Overly analyzing Metroid Prime 4's reveal trailer
Against my predictions, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond was officially announced at the June 2024’s Nintendo Direct, and is slated to be released sometime in 2025.
While in my head I promised myself not to spoil myself by watching further trailers for this game, I also took the chance to scrutinize the reveal trailer and speculate over the details of both this game and the successor of the Nintendo Switch.
Revealed at the very last possible moment
After the October 2023’s Nintendo Direct, I predicted a 30% chance that Metroid Prime 4 would be revealed in June of 2024 with a “2025” release date, and a 10% for “late 2025” release date. The remaining 60% had a more pessimistic outcome: That the game would have been benched much like Metroid Dread did in the past.
This is because I predicted that we would’ve heard news of the new console sometime in 2025, which, as it’s been revealed that it will be formally announced sometime in this fiscal year spanning until March 2025, has all the odds in favor to be spot on. If this game were to be released for the Nintendo Switch, the June 2024 Direct was the last possible time for it to be announced before the successor’s announcement.
Some people consider that Metroid Prime 4 being revealed this late implies an imminent announcement regarding Nintendo’s new console, but I still firmly believe we’ll learn its name somewhere within this autumn or winter.
The Nintendo Switch was officially revealed in October 2016, and formally presented in January of the following year, and now that they are fully unshackled from the schedules of events like E3, it does seem likely that the Big N could follow this pattern for this console as well.
Things that I’ve noticed
It seems that one of the most prominent features of Metroid Prime 4: Beyond will be the reintroduction of parallel worlds, but unlike their appearance in Metroid Prime 2: Echoes where there was a light and a dark version of the same world, it seems like these are completely distinct worlds, connected by portals, or far more likely, versions of the same world across different points in time.
Funny… Having parallel worlds is the same concept we had for Karine Star, the game we were planning on developing after my research project, a port of Metroid Prime for VR.
The producer of the Prime series, Kensuke Tanabe, has stated in an interview that time-shifting was an interesting idea in his mind for a next installment, so it does seem like the setting of Prime 4 will be a single planet, but with the ability to travel through time and potentially change things across the timelines. Many fans expect this to be the case.
Analyzing the HUD, I’ve noticed several improvements over the previous Trilogy games, and a few missing things.
- The map now has a compass feature that shows in which cardinal direction you’re facing.
- The radar has been overhauled quite a lot. Now you have different types of markers: Red for enemies, green for allies, and orange for the target you’re locking on. It makes me think that you’ll encounter many people from the Federation on this game, much like 3: Corruption.
- There is also a hazard indicator like in Prime 1 and Echoes but it’s now a metered indicator instead of a gauge.
- The visor selector is missing, despite the fact that there are visors featured in the trailer. Instead, there is a selector with a missile launcher selected, so I assume it’s meant for auxiliary ammo. I wonder if this will be the same with the beams, or it will be a tiered beam like in Corruption. I’m willing to consider the latter.
- There doesn’t seem to be any space for energy tanks in the HUD, at least none that I was able to see. There are Morph Ball bombs, though.
Shameless! You can’t just do that when presenting your game.
A surprising yet expected thing —or rather, person— is Sylux, making his first appearance in the mainline Prime series. I was expecting a Metroid Prime: Hunters remake to flesh the bounty hunters from that game a bit more, but I guess we’ll be going towards this route.
Not that it’s a fundamental problem in the story. Maybe Sylux was just meant to be a character always shrouded in mystery…
A few more things that are noteworthy include the extremely satisfyingly seamless transition between the Samus entrance cutscene and the gameplay —although the fanfare and the music seems to have gone a noticeable downgrade to be honest.
The design of the Varia Suit is really beautiful. It’s pretty much the same design from Prime 2: Echoes, but they’ve obviously taken some pages out of Metroid Dread’s design book, as her shoulder pads are noticeably smaller and lie at a slightly lower height. It also looks much leaner and more humanistic. I can confidently say this is the best rendition of Samus in the Prime series. In terms of animation for cutscenes, I can assume this is the best one to work with as well.
Now, while the relative placement of the games in the timeline is quite clear, the exact placement of events across the Metroid franchise is very inconsistent across sources. But so far, we know that in the Cosmic Year 20X5, the events leading up to Zero Mission happened. Soon after Zero Mission, all of the Prime games so far followed.
