I was reading a summary of Metroid's fiction that was written by a NeoGAF user, then reposted on Kotaku (here), and it got me to thinking about Nintendo series, and their writing. My conclusion is that the reason that Metroid's lore is pretty good (and detailed) is that Nintendo barely had a hand in it. Retro Studios has added more words of text to the Metroid lore than anyone else combined, if you want to compare all of the logs in Metroid Prime 1, 2, and 3 to the paltry amount of text/script/info in the manuals from all the Nintendo-developed Metroids, the Metroid manga, or Metroid: Other M. Kensuke Tanabe was a producer on Prime (and technically so was Shiggy), but I imagine they just gave approval to pretty much anything as long as Samus didn't become a pornstar or kill all the Jews or something. Usual writer of Metroid Yoshio Sakamoto (Super Metroid, Metroid Fusion, Zero Mission, and Other M) had no involvement (thankfully?).

Sure, Metroid Prime's lore isn't perfect. It sort of turns Metroid into the gaming all-story, this time with Samus as this vaguely prophesied hero of the Chozo, who they believe will be their legacy and the one to stop the evils in the universe. Thankfully, there's nothing magical or special about her in particular, and (presumably) she isn't going to have to sacrifice herself to stop some cosmic threat. The just took her in when she was orphaned and trained her really well, before the last of their race was obliterated. The cosmic threat is kind of Phazon (and its origin, Phaaze), and also Space Pirates, and also Metroids, but thus far she has handled those in a way that has not required a Christ-like sacrifice, so that's a plus.

That being said, overall, I really don't believe in Nintendo's ability to write anything. Some of their teams (and localizers) have been responsible for well-written games, like Intelligent Systems, makers of Paper Mario, Fire Emblem, and Advance Wars. AlphaDream makes the excellent Mario & Luigi RPG series, which are light on lore, but well written in terms of comedy and just being charming. Retro Studios expanded Metroid's fiction considerably, though now they've been banished to go and make Donkey Kong for a while, a game with literally no spoken dialogue or written text.

Other than those guys, all of Nintendo's internal dev teams within Nintendo EAD (everyone here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nintendo_Entertainment_Analysis_%26_Development) basically couldn't write an interesting story or dialogue to save their lives. Gameplay is solid, sure, but seriously, just try to point out a recent game within that link I provided that has a very original premise, or writing that you would actually call "great". Almost everything post-2000 is pretty poor. I think Pikmin was a novel concept, and Majora's Mask and Wind Waker had cool premises/settings that largely broke from Zelda tradition. Otherwise, every Zelda game is just picking scraps off the carcass of A Link to the Past (Ocarina of Time, Twilight Princess, upcoming A Link Between Worlds on 3DS all do this pretty explicitly; everything else is very reliant on the basic structure, items, and abilities established in either LttP or Ocarina of Time). Zelda's dumb patchwork timeline gets gradually expanded, and I don't get why people are so interested in it; the nods to continuity within each game range from "minor" to "completely imagined-by-players", and the timeline itself isn't really going anywhere meaningful and Ganon is going to be resurrected 8 more times anyways. Who cares. If you think they plan any of the Zelda timeline out ahead of time, then I bet you also think Lost was a rewarding and worthwhile viewing experience that valued the audience's time and expectations.

To their credit, at least the handheld Zeldas sometimes have an original scenario that isn't slavishly trying to be A Link to the Past. This used to be true of Mario Land/Wario Land on handhelds, which both did some fucking weird things, until eventually New Super Mario Bros. came along, and is kinda Super Mario Bros. 3 every time, with a sprinkling of Super Mario World and some occasionally new level ideas or abilities thrown in. I fear that A Link Between Worlds may be the New Super Mario Bros.-ification of the handheld Zelda games, where they loosely remake a classic, instead of doing something weird like Minish Cap or Spirit Tracks.

I pick on Zelda because in all fairness to Nintendo EAD, it's one of their only games that even tries to have a story. Super Mario Sunshine and Galaxy have weird stories, and I guess they work about as well as you would expect for a Nintendo platformer (though are obviously pretty light when compared to Ratchet and Clank, Sly Cooper, most 3rd-person platformers of the PS2 era). Most of Nintendo EAD's games have no story, but they're starting to really neglect the ones that do. Metroid, Star Fox, and F-Zero all have fictional universes, ranging from interesting to wacky, that Nintendo has had no idea what to do with since the 90s, and those series have been farmed out to other developers lately because Nintendo has no idea what to do with them. Star Fox Command (2006) on the DS was the last new Star Fox game, and F-Zero hasn't seen any action since the GBA and Gamecube era. Metroid has been getting more continuous entries, though Nintendo hasn't made one themselves since Super Metroid, and the series skipped the N64 entirely. Maybe Nintendo hates sci-fi? Anyway, consider the neglect of those series, on top of the fact that Nintendo EAD hasn't really created any new setting and characters since Pikmin (I don't count Nintendogs, Wii Sports, Nintendoland, etc.).

Nintendo's internal teams seem to want every game to be a standalone experience (which can be good, as it doesn't alienate new players), given how little continuity there is and how they clearly want each game to be approachable on its own merits. But even within those standalone experiences, I just don't see them ever include writing that is anything but mundane and serviceable, and nowadays they can't even be bothered to come up with a very original premise.