Metroid

Artstyle Metroid 3 is so far the pinacle, it's so utterly cool. Like aunoma did with wind waker, someone could do the same with metroid, since a cell-shaded look would really be homeground, metroid 3 got that cartoony look, and a universe sort of like springing from a marvel comics book, but really just surpassing anything else that has to do with superheroes. But that's sort of like what it is, the metroid universe. What's cool with the m3 universe for example--besides the obvious: the look and function of samus suit--is the characters and the distance the creators had to the whole feel of the setting. it's so utterly cool with a green giant dragon, or the bird ridley, thrown in this futuristic sci-fi setting. Anyways, i wouldn't go for that look, not for a first attempt at least, but it would definitely have worked. Im more into the idea of having a pretty realistic look to humans in the game, and make it gritty looking, have a lot of effects on characters like that green giant dragon, with bumpmapping and all of those stuff, but still have a really colorful green, and make it look sort of like your archetype dragon. that would be neat. Gritty, dark, cavernous, a lot of shadows and bloom lightning. It should be more alien and less fantastic4 (i agree with KungfuKitten (gamespot member)). I think that done more like alien it could be really cool since u have all these great things in the metroid universe, with the prehistoric birds and dragons, woven together with space pirates and the metroids themselves in this sci-fi setting. U could say alien, but i guess in a sense the tim burton take on batman is more appropriate to compare with, when doing a more realistic looking metroid game like the one im thinking bout. I thought about what it could include...

Story, Gameplay I want this game to look sort of realistic and have a lot of interesting characters, which means a lot of dialogue, i read in a gamespot review of that half life 2 episode1, that u have this character alyx (or whatever her name is?) that sort of like is with u the whole game, and that's neat of course. That's a game im a bit interested in playing maybe a demo of, and i might do that.... but then u'd need a good computer, which i haven't, so i probably wont play it. Anyways, so a lot of characters in this metroid game idea i have. Story wise, im not sure, i was thinking about maybe a super princess peach thing going on, where u need to rescue an important politician who has been kidnapped by space pirates. So yeah, save an important politician. Why has an important politician been kidnapped by the space pirates? The space pirates who have become this intergalactic plague by mindlessly looting space ships in an environment that is impossible to guard with the long arm of the law: space. Well... it all begins when a lot of space pirate activity has been believed to have been observed and pinpointed to a specific, desolate planet. But while inspecting the planet nothing is found. Advanced equipment that has probed the planet from space instead makes out strange formations under a certain desert area of the planet. Not knowing what it is, cautious measure are taken to inspect the area further, and a small ship with soldiers and scientist land. What is found is a thin, small triangular peak with unreadable inscriptions on it, but they are confirmed as being inscriptions by the chozo race. Anyways, more in-depth analyzes commences, and the whole area is digitally

mapped out, it's most probably a buried, ancient chozo city. The small triangular peak is the peak of a huge obelisk, at the centre of this presumed city. a dig commences, gigantic sand vacuum cleaners are introduced to the site...... At about the same time, at another part of the planet… EXT. - EXOTIC RAINFOREST - DAY A somewhat large, open area in a rainforest. Kinda free from tree vegetation. Three people: two important scientists (or archaeologists) and a security guard, the two scientists talking business. Somewhat important, confidential business, since they're alone out in the wild. Sitting on white chairs in this--what looks like a miniature, lounge area, or exterior tv studio free of walls: a small, white circular plateau with two white chairs. In the background two large, hairy beasts, looking like alien cousins to the gorilla. At a certain point they are starting to behave a bit more strict, which is not noticed by the three humans. The beasts are moving closer to the white plateau, and suddenly they pull out weapons and kill the security guard and scientists. They drag the bodies out into the jungle, dumping them in a hidden shelter. When this is done they lift up their head masks, revealing their true nature, the more humanlike space pirates, looking menacingly and talking to each other in short, harsh bursts in their native, unintelligible language. Samus voice is narrating, as this is part of the montage of scenes intro. In this particular scene she would talk about what the space pirates did to get the scientists and archaeologists to leave the planet without ever knowing that the space pirates inhabited the planet.

