Metroid general

[Mike Matei's Penis]

I used to play a lot of Prime Hunters on my DS back in the day, Sylux's whole deal was just that he hated the Federation, and was capable enough to steal a Feddie prototype. Given that the Metroid setting exists as a vehicle for Samus to kill shit and get sick power-ups. All that we really needed to know was that he fucking hated the Feds, which Samus is generally friendly towards if we're operating off Prime established lore, and by extension he hates Samus because she works with and / or for the Federation on occasion. This should be enough for the player, it was for me, at the least.
Granted, I haven't played 4, but from what I've seen of other people's posts, and what I've heard about online, it sounds like Sylux's whole deal has been shamelessly rewritten to spin the whole slighted soldier into bitter rival bullshit. Which I find incredibly gay. Maybe I'm retarded (who am I kidding, I'm here after all), but I find the getting pissy and being spiteful enough to go about dedicating yourself to ruining someone's life over what sounds like an incredibly minor slight is incredibly Reddit brained.

Also, I just dusted off my 3DS to boot up Prime Hunters again, and fuck that intro still goes hard. A shame we'll never get a competent and not lame sequel to it.

The low res Starcraft 1-like CG of Hunters goes so hard.

Been using Citron to go through MP4 when I've had time (because it's free), but the stuttering is really starting to ruin the game, especially once you get to the desert. Not missing much though I suppose.

 

[Berrakh]

Samus completes her mission, but this devastates Sylux who is the lone survivor. Sylux as a character could then be further developed with survivor's guilt, hating himself for not being strong enough to save his own men, and hating Samus/the Federation for "getting his men killed". Sylux could make for a great conflicted villain in that regard. Anything would be better than what they did...

I see what you’re going for but I think he’s too big of an asshole for that story to not seem played out.

 

[robobobo]

Or give the guy a legitimate beef. Samus wasn't cast as a shining hero originally, she's a bounty hunter with a chip on her shoulder about space pirates. Say Sylux's team was getting ground up and Samus could've saved them, but saw some space pirates and went all foamy at the mouth, so a bunch of them died while she was busy pulling limbs off of space pirates and beating them to death with them. Then his hatred would have an understandable backstory, Samus would have some interesting character flaws with an obsession for revenge of her own, it would've been better all around.

 

[Sugriva]

I think I know the answer to this, but did Prime 4 even reference the other Prime games at all?? All the crap NPC dialogue I've heard doesn't have anything like that... These niggers could have been so good if they did that. Imagine if the sniper said something like, "You know Samus, my brother was stationed on Norion and saw you in action. He says you killed a space dragon and blew up a meteor... That's fucking incredible." Dude little things like that could have gone such a long way to endearing you to the troopers...

Sergeant nigger actually does mention eating curry on Norion, but as far as I know that's the only reference to the previous games.

 

[mirai gadget 8]

Part of the problem with casting any of the other villains from prime hunters is that they are all hard to take seriously because of how hard they jobbed for Gorea. They all got one shot tentacle'd to death.

 

[Lone MacReady II]

Sergeant nigger actually does mention eating curry on Norion

Jesus Christ Almighty........................................................................................................................................... just mongoloid tier.

Retro's best stock left after Prime 3, any quality stragglers left after Tropical Freeze, and then 343 + 20 miscellaneous studios filled in the gaps. What a mess.

 

[M3xus]

My sister surprised me with Metroid Prime 1-3: A Visual Retrospective. It's got concept art for Samus's suits, all the different bosses and creatures, and the evironments. It even includes scan log entries of some of the creatures and notes fron the producer Kensuke Tanabe. There's one note from Prime 1 that really sticks out to me:

Retro was established by assembling talented developers with both experience and a track record in game development. Because if this, as long as we provided a clear high-level concept, we could generally leave the details to Retro. For example, they were responsible for setting up and proposing the overally map design.

However, since Nintendo retained the final decision-making authority, there were many instances early on where our approaches to specifications did not align, leading to disagreements. Retro often explained, "This is how Western studios approach and think about game development."

To help them understand our perspective, I told them "Yes, but the game we're making now is a Nintendo game, and this is Retro's first time working on one. I've been working on Nintendo games for my entire career, so I believe I have the most experience in making Nintendo games. So please trust me first."

There were such conflicts, but in the end, I believe we gained Retro's agreement and were able to deliver a high-quality game.

There's more snippets clarifying who pushed for which mechanic (Retro really pushed for the half-pipe puzzles and Samus's arm cannon transforming for different beams, for example), and that the ending revealing Dark Samus was a late addition to Prime 1 that influenced their decision to make it a trilogy.

It's a joy to look at, but also melancholy. Both companies are echoes of what they once were, and it shows when you see Tanabe explain Retro's decision-making and design ethos. Highly recommend grabbing it if you're a fan.

 

[iScream into the void]

It's a joy to look at, but also melancholy. Both companies are echoes of what they once were, and it shows when you see Tanabe explain Retro's decision-making and design ethos.

Evergreen.

 

[Soggy Floppa]

I got the same book from a family member, there are some bits in the Prime Remastered section that fill in some details. The project was started in 2018, and according to people when the game came out, Nintendo sat on it for a year, so it was finished in 2022, so 4 years of development before they even started Prime 4.

So basically prime 4 had 3 years at most from a team that has never made Metroid before, since they made a point to change zero gameplay in the remaster. Apparently retro tried to propose redoing every cutscene from scratch, but Tanabe shot them down and made them match the original as close as possible.

Tanabe also states that he would be interested to see Prime 2 remade with online multiplayer, so probably not happening for another 5 years if at all.

 

[UERISIMILITUDO]

My sister surprised me with Metroid Prime 1-3: A Visual Retrospective. It's got concept art for Samus's suits, all the different bosses and creatures, and the evironments. It even includes scan log entries of some of the creatures and notes fron the producer Kensuke Tanabe.

