Metroid Prime 4 devs say rebooting the game again was ‘out of the question’ despite changing tastes
The Nintendo Switch game’s development team have discussed its lengthy development
Nintendo has said that rebooting Metroid Prime 4 development for a second time was considered “out of the question”, despite committing to an open-world hub formula that faced ‘changed’ player trends by the time it was completed.
Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was finally released for Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 last month, after nearly a decade of development and a change of developer. The game received generally favourable reviews, but attracted some criticism for its support characters and desert hub world, which some perceived as dated.
In a new interview with Famitsu (translated by Nintendo Everything), Metroid Prime 4’s development team has discussed its lengthy production for the first time. According to the uncredited interviewee, Beyond’s formula came from an initial desire to implement open-world features into the series.
However, the interview suggests that by the time the game approached completion, the development team may have had some doubts about the direction it had set, but it considered further delays unrealistic, given that Prime 4 was announced way back in 2017.
“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’,” the development team told Famitsu.
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“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.”
The team continued: “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 not to take them into account. Therefore, I think this game is pretty much divorced from the changing of times.”
Metroid Prime 4 was first announced at E3 2017, with Bandai Namco reportedly in charge of development. However, two years later, Nintendo announced that development had been handed to the original Prime studio Retro, and production restarted.
According to the Famitsu interview, Nintendo had already decided on the game’s story and gameplay involving psychic abilities before development was transferred to Retro Studios.
“While playing with the prototype, we came up with the idea of ‘controlling the Charge Beam.’ We had it programmed and tested, and determined it would add a new layer of gameplay. But then we asked, ‘What makes Samus capable of this?’ That led us to tie it to psychic abilities.
“Later, when development was transferred to Retro Studios, we asked them to add other ideas for psychic abilities.”
Guides: Read our Metroid Prime 4 Walkthrough for a step-by-step guide to finishing the game 100%. We also have simple guides for all Missile Expansion Locations, Energy Tank Locations, Mech Part Locations, All Shrine Locations, Scout Bot Locations, a Green Energy Crystals Guide, Lamorn Lore and Data Log scan locations, and how to get the secret ending.
