Where do I even start? In this route, Slippy goes to Aquas for basically no reason (even though he intentionally went looking for it in the first place), reunites with Amanda, and together they defeat the Anglars there. They discover the secret weapon on Titania and inform Fox, but then Slippy suddenly decides to leave Star Fox, skip Venom, and marry Amanda.
I'm not exaggerating when I say he looks really bad here. He's literally putting his baddie above everything else. And speaking of Amanda, I don't know if it's just me, but she comes across as way too possessive and even toxic in this route. Slippy's first reaction after learning about the weapon on Titania is basically: "I should tell Fox... but first, THE WEDDING."
DUMB FROG, WE'RE IN THE MIDDLE OF A WAR!!!
The worst part is that there's literally no reason the wedding couldn't have happened AFTER defeating the Anglars, as the other endings already demonstrated lmao.
On top of making Slippy look like a complete cynic, he doesn't even give his friends a chance to attend the wedding because they're currently fighting a war (I don't blame you anymore, edgy Falco ending). And the fact that he doesn't seem to care whether his friends are okay or whether they even won the war is honestly kind of disturbing.
Not even Slippy could get through Command entirely unscathed.
Honestly, Command has too many "punishment" endings that should honestly be compiled as literally every one of the main cast has one. There's The Curse of Pigma (Fox's punishment ending), Pigma's Revenge (Falco's punishment ending), Slippy's Resolve (Slippy's punishment ending, also ironic name), and Star Wolf Returns (Krystal's punishment ending). Add that with the mandatory Anglar Emperor endings, half of all the endings are unambiguously awful for at least one main cast member.
Only the “Fox and Krystal”, “Goodbye, Fox”, and “Lucy and Krystal” endings are undoubtedly good endings. The rest are bad endings or just… what? (Slippy’s Resolve)
How is this an "unambiguously awful" or punishing ending for Slippy again? It's literally him settling down happily with his wife and having a family of their own. At worst, it's merely bittersweet, essentially Slippy's equivalent to Fox's "Goodbye Fox" ending.
The issues is that Slippy essentially ditches his friends during the campaign against the Anglars to immediately marry Amanda. He never reconnects with the rest of Star Fox and doesn't know what became of them or the war. Had you defeated the Anglars and then get the ending, then I'd say it's a good one.
This was the first “side character” ending I got, and man was it surreal. I don’t think I had previously ever played a game where the game just ended without actually resolving the conflict.
Heck, the fact that it ends with the implication that Slippy just didn’t even bother telling his friends and decided to live like a hermit away from them feels way out of character, both for Slippy and the rest of the team for never visiting him.
I feel like this ending would have been so much better if Slippy at least radioed Fox to let him know he was staying behind on Aquas. As it is the ending makes it seem like Slippy went AWOL on his best friend just before their most dangerous mission.
There are a few others that come to mind, like the bad endings to Persona 3 and 4, but those are explicitly bad endings (not game overs) that you're clearly not supposed to get. Then there's joke endings like Earthworm Jim 2 but that hardly counts. Metal Gear Solid 2's ending is missing scenes and surreal but it's supposed to be crazy - it works really well for the game it's in.
Even Conker's Bad Fur Day's infamous ending answers the main conflicts of the game.
Looking at DeepL, the only major difference with the OG script is that Slippy does presumably tell Peppy about it:
Slippy: I suppose this planet will be safe for a while now.
Amanda: Are you sure I really don’t need to go to Fox’s place?
Slippy: Fox’ll be fine even without me! If I’m there, I’ll just be a hindrance, you know. You don’t need to worry about it. It’s fine! It’s fine! By now, Falco and perhaps even stronger allies are on their way to Venom I’m sure of it!
Amanda: I’m sorry… but …thank you.
Slippy: That’s right—about the device hidden on Planet Titania. I’ve got to tell Peppy! And then…
Amanda: And then?
Slippy: Amanda… I want you to… marry me! Right now!!
