The World Design of Metroid Prime | Boss Keys
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 13 มี.ค. 2019
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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.
Contribute translated subtitles - amara.org/v/C3BES/ - เกม
Just want to point something about the hint system : it doesn't show the next upgrade all the time, but when you visit a certain numbers of room. So, basically, the more you explore, the more the game thinks that you may be completly lost, and finally gives you the hint. I think it's a very interesting way to let you explore like you want, but helping you when you don't feel like you progress anymore is very neat
But as Mark said, having the hint system to be on by default is indeed counter productive in my opinion. Laying out the option before the game started (or during the prologue) and explaining what it does so newcomers understand what it is and either agree/disagree to use it or veterans who know about the franchise and know its structure would have been the better way to handle the hint system.
It backfired as much as it could have for me, until I thought to look if it could be turned off, which wasn't made clear; If you're the kind of player that wants to try for as close to 100% completion as possible on your first playthrough, you will likely spend a lot of time exploring after each new ability in case you spot new opportunities that you wouldn't have recognized before, in search of hidden goodies beore moving on with the critical path. To that kind of player, the hints will smack you in the face every single time. I felt like it discouraged exploration, like the game got impatient with me for spending time enjoying the open world and just wanted me to move on with the plot. It's a good idea, but implemented poorly.
@@Roxfox Good thing the game allows you to turn off the hints, then. But yeah, it sucks that you have to go to the options to know that
@@samy29987 The things is that the veterans are the one who will most probably go in the option and check if they can disable the first time they see hints. While on the other hand, new players while propably never check that kind of things, and making it a choice at the beginning gave the risk that new players (who don't know much about this type of games) get too cocky and say "Hey i'm an adult, I don't need advice", and then they end up being lost, which can be some kind of softlock, because they are unexperienced with the game. In some way, having it as an option that you have to check yourself is a way to "protect players from themselves" and make sure that they know what they are doing.
@@Roxfox Spot on!
Even as a stupid kid I had no trouble understanding that the ultimate objective was collecting the Chozo Artifacts and accessing the crater. The Pirate data logs flat out tells you that the president of Metroids is waiting down there.
I was a non native speaker that didn't know a lick of English and I completed this game in 20 hours or something lol.
"The president of Metroid"? Is that how you talk about the great Dark Samus?
Yeah I thought that was one of the weirder "complaints" in the video. The artifcat temple is extremely easy and logical to find, and so many logbook entries keep talking about the importance of the artifacts. It's not vague at all.
@@francisthompson3772well no, this is prome 1
yeah it's pretty obvious. when i found the impact crater i was like "oh ok this is ganon's castle, these hints are for finding the keys to open the endgame"
I actually really liked the fact that a good chunk of the artifacts were gotten near the end of the game, because it gave me a bunch of time in-game to actually enjoy playing as a fully-decked out and upgraded Samus, and without it, I feel like I'd be missing out on that.
On one hand, yes. On the other, getting the artifacts require going into the depths of places or routes that are annoying from where you are. Having to go through the same areas so many times is incredibly tedious.
they also add in some fun puzzles to solve and make it so you naturally stumble across upgrades which better equip you for the ridley fight. I think this sometimes get lumped in with the triforce shard search in wind waker but thats actually an explicit example of pointless padding.
11:54 I feel like the phrase “Hopefully you’ll stumble upon this room” does a huge disservice to the subtler bits of Metroid Prime’s structure. The hallway leading to the artifact temple is literally the first door you see after touching down on the planet, and all you need to reach the temple itself is the missile launcher. Stumbling into the main endgame collectathon can be done obscenely early, and any player who doesn’t wander in after acquiring the Space Jump Boots is actively not exploring.
Yeah I agree with these points, playing it for the first time, but I'm not at the end game yet. Still I don't think a fairly long collectathon element adds much; MVs should mainly be about gaining abilities. Maybe if they tied most of the lore to finding these artifacts.
@@Alianger The end-game Collectathon is to encourage you to use those abilities to collect the powerups you might've missed, like Energy and Missile tanks. It's also sort of a final boss, only instead of a health bar, it's a test of how well you've come to know the planet, and how well you can interpret vague clues and solve puzzles. If the only final challenge a MetroidVania gives you is a bullet sponge, it's doing you a disservice. The climax of a game should bring ALL of the elements of the game together.
The door doesn't realize stand out enough. Sure, it's on the screen when you first get to Tallon, but it doesn't stand out when the area is already somewhat blue and it's on a ledge where many won't initially think of
@@danielle5160 Yea I understand waht you're saying, but for me there's a fine line between exploring and the illusion of exploring. I spent hours wandering around this game sometimes lost, but i never personally thought "This game is badly designed" as I enjoyed running around and mapping the world out.
This is the danger of a series like this where it can mistake players wandering as "inefficient power-up spacing" or "poor level design" where for me it felt like being immersed in the world, a natural world that didn't always have rhyme or reason, I was exploring as Samus.
These denotions are potantially flaws of any system that attempts to categorize a genre imo.
I do like the bosskeys series though, as with any enjoyable subject it's going to breed discourse :)
Plus there are several Pirate scans that tell the player that they are trying to reach the Impact Crater and they need the Artifacts to get there.
The water area that requires the gravity suit was pain. If you accidentally go down there without the suit, the game baits you into saving down there, but you soon realize you need the suit and have to painstakingly platform underwater to backtrack to the gravity suit
I always thought the reason it has you backtrack through the whole map is so you can marvel at how incredibly powerful you've become. It's not a repeat of old challenges and areas, it's a victory lap, where nothing outside of the crater can hurt you and no obstacle can slow you down.
Precisely this. It always felt amazing and more empowering with each successive retread.
While many people wanna play this game like it's a "2d metroid but in 3d" going fast, the game is designed to be slow for a reason. The levels are not levels at all. You are not traversing challenges just so you can get to the objective. The game wants you to immerse yourself in the world so you can bring it in your heart. You are not completing an area, you are living in it. It's the perfect example of "it's not the destination what matters, it's the journey"
It flings you around the map like a tennis ball so you can experience not only the world evolving, but you growing up from being a "child", being weak, fighting small enemies, but mostly amaze yourself discovering little things and mechanics, to being experienced and ready, an adult that looks back to the earlier times and thinks how far you've gone.
When it's time to search the artifacts, it means you have the chance to say goodbye to all the places you almost know by heart, and recover all items and ready up so you can leave this place forever and fulfill your destiny, ending up near the first room of the game, closing a circle, hearing the remix of the title theme in the last bossfight, the same theme that scared you the first time you booted up the disk in the console
Yes, a victory lap that can take multiple hours as you navigate the games windy, literally obstacle-laden world as you figure out where the hell all these arbitrary artefacts are hidden - I definitely felt like Caesar marching into Rome when I went through that ballache.
@@mononoke721 for most of them they litterally tell you where they're hidden and what to do, and you can plan a backtrack through the world easily after you know where elevators send you. One hidden one (???) Is viewable in the phazon cave entrance and can be heard when you pass there, something you'll probably backtrack as soon as you get the suit, while the magmor cavern hidden one can be heard every time you pass there so you'll probably get it early and it's visible with the x-ray, but it can be evil if you are not used to switch visors, other ones are in rooms that are maked as unexplored on the map.
If you plan your backtracks decently, you can find most of them simply when item hunting (for example you can get the pirate lab one and the cave-y one when you have the plasma beam while also backtacking all pendhrana to get all of the items locked behind ice you can melt with the plasma, double win at the price of one).
Last time it took me a little more than 45 minutes to get all artifacts after beating the omega pirate, only becouse i forgot to scan one statue so i had to go back and forth from phazon mines to get the elite pirate one
@Morph Ball One word: Boostball
Time spent in elevators is definitely to mask loading.
Yeah, even the doors are there to mask a loading screen.
@@MegaGameCore clever design pattern
@@CaptainJeoy indeed. The game's backend is pretty good.
@@MegaGameCore And Prime 4 will most surely have that same core design.
@@samy29987 But hopefully with a more modern polish, right?
I'm surprised you had so little to say about the effect of 3D on Prime's world design. Does Prime face any unique challenges or opportunities doing Metroidvania design in 3D?
I have seen people argue that Prime being 3D is the cause of the game having a more horizontal layout. That plus the first person view is why taversal is a bit less interesting. Running through one area to get to another became tedious. The center hub plus ring layout of Prime 2's map is something that I do think is better suited to the level of mobility afforded in Prime.
Yet more that melds this style of the Metroidvania genre, with Zelda-like games.
One issue I'm sure it faced was the problem of getting players to look up. Because many players never look up in games unless they're given huge hints that they need to.
@@jasonblalock4429 plus the fact that with the original gameplay it was tedious to even look up, you had to press a button and stop moving because the camera was mapped on the left stick.
@@jasonblalock4429 I'm taking notes. That's a very valid point that never crossed my mind!
The community around this channel is 10/10
You say the game doesn't make it clear that collecting Chozo Artifacts is important, but this is only the case if you don't read the log book.
The Chozo lore mentions the Impact Crater housing "the Worm", the source of all phazon, which the Space Pirates (the other main antagonist) are after.
Meanwhile, the game explicitly tells you that collecting all the Artifacts will unlock the path to the Impact Crater.
Put two and two together, and it's pretty clear that the Artifacts should be collected at some point.
And if you miss them until the end of the game, collecting them will be the only thing left to do. So I don't see a problem here.
I made it to the end of the game and basically stopped playing for the exact reason Mark mentioned. I didn't feel like having to go around the whole map again!
@@DjMIniboss The thing is, that's a different issue than what the OP was talking about.
Was gonna mention that, myself. Also, one tends to get the rest or the upgrades and scans on the way to the Artifacts.
A game requiring you to read lore texts to find out important information isn't very good as many players just aren't interested in reading a bunch of stuff (especially in action games). Of course, as you say, at some point collecting the artifacts will be the only thing left to do which is isn't a problem for completionists, but is a problem for players who just aim to finish the game without finding all optional content.
