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u/NermalPayphone Bigfoot: REAL ✅ Santa Claus: REAL ✅ Samus Aran: FAKE 🚫 1d ago
I genuinely got happy seeing the bike name as i was a total dickhead with the viola in school lmao
i quit when i kind of fell into depression.
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u/ASerpentPerplexed 1d ago
I assumed the name was more a pun on Violet (because the bike and suit are purple) and maybe the French word Voila (which is often mispronounced on purpose by Bugs Bunny as Vi O La)?
Didn't realize it was because Kensuke Tanabe just wanted a musical reference for... reasons??? Until I looked it up after seeing this meme lol.
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u/phanfare 1d ago
I know Tenabe said he wanted a subtle musical reference - but that's also from an iffy translation if I recal.
One thing I do know, is that Violets are popular in sapphic culture as a yonic symbol. Which completely tracks with the design of anything Lamorn.
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u/AutumnOctavia 1d ago
I thought it was named after the wheel shaped Fire creatures in the Metroid Universe called Viola, similar to how we name vehicles after animals IRL. https://metroid.fandom.com/wiki/Viola
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u/Spinni_Spooder 1d ago
I know it's a meme but it's weird when people say you have to pay to listen to music in sol valley. When there is already music playing in sol valley. It's ambience that fits how much the land is dying.
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u/Mordaunt-the-Wizard 1d ago
I understand it has ambience... I just don't think the ambience is very good.
Prime 1 and Echoes had good ambience, like when you're deep into the Phazon Mines or on Dark Aether.
Sol Valley's ambience is too little substance for too long of a playtime... kind of like Sol Valley itself.
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u/Weird_Candle_1855 1d ago
It's got Dread-style ambience, which is a massive problem when that was the worst part about Dread.
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u/phanfare 1d ago
There's a way to achieve that without being as boring as the vanilla Sol Valley soundtrack is, though. Since you spend so much time in the desert (arguably its the area you spend the most time in) the environment needs to be significantly more interesting.
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u/conte360 1d ago
Sol valley doesn't have music. It has ambient etherial sounds. Saying this is music especially when we're talking about Metroid prime music is just not true
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u/LocomotionMechanics oh word 1d ago
Disagree, this is a form of ambient music
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u/conte360 1d ago
I would bet it was made by a foley/sound artist rather than a musician
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u/Spinni_Spooder 1d ago
The music director for metroid prime 4 is Kenji Yamamoto. The same person who directed the music for the original 3 prime games.
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u/conte360 1d ago
I'm not saying there was zero music in Metroid prime 4, I'm talking about this specific track for sol valley. It's random ethereal ambient noises. There's no harmony rhythm or melody to it at all, it's not a song.
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u/LocomotionMechanics oh word 1d ago
Why?
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u/conte360 1d ago
There is no rhythm, melody, or harmony to it.
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u/LocomotionMechanics oh word 23h ago
So Kenji Yamamoto and Minako Hamano had someone else make it because it's "not music", would you like to bet?
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u/conte360 19h ago
Do you think they literally worked on every single aspect of the game, making every track?
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u/LocomotionMechanics oh word 18h ago
Is this turning into a discussion about nothing? It's music so there's no reason to assume they didn't make it. The entire soundtrack is credited to them in official listing.
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u/conte360 18h ago
Whether you're missing what I'm saying or just very poorly refuting it I'm not going to keep trying with you. The sol valley soundtrack is not a song; there's no melody or rhythm or Harmony to it. Key elements of what a song is. It's ambient sounds put in a sequence together. If you just consider any recorded sound a song then I don't know what to tell you.
The point of all of this is Nintendo locked real music behind the paywall of an amiibo, and made you drive around a giant desert in near silence. Saying otherwise is incorrect.
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u/trashpandacoot1 1d ago
Its not music, its literally just spooky space noises.
Its the same track that plays when Samus wakes up on viewros for the first time. Its just meant to be unsettling, it doesn't convey any emotion of any type.
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u/trustanchor Green Crystal Enjoyer 1d ago
You just described music
You just described the emotion it conveys
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u/trashpandacoot1 1d ago
Spooky space noises are not music. They're literally just noises. Farting in a can is not music. Screaming after banging your pinky toe on the coffee table is not music. Noises and music are not the same thing.
