@oskar_det said:1) Samus takes orders from Adam and want to show him she can follow them. OK, so what's wrong with that? Just because you're super strong means you can't take orders? Or was the problem that the orders came from a man? Do I smell a bit of feminism here? Samus wanted to prove herself for a character she saw as a father figure - I don't see anything wrong with that. It's not like she didn't prove herself in combat throughout the game.Now, you assert here that the 'smell' of feminism might be an inherently bad thing. Ask yourself this: how many female video game protagonists are there that aren't merely reduced to being titilating sex symbols? Answer: not many. Taking one of the only tough and independent female characters and making her subordinate to another character undermines one of the things that makes that character cool. It has nothing to do with the gender of the person giving her orders and everything to do with who she is. You wouldn't accept it if someone made another Die Hard and in it John McClain suddenly towed the line, so why do you accept it here?
@oskar_det said:2) Her butt was too big, making it look fat. As ridicolous as that sounds, this has been a serious complaint from people. Compared to Smash Bros. Brawl, Samus's butt was indeed very big in Other M - and if a woman with Samus's otherwise slim body has a butt that big, it has quite a bit of excess fat on it, yes. But you know what? That's how real women look like. Real women's butts are big and a little fat. Real women don't look like Samus did in Brawl - big boobs and boy hips with a wasp waist.
Wait, what was I saying about sex symbols? I know you're not personally saying she should be more physically attractive, but the simple fact that we're even discussing her arse just shows the problem the games industry still has with portraying female characters.
@oskar_det said:3) She was way too sensitive and... SHE WAS CRYING FROM FEAR WHEN SHE MET RIDLEY!!! Good Lord. This can't be good. Samus crying? I thought she was a cold robot without emotions... how the hell can she cry from fear? Irony aside, people complained that Samus had met Ridley many times in the past and never cried - guess what - Other M is the first game to focus on her character and feelings. If you met a monster ten times your size who killed your parents in cold blood, you'de be scared to death. Do video game characters have to be "Oh, I'm so though and I can never lose and I have a lot of cheesy, American one liners when I speak"? What's wrong with showing weakness and emotion?I'm not against developing a character, unfortunately Other M did it very poorly. It's not 'developing' anything to have a character act completely different around an antagonist they have met (and defeated) several times before. If Wolverine in a moment of weakness burst into tears while fighting Magneto that wouldn't be cool - it would fucking suck. Same applies here. Samus probably is scared when she fights Ridley however being scared does not mean one instantly loses control of oneself and for her it normally means it's time to get the whompin' stick out and kick some pterodactyl arse. Ultimately you seem to be labouring under the delusion that Samus Aran represents the gaming industry's infatuation with hard-ass space marines when in fact she's actually one of the few shining examples of doing something different. Rather than yet another piggish alpha male she represents a proud symbol of feminine power. Okay, she's not that feminine and yes, she embodies a lot of masculine traits, but you'd tough as nails too if you'd been through what she had. She's still more or less a one-off in an industry that is stuck in a time period when they catered almost purely to the mastabatory whims of pubescent teenagers. Samus is a woman who gets shit done and doesn't need to get her boobs out while she's doing it. She was a hard-ass before being a hard-ass was cool and certainly before any other women in games. She's an institution and she doesn't need some schmuck with a poor idea of what constitutes character development ham-fistedly cramming adolescent concepts of what femininity is (crying, writing diaries, deferring to men) into her games. Make her more feminine if you know what that actually means, make her more of a woman if it makes sense for the character. But don't turn her into a little girl because you're not sure how women actually act.
1) What? There are lots of great females in videogames, and Samus is one of them. If you show a woman in game who's got tits and ass - and that's what most real women have - you automatically "sexualize" this female character. Either you have to make her look like a man (Alyx from Half-Life) or completely flat (that chick from Mirror's Edge). I think the problem is, just showing a woman with curves in game makes her a "sex object". Of course, I don't think so perspnally.
2) It's not a problem of the industry, it's a problem of the consumers. As soon as you show someone like Samus in Other M (tight suit, slightly larger than avarage boobs and a slightly fat ass) some people automatically turn her into a sex object. She doesn't behave like a sex object, but that doesn't matter.
Many women think Link from the Zelda series is very sexy. Why do we never hear any complaints that Link is a sex object for the ladies? People who complain that female characters are "too sexy"... what the heck is their problem anyway?
Personally, I think Rebecca from Resident Evil is very sexy, but does that make her a sex object? Of course not.
3) No earlier games in Metroid have focused on emotion and her personality. She might have cried in the original Metroid and Super Metroid when she met Ridley, she might have pooped herself when ridley attacked her in Zero Mission. Point is - WE DON'T KNOW. The only thing we know is that she became really scared in the game where she finally let her personality out. There was no personality in earlier Metroid games, maybe a small exception for Fusion, and that game is last in the timeline.
It seems that you have developed your own image of Samus, possibly with the "help" from all other kick ass characters in videogames. "Don't take shit from anyone", "Talk back" and "unbeatable". I love Samus in Other M because she's both strong and weak, she can defeat countless of enemies on her own, but she still has weaknesses in herself. She's so determined to prove to Adam (who's a characters who means a lot for her) that she'll follow whatever he says that she takes heat damage. THAT is strong in my opinion. To be so determined that you take damage and suffer just because you want to prove yourself. She wants to prove herself both to Adam AND to herself.
I can agree that some of the voice acting is not the best, but the story in Other M really moved me a great deal. It was very touching.
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