Sheri

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Writer of word both truth and tale. Video producer, editor, artist, still human. Hire me?

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Slowly making a visual novel called We Will Not See Heaven, demo is free. Sometimes I stream, or post adult things. Boys' love novel enthusiast. Take care, yeah?

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i've decided to treat myself to a replay of a childhood favourite of mine, metroid prime. and i wanted to talk about this text prompt.

metroid prime is a first-person shooter nintendo game made by retro studios in the USA, which makes it feel a bit different than most nintendo fair of the time. but they still wanted to maintain ties to what makes metroid feel like metroid. one of those being completionism.

trying to unlock every upgrade, get to 100% completion rate, and do it fast enough to briefly see samus' massive girlcock, that's fun stuff that's "metroid"

the natural progression of that is subdividing the mechanic of completionism into separate first person shooter mechanics. the easier ways of doing that are fighting every type of enemy, making secrets that make use of the limited camera perspective to task the player with creativity

they tied this all together with the scanner. the game wants you to scan everything, to the point where it's on the left bumper to make it easier to do on the go. one facet of metroid prime completion is scanning every enemy type, piece of lore, gameplay mechanism

not literally every object has to be scanned, some existing purely for lore and curiosity. and some objects are required to be scanned to activate machines. there's also optional scans that still help, like disabling turrets. generally, if you see a monitor in metroid prime, you should probably scan it

so if you're going to be constantly scanning things, often stuff you've already scanned without realizing it despite the game only highlighting new information (though this doesn't always work correctly), it should be a satisfying thing, right?

this little popup. the audio cue. the red text telling you what new piece of lore you unlocked. it's so good. it's so satisfying. if you scan something like an enemy for the first time, you get a drumroll of the scanner gathering data, pulling up infographics on the HUD as you dodge back and forth to avoid attacks

then, the game pauses time to let you read.

the jingle plays that lets you know you've gotten one step closer to completion, and then you get to read about how to fight the enemy with time frozen, sometimes you get some fun little facts about it too.

sound familiar?

A screenshot from The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. Young Link is locked onto a giant Peahat, using the fairy Navi to get information. Navi says "Peahat. Its weak point is its roots!

if you were around for this era you probably remember jokes about how annoying navi was, but also praise for how cool metroid prime's scanner is. maybe you had to be a very specific kind of nerd, i dunno

point being, what is the difference between these two mechanics?

navi's character is personified as pushy, a little sarcastic, but overall meaning well. and the vocal cues of "hey" and "listen" can come across as pushy OR well meaning. most people took it as pushy. being dinged at to scan or pause the game is obnoxious

but a scanner is just a scanner. the text has the personality of, presumably, samus' computer on her ship, which is nil. its just interesting facts about plants and animals, and combat strategies. but instead of being prompted to scan enemies, the game lets the passive goal of completionism, which scanning is NOT a component of to ocarina of time, spur the player to scan at their leisure. the less the player cares about completionism, the less they'll use the scanner.

therefor, a player who doesn't care about reading or learning about a game's lore (his mother is very proud) would not be as bothered by metroid's scanner as they would by ocarina's navi

all of this is to say, putting the control into the player's hands rather than prompting them allows an obstacle, scanning during combat, with a known reward, completionism, and the instant gratification. the little beeps, the number going up, the sci-fi visuals

metroid prime understands that reading can be fun if you stop trying to pander to players who couldn't give a shit about your writing. let those players play their way, that's fine. and build your game's lore around the assumption that players who want to find your story, will. and that itself is gameplay


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