I think Metroid Prime and Pokémon main-RPG are the best Nintendo candidates for another openworld experience.
It would be a massive accomplishment for the series to be more sandboxy and explorable.
@MarcelRguez I'd say Other M was pretty open, maybe not an open world like Zelda is, but the idea of back traveling and exploration have always been important to the Metroid formula. I don't want the ''go anywhere'' open world, but I wouldn't mind being able to travel back to every single location I visited in the game.
@MarcelRguez I understand your point but I disagree. Breath of the Wild has a few environmental barriers that stop you from going just anywhere at the very beginning and must overcome by obtaining new equipment (like the waterfalls and the rain in Zora's domain).
Infact those environmental barriers are soft barriers - a key feature of the platonic ideal of a Metroid game. You can climb a BoTW mountain in the rain if you're determined enough just like you can wall jump over a barrier before you have the high jump boots or run through the super hot caves before you have the Varia suit in Super Metroid if you're determined enough. It's one of the reasons why BoTW felt so much like a Metroid game to me.
To me the pattern laid out in BoTW is, in many ways, a more natural evolution of the Metroid formula than it is of the (very similar) Zelda formula.
If Metroid Prime 4 were to model itself on BoTW I'd be delighted - I hope they take the series in that direction. Of course I'm delighted anyway! Metroid is coming back - the only one in the series that's not completely great is Metroid II*.
*The game(s) you may be thinking about that might contradict that statement didn't really happen. You imagined them. They were a bad dream and now you're awake!
Pokémon, I kind of see it. Prime, not really. You make it open world and the core concept of the games goes flying though the window. Open-world design is at odds with the environmental barriers present in metroidvania titles, the whole point of these games is to not be able to go everywhere from the get-go.
Besides, we have enough games featuring an open-world already and we just got an excellent one with Breath of the Wild. Please, make it stop.
Open world design just absolutely decimated Zelda's metroidvanian elements in Breath of the Wild, so I don't think it's a good choice for Metroid, lol. And any big change would make Pokemon more interesting, not just moar LAND.
Metroid Prime had the best sequence breaks (if you had the earliest release of the game possible). Space Jump Boots first, anyone? How about the Plasma Beam before Thardus (who is actually weak to it)?
Everything is weak to the Plasma Beam, color-coded immunities aside. Magmoors, the one thing that "resists" it, is still taken out by it more quickly than most other weapons.
Yes, if it follows the Prime games then it may be about Sylux. But as I mentioned before it may also be a totally different story set much later (or earlier). Keep in mind that Nintendo is not really story-minded, and that this game is (presumably) made inhouse by Nintendo. Ah well, we wait and see.
@MarcelRguez There are a handful of "hard locks" in BoTW. Entering all of the divine beasts requires you to go through a quest sequence and talk to an NPC. I tried to jump onto the Zora divine beast and found out about the force field the hard way.
That a Metriod "BoTW" would work a bit differently, emphasise different things, add in a few more "hard" barriers and require a lot of careful thought and hard work is something that I don't think is in any question. How exactly they'd manage it all I don't know - but it is possible and Nintendo's designers are some of the best in the business.
I do think that the true non-linearity of BoTW is a natural development of the pattern laid out by A Link To The Past (a modified version of which underpined Super Metroid which is what all Metroid games have been since). I think it would work especially well for Metroid because the soft barriers have always promoted the idea that you could potentially approach the game in any sequence you'd like (even if they're actually designed to be played in a linear way).
Yeah, because it's an "open world" game doesn't mean
there must be lots of vast empty areas
you should be able to climb any wall and any hill and have everything open at any time.
it's automatically a survival simulation where you need to collect and craft stuff
In a game like Metroid it's about the feels, what can an open world do to immerse the player, to make him feel even more claustrophobic in some places, to make the world even more explorable, interesting, and dangerous in other places.
Breath of the Wild is great, but it's not perfect. The next open-world Zelda learned plenty from BotW's little misses. I assume the same for Metroid Prime 4 (if it goes openworld). It may not be perfect on its first try, but it will be great! Probably much greater and with much more impact than the other Primes.
You remember when Ridley attacked that pipe section you had to morph ball into and get through? You had just a way back and forth, but Ridley was freely roaming the air outside not only causing you trouble but also devastating the base. That's where I felt claustrophoc but at the same time had a feeling of stuff going around in the world outside. But it was only simulated, a half movie scene. In an open world Ridley would have the enhanced AI to attack the player, the base, the generators, or the Metroids or the Pirates or anything else that was involved in the battle.
