Flooferdoops

Oh god why do they look like that?

I think it was a bold decision to put Fox McCloud in the new Mario Galaxy movie, and also include the entire animated short giving the backstory of Fox McCloud and his crew from said movie at the start of the direct (thank you, Miyamoto, for doing that btw, hearing they had a 2D Star Fox animation was the only thing that interested me about the Galaxy movie and now that they showed that part in the direct I don't need to see the movie anymore), and then immedietly after show the new designs of the crew just to make the contrast between the two designs even more drastic and jarring.

DLSS5 off vs DLSS5 on.

They've clearly gone more "realistic" with the designs, and on first impression it's a little uncanny, especially with the human-like eyes. The most noticable things are their faces, but also their feet, both of which are more closer to the original animals they're based off of. For me, the legs are probably the part I find the most contentious. I would argue their fancy space boots were a pretty iconic part of their design (they even mention the boots specifically in the Mario Galaxy Movie!!), but now their animal feet no longer fit into regular human-like shoes. Even going by fantasy space furry designs, I feel like these are pretty unusual. I'm no furry, but I've seen many a furry drawing during my time on the internets and even I know that, normally, furries emphasize the size of the feet or elongate the legs for these kinds of characters, so Fox in particular feels pretty stumpy.

If you crop out everything below the belt he's actually pretty cool.

Falco now has actual bird feet, and he looks a little shrimpy in this particular shot.

Imagine the sounds as he clacks around the Great Fox on his freakish bird talons.

It's not even consistent either. Slippy, for some reason, still seems to have the normal shoes. Real frogs have pretty long legs, so Slippy is the only one so far that feels a bit stylized and cartoony compared to the others, which feels incongruent with the rest of the cast.

Slippy: "mom I frew up"

Dispite these issues I have, I think I have already grown to the new designs and I don't dislike them. My immediete reaction to the direct was one of mild disgust but after seeing some of the key art renders I think the designs aren't too bad, with the potential to show a lot of personality. I'll probably have to see them in motion a bit more before I can form a full opinion.

I guess it doesn't matter too much, though, as most of the time they'll be stuck in the cockpits anyway and you won't be looking at disgusting furry feet whilst actually playing the game. While playing Star Fox 64 it's not like I was sitting there thinking constantly "Gee I sure wish I could see their feet".

It's another remake!?!?

I also wasn't thinking "Gee I wish I could play Star Fox 64 but with more cutscenes" but that's apparently what Nintendo is cooking up with this release. It's the exact same games and levels, but with overhauled graphics and additional cutscenes between missions. I feel like if something like this was announced during, say, the GameCube days, when new graphics were actually impressive, when we were wowed with the Resident Evil 1 remake and were all aiming for games to be more cinematic, this would have held a bit more appeal to me, but I can't help but feel lukewarm about the announcement because it is the same game I've replayed a billion times. Star Fox 64 is an arcade style game, designed to be replayed multiple times to aim for high scores. Arcade style games normally avoid long cutscenes to avoid disrupting the flow of the game play, so for me, these cutscenes will probably be viewed once then skipped every single time henceforth.

And let's face it, if you're a Star Fox fan, you're likely a fan because of Star Fox 64. It's the one game everyone universally likes (along with the SNES Star Fox game maybe). If you're a super hardcore fan, you've probably bought the game again on Virtual Console, on the Switch online service. Maybe you even played the 3DS port, or even tried that decomp. By now, you know the game like the back of your hand, have perfected your runs and know the best routes and tricks to get the highest score, have all the medals, and are probably starving for a sequel with NEW levels to sink your teeth into, but if this is a true remake then you probably won't be getting that itch scratched any time soon as it'll be the same levels again. Say what you will about Star Fox Zero, a game universally slammed for it's motion controls and rehashed story, but at least that game had new levels and remixed concepts.

Perhaps I can understand the appeal of doing another remake, though. It is THE Star Fox game that people like. It's the one with the memes everyone remembers. Every other game since then has struggled to recapture the original appeal. I even remember back in the day, people would complain that we never got a proper sequel that was in the classic on-rails style of Star Fox 64, so going back to that probably makes some sense from a marketing perspective, at least in the view to bring in new fans of the series and roping in the new interest drummed up by the Mario Galaxy Movie. That said, I think most people would have preferred a game in the style of Star Fox 64 but with new levels, instead of literally the same game again.

To me, this feels like a lost opportunity to use aspects they could take from other games to enhance the experience. On top of adding new stages, they could implement the mechanics from Star Fox Zero, which I felt were a pretty good evolution of that from 64. Like 64, where using charge shots nets bonus points, Zero also let you earn bonus points from shooting downed enemies again. The charge shot also was more powerful if a shot was fired the moment a lock on activated, and hyper lazers allowed you to lock on to two enemies at once. These would probably fit nicely into any new Star Fox game, but as these are new mechanics that were not part of the original game, we'll likely see these mechanics tossed out, which is a bit of a shame.

Maybe this reboot will work this time?

Star Fox Zero was intended to be a reboot for the franchise. After Star Fox Command, a game with like a billion different story endings, it probably makes sense to go back to basics. The Zero reboot never went anywhere though, I wonder wh-

Oh...

These days I'm pretty jaded on remakes and re-releases, I'm old enough to have played most of em when they came out. I have no desire to play Silent Hill 2, Resident Evil 4 remake or MGS3 Delta, because I still own the originals of those games and can readily play them at any time I desire.

That being said, I do hope this new Star Fox sells well. If it does, we can hope to enjoy sequels that build upon the mechanics of the game with new levels, new story and new characters. If it bombs, well I guess we'll see another remake in ten years or so.

On another note, when all the twitch streamers start becoming Star Fox vtubers using the game chat feature, know that I was doing it first.