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

So far, I've only played the first Metroid Prime. I loved the game, but I gotta agree that Magmoor Caverns was a huge pain. My least favorite room was the one with those annoying defense turrets that seemed to respawn on every trip through. Some of the environments got a bit same-y as well due to backtracking. However, the game's positives far outweigh the negatives in my book.

Reading the feedback on Echoes in this thread has me more excited about starting it now. The internet in general seems to consider it the weakest entry in the series.

@Tyranexx It's by far the most difficult Prime game, which is why people hate on it / don't complete it I think.

@Tyranexx
I found travelling between worlds in Echoes a pain in the backside. In particular when you have to go through several in the space of a few minutes. The first is definitely my favourite.

Echoes is pretty much ALttP: Metroid edition. That being said, it was actually enjoyable. The main difference between Echoes and ALttP is that the Dark World in Echoes actually hurts you and you have to take a different approach to exploring the Dark World, relying heavily on light beacons that can heal you.

And yeah, Magmoor Caverns was annoying in Prime 1. Mainly because there was no shortcut around it to get to and from Phendrana and everytime you had to backtrack between Tallon Overworld/Chozo Ruins and Phendrana (which is quite a lot actually) you had to go through the area all over again. At least Echoes has several shortcuts and a fast travel method once you get the final powerup in the game.

@Bolt_Strike I almost never use the Light Suit's warp function because it requires you to venture to the relatively out-of-the way temples. And sit through loading screens due to those weird bomb-slots for some reason. Aether is also much better structured for ease of travel: one central area and three main ones, with elevators linking all of them.

That said, Samus Returns seems set to take fast-travelling to the next level.

I forgot the endgame light energy controller fast travel. I love the context of it.

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)?

day 3 :/
in the future ill randomly see this and laugh at my past self's misfortune

It'll be fun to come back to the beginning pages of this thread, and seeing what we were thinking when all we had to go on was a logo. I did that with the Zelda thread. It's cool to see what we thought would be in the game versus what we got

@Operative2-0 Don't make me worried.

Metroid Prime 4 is the announcement that I wanted the most!

For me its MP2 > MP > MP3.

I really hope Prime 4 is more like the first two and less like the third one.

Wouldn't surprise me if "Prime 4" is just a place-holder name, only because they wanted to give the message: We are really working on a proper Metroid this time. Could have a entirely different story in a different timeframe. But we'll see.

However, I hope Nintendo isn't to harsh to Next Level games. Okay Federation force wasn't what we wanted and thus sold very badly, but it was Nintendo who gave the order for that game. The team DOES have talent, Punch Out Wii was great. As was Luigi's mansion 2. Hopefully they get to make a new Luigi's mansion for Switch someday.

I just hope Nintendo makes Next Level go back to Mario Sports. Strikers was great, but when they tried to make action adventures...

@Henmii Very true, but we can make a few educated guesses:

Since the game will most probably revolve around Sylux, it has to take place after Hunters, so it'll be placed after Prime at the very least. Tanabe decided to sequel-bait both Corruption and Federation Force (which takes place after Corruption) with Sylux, so it makes sense for this game to be the last game in the Prime chronology.

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.

@SKTTR 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.

@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!

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.

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.