Metroid Prime 4: Beyond Won’t Be The Franchise’s ‘BOTW Moment’, And That’s Okay

As Nintendo ended its latest Live presentation with the full reveal of Metroid Prime 4: BeyondThe world quickly got a little noisier as fans celebrated the glorious return of one of the company’s most revered brands. FinalAfter its initial announcement in 2017, Prime 4 is expected to launch in 2025 and it looks spectacular.

While the vast majority reacted to the trailer with excitement and anticipation, there were also those who felt disappointed, citing the game’s similarities to previous Prime entries, both visually and style play.

Here’s the thing: I get it. I really do. After 7 (or, if you’re like me, 18) years of waiting, surely our imaginations start to get the better of us and after games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and even Super Mario Bros. Marvel shows how far Nintendo is willing to deviate from the tried and tested formula, it’s natural to assume that Prime 4 will also mark a significant evolutionary step for a series that began in 2002.

Now, I’m not saying that developers should rest on their laurels and be satisfied with the bare minimum; Experimenting, pushing boundaries and challenging player expectations is always a good thing. But with Prime 4, I think it’s important that we examine our own expectations and understand what this game really is.

Let’s look at development times to start. I have absolutely no doubt that Prime 4 was announced too early and very few people objected to it. Many of Nintendo’s first-party games today are revealed and released within just a few months, but nearly two years after Prime 4’s announcement in June 2017, Nintendo’s Shinya Takahashi confirmed that development would be restarted from scratch at Retro Studios.

So let’s break this down. If development started in January 2019, that would mean Prime 4 had about five years in the oven (much of which was likely also affected by pandemic restrictions in 2019). 2020 and 2021). 20 years ago, that seemed unusual at best, but for big-budget titles of the 8th and 9th console generations, this was considered the norm. The only difference with Prime 4 is that we, the fans, have known about it for a long time (good luck with Elder Scroll VIBethesda).

I know many people are probably reading this article and thinking something like, “Ah, that’s not it ours Is there a problem?” – and you would be right. What I want to illustrate, however, is when a game becomes a known entity and is then kept secret (e.g. seven years, remember), expectations are easily inflated. It happened to me many times.

There’s also growing speculation that Prime 4 may actually bypass the Switch altogether and release its successor. An understandable conclusion, to be sure, but still an unfounded one. Nintendo has consistently labeled Prime 4 as a Switch game, including it in its regular list of games in financial updates. Now, I know companies sometimes like to spin information or use it in the wrong direction, but outright lying about which platform Prime 4 will launch on? No, I never bought that. Prime 4 looks like a Switch game because of it To be one. Even if it turns out to be cross-gen, the Switch 2 version will simply be a shinier version than what we have here.

Besides that, it’s important to note that Prime 4 is the fourth main installment in an ongoing story. When you look at franchises like Zelda or Mario, those games (for the most part) rarely include numbers in their titles, essentially giving developers a blank canvas to do the math. their magic. Prime 4 is the sequel to the ending story about a major incident in Metroid Prime 3: Corruptionwith Federal forces offers just a few tantalizing clues about what the future might hold.

The thing is, this isn’t a reboot or a drastic overhaul of the Prime series; it’s simply the next chapter, like halo 4like Undiscovered 4like Gear 4. Damn, like Pikmin 4! And I think we can all agree that none of these games do anything particularly groundbreaking when compared to previous entries. Again, it comes down to expectations and what we think we want out of the next game versus what it’s actually going to be.

Finally, I want to highlight the image specifically. To me it’s clear Metroid Prime Remastered looks like a test bed for the Prime 4. Looking at the two side by side (what I did(by the way), there is a noticeable improvement in the latter version, but you can tell that the technology applied to Metroid Prime could have been reused for Prime 4. With this in mind, you can forgive for thought, “Wow, Prime 4 looks just like the first game”. But I would say go back and watch the footage of the original trilogy on the GameCube and Wii and I think you’ll be surprised at how far Retro Studios has come.

Metroid Prime 4 won’t be the franchise’s ‘Breath of the Wild Moment’, and that’s okay – we shouldn’t expect that to be the case. What we can hopefully expect is a thrilling journey into the fourth main installment of one of Nintendo’s most popular franchises of all time. 2025 can’t come fast enough.