RedesigningMetroidPrime4Beyondbecausewhatthefuck

[rmp4bbwtf]

I just cooked this up in five minutes. Actual map details are irrelevant, but in thinking about how Metroid Prime Beyond could have been, you know, a Metroid game, here’s a rough map:

I feel like it’s obvious that Fury Green should have two exits that lead out to either Flare Pool or Volt Forge. No need for a desert in between, but I’ll (in this imaginary scenario) keep the desert assets to use elsewhere.

You can tackle Flare Pool or Volt Forge in either order, with a shortcut area in between called Solitude Valley that unlocks from either side when that area is completed; an actual valley, a dried up river turned desert.

Flare Pool leads to Great Mine, Volt Forge to Ice Belt. In this reinterpretation the mine is below the ice and its facility, and you have to have both prior shots to complete both areas and get the Ice Shot. I feel like intertwining these areas will really bring back the Metroid exploration vibe.

The teleporter key hunt can simply be part of the standard gameplay, and if you find them all naturally without being pushed to do it by characters, so be it. Let a fella speed run.

The keys are required to access the final area, which is a lost city sinking into a desert, and up on a ridge, the Chrono Tower. The lost city can be entered early with only three keys just for fun!

Beyond the necessary areas, I know it’s more work, but I feel like the stuff I’m suggesting are vital to how a Metroid works:

Storm Marsh. An optional area that provides a more difficult route to Ice Belt after acquiring the Thunder Shot, with an optional hard boss. Hides an optional, powerful upgrade; maybe just a straight damage upgrade. I’m thinking toppled Volt Forge architecture mixed with a poison swamp theme.

Endless Waste. The city ruins fade out into a windy desert that does that classic invisible wall thing of driving you back with wind. This planet is wrecked apart from Fury Green, clearly.

Biome Generator. A secret area off Fury Green that shows machinery diverting moisture and otherwise keeping the forest going, the area itself shows off a barren landscape on the horizon.

Sacred Tree. By burning a hole into it, you can enter it and see that it’s actually hollowing out and rotting. I love a good inside a tree level.

Volcano Surface. A brief hop out onto a bit of the mountain range the mine is part-way under, just to make the map a bit more ‘real’.

Dusk Ridge. A desert canyon / mountain area to really cowboy it up. I’d stick crashed space pirates here. I need space pirates! Permanently sunset, because Dark Souls has taught me areas with a permanent time of day are evocative. Needs one teleporter key to enter, because reasons… Primordial Basin and Core Fracture. I feel like an optional boss, or difficult puzzle, enemy waves / arena etc. are so vital to making this work. Places you can skip, but are memorable to beat. Too weak to take it on? Come back when you can!

So yeah, that’s my take on the map. It’s still basically linear, but it would trick you into thinking it’s not just by allowing a couple of initial options and putting you in a spot where you can’t complete a later stage area until you go back and finish one of the early ones to get the two elemental shot types you need. Just getting it out of my system, hope you enjoyed the read!

[rmp4bbwtf]

Well, I’m done with this blog. See you next mission!

[rmp4bbwtf]

Redesigning Metroid Prime Beyond (11)

There is a part where Samus has a bike chase plus sword and gun fight with Sylux and Nora Armstrong is clinging on tightly to Samus the whole way, set to a remix of The Theme of Samus with 1.5 its usual tempo, at night.

[tobiasdrake]

Some ideas for improving Metroid Prime 4, apart from the general "better level design" and such. Endgame spoilers here so, y'know.

-> There's already a "Call Myles for guidance" button on the map. That's enough guidance. Remove any instance of Myles calling to tell you where to go.

-> Give Samus dialogue. Controversial point but I made my argument for it here: It would help her be more of a commanding figure for the Federation squad if she was actually able to command.

-> Chrono Tower is a time machine, not a teleporter. It's literally called Chrono Tower. Why is it not a time machine?

-> That blast wave from the start blew us into the future. If Sylux is to be our main villain then he should be integrated into the plot, and a driving force of the catastrophe on this planet. This is what became of the same world after Sylux destroyed the Federation.

-> All Grievers have that big green glowing spot that charges up in their chest. Make that one of Sylux's parasitic infestation Metroids. Grievers are infested Lamorn.

-> Speaking of, enemy infestation Metroids that try to parasitize Samus and/or your squadmates. This is too interesting of a concept to relegate to a handful of boss fights and then never speak of again.

-> Sylux survives in the game as is, so they clearly don't want this to be the end of his story. With that in mind, Sylux didn't come with us into the future.

