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Game Maker's Toolkit: The World Design of Metroid Prime

Datajoy

Datajoy

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Oct 27, 2017
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One of the best video game critics on YouTube is back with another entry in his long-running Boss Keys series. In the first season of Boss Keys, he looked at dungeon design in the Legend of Zelda series. In this second season, he is looking at world design in Metroidvania games, having already covered Super Metroid, SOTN, and more. This installment takes a look at the world design in Metroid Prime.



Metroid was lost in space for eight long years... but suddenly, Samus was back. Metroid Prime turned the side-scrolling adventure series into a first-person shooter. But how does it stack up as a Metroidvania? Let's find out.
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Deleted member 37233

Banned
Jan 2, 2018
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Datajoy said:
One of the best video game critics on YouTube is back with another entry in his long-running Boss Keys series. In the first season of Boss Keys, he looked at dungeon design in the Legend of Zelda series. In this second season, he is looking at world design in Metroidvania games, having already covered Super Metroid, SOTN, and more. This installment takes a look at the world design in Metroid Prime.

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It seems like we made the same thread at the same time: https://www.resetera.com/threads/ga...rld-design-of-metroid-prime-boss-keys.105334/

Perhaps a mod can merge these two?
 
WestEgg

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Oct 25, 2017
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Excellent, definitely watching this after work so I can give it my full attention.
 
Maxim726x

Maxim726x

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Oct 27, 2017
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I never finished Prime on the GC, just started a new game on the Dolphin. Looks amazing with all of the graphical updates the emulator is capable of.
 
Tarot Deck

Tarot Deck

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Oct 27, 2017
4,235
Metroid Prime is my favorite Metroid game.

This video focused on all the negative aspects and I actually agree a lot with it.

Now I understand why so many people were bored with the "key hunt" ( I loved it) and the backtracking ( I tolerated it).
 
ghibli99

ghibli99

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Oct 27, 2017
17,876
Can't wait to watch this later. I didn't like backtracking and looking for all the artifacts late in the game, but the overall impression I felt after everything was said and done was that I had just played one of the best games in the series. I hold it pretty much up there with Super when I think of my favorites (and I played both games for the first time about two years ago).
 
Noema

Noema

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Jan 17, 2018
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The comparison he makes with Dark Souls is interesting because they both use elevators (and in the case of Dark Souls, long corridors) to mask how new areas are loaded into memory. Metroid Prime shows you a cutscene of Samus riding the elevator which actually makes the process more detached and ends up yielding the problem of the world feeling disconnected.

Ironically this is an instance where the map ends up hurting the game somewhat because like Mark pointed out, you have to guess which elevator you're going to pop from once you move from zone to zone, something that doesn't happen in Dark Souls since there's no map.
 

Deleted member 50454

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I didn't really have the progression problems he mentions (especially the one about the grappling beam).

I certainly never used a walkthrough either.

I think he's just bad at orienteering.
 

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Kuro

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His only major hangup really is the back tracking through what he thinks is a useless area but it was probably added for aesthetic reasons and to give the player more reason to use their upgrades.
 

Deleted member 3208

Oct 25, 2017
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Metroid Prime 2 next. Oh my, the wait will be more painful.
 
xyla

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That's exactly the problem I had with Prime. I felt cheated when I had to randomly search for the 12 artifacts - I might not even have found the room with the hints, I don't remember anymore.

But I stopped the game at that point, because I didn't want to backtrack anymore and felt lost without any hints.
Wind Waker did something similar, but I found the fragments naturally while playing the game. In Prime, I didn't and would have had to go through the world to stumble upon most of them at the end point. Just didn't sit right with me.
 

NuclearCake

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Oct 27, 2017
9,867
I forgot that some of these things are even issues, since i always sequence break and get some items out of order which vastly cuts down on the backtracking and some artifacts can be collected earlier as a result. It's the main reason why i still vastly prefer the GameCube versions of both Prime and Prime 2 over the Wii version.

That said Magmoor Caverns really shouldn't have been such a bottleneck. It seems like that area was the one impacted most by the rushed development as it's only area that doesn't feature a real boss fight.
One was planned but got cut and moved over to Phandrana Drifts.
 
