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Nintendo talks Metroid: Other M reception, quality of voice acting, possibility of future collaborations

by rawmeatcowboy
22 February 2011
GN Version 3.1

A portion of a ShineSparkers interview with Nate Bihldorff, localisation manager for Nintendo Treehouse…

SS: For the first time in Metroid history, Samus Aran was given a voice in the form of the actress Jessica Martin. After working with her closely, what are your opinions of her? Do you think she did a great job as the leading role and do you feel she has a future as Samus in any future games?

NB: Jessica did a fantastic job with an extremely difficult role, and I would love to work with her again should the opportunity arise. Not only was she working under the mighty expectations of a huge and passionate fan base, but she had a room full of directors. Mr. Sakamoto’s vision for the character called for a very detached delivery for much of the voice over, but also required passion and pain as the story progressed. Jessica handled long sessions without flinching, and her voice quality never stuttered.

SS: Metroid Other M saw a historic collaboration between Nintendo, Team Ninja and D- Rockets to bring together some great talent. Do you think Project M did a good job and do you see similar efforts happening in the future for Nintendo?

NB: Oh, absolutely, I think Project M did a great job. The game couldn’t have been made by any one of the individual companies, in my mind—from the incredible cinematics of D- Rockets to the action-packed fighting of Team Ninja to the unique Metroid level design of Nintendo, this really was a collaboration in the truest sense of the word. I can’t speak to what the future holds, but I’d certainly love to see similar efforts going forward.

SS: Metroid Other M has provoked some controversial comments. Some fans feel it didn’t meet the high expectations that they held for it and have complained about poor writing, voice acting, dropped sub plots and other various aspects. In your own personal opinion, what are your feelings on these comments?

NB: This is a touchy subject, to be sure. Bear in mind, we’re dealing with a beloved series that’s almost 25 years old, and since Metroid has traditionally been extremely light on exposition, fans have filled in a lot of the blanks with their own imaginations. Samus’ story—her voice, her motivations, everything about her—has largely been a matter of individual perception, especially in the US, where people haven’t read any of the official manga related to her childhood. Mr. Sakamoto is the only one who knows who she really is, and his vision for her and her voice was always going to be different than the character people had built in their heads.

I’ve seen the same comments you have, and while I understand where they come from, I definitely don’t agree with most of them. For me, Samus’s detached monologue speaks to the reticence of a wounded character, one scarred by the tragic events of her childhood. The glimpse of the pain and fear she carries—shown in the flashback scene when she sees Ridley—is not a sign of weakness, but of strength. People who call out that scene as anything but empowering are kind of missing the point, in my opinion—she does end up torching Ridley, after all. There is no courage without fear, in my mind, and knowing that Samus overcomes that repressed terror makes her all the more heroic than someone who plods forward without a hint of humanity.

I do think that Samus’s reliance on Adam’s commands is an important part of her canon as we see later in Metroid Fusion, Samus hates taking orders, and that problem with authority can be traced directly back to the events on the Bottle Ship in Metroid Other M. Obviously her relationship with Adam was complicated, and her confusion about his role in her life led her to put up with a command structure that she ordinarily would have scoffed at. Make no mistake, though—the events of Metroid Other M change her.

Full interview here