Nintendo‘s long-awaited Metroid Prime 4 is finally available and as readers will know it has been a long time coming. One of the developer’s has talked to Japanese new publication about the trials and tribulations the developers encountered while creating their bold vision and why they decided to design limited areas instead of sprawling open worlds that many games the days have. Here’s what was said:
“At the start of the project, perhaps due to the influence of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, we saw a lot of comments on the internet saying ‘we want to play an open-world Metroid’. However, Metroid’s core element of ‘increasing the amount of explorable areas by unlocking powers’ is not very compatible with the ‘freedom to go anywhere from the beginning’ of open worlds. Thus we thought to design a limited area that could be freely explored, and have that be a hub that could connect to other areas. Then we thought that if one could move around on the bike in a satisfying way in that area, it could be a segment that mitigates the tension from exploration, and paces the whole game.
In the end, the game took much longer than expected to finish, and we realized that players’ impressions toward open-world games had changed. That being said, development had already been reset once before (when we started again from scratch with Retro Studios) so backtracking development again was out of the question, and we resolved to move forward with our original vision. During this time, shooting games and action games went through evolutions, with an increase in game speed in particular, but taking in those changes would have made it difficult to construct the tempo of an adventure game, so we actively chose to not take them into account. Therefore, I think this game is pretty much divorced from the changing of times.”
Thanks to Greatsong1 for sending in the news tip!
They could have still done an open world, yes Samus needs her items to help her explore, but that’s the joy of having optional areas, and side quests.
Wait so it’s not even open world? What the- what’s the point of that huge desert area then? Man the more the time passes the less I’m interested for this game.
The desert area is a vast central zone that allows access to the other zones. It’s not an open world, but you can go wherever you want, although you’ll inevitably be blocked at some point if you don’t have the right powers… that said, without giving spoilers, you often have indications to tell you where you need to go, even though one of the marines tells you ‘you can go wherever you want’ ^^
Opinions on this game are very mixed. My husband loves it and finds the new ideas excellent, bringing a breath of fresh air. As for me, I’m more skeptical; I felt that the zones are ’empty’ and, above all, shorter, even though it took a little over 20 hours to finish it. I could clearly tell it wasn’t the same team behind it.
Prime 4 has got to be my biggest gaming disappointment in the last 10 plus years. Super average.