Topic: Metroid: Other M to Use Dual-Layer Disc

[NWR_pap64]

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

http://www.nintendoworldreport.com/news/23914

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.

[broodwars]

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

[Sundoulos]

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.)

[Tansunn]

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 Dude]

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.

[MegaByte]

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

[Mop it up]

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

[BeautifulShy]

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 up]

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.

[Stratos]

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 up]

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?

[MegaByte]

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

[Mop it up]

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

[MegaByte]

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.

[AV]

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 Spyke]

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.

[MoronSonOfBoron]

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 Sane]

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.

[Halbred]

Obligatory joke about Team Ninja, gravity, and breasts.

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

[Caliban]

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 up]

How big was Metroid Prime Trilogy?

7.4GB

[Ian Sane]

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.

[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?

[GoldenPhoenix]

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.

[Sundoulos]

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.