Topic: Metroid Prime 4: The Long(er) Wait

I must admit, I never really liked the idea of Bamco being involved with Metroid Prime 4. It has great pedigree, and well worth teaming up with for things like Smash and Pokken - but a first-person shooter and adventure? Always seemed an odd choice.

Retro has been so quiet for so long, I suspect it has been working on the Metroid Prime trilogy remaster/port for Switch - and this makes it an obvious choice to take over development for the next game.

@Dezzy To be fair, those sales were on the GameCube, and the Wii (and I don't think the demographic, nor the marketing was there for 3). I'm certain it can sell at least 5 million on the Switch. Probably even more. There are a lot more Switch owners, and the demographic has changed over the years.

It was the right thing to do. We might be upset at the moment, but I bet all of us want the best Metroid game possible. Realizing that, it's easier to accept these news.

@Octane Ah, you watched the DF Retro video, huh?

Agreed. It’s because Nintendo are willing to do things like this, that they usually produce such high quality games.

I’m hopeful it’ll be worth the wait!

I'm looking forward to what Retro Studios is going to do with Prime 4, especially since this isn't the same team outside of name that worked on the original Prime Trilogy, but I'm also not as excited. This will follow Primes 1-3 closely as a guide and will likely feel more safe than ambitious, and so it puts my expectations in check as far as the game's design. My window for the game is November 2021-2022 to release depending on whether or not online multiplayer is pushed for Prime 4, and that expected release window gives it the longest development time of any Prime sequel. I'll probably believe that the game is having/has had development issues under Retro if it's late 2022 without online and definitely by 2023.

MP4.exe has crashed. Now restarting.

One huge advantage of Retro now handling Prime 4 that I barely see much people bring up is that Retro has (presumably) the source code and old ideas for Prime 1-3. Imagine if we finally brought back Meta Kraid, who was cut from Prime 1 due to constraints. Imagine them finally deciding how to incorporate the Speed Booster in a Prime game. Etc.

A recurring theme of Nintendo lately was digging back to past ideas and refining it for modern day. Stuff like BotW calling back to Zelda 1 in design, Odyssey calling back to 64 and Sunshine, and Smash Ultimate taking cut concepts like Ditto (who was supposed to be in Melee) and the premise of World of Light (which was one of the initial proposals for Subspace Emissary) and putting it in the game officially.

I (Edit: It) will be awesome to see Meta Kraid in Prime 4. Also the Queen Shegoth that was scraped from Prime 1 due to time constraints and even Mother Brain.

@DarthNocturnal Agreed. I didn't know too much about the Queen Shegoth since I only saw it once on a youtube video. Also would be interesting to see how see how they implement the Speed Booster in a Prime game.

Just gonna put this up here, in case somebody missed it, or is actually interested in these rumors:
https://twitter.com/imranzomg/status/1088857688027480065

Take it with a generous amount of salt, though. I'm certainly doing that, at least until more is known, and rumors like these are actually officially confirmed.

Really curious about the Retro's pitch. Nintendo mentioned that they weren't happy with the quality of the Metroid Prime 4. I am suspecting that they were okay about the product until they met Retro Studios. If they were worried about the quality then how could the Other M and the Federation Force ever happen?

So what was Retro' s pitch? Earlier the Zelda franchise shared some similarities with Metroid. So could it be that the new game is going to be as open as BOTW?

4-5 million seems possible. I doubt it'd be much more than that though. It's still a fairly niche series. It doesn't really tick any of the mass market checkboxes.
Wii audience demographic was definitely all over the place. Gamecube audience demographic seems fairly similar to Switch demographic though. Except the Switch will have a bigger install base. Beyond that, I'm not sure what the difference is. Maybe higher average age audience. But I'm not sure what impact that has on Nintendo given that the most mature stuff they make is teenage and upwards.

I really hope that whatever Retro was working on after all these years gets released or at least announced. I mean think about it, imagine working on a game for 5 years only for it to be cancelled. I feel like that would really hurt the team's morale. I'm glad to hear that Retro Studios is back and if they managed to impress Nintendo with their demo, then that does give me some confidence that the team is still capable of doing something good with a younger team. But at the same time, I'm also concerned if their morale isn't up to par or Nintendo isn't using them properly

I want to see what build this Metroid Prime 4 originally had

@Zkibu My hot take would be.

Other M was trying to get a 2Desque Metroid on a big console, though I guess they did not understand that the players were adamant about the exploration and meaningful progression.
Federation Force was probably just a Metroid game so they could namedrop it to make Fedeartion Force sell better. They probably did not anticipate the backlash they would get from this.

Apparently with Samus Returns and giving Prime 4 the better treatment might be a clue that they ae willing to improve in order to salvage the Metroid IP. With two "stinker" games they certainly can't have any further missteps, or else they could bury this IP completely.

Another possibility would be that Prime 4 is even a bigger dumpster fire than those games named.

This is pure conjecture on my part, of course.

@Lemmy_the_Koopa agreed, Nintendo were completely out of touch what is a Metroid-game. We can see that development as early as Metroid Prime 3 which was quite linear game. I seriously hope that they realized now that the problem was their previous products than the audience. The demand is still there as we can see with the people's reaction and anticipation after they revealed just the logo.

@Zkibu i certainly hope so. fingers crossed

No, that's not true. We knew the old Retro back then when it was new. We knew they were the new Iguana Entertainment that had loads of experience in the first person genre, as they developed classic and popular N64 titles such as the Turok series and Forsaken before Acclaim went bankrupt and Nintendo picked them up.

We know less now. But I don't worry. Even NSTC was able to create one of the best Metroid Prime games (Hunters).
A newly formed Retro has the best connections and all the assets and knowledge to make Metroid Prime 4 work best. It's not like all old Metroid Prime staff is gone, they still have a bunch of veterans.

@Zkibu Are you joking? Prime 3 was literally taking the Fusion route in terms of linearity, and Fusion came out all the way back in 2002 next to Prime 1. Overall still linear and always provides an objective, but how you get there is still up to you.

And Fusion is one of the best games in the series. Prime 3 is also great, and its problems had nothing to do with linearity. It more had to do with Hypermode being extremely unbalanced, causing combat to become a breeze.