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Metroid Prime 4 (Switch)

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[tweet]874668801433886720[/tweet]

 

And Dreams, and...

 

For Shenmue III, we've actually seen some art assets and concept footage.

 

Anyways, I'm hyped for this, although I'm of the (probably) controversial opinion that it'd be great if they'd use the right stick to look around, rather than changing weapons/visors.

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It's a big ask for a new developer to come in and capture the essence of the originals (1 & 2 in particular) while making the series relevant to today. I think they need to overhaul the lock-on system without turning the game into a straight-up FPS, or do something to tweak the combat. Add melee weapons? Turn the screw-attack into an actual viable attack? Anything that incorporates the extra abilities into the combat would be great because compartmentalising every upgrade into ultra-specific functions (e.g. traversal only, morph ball only) is a little outdated now.

 

I'd be interested to see if they could make snapping between first and third person more fluid so that you could maintain momentum between the two, or anything that avoids slow confrontations that devolve into games of ring a ring o' roses. The new DOOM has shown there's still life in the genre to explore mechanically, especially movement wise.

Edited by dwarf

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Bit of a troll announcement but I'll take it.

 

Still not enough to warrant a purchase for me as there's still only three games I want. (Metroid, Zelda and Mario.)

 

Doesn't that apply to pretty much every Nintendo console? :p

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Not a big fan of the "teaser" reveal. I didn't like it with FFVII and Shenmue, and I'm not a big fan now. Sure, it was shocking to see it's real, but it's still the equivalent of a passing comment by the devs.

 

What does intrigue me is that Retro Studios isn't making it. This is good news to me, since I felt Retro exhausted all of their ideas on the original trilogy. And it's definitely going to be interesting to see Nintendo's own developers take a shot (a-ha!) at the FPS genre.

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Isn't Kensuke Tanabe at the helm of this?

 

Hasn't he had a hand in the all the Metroid games beginning with Prime and excluding Other M?

 

Regarding the reveal, I'd say that the mention of Metroid Prime 4 combined with the showing of Metroid: Samus Returns tries to get across, as Reggie said, that Metroid is an important franchise to them, something that was a bit up in the air since the downward spiral starting with Other M (even though I personally enjoyed the game).

It gets a pass in my book.

Edited by Fused King

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Doesn't that apply to pretty much every Nintendo console? :p

 

True, but I've already played this generations Mario Kart and Smash the previous generation of hardware. As much as I enjoyed those two games there's no reason to shell out on a whole new console to play them again.

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Eurogamer are backing up the rumours about Bandai Namco being the developer.

Quote

Internet rumours this week pegged Bandai Namco as being the mystery studio behind Metroid Prime 4 - something multiple sources have now confirmed to Eurogamer as being accurate. 
Specifically, the highly-anticipated Nintendo Switch exclusive is being developed by Bandai Namco Studios Singapore, which we understand is lead studio on the game in collaboration with Nintendo. 
This studio houses some former LucasArts Singapore staff who previously worked on, among other things, the ambitious cancelled Star Wars 1313.

 

 

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As I said in the other thread, I'm pretty confident that the rumour is true.  Namco have been the rumoured developer for a good while now and everything is pointing towards them doing the deed.

 

And as I also said in the other thread, I'm not particularly confident in their ability to do justice to the series.  In cases where Namco act as co-developer on a Nintendo game (MK8, Smash 4 etc), they've done a great job, but when they're the main developer (Star Fox Assault, Mario Baseball)... not so much...

 

Not to mention that Namco have almost no experience in making first person games, or metroid style games...

 

The fact that Nintendo have been playing coy about who's making the game is another big sign that they knew people wouldn't be happy about the news...

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25 minutes ago, Dcubed said:

Not to mention that Namco have almost no experience in making first person games, or metroid style games...

To be fair, neither did Retro Studios.

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I think we could be pleasantly surprised with what comes out of the development team for Metroid Prime 4. I really hope they do a better job than Mercury Steam with the franchise, though, as despite Samus Returns being a good game it just wasn't quite up par with other entries.

The best part of the rumours may be Ridge Racer making a return as I haven't played a racer like that for quite a while and my feelings for the series are mostly positive thanks to living Ridge Racer 64 all those years ago and enjoying Ridge Racer 3D :smile:

Hoping for some cool Nintendo decals for the cars :grin:

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33 minutes ago, Hero-of-Time said:

To be fair, neither did Retro Studios.

I actually read a really in-depth article about the history of the Gamecube recently and one thing it included were quotes from Retro Studies ahead of the Gamecube's launch. They were originally working on an exclusive NFL game for the Gamecube's launch as well as an online (!!!) RPG, but both got cancelled and they ended up working flat out on Metroid. There was actually a lot of concern that the game wouldn't deliver...thankfully the rest is history!!

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Retro had a lot to prove but nothing to disprove... if that makes sense. They were an unknown and they delivered. Namco on the other hand have high highs and low lows on their track record. That said, hopefully Nintendo is staying close to the project, and they will borrow a lot from what made the previous games great. I hope they steer away from any and all motion controls and abandon entirely the embarrassment of character development that Other M tried to touch on. I would say that right now this is the one and only announced game I'm really looking forward to.

