What did they think was gonna happen? Did they think FF would satisfy people asking for a new Metroid? Well, why would it? It's something completely different wearing the name. Did they think it would make the Splatoon lightning strike a second time? Well, why would it? Splatoon instantly looked fun and had great character designs that fit the theme to boot, and this looks... really pretty boring and half-assed, like the game made itself on autopilot.
It's also worth noting that
Splatoon has the luxury of being a brand-new IP with freedom to look and feel however it wants. With FF, it's not even so much an issue of the quality of the game itself (which is still in development), and more that they developed a generic co-op shooter in space and then decided to slap on a
Metroid sticker due to the power of
branding.
I maintain Sunshine would've been much much better as its own new IP without Mario.
Exactly, just replace "Sunshine" with "FF" and "Mario" with
Metroid.
People joke about how they'd rather have
Other M than this, but I think there's some validity to that sentiment. There were a lot of things about it that infamously
did not work, but visually it was very good and atmospherically (aside from the soundtrack's thing it did where it forgot to exist) it still did. Sure, there are brighter counterparts to the grim and grit of the likes of
Super Metroid, but even the brightest
Metroid titles knew that it was about being
heroic, not generically goofy. The thing about adapting Mario to play sports, or even doing a 180 on the
Zelda aesthetic in
Wind Waker following OoT, is that those franchises have always been oriented toward a good degree of whimsy (OoT was actually the exception to this at the time, and that's when it didn't still follow the same rules). And that's not bad! In fact, it's a desperately needed influence in this decade's video game industry. But
Metroid has always been a bit different. Alien, if you will. It had subtle and consistent characterization. It had continuity and an established chronology, something that
Zelda fans were still dreaming of until well after
Metroid had lived and died under the weight of those things.
Super Metroid provided the "Metroid" years ahead of SotN's providing the "vania" - could anyone even imagine a first party Nintendo game's being even remotely comparable to SotN in today's market?
It's Metroid. You can't have fun when you play Metroid.
But I think this is really the root ideology behind this game that's made people so angry: "fun" is always cartoony and silly. It's almost an equal and opposite to the idea that you can't take a game seriously unless it's a FPS as brown as dog poop. Like somehow people who prefer dark or deep games, or people who play games competitively, just have less appreciation for "fun."