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Wii

Metroid: Other M to Use Dual-Layer Disc

by Pedro Hernandez - August 24, 2010, 4:57 am EDT
Total comments: 34 Source: (Iwata Asks), http://www.nintendo.co.jp/wii/interview/r3oj/vol2/...

In addition, Team Ninja confirms that the game lacks Samus's Gravity Suit.

In a segment of Iwata Asks, members of Team Ninja stated that Metroid: Other M will come on a dual-layer DVD disc in order to hold the game's cutscenes and additional content. At times the cutscenes were shaved off in length by seconds to fit them all on the disc.

The development team also confirmed that Samus's Gravity Suit will not be in the final version of the game, instead replaced by a purple aura. A major suit upgrade seen in previous Metroid titles, Team Ninja expressed that series creator Yoshio Sakamoto felt that the suit's coloring made it look weird during certain serious scenes near the end of the game. He requested for the team to include a different indication that the player has obtained the gravity-related upgrade.

Talkback

broodwarsAugust 24, 2010

Isn't it a tad bit late for Team Ninja to be saying that that Gravity suit may not be in the final version?  :confused;  They had to have sent their final build to Nintendo for manufacturing about a month ago.

SundoulosAugust 24, 2010

Yeah...other information I've read or seen seems to indicate that if anything, the gravity suit isn't a new suit at all.  Samus is just covered with a purple outline indicating that the power is on or something similar.  http://metroid.wikia.com/wiki/Gravity_Suit  (See Other M pic at the bottom of the page.)

TansunnAugust 24, 2010

It wouldn't surprise me if the lack of gravity suit is related to the amount of cutscenes in the game.  Having a purple aura blink out for a moment when it switches from gameplay to a cutscene is a lot less jarring than a purple suit suddenly becoming yellow, and since they're already cutting seconds off of the cutscenes they have, there's no room to include scenes rendered with both varia and gravity suits.  (Assuming you can trigger certain cutscenes with or without the gravity suit, of course.)


This is assuming the cutscenes are pre-rendered, but they'd have to be to take up that much space.  It would be a ridiculously long game if the cutscenes were all done within the game engine and the audio for them took up a full dual-layer disc.

Luigi DudeAugust 24, 2010

This shouldn't be that surprising, Team Ninja is well known for hardly compressing anything.  I remember reading about how for the last Dead or Alive game for the 360 the FMV cutscenes took up most of the data on the disc because non of them were compressed at all and so they took up a huge amount of space for something so little.

I imagine Team Ninja did the same thing again with this game where a small amount of FMV's are taking up several gigs of memory because they didn't bother to compress anything.

Probably.  Nintendo usually uses a variant of MJPEG, which yields overly gigantic files.

Mop it upAugust 24, 2010

Does that make this the first Wii game to use every bit of data on the disc?

BeautifulShyAugust 24, 2010

This wasn't the first Dual layer Wii game.

I think Scarface and Brawl before it was the first 2 games to use dual layer disks.

Mop it upAugust 24, 2010

I know that, but those games didn't use all of that available 8.5GB of space. SSBBrawl was 7.1GB if I remember rightly. There's also the Metroid Prime Trilogy but I don't think it's maxed out either since the three games separately don't add up to 8.5GB.

StratosAugust 24, 2010

Quote from: Mop

I know that, but those games didn't use all of that available 8.5GB of space. SSBBrawl was 7.1GB if I remember rightly. There's also the Metroid Prime Trilogy but I don't think it's maxed out either since the three games separately don't add up to 8.5GB.

Considering two of those games are Gamecube games it's not surprising that the Trilogy didn't max out.

I am sad that things were cut from Brawl and there was still nearly a gig and a half of space on the disc.

Mop it upAugust 24, 2010

Some of the SSBBrawl stuff makes no sense to me. There is some unused music on the disc that isn't accessible, it was found through hacking and is now on places like YouTube. From the sound of it, the tunes were finished and put on the disc, so why go through the work if they can't be heard?

It's more work to delete files than just the references to files.

Mop it upAugust 24, 2010

But why do so in the first place if they are finished? Or did they intend to work on them some more?

Actually, the files you are talking about were not left on the disc... somebody put together a "lost tracks" album to fill in the missing tracks that were referenced, but we don't know what happened to the originals, if they were ever done.

AVAugust 25, 2010

How big was Metroid Prime Trilogy?