@@ReFreezed Metroid Prime is a game that has very little in terms of character, though. Most games have cutscenes or dialog with other characters. It has always been praised for this method of story-telling, so it's weird that such a thing is ignored in a discussion of the game.
hint systems are on by default because the people who need them won't look through the menus for it. what they should do is ask at the start of the game
Or explain it through the well-built tutorial through a computer scan or something during the frigate orpheon section which Prime nailed perfectly onstead of just askig through a box of text and a yes or no prompt.
@@samy29987 a tutorial can't replace the hint system, I don't understand what point you're trying to make
@@prorambler8605 I am not suggesting that the tutorial replaced the hint system. Where did I say that? Frigate Orpheon basically explained the player everything he could do by gameplay and small sub texts. Maybe placing a computer screen where the map station was and tellin the player what the hint system means and what it does, etc instead of just a sub box before starting the game that said: Hint system = on or off?
@@samy29987 ah, I completely forgot
The problem with that is that there's no shortage of people who will turn it off and then, later, become terribly lost and perhaps just quit playing the game. (There's also a lot that just don't scan much or read text, and so can't be reached through those methods.)
Also, people don't know whether or not they need hints when they first start playing the game.
It's probably better to have it on by default (but be toggleable in a menu) and then, once the first hint pops up, point out where in the menues it can be disabled. Also, it's probably a good idea to just have a button somewhere that immediately gives you a hint so you don't have to, as in Metroid Prime, aimlessly wander around lost for a bit.
Your comments on Magmoor are interesting, as the level was definitely designed as a "subway" of sorts and I'd argue actually helps with navigation. A trip to Magmoor gets you in close proximity to several important elevators and causes Magmoor to act more like the hub of this game.
It's also worth noting that although you do go back to Magmoor multiple times, it is not as if each trip past the first is backtracking. Magmoor can more or less be divided into 4 sections between elevators. If you are playing efficiently, only a couple of those instances are actually backtracking. (Second trip to Phendrana, and your trip to get the Plasma beam). The rest is exploring new sections of the map.
If you don't know where to go at all times then there's a high risk you'll end up backtracking in Magmoor many times (which happened to me both times I played this game). Because all areas are connected through elevators (instead of simple doors between rooms, which would've forced a certain layout of the world that would've been easier to memorize) it would have decreased the amount of backtracking if Magmoor didn't exist and the elevators went between all other areas directly. I agree with Mark on this one.
I actually really liked Magmoor cavern because I would try to beat my own time going through it, it was fun seeing how I was able to dodge the obstacles faster everytime. Not tedious at all, but I can see why it feels so artificial.
@@ReFreezed This reads more like a criticism of the elevators than the actual area, which were a necessary evil as they masked loading times (no maybe about it). I would agree that the world map should link together and agree that it is a flaw in this game's map system.
If you don't know where to go at all times, you are going to backtrack, period, in any Metroidvania. That is a moot point to me. It's a tradeoff of the genre. I don't think it would be specific to Magmoor beyond that it works as the hub. So as the most centralized area, you are most likely to backtrack, but that is just a consequence that would happen wherever is most central in the game. If it wasn't Magmoor, it would be Talon Overworld, and if it wasn't anywhere, it would be too linear.
@MrWhygodwhy There isn't much wrong with the area, nor with backtracking in itself, nor with any loading times, nor with any central areas/hubs - I just think I spent a little bit too much time going back and forth through Magmoor without getting much progress done anywhere. It doesn't help that the elevator rooms all look very similar and that the map isn't super clear about where the elevators end up (i.e. more time spent on the map screen). Metroid Prime 2 did a better job with the world layout IMO. It also has a central area, but it isn't just a long corridor and you don't have to go through it all the time.
@@Antoine893 I had the same experience with Phantom Hourglass's Temple of the Ocean King. Everyone gripes about it but I loved seeing how much better I could do with foreknowledge and new gear.
The Tony Hawk gag warmed my heart not only because Heck Yeah Tony Hawk, but also because we so rarely get to see you just goof a bit in your videos. Thanks for the laugh!
Honestly that's what makes it so funny in the first place. GMT videos have this very professional tone to them and mostly stick to it, so whenever something like that or the Shaft gag in the Castlevania vid happens, the sheer whiplash makes it that much more hilarious.
@@ExeloMinish Indeed - quality, not quantity.
He even added the "boneless" trick which is a humorous nod to how the Morph Ball is at all physically possible.
I find it interesting you say that the "impact crater" is hidden away. When the very first door you see, coming out of your ship on Tallon IV is that door.
Great Video! But...
You glossed over the all-important Scan Visor:
1) It tells you what Material objects are made out of, so you can destroy them later, with an "aha moment".*
2) It tells you about the world and it's geography, like the significance of the impact crater & its supporting keys.**
...and should not have been left out of the video. It's pretty much the MOST important and prevalent tool in Prime's arsenal!
*[Note 1 - destructible object material is a multi-tiered "aha moment", as it comes up for the missiles, bombs, super missiles, & super bombs]
**[Note 2 - scanning may be perceived as vapid and pointless by some players; HOWEVER it is rewarded in the short-term with combat clues on enemies, & environmental clues by highlighting interactables with neon colors (in what was a overwhelmingly new 3D environment at the time). In the long term, scanning rewards the player with percentage goals of finding all scans, & lore/world-building.]
ACTUALLY, it was Prime 2 that started highlighting with neon colors. Prime 1 had a far more annoying version: There were small icons you had to scan. For the most part, still fine. Except the original US version for Hive Mecha. They put its scan point UNDERWATER. You had to explicitly look DOWN to find it! It's probably why Prime 2 switched to "whole object is a scan point".
Yeah, while having to switch to scan visor every so often sounds boring and looks like something player might forget after a while, it's crazy to think Prime series utilized a feature like this so well.
I can't remember exactly how often but from time to time there were things player could interact only with scan visor, so he/she were reminded of scan visor's existence (and usefulness to the player). Subjectively, at some point it became a habit to scan things I saw for the first time or haven't scanned yet.
I dare to say that it was also perfect for immersive story/lore telling in Prime's sci-fi setting and added a sense of discovery to the game.
And, yeah, omitting it in the video was a crime
Y'all, this is a series about examining the map design in these games, so that's all he's looking at
@@DestroyerOfAglets Very true! But Is it possible to disentangle the features of the scan visor (and how it helps you decipher dead ends and navigate the map with Samus’ abilities) from the map design? I don’t think so because of the reasons others have mentioned. Imo, it’s about equally as valuable as the viewable map players have access to, which he does discuss/critique in this video.
For the few small problems it has, metroid prime is still the most impressive move from 2d-3d ever made.
*cough* Mario *cough* 64, and *splutter* Ocarina *hak* Of Time *cough*
Excuse me, allergies.
@@benredfield6643 ill agree with you about them being impressive for first trys at 3d but metroid was on a higher level. Moving from 3rd person to 1st person and it still feeling like the same game series is wizardry
@@benredfield6643
As much as I ADORE both of those games, and greatly respect what they did for both their own series and gaming in general, I honestly have to agree that Metroid Prime really is the most impressive move from 2D to 3D ever made.
Cough cough risk of rain 1 to risk of rain 2 :D
IMO, Mario 64 > Metroid Prime > OoT
The Impact Crater is something that the Chozo Lore and Pirate Data constantly allude to as the source of all Phazon on the planet, which by the end the player should understand as incredibly dangerous, and that the creature guarding it is also the one producing it and should be destroyed, according to the Chozo anyway. The game informs the player about the scan visor's use for data collecting in the frigate when you reach a room with computers, that also allude to a series of experiments involving Phazon, so from here on you should be scanning similar computers throughout the pirate bases; as for the Chozo Lore, they stand out with the water looking texture they have when unscanned, they even put one directly in front of a door when you first visit the ruins.
Actually Invisible platforms are made memorable by making some of them have water or snow fall on them letting player know there is something there that they cant normally see...
Metroid Prime does this as fast as Tallon Overworld Root Cave, but most people just drop and forget to always look around for clues...
Unfortunately, nothing really brings attention to this fact, so you'll never actually notice it unless you look for it. :/
It's actually really obvious after you start looking at the world around you. Something really off about seeing a floating plane of water droplets colliding.
Granted, the fact that the one set of invisible platforms actually necessary for progress doesn't have any rain to give them away is a problem. A nice solution would've been to give invisible platforms a more distinct audio cue, like how some of the Echo visor things function in Prime 2.
This video does a great job of making one of my favorite games sound sub-par.
I never played it and what I got was that this game was a brilliant transition from standard metroidvania but suffered map design flaws that could sometimes interfere with pacing.
I mean "flumped execution" on a few technical elements of map design doesn't sound sub-par to me.
Viewing things through a critical lens tends to do that.
Don't worry, he ignored visuals/atmosphere (since he only talks about map design), which are a huge part of the game.
@@OverbiteGames Right. Mark is looking at the game strictly through the lense of macro level-design, which of course is only just one relevant facet of game design.
It always depends on the critical lens you view a game through. A different critical lens may view this game as a masterpiece. But Metroid Prime didn't prioritize world design to quite the same extent Super Metroid did, and considering Mark is rather strictly viewing it through that lens, it is going to sound mediocre in comparison.
I bring this up because any game can be made to sound mediocre if you aren't used to hearing this type of evaluation. But you'll realize after awhile the most accurate way to view a great game is not how it is a paragon of perfection, but that it did a couple things extremely well while being mostly competent at everything else it does. An area of expertise so to speak while otherwise not being terrible.
"No game is perfect" doesn't sum it up quite right, every game is far from it. But it is hard at first because we want to consider our favorite games as being flawless.
The artifacts rush at the end of the game was interesting, because it reminds me of the Triforce quest at the end of The Wind Waker. It seems like Nintendo got really happy with that open-world design, where you're spending the whole game running around all over the place going and doing major things, then suddenly you have a fetchquest dumped on you right before the end of the game, slowing the pacing down to a screeching halt.
In reference to 5:45, in Tallon overworld the rain hits the invisible platforms after you get the X-Ray visor, to help you understand that from now on you are expected to rely more on the visors than before as an adventure component (because Thermal is used mostly for combat as far as i remember).
It's true in the Phazon mines there is nothing to tell you the platforms are there (as far as i remember) but at this point you're very late into the game, the hint will tell you there's a way to cross the chasm with your current gear, and that's a breaking point that the game expects you to rely on your experience without tips or visual queues.