a1: digging site, could be likened to a large sand-filled crater a2: starting location for samus. rocky location that is digging sites oval border b: river, natural demarcation between desert and rainforest c: rainforest, filled with rainbow-colored lights that shoot far up in the sky

image 1; probably better representation of what the lights would look like (somewhat tilted view)

Shortly hereafter some scientists find an entrance to the city in a mountain very close to the dig site. an elevator that goes all the way down to the city. Does this mean that it's hidden and not buried? that's what one might think as the whole project gets wiped out of the earth... and space, in a time period of only a few hours, by the space pirates. Then again, there weren't that much military to speak of at the start of this attack, since the whole project had had the time to be reassessed as a work of science / archaeology. A strange note would be the fact that the scientist who were at the dig site estimated that the triangular peak were thousands of years old, that could mean a couple of things. That the space pirates was a syndicate with a rich and long history, or that they infested the old chozo city in recent time. Either way, the site was important for the space pirates as they managed to kidnap important politicians during the assault. And they are demanding a smooth evacuation from the planet in exchange of the politicians life. This is where samus gets in the picture... the site as it is cannot be destroyed, as it is a place of great cultural, scientific value, but as with every important politician working for the federation, they carry / emit a signal that tells their present condition, and as it is, this poor politician has been killed...

So samus together with a group of marines are going to eliminate the space pirates and secure the probable chozo city. Maybe it's just me but i like the idea of an ancient chozo city buried under sand--probably by the space pirates and not time--that has a city plan that is laid out so that u can reach different complexes just by walking to them as in any normal city, but that now, due to the sand, has been modified so that there are these passages that the space pirates have established, that unite the otherwise isolated complexes. So at the start of the game u have obviously landed on the planets surface, and u r going to meet up with some soldiers, maybe 4 or 5 soldiers who r going to aid u throughout the game. Gameplay wise this means that u r going to use a new visor at the start of the game, a visor that connects u with the other soldiers. It's pretty cool, cuz u have this new visor and it sort of like pops up on ure visor at a certain point in the game (beginning of the game that is) and the visor reads some data message like, "uplink new data entries" or whatever, and u get these 5 video displays, since the soldiers have cameras on their bodyarmor. At a first glance it might look like they're dead, cuz they r all lying down, and u see their bodies through the cameras, which means they're lying close to each other. But the data read out shows they r alive, so they r probably sleeping. But the fifth camera is showing black and white flicker, and the data read out can't tell if the person is alive, so samus--or u the player--get a little bit worried. Walking towards the sleeping soldiers and she stumbles upon the fifth member, who was just adjusting some things on his/her bodyarmor... that was the reason why the data read out couldn't tell if the person was dead or alive. They walk over to the camp and meet up with the other team members. They get moving. Basic surprise moment, there's like a cinematic feel to it EXT. - GREEN ALIEN MOUNTAIN LANDSCAPE - DUSK (?) View of crew from the side, at a distance as they walk in line down a narrow mountain ridge path. CAMERA ON little, transparent blob further along the path, where the path takes a turn. Another view of crew from the side, now also showing what could be described as the continuation of the blob, which is a long thin, transparent pod that at the bottom connects with a transparent, organic pup. CAMERA ON one of the crew members as he suddenly takes notice of the blob, squints at it for a few seconds, and then decides to fire a few shots at it just for... practice? fun? uncertainty, and a scared reaction to the unknown? Anyways the player/viewer understands that this probably wont have that a good consequence for the crew members, and rightly so, as a winged creature that was inside the pup ascends and start to wreck havoc... this is where the player can take up the controls for samus. So u have a first action sequence in the game, and ure shooting at some kind of transparent winged predator, it's not something samus has ever seen before and it doesn't look like a space pirate foe, she shares this information with the crew members after the encounter and the player will also see some scenes that depicts what goes on in samus mind at that instant, not flashbacks, but sort of like introspective scenes, or whatever. anyways these very short scenes, or scene, will tell the

