Last week, we took a look at approximately half of a shaft. Now, believe it or not, it's time to look at the other half of that same shaft. As a refresher, here's what the thing looks like:
To pick up from where we left off, you'd probably think that the next door to go through would be the bottom right one. However, that's the door that actually contains the way forward and we probably want to take a look at all the dead-ends before moving on. So that leaves us with the top right door, which, trust me, won't take long.
Unlike all the other rooms we've seen in this shaft so far, this room doesn't dead end with a straight-up wall. Instead, it ends with a barrier you can't pass yet. If you try walking across the pathway, the ground will start crumbling beneath you, and the gate ahead of you will close faster than you can reach it. No matter what you do, you're going to end up getting dropped down below, where you can get a missile tank as a consolation prize.
Now unfortunately, it seems like you are now trapped in this small box with the missile expansion. The blocks that you fell through have regenerated, except now they are gray tiles with a weird symbol. At this point, the player should be getting acquainted with some of Super Metroid's deeper systems. We figured out last week that some blocks can be bombed, revealing gray tiles that have icons referring to how they're destroyed. Now that the player has seen these crumbling blocks, they can start piecing together how things work. Basically, some blocks in the map have some kind of hidden identity. While the blocks may look like perfectly normal textures in the map, they function slightly differently, and bombing, or activating, these blocks will reveal their identity to you.
As mentioned last week, part of the reason this system exists is to keep secrets hidden without having the player have to try every single weapon on them until they find the one that works. But another reason these exist is to keep the world feeling cohesive. Consider two scenarios. One, in every area, the special functioning blocks are visible from the start, and always look the same. This would stick out like a sore thumb, as the gray blocks that are used to mark special functioning blocks don't match with any area theme in the game. Two, every area with a unique set of tile sprites also has a variation of these special tiles that matches the theme. This looks better than the previous situation, but now the player has to learn what each of these blocks looks like in each area and the developers would have to make different sprites for each form of these blocks. The system in-game combines the upsides of both situations I just laid out. First, all the environments can still look cohesive since they won't initially contain any gray blocks that don't fit. But since all the blocks will turn into the gray ones once they've been activated or bombed, they are still universally recognizable to the player so there is no ambiguity. And the gray blocks won't feel like they stick out as much here because it feels like the player is discovering the blocks themselves, so seeing the gray icon tile feels like something you uncovered and so it's okay for it to not match. It's like a Scooby Doo villain you ripped the mask off of, so it is perfectly fine that it's not wearing the disguise anymore.
With so much time spent on that tangent, you probably forgot that we're still stuck in this small pit. It is really easy to escape however, you just have to bomb the outer wall. This moment serves to reinforce a lot of what we have already learned about bombs. As we've already seen, the bombs are a crucial tool in Super Metroid, and kind of unexpectedly so. Super Metroid wants you to get into the mindset of bombing almost everything, but teaching the player that is a little tricky when you can't just have a text prompt pop up saying "Try bombing everything." What Super Metroid does is a lot less immersion-breaking and feels a lot better to the player. Through experiences I have already pointed out, you're taught that bombs can work on seemingly inconspicuous blocks, and that they can reveal the inner-workings of some tiles. In this situation, you're taught that if your stuck, you can always try bombing everything. It should be an easy putting 2 and 2 together situation to realize that bombs will probably break the walls, but it reinforces the idea of using bombs so you're more likely to use them later on.
Speaking of bombs, once we head down to the last door left in this shaft (yes, we're finally exiting this one area), there's a hallway waiting to remind us of not one, but two uses for our bombs. First, you'll be faced with a suspicious wall that can only be broken by bombs. Once past it though, there will be a suspicious portion of the ground that you'll once again think to bomb. Doing so will only reveal a new kind of unbreakable tile, but it's just another thing placed in your way to get you to start bombing. I understand all this may sound like child's play when I'm describing it, but back when this game came out and not many people were used to its style of gameplay, it was crucial for the developers to have this long string of learning experiences to subtly teach players how to play the game.
