The person who directs the next Metroid needs to be someone who understands what made the series popular. Other m's design staff seem to have thought that any such list boiled down to "killing things while moving through a scifi environment" and added things that directly inhibited some of the other original draws of the series to a catastrophic degree.
If Sakamoto understands the disconnect between fans' mental image of Metroid and the product actually released, and wants to correct the problems in a future entry, then he is as qualified for the job as any other candidate. If he thinks that the series inherently needs an actively dramatized story, and that metroid's original low-cutscene exploration-driven design was only forgivable because of the limitations of old technology, then the success of the series must have been a happy accident, and the franchise should be handed off to people who want to make things faithful to the concepts actually embodied in the products that popularized it.
I'm afraid that some element of the metroid design staff at Nintendo really does feel that the low-story stuff was purely a product of the time instead of a unique and viable style of product because the more modern games have feature increasing amounts of it. Fusion added samus's monologues. Zero mission added more plot into the original metroid. Prime 3 forced us to tolerate the galactic federation. other m performed franchise suicide. Then there's the whole "Nintendo didn't seem to know what bounty hunter actually means to the rest of the world" thing, where instead of going with what they'd been communicating to the world for the history of the series, they instead decided to continue using their personal definitions.
RE: "the game has potential even if the execution was bad:" I find this odd. A cooler setting and a story dedicated to empowering the player/main character instead of weakening them would make for a less terrible experience but wouldn't turn it into something worthy of the series' pedigree. I'd summarize the basis of other m as:
-linear game
-cutscene-based story
-an isometric 3rd-person camera
-increased mobility for samus.
The first two points in the list run counter to the original principles of the series, and should probably be abandoned if recapturing lost fans is the goal. They go beyond "botched execution" into "attempting to do the wrong thing from the get-go." If half the points that form the foundation of Other M would have to be scrapped in a future attempt irrespective of execution to be faithful to the Metroid games before it, then I find it really hard to say that any such sequel were tapping the potential of other m.
On top of that, I feel like the controls as implemented now would also need completely revamped. Samus can move quickly and have melee attacks, sure, but auto-aim and the magic dodge button feel like a gameplay extension of the linear and cinematic approach- 'automated stuff looks cooler than anything you could do yourself, so you have less input here' is what it feels like those features say to me. An agile samus is pointless if it's achieved by minimizing player input. Thus, any potential for a fun 3rd-person 3d metroid with an agile player-character seems even more detached from other m in my eyes. The potential all lies in a concept so vague that it's nearly completely dissociated from the product that actually got released.
just some food for thought, since it seems that many people here are getting a bit too focused on one particular detail of game development.
a game is never made by just the one guy (unless its the indie-est indie that ever indie-ed) , there is always a group of people contributing to the whole, so giving one person full credit for a whole game ( in either a negative or positive way) is never going to be very fair.
it seems to me that the guy could make another terrible metroid or a game the returns the series former prestige, its just to murky of an area for anyone not directly involved to accurately predict. so i wouldn't say no to him trying his hand at the series again.
that said who else is excited for Ghost Song?!
It's true. Even accounting for the fact that coding staff or art staff might not have any say in game design decisions, there are certainly still many people alongside sakamoto who contributed to game design and story choices.
Still, at some point in the chain of command, somebody of influence needs to be capable of noticing, "We are developing a Metroid game that has deviated significantly from many of the elements that attracted the current fanbase," and of speaking up about it to influence development. Before we even get to quality-of-excution judgments, "linear" and "plot-driven" are relatively objective statements.
Of course, quality-of-execution judgments also need to be somebody's responsibility when millions of dollars of development money get involved. Somebody has to say that the game doesn't actually benefit from going remote-only, or that pixel hunts are the wrong way to add variety. Somebody has to be able to say, a plot dedicated to making the main character appear weaker at every turn with no final moment of redemption might be well-suited for an experimental project but has no place in a flagship action game.
So where's that cautionary feedback voice supposed to come from? Nintendo's current leadership, as far as I can tell, strongly believes in deferring to the game designers in most situations. If the people with the purse-strings aren't going to call out severe problems in major projects, the creative staff need to be able to help each other out.
I feel like Nintendo is in part responsible for people overemphasizing the importance of individual developers. I wonder to what extent people like sakurai or miyamoto believe their own hype. I've certainly made a hyperbolic statement or two blaming sakamoto personally for other m's issues in the past, and I acknowledge it was absurd. I've done my best to get over placing undue influence on individual developers lately.