Ultimate antagonist is an old and decrepit Sylux who achieved his goal of eliminating Samus (who vanished from history in the blast wave) and destroying the Federation, and has been left bitter and miserable with nowhere to go from there once he ran out of people to hate.

-> Though perhaps we should think Sylux came with us until we find out the truth about the Sylux that's hunting us.

-> Nora and Samus should kiss. Look, it's my list. Fuck off. Also the squad should survive to go back in time with Samus and avert this history.

-> The prophecy of the Chosen One who will save us was written by a Lamorn physicist who understands that the wave that hit Samus was a temporal blast, and that she will suddenly re-emerge into the timestream at some point. But it's impossible to know precisely when, and so those who cling to it can only hope in increasing desperation that maybe that tomorrow is just around the corner.

A scientific assessment given religious reverence by the increasing desperation of the apocalypse that came for the Lamorn.

-> Stealing a suggestion from this comment here, Old Bitter Sylux should secretly be one of your squadmates. An old unmasked man in a damaged Federation uniform wandering the ruins of this destroyed world, who imparts a lot of knowledge about the people who lived here and what their society was like and the tragedy that befell them.

He can talk in cryptic terms about what it felt like to lose the Federation and watch the galaxy fall, about his bitterness, his isolation, his rage. Things that take on new meaning when we reach Chrono Tower and he reveals himself.

When defeated in the final boss fight, Old Man Sylux is left a miserable wretch on his knees staring down the barrel of Samus's gun, bitterly admitting that this is what he really wanted. Samus suddenly bursting into existence again was a sign that the universe was finally going to punish him for his crimes. That the harbinger of death has finally come to collect him.

It's left to player choice whether to shoot him or leave him in the misery of his making. Either way, Samus and squad return to the past, repel Young Sylux's attack, and change the future.

[rmp4bbwtf]

Really cool! We make similar picks on some things too, that’s nice.

[rmp4bbwtf]

Redesigning Metroid Prime Beyond (10)

Two things:

Sylux is a woman to repeat the exact reveal from Metroid 1 because that would be so funny to me personally.

Samus has an absurdly huge great sword to slap foes that get too close around. When she doesn’t need it the weapon disappears. It can even be called the Psychic Sword.

[rmp4bbwtf]

Here is my totally original redesign for Sylux that I made from scratch and not by using the concept art for Samus as a base.

Grey haired older woman who hates the Federation to bounce off the freelancer who’s willing to work with the fed and the younger, naive woman who’s a rookie in the Fed’s forces. There’s something to that, right? Pale eyes because she’s gotta be blind or something to wear that helmet.

Psychic Sword:

I rest my case.

[rmp4bbwtf]

Redesigning Metroid Prime Beyond (10)

Two things:

Sylux is a woman to repeat the exact reveal from Metroid 1 because that would be so funny to me personally.

Samus has an absurdly huge great sword to slap foes that get too close around. When she doesn’t need it the weapon disappears. It can even be called the Psychic Sword.

[rmp4bbwtf]

Redesigning Metroid Prime Beyond (9)

Psychic Visor -> Psionic Visor

Psychic Glove -> Telekinetic Gauntlet

Psychic Boots -> Hard-Light Diffusion Array

Psychic Bomb -> Breach Bomb

Psychic Lasso & Psychic Grapple -> Graviton Stream

Psychic Boost Ball -> Speed Ball

Psychic Spider Ball -> Ion Ball

Fire Shot -> Thermal Slug

Thunder Shot -> Arc Bolt

Ice Shot -> Energy Nullifer

There, that wasn’t so hard.

[rmp4bbwtf]

I don’t think the Sol Valley hub should even be in Metroid Prime 4 Beyond, but in general, broadly speaking, can we stop making desert on other planets generic? Look at what the Earth has to offer!

Even keeping the basis of a yellow sand dune desert, some deep green pockets where the killer rain hit hardest would have been really evocative. Or an open cave system you can drive through with sand falling down, the interplay of light and shadow, the occasional one second of utter darkness as you ride. Yellow sandstone ridges with green circles bored through them at an angle, snaking trails of green glass sand that glitters in the sunlight, ruins that are starkly deep green and weather worn on one side… Live a little!

[rmp4bbwtf]

Redesigning Metroid Prime Beyond (3)

The teleportation accident in the prologue not only moves things across space, it moves them through time. Samus arrives present time. Each trooper has been on Viewros for one more week than the last, and the robot can have been there for… a year. Enough that it has more information than the others on what’s going on.

