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A problem with Star Fox: Consistency


Giladen

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After going over the series, I've seen a problem: it's consistency.

 

The original Star Fox was a game following the lead of Thunderbirds and past sci-fi series like Battlestar Galactica. The game had a style that was moved away from as the series went on (just look at the giant slot machine boss). Star Fox Adventures was a grungy (think of Firefly) Zelda wannabe with magic. Star Fox Assault was a game taking in third-person shooter mechanics, and following the lead of sci-fi in the 90s to 2000s, especially Japanese sci-fi. Star Fox Command was a headscrather.

 

The characters have consistency problems too. Wolf O'Donnel goes from a low life mercenary who taunts Fox with his father's death ("You'll be seeing your dad soon Fox!" in 64's English version and "Your father's waiting for you in hell!" in 64's Japanese version) to a mentor for Fox who gives him advice and for most of his screentime isn't really antagonistic to Fox, and by the time of Command is a character who ends up trying to be a mixture of both. Don't get me started on the others, especially Leon, whose voice in Assault didn't try to get across how he acted in the JP version unlike in 64.

 

It's clear enough that the series has had years of separate teams with separate visions for the series.

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Maybe the next game will be something entirely different to further complicate the inconsistency...maybe as a sci-fi noir, like Deus Ex or Blade Runner.

 

I personally prefer the tone and feel of Assault. Not too serious, but not to campy...perfect blend for me.  ^_^

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This is why reboot.

 

I personally preferred the general feel of 64 and Assault, but then again, I'm one of those weird fucks that liked just about everything about assault besides its length

 

So

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"Star Fox's problem is consistency so let's change it again!"

 

wait what

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I think I may be the only one who thinks Assault was the best in terms of gameplay....just add more mission types and I won't complain if you start milking the franchise, mmmkay?. Character voices I am less concerned about than how they interact. Adventures voice acting was closer to SF64 than Assault......except for whoever did Andross. Im sure just about anyone can do a near-perfect rendition of Bill's voice :troll:

 

All in all though, SF is a game that needs to have consecutive titles worked on by the same team for any consistency at this point sadly.

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On-Foot controls should also get redone as they were kinda messy.

 

That is especially true if you played with the default controls, but when using the dual-stick configuration, most of the problems were fixed....except turning the Landmaster felt worse because you now had to move the aiming cursor to steer. But other than that, the pilot controls felt almost perfect, to the point where the only issue was turning around felt sluggish, but it was like that for all control types as it was a gameplay mechanic error as opposed to poor control scheme.

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A reboot could be useful in the sense that if you re-exposit the plot it gives you a chance to explain a bunch of shit in current, seamless time, without having to break the current narrative going backwards to explain it (by this I mean mostly character origins and relationships). A reboot wouldn't really have anything to do with gameplay consistency, but at least it could put its foot down on THESE ARE THE CHARACTERS, THIS IS THE WORLD, HAVE FUN instead of eternally fucking around trying not to step on the toes of the previous developers.

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But would the reboot take more from the Bucky O'Hareish SNES era setting (like Fox being in his 20s)? Or would it take more from the toned down 64 era setting?

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I don't know what was "toned down" about 64, the thing was non-stop references to campy science fiction movies that culminated in fighting a giant monkey brain. I couldn't say what it "would" be, though if they wanted to do a reboot at this point, I'd say run it from the 64 continuity since 643DS came out fairly recently.

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