Stouffers

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Oct 25, 2017
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This is easily more forgivable than the Triforce hint in wind Waker. I found the artifact search a lot more organic to the experience.
 
TheMink

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Cess007 said:
He critizices a bad pace, some boring (and confusing) backtracing and the artifacts hunt. All in all, i think he present more negatives than positives on the video. I think people is gonna be surprised as a lot expects to be a more praising video lol
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Honestly more fair than I would have expected, he was very critical of SotN as well which is closer to my heart, but I definitely agree with what he is saying.

My point being that he isn't pulling punchces just because the games are generally beloved.
 

GobHoblin

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Oct 27, 2017
464
I've yet to play these games (despite owning them), waiting on the Switch ports.

Will still watch vid
 
Dyle

Dyle

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Personally I really liked the fact that Magmoor was effectively a hub for the others, you can move so easily through it and do so often enough that it became familiar and homey. It made going from place to place feel like a task, in a way that made progressing feel more like a complete adventure and organic world than a theme park where everything was tailor made for the player.

The artifact hunt definitely should have been done better. I think it would have been a good idea to have had the player be forced to go to the temple soon after landing on Tallon IV and make it clearer that that was the final goal.

I'm confused by how he suggests that coloring the doors on the map gives away too much and that too many dead ends are not memorable. It seems contradictory to me, since his issues with dead ends would be way way worse if the weapon types needed to open doors weren't shown on the map.
 
Xtortion

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Stouffers said:
This is easily more forgivable than the Triforce hint in wind Waker. I found the artifact search a lot more organic to the experience.
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Yeah, the only artifact I don't like is the one in the morph ball tunnels in the Phazon Mines that requires the Phazon Suit since it's a straight up forced backtrack through an area you just cleared that doesn't offer anything new. All of the others can be obtained pretty painlessly while playing the game as long as you're conscious of the Artifact Temple hints. Also a good excuse to get more power ups while backtracking.
 
Nocturnowl

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What will be interesting to see is how he'll feel about the sequels coming off those very logical gripes for Prime 1.
Prime 2 has little like Magmoor going on, but in turn that's because it quite heavily separates the main segments of the game which also makes the few moments of backtracking to a previous area for a new item become less obvious to the player.
Throw in that the sky temple keys take the negative he gives for the artefacts to their worst conclusion, it should be an interesting one.

The point about prime's objective reminds me that when I first played the game I actually had no idea what I was supposed to be working towards, I just rolled with it.
 
ClickyCal'

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Backtracking is something that makes metroid for me and I love it. It's a core nucleus of the series.
 

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xyla said:
That's exactly the problem I had with Prime. I felt cheated when I had to randomly search for the 12 artifacts - I might not even have found the room with the hints, I don't remember anymore.

But I stopped the game at that point, because I didn't want to backtrack anymore and felt lost without any hints.
Wind Waker did something similar, but I found the fragments naturally while playing the game. In Prime, I didn't and would have had to go through the world to stumble upon most of them at the end point. Just didn't sit right with me.
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This happened to me the first time I played the game, but on the second playthrough (when I actually finished it), being that I knew about the artifacts ahead of time, I'd come back to the "hint room" (where you fight metal ridley) every now and then and record the hints that were there, and then go back out into the world. I'd keep track of where I was in relation to the hints, etc.

It was actually a great way to play the game and I didn't end up having to backtrack much at all.
 
Xtortion

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Nocturnowl said:
What will be interesting to see is how he'll feel about the sequels coming off those very logical gripes for Prime 1.
Prime 2 has little like Magmoor going on, but in turn that's because it quite heavily separates the main segments of the game which also makes the few moments of backtracking to a previous area for a new item become less obvious to the player.
Throw in that the sky temple keys take the negative he gives for the artefacts to their worst conclusion, it should be an interesting one.

The point about prime's objective reminds me that when I first played the game I actually had no idea what I was supposed to be working towards, I just rolled with it.
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Imo the awfulness of Echoes' key hunt is sufficiently lessened by the empowerment of steamrolling the dark world with the light suit. But yeah, it is kinda awful.
 