There's a concept in game design known as "intended play." Just as you would expect, it refers to the way developers intended the game to played. At first it may sound like a kind of useless idea because, after all, aren't all games designed to be played a certain way? The answer of course, is yes, but due to the interactive nature of games and the diversity of people in general, games won't always be played the way they're meant to be played. The reason most games have an "intended play" in the first place is because developers will often realize a certain play-style is inherently more fun than others. Consider a game like Bloodborne. In it you experience all kinds of epic and exciting battles with very tough foes. These fights are at they're most exciting when they're the most tense, when you're acting aggressively and occasionally taking risks. Not everyone would instinctively play the game this way, so the developer put in the Rally system where you can regain lost health by quickly retaliating and hitting enemies after they hit you. This rewards the player for being aggressive with the opportunity to get some health back, so it pushes everyone to play the game the way the developers want you to play it.
These experiences we're taking so long to talk about here are examples of Super Metroid doing a similar thing. The developers are trying to condition the player to bomb everything that's suspicious, in hopes that later on they'll continue this trend and end up finding all sorts of cool secrets. Super Metroid is a game where you're supposed to explore and uncover secrets; the game is just more fun when you do that. So in the early parts of the game, that idea is drilled into your head so that you'll hopefully continue playing this way for the rest of the experience.
Now, coming into the room after this hallway, we'll see a kind of design we haven't seen before. Now that the game is beginning to transition out of tutorial mode, more complex room layouts can be introduced. This room, despite being vertically oriented is definitely not a shaft design, because it's more than just a connection between rooms. It has its fair share of exits, but it's really just a jumbo-sized normal room. This is also the first room in the game that really takes advantage of the fact that the SNES can could scroll the screen horizontally and vertically at the same time (something the original Metroid could not do). There's a lot going on in this room, but luckily we don't have the tools to do most of it right now, so only a bit of it is really relevant.
Ironically, the fact that there's not much we can do is something actually worth discussing right now. If you notice, back in Crateria while the training wheels were still on, the only ever locked doors you encountered were ones that you'd be able to open with whatever ability you got next. That simplicity made it really easy to not get lost and made the environments feel much less overwhelming. Ever since the game started easing off the training wheels in the past two episodes however, we've been seeing all sorts of gates we won't be able to pass anytime soon. This room is kind of the pinnacle of that, having doors for power bombs, blocks for the grapple beam, and a door for a super missile, only one of which we'll be able to open anytime soon. All the new things in here, combined with the rooms large size in both dimensions can make it feel really intimidating. In the end, however, there is still only one way out of this room so you can't really get lost. Regardless, this room and its overwhelming size and complexity helps make the planet Zebes feel like such a formidable foe.
Luckily, there is some light at the end of the tunnel, as there is a free missile tank just waiting for you at the bottom of this room. But that isn't all to find down here. You can probably already see the two suspicious blocks in the rock face to the right. All the player's training should pay off right now because they should now instantly know to bomb those two strange blocks. Bombing them reveals a hidden path that goes behind the rocks and leads to a lucrative secret.
This is the Charge Beam, your first beam upgrade in the game. It is an entirely optional upgrade, one of only a few, but unlike the rest of them, almost every player will pick it up. It seems strange for such a large upgrade to be hidden in such plain sight, but once again it is for the purpose of teaching the player. The developers had to sacrifice a missile tank and the charge beam in order to teach the player that sometimes there may be secrets hidden in secrets. Now the missile tank here obviously isn't a secret, it's in plain sight, but it manages to convey a similar concept. You think that the once you've found the missile tank you've found what you were supposed to find and then that's it. However, the blindingly obvious breakable rocks in the room contradict that compelling you to at least try bombing them. This whole secret exists in an exaggerated fashion, the blocks are very obvious and easy, yet the reward is huge and extremely helpful. This is because in most games, there's never anything hidden inside of an area that's already hidden. In order to get you to realize that Super Metroid will be different, the game needs to do something obvious enough to make you notice in the first place.
