This week’s issue of Famitsu magazine features a one-page interview with longtime Metroid series director Yoshio Sakamoto. After recapping the information that is already available on Metroid: Other M, Sakamoto addressed topics such as the direction of the game.
"However, different from the rest of the series, this time we’re strongly depicting the human side of Samus through such things as movies. She’s a strong woman, but she also has a fragile side," Sakamoto told Famitsu, according to a translation by Andriasang, while discussing the series’ uncelebrated status in Japan. "We want to make a game whose charms can be felt from the story areas and these human touches as well. It’s an action game, but it’s capable of having a clear emotional side."
Do Nintendo hope Metroid: Other M will make the Japanese market more receptive of the franchise? Probably not, but it’s interesting that Metroid is possibly the property they’ve experimented with the most, within the main line of games. However, be that as it may, it seems Sakamoto still sees this game as a return to the franchise’s roots, albeit with some changes.
"This Metroid is being developed with the aim of the ideal form of the old Metroid," he stated in a separate quote. Sakamoto went on to say that the series is making the jump from the "2D jump-action" genre to 3D action, facilitated by Team Ninja’s development experience, and that the project is progressing "extremely well."
Metroid: Other M is scheduled for release this summer in Japan and sometime this year for Western markets.
