Nintendo has suggested the incredible response to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its open-world pivot was partly responsible for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond's own freely-explorable desert section.
Unlike older Metroid Prime games, this year's Switch 2 shooter gives Samus both a speedy sci-fi bike and a large stretch of desert to drive over, which also serves as the connective tissue between the game's more traditional, linear, directed levels where our bounty hunter goes on foot (or folds up into a ball... dealer's choice.)
A Nintendo spokesperson told Famitsu, with translations from Nintendo Everything, that the development team kept seeing fan comments clamouring for an open-world Metroid near the start of production, "perhaps due to the influence of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild."
Nintendo ultimately decided against going down the full-fat open-world route since Metroid and the entire genre it spawned is about being locked out of certain areas until you find the right ability, and the devs thought it was incompatible with the open-world formula.
"Thus we thought to design a limited area that could be freely explored, and have that be a hub that could connect to other areas. Then we thought that if one could move around on the bike in a satisfying way in that area, it could be a segment that mitigates the tension from exploration, and paces the whole game," the spokesperson explained.
Just earlier this year, Mario Kart World also took its wheels to the open world, which simply makes me curious about what other upcoming Switch 2 games will go down the same route.
For more, check out our picks of the very best Switch 2 games so far.