Oh, this is something else the future has taken from us. There are these debates about using AI in video games these days, with some claiming that it's fine when only the concept art and other stuff that isn't in the final product uses it. In the past, we got books showing the early ideas and everything. Now we'll be lucky to get ChatGPT's vomit and the prompts they used if this trend carries on.

 

[derapples]

Famitsu did an interview with someone from Nintendo staff (probably Tanabe) about Prime 4. A translation has been posted on Famiboards Link
Some tidbits I found interesting.


Seems like the psychic gimmick came from the previous team and Retro just went along with it, explains why there are barely any real psychic powers in the game



Just straight up admitting they were chasing trends at the time and in the 2nd paragraph it feels feels like they're kind of admitting that these ideas didn't work well with Metroid's formula but they couldn't restart development again.

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

Famitsu did an interview with someone from Nintendo staff (probably Tanabe) about Prime 4. A translation has been posted on Famiboards Link

Who? Who the fuck said they want an open world Metroid game?? Had they ever played a Metroid game before when they said such a retarded thing???



Fuck they listened to Reddit, didn't they?

 

[starborn427614]

The whole dev cycle was a fucking mess, but if there's any silver lining it's that it wasn't entirely Retro's fault.

 

[derapples]

Sorry for kinda double posting but I also wanted to share this tweet from Kiwi Talkz, a podcaster who's done many great interviews with lots of game devs including multiple interviews with previous Retro devs, if you're interested in the development of the Prime trilogy I'd definitely recommend you check them out. Tweet

Some thoughts on his take. First, he puts a lot of blame for the game's state on the fact they had to work from Bandai's foundation. Though I think definitely it didn't help, I don't think it had as much of an impact as he implies. There was so much new blood at Retro during Prime 4's development that I think it is reasonable to believe that they were responsible for the bad decisions made, and also just the fact that Retro stated themselves that they started development from scratch makes me think that blaming everything on Bandai is unfair.
Second, I have no idea why he thinks Prime 5 is confirmed. Maybe there's something I overlooked but I haven't anything to suggest that another Prime game is on the table.
And lastly I really like his LOTR vs The Hobbit movie comparison, it fits very well imo.

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

The whole dev cycle was a fucking mess, but if there's any silver lining it's that it wasn't entirely Retro's fault.

After reading the interview, I believe Retro is not to blame for most of the issues with the game. For example, the interview mentioned how they designed the Control Beam (charge shot you control like an Arkham Batarang) before they had a logical reason Samus could do something like that. Retro inherited the early game development ideas and had to roll with them, so they decided "Samus has psychic powers, THAT'S how she controls the beam" and then expanded her moveset based on that. So it was an idea looking for an explanation.

In the comments of that interview thread on Famiboards they mentioned Sylux only has mocktroids (because they only have one internal nuclei) and if that's the case DON'T CALL THEM METROIDS IN GAME it's not Metroid fusion it's mocktroid fusion. Which still makes no damn sense regardless.

 

[LightDragonman1]

Who? Who the fuck said they want an open world Metroid game?? Had they ever played a Metroid game before when they said such a retarded thing???

View attachment 8331458

Fuck they listened to Reddit, didn't they?

Having been replaying BOTW on Switch 2, I must say that if that was the approach they decided to go with, then holy crap, did they miss the subtleties that made that game as good as it is.

 

[Sugriva]

According to that interview, Prime 4 takes place after Super. This is Other M levels of ignoring the canon and making no sense. Did anybody who worked on this game actually like Metroid?

 

[demicolon]

Samus Aran waited. The lights above her blinked and sparked out of the air. There were Space Pirates in the base. She didn't see them, but had expected them, now for years. Her warnings to G-Fed were not listenend to and now it was too late. Far too late for now, anyway.
Samus was a space marine for fourteen years. When she was young she watched the spaceships and he said to Chozo "I want to be on the ships, daddy."
Chozo said "NO! YOU WILL BE SEXUALIZED BY NECKBEARDS!"
There was a time when she believed them. Then as she got oldered she stopped. But now in the space station base of the UAC she knew there were Pirates.
"This is Adam," the radio crackered. "You must fight the Pirates!"
So Samus gotted her palsma beam and blew up the wall.
"SHE GOING TO KILL US," said the Pirates!
"I will shoot at her," said the Ridley and he fired the rocket missiles. Samus plasmaed at him and tried to blew him up. But then the ceiling fell and they were trapped and not able to kill.
"No! I must kill the Pirates," she shouted!
The radio said "No, Samus. You are in Zero Suit."
And then, Samuas was Screw Attacked.

 

[demicolon]

Old news but why even have a backstory with Sylux at all?

First time playing Super I thought the game is about Ellen Ripley visiting the space colony in the mecha suit, colony which has been destroyed by the xenomorph queen who grew bat wings for some reason and the quest is to chase her around the planet before she lays eggs and in the mecha suit because there's no time to change clothes and there's these bird aliens for some reason who are I guess the relatives of these savage statue bird people who hide in statues to ambush you and to steal their shit and... Bishop has been turned into a giant brain because... dunno, was about 5 at the time and didn't even knew how to read yet. Are kids today so imagination-deficient they need everything spelled out to have fun?
No, wait, Current Year Metroid is designed for 30-something children, my bad.

 

[MerelyAPlateOfSpaghetti]

According to that interview, Prime 4 takes place after Super. This is Other M levels of ignoring the canon and making no sense. Did anybody who worked on this game actually like Metroid?

They also said "it takes places in another dimension/timeline/reality so it won't affect existing canon and you don't need to worry your pretty little head about it."

Basically it's permission to skip it entirely since it doesn't matter.