player that samus thinks this winged foe shared similarities with an old friend of hers, the metroids, or, the chozos peculiar guarding dogs, to put it another way. They company continue their march towards the entrance they're going to breach. Samus notices an almost hidden rune inscription on mountain wall. Introspective scene tells player that this rune means that the chozo has an important look-out/guarding place in the precinct. She strays from the group to look further at the rune. the player will find what the rune marked. A small opening to the mountain... INT. - MOUNTAIN - GRITTY, DAMP, NARROW PASSAGE The walls are black. Samus gropes her way through the passage. She enters a small round opening. What she finds in this space is probably chozo, a large gelatinous mass of a body, without anything to really fix ones eyes on. Like a jabba the hutt without head, without arms, that's transparent, and where u can see some kind of inner organs. A cool player within enters

thing is, that since it's cinematic at this point, the will not see this being from samus view first but from the transparent being, camera angle at samus who the opening.

Anyways, this being strikes samus as very peculiar. And the outer layer of this gelatinous mass looks somewhat "weather beaten", as if it's very old. As she's gazing it another being emerges from the shadows of this small confine... a woman. What is a human being doing here of all places in the universe? And even more absurd, the woman is an old friend of samus. Turns out she's only a sort of figment of samus imagination, and serves as a mediator between the being and samus, which can't communicate with samus in any other way. Samus finds out that this being is the caretaker over the protective system that the chozo have established. So it controls metroids that are inside the mountain, but it hasn't 100% control. The metroids have some inherent attributes of themselves, such as defending themselves from anything that threatens their existence. (Explains why the winged creature attacked them.) The metroids will replenish the health of the team members if they are injured and not hostile towards them. I think that's a kind of cool take on the whole health bar thing. Ure inside the mountain with ure crew fighting space pirates, and there's this critical moment after a fight where ure crew members are very week, injured, and u locate these metroids all of a sudden, who hovers over ure members and attaches themselves on their heads and start to replenish their health, i just think that would look pretty cool. I think that the metroids here in this game shouldn't look that harmful, or like those head snatchers in the alien movies, but more like like kind hovering jellyfish. And not act harmful towards the team. Like the metroid in the introductionary scene of m3. How do u make them look kind then? well, not having that much detail to the tentacles or arms or whatever it is they have underneath the jelly area. And have a shimmering light to them. More spielberg less ridley scott i guess.... anyways…

Other things this large gelatinous mass reveals is that the chozo people were present at the "sand city", at the time of the attack. The city wasn't completely deserted when the space pirates found it, but they buried it under sand, and turned it into this ultimate hiding place. The being is almost cetain the chozo people from the sand city are no more, they wouldn’t have been able to stand their own for that long. The space pirates only see the metroids as troublesome fauna to the location, which the being points at as being a failure for what it has set out to accomplice: namely taking care of any threat the city faces. Samus asks if there's any point in securing the city, other than cultural. If there's any scientific or technological benefits from securing the city. To which the being answers that there are, at least some. But the most damaging outcome would be that the space pirates as a syndicate would have know-how in things no one else had any knowledge of. And also, the metroids value as an energy source should not be underestimated...

image 2; badly drawn sketch (should be more detail to the texture surface of the being.. to everthing i guess, but then again: it's just a simple sketch, but the most lacking area is the being): the being resides in a small alcove in the mountain room