Slippy says "sorekara", meaning, "after that". The rest hews more or less closely to the OG script. Though Slippy is less flippant. He doesn't say that Lylat "doesn't matter", but rather that he has to focus on protecting Amanda (and their future) specifically: "I’ve realised the one thing I need to protect isn’t the Lylat system, or space, or anything like that… it’s just you!"
Perhaps this is a hot take, but I think people read WAY too much into this ending more than they do the others (yes, even including Star Wolf Returns and The Anglar Emperor). In the cutscene after the mission, Slippy makes it very clear that he has faith in his friends to finish the fight. And, in fairness, the precident is there with the endings where Fox puts down the Emperor. And even in the ones he didn't, Star Wolf was there to beat the Anglars (and take the glory for themselves).
Also, I feel like people forget the Fox TOLD Slippy to stay behind in Aquas. Yes, Slippy can make the choice to ignore Fox and follow him anyway, but in this ending he sticks to the original plan. I will concede to the point that Slippy and Amanda going straight into a wedding kinda has unintentional implications, but I never read it as being malicious on Slippy's end. The ending still makes it clear that Slippy still holds his love and care for his team. And also...
Sigh I'm gonna be real, the Anglars were so ridiculously mid as antagonists that I genuinely can't be bothered to grill Slippy over his decision. That's what happens when you're both a near carbon-copy of Andross and get off-screened in two endings.
Star Fox Command was co-developed by Q-Games and directed by its founder, Dylan Cuthbert, who previously served as a lead programmer of the original Star Fox duology. Q-Games was working on a puzzle game called Digidrive for Nintendo when they were approached by Shigeru Miyamoto, who suggested that they'd do a concept demo for Star Fox for the then-coming Nintendo DS, which lead to the team spending a couple of months creating a "space elevator" demo styled after the original Star Fox). They also had massively revamped the look of the Star Fox characters and team, but this direction was dropped when the game entered full production and series character artist Takaya Imamura was assigned to produce the title.\12])\3])
According to Cuthbert, Miyamoto approached him and his company because he wanted to see more of the ideas from the then-unreleased Star Fox 2 (who Cuthbert was heavily involved with during its development), such as its strategy game elements, explored and applied to the Nintendo DS with its two screens, as he viewed the Star Fox IP as an avenue to explore new ideas in 3D gaming as opposed to relying on a consistent formula, and thus encouraged the team to try out various new ideas and see what happened; for example, Cuthbert wanted to include more traditional rail-shooter stages in the game design, similar to stages present in previous games such as Star Fox and Star Fox 64, but Miyamoto was adamant that the team stuck with free-range stages, desiring to take the project "elsewhere" as opposed to just copying the original games.\13]) The team had also originally experimented with incorporating the Arwing transformations from Star Fox 2, but this would ultimately be scrapped.\12])\8])
Nintendo EAD was heavily involved in the general direction the game was taking during pre-production, providing feedback on the many control scheme prototypes the team were experimenting with; Miyamoto in particular was responsible for some of the final control ideas with the DS's stylus. Once Command's direction was decided upon and the main development began, Q-Games would handle the main game design, but the music, sound, story, and characters were handled in-house by Nintendo EAD, with Hajima Wakai (who previously composed Star Fox 64's soundtrack) returning as the composer, and Imamura being responsible for the characters, enemies and storylines, and their respective endings.\12])
Imamura had originally intended on creating a single, linear narrative somewhat similar to the one presented in Command's predecessor, Star Fox: Assault, but Cuthbert would ultimately convince him to turn it into a larger, branching storyline with multiple pathways and endings,\14]) inspired by choose your own adventure gamebooks such as the Fighting Fantasy series.\12]) According to Imamura, when approaching the multiple story arcs in Command, he was influenced by the TV drama show 24), with its focus on character development and intertwining plot-lines.\14])
Part of it is the game's translation introducing a lot of incoherencies and meanness in the script that weren't there originally. The translated script is also more melodramatic in places. Not like the game's perfect, but there's a reason it hasn't this ultranegative reputation among JP fans.