The trailer shows that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond takes place in the Cosmic Year 20X9. Taking into account the Prime series alone, this would take place about 3 years after Metroid Prime: Federation Force, the last entry of the series until now.
However, if we consider the overall Metroid timeline, this would place Metroid Prime 4: Beyond after Super Metroid, which according to some promotional material, takes place in 20X7. Super is also the only canon appearance of the Mochtroids so far, so it’s possible that these two games are pretty close together in the timeline, possibly with Beyond being sometime after Super.
Then again, the 20X7 dating for Super Metroid was only shown in a single promotional material in Japan, so the evidence is not very conclusive. Also, Other M takes place weeks after Super Metroid. This all suggests two possible placements:
- Between Federation Force and Metroid II/Samus Returns, ignoring the 20X7 dating.
- Between Other M and Metroid Fusion, a bit unlikely due to the implications of the events in Other M.
One thing I can say with some confidence is that the Space Pirates we’re dealing with here seem to be the same ones from Prime 3: Corruption; although their design departs a bit from the ones from that game, some of the ships seen in the trailer share a striking resemblance, hinting that they could come from the same tribe.
I’d delve more into this, but I’d rather discover these things for myself once I get my hands on the game.
But I can talk about what we’ve been shown means for the future successor of the Nintendo Switch.
What does this trailer tell us about the successor of the Switch?
The honest truth is that Metroid Prime 4 tells us very little about the capabilities of the successor of the Switch, or so called “Switch 2” by many.
We don’t even know as of the time of writing this that Metroid Prime 4 will be set for release on the new console. There are three possibilities, ordered by likelihood according to my expectations:
- Prime 4: Beyond will be a Switch exclusive, assuming the successor won’t be software compatible with the Switch and there won’t be a version that runs it.
- There will be two versions of the game: One for Switch and another for the new console. Again, implying that the successor will not be compatible with Switch’s games. We’ve seen this cross-generational release pattern happen with The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with the Switch.
- The new console will be backwards compatible with Switch games. In this situation, a single Switch version may be released. While the possibility of having two versions is also in the air, I pretty much discard this.
Some people have argued that the reveal trailer “looks too good to be on Switch”, but it’s already been confirmed by several sources that it is rendered on Switch docked mode. Although there is debate as to whether the game will run at 720p or 900p in docked mode, they confidently say —myself included— that the Beyond we saw in the trailer was running in docked mode.
Which brings me to the question: How would the game look on the successor? This one has an easy answer: Expect it to look much like the one on the Switch, only in higher resolution and possibly with some visual fidelity enhancements added in, while being probably a bit more performant and have a more stable 60 frames per second framerate.
We’ve seen in both first-party ports and cross-generational titles throughout Nintendo history that they generally look the same between consoles, just with a slightly higher visual fidelity on the more modern one. And I wouldn’t discard this should Prime 4 have the same kind of release.
But this would not bode well for the new hardware’s competitiveness. The Metroid series has been one of the two main Nintendo’s first-party series which put visual finesse first, alongside Zelda. However, The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom was released last year, and Echoes of Wisdom is already on its way, so the possibilities for flagship titles are running out. If Metroid Prime 4 is really meant to be the flagship title for the Switch’s successor, Nintendo would lose all competitive grounds against Sony and Microsoft. In other words: Nintendo could be leaving the next gen market.
At this rate, only a minor IP surging with a flagship title could bring competition back into the table. I’m willing to bet for a Luigi’s Mansion 4 (with the first one being a launch title for the GameCube), Star Fox or heck, maybe even F-Zero or Mario Kart.
Although I wouldn’t be surprised if there will be new IPs as well.
One can speculate so much with so little information, so I think I’ll leave at this for now. I’m still very surprised that Metroid Prime 4: Beyond has managed to stay around at the start of the sunset for the Switch’s lifetime, as the outcome I found most likely was that it was benched for the next system, or worse, cancelled, and now I’ve begun to look forward for the game seriously, although I’m not hyped up about it —nowadays one can be easily disappointed when you highly expect a game, after all.
I will try to keep myself as uninformed as possible, though. I want to discover everything by playing the game and I’m very eager to see if my predictions (and expectations) are met.