Two Gamecube games is about 3 gigs, and whatever the size Prime 3 itself was. I know they cleaned up the graphics so it makes sense that the game is near max capacity just in the quantity of data.

TJ SpykeAugust 25, 2010

I don't think the two GameCube Metroids add up to 3GB. GameCube discs maxed out at about 1.5GB, and I don't know if either Metroid game reached that limit.

MoronSonOfBoronGarnet Red, Contributing WriterAugust 25, 2010

Obligatory joke about Team Ninja, gravity, and breasts.

Hopefully this will be a meaty single-player experience and not just cinematics-padding. Excited as we all are for the story... Come to think of it, is this a modern 20-hour adventure or a classic 3-hour rush? Fusion had excellent narrative pacing and substance for its short session times.

Ian SaneAugust 25, 2010

Quote:

Come to think of it, is this a modern 20-hour adventure or a classic 3-hour rush?


Both.  3 hours of gameplay, 17 hours of cutscenes.  The Metal Gear Solid 4 approach. ;)

Quote from: MoronSonOfBoron

Obligatory joke about Team Ninja, gravity, and breasts.

It's actually looking like Nintendo made Team Ninja reign in Samus' cup size.

CalibanAugust 25, 2010

Quote from: Ian

Quote:

Come to think of it, is this a modern 20-hour adventure or a classic 3-hour rush?


Both.  3 hours of gameplay, 17 hours of cutscenes.  The Metal Gear Solid 4 approach. ;)

Just curious, did you end up playing MGS4 because you have a PS3?

Mop it upAugust 25, 2010

Quote from: Mr.

How big was Metroid Prime Trilogy?

7.4GB

Ian SaneAugust 25, 2010

Quote:

Just curious, did you end up playing MGS4 because you have a PS3?


Yes.  It's a great game frequently interupted by movies, some of which are very entertaining and some of which are agonizingly boring and stupid.  It's like both an example of how to incorporate cinematics into games and how NOT to.

balzzzyAugust 25, 2010

While its nice to see the game take full advantage of the Wii disc storage capacity I would like to see a game take advantage with more gameplay, levels, characters, plot development and exploration incorporated into it than uncompressed movie files.

Gone are the days of the double, triple and quadruple disc games that were packed with so much of everything you were getting a 60+ hour game. Final Fantasy anyone? While I know that the storage mediums have come a long way since then, I have to wonder why Wii game developers as a whole do not utilize what they have been given in capacity to produce something that is quality.

Where does the bulk of time, money and resources go in the 2 to 6 year variable span of time when an ok, sub par or sometimes heap of crap game gets produced?

I think Nintendo should continue the trend of working with other development teams. I would say some of their really great and memorable games have been produced when collaborating with others.

Thoughts? Am I off?

GoldenPhoenixAugust 27, 2010

Quote from: balzzzy

While its nice to see the game take full advantage of the Wii disc storage capacity I would like to see a game take advantage with more gameplay, levels, characters, plot development and exploration incorporated into it than uncompressed movie files.

Gone are the days of the double, triple and quadruple disc games that were packed with so much of everything you were getting a 60+ hour game. Final Fantasy anyone? While I know that the storage mediums have come a long way since then, I have to wonder why Wii game developers as a whole do not utilize what they have been given in capacity to produce something that is quality.

Where does the bulk of time, money and resources go in the 2 to 6 year variable span of time when an ok, sub par or sometimes heap of crap game gets produced?

I think Nintendo should continue the trend of working with other development teams. I would say some of their really great and memorable games have been produced when collaborating with others.

Thoughts? Am I off?

The amount of storage space a game takes up has little do with the quality of gameplay. Chances are that without the movies the game would only need a single layer disc, I doubt the cinematic pushed gameplay plans out because of storage concerns. Heck the prime games could be beaten in a few hours if you were good enough, and Final Fantasy, well grinding contributes quite a bit to the length of the game. Some of the best games ever created were made with limited storage, think to the N64, SNES and NES days.

SundoulosAugust 27, 2010

Yeah, since we're using Final Fantasy as an example, the majority of them contained bloated cutscenes as well.