Heading up to the top of the big room, there's another bomb-able spot, although this time less obvious than the last one. The rewards aren't near as generous as last time though, with only a save point to be found behind. It's strange to see a save point here though, because there was one just in the previous shaft. If that sounds familiar, it's probably because you heard it before back when there were two save stations close together in Crateria. So you probably already know what this means, but I'd like to touch on another aspect of save stations while we're already here. There are two distinct purposes different save rooms have in this game. Some of them exist for the future, and others exist for the present. There are really only two main reasons to ever need a save point in a game like this. One is when you're about to encounter something that might force a game over on you. Obviously if you're gonna be hit with a death out of the blue, you don't want to lose a ton of progress, so it's pretty natural to leave a save point before a boss or tricky section. The other main reason would be when you just want to quit and need to find a save point. This isn't an issue with most modern games and their save anywhere systems, but for games with physical save locations, it sure can be a pain to have to hike somewhere when you need to turn the game off. This is why we keep seeing two types of save points: the centralized ones inside of shafts or other key areas, and the tucked away ones that come before bosses.
There's something else by this save point that further makes it a point of convenience, and it would be the little green pipe on the ground. This isn't the first one of these we've encountered, but it's the best one to use as an example for its function. They continually spawn enemies out of them, which seems like an annoyance at first, but you will soon come to love these little green pipes. The enemies that come out of them almost always drop some kind of pickup, either health or ammo. And since enemies continually spawn out of them, it means they're a nonstop source of health and ammo. When you're in a pinch these enemy spawning pipes act as full heals, but only for those patient enough to farm them. It seems like a kind of weird thing to implement, because why would you want to force your player to spam their gun at a pipe for a couple minutes? While it's true it isn't the most engaging solution, these pipes make for a really intuitive way to give the player optional recharge points and let them set the difficulty in some places. You never have to stop at any of these pipes, which makes them unobtrusive, and they make good use of the game's already existing pick-up system so they are really intuitive as a concept. Besides that, they also let you chose sometimes whether to play things safe or not. If you're low on health, you can spend some time grinding these pipes to be healthy, or you could take a big risk and just go for it because who has time for all that waiting?
Speaking of waiting, let's cut to the chase and finally make it out of this room. Continuing to the right takes you to an exit you can actually open. Inside, you're forced to square off with three new, tough enemies before you can exit, but they aren't the big threat. Head up to the next room and then it's waiting for you, the big plant Spore Spawn.
Spore Spawn is... not a very exciting boss. It moves in a predictable pattern that can be entirely dodges just by staying in morph ball form in the lower level of the arena. Its only other method of attack is spawning spores that float down to the bottom of the arena. These two are pretty easy to dodge, and can even be destroyed by your blaster for free pickups. Doing so means you have to leave morph ball and put yourself at risk though, which is a nice element of risk vs. reward, but it's about as interesting as the fight gets. Randomly in its movement, Spore Spawn will stop and open up revealing its core which you can hammer with missiles. Do this over and over as it speeds up and then that's the fight.
Defeat Spore Spawn however, and then there's a big, exciting surprise waiting for you. But you'll have to wait until next week to figure out what it is. The suspense is killing you already, isn't it? it truly is a devious trick and it's certainly not like you can just find out online in a matter of seconds. To distract you from that, take some free key takeaways, they're on me.
Key Takeaways:
- Developers often create games with a certain playstyle in mind. It is up to the game to teach the player to play this way, often using in-game systems and rewards to make it the most viable playstyle.
- Games that end up complex can't start that way or else they'll scare off many players. It's best to slowly ease into that complexity as smoothly as possible. Ideally the player won't even notice that they are handling more and more complicated challenges.
- Save points can have many functions in games. Most ditch save points for a more convenient "save anywhere" system, but games that still use save points need to consider what they'll be used for when determining where they are placed.
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