The point is that while Samus is the powerful hero she's still for the most part a regular human. She has to fight to survive and usually just barely makes it out alive, yet keeps plunging back in because she's the only one who can or the only one willing. The other hunters clearly aren't humans and they have these magical powers that give them an edge in a lot of situations.
And the hunters still died in the end.
The regular grunt humans were dying left and right in the opening and ending sequence of the game.
In the end the other Hunters are only there as boss fights.
And making Samus more powerful than regular characters isn't the same as saying that she's "the one," the super important person holding the whole universe together. The chozo were the most advanced species around and Samus benefits from being the last living user of their technology. Samus Returns even hinted that a corrupted version of them might still be around, and that could easily pose a huge threat to her in future games. The fact that she's more capable than other humans doesn't have to make her an invincible savior more powerful than anyone else in the universe.
And thank god for that.
Although I would be more than thankful if they droped the whole Samus goes rogue and bad chozos try to take over the universe because that's beyond cliché and we all see that coming.
I don't really care if what happened in Other M was the focus of the game or not, my point is that if you're going to bring other human characters into the story then it has the potential to really change the tone of the game, since Metroid is usually about isolation and Samus on her own against tall odds. Corruption handled it in a way that turned the game into a cartoon, and for all the mistakes Other M made, it at least had the anxious/sinister tone to it.
The other NPCs didn't seem in any kind of danger outside of the "deleter", they survived quite well and there is literally no tension till around we get that horrible midsized Ridley boss fight.
No one was in any kind of danger and the game's story made it quite clear that the stake were low when you have a small squad dealing with that and the only danger they face is a traitor in their rank.
Corruption didn't turn into a cartoon, it established new characters and sent them off.
If the 2 lines and 3 cutscenes they feature in to give them personality is a cartoon, Zero Mission is that Sonic slapstick cartoon.
That cartoon style never really manifested itself in any of the actual games, though. The concept art started in a goofier place, but I think it's pretty clear that the games themselves quickly went darker and more realistic, and I consider the look of these enemies in-game to be a lot better than the concept art.
I don't really agree,
Metroid I has some really weird 80's designs.
Metroid II on the other hand have some really good designs ingame and outside
They're actually very close to what you see ingame and rather representative of the game.
Super Metroid is the first game in the series technically mature enough to really have a defined art style to judge, and it's much more like an Alien movie than the early concept art. There's nothing cute about any of it, expect maybe the etecoons:
Not really
Super Metroid is basically using a more refined style but it's rather similar
It's just that pixel art of around the SNES generally age fairly well and are really good at sparking the imagination.
I choose the small criters because they usually have way less work dedicated to them and shows that regardless a ton of work went into them.
I don't think there's any big creature design that is outright bad in Metroid II/Metroid III/Metroid IV/Prime 1/Prime 2/Prime 3.
I tend to prefer the ones in the Prime games as the artists really shined
Heck in the gallery you can even see some cut contents like the original last boss of Prime 2
https://www./proxy.php?image=http%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FlFcgj.jpg&hash=2f2c5ab196b9c52e03dfd499218940a7
We've gotten way sidetracked, so to try to get back on point, I think everyone should be able to agree that Retro was much better at handling environments and traditional Metroid gameplay than human characters and dialog. Which is why I want Prime 4 to stay away from those things, even if another developer is doing the job. There's almost a direct correlation between the amount of interaction with NPCs and the quality of the games, and Corruption's hunters and troopers were one of the weakest parts of an otherwise really fantastic Metroid game.
Hey don't get me wrong, Humans weren't Retro's forte and I'm not gonna defend that part of the Prime game.
I guess that's why we saw so little humans in the 1st 2 Prime games (and they were better for it).
I don't NPCs as long as they're bosses, otherwises Prime 2 had the right balance :
1 guy and cadavers everywhere.