Stop and Talk
A hallmark of the Metroid Prime series — okay, hold on. I feel weird saying that a subset series that only started one console generation ago, despite being built on a storied franchise, already has its own hallmarks. It’d be like saying that a key component of Mario games is Goomba-stomping after only the first three titles. And yet, core gamers will note that I was very upset when I learned that the Goombas of Super Mario World could not be stomped, only flipped over and kicked around like common Troopas. Interesting how quickly we the gamers will adapt to new technologies or motifs, even in spite of our haranguement of them on message boards.
I’ll start again. A hallmark of the Metroid Prime series is its Scan Visor, which allows Samus to research and record information on a variety of landscape elements, enemy types, and planetary lore. A similar function is performed by Paper Mario’s Goombario, who can give his take on any given screen or nearby character with the tap of a button and provides hints for defeating enemies during battles. The problem is, as a player raised in the “talk to everyone” tradition of old RPGs and adventure games (I wasted a lot of time yakking with passersby in Zelda II) I’m addicted to this sort of information feed. Metroid Prime colour-codes scannable items to show which you’ve studied; I won’t leave a screen until every possible surface is shaded green. Goombario has something to say about every single room, no matter how small or useless it may be, so I have to switch him into the party every time I pass through a door.
What’s strange is that beyond the odd snippets of useful hints, most of the data is essentially ignorable. For the most part, I shouldn’t need to be told that a storage canister appears to be ruptured, as I can see that for myself. So why bother reading it in the first place? Because aside from my obsessive text-lust, it does bring a certain amount of atmospheric quality to the game world. There’s a particularly gruesome room in MP3 filled with dead Space Pirates; scanning their corpses reveals the details of their demises. “Multiple cranial puncture wounds.” “Phazon scarring on back indicates subject was fleeing.” The player is left to draw their own conclusions, and savvy followers note that the descriptions hint towards the onset of the titular Metroids (made bluntly obvious upon entry into the next room, a laboratory setting where the damn things are flitting about in test tubes and screeching.)
But it takes a moment to scan even the least mission-sensitive objective. A player will be altogether too used to the “chukka-chukka-chukka-chukka-blip” that accompanies every reading by the end of the game. Surely there’s an easier way, like the quickline descriptors of System Shock. What will that do to the extended entries? you may well ask. Well, as I said above, not all of those extended entries may be needed. The option should be presented to the player to truly ignore what is relatively unimportant. In a lighter vein, as I told a friend on the weekend, I would’ve stopped going to Goombario all the time if he’d said something like, “why do I keep describing these rooms? They’re basically all the same.” If much of the descriptive text in your game can be characterized as “extremely similar,” you either need to figure out a better way to impart information to the player, or you need to hire better writers.
Tags: metroid prime 3, Paper Mario