Just like in your super metroid video when you say there are hidden doors behind walls that aren't mapped but you need to cross, at a certain moment, the metroid games cease to hold your hand invisibly and lets you enjoy the show on your own.
5:35*
I seem to recall reading that a dev said one of the reasons Magmoor was lacking was because of time constraints, and they moved some things from Magmoor to Phendrana to fully flesh out one of the two zones (presumably at the time both were WIP) meaning Magmoor was "sacrificed" to finish Phendrana, the most notable being the Thardus boss which was originally going to be a lava rock monster, with the Phendrana boss originally being a Sheegoth Prime or something. I think this is why Magmoor is so heavily attached to Phendrana in regards to progression, and it makes me wonder how things may have been had they had a few more months to work on the game, or even if Phendrana was the sacrificial zone and we got a fully fleshed out Magmoor.
having finished the remaster (first time playing through the game, for some reason I only ever played through 2), big agree on the "uggghhhh don't make me go back to phendrana drifts again" problem with the world structure
this is a game where I can excuse these issues because the formula was still relatively nascent around those times, however...
I think the comments from 3 years ago are overly harsh because most players hadn't played it in a while and had a hard time looking past that built-up fondness from playing it when they were younger
I hope that, with this remaster, both old and new players can approach it with a critical eye, understanding the groundbreaking achievement the game was while acknowledging its faults
Just beat the game and came here to upvote this thing all over again. The final hours of this game were frustrating. I think prime is amazing, but Mark brown speaks truth on the problems this game has.
He mentions that you never really got stuck in a place in Metroid Prime like Norfair in Super Metroid; but I would argue different.
The Phazon mines feel very much like a trap to me because of their lack of save points.
When arriving in the phazon mines you basically face a long gauntlet of enemy filled rooms before happening on the power bombs and finally reaching a save point. This feels like a trap to me yet done in an extremely elegant way.
The brilliance of it derives primarily because there is literally nothing stopping you from going back and finding a save point. Despite that; when I played, I never wanted to. The explorative nature of the game made me never really want to backtrack out of the phazon mines and re-up my health by saving. In addition to the player’s natural desire to keep moving forward; the consistently re-spawning enemies means going back would be akin to just re-loading a save anyway. Might as well keep moving forward then.
It’s not a trap like Norfair where you can’t get out at all; it’s a trap designed to make you subconsciously NEED to keep pressing forward.
Feel free to rebut if you think I’m off my rocker. Of if I got my facts wrong about these Phazon Mines and Norfair; it’s been a while since I played these games.
There is a save point in the very first area of Phazon Mines, up the spider ball rail
Even if this had been true, it would be unreliable and often achieve the opposite to what soft traps do. Having a long, challenging area without save points would have a high risk of killing the player and wasting a lot of time, which rationally would warn them away from exploring the are until they found additional energy tanks etc, potentially dissuading them from making progress rather than requiring them to do so.
@@magictriangle6878 He never denied this. It's just, to progress, you need to have pretty much 30 minutes uninterrupted gameplay without dying, against challenging and tanky enemies, and at the end a needless mini-boss is thrown at you as a troll. It's absolutely grueling, and if you get killed by that sentry drone you lose a whole half hour of gameplay here, which doesn't feel good. Turning around to save is not meaningful anyway, since you have to fight those same enemies all over again.
It never makes you want to backtrack, precisely because it wouldn't help you even if you did.
@@peter0x444 Just did it, died once near the end, mostly because the game never made me care about my health bar until that point, but next time I the knew enemy placement and had each beam ready for each encounter. Easily the best areas in the game so far, felt like a Dark Souls level.
@@night1952 i legit once died at the final electrical maze with the morphball, after the boss 🥲. anyway the annoying thing for me was scanning every nook and cranny 5 times over. but yeah once you make it it's super satisfying
7:33 "You can't possibly check them all without getting bored and resorting to a walkthrough." Bold of you to assume I'm not petty enough to go around the whole map 3 times in search of the next obstacle.
bold of him to assume that many children did not beat this without resorting to a walkthrough. Baffling, tbh
5:45 My first experience in this area was not negative at all. I puzzled at the chasm I couldn't cross for like two minutes, and then I left because I had seen power bomb obstructions elsewhere in the mines. Later I followed those rabbit holes, got the x-ray, and immediately I remembered that unsolvable chasm. It's not that the dead end creates hopelessness or that it's misleading, it's just a level of problem-solving you didn't know you needed, which is the very nature of problem solving, isn't it?
So honestly this one kind of boils down to "git gud" lol
7:05 This isn't a great representation of the initial furnace experience either. Before you go in and get the energy tank, you see a very obvious spider track. Since I was new and curious, which is the point, I scanned it, and then I was introduced to spider tracks for the first time, which made it very memorable. It doesn't make sense why Boss Keys initially suggests that memorable areas are better than parsing the map (4:58) and then suddenly criticizes this memorable area because you can't use the map- or less ideal searching method- to progress further; it's a little backwards.
7:48 This is mostly fair. After Grapple Beam, next comes plasma beam, and then you're kitted up for the Omega Pirate, which requires grapple, plasma and x-ray to reach. The plasma beam room isn't super memorable; you have to have the mindset of intentionally paying attention to rooms in order to catch it without hints. The room is unnaturally large, and it has some grapple hooks and strange amounts of detail in the upper canopy of the room, which I did notice on my first playthrough (without the attention mindset), though I couldn't remember the room by the time I got grapple beam because I was young.
11:52 This is probably the most unbased thing in the video lol. The chozo temple is the most memorable and tantalizing little doorway in the whole game, as mentioned in a top comment so I won't harp on this anymore lol
14:15 I enjoyed this aspect of it because several artifacts had interesting secrets hidden under your nose in these rooms, so seeing how these artifacts were hidden was something I looked forward to as I approached the room.
"Find all Artifacts to enter the 'Impact Crater,' but that doesn't actually mean much"
Players are actively encouraged through the game to scan literally everything for information. Not just enemies, but terminals and runes on walls for Lore entries in the scan log. The entire game's story is presented this way. It's non-obtrusive, which is good, but since it's also not necessary, it's also possible to skip entire explanations for things like the Phazon meteor that brought along a corruptive force, deep inside the impact crater.
TLDR: Your objective to destroy the source of Phazon on the planet is something you could completely pass or ignore, and because of that, you may end up losing the objective in the short-term with enough progress
I was gonna say that this why Prime is pretty damn clever in its storytelling. You could always read the little manual that came with the game, there's some backstory in there, but otherwise, you can play the game without knowing the intricate story details, but for those who do love world-building, it's wonderful to learn more about the planet and how the turmoil has poisoned it.
@@Metroid4ever And to learn about how Science Team has vapor for brains. Retro had some fun with that flavor text.
@@VideoMask93 Yes, very much indeed.
Why, without the scan visor, I wouldn't have learned that Metroids do not make good pets...nor do they make good target shooting practice. And that you shouldn't give them pet treats, it makes them sick, apparently.
FOR SCIENCE!
Collect all the artifacts to enter the Impact Crater?
Meh it probably only contains a missile upgrade.
It's kind of funny, because this type of "hints in lore/items collected text" is something highlighted as a plus for SotN and Dark Souls, but overlooked in Prime and the problem that it actively solves is highlighted as a negative. Maybe the script could have used another look through for the episode
I think one stumbling block you skipped over in a major way is the Ice Beam -> Gravity Suit sequence.
So, after you get through the second half of Chozo Ruins to acquire the Ice Beam, you come to a room with 4 doors in it. 1 of them leads back into the Ruins, one to a missile recharge, and 2 lead out of the Ruins. One of these, a regular blue door, takes you to an elevator down to Magmoor that's pretty close to an elevator to Phendrana, near the area with the Gravity Suit. It doesn't take all that long to do.
_However_ , in that 4 door Chozo room, there's also a shiny white door which you can unlock with your brand new Ice Beam. That door leads to an elevator that takes you to the Tallon Overworld, in a direct path to the Crashed Ship, which you can now open with the Ice Beam. It's easy to get 2/3 or even 3/4 of the way through the Crashed Ship before you hit a proper dead end and the game mentions you can get the Gravity Suit...15-20 minutes of backtracking and 3 loading screen elevators away. I have to say, that moment was *very* frustrating.
And all of that happened because I followed the maxim you mentioned that otherwise serves the player quite well in this game-"follow the dead end". Use the new item you get right away in this instance and you're just inconveniencing yourself later.
Interestingly what you said here isn't quite accurate (just played through the game coincidentally). There are 3 doors next to the ice beam. The first is the way you came from back into Chozo, far from any other elevators and the one that does connect to Magmoor is actually on the polar opposite end of where you want to be. The other two doors lead to two elevators right next to you, both of which go to Tallon Overworld. The one behind the ice beam leads to a dead end near the Phazon Mines entrance and is where you eventually get the X ray visor. The other is past the save station nearby and leads to where you mentioned. It is actually the fastest route back to Phendrana's edge (where you want to be).
I wholeheartedly agree that they should have cut you off sooner than they did if you try to explore the Frigate, however you are actually cut off only a couple major rooms in, maybe 1/3rd of the way in, and at the dead end, you will find a health upgrade for your troubles.
But I will agree, in my opinion, the game allowing you to travel so far in this direction when it is also difficult to get back out is probably the game's biggest flaw. Probably my only other gripe is how far out of your way 2-3 of the late game artifacts are.
@@MrWhygodwhyHmm, I'll have to re-check myself. I remember the room I'm talking about has the half-pipe at the bottom and the frogs you need to get eaten by to kill, but I must have the connecting rooms mixed up.
@@donbionicle Yep, that's the correct room.
If it has been awhile, you were probably just remembering Phendrana's Edge connects in Magmoor. You may have just assumed they wouldn't have the best route go past the frigate, since you can't finish it and it has been an enticing, MAJOR point of interest for awhile by then. I mean, if the game takes you right by it and you can now get in, of COURSE you are going to enter! But it is the best route, they really did do that, and is probably exactly why you ended up in a situation where you were forced to needlessly backtrack. I did it too back in the day. Never again!