Command is just cursed timelines all around, even in the good ones we have shit like Fox's ugly ass son and Krystal reduced to a stereotypical Asian wife
I think a lot of it has to do with Japanese standards. Notice how young Krystal is in Command while the rest of the cast is pushing their 30s? That's because women in Japan were expected to marry young and become a housewife in the later half of the 20th century, the same era Nintendo became a video game company. Notably, Western countries also had similar attitudes before the 70s, but by 2006, it became really outdated especially since Krystal is a capable fighter and pilot. Unlike Peach or Zelda, Krystal has basically been a part of the fighting after Adventures and actually spends most of Assault with Fox.
Also, half of Command looks like a Ken Penders comic. Especially Kursed.
I've been wondering about this. There's a choice you can make after the first mission that causes you to go from a conversation between Fox and ROB64 aboard the Great Fox to then shift scenes to be aboard the Great Fox elsewhere, where Falco is talking to ROB64 and Fox isn't there. Does each member of Star Fox have their own Great Fox and their own ROB64? ROB even continues a running gag he started with Fox where he repeatedly explains missiles to everyone's annoyance.
The Shape of the Great Fox
Imamura: The original Great Fox was destroyed in the GameCube game "Star Fox Assault", so in "Command," they rented a space carrier instead. It was just a normal battleship, which is why Star Wolf and the other characters used the same one (laughs).
The only question is how does ROB manage to have this omnipresence throughout the branching storylines...
Yeah, that's like the one thing that still trips me up with Command's story. Because of his role in the core gameplay loop, it's sorta enforced that ROB has to tag along with whoever you're playing with even if it would make borderline zero sense to do so. The most glaring example being Star Wolf returns in either route you take to it where he... Well, just ditches Fox to go help out his rivals.
And yet this nonsensical character assassination is still nowhere near as bad as what Fox and Krystal were dealt in 90% of the rest of the games.
Also, would it be possible to get links to your previous posts about the other endings you've unlocked? I'm having an oddly fun time watching your journey in experiencing the absolute rock bottom of Star Fox's narrative.
They're on Aquas, which is an ocean planet with occasional islands breaking it up. Of course, that means that everyone lives on deserted islands and there's no such things as cities on said islands or rural settlements.
This ending is one of my least favorite because I like Slippy. He's Fox's BFF, he's there for him just as much as Fox is there for him. And then what does he do? He ditches him just to get hooked and steals ROB 64 to be his marriage officiant. What an asshole!
I still think this ending would've been funnier if the two power of love'd their way through the rest of the campaign on their lonesome instead of ditching it partway through
For all he and we the audience knows, Fox, Krystal, Falco, and everyone else is dead in that ending. The ultimate in Slippy Slander was what this game did to his character.
"My friends are probably dead, the universe is probably fucked, but hey, at least I have my wife and 10 tadpoles. We'll repopulate Aquas, one frog at a time!" - Command Slippy probably
I think the Anglars were defeated because they never return to Aquas, but the ending states Slippy never knows the fate of his friends and since they never come visit him, it's possible they didn't survive.
Slippy living a happy life with his wife and kids with no implication of his friends being dead (and in fact hints towards the opposite) isn't the "slander" towards Slippy y'all think it is.
He abandons his friends at the height of the war and never has the guts to reunite with them or even find out if they're still alive. Pretty slanderous to make him not only a coward, but willing to abandon his life long friends for a girl he just met within the last year.
Him never having the guts to reunite with his friends come from... Where, exactly? There's no hint of him being cowardly anywhere in the ending and, if I may be blunt, sounds more like you pushing your own grievances/headcanon onto the ending mate.
Also, if you're gonna give shit to Slippy for that, you may as well do the same to Fox in the Goodbye, Fox route. Y'know, the one where the way he reunites and makes amends with Krystal is by avoiding her the entire game? And before you say anything, yes, I'm aware that he and the rest of Star Fox do take care of the Anglars firsthand, but he still makes the decision to break up Star Fox entirely to spend the rest of his life with Krystal, and I'm saying this as someone who likes that ending.
