger presence. It doesn't really matter that Samus wasn't present for the Deleter's demise; the whole point there was that the Deleter himself didn't know how dangerous MB was.

And as for Evil Clone Samus, I think in the long run, it would have been more effective had the Metroid Prime series done some thing else. We already had one evil clone in SA-X, and it, at least, was sufficiently explained in that SA-X was born in the same manner as every other creature created by the X-Parasite. Dark Samus in Prime, on the other hand, is not only a little late to the party (despite first evidence of its existence appearing in the MP1 100% ending), but was part of the whole Phazon mythos that grew more absurd as the series went on. (Again, Phaaze.)

I wouldn't agree because I don't think it is relevant and the question is trying to make something into something it isn't. The narrative in most Nintendo games doesn't even attempt to place emphasis on characters because that isn't its intention. Nintendo makes games first and foremost.

The dialogue in Mario games is secondary to level design and composition and only serves as a vehicle with which to move you to a different, unique environment. It's not Pulitzer material, because that's not how it is envisioned from the beginning and to apply those standards is to compare apples to oranges, in the truest sense of the metaphor. The Metroid games (or at least the absolute best ones, and I KNOW that's a contentious opinion, but I stick to it) have been farmed out to Retro, so they don't count. Most of the games that you mention or that actually place any emphasis on story are made by secondary studios.

Pikmin is and always has been about the environments, and everything revolves around them. The true beauty of Pikmin is how you are in control of the way the game unfolds; beyond the first's 30 day requirement and scattered limitations placed on the player in the 2nd and 3rd, you are the author of your story. Have a great day and defeat a giant spider monster with limited losses? Lose half your blue Pikmin reserves to a fiery blowhog that happened to wander by? This is how the story unfolds, not through cutscenes or lore or any other conventional storytelling devices. Would Pikmin have been an objectively "better" game if Olimar had descended into a dark depression that spiraled out of control into a booze and pill binge ala Max Payne? It would be different, but different is not necessarily "good" or "better."

My brother and I are fairly well opposite in how we approach games. He likes story and prefers a strong narrative to strong gameplay. I don't care about story and prefer well designed systems and mechanics. He played Mass Effect because of the characters and how they interacted. I played Mass Effect because I get to go into space and blow shit up. He would rather play The Walking Dead, I'd rather play Tetris. One is not necessarily better than the other. A "good" game (in my opinion) is one that sets out to fulfill the intended vision of its creators and does so to the best of its abilities. If that vision includes a strong narrative, than that becomes a focus. If it includes an emphasis on gameplay, that that becomes a focus. If the goal is to include both, than that is the responsibility of the development team to deliver on that promise. None of these choices is "better" than the other, and from my experience Nintendo almost universally focuses on gameplay first.

The wording of your question is suspect, as well. Positioning such a strong negative modifier (terrible) is already predetermining the nature of the responses that you are going to get, although if it's what you're looking for than this quibble isn't particularly important.

@hailinel: I'll agree Metroid Prime gets dumber as the series goes along, but it's not until 3 that it actually becomes stupid. Echoes' story is pretty good, I think, and Dark Samus's presence is well-justified and decently written. It's no Prime 1, where if you scan everything you find the history of the Chozo and learn about what happened to them, but it's still good.

Phaaze still takes the cake for "really fucking dumb twists in Nintendo games" though, outside of Other M.

Anyway, Nintendo's writing isn't terrible. Most of the time, it's just minimal, as in hardly there at all. It's not what matters, and no one comes to these games primarily for their writing.

If only writing code was as easy as writing prose.

@seveword said:

Oh yeah, for sure, the poll phrasing is super biased. But I intended it to be obvious clickbait where people see it and think "Hell yeah it sucks" or "Terrible? You're being a dick, it's fine". I want to engage people.

Backwards? Nintendo can write solid code all day long.

Sounds to me like you haven't played Pikmin 3. That games story was mad deep.

(No seriously Pikmin 3 is actually a pretty deep game if you read between the lines. It isn't spoon fed to you.)

The script for Majora's Mask was pretty good.

@bisonhero: Doh!

@darthorange: I must know what happened to the rubber ducky.

Yeah, it was. So was Wind Waker and Metroid Fusion. I think Majora's Mask, Wind Waker, and Metroid Fusion are pretty much the last time I respected Nintendo internal teams' ability to put some neat, original writing into a game.

Since then, 'tis been a barren wasteland, aside from the satellite Nintendo studios that I mentioned earlier.

No. When they do humor they are really good at it. The Mario RPGs are really well written and, at times, Zelda can be well written (not just dialogue, but some of the cutscenes like with some of the scenes in Twilight Princess). They aren't the best at drama but a lot of game developers aren't good at drama. I don't think that makes them bad writers. And there's more to writing when dialogue.