I've been watching a few of the early videos of Other M playthroughs  (complete with an unboxing video...don't ask me how the player got it early), and the balance between gameplay and cutscene looks good.  http://www.youtube.com/user/WishingTikal#p/u/5/8mnE_yyDcoQ

In fact, to me, the game looks pretty flippin' awesome.  I can't wait for my copy to arrive next week.

balzzzyAugust 27, 2010

Quote from: GoldenPhoenix

The amount of storage space a game takes up has little do with the quality of gameplay. Chances are that without the movies the game would only need a single layer disc, I doubt the cinematic pushed gameplay plans out because of storage concerns. Heck the prime games could be beaten in a few hours if you were good enough, and Final Fantasy, well grinding contributes quite a bit to the length of the game. Some of the best games ever created were made with limited storage, think to the N64, SNES and NES days.

Phoneix, you misunderstand. I was just saying that it would be nice to see more elements to gameplay such as more levels, characters, plot development, exploration and even textures than cinematics. Surely to include these things it takes up more storage on a disc. And yes Final Fantasy VII was a bad example but it was mostly grinding that I was referencing there.

The point of why I bring this up is that I read that someone with an early copy has already beat Metroid Other M and collected 100% of the items in about 15 hours. They wrote a write up of the game and their thoughts on Metroid Database. *Warning there are spoilers contained within that link so if you click it you do so at your own risk.* I guess I would rather see the game take me 30 hours with less cut scenes. Does that make more sense?

Mop it upAugust 27, 2010

I'm sure everyone would like to see that, but I don't think it is realistic. Designing stages and environments takes up a lot more time and resources than cinematics do, and to fill up the entire disc would put the game in development for too long. Consider Super Mario Galaxy 2. It uses about 1.3GB as it is. Now, if they were to fill up the max space they have, which is 8.5GB if they go dual-layer, that's over six times as many levels as what the game contains currently. Assuming these stages are actually good, meaning crafted with the care and creativity of the existing levels, it'd have probably spent some eight years in development. That's just too long.

I think someone famous said something along the lines of "Games are never finished, only abandoned."

broodwarsAugust 27, 2010

I'm finding these days that 15-20 hour games hit the sweet spot with me.  Anything more than that, and it becomes something of a chore to finish them (damn you, Last Remnant!  James didn't point out enough how long that game is!).  I'll take a well-paced and entertaining 15 hour game (100%-ed) with good cinematics over a bloated 30 hour game that wears out its welcome long before it ends (which these days is usually what happens).  Also, the shorter a game the more likely that I'll actually replay it sometime down the road.  I'm not saying that's what Other M is, but that is my general stance on shorter games.

GoldenPhoenixAugust 27, 2010

Quote from: broodwars

I'm finding these days that 15-20 hour games hit the sweet spot with me.  Anything more than that, and it becomes something of a chore to finish them (damn you, Last Remnant!  James didn't point out enough how long that game is!).  I'll take a well-paced and entertaining 15 hour game (100%-ed) with good cinematics over a bloated 30 hour game that wears out its welcome long before it ends (which these days is usually what happens).  Also, the shorter a game the more likely that I'll actually replay it sometime down the road.  I'm not saying that's what Other M is, but that is my general stance on shorter games.

I agree, I'll enjoy the rare 30-50hr Zelda game, but overall I prefer games shorter games that are 10-20hrs. Developers tend to pad their games a lot when it goes beyond that making for poorly paced game in places.

Mop it upAugust 27, 2010

I can't afford very many games so I don't usually pay full price for single-player games that don't last longer than 20 hours. It's why I've been tending to look for multiplayer/online games, because I tend to get a lot out of those. Plus I don't usually get to playing games right when I get them, so by the time I do, it would have come down in price.

balzzzyAugust 27, 2010

A good run at 15-20 hours is fine with me. Adding other things to collect along the way appeals to adding more replayabilty of the game in some cases. Adding hard and expert modes appeals to the hardcore fan base. And in the case of MOM they've added a movie to the list. But I pose this question. Could the potential for say an MMORPG not be made for a home console? Not for Method in particular but just a thought. The multiplayer and replayability of those games is quite good.

KDR_11kAugust 28, 2010

I just feel like laughing at the fact that this means Other M contains more data than the XBox 360 can handle.

GoldenPhoenixAugust 28, 2010

Quote from: KDR_11k

I just feel like laughing at the fact that this means Other M contains more data than the XBox 360 can handle.

Hmmm? Thought the 360 had dual layered DVDs as well?

KDR_11kAugust 28, 2010

Yes but a few GB of the disc are reserved for DRM nonsense so the capacity for usable data is more limited.

GoldenPhoenixAugust 28, 2010

Quote from: KDR_11k

Yes but a few GB of the disc are reserved for DRM nonsense so the capacity for usable data is more limited.

Interesting never heard that before!

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