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Weren't Retro Studios initially comprised mostly of the former Acclaim team who made the Turok series? Sure I remember reading that somewhere.

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Firstly, Starfox Assault is awesome, and at the very least better than a lot of Nintendo developed Star Fox games. 

But more importantly, Bamco are developing this "in collaboration with Nintendo" so hopefully it'll turn out well. 

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1 hour ago, Nicktendo said:

Weren't Retro Studios initially comprised mostly of the former Acclaim team who made the Turok series? Sure I remember reading that somewhere.

You are absolutely spot on.  They were initially made up of most of the team from Iguana, who made Turok 1, 2 and Rage Wars.  However, a large chunk of them (not all though), including the then CEO Jeff Spangenberg, were kicked out after being found to be committing misconduct, during the development of their initial set of prototypes.

 

Quite a few notable people did stick around from Iguana after the exodus however, most notably Mark Pacini, so they did have experience with FPS games when making Metroid Prime.  Retro's makeup has changed significantly from MP1 though, especially after Mark Pacini left and tried to take a bunch of staff with him; before being escorted out of the building and kicked out of Retro.  Though that's not to say that Retro doesn't still have a large chunk of staff who did work on Prime 2 and 3.

 

There are actually a fair few touches in the MP games that come pretty much directly from Turok 1 & 2, despite the exodus, like the ability to shoot the birds flying around in the sky in the Chozo Ruins and the ability to trick enemies into fighting each other; not to mention the focus on platforming and exploration.  So there is still a bit of a shared lineage there that you can see in the final product!

Edited by Dcubed
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I was definitely more excited when I thought it was a new internal development team considering how great the new blood has been in rejuvenating Zelda and Mario. I'm not completely the other way now this rumour has become more solid, Namco could still produce something fantastic but I am a bit more hesitant about it than I was when it was announced. Do we know what sort of experience Bandai Namco Singapore has? What games have the developers worked on before?

As others have said Retro was very much an unknown quantity and Metroid fans had a lot of misgivings about it being in the hands of another developer but they knocked it out of the park. It's worth considering though that Nintendo made them scrap their numerous other projects to focus on making Prime, will Nintendo be able to have that kind of control and input over a studio that is wholly owned by Bandai Namco?

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I find it odd seeing people say "Star Wars 1313" as a positive. A game that was cancelled for being a mess in development isn't exactly good.

That said, I'm sure this will turn out fine. Plus they were a support studio, not the main studio.

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Was it a mess? I thought it was cancelled for being Star Wars.

Anyway, I have no strong feelings one way or another about Bandai or Namco doing Metroid Prime 4 yet, I'll just wait and see if this new team can deliver.

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1313 wasn’t a mess to my knowledge. It was only ever handled by LucasArts, Disney bought Lucas Film and shortly after they decided Lucas Arts was no longer a developer and shuttered all projects. 

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1 hour ago, Cube said:

I find it odd seeing people say "Star Wars 1313" as a positive. A game that was cancelled for being a mess in development isn't exactly good.

I think that you might be getting Star Wars 1313 confused with Star Wars Battlefront III1313 was trademarked in May 2012, LucasArts announced it later that month, and it was revealed in June 2012 at E3. Disney purchased Lucasfilm in October 2012, but development at LucasArts wasn't officially ceased until April 2013. Development, I imagine, would have been very sporadic and less confident in the weeks leading up to, and the months after, Disney's acquisition of Lucasfilm, but I don't recall ever reading or hearing about that game in particular having development issues, and the short window between trademark to announcement and then to reveal seems to bolster that somewhat.

Battlefront III, in comparison, was an absolute mess, and its been well-documented as such (which is why I mention it specifically). There were supposedly no major deadlines to work towards, direction was infrequent, and funding and support from LucasArts was supposedly very hard to come by for the game's developers.

I was kind of hoping that Nintendo's own EPD division would be taking on the game, so hearing that Namco might be taking on the project does make me a little nervous. It's got very little to do with their lack of a first-person action-adventure game, and much more to do with the fact that, from what I gather, it was the western influences on the original Prime games which made them so great (I haven't played them myself yet, so I can't comment on how true that is). Metroid hasn't ever really sold like Nintendo's tentpole franchises, but I do hope that, whoever Nintendo decides to entrust with Prime 4, they are being entrusted because Nintendo believes that they can evolve the franchise whilst paying homage to what made the other Metroid games so interesting.

Edited by Julius Caesar
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I'm willing to reserve judgement until we seem some trailers or hear some more information at least. I'm really hoping they can pull it off and release a quality product that lives up to expectations - goodness knows it's been a while since the last 3D Metroid game (just looked it up and I can't believe Metroid Prime 3 was released in 2007... time flies!).

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6 hours ago, Kav said:

I don’t know the truth to this but...

It's Eurogamer... ::shrug:

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Well, it's not always going to work out, but as long as the developer sticks to the core principles of Metroid and doesn't go too far then we should hopefully have a solid Metroid game. MercurySteam are the only developer to have succeeded with Metroid in recent times. Please don't make this the Halo 5: Guardians of Metroid Prime... oh wait I suppose we already had that in Federation Force.

Personally hoping that they don't force everyone to use dual analogue controls, I just don't get on with that control scheme at all. 

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