Solid post! I'll just say though, that the thread doesn't have to be obnoxious. We can use it to talk about what we love!
even hollow knight seems to have a ceiling, it only sold 3 million, the same as dread. It felt like online it sold way more
It's a bummer to hear about the effect first-person games have on you. I know some folks get motion sickness from the perspective as well, so it's a shame about it being a wholly inaccessible game type for some. That said, I don't think this is really in line with the question the thread is asking, since the GameCube release of Metroid Prime is still among the best-selling games in the series. I don't think abandoning the perspective is likely to lead to the series "breaking new ground", since there are still other, more prominent factors at play that've been posted.
I dunno, the genre still seems to be growing, albeit slowly, considering where it was back in like the GBA/DS era of selling a couple hundred thousand units at best. Structurally Souls, the recent Jedi games, and even the RE2 & RE4 remakes are all varying degrees of Metroidvania-ish, so I don't think the design is entirely unappealing commercially considering how much those games have sold, but you need the right presentation up front to get people on board. Given that all of those games happen to be 3rd person, so I'm going to fall back to that as far as where this series needs to go to sell more.
That 3 million number is from 2019, and very early on in it's life as far as when it really started blowing up. We've never had an update since. The game has been perched as a top seller on digital platforms ever since, and remains a streaming favorite, so I would definitely expect that it's sold far more than that by now. Maybe we'll get an update once Silksong is ready.
Going first-person is a big part of its popularity - Prime 1 was the best selling game in the series for nearly 20 years, and is seen as its SM64 or OoT. And Dread, on Switch, didn't even beat that Gamecube game by that much. Prime 4 is probably gonna do some impressive (for Metroid) numbers as well.
I question whether that's true. I can understand the argument based on parallels like 2D Marios having a higher ceiling than 3D Marios given their extreme accessibility and ground-level simplicity.
Hollow Knight is actually above 3 million by now. It hit 2.8 million in February of 2019, so it's probably close to if not above 4 million by now.
The Resident Evil 2 devs have said that the remake is a Metroidvania, and that game sold 12.6 million copies. The Souls games also have very similar level design. I get it's not ability gated exploration and you usually don't have to memorize stuff, but that's also true for parts of other Metroidvanias.
I'm a superfan who owns a bunch of series merch, and even I probably wouldn't buy a Mother Brain plush. I'm beyond uncomfortable with welcoming this level of ratchet into my home:
This is me.
10/10, would saveThese are all so cute! Check out this Etecoon too:
Which is why everyone liked Other M so much
Regardless of the difference in approach between 2D and Prime, I do really like the fact that her big heart is so emphasized across both. One of my favorite Samus moments is the ending to Echoes, with her having just selflessly saved a whole civilization during the period her ship spent repairing itself, before walking off with a "No need to thank me" wave. Just another ordinary day for Samus.
This is the sad truth. Never thought I’d be interested in the series until one day on a whim I bought and played Super Metroid, really can’t even remember why, and the rest is history. Favorite franchise of all time. I wish everyone could go through the same thing, there’s sure to be others out there like me.
I think there's an argument to be made that Metroid leans more "sci-fantasy" in a similar way that Star Wars does, rather than just being pure sci-fi.
And this, too.
As an isolated scene its awesome, taken as a whole it is a bit indicative of the different storyline choice of Tanabe's team vs Sakamoto's. The mercenary and the superhero.
Yeah she’s honestly had some great rivals. Dark Samus and Raven Beak in particular were executed very well in terms of the presence they conveyed every time they were on screen.
When I was younger, I used to always imagine the rivalries and fights between Samus and all the other bounty hunters.
I ... really don't take it that way, wow. I take it pretty much exactly the opposite. Metroid Dread literally had Samus doing anime poses and screams during cutscenes. I feel like pretty much from Fusion onward, while the series has focused on the oppressiveness a lot with the SA-X or EMMIs, it's also focused on making Samus seem like a big badass. You literally had stuff like the ending sequence of Zero Mission, which is probably the most empowering moment in the entire franchise. And Dread's sequence comes very close as well. Whereas in the Prime games even with how powerful she is and the fact that she's the lone helper (which is also true of the 2D games, and she even has a team in Prime 3), how badass Samus is is often interpretive due to the perspective. You even have cutscenes like Samus mourning her friends. She even needs a group of people to help her initially in Prime 3.
Yep.
But Samus is blowing up those planets out of necessity! Sometimes, a superhero's just gotta blow up a planet for the good of the galaxy, y'know? The only one that was a conscious choice on her part was SR388, and anyone in her position would've done the same thing.
Superhero vs mercenary doesn't exclude the need for badass posing.