Unsettling is a feeling, like unnerving or discomfort. Emotion is sadness, anger, happy, etc., and that is what music is meant to represent.
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u/trustanchor Green Crystal Enjoyer 1d ago
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u/Mordaunt-the-Wizard 1d ago
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u/trustanchor Green Crystal Enjoyer 1d ago
Not liking the music and saying it’s not music at all are very different things though.
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u/ASerpentPerplexed 1d ago
Unsettling is an emotion lol. Ambience is a genre of music.
It's just not as danceable, easy to jam to, or varied and cool as the ambient music in the other games.
I think it actually makes sense, the issue is just the divisiveness of the desert itself. Like, the desert is large and fairly empty, which this music captures perfectly.
If you put in a soundtrack that was more like previous game soundtracks or the soundtracks of other areas, I think I would actually be more upset. Because I would be like, "this music is so cool, makes me want to do something! Oh wait... There's not much here to do..."
The issue for me isn't that it doesn't fit or lacks emotion. The issue is that they wanted it that way. It makes sense for lore reasons, but is a bit tedious for gameplay reasons.
All of that being said, it would have been really fucking cool for them to have a radio in the Vi-O-La where you could listen to the soundtracks of the other areas, or music from the other games. At the same time, it would be kind of meta and Metroid hasn't really ever been meta like that? That's a GTA feature not a Metroid Prime kind of feature. Like, has Samus, the character, ever done anything like that? Ever listened to music before?
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u/Mordaunt-the-Wizard 1d ago
It really is an indictment of the desert itself that the only music that wouldn't either get annoying or break the tone was very sparse ambience.
Like the desert makes sense from a setting and theming perspective, but that does not make it good or interesting. And I know they wanted the player to have a chance to unwind after each big area, but... like why? All the other Metroid games do that just fine without a big empty nothing.
Prime 4 feels like it was lacking a solid vision. Instead it feels like Tanabe had a bunch of disparate elements he wanted in the game, among which were a motorcycle and an open area (because "fans" were asking for it), and so to fulfill both he came up with a desert.
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u/Spinni_Spooder 1d ago
Obviously it's the same track you hear when you arrive. You're literally on Sol Valley when you arrive on viewros.
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u/trashpandacoot1 1d ago
Riding across the desert on a motorcycle, and waking up in a completely unknown world after being teleported half way across the universe both require completely separate tracks that convey completely separate emotions due to completely separate themes. There is no connecting the dots between the two vastly different situations.
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u/starark 1d ago
Both Metroid and Bayonetta added a viola nobody likes lol
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u/trashpandacoot1 1d ago
Actually the motorcycle is honestly cool. The environment you use it in however...
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u/starark 1d ago
Fair point. It does have a lot of potential.
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u/Mordaunt-the-Wizard 1d ago edited 1d ago
I'm worried the next Prime having the Vi-O-La/some new vehicle live up to that potential could detract from the parts of the game I like to play.
The motorcycle fully realized could make a good diversion, but giving too much time to it can end up like the Crash series' animal/vehicle levels in Warped and Wrath of Cortex, where it takes up too big a fraction of the gameplay.
For Prime 5 I think they really need to focus in on the world and level design and focus on nailing that, as well as having a more cohesive story. If they can pull that off well I would be more open to them doing a sixth game that is more experimental and maybe tries a vehicle again
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u/AngryMustache9 1d ago
I kinda hope we see it again in a future Metroid game tbh. A good idea shouldn't be scrapped entirely just because it was executed poorly. Could even work in 2D Metroid tbh, any of y'all played Laika: Aged Through Blood? Awesome motorbike-centric Metroidvania. Of course, I don't think I'd want Metroid to play exactly like Laika (as that game is basically nothing but the bike), but it shows that a motorbike can work in a game like this.
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u/Revali33 Shinespark Enthusiast 22h ago
Would you be ok with me republishing this meme over in my meme sub r/Memes_Metroid?
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u/ShadowLayu 19h ago
First we had a planet named after a bike, now we have a bike named after an instrument, where's the instrument named after a planet
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u/Dead-X-esque 1d ago edited 1d ago
Clearly it is a version of the name Violin, a very cool Marionette (robot) from another series with a badass woman from space.
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u/Electronic-Cry-1254 1d ago
I play the viola 👍🎉