It's such a blunder in an otherwise smartly designed game that I wonder if they originally intended for you to go that way first before realizing they designed themselves into a corner. A mix of needing the Gravity suit still and also needing that path to make getting out of the Mines and back to the ship reasonable.
@@MrWhygodwhy The only reason I specifically disliked that bit of design was the very vertical precision jumping room was made three times harder to get back out of by lack of gravity suit. It's been a while so I can't remember the exact jump, but roughly 2/3 of the way out of the room there's a jump that, without the gravity suit, needs to be very, very precise, and if you miss it there's not a platform you can reach before hitting the bottom again. Add in that it's the only room of its kind, so you can't practice water jumping prior to this, and it took me a good half hour the first time to get out of that single room. It wound up being the single most frustrating experience in that game for me. The gravity suit trivializes that room so on subsequent playthroughs it really wasn't bad, but man was I mad at the game for sticking me there when I couldn't progress.
@@LordRegal94 Yep. You can definitely learn it, as in a way it is basically back to operating with a single jump on the surface, but it was an extra layer that made that part so questionable.
Not least of which, they placed a save room in about as far as you can reach. Just to make sure you HAVE to land those jumps. lol.
When I was playing Prime, I felt that it had some of the best “this isn’t a dead-end” feelings in the genre. What I mean is, I would use an upgrade to go down what I thought was a side path, but is actually the correct way to go. That feeling of getting lost and accidentally stumbling upon the next step is crucial to Metroidvanias, in my opinion
Still my favorite of the Prime trilogy and best Gamecube title
What makes you like it better than the sequels? The environments? The boss battles? The log entries/plot?
Elfos64 I think the feeling of exploration was closer to SM and less gimmicky. Echoes and Corruption definitely fixed technical issues with the backtracking and Macguffin collecting, but the worlds just weren’t as interesting as Talos IV
@@benwasserman8223 Talon IV* and I agree. While many people justifiably had issue with the backtracking, there is some thrill in trying to plot out the most efficient path to get where you're trying to go. What I imagine Speedrunning optimization is like.
Controversial opinion: I prefer Prime 1's structure to Prime 2's. Yeah 2 had less backtracking, but it also felt too gamey/contrived for my tastes, which took me out of the experience a bit. It felt less like I was exploring an alien world and more like I was playing a more traditional level based shooter with a checklist I had to complete:
1) Go to next level
2) Find 3 keys
3) Fight boss
4) Go to 1
While I prefer 2 to 3, I think 3 did a better job in providing variety in how your goals are accomplished.
@@Twisted_Logic I agree. Prime 2's map feels entirely too gamey, like i'm going through a theme park.
While Prime 1's map has a ton of tedious backtracking, it was more of a joy to explore because it has that lived-in feel.
I think the visors might be the most interesting innovation, in the sense that they have a lot of still untapped potential in first person games, both as an optional story telling venue and as a game play mechanic.
I think I have an idea on how the invisible platforms in the Phazon mines could have been improved.
You're in a cave, right? When you reach this place the first time, have some rocks and debris fall from the ceiling onto the frontmost platform. With a loud metallic clank to draw your attention to it as well as the impact momentarily disrupting the platforms invisibility, this would both show the player that the platform is there, and make it memorable. On top of that, some debris might remain on the platform to give you a visual reminder.
Or have them periodically clank against the wall with some sparks or something.
This is actually how they Hint at other platforms in some other area. You can see rain Drops hitting the thin air if you Look very closely
@@lolschrauber Yeah that's a really cool indicator, and the game probably would've benefited from leading the player to one of these earlier so they could make the connection more easily upon reaching the entrance to Phazon Mines Level 3.
@@lolschrauber I was just about to bring this up. I saw this on the overworld
I feel like you've missed the point of the hint system. The game does not show you where to find something straight away, it gives you a fair amount of time to explore a bit yourself, almost always enough to go straight to a place you remember, but when you do get a hint it never tells you a route, but rather a room, isolated from other rooms, so that you know the general region, but have to explore it yourself to find the new path. In the case of the invisible platforms, once you have the xray visor, the game indicates a room in that general area, and you have to explore the most likely access points to work out the correct route. Once you see the big gap, you put two and two together, and know to try your xray visor.
And also would cover for his complaint about not understanding the importance of the artifacts. The game tells you almost right after beating the normal world bosses
I don't think they "effortlessly" turned it into 3D. They put a lot of effort into it.
It went through a number of different iterations too! It apparently started off as a 3rd-person game, which they scrapped entirely when Miyamoto suggested that it'd be better as a 1st-person game.
@@Banjeoin Except Miyamoto rarely states things so plainly, so he said "what if Samus had a bug's head?" Miyamoto being Miyamoto...
My thoughts exactly lol
MageBurger exactly.
They also had someone from Nintendo in Japan breathing down their necks the whole time.
I disagree that Metroid Prime doesn't make it clear enough that the Impact Crater and the collection of the Chozo Artifacts is the ultimate end goal. The log entries you find from the Chozo and the Space Pirates keep referring to a giant monster and the source of the Phazon being sealed in the Impact Crater and needing to be unlocked by the Artifacts. Sure, it's not as obvious as obvious as The Witness's laser beams, but it works just as well.
@@leonpaelinck The only rebuttle I have to that is, "yeah, if it wasnt a boss room, that would work." other than that, decent point lol. The other point still stands.
I remember playing Prime years ago and every metroidvania game since I've always come back to the same idea that the player should be able to make notes on the map, you talk about the big dead ends being memorable but equally the game throws so many little things collectibles off to the side that you can't get till later, that you end up just focusing on what needs to be remembered.
Zelda Phantom Hourglass had a really good map that you doodled on and puzzles that took advantage of that. It'd be a good choice to go for rather then those die hards that would draw out Metroids world map on grid paper and make notes themselves. Awesome stuff, but would love to see the game take some responsibility for actually remembering everything that's in it, rather then encouraging walkthroughs or in the case of Prime, encouraging you bought the Prima Strategy Guide.
I honestly don't understand why it isn't common practice to have assorted player-made waypoint systems and editable world maps.
Yes, every game with a map period should have this option to leave a marker of some kind to help the player remember important areas for later or points of interest etc - we don't all have photographic memories for crying out loud!
@@mononoke721 Actually we do, it's just some of us don't have film 😏
Prime 2: Everything is behind a power bomb rock!!!
What they could've done with the lens of truth visor is to let you walk on an invisible platform for a while before falling into the death pit. That would've hinted to you that there are things you can't see. Ocarina of time does this pretty well I think inside the well in kakariko. There's tons of stuff you know is happening but you can't see, like holes in the floor, hallways, and enemies.
That's a good point!
The trouble with that is that OoT has something Prime does not have, and that's a third person view. It's harder to make people notice they're on an invisible platform when they can't see their feet.
I had an idea similar to this where you could has running water running over the first platform to show that there are invisible platforms, however think the issue with both of these is that it tempts you to try to play without having the visor and could frustrate some players. Personally when I played through it the first time, I didn't think to try to blindly locate the platforms because there was no hint up until then there even could be invisible platforms.
Death pits seem to be really un-metroidvania, though. Yeah, things like Hollow Knight have spike pits but it’s pretty rare to see something like from a Mario game in a metroidvania. It might even be ANTI-metroidvania in design, since it might mislead players into thinking that they just don’t have the right tool to go in the pit (like the Abysswalker ring in Dark Souls). This is even more true nowadays than when the genre was younger since people have expectations nowadays of what should and shouldn’t be in a metroidvania.
As for the invisible platforms in Prime, I say it’s as simple as an enemy standing on the invisible platform, in a pose that clearly shows it as standing as opposed to floating there.
If the enemies can stand on invisible platforms, too, that'd be the best way to introduce it. You could see enemies that you KNOW belong on the ground just... casually standing on what looks like thin air. Having one such enemy in that phazon area would help, and again with one or two enemies right after you get the visor. Guaranteed to stick in the player's mind.
Thanks for making this video, Marc! Retro Studios has been out of the series for so long it's nice of you to have made an easy refresher course for them to get up speed real quick now that they're starting from the beginning again, haha
as if Retro Studios is going to watch this and take notes from it lol
Texas isn't so bad once your remember Florida exists.
As a Floridian, you're not wrong
Could be worse, could be California or New York
As a Texan, I think Texas is worse.
@@josh-oo as a Texan you can kindly but firmly be asked to leave
@@wombatjack3995 That's uncalled for. So much for "kindly", I guess.
The visual support, as always, make it so easy to follow and understand even if I never played a Metroid game before.
The animations, graphs and game footage are so perfectly edited in.
Best channel on the platform.
Don’t usually comment. Nice vid as always I agree with most of this. But heavily disagree with the artifact hunt and “explore the map” part. Those are my favorite parts. Also I think it’s flaws are very minor and is still the best game on the cube.
I could never get enough of the music and art design in Prime. Any excuse to run back through the map with new kit to hunt down some doodad worked for me. Heartily agree
@@Insan1tyW0lf Agreed, it felt more like a final test of your knowledge of the world and your powerups than a fetch quest. I never had a problem with the artifact search.
In my opinion, gaming perfection.
And Mark, while your point about the constant travelling through Magmoor is a valid one, every time you do, you’re stronger and can zip through it quicker. In my view this lends EXTREMELY well to the sense of progression and power that’s crucial to all metroidvanias.
As for exploration and backtracking as a whole (including the key hunt), I’ll never mind retreading through the game when a developer makes traversal as fun and as well designed as Prime. I could write an essay about how flawlessly they executed jumps and why they feel so right, for example.
The best in the genre. Looking forward to Echoes.
The best in it's genre IS Echoes.
Interesting take, but not your best analysis yet. The all-important scan visor for example, is something you totally glossed over. I also believe your critisicm towards the map is a bit much. Reading maps requires some research and thinking of the user and I for one enjoys that immensely.
Another good video, dude!
