When Nintendo closed out its latest Direct with the full reveal of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, the world briefly went a little wild as fans celebrated the glorious return of one of the company’s most iconic franchises. Finallyafter first being announced in 2017, Prime 4 is slated to launch in 2025, and it looks spectacular.
While the vast majority responded to the trailer with excitement and anticipation, there were those who felt disappointed, citing the game’s similarities to previous Prime entries, both visually and in terms of gameplay.
Here’s the thing: I get it. really yes After 7 (or, if you’re anything like me, 18) years of waiting, our imaginations are undoubtedly starting to run wild, and after games like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and even Super Mario Bros. Wonder show how far Nintendo is willing to deviate from the proven formula, it’s only natural to assume that Prime 4 will also mark a significant evolution for the series that started in 2002.
Now, I’m not saying that developers should rest on their laurels and settle for the bare minimum; experimentation, 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 the game really is.
Let’s look at the beginning of development. I have no doubt that the Prime 4 was announced too soon, and few would argue against that. Many first-party Nintendo games are revealed and released within just a few months these days, but nearly two years after Prime 4 was announced in June 2017, Nintendo’s Shinya Takahashi has confirmed that development will be restarted from scratch at Retro Studios.
So let’s break it down. If development started in January 2019, that means Prime 4 has had roughly five years to cook in the oven so far (much of which was probably also affected by pandemic restrictions in 2020 and 2021). This would have seemed highly unusual 20 years ago, but is considered the norm for big budget 8th and 9th generation console titles. The only difference with Prime 4 is that we 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, not that. our problem, right?” – and you would be right. However, I want to illustrate that when a game becomes a known entity and is subsequently kept under wraps (e.g. seven years, mind), it is incredibly easy to inflate expectations. This has happened to me on multiple occasions.
It’s also impossible to avoid the growing speculation that the Prime 4 may actually skip the Switch altogether and release its successor. An understandable conclusion, sure, but still unsubstantiated. Nintendo has consistently referred to Prime 4 as a Switch game, including its regular lineup during financial updates. I know companies like to embellish information or use misdirection from time to time, but to outright lie about which platform Prime 4 will launch on? No, I never bought it. Prime 4 looks like a Switch game because it is Yippee one. Even if it ends up being cross-gen, the Switch 2 version will just be a shinier version of what we have here.
Additionally, it’s important to consider that Prime 4 is the fourth major ongoing story line. If you look at franchises like Zelda or Mario, these games (for the most part) rarely put numbers in their titles, essentially giving developers a blank canvas to work on. Prime 4 continues the story that ended on a huge cliffhanger in Metroid Prime 3: Corruption, with the 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 another chapter, just like Halo 4, just like Uncharted 4, just like Gears 4. Hell, just like Pikmin 4! And I think we’d all agree that, while they’re good, none of these games did anything particularly ground-breaking compared to the previous entries. Again, it’s about expectations and what we think we want from the next game versus what it will actually be.
In conclusion, I would like to emphasize the visual aspect in particular. It’s clear to me that Metroid Prime Remastered was a bit of a test bed for Prime 4. Looking at the two side by side (which I did by the way) there is a noticeable improvement in the latter, but you can tell that the technology applied to Metroid Prime was probably reworked on Prime 4. With that in mind, you’d be forgiven for thinking “Well, Prime 4 looks just like the first game”. But I’d say go back and watch the original trilogy footage on 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 just as well – we shouldn’t expect it to be. Hopefully, we can look forward to an exciting journey into the fourth main series in one of Nintendo’s most famous franchises of all time. 2025 can’t come soon enough.