The much awaited Metroid Prime 4 which was first showcased at E3 2017 at the time being developed by Bandai Namco Studios. It is a sequel to Metroid Prime 3 which was released almost 2 decades ago and so well received fans have been hungry ever since and Nintendo finally released an Announcement trailer on the 19th of June.
Okay, So What’s It About ?
The Metroid Prime series is sort of labeled as a 1.5 to the various other Metroid releases but is packed to the brim with lore and story of Samus before the newest developments of the most recent game Metroid Dread. Fans can finally explore the story further and hopefully defeat Dark Samus to reach an epic conclusion to a much beloved and much awaited sequel or we’ll get to a continuation which was decades in the making.
The hype for the series was restarted due to a masterful remaster of the first Metroid Prime which was released last year, which somewhat satiated the thirst of beloved fans everywhere but reignited the hope for a Metroid Prime 4.
A Short Recap Of The First 3 Games
Metroid Prime 1 takes place between the original release and Metroid 2: Return of Samus and is about defeating the phazon (an energy producing bio-organism) enhanced space pirates and investing their settlements in a planet called Talon IV. The game concludes with the defeat of Metroid Prime but in its defeat it absorbed Samus’ phazon enhanced suit which was acquired earlier to resist the effects of the organisms. This absorption led to the birth of Dark Samus.
Metroid Prime 2, takes place on the planet Aether and this is where players eventually encounter Dark Samus. Samus has to fight through Dark Samus, remaining space pirates and the Ing guardians who are using Dark Aether to take over the planet of Aether from the Luminoth race who are the inhabitants of it. The main objective is to retrieve 3 main “light Aether” sources from the various regions of the planet and return them to their original temples which eventually cause the Dark Aether to become unstable and cause massive destruction which Dark Samus gets caught in. Samus escapes in time and returns to the Luminoth to tell of her success. If players can complete the game with all items obtained then a special cutscene gets shown which shows that Dark Samus survived.
Metroid Prime 3, starts of with an assault on the Federation Base( the main command who give Samus her missions) by Dark Samus with a “Leviation Seed” a large body consisting of Phazon which land on planets to corrupt it with the Phazon its carrying. Samus gets corrupted here with Phazon but the Federation helps her by giving her abilities which let her use the Phazon energy herself. The main objective of the game here is to attack the planet Phaaze which is the source of all Phazon and Samus goes to the core of the planet where there is a final encounter with Dark Samus which results in the explosion of the core rendering all Phazon inert across the galaxy, thus concluding the story of the 3rd game.
Why Did it Take So Long?
It was supposed to be released years ago, but Nintendo apparently weren’t so happy with the progression of the game with Bandai Namco and evidently decided to give it back to the series creators Retro Studios, this change in development took place in 2019 and 5 years later we finally got an announcement trailer.
But in the end it is only an announcement trailer, we only got some gameplay and the reveal of a returning character Sylux, the game is going to be released in 2025 but already fans are hyped and revisiting all the lore of Metroid Prime to be prepared for the story developments.
Conclusion
The Metroid Prime franchise is much beloved and each release was critically acclaimed as a masterpiece and there is no doubt this one won’t be as well as it is being made by the same studio, Retro Studios. There is speculation that the game could be released for multiple platforms or be playable in smooth 60 FPS if it gets released for the Switch 2.
