[POLL] METROID PRIME 4 TO OPEN WORLD OR NOT TO OPEN WORLD THAT IS THE QUESTION

Poll

Should Metroid Prime 4 be an open world game? - Results

Yes - Open world
1
5%
No - regular Prime style game
7
41%
Something in between Open world and regular Prime
2
11%
Neither 2D Metroid only
3
17%
Shpoodly!
4
23%

Posts

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The new Zelda and Mario are Open World. Would you like the same for Metroid? Of the 3 franchises, Metroid is the only one that's not been an open world game. Zelda 1 was open. Mario 64 was open. But that said, Super Metroid had many intentional gameplay exploits like the wall jump that let players progress at their own pace making it pretty open to an extent. Linear games are great for story telling but to be honest, I don't play Metroid for in depth story. Plus, the most linear game in the Metroid franchise was Other M. That said I'm not asking you to choose between Other M and a new open world experience. What I want to know is if you want a more standard 3d Metroid Prime game or an open world type of Metroid Prime?
Surely metroidvanias are open enough. There's enough backtracking and getting lost to last a lifetime in those games.
pianotm
The TM is for Totally Magical.
32347
I voted shpoodly because this actually is not a simple question. Metroid's best entries, in my mind, are side scrolling platformers. That said, plenty of side scrolling platformers have made a brilliant transition to 3D open worlds (several Marios are on this list), while many others have been terrible: even if they were successful, they failed to maintain the spirit of the game from which they came (Sonic the Hedgehog, for one...of course there was one open world Sonic game that was probably the ultimate violation.). I think it's really down on the developer how good an open world game could be. If you think about it, all of the Metroid games have been pretty fairly open world; it's just not so obvious in a 2D setting. You could pretty much go anywhere you wanted barring certain equipment limitations, whether you were ready for that area or not. Metroid games have never been entirely linear.

It's a little silly to say that the new Zelda game is open world as if that was something special because the very first Zelda game, and most since, have all pretty much qualified as open world.
Are you trying to say "with quests"? Metroid games were always open-world.
The way the 2d Metroid games sans Fusion handles it is my favorite. There is an intended main route with some variations, but you can easily sequence break and go an entire different route. Some bosses/power-ups are more of less hardlocked behind certain other power-ups of course. However, I don't need full freedom, large freedom is enough for me.
The Four Horsemen of the Gaming Apocalypse:

Open World
Survival
Crafting
Procedurally Generated
Jeroen_Sol
Nothing reveals Humanity so well as the games it plays. A game of betrayal, where the most suspicious person is brutally murdered? How savage.
3885
Wow kentona, you've really become a cranky old man. "git off mah vidya gams!"

None of those things dominate the game pool, and they haven't infiltrated already existing series either.
Zelda, for instance, was already open world in the very first game. Crafting in the form of cooking might be new, but it's not like earlier games didn't have their: Find some ore and broken item, forge into good weapon/shield quests.
Procedurally generated games are still very much a niche even though roguelikes have been around since 1980, so if they were heralding the apocalypse it would've happened by now.
Really, the game those 4 things describe best is Minecraft. But even that is just one game. It may have a cult status, but it's not infiltrating existing series. If anything, with the amount of gameplay-changing mods, other types of games can exist inside of Minecraft, which I personally think is really cool and definitely not the sign of a gaming apocalypse.

In the case of Metroid, it has always been open world, with very little blocking your path outright except a few doors and some lack of knowledge of wall jump mechanics, so like many others I don't really understand the question. If the question is: "Should there be even less roadblocks?" then my answer is no. Metroid works because it is a complex puzzle that subtly leads you through the entire game while giving you the feeling that you're exploring all on your own. Removing some well-designed roadblocks just makes players get lost and frustrated because the puzzle is far too complex and can't be tackled by solving small sub-puzzles.
I'm kinda fed up with open world games TBH.

The genre isn't intrinsically bad or anything, I enjoy plenty of them, but all games don't have to be open world, god damn.
Well I guess the way I waas thinkin of it was a world like BOTW but nstead of shrines, there would be this huge connected underground world that works more like a traditional Metroid Prime but is linked to that upper more open world through variouss cave openings. Also you could pilot your ship to certain areas but can only park the ship in areas that can accomidate it so even the open world would be complex. Also no climbing like BOTW since Samus would use her Space jump.
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
Why the fuck make a Metroid game with that same bullshit cookie cutter game model of 'open world'. Another stupid goddamn excuse to run around from node to node collecting bobbles and checkpoint towers. Always a stupid icon in the middle of the screen telling you exactly where to go, and QTEs while we're at it to add artistic flare. Yay, METROID! Just like I remembered!