The big thing is Sylux has been on Viewros for decades. He’s been stewing on the event for years now. He’s had time to figure out Lamorn technology. His metroids have had plenty of time to acclimatise, breed, get out of hand—there’s probably a hive, or whatever metroids have, over at some desolate corner of the map.

This neatly ties up his control over the tower and its drones, why he’s absolutely rabid to hurt Samus, how he can be knocked on his ass by one shot but end up as the last boss, and explains his use of that healing pod. He’s getting old.

Bonus round! The game would have space pirates, and with enough years under their belt and new ones popping in at varying intervals you can justify there being a lot of them, with a few new variants and a lot of funny logs detailing their attempts to become psychic!

[rmp4bbwtf]

Piggybacking off this, one trooper, let’s call them Selene, leaves useful logs dotted about the map, as well as cases full of ammo and health right where you need them. Despite having not met them late into the game, you form a bit of a bond with them for how helpful they are.

They arrived forty years ago. You find their skeleton before the final fight with Sylux.

Are you seeing the vision?

[rmp4bbwtf]

Redesigning Metroid Prime Beyond (7)

The green rain being an attempt to rejuvenate the world using an untested mutagenic chemical is the dumbest shit imaginable and I don’t think the Lamorn deserve to be that dumb. I want to elevate them to just as dumb as humans, at least.

Instead, the mined Elogium (what I’m calling Green Energy) was distilled into a liquid that enhanced the Lamorn’s psychic potential, leading to the Psychic Age. Rather than being a utopia, it was an age where those who were most psychic ruled over those that were weaker, with the weak requiring more Elogium to keep up.

Elogium eventually got into the water supply, to the point it fell like acid rain across the land, turning it into a desert and messing up the wildlife. Wars were fought over pure Elogium supplies, over dwindling resources and fertile land, until eventually society collapsed.

The Lamorn split into three factions, the Grievers, heavily mutated by Elogium but also suffering withdrawals from lack of a good supply, the—let me pull out a thesaurus real quick—Soro. You know, sorrow. These guys are equally mutated, rabid Lamorn, but they’re pumped full of Elogium and were highly psychic to start with. They can be an elite foe, a kind of ‘black knight’ / equal to Samus, but also an enemy of Sylux and his space pirates.

The Lamorn that speaks to Samus, Chatoya, is of the third faction, the few that stayed sane during all this and while psychic, didn’t overdose on the goo. Ancient logs found indicate they tried to warn everyone, but failed because those in power didn’t want to give up the psychic age even if it meant that was the last one.

[nerdy-the-artist]

Honestly, I feel like the green energy shower plays into a big, though possibly not intentional, aspect of the Lamorn, one that even mimics the Space Pirates.

The Lamorn are obsessed with speed, and easy solutions. We see them use teleportation, both from psychic abilities and through technology. We see them use multiple forms of ballistics based transportation. We find an entire, massive factory, dedicated solely to the production of Vi-o-la. We hear how they dug up the land, grabbing resources to fuel exponential growth and speed. Even their faith in a chosen one to descend from beyond to fix their problems is a little bit of an easy way out if you think cynically enough. The Green Energy shower was one miracle cure to fix a lifetime of quick fixes, one that finally backfired in a way they couldn’t come back from.

However, unlike the Space Pirates, this desire for quick fixes is tempered by compassion. They have no need of empires and domination. They hold genuine love for their fellow Lamorn and their beautiful world of Viewros, such that they seek to undo the damage they wrought, both to the environment and to their fellow Lamorn turned Grievers. The Space Pirates have had their comrades in arms transformed into creatures without self control in Metroid Prime 1, and do you remember what became of them? Target practice. They were target practice for their new and improved elite soldiers to train against. Where the Lamorn couldn’t bring themselves to execute the unstable mutants they created, the Space Pirates gleefully pitted them against their own. The Lamorn’s fatal flaw is an obsession with speed. However, unlike Samus’s regular adversaries, the Space Pirates, this tempered by compassion. I think it’s a neat parallel to draw, to really show 2 sides of the same coin, 2 peoples who want miracle cures and easy solutions to complex problems.

[rmp4bbwtf]

I respect and enjoy your version of the Lamorn that the developers didn’t intend to create. The Lamorn really said “Gotta go fast!”

[rmp4bbwtf]

Redesigning Metroid Prime Beyond (8)

Your impetus for exploring the planet is Myles has picked up the distress beacon signals of 3 other troopers on the planet, and early on manages to get a very static filled radio call going with Duke.

This avoids the awkward scene where Duke asks Samus to identify herself and she just stands there pointing her cannon at him silently until the narrative has to move on.