A good feel of claustrophia is also when you dive into water without the Gravity Suit. All your actions and moves become slow and swarms of alien piranhas come to bite chunks out of your armor. Here, put Samus into a huge openworld underwater area, a sunken ship or something like that and you get a very different and more dense feeling than what you get from being in a bunch of connected rooms.
Really, it's about the feel of a breathing, living world where stuff is happening around you at all times and not just in the seperated room you are (I really liked how in Metroid Prime Hunters the Hunters themselves had a bit of their own life. Even though the game wasn't open world, the Hunters were also moving between planets doing their business and could appear on your route.)
Anyway, having more object interaction not just with the player but with other AI's as well cannot be done if everything is closed up in rooms. Openworld adds an element of chaos, of randomness. It also adds that enemies can be observed in their habitat from afar and can be lured to other places. It opens up more battle strategies, just like in Zelda, and battle is a huge part of Metroid. Just like exploration. In Prime all enemies are tied to their room, and they cannot leave it. Don't you think that's pretty restricted?
I think battles, exploration, and atmosphere will be better in an open world Metroid, if done right.
@MarcelRguez The thing is that I do still see quite a bit of ALTTP in BoTW. I see even more of Super Metroid in BoTW.
Take the Varia suit - as an upgrade is it any different at all conceptually to the fireproof suit in BoTW? That's something you don't have when you're fresh off the Great Plateau and a significant area of the game is soft gated behind having the (entirely passive) abilities it offers. Just like the Varia suit.
Non-linearity has always seemed to me to be the next logical step for a Metroidvania title (as it is for Zelda). There are potentially other ways to achieve that and different levels of non-linearity.
I also tend to agree with @SKTTR. An open world game can be claustrophobic. I find the mazes in BoTW to be a little claustrophobic for instance. The main feeling that Metroid always evoked to me though (and that I like it to evoke) is a feeling that I'm in a disorientating and dangerous place, always a little bit out of my depth and not quite sure how I get back to safety. An open world game can definitely do that.
My fingers are crossed that Metroid Prime 4 provides the open world non-linear pot-holing sister to Breath of the Wild's open world non-linear rock-climbing brother. But if it's a more linear narrative driven game following a more traditional Metroid pattern then that's great too. Nintendo is in a win-win situation with me here.
@Aurumonado You don't need to get rid of doors. And no open world game is completely rendered at all times, it's always partially rendered. Doors and corridors also means that the game can have even more detailed environments than a game that takes place in the open plains. So I'm not sure what you're trying to say.
I agree with no open world. Maybe some aspects of it can be but if you're going open world name it something other then Prime 4. Just the name title tells me it should be in the same vain as the others.
John 8:7 He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.
MERG said:
If I was only ever able to have Monster Hunter and EO games in the future, I would be a happy man.
I agree with no open world. Maybe some aspects of it can be but if you're going open world name it something other then Prime 4. Just the name title tells me it should be in the same vain as the others.
Agreed. Open world would dampen the feeling of isolation IMO.
I started playing Echoes last night. So far, I like what I'm seeing. I just got past the cutscene with the GF ship, saw what happened to the whole crew, and (finally) hit a save station. That's another minor gripe I had about Prime 1, to be honest; save stations need to be more frequent. I had to redo half an hour of gameplay at one point thanks to Magmoor Caverns early on. That doesn't exactly fly for someone whose gaming time is normally limited.
Currently playing: Ys IX: Monstrum Nox (Switch), Mario & Luigi: Dream Team, SteamWorld Dig (PC)
I think Metroid Prime 2: Echoes' multiplayer with pointer controls, tighter animations, and more visually interesting maps would be fine. That said, if ARMS and Smash don't need singleplayer, Metroid Prime sure as hell doesn't need multiplayer.
I really like save stations in Metroid Prime and the tension they provide, but maybe they could do something interesting with auto-save, who knows? I just want more of those little pocket areas, they were so well visually designed around a central point they felt almost like sacred little shrines. Hopefully Nintendo doesn't overlook that, because especially Metroid Prime 2 and 3 had some incredible-looking save rooms.
Here's one of the better ones from Metroid Prime 1. They only got better looking as the series' lighting and visual design improved:
@Tyranexx That's awesome! Let us know where you are in the game sometimes, if you don't mind.
@Tyranexx Careful with the boss after that station, it can break your lock-on when it attacks... at first, anyway.
@Haru17 I'd imagine the controls for Prime would something like Splatoon, traditional twin-stick camera controls with gyroscope aiming, maybe have an option to only make the aiming active when firing like in Star Fox Zero. The Switch also has more buttons to work with compared to a Gamecube, DS or Wiimote
Forums
Topic: Metroid Prime 4: Beyond
Posts 81 to 100 of 965
Please login or sign up to reply to this topic