Deleted member 29599

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I fucking love Mark Brown's videos, one of the few YouTubers i will clear time in my day for. He raises some good points about Metroid Prime. As fantastic as that game is it's not perfect, although by the looks of it he was playing the Wii version which i know had some tweaks from the GC original. IIRC the in game hint system that basically tells you where to go if you dont make progress for a while took much longer to kick in on the GC version, to the point where i didnt see it pop up all that often. I wouldn't play the game with those pointer controls personally either, i feel like the game was designed for lock on, free aiming was never the point of MP and just makes things harder than they need to be.
 
Xtortion

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RyanG said:
I fucking love Mark Brown's videos, one of the few YouTubers i will clear time in my day for. He raises some good points about Metroid Prime. As fantastic as that game is it's not perfect, although by the looks of it he was playing the Wii version which i know had some tweaks from the GC original. IIRC the in game hint system that basically tells you where to go if you dont make progress for a while took much longer to kick in on the GC version, to the point where i didnt see it pop up all that often. I wouldn't play the game with those pointer controls personally either, i feel like the game was designed for lock on, free aiming was never the point of MP and just makes things harder than they need to be.
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You can disable free aim while locked on in the Trilogy version of Prime 1 and 2.
 
Fireblend

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As someone who adores Metroidvanias, I couldn't enjoy Metroid Prime as much as I wanted. I felt the transition into 3D was a very straightforward "port" of the formula without really considering how the platforming gameplay was going to impact it. I beat it begrudgingly tbh haven't touched 2 yet. Love Mark Brown videos, will dive into this one soon for sure.
 
ItWasMeantToBe19

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Fireblend said:
As someone who adores Metroidvanias, I couldn't enjoy Metroid Prime as much as I wanted. I felt the transition into 3D was a very straightforward "port" of the formula without really considering how the platforming gameplay was going to impact it. I beat it begrudgingly tbh haven't touched 2 yet. Love Mark Brown videos, will dive into this one soon for sure.
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Prime definitely has the best first person platforming of all time I think.

Though the feel of platforming is completely different in Prime than 2D Metroid (with the screw attack in particular being the main mode of transportation and attack in the endgame of 2D Metroids while it's barely relevant in 3D Metroids).
 
Lunar15

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Oct 25, 2017
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Criticisms are fair, even if it is one of my favorite games of all time! To be fair, he was also super critical of SOTN. It's important to criticize this stuff in ways that explain level design better. MP/SOTN were memorable for far more than just level design, and both were first forays into their respective genres for each team.
 
Weegian

Weegian

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Oct 27, 2017
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Critical of the general design and full of praise for the artifact hunt.

Now there's a take.
 
mikehaggar

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I don't know that I agree or disagree with his analysis... I DO know all watching that video did was make me want to play Metroid Prime again LOL! C'mon, Nintendo... give me that MPHD Trilogy for Switch asap!
 
Raijinto

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I agree with him 100% on the traversal. As much as I really enjoyed the game when I first played it a few years ago I just couldn't stand having to go through Magmoor Caverns again and again which was made worse as he said by the unintuitive map and interconnection between the areas. I do think that the ship should have been used as an option for traversal in some capacity, similar to how it would eventually be used in 3.
 
Nocturnowl

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Xtortion said:
You can disable free aim while locked on in the Trilogy version of Prime 1 and 2.
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Granted I managed to get some good use out of free aim to speed up some prime 1/2 bosses, still I wish I knew!
 

Deleted member 41271

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Good points indeed - one of his better videos in the keys series!

Mind, I loved the artifact hunt personally. but I see why most people wouldn't like that kind of thing. Most people prefer mastering frenetic gameplay or fights, and I'm in the tiny minority that rather masters environments and exploration.

That's why for me, the artifact hunt really was a true culmination of what the game did until that point.

You can disable free aim while locked on in the Trilogy version of Prime 1 and 2.
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Game changer. May have to dig out the prime trilogy again!
 
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