I can't agree on that. The Mario&Luigi games are probably some of the best written games of the last decade for me.

Paper Mario and it's sequel are the two funniest games I've ever played. Maybe Nintendo should lean into comedy more because honestly they aren't bad at it.

Uh... who cares? Yeah, they aren't great, but it's really not a problem in this medium until it gets in the way of the game. Now THAT is a crime Nintendo has committed quite a bit recently.

...In what way?

@hailinel: Other M and Skyward Sword come to mind. From the thread it seems like you have pretty strong feelings for Other M, though. I don't want to get into an internet argument right now over the merits of that game.

I wouldn't call two games "quite a bit," and I don't recall many complaints regarding Skyward Sword's story.

Hey now, Intelligent Systems is an internal Nintendo team and they write some pretty great stuff, though if you want to place that at the feet of NoA's localization team I won't stop you.

Hey now, Intelligent Systems is an internal Nintendo team and they write some pretty great stuff, though if you want to place that at the feet of NoA's localization team I won't stop you.

@arbitrarywater said:

Yeah, I acknowledge that those satellite-but-owned-by-Nintendo developers are actually way better writers. Intelligent Systems, AlphaDream, Retro Studios, maybe a few others. But as for the teams that actually work at Nintendo HQ (Nintendo EAD, Nintendo R&D1/Nintendo SPD, etc.), have kinda slacked off any doing anything original or very well written since about Majora's Mask, Metroid Fusion, and Wind Waker.

I'm jumping in to the middle of a conversation here, but I couldn't finish Fire Emblem: Awakening because the characters are so awful. Therefore, I wouldn't say that I'm a fan of Intelligent Systems writing. Alpha Dream, on the other hand, are among the best in the industry.

Really? What did you find awful about them? I thought that characters in Awakening were great. Not my favorite cast of characters, but I have my favorites, and I love the call-backs to the older games.

Nostalgia isn't a factor for me, as this is only the third FE game I've played. I wouldn't have recognized throwbacks, so take that in to account.

My big problem was how typical the characters are. Chrom is incredibly boring. He's so trusting and loyal and brave and... blech. He was basically Sigurd all over again (FE 4 is one of the games I've played). As far as I saw, he didn't have any depth. The same can be said about the avatar. He's just mysterious and awesomely boring.

Everyone else is exploited for one or two attributes. Sumia was a klutzy cook. Frederick was loyal to the crown. Vaike is a bro. Lon'qu is afraid of girls. Miriel uses big words. None of it was subtle, and it became irritating with time.

I disagree. You have to keep in mind what they are intending to create, most of what you are calling bad is a deliberate creative choice on their part.

Nintendo isn't trying to create the next War & Peace, they are shooting for mostly light hearted entertainment that appeals to wide a audience. And they do it extremely well.

@bog: What you're experiencing is known as "Anime Waifu syndrome" wherein every character has a personality that closely follows established anime archetypes because you can totally marry all of them. That being said, I think the writing (or perhaps 8-4's localization) is good enough that all of the characters falling into predictable roles doesn't really bother me because of the various ways they play off each other in supports and whatnot. I'll cop that Awakening's overall story is pretty weak and mostly a justification to have multiple generations of characters... but I don't play Fire Emblem games for the story.

I can see that, but I question how much of a priority writing is for those internal studios in the first place. It's not like people praise Mario and Zelda games for the strength of their writing.

Are you saying you played Awakening just to see Gaius fuck Olivia in a sports equipment shed?

Shouldn't this thread be locked, since it's obvious clickbait, a fact the OP himself admitted to?

I'm pretty sure you already made that joke with one of your blog titles like a year ago.

I suppose I can understand that. On the other hand, I think that's also what makes the cast memorable. It's a diverse cast where everyone has that thing about that stands out. Even Kellam, who's just sort of there. The characters come across best in their support conversations, at least, which really gives them an opportunity to speak at length, and they might surprise you on occcasion. Particularly as you get into the second generation characters.

I suppose I can understand that. On the other hand, I think that's also what makes the cast memorable. It's a diverse cast where everyone has that thing about that stands out. Even Kellam, who's just sort of there. The characters come across best in their support conversations, at least, which really gives them an opportunity to speak at length, and they might surprise you on occcasion. Particularly as you get into the second generation characters.

@arbitrarywater:

I did? I don't remember writing "Gaius fucks Olivia in a sports equipment shed"................*goes off to write "Gaius fucks Olivia in a sports equipment shed"*

I suppose I can understand that. On the other hand, I think that's also what makes the cast memorable. It's a diverse cast where everyone has that thing about that stands out. Even Kellam, who's just sort of there. The characters come across best in their support conversations, at least, which really gives them an opportunity to speak at length, and they might surprise you on occcasion. Particularly as you get into the second generation characters.