The robot naturally is his own distress beacon, but getting an exact bead on him is tough since he’s underground.

Tokabi and Armstrong lost their distress beacons, just for a fun bit of intrigue as you question why they didn’t call in.

The last beacon leads to a body, because a light bit of horror is good in a Metroid, personally. Or it maybe even leads to a boss… the beacon is in it. Or Sylux has it, picking it up off a dead trooper and flicking the switch to draw in Samus.

Seems obvious to me, but eh.

[rmp4bbwtf]

Redesigning Metroid Prime Beyond (7)

The green rain being an attempt to rejuvenate the world using an untested mutagenic chemical is the dumbest shit imaginable and I don’t think the Lamorn deserve to be that dumb. I want to elevate them to just as dumb as humans, at least.

Instead, the mined Elogium (what I’m calling Green Energy) was distilled into a liquid that enhanced the Lamorn’s psychic potential, leading to the Psychic Age. Rather than being a utopia, it was an age where those who were most psychic ruled over those that were weaker, with the weak requiring more Elogium to keep up.

Elogium eventually got into the water supply, to the point it fell like acid rain across the land, turning it into a desert and messing up the wildlife. Wars were fought over pure Elogium supplies, over dwindling resources and fertile land, until eventually society collapsed.

The Lamorn split into three factions, the Grievers, heavily mutated by Elogium but also suffering withdrawals from lack of a good supply, the—let me pull out a thesaurus real quick—Soro. You know, sorrow. These guys are equally mutated, rabid Lamorn, but they’re pumped full of Elogium and were highly psychic to start with. They can be an elite foe, a kind of ‘black knight’ / equal to Samus, but also an enemy of Sylux and his space pirates.

The Lamorn that speaks to Samus, Chatoya, is of the third faction, the few that stayed sane during all this and while psychic, didn’t overdose on the goo. Ancient logs found indicate they tried to warn everyone, but failed because those in power didn’t want to give up the psychic age even if it meant that was the last one.

[rmp4bbwtf]

Dang

Just read the Famitsu interview and I have changed my opinion from this having a troubled development to this being trouble that had development in it. Also, they wanted the empty desert that splits the world so it’s not interconnected? Okay.

[knackeredforever]

It’s awesome Metroid prime 4 contains a reference to the fangame AM2R

[rmp4bbwtf]

Redesigning Metroid Prime Beyond (6)

You know when you’re about to beat the game? There’s this moment where a valid target is being held in place? Yeah, that one. And Samus has a special psychic ability where she can shoot a shot that she can move with her mind, allowing her to hit a target very precisely without hitting some stuff she doesn’t want to hit? Yeah, putting that in.

[rmp4bbwtf]

Redesigning Metroid Prime Beyond (5)

50% less heroic sacrifices to hold them off that get faked out. Actually, keep only two. Give one to Nora Armstrong, have her survive unscathed. Give one to the robot and kill it. Not that I have something against it, but you can’t just be having heroic sacrifices to hold them off and make them all meaningless. Have Samus retrieve a little floppy disc of his brain from his mangled frame if you really want to soften the blow.

[rmp4bbwtf]

Redesigning Metroid Prime Beyond (4)

I don’t think there should even be green crystals to collect, but if Green Energy as a concept is too hard to remove from the game, it’s got to have a new name. Like, you can just make words up, it is allowed, here’s one: Phazon.

In my hypothetical redesign I’m calling Green Energy “Elogium”. I think this is a pretty cheeky name because it’s a Latin word for an inscription placed on a tomb, and since the Lamorn are blatantly the words lament and mourn smushed together, it tracks, and sounds like an element too.

[rmp4bbwtf]

Redesigning Metroid Prime Beyond (3)

The teleportation accident in the prologue not only moves things across space, it moves them through time. Samus arrives present time. Each trooper has been on Viewros for one more week than the last, and the robot can have been there for… a year. Enough that it has more information than the others on what’s going on.

The big thing is Sylux has been on Viewros for decades. He’s been stewing on the event for years now. He’s had time to figure out Lamorn technology. His metroids have had plenty of time to acclimatise, breed, get out of hand—there’s probably a hive, or whatever metroids have, over at some desolate corner of the map.

This neatly ties up his control over the tower and its drones, why he’s absolutely rabid to hurt Samus, how he can be knocked on his ass by one shot but end up as the last boss, and explains his use of that healing pod. He’s getting old.

Bonus round! The game would have space pirates, and with enough years under their belt and new ones popping in at varying intervals you can justify there being a lot of them, with a few new variants and a lot of funny logs detailing their attempts to become psychic!