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| Metroid Prime 4: Beyond returns with a familiar look and feel, even after years out of the spotlight. |
By Jon Scarr
There’s an assumption that hangs over any game that spends years in development. By the time it finally shows up, people usually expect it to have evolved with the industry. Faster combat, broader worlds, and design choices shaped by whatever trends took over the last generation. It’s the unspoken expectation that comes with a long wait.
That’s not what happened with Metroid Prime 4: Beyond. And according to Nintendo, that was by design.
A recent Famitsu interview with Nintendo staff makes that clear. The conversation goes deeper than most, openly touching on abandoned ideas, internal resets, and why the team was comfortable letting the game drift away from modern trends. The team wasn’t trying to reshape Metroid to match where shooters or action games ended up over the years. The focus stayed on protecting how Metroid Prime plays and feels, even if that meant the game wouldn’t line up neatly with modern design trends.
Instead of trying to catch up, Nintendo stuck with what defined Prime in the first place. This wasn’t a game built to reflect the current moment. It was built to remain recognizable.
Nintendo Heard the Trends and Ignored Them
Nintendo didn’t avoid the open-world conversation. Early in development, the team seriously explored what an open-world Metroid might look like, especially as The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild reshaped expectations around exploration. Fans were already asking for it, and the idea received real attention internally.
The issue was how poorly that direction lined up with how Metroid actually functions.
Metroid has always been about gradual expansion. You move forward as your abilities grow, not because the entire map is available from the start. That slow widening of possibility is baked into the series, and full freedom from the beginning would have flattened that structure.
Rather than fully committing to an open-world format, Nintendo settled on a more controlled setup. Larger spaces that allow room to explore, paired with structure that keeps progression meaningful. The goal wasn’t freedom for its own sake. It was preserving curiosity and a steady sense of discovery without breaking the series’ identity.
Restarting Development Came With a Cost
Restarting development isn’t something studios talk about lightly, but Nintendo was unusually open about it here. When the project moved to Retro Studios, it wasn’t a simple transition. Retro didn’t yet have the internal setup required to build a Metroid Prime game, so that groundwork had to be rebuilt first.
Teams were reorganized. Pipelines were re-established. External partners were brought in to help with environments and cinematics. Before the game itself could move forward, the studio had to be ready to support it.
That reset added time, and Nintendo understood exactly what that meant.
By the time development stabilized, the industry had already shifted again. Shooters had become faster. Action games pushed harder pacing. Open worlds were no longer novel. Nintendo decided not to redirect the project a second time.
Not because it couldn’t, but because doing so would have pulled the game away from what it was meant to be. After one restart, reshaping it again would have risked losing its centre entirely.
A Long Gap That Created Real Pressure
Metroid Prime 4 was first announced back in 2017 during Nintendo’s E3 presentation. At the time, the logo alone was enough. Just knowing a new Prime was coming carried a lot of weight, especially after such a long absence.
That optimism didn’t last forever. In early 2019, Nintendo publicly confirmed that development had restarted and that Retro Studios would take over the project. It was a rare moment of transparency, and it reset expectations in a big way. The game wasn’t just delayed. It was being rebuilt.
After that, the project went quiet for years. No trailers. No gameplay. Just silence, speculation, and a growing sense that expectations were getting heavier with every passing season.
That finally changed in 2024, when Nintendo reintroduced the game properly. Seeing it again after so long made one thing clear. This didn’t feel like something Nintendo rushed out just to say, “Hey, it’s still happening.”
That long gap matters. Between the initial announcement, the restart, and the re-reveal, pressure didn’t just build. It hardened. The urge to modernize, overcorrect, or explain the time away would have been strong. Nintendo still didn’t budge.
Metroid Prime Was Never About Speed
As the genre evolved, plenty of shooters and action games shifted toward faster movement and constant pressure. Nintendo was aware of that shift and decided not to follow it.
Metroid Prime has never been built around nonstop combat or forward momentum. It’s about careful movement, scanning environments, and taking in spaces that don’t feel safe or familiar. That slower approach isn’t outdated. It’s intentional, and pushing the game toward speed would have changed the experience into something else entirely.
The interview also references the Japanese concept of “ma,” the space between things. Silence. Distance. Pauses. In Metroid Prime, those gaps are everywhere, whether you consciously think about them or not.
Empty hallways. Quiet moments before encounters. Long stretches where nothing happens, but the atmosphere keeps building. Helping new team members understand that feeling took time, but Nintendo treated it as essential to getting Prime right.
A Game That Exists Outside Its Era
Nintendo describes Metroid Prime 4 as being somewhat divorced from modern trends. That might sound risky on paper, but here it was intentional.
The game wasn’t designed to reflect where the industry landed in 2025. It was designed to reflect what Metroid Prime has always been. In an industry that often prioritizes constant change, that kind of restraint is becoming less common.
Not every game needs to move faster or broader. There’s still value in atmosphere, in letting moments breathe, and in trusting you to settle into an experience without being pushed forward at all times.
What “Beyond” Actually Means
Nintendo says the subtitle “Beyond” refers to transcending time and space. That applies to the story, but it also mirrors the thinking behind the game itself.
Metroid Prime 4 isn’t trying to compete with modern shooters or redefine open worlds. It exists outside that race. Even the way the timeline is handled reinforces this idea. By placing the game in a flexible space and loosening its connection to the broader Metroid timeline, Nintendo created room to tell a focused story without rewriting the series.
Why Nintendo Was Comfortable Waiting
There’s something I genuinely respect about this approach. Nintendo could have taken the easy path here. Speed things up. Broaden the design. Soften the edges to match what everyone else is doing right now. That pressure absolutely exists, especially for a game that’s been talked about for this long. Instead, Nintendo stuck to its guns and trusted the identity of the series. That’s Nintendo being Nintendo, for better or worse, and it’s something the company doesn’t get enough credit for anymore.
Metroid Prime 4 doesn’t exist because Nintendo finally caught up with the industry. It exists because Nintendo didn’t feel pressured to.
After restarts, long gaps, and shifting expectations, the team stayed focused on what made Metroid Prime what it is. That approach won’t connect with everyone, but for players who wanted Prime to return without reshaping itself around trends, it explains exactly why this game looks and plays the way it does.
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