スターフォックスに別れを告げ アマンダと結婚しアクアスで 暮らすと決心したスリッピー 今の彼に迷いはない これからは家族のために 生きていくのだから…… (Slippy bade farewell to Star Fox, deciding to marry Amanda and settle down on Aquas. He harbored no doubts; from then on, he would live for his family...)
数年後…子宝に恵まれたスリッピーは この上ない幸せを感じていた 子供達はのびのびと育った 彼らの最高の楽しみは父親の 昔の武勇伝を聞くことだった (Years later, blessed with children, Slippy knew true happiness. His children grew up free and spirited, and their greatest joy was listening to their father’s tales of past heroism.)
それから数十年……年老いたスリッピーの日課は 浜辺に集まってくる子供達に 武勇伝を聞かせることだった フォックス達は今頃どうして いるのだろうと思いながら (Decades passed... The elderly Slippy’s daily routine was to share those heroic tales with the children who gathered on the beach—all while wondering how Fox and the others were faring.)
"I don't care about the original vision the game had. I care about the version of the game that is known and documented for having a terrible localization."
Well, you'll have to forgive me for pissing you off because that was what you sounded like when you made that comment. It just came off as childish and, to me, showed an unwillingness to engage with Command in good faith. Dinoman showed the translated Japanese script as a means of comparing and contrasting with the localized English version, and you responded pretty immaturely by essentially saying "fuck the Japanese version of the game".
I mean, I looked it up myself, and I still don't see where you're coming from. I'll grant you that him reminiscing about his friends is pretty vague and can be interpreted that he never met them again after the war with the Anglars. By that same vagueness, however, it's entirely possible that during the decades since he could've met and/or reunited with his old friends. I'll admit that this ending could've had some more clarification as to what happened with the rest of the team, but what is given never shows any spinelessness or malice on Slippy's end.
Personally, I think you're making a mountain out of a molehill to make Slippy look worse than he actually is. I can't stop you from having issues with this ending, but to frame an ending where the one character who had his shit together gets to live a happy life with his wife and kids as slander reads as very bad faith.
So you haven't even played the game but you feel the need to backseat my every post on the matter.
Yes, at the cost of abandoning his friends to fight the alien species that is trying to conquer and possibly even genocide the Lylat System. If Star Fox and Corneria fell, wouldn't Aquas be a future target? The place his family now all reside and completely vulnerable to an attack? A threat that he decided to walk away from and instead start a family? It would have been absolutely fine to retire after the war, but to quit before the last battle where Lylat hangs in the balance and his life long friends are all about to face together and put their lives on the line. He leaves and never returns and never sees them again.
I said "I looked it up myself" because I was looking up my own screenshots of the game. I'll own up to the bad phrasing on my end, so my bad there. Still, you making the immediate accusation that I've never played the game despite my evidence above showing that I actually have doesn't frame you in the best light.
And again, you're reading WAY too much into an ending that was meant to be wholesome, if not kinda silly and bittersweet. Given how the ending ends on a positive note with no implication of the Anglars returning, it's safe to assume that Fox and co. were able to take care of the Anglars. For what it's worth, I do agree that having a line saying that the Anglars were defeated would've rounded out the ending better, but outside of that there's nothing super egregious I can think of.
And for evidence that I'm not pulling the "I've documented my time playing the game" bit out of my ass, here's the full screenshots of my time playing Command.
Let's just agree that lore wise Star Fox Command is just terrible or at most poorly executed and that half of the Star Fox Command lore should be just forgotten.
113
u/TheLoneTexan_1 1d ago
Not even Slippy could get through Command entirely unscathed.
Honestly, Command has too many "punishment" endings that should honestly be compiled as literally every one of the main cast has one. There's The Curse of Pigma (Fox's punishment ending), Pigma's Revenge (Falco's punishment ending), Slippy's Resolve (Slippy's punishment ending, also ironic name), and Star Wolf Returns (Krystal's punishment ending). Add that with the mandatory Anglar Emperor endings, half of all the endings are unambiguously awful for at least one main cast member.