Great topic.
You realize if you take out the compass and the QTEs, you've basically got Super Metroid, yeah?

What's an open world Metroid game look like? Basically, exactly what has already been made, just with fewer walls and linear paths. Sounds fine to me.
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
No, mate. Open World is a genre defined by going to a tower to unlock all the collectible nodes and archery challenges in the area, then going to the next tower and unlocking the next area of nodes and foot races. And then going to the next tower to find the artifacts you haven't found yet.
Metroid isn't open-world. It's an explorable dungeon with secrets, tricks, and challenges to overcome. There's an astronomical difference.
Metroid is about overcoming obstacles and unearthing power ups that allow you access to new areas, followed by or punctuated by a boss battle. In Open World, you are literally running around collecting little bits of bullshit that is cookie cut (not level designed) into each area. Legend of Zelda, even the original, had an explorable overworld, which was puzzle-ridden to uncover hidden temples that were in themselves, basically the bulk of the game.
The game was about dungeons. Breath of the Wild was about tiny one shot shithole caves, with a million cookie cutter little bits to collect. Towers to climb to see where they are, and the same routine bullshit (regardless of the landscape).
Dudesoft
always a dudesoft, never a soft dude.
6309
Best of the Worst examples of Open World are:
Any Assassin's Creed game, Zelda BOTW, Shadow of Mordor.
LockeZ
I'd really like to get rid of LockeZ. His play style is way too unpredictable. He's always like this too. If he ran a country, he'd just kill and imprison people at random until crime stopped.
5958
author=kentona
The Four Horsemen of the Gaming Apocalypse:

Open World
Survival
Crafting
Procedurally Generated


Oh my god, the worst part is that I can very clearly visualize each of these.

Here are some more horror story ideas to make you recoil:

  • Metroid Online, the MMORPG where you can see fifty other people solving the puzzle you need to solve, right in front of you
  • Metroid Souls, where you lose all your powerups when you die and have to recollect them before dying a second time (despite not being able to actually get to that spot because you don't have them)
  • Metroid Go, the mobile tap-to-win game with an awful gacha system. Pay $50 hoping to get morph ball but instead just get six missile expansions, two super bomb expansions and three chunks of metroidite ore to refine your items with if you ever get any. All actual gameplay is completly automatic.
  • Metroidcraft, the ultra-low-poly building game that lets you create your own expansive Metroid-style levels for other players to get through. Except instead of solving them, they'll just tear them down with a mining drill and use the parts for their giant penis sculpture.
Considering every one of those games exist under different names, it wouldn't surprise me if they ruined metroid with a bunch of useless games that nobody cares about. At least that's what I'd like to say except people actually support these types of games with 0 content that are out to get your money.

Naturally I voted regular style. I played botw and can pretty much agree with what dudesoft said as well. It's an alright open world game, but it is a terrible zelda game. Between skyword sword with its awful controls, and now botw with it's lack of puzzles and huge overworld with nothing in it, I'm about ready to give up on the series. Game companies just keep killing the series that I used to love. Hell, I could play a mediocre rmn game and it'd still be better than what most companies put out these days. Says a lot when I enjoy a free game more than one that a company put $1000s of dollars into

...Probably exaggerating a bit by saying mediocre rmn games, but some of the good ones I really do enjoy more than a lot of commercial games produced these day. I won't say all, but I've felt that game quality has actually decreased over the years. They try to distract you with graphics while actually making a fairly empty world.

Short version: We need to gather a group of heroes and take out the four horsemen before it is too late.
author=kentona
The Four Horsemen of the Gaming Apocalypse:

Open World
Survival
Crafting
Procedurally Generated


I agree with the old man.
Jeroen_Sol
Nothing reveals Humanity so well as the games it plays. A game of betrayal, where the most suspicious person is brutally murdered? How savage.
3885
I agree that Metroid shouldn't become more Open World than it already is, but I think you people are drastically overexaggerating "The rise of Open World games, the death of all things holy and the Gaming Apocalypse."

author=demonlord5000
Between skyword sword with its awful controls, and now botw with it's lack of puzzles and huge overworld with nothing in it, I'm about ready to give up on the series. Game companies just keep killing the series that I used to love.