Keeping in mind the three over-arching issues you pointed out in this video, it is even more impressive how targeted Retro Studios was in designing Echoes:
1) they made the dead ends stand out, often with bright lights and colors (translation doors, temple-key doors, large mechanical puzzles, even more obvious color-coding for scans)
2) they revamped the world design to make the starting section, Temple Grounds, the hub area for all world travel, simplifying navigation
* they included many more and interesting obstacles in this hub area for you to overcome with each new ability, making the ease of your exploration of the hub area a clear indicator of your progression through the game
* they added shortcut paths between areas that bypass the hub to make certain instances of backtracking more natural
3) they practically shout in your face what the final objective of the game is (get the light back from Dark Aether, kill the Ing)
* they remind you of your progress towards returning the light to Aether each time you talk to U-Mos, literally showing you lasers pointing between temples (I think we know where The Witness got it's laser-mountain idea)
* They made the hub area itself the location of the game's finale, so every time you move through it, you are reminded of the end goal.
* They consolidated the final key fetch-quest into a single rush during thr game's ending chapter, letting you zip all over the world in your uber-power suit like a victory lap.
I cannot wait for your report on Prime 2: Echoes. I hope you bring back the exploration flowchart for that one. I really like those.
But... I have to jump on the pile here, and say that not mentioning the scan visor in this video was an oversight. Maybe you think it was a game-design crutch, but that visor was integral--even more so than the hint system--to giving the player insight into what the dead ends were and how to overcome them. You cannot criticize Metroid Prime's exploration without mentioning the difference the scan visor made. It was a real innovation that brought the clarity of 16-bit, 2D graphics into a fully-textured, 3D world.
I also wish you had mentioned the full-room puzzles. That was another innovation Retro created for the 3D world, fitting full, complex puzzles into single rooms just by utilizing that 3rd spacial dimension. See the Plasma Processing area in Magmoor, the Tower of Light in Ruins, and the Ruined Courtyard in Phendrana for example. Each large room that you enter feels like a possibility for great experimentation and discovery. While in Super Metroid, the world overall is one large puzzle to navigate and the individual rooms only offer minute problems to solve, in Metroid Prime, the world overall is a puzzle to navigate AND each room you enter could be its own self-contained puzzle. In this way, Prime complements its world exploration--which I agree missed the mark in some ways--with other types of discovery to give the same, wonderful feeling of Metroid accomplishment.
For the artifact hunt, I felt that the whole map belonged to me when I had all the power-ups, and exploring the whole map with all my abilities was my final goodbye to the game. It's one of the best parts of becoming powerful as Samus.
Man, it's disappointing to see so little coming out of the Metroid Prime Boss Keys!
And one of the worst parts of becoming a rat in a maze as you hunt down all the hidden cheese that suddenly pops up all across the map. You might have mastered the maze and become the ultimate superrat, but you're still a rat chasing after cheese like a damn fool (note: I do actually like rats, they just work for this analogy, kinda).
Thank you for the excellent video on my favorite game of all-time Mark! One thing I wonder your opinion on, is the game's discernment of information via the Scan Visor and how that could kind of help you get a better sense of what item you need to unlock pathways. I loved how everything breakable by a weapon had a name for its material, so you could build a little chart in your head of "Bendezium is broken by Power Bombs" and help you realize once you collect the Power Bombs, you should go back to the spots you remember having Bendezium block the way.
And then you have the one pillar in the game that ignores this, possibly by accident.
There's a pillar in Magmoor containing an Artifact that the scan says needs a Super Missile to open up- that's the intended path. Except you can get the Artifact on your very first visit. How? ...It breaks open with two normal missiles for some reason.
I know this is a small thing to comment on, but I like how you mentioned the aesthetics of the different areas! Part of the reasoning that drew me to Metroid Prime ( besides Smash Bros. ) was that the environments popped out and you could separate characters and enemies from the background. It is actually kind of brilliant, since Metroid Prime isn't just a first person shooter, but also has a strong focus on exploration. You feel this world living and breathing around you. I'm sure games like Call of Duty and Battlefield are fine, but as someone who is drawn to the artistic, the world of Metroid Prime is breathtaking.
LOVE YOUR EDITING!
Esp. with text that match game's UI
I know how much you don’t like Samus Returns, but I feel that it did wonders with the simple addition of letting the player put markers on the map themselves.
My play throughs of Metroidvania games involve me going down one path, finding a dead end and going down another path and finding another secret. So when I finally get the power up needed to beat the first dead end, I’ve completely turned myself around and can’t tell where on the map I found the dead end.
With Samus Returns, I would mark interesting locations and then explore, making me feel like I was actually exploring an area and mapping it out instead of running around a maze.
That little bit of player agency made the game so much better in my opinion, and I really hope that future Metroidvania designers take it into account.
Yeah, any game that has a map should have way points, no doubt.
I don't know how many games have done this, but, in real life, you can annotate a map, so why not make it standard to make a way point and give yourself a little note on it (if you want).
It'd help exploration feel more motivated and less frustrating, because you won't forget where things are and why you cared about them in the first place.
It can also help for large maps where there are features where things might be hidden. Like, drop waypoint "Found chest, no key, behind rock".
Just so you don't have to feel like you're re-inventing the wheel any time you do anything.
@@SaberToothPortilla having way points as an option for newer metroidvaina style games should be mandatory. As long as the map can't be filled with infinite ones, then yea. Part of the magic and appeal of these games are those "AHAAA" moments where you acquire an upgrade and remember where to use them. Of course, the more the player explores, the more things to remember which is where the way points come in. Now, there should be a limit because if you can add any # to the map, then it becomes convoluted and defeats its own purpose.
Samy_Jonas there’s a limit to the ones in Samus Returns (only 5 for each color and 5 colors I believe) so you kinda have to keep reviewing and updating the map itself
@@quackerjack0118 25 available way points is too much. I would say 5-10 max. I mean, having to remember stuff is also what makes metroidvania games memorable. That one door you couldn't open, that one wall you couldn't destroy, that one ledge you couldn't reach but then acquire an upgrade and you know exactly where to use it. Those "Ahaaaa" moments are erased entirely if the player has the option to put way points on everything they discover.
Samy_Jonas you make some good points about not using the map markers as a crutch to prop up level design flaws. It definitely requires the designers to make the map serve the level design, instead of the opposite.
However, I’d argue that the great thing about that system in Samus Returns was that it was completely and totally optional.
The player agency, where I could control what I wanted to put on the map, was just the most important part to me.
That’s what separates the map markers with waypoints. I had to pause, pull up the map screen, and fiddle around with it if I needed to check something. I could also remove map markers if I wanted to. Instead of the game giving me hints, I could use the map to provide confirmation that a hunch I had had was correct.
Were there too many map markers in Samus Returns? Probably. Could I have gotten through the game without it? I’ve done it before with other Metroidvanias.
But did it serve as a quick reminder of the general location of something that I had seen an hour (or even several days) ago? Yes.
It’s such a small detail in designing a game with a complex map, but I’m glad that Mercury Steam did it.
TX has made some pretty great games actually. Id studios is (or at least was, idk if they still are) stationed in Austin for example.
I always regarded - and still do - Metroid Prime as one of the best examples of excellent game design. Yes, it does have its lengths and the video is very clear about it. However, judging only from the video, one might think that Metroid Prime was a lackluster game. It was not, not in any capacity. From the world design to the audio, the puzzles, the bosses, the powerups - this game was (and still is) brilliant, albeit not free of hassles. A greatness which the successors failed to match.
Metroid Prime 2 lacked enough visual differentiation between the three major areas (temple, swamp and high-tech fortress), suffered from the poorly thought-through ammo system (enemies will always drop ammo for the opposing element of the beam you use on them, i.e. always the ammo you DON'T need right now), and even punishes the player for exploring in the dark world, for as long as you don't have the light suit, which just happens to be one of the last power-ups in the entire game. And even if places had a distinct look in the light world, everything just blends together into an unrecognizable mess in the dark world. Whenever I had to go from the light world to the dark world, it had a bad feeling to it - not a feeling of fear or respect (as in " I'll have to tread carefully") but rather a feeling of annoyance ("This will be a pain in the a**, please let's get this over with quickly). MP2 in and on itself is not that bad, but it completely pales in comparison with the first game. One thing Prime 2 had going for it is the fact that you could unlock map markers for all the optional stuff you missed towards the end of the game, which was immensely useful (some might say it ruined the fun for them though).
Metroid Prime 3 accomplished a feat which has been observed only very rarely: it successfully incorporated motion controls into a classic game in a way that felt neither forced, nor out of place or awkward. It also managed to introduce some more story and a couple of memorable NPCs, as well as some new locations. However, as the game takes place on three planets, and as cool as travelling between them in your space ship is (honourable mention for the power ups you can get for the space ship this time around), it made each individual planet feel too small with respect to the explorable area. This great sense of being a lonely pioneer in an unknown world which Metroid Prime 1 so brilliantly conveyed was gone in 3. You had a clear mission from the get-go, there were NPCs organized in factions, there was a rather linear story to follow - somewhere along all of this, the player got eliminated from the equation.
With all of this being said, if Nintendo decides to release a Metroid Prime trilogy for the switch, preferrably even without motion controls, I'd be the first person to buy it the moment it hits the stores.
Echoes has less backtracking then Prime 1, more interesting puzzle, more and better bosses, a better though-out map, has more original environnement, has more rewarding power-up... Really, I'd only give the soundtrack to Prime 1.
As for three, it failed on other aspect that made it the worst in my opinion.
Also Prime 3 is the one where you can learn the location of optionnal item, actually.
Prime 2 is my favorite (it was my first Metroid game) so I'm excited for the next episode and I'm ready to listen to Sky Temple's keys complains. The worst part of the game is traversing Magmoor Caverns 5 times like you said, I think Phendrana needed an elevator to Chozo or Tallon. While the game doesn't "lock" you in an area like Super Metroid's "Red Tower" there's 3 points in the game where you do tons of exploring in 1 singular area and get many upgrades or just explore a lot of the big areas and these are where the gameplay truly shines. These are the Chozo Ruins (recovering most of the lost powerups), the Chozo Temple+Space Pirate Lab combo in Phendrana (this might be the best section of the game) and the first exploration of the Phazon Mines (and with a difficulty spike without save stations in between). Notice how after these sections there's a Boss (the ones with health bars, not like the mini bosses) to help segment the game in chunks (Introduction, Recovery of powerups, Journey in Phendrana, Blasting through the Mines, Chozo Artifact hunt, Final Boss). Finally, I agree sparcing more the Artifacts throughout the game would help alleviate the complains to this section about hunting mcguffins (honestly, I can't understand why people HATE with a passion hunts like these when they're done good like this game or Wind Waker's Triforce hunt. Like you always hear "this is the worst part of the game" but if you masquerade the hunt better you wouldn't hear any complains).