Or whatever... lol, it's always difficult to come up with these overarching story points that anyways don't really have any real purpose, as far as gameplay and in-game story goes (with all the characters and such). Anyways... there's this platform that they need to get up on, they r standing on this desolate planets cavernous surface. The platform protrudes from the opening of a cavern that is in the middle of a very large rock, so they can't reach the platform by other means than a ship... and we find ourselves in a grapple-beam sequence. This scene would normally be a puzzle in an adventure game, but since i more see this whole game as a storydriven action game, this wouldn't be a puzzle, ud actually have a conversation between samus and crew about how to get up on the platform on the mountain. And there would be debris from a spaceship or something, lying on the ground. and samus tells the crew members that she has a grapple beam with which she can transport them up to the platform. And from where they afterwards could try and figure out a way to get her up on the platform. So she tells them to hold on to a large piece of the debris, so that they wouldn't get an electrical shock "when being under the grapple beams command". And after that conversation, the player knows what to do, and it becomes this interactive sequence. This building, that's inside a large rock, is situated, in context of the above mentioned storyarch, on the same mountain that houses the elevator shaft, but since samus and the federation doesn't know where exactly on the mountain that specific opening is, they have split up in groups of 4 or 5. So samus is actually in a group that gets in one of the wrong openings. The game area is restricted to this entrance in the beginning of the game. Doesn't maybe sound that free-roaming, but metroid 3 was never that open-ended either, it was a vast game world, but u couldn't go anywhere u wanted from the outset of the game. I picture the space pirates to be these big, bipedal alien / predator looking species. In metroid 3 they have like the crab claws as well. I don't know, but anyways i see these very big creatures, like maybe 1,5 or 2 times an average human being. So their cavern complex is of course designed as a place for creatures 1,5 or 2 times larger than humans. So like if there r these dashboards they're placed just out of reach for samus and her companions, things like that.

Samus Unarmed Samus can morph into this ball that's a fifth of the mass she is in human form--or something like that--it's cool, but when in 3d and when story is a bit more important, why not also add the ability for her right arm to morph into a regular human arm. And when she's in this state--this normal state--the player could point and click at things as in a regular 1p adventure game... not that there are that many i guess, but that type of gameplay would suite the game, i mean, it would be weird if u had the same kind of "shooter control" over samus right arm when it wasn't a cannon anymore. …by the way... it must be strange for a left handed person to play metroid, considering samus cannon arm is her right arm…

Enemies The enemies are as follows: the mother brain; the big bosses, such as ridley; the big predator looking space pirates; the more human like space pirates, who are more clever than the larger predator space pirates, but also more fragile; the large bugs and insects (not as frequent and as deadly as in metroid3); and last but not least: the tiny human like space pirates.

image 3; crude sketch of what the big predator looking space pirate could look like

The Ball And The Tiny Helper Now how does the tiny space pirates fit into the game? Well... samus morph ball has three uses: When she is in this mode she is less vulnerable to attacks and hazardous environments, but on the other hand, only have some pretty weak morph ball bombs; When the team, or samus by herself, has gotten to a dead-end, samus might be able to find a solution to trespassing the dead-end by using her morph ball;

Some environments, such as those inhabited by the tiny pirates are only accessible to samus when in morph ball state, this is pretty cool, because samus suddenly finds herself inside these somewhat tiny aisles and passages when she's this ball, and compared to the surroundings the ball looks large since these tiny space pirates--while not tiny as in dolls house tiny--still are pretty small (half / third the size of a midget maybe). A pretty obvious addition, although pretty funny as well; funny as in bizarre, situational comedy, is the tiny helper, that resides in a simple shoulder bag of cloth. The helper is seen from head down to chest. And will help samus when infiltrating the tiny space pirates hives. So, somewhat like the morphball puzzles maybe, but with more.. story and characters and conflict? The shoulder bag is carried by one of the marines. Here's an example of why it would be funny with the tiny helper, as in situational comedy. A little alien, bipedal humanoid caracter who resides in a simple cloth shoulder bag. Ok, so if we take the first cinematic scene where the camera shows the crew from the side as they walk a narrow mountain path. What if there were another creature lurking above the crew? The camera would show the creature as it prepared to jump one of the members. Since it was a cinematic sequence the player would feel helpless. And then u have the fun part. A small shout, before the player locates where the voice came from a blast nocks down the creature. The blast came from the guy who carried tiny helper, but it was a small blast and he did not notice the creature. But the tiny helper did. But tiny helper was not visible in view at the time of the blast, and the player didn't have time to think about what the tiny helper did at the time; since everything happened at a seconds notice.

