When Nintendo closed its latest Direct presentation with the full reveal of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, the world got a little louder for a moment as fans celebrated the glorious return of one of the company’s most revered franchises. FinallyAfter its initial announcement in 2017, Prime 4 is scheduled to launch in 2025, and it looks spectacular.
While an overwhelming majority responded to the trailer with excitement and anticipation, there were also those who felt disappointed, citing the game’s similarities to previous Prime entries, both in terms of visuals and gameplay.
The point is: I get it. Really and truly. After seven (or, if you’re like me, eighteen) years of waiting, our imaginations are undoubtedly starting to get the better of us, and after games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and even Super Mario Bros. Wondering how far Nintendo is willing to deviate from the tried and tested formula, it’s only natural to assume that Prime 4 would also mark a significant evolution for a series that started in 2002.
Now, I’m not saying that developers should rest on their laurels and settle for the bare minimum; experimenting, pushing boundaries and challenging players’ expectations are 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 the development time to get started. I have absolutely no doubt that Prime 4 was announced far too early, and few would argue. Many of Nintendo’s first-party games are revealed and released in just a handful of months these days, but nearly two years after Prime 4’s announcement in June 2017, Nintendo’s Shinya Takahashi confirmed that development would be restarting from scratch at Retro Studios.
So let’s break this down. If development were to start in January 2019, that means Prime 4 has had about five years to cook in the oven so far (much of which was likely also affected by the pandemic restrictions in 2020 and 2021). Twenty years ago that would have seemed highly unusual, but for big-budget titles in the 8th and 9th generations of consoles, this is considered the norm. The only difference with Prime 4 is that we, the fans, knew about it all along (good luck with The Elder Scrolls VI, Bethesda).
I know a lot of people are probably reading this and thinking something along the lines of: “Well, that’s not true us problem, right?” – and you would be right. However, what I want to illustrate is that when a game becomes a known entity and is then kept under a veil of secrecy (e.g. seven years, mind you), it’s incredibly easy for expectations to become too high. It’s happened to me several times.
It was also impossible to avoid the growing speculation that Prime 4 might skip the Switch altogether and appear on its successor. An understandable conclusion, admittedly, but nevertheless unfounded. Nintendo has consistently labeled Prime 4 as a Switch game, including putting it in regular lineups during financial updates. Now I know companies like to embellish information or use deception from time to time, but outright lie about what platform Prime 4 would launch on? No, I never bought that. Prime 4 looks like a Switch game because it is An. Even if it does go cross-gen, the Switch 2 version will just be a shinier version of what we have here.
That aside, it’s important to remember that Prime 4 is, well, the fourth main arc in an ongoing story. If you look at franchises like Zelda or Mario, those games (for the most part) rarely put numbers in their titles, essentially giving developers a blank canvas on which to work their magic. Prime 4 is the continuation of a story that ended on a huge cliffhanger in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, with Federation Force providing only a few tantalizing clues as to what might happen in the future.
The thing is, this isn’t a reboot or a drastic overhaul of the Prime series; it’s just the next chapter, just like Halo 4, just like Uncharted 4, just like Gears 4. Oh well, just like Pikmin 4! And I think we can all agree, as good as they are, that none of these games have done anything particularly groundbreaking compared to previous entries. Again, it comes down to expectations and what we think we want from the next game, versus what it’s actually going to be.
Finally, I want to specifically highlight the visuals. It’s clear to me that Metroid Prime Remastered was a bit of a testing ground for Prime 4. Looking at the two side by side (which I did, by the way), there’s a noticeable improvement on the latter, but you can tell that the technology used on Metroid Prime has probably been reused for Prime 4. With this in mind you might think: “Oh, well Prime 4 looks exactly like the first game”. But I’d say go back and watch the original trilogy footage 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 fine – we shouldn’t expect it to be. What we can hopefully look forward to is an exciting journey into the fourth mainline in one of Nintendo’s most celebrated franchises of all time. 2025 can’t come soon enough.