I really like how in depth you went on this one and the summery part at the end. Made it feel more like an official lesson.
Two disagreements--
1) Reading door colors on a map is not following an objective marker... it's reading a map. You still have to use your brain to see where to go and figure out the best path to take.
2) Clustering the artifacts near the end of the game gives the impression (at least to me) of a victory lap through the world you've conquered. Yes they could have telegraphed more heavily that it is the central goal, but I personally didn't misunderstand the intent. Perhaps it's because I've played too many RPGs. But you yourself spoke to how much the world opens up as you progress and gather upgrades. I won't disagree that it can be tedious, but that's more a problem with the world's layout (as you described), not in the doing of the thing. The breadcrumbing of the artifacts near the beginning spurs curiosity. Maybe you missed the Impact Crater, but still stumble upon an artifact. Their non-obvious nature makes the player question their purpose-- leading *them* to figure out what to do. It doesn't have to be telegraphed to be effective. If anything, the way the artifacts are presented pull the player into the world more, leading them to figure it out themselves.
A few of the problems were fixed by the remake, namely the collectathon. The chino statues that you scan for hints don’t become active until you have the powers needed to collect the item, so it gives you a feel for what you can do and made me feel like I was making progress as I could visit that room as I passed through the hub. Totally agree with the magmoor caverns though, it feels like the fast travel system LOL. One thing I did notice that was missed is each upgrade usually has a nearby path that leads you to the next area you should be exploring, so there is a subtle flow, I only got super lost twice, and was very thankful for the ship scan being like, oh hay there is a gravimetric disturbance in phendrana. It shows you a remote room but it’s up to you to figure out how to get there. I think it was an ideal way to nudge the player without it feeling to hand holdy
I'm looking forward to MP2's episode of Boss Keys. Echoes was my very first Metroid game, and I still love it to this day.
In my opinion, it's better than both it's predecessor and it's successor, even after having played through the trilogy multiple times.
Interested in hearing your take on it!
Hello fellow unicorn that also enjoyed Echoes most of all the Primes! :P
I was SO eager to watch this! Thanks Mark!
Damn I was waiting for a Prime video, thanks!
IMO not having colour coded doors would've turned the Metroidvania aspect from fun to tedious, because the "example" you'd need to remember is just a door with, surprise surprise, different colours. Retro did the right thing in that regard.
I watched your video on SoTN and came to this one and have really enjoyed the content so far. Subbed, keep it up man, great work.
Great stuff! Metroid Prime is one of my favorite games of all time so its great to hear analysis over its pros and cons. I think you have a lot of great points, as well as some noted flaws that I managed to avoid since I originally played the game when I was little and had a player’s guide haha
The exploration is the fun of Metroid Prime.
A few points:
1) Doesn’t the fact that Magmoor doesn’t have much and is structured like a subway what you want if it’s the sole path to Phendrana? You’d rather it take longer to traverse through it or something?
2) There’s a compass on the map menu. Elevator problem solved.
3) The game tells you that the keys unlock the barrier that’s containing “the evil” inside. Not just once, but like 10-20 times in the game. Hell, the hologram that you scan right before the temple says this. Hell, even the back of the case literally says in large bold text: “EVIL WAITS BELOW THE SURFACE.” Unless you have room temperature IQ or can’t read English, it’s obvious that your goal is to gather the keys and fight the Metroid Prime.
Your video essays are always so well thought out and executed. Thank You!
It's not Var-eye-a Suit, it's Var -ee-a Suit. As in Barrier, but with a Japanese accent (BAARIA) and then mistranslated into Varia.
TwilightWolf032 let me guess. You say Aaron too instead of the real way A-ran.
@@VGMStudios33 Who says Aaron? Her last name is Aran. アラン. What you said doesn't make sense. Or what, you heard someone saying Aaron unironically?
who the hell cares lol
13:59
With enough energy tanks you don't need the phazon suit to get the newborn artifact... And it's on the way back from getting the phazon suit anyway, so it barely counts.
Also I liked the magmoor backtracking. Back in the day it felt super dangerous to be in magmoor, so it was essentially content filled every time since there was a risk of dying. (And the song is great)
A couple of thoughts. The hint system *needed* to be on by default, so as to protect overconfident players from themselves. I think you might be being a little too hard on the "lack of weight" surrounding both the Chozo Artifacts & the Artifact Temple. Simply put, their significance is explained rather well, it's just not done through world design. Metroid Prime explains much of its backstory & world through "optional" data logs. Both the Chozo Lore & Pirate Data mention the Artifacts and their relevance. As you move forward to Metroid Prime 2: Echoes, please remember that not everything needs to be (or will be) explained through world design alone.
I help run the gamedev group at UT Austin and we’ve had Mike Wikan (Senior Game Designer at Retro from 2000 - 2011) in a couple of times for talks.
I remember one thing he always said when people asked him about the Prime games and it was that they aren’t shooters. At Retro they saw the Prime games as platformers primarily because the focus of their game designer was how you were traversing and exploring the environment rather than being a first person shooter.
Also he coded every line in Prime 1-3 and the trilogy. I remember him saying that there were a lot of mistakes he was happy that he got to go back and fix in the trilogy
I feel like if you designed a game using these tips it would end up being a "where do I go game" to which you would reply with an essay how the player should know where to go because they made the next steps "memorable"
I don't think you can ever count on something universally being "memorable" which means you gotta use map hints.
But "where do I go" describes the point of the entire genre! There will always be a finite number of new places to try, and if the game manages to be enjoyable to explore for the duration of its playtime, then that's not a problem even with no hints or clues at all! I certainly never needed any hints in Super Metroid or Symphony of the Night. Genuinely got no idea where to go next? Do another lap around the map, inevitably discover new secrets that you didn't know to look out for before you got the necessary ability to access them, feel rewarded for your time and dedication, and finally stumble onto the correct path to continue progressing with the game. Done right, that's an enjoyable gameplay loop in itself.
What you're referring to is when non-MetroidVania gamers play MetroidVania games. It's an entirely different play style made for gamers who prefer a different experience. Imagine thrusting an RTS gamer into an Overwatch match. I doubt the RTS gamer would like it that much.
But I do agree that hints SHOULD be available when the player needs them. Perhaps a hint button right in the pause screen with different types of hints (location, plot, equipment, etc.) for the player to request when they need, without taking all the hints. An option in the settings to turn on all hints isn't a bad idea, though. Which hints should be included and how they should be written revolves around playtesting and alpha/beta player feedback. Where they get stuck and why they get stuck will influence what gets them unstuck.
Your comment makes sense but you seem to be talking from an outside perspective. Anyone who plays a well designed metroidvania will do pretty well to remember any dead ends they come across. It may seem like an impossible feat since a lot of people can't remember what they just heard within the last hour but the point of the design in this video is that certain images/sounds/ and behaviors all trigger an immediate response in your brain to recognize all the locations that match those parameters. It's when a game is designed with such a memorable and striking style that it makes it difficult for the brain to forget it, even after 10s of hours of play.
It's easier to achieve than it might seem and it requires a very forward thinking designer to balance properly so a player is not lost. It's not that hard to do but it's pretty difficult to balance difficulty. After all the point is to make players feel clever for figuring it out and so spelling it out on the map is not an option.
@@ghostderazgriz To the point that if you've played enough of them you can start to get a sense of what the ability upgrades are going to be by the way the environment is put together and things you might not even register in other genres. Hollow Knight is particularly good/bad (depending on if knowing there'll be e.g. a walljump from the environment design is something you enjoy) at that.
In my second true playtrough outside shooting around when i was a kid in the first areas, i already could remember all the map by heart and could traverse and find every single item without using the map, or barely.
In my brain i can make a simualtion of the game and go through every area if i want, besides copypasted secondary rooms and tunnels.
It's happening also for prime 2 easily, and i didn't play that one as a kid.
Instead i don't remember anything from the levels of zero mission, outside some static immages of some places
Yes!! I was waiting for this, thank you!!
First time I played Prime, I never found the chozo hint room until after I got 3 of the artifacts after I got the Phazon suit.
Also, the Gravity Suit stopping point is way too far into the Sunken Ship, since there's loads of rooms where the water merely impedes movement before you can't go further. It should have blocked you at the entrance, like how other roadblocks do.
The artifact hunt was one of my favorite parts, if not my favorite, of a Metroid game, EVER. Yes, I think they should have drawn more attention to the crater, but I think it's good to go through the entire map after being fully loaded on items with a new objective.
As a person who adores this game above almost all other games, I respect this. It is a masterpiece in many ways--art design, music, etc--but it does have some frustrations. Good video!
Uh, you say make dead ends memorable, yet you criticize the way the end goal of the game is presented. The VERY FIRST THING you are "encouraged" to scan/explore when you drop to Tallon IV is the door to the artifact temple. You get blocked by a dead end, and it hints at what you what you need to get past it: missiles, which are one of the first things you find. Right away the game teaches you its basic principles. The items you gain throughout the game tell you what they're used for, so when you get it, you....wait for it....REMEMBER, 'Oh yeah, this is what I needed to get through the dead end near the temple.' Then when you do, you scan the remaining lore rock statues and realize that a) these are clues to locations of the remaining artifacts, and b) you've already been to one of these locations. The game design is far more brilliant than you're realizing....I said you are "encouraged" to scan because the game lets the player move at his/her own pace. If you want to get lost and ignore what the game tries to tell you, you can. If you want to be efficient at traveling, you can. So if you're complaining about the amount of backtracking in a Metroid, you clearly don't get the point, and you aren't learning well enough to avoid going through the same spot a million times (I've 100% completed the game on hard mode in 8 hours without glitch exploits). Also, stop calling Metroid Prime a Metroidvania. It's a frickin Metroid game. There's nothing Castlevania about it. Disappointing criticisms.