The Grapple use grapple beam to... •

get ure squad soldiers up on different plateaus, they will then help u up

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to stack together boxes and get up on previously unreachable plateaus (has this been done in half life 2 with the gravity gun? i don't know, gasp!)

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to smash obstacles into thin walls and the likes (this has been done already in "my" game subterrania... aww) and get through to the other side!

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to swing like tarzan (as in all the previous metroid games wiiii... wii?)

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use grapple beam together with squad members laser guns (which can't be used like a grapple tool, but which can be used to channel a continuous stream / beam of laser) à la ghostbusters channelling system, in this case they could use the channelling to defeat big bosses maybe, but also to establish energy walls to protect the group from... hazardous environments? lava? shield off swarms of bugs? and the likes...

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and of course, use the grapple beam as it's used in the mp3 demo.

Controls Accelerometer, or d-pad, or z buttons, or a conjunction of any of the mentioned=movement Analogue stick=mouselook Remote=aim (just as in the e3 demo) The difference in aim and mouselook is that the first is the actual control of the reticule and samus right arm (e3 demo), while the mouselook is control of where samus is looking (just like halo right analog stick) Another important difference with the two that is obvious, but that none the less needs to be mentioned, is that the mouselook also serves as movement in that u turn right and left when u "look" to the right or "look" to the left. This is how it works in halo and other console fps games as well, and it's a bit awkward maybe, then again, it's awkward in the e3 demo that u start to turn when u get ure cannon arm to the right or left of the screen as well.

Boss Fights At some critical situations, like take the balrog sequence for example, the game would switch to a third person view. This would of course be very disadvantageous for the player, who now finds him/herself at a critical instance in the game, not having any access to samus visors whatsoever. Yeah, and that's just the way it is... anyways, so if we take the balrog sequence, ud be tumbling down this shaft with ridly behind u. up until u get thrown down the shaft it's 1p, when the in-game cinematic with samus on top of ridley begins, the actual gameplay begins as well, so these scenes, these 3p view scenes, play out a lot like zelda, that is, similar controls. Just that u don't have any control of the camera, but that's also the point, a little: to make these brief instances cinematic... the control for the arm-cannon works just like it does in 1p. it wouldn't be a difficult transition for the player, when u wave the remote to the left of the tv, samus waves the arm-cannon to the left as well, sure, ud see it from 3p, but it wouldn't be that much to adjust to. I can write about the control scheme for samus.. it would be mapped in an appropriate way for the setting.. meaning, since samus is at this tight spot, on top of ridley, she wouldn't move much at all when the player moved the analogue stick, and she would be somewhat crouched all the time, when being atop of ridley. The balrog sequence was an example of how it could work, but u got that, i hope. so no, it's not something that ive thought about having in the game... though it would be neat to have a ridley scene like that :-)) I also want that green boss that's in metroid 3, but with a twist, ohh!!, the boss would be blind maybe, but it would sense where u were placed, unless u were placed on un-organic spots in the boss room, such as metal and things like that, and of course, if u jumped.

The Million Dollar Question So what is the rainbow lights? Well.. they could of course just be something pretty to look at, but im considering using them as some kind of elevator. Works in this fashion: someone steps into one of these lights and said someone hovers for a short while inside this light area and then suddenly gets transported in a rapid tempo down below to the underground. And the underground area is a network of tunnels that leads to the other lights—that—and barren, small underground, cave rooms. When stepping into one of these lights from underground, the same procedure occurs as above ground, said person starts to hover a bit above ground and then gets transported up, above ground. On a sidenote, the two space pirates use a light elevator when they escape in the opening sequence after killing the scientists and the guard. This to make it imposible for satelites in space to discern where they went after the killing. They are also covered by trees and vegetation when stripping their outfitts, so that the satelites can't discern the transition. so it's a smooth covert operation.