I don't really agree Skyward Sword had terrible controls, but we also had Link Between Worlds in the meantime, one of the best Zeldas to date. Definitely a game series being killed. Not. I haven't played BOTW yet so I can't really make a judgement on it.

author=Dudesoft
No, mate. Open World is a genre defined by going to a tower to unlock all the collectible nodes and archery challenges in the area, then going to the next tower and unlocking the next area of nodes and foot races. And then going to the next tower to find the artifacts you haven't found yet.
Metroid isn't open-world. It's an explorable dungeon with secrets, tricks, and challenges to overcome. There's an astronomical difference.


"Open world, free roam, or (more loosely) sandbox are terms for video games where a player can move freely through a virtual world and is given considerable freedom in regard to how and when to approach particular objectives, as opposed to other video games that have a more linear structure to their gameplay."

"Some open-world games, as to guide the player towards major story events, do not provide the world's entire map at the start of the game, but require the player to complete a task as obtain part of that map, often identifying missions and points of interest when they view the map. This has been derogatorily referred to as "Ubisoft towers""

You're focussing in on a small subset of open world games and saying all open world games are like that. This is very obviously not true. The non-linearity and freedom that are the actual definition of Open World games fit Metroid to a T.

As for the horsemen:
Survival, crafting and procedurally generated games are all niches that are not infringing on any series. Since when is the game industry so small that this is "heralding the apocalypse" in any way?
Dudesoft, if you're just going to alter the definition of words to mean whatever you want, there's no point in this.

author=Metroid isn't open-world. It's an explorable dungeon with secrets, tricks, and challenges to overcome. There's an astronomical difference.

Let's change it to this. It's an explorable world with secrets, tricks, and challenges to overcome. An astronomical difference there ain't.

The fact is that open world games are not defined by "towers" and "collecting bits of bullshit," which is something you do in Metroid anyway. They're defined by having an open world, period. Pointing to trends and popular manifestations of open world games as though that's the only thing it can mean is silly.

I get that you've been made cynical by BotW and all, but just because open world games tend to use gimmicks you don't care for doesn't mean they have to. Like I said, you take Metroid Prime, make the world bigger, knock down the walls, have fewer linear paths and you basically have open world Metroid right there. You don't need "towers", you can still hide missile packs in clever ways, you still put powerups hidden in different places.

The trick would be making non-linear progression while still keeping the traditional powerups, and that may be where open world Metroid fails, and why I'm skeptical myself. But it isn't "towers".
author=Jeroen_Sol
As for the horsemen:
Survival, crafting and procedurally generated games are all niches that are not infringing on any series. Since when is the game industry so small that this is "heralding the apocalypse" in any way?

I was being a bit facetious. It's more that all of the shovelware schlock that are using these terms to sell their games. So many garbage gacha games. And you get a sense that publishers try to push these nebulous concepts onto developers in order to "capitalize on trends". It has gotten to the point where these terms breeds cynicism in both developers and potential players.

also, there is their upcoming little brother Horseman 'eSports' making a name for himself!
I'll admit albw was pretty good. It hadn't come to mind when I was making that post.

It was more the frustration of every single game series that I used to enjoy going downhill. With final fantasy we had mmos, corridor hell, and most recently it turned into an action game. I can get behind action games but it's not what I played the series for. Star ocean no longer immerses me and the world is littered with fetch quests. The tales series and kingdom hearts are still good thankfully. Suikoden I'm pretty sure is dead. Dragon quest is a grey area as the 10th was an mmo so now I'm worried they will screw up the 11th. Honestly, I could keep this list going into other genres as well (sonic, mario & mario party, mega man...), but I'll stop here.

I will admit there are some good games still out there, and it's mostly the big series games that are really taking a hit.

With motion controls I was never able to get it to work for me. The bird didn't respond well to where I wanted to go, and it didn't help that every single enemy in the game is programmed was programmed to block you in some way. I could eventually kill them but it felt so tedious to the point where by time I reached the the first real dungeon I set it down and never picked it back up. I felt I would have enjoyed the game more if it had regular controls.

Not trying to start a whole motion verses regular control argument here as I know for some they do work. They just didn't work for me.
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