13:30
I disagree entirely. More than half of the lore scans and even some ecology scans specifically refer to the Impact Crater multiple times throughout the adventure. The question of "What is in the crater??" is asked multiple times and the area is linked to Samus' ship, which is the easiest area to return to.
Also probably the first door you see after landing considering Samus points that direction after exiting ship. Genre savvy players might figure out that it isn't the way to go and therefore must be checked first.
Plus even if you scan literally nothing (And ignore a solid third of the game's core design, seemingly out of spite), the instant you enter it it's pretty blatant that it's, you know, important. Special music change, large central structure, and entire section of your logbook dedicated to the artifact system, etc. etc. It's certainly as obviously important as the four boss statues in Super Metroid, only unlike that game if you WANT text confirming that "Yes, this room is important, keep it in your mental map" you actually have that available to you in-game.
You're right about making dead ends memorable, and I would add that I want a way to annotate the map. If this kind of adventure took place in the real physical world and I had a map handy, I would definitely make notes on it about whatever noteworthy place I come across, so why not in the game? The colored badges in Hollow Knight did a decent job of this, as I was able to make my own color-code with them for different obstacles and features, though I think you should be able to just write out some kind of worded message if you choose. Or, in keeping with Samus' advanced equipment, you could have a picture function (like in Zelda BOTW) that is 'geotagged' within the world map and could serve the same purpose.
Hey Mark I love your channel, I love this game and I have to say this is the first time a really high quality channel has tackled this specific game and u did it so well! I've played MP a few times through, and This games atmosphere is great and it has good elements but tracking through magmoor and sometimes not knowing where to use the spider ball were the 2 things I remember hating when I played this game back in 2006. I feel like I could talk all day about this game though haha - I'm pumped for your MP2 thoughts!!
Love your point about the elevators disconnecting your mental map. It's sorta like living in a city and taking the subway / train all the time. The city becomes all these separate chunks of suburbs and it isn't until you walk between them that it all comes together in your head.
Excited for the next episode about the best Metroid Prime game!
While I understand the idea behind this criticism, when the game was made it was impossible to to a Dark Souls-like interconnected world with shortcuts, and even then, until you have walked all across the area, you wont know about the shortcut or transport. So either way, once you know the room that leads to the other area, it doesnt matter if it is an elevator or just another door.
"when the game was made it was impossible to to a Dark Souls-like interconnected world with shortcuts"
I don't think this is true. For example, the Jak and Daxter games have fully streamed seamless gameworlds with similar texturing quality to MP and are often more non-linear in how they can be traversed than DS. It would be more fair to say that this would have been a challenging feature that other things were prioritized over rather than impossible.
Time for some criticisms. Love your work, but you do have a bad habit of, once you get in your head that something is a bad choice, not consider at all reasons it might actually not be.
-The door colors. I've NEVER looked at the map for colored doors when playing this game and I've never heard anyone doing so either. It's true that you "could" do that, but the dead ends by those doors are already made memorable on their own right like everything else, and there's so many of them available at once whenever you get a new beam that "following the map" doesn't really work anyway; you think of the location with one of those doors that you want to go to, not "where was a door like this?".
-The phazon suit bit. One thing I noticed with Axiom Verge is that a powerful tool in metroidvanias is hinting at one particular upgrade, but then surprising you with a completely different one that also gets the job done, like how AV teased tiny pathways as if a morphball-like upgrade was next before giving you the drone, and much later the teleporter. Mis-telegraphing the upgrade you'll need to cross actually can come just fine as a positive surprise. Another good example is when you spend most of the early game assuming you'll eventually get an anti-toxin shield for the green water, only to get a different, better upgrade and cleanse the toxin itself from hte world. It was unexpected and it was great.(your criticism that the invisible platforms couldn't be made memorable kiiiind of has a point, but think about it; by that point in the game, that's pretty much the only significant dead end left, and with no clue about where this new upgrade could need to be used at, it's easy to make the connection, specially if you think of it as a late-game "puzle" now that players have come far enough to be veterans at dealing with this world design. Plus, other X-ray locations are hinted at in clever ways, like putting invisible platforms under the rain.)
-the cut-off rooms in the map: there's a tiny number of these and, with one exception, they're all pathways to optional goodies. The one exception that you do mention is extremely easy to find simply by remembering about the spiderball tracks in the room and, in fact, serves as a tutorial to look for suspicious dead ends in the map as if a hidden room was there... wich works FAR better than the BS 0-hint fake blocks in the early 2D games.
-"map is too big to check room by room" First off, even when the path to follow after getting an upgrade is not obviously memorable, the path you need to go through is always significant enough to limit your destinations to "I wonder if I could now cross that one room?" effectively. Sure, you have a lot of places to try the grappling beam at once you get it, but the path for progress is really easy to guess and pretty much right next to where you get it. Secondly... no, the map really, really isn't that big. It FEELS big, and that's an accomplishment of the map design, but the end-game "check every nook and cranny for hidden expansions now that I have every power-up" takes less than two hours total. And the most pain-in-the-ass map zone to navigate is untraversable until towards the very end, at that.
-Magmoor caverns being a subway: You're underestimating the merits of how magmoor is designed as a speedrunning tutorial. Yes, it's crossed QUITE often, but the whole thing is pretty much a tunnel and, as you point out, there's a lot of tricks into it's design to make travel easier and faster every time, plus it's short enough that you never spend more than 5-10 minutes in it for a trip to other areas. So while on paper it sounds awful, in practice, it was actually an incredibly satisfying experience to just bruteforce in a few seconds my way through what was a slow, annoying room the first time around, and the fact that it always remains annoying unless you force your way through and ignore the enemies actually teaches the player to traverse the entire world quickly in general.
-Agreed that the elevators are a bit confusing on the map, but the location of the elevators themselves, both ends of them, is memorable enough to keep them tidily organized in your mental map.
-Your criticism about the artifacts not being clearly signaled as an end-game goal kinda falls apart when you consider ludonarrative. If you actually read the scan logs, the story reveals little by little the clues to figure out what your ultimate mission is, and the "ah-ha!" moment relates right away how the artifacts are the keys to get to the final destination. This is only really a problem for first-time players who don't care at all about the story, and while that's still a problem... there's literally no way to keep the same ludonarrative while also clearly, visibly signaling their importance.
-The majority of the artifacts can be found thorough the game for players who like to explore. Even the ones that require late-game upgrades can be accessed from the path to the next upgrade. Only a small handful actually require new players to really look at the clues, figure it out and go seek them out.
-The forced back-track-a-lot that the artifacts impose is a way to nudge players into the end-game item hunt, wich is a significant part of the metroid experience that a not small amount of people sort of overlook in favor of "just beating the game". It'd be a problem if it went on for too long, but it really doesn't; as pointed earlier, the world map isn't that big, and the game itself is quite short. It may slow down the pace speaking purely of action build-up, but it actually contributes to it by having you, after conquering all the trials of the game, master your way of traversal and puzzle-solving as well, a true power trip about on par with obtaining the screw attack in 2D games as the world becomes your oyster to fully uncover and easily blast your way through once-troublesome enemies, before finally hitting you with the final trial.
Quite the in-depth analysis there! I agree with most of this, but in some cases I do think like Mark does, most specifically Magmoor. YES, it can serve as a speedrunning tutorial, but even 5-10 minutes per trip adds up. I DON'T agree with him that the final product wouldn't feel like anything is missing without it, but there needed to be faster ways from Phendrana to "not Magmoor" than what we have.
Regardless, I think he'll find Prime 2 far more interesting, as it directly addresses most of his criticisms without sacrificing the qualities that necessitated them in this first installment. The one step back I can find is a minor case of missable scans, and even then, missable scans as a whole are far less sneaky than they are here (stupid War Wasps...).
@@ShadwSonic war wasps are cute compared to flaahgra tentacles and ice shriekbats.
Zaruian
Zaruian
1. Using your personal experience to excuse the door colors labeled on the map doesn't work. Personally I did use the map to make the beam stuff far easier.
2. As for the Xray bit, that is still handled incredibly poorly. It all bags on the user going "fuckit whatever I cant get through here so i'll use everything I got to look for stuff"
3. There are incredibly bs ways of obtaining some artifacts, some being so shit you'd need to use a game cheats website which wouldn't be around at the time.
4. The problem is that backtracking isn't fun because the game doesn't really mix up the areas you backtrack back to
1.If you truly needed the map cheat consistently, you're definitely doing something wrong. scouring the map for things you might have missed during the endgame item hunt is one thing, but actual story progression, all the colored doors are made memorable otherwise.
2.So you'd rather have idiot-proof design that makes sure the players who aren't willing to think about what to do next won't get lost? the same design philosophy that consistently ruins modern games?
3.I don't know what to tell you there... every single one of the artifacts felt easy enough to figure out once I got to the room it was in and re-read their lore entry. Can't think of anything so obscure.
4.The areas themselves aren't mixed up, but you have new abilities to play with that let you cross them faster and in more direct ways, so that mixing up is something you're allowed to do yourself.
Most of your points here speak of "I want the game to tell me what to do" approach.
Zaruian No? I enjoy when the game has us solve our dilemmas but how the is backtracking any fun god damn mix it up or some shit.
Also yeah there were a few bullshit artifacts, that phendrana rifts one being a massive bullshit one.
Theres a difference between being handheld and not being given a near impossible task to solve without a guide. Even the 2D games have this issue. And your personal "meh wasnt that hard" doesnt change the fact that the game itself doesnt really shine a light on certain unsolvable problems.
Man, I love this channel!
Please make the next video even more longer/detailed by drawing comparisons between Prime and Echoes!! :-)
Yay finally one I can watch. I always seem to have not played the games you talk about and don't want them spoiled. I've missed watching your vids.
I hit thumbs up as soon as I heard the fanfare at the beginning.
Mark I respect your work too much but today I have to disagree in some aspects about the chozo temple with the artifacts. I don`t think it's a mistake to give it the mystery aura that it has, If you scan the Lore (I can agree that's kinda of boring for some people) you can slowly solve the mystery bit by bit, and that completely works with the solitary mission that the game puts you in. This game will not hold your hand and make objectives crystal clear and that's one of the things that makes it even greater.
But you got a point, I never noticed the mini-HUB that is magmoor caverns, that could be solved with one more elevator imo. But the design is too intricate for me to see if that could really solve the problem.
Disagreements apart, kudos for the video mate!
_"I don`t think it's a mistake to give it the mystery aura that it has, If you scan the Lore (I can agree that's kinda of boring for some people) you can slowly solve the mystery bit by bit, and that completely works with the solitary mission that the game puts you in."_
He praises this kind of storytelling in his Halo 3: ODST video, stating that Halo 3: ODST (a game that came out seven years after this one) "was way, way ahead of its time".
@@elliotkeaton378 And Halo ODST was a waaaaaaay inferior game than Metroid Prime.
Of course you had Samus doing a "Boneless" when she's squeezed into a small metal ball.
One thing I'm reminded of in watching your footage is how tedious those dead ends are at times. You can go pretty far into Magmoor or the Ruined Frigate before you find out there's nothing to do there, and just have to turn your ass around. Other times, the thing you're supposed to remember isn't shown very well. You already mentioned the Spider Ball Track you need to use in the Furnace, but that hole after you get missiles isn't even the right way to go. A lot of the world's design feels like it discourages exploration, and just assumes you're gonna follow the hints when you don't know where to go.
The Frigate in particular would've been better if you couldn't even get to the door without the Gravity Suit, because the player is guaranteed to see the Frigate coming out of the Chozo Ruins elevator, and the room is so unique in design and shape on the map that they'll definitely remember it. Not to mention withholding the inside of the Frigate until the player got the Gravity Suit would've arguably made it stick out better in their head from the suspense of what could be inside.
One thing I did like about Prime is how the player doesn't ever need to leave Chozo Ruins until they get the Varia Suit. It means they get the taste of what a Metroidvania is in a relatively smaller space, before moving on to apply that thinking to the world at large. Super Metroid kinda had that, but there was only one major case of backtracking in Crateria followed by a very linear path in Green/Pink Brinstar, while Norfair and Red Brinstar were the only part of the game where you really had to backtrack heavily. Prime puts that part right at the beginning when you've started exploring the world, which gets the player used to exploring, and sets the expectations for the rest of the game.
However, I feel like the game falls apart after that. Super Metroid has three acts: The linear and locked off Crateria/Brinstar; the more backtracky and sequence-break-friendly Norfair, with optional backtracking through the first act; and the self-contained areas of the Wrecked Ship, Maridia, Lower Norfair, and Tourian. Prime is a lot more disjointed, with the initial Ruins area, followed by a series of linear paths broken up by moving between them across the world.
In the end, I feel like Prime was trying to make a beautiful world full of life, but forgot to make a fun game. From the messy form to the mediocre gunplay and platforming, the game really just looks pretty. Not to mention the Scans are actually really cool when you take the time to read them; it's funny to read the Pirates assuming Samus must have cloaking on her ship, despite the fact it's in the open right beside the giant crater, or some of them making reports filled with snark that others aren't doing their fucking job right. There's even one female soldier at the start of Prime 2 who looks up to Samus as a role model, which I thought was really neat.
Sidenote: I disagree with your complaints on the map system. I've personally had a few times where my depth perception goes totally haywire and I can't tell which way is up because it's so simplistic, but it's actually pretty easy to tell how the areas link up to one another, because they're adjacent on the map of the whole world. When you zoom out at 10:39 in the footage, you can kinda see the camera lock to a certain hexagon, which happens to be right next to one in the corner of Phendrana. If you moved the cursor over that area and zoomed in, you'd be looking at the right elevator. Even if you weren't that exact, you can see one elevator is in the middle of Magmoor, and leads to the end of Phendrana, while the other is in the middle of Phendrana, and leads to the end of Magmoor, and this is shown by their proximity on the larger map. I think a worse example is Chozo Ruins to Tallon Overworld, as there are two elevators right next to each other around the Ice Beam, but they lead to two completely different ends of the Frigate in Tallon.
My favorite game ever. Music's perfect imo and gameplay is a joy. Good review Mark, cheers.
I agree the ultimate goal isn't crystal clear, but I love how it's presented to you through chozo lore. You first discover the artifact temple and find out you need to find 12 artifacts to get to a place called the Impact Crater. At first you don't know what that really means but then you read the lore that tells you about how a creature had emerged from the meteor and was spreading corruption. Followed by how the chozo sealed it within the Impact Crater using the artifacts, hoping one day someone known as the entrusted one would find these artifacts, enter the Impact Crater, defeat this creature and save their home. You learn by exploring the world and finding out about it's history that the chozo artifacts and the artifact temple itself are vital to completing your quest and I think that's a great way for your goal to present itself.
10:11 It's important to note that this wasn't possible in the first versions of the game.
Would you mind expanding upon this? I didn't know that.
@@LifeWulf I think there was an invisible wall up there, forcing you to go through the pit every time.
@@eiriseven Makes sense. I despise invisible walls. Especially when it looks like you should have no problem going somewhere. Whether it's jumping over this gate thing in Metroid Prime or exploring in practically all of Bungie's games (it's not as bad nowadays but I've definitely still encountered some in Destiny 2).
great job on the series, Mark
I'm someone who has a lot of appreciation for good communication, and I really appreciate your little graphics and maps that you use to communicate. Very clean, attractive and effective.
I think that the players will know that the entrance to the impact crater will be the final area, if you explore and read the chozo lore.
They'll tell you what happened before you arrived and lead to the conclusion: The crater is the core of the problem.
Yeah i think this ties into the main flaw of the entire video - the scan visor is not mentioned in any way. (Its a great video otherwise!)
The Scan visor does everything he praises other games for in his Halo 3: ODST video and he pretends it doesn't exist here.
The artifact hunt in Prime 1 still isn't nearly as bad as the Sky Temple keys in Prime 2. Five out of nine require the very final item, and all require the Dark Visor, which isn't even obtained until defeating the second of three major bosses.The Sky Temple entrance where the clues lie is much more out of the way than Prime 1's artifact temple, and the keybearers add an awkward middle step between the hints and keys. They're also all hidden in the exact same unceremonious manner, as opposed to Prime 1 where you might need to fight a powerful enemy or discover a unique secret. Fuck the Sky Temple keys.
(Also the chozo artifacts are often really easy to sequence break so for an experienced player they can all be obtained with minimal backtracking. I get that this isn't really a fair argument but I just wanted to throw that out there.)
Five artifact require the plasma beam or phazon armor. Those artifact are the very extreme of the map;you have no choice but go everywhere. That's not any better. And sequence break is the dumbest argument ever, because they consist of going throught wall and gliches never intended.
Echoes, meanwhile, limits the backtracking pretty much only to this end quest and you get op weapons for it. Only one of the many thing where Echoes is superior.
This was a nice present to see after my physics test this morning! Metroid Prime is one of my favorite games in one of my favorite series, and I’ve been hoping to see this video soon!
Something neat about the X-ray platforms in Phazon Mines that not everyone may have known about, but you can actually see roughly where they are with the THERMAL visor. You can see the "propulsion" fumes coming out of the bottom of them when looking through the thermal visor.
That Chozo spirit boss fight was a pain.
You can see them with the X-Ray Visor, and 1 Super Missile + 1 charge shot is enough to kill them on most difficulties.
@@Monody512 its been years so I don't recall but i don't think you have the x-ray visor when you first encounter the ghosts. That's what makes them so damn difficult. Its after you have the visor that they just become pushovers
And having to fight them every time you go through that room again afterward...
I haven't played this in a long time, but I recall being able to just run past them and leave the room after the first fight.
@@Ginrikuzuma By "boss fight" I assumed the original comment was referring to the fight in Flaahgra's room to get one of the artifacts, which you can have the X-Ray visor before doing.
Great video as always Mark, however I disagree about the part about the hint system. I think it works fine with the game.
Otoo Andoh each to their own with this I guess.
@paula He mentioned that in the video already.
Less intrusive than Corruption's without a doubt.
I dunno, does the Trilogy version have the hint system cranked up to 11? Cause the original GC release only chimed in on occasion during play, and chimed in every time I started up the game to remind me what the hell I was doing or aiming for.
The invisible platforms for the Xray visor are telegraphed a little bit if you've got sharp eyes (or get lucky). There's an area in the Talon Overworld where you can see rain bouncing off the platforms. They also can be hit by beams, leaving a glowing spot mid-air if you happen to shoot towards them.
I always thought of Magmoor itself as a shortcut. Think about getting the Boost Ball and going back to Tallon Overworld. You *could* go back the way you came, to the "left" when you get back to Magmoor. Or, you could go to the right using your new powerups, find a new entrance directly to Tallon Overworld (one that is conveniently near your ship) and get the Space Jump that way. Indeed, I used that entrance to Magmoor extremely often, to the point where the main entrance became kind of pointless.
Going to Magmoor never felt like it was wasting my time; on the contrary, it felt like it saved me time.
So you don't like when the game tells you where to go but you also don't like it when the game doesn't tell you? Sure
If it seems like Mark is being very critical of Prime 1, it's because he is. There are so many potential reasons for why the problems he pointed out exist, short dev cycle, brand new studio, etc. But keep in mind that, as stated in the beginning about learning from the games mistakes, this is meant to be a criticism, and isn't bashing/blaming.
Appreciate what you do! Love these videos, and that you've expanded Boss Keys to my favorite franchise of Metroid :)... and us Texans forgive ya, southern hospitality after all.
He's critical of any game really. He's there to tell what doesn't work and not endless praise without substance.
I feel like the backtracking through Magmoor Caverns helps highlight the power of your new tools by demonstrating how it can create faster navigation. This can also create anticipation for the next item so that traversal through Magmoor is further cut down through new and interesting ways. Magmoor presents the problem and each new item forms the solution.
I just finished this game for the first time ever via the remaster and this video really hit home. I thought the artifacts were optional and had to grab a walkthrough and go track the missing ones down. The back tracking through Magmoor was also tedious.
I think everyone can agree on that. At first I thought Tallon overworld was the main hub, but i noticed rather quickly that not every region is interconnected. For starters, it takes way too long to travel from the Phendrana Drifts all the way back to the Phazon Mines. When you have things that you're actively looking for in each region, it's not a problem, but by end game, it really does get tedious