Metroid Prime 2 Echoes: Retro speaks, plus stunning trailer
Friday 28-May-2004 3:32 PM We give it to you straight from the horse's mouth - everything you need to know about GameCube's stunning FPS sequel Metroid Prime 2 Echoes - one of the hottest GameCube titles at E3 and a dead cert for the Cube's first-person shooter crown when it debuts before the end of this very year. If you don't believe us, just check out the superb Metroid Prime 2 Echoes movie at the end of this feature to see what we mean.
Another joint collaboration between Nintendo and Austin-based Retro Studios, Metroid Prime 2 was available for a limited showfloor viewing at E3 and we rightly enjoyed laying down some righteous Samus-style law on those infernal space pirates' heads.
However, as always, you get to see the best things behind closed doors and so we joined representatives from both Nintendo and Retro Studios for a breakdown on why Metroid Prime 2 Echoes will conquer the known world.
But as the old saying goes, nothing beats hearing it straight from the horse's mouth, so we've turned the rest of this article over to the marvellous Mark Pacini, lead designer and game director for Metroid Prime 2 Echoes, as he spills his guts on some of the key design goals, new weaponry and that most terrifying prospect: the advent of a Dark Samus.
Introducing Mr Mark Pacini
"Hi, I'm Mark Pacini, game director and lead designer on Metroid Prime 2 Echoes. It's my responsibility to guide features, story, plot and relay that to both the Nintendo and Retro Studios' teams. In other words I get to do all the fun stuff!"
Tell us a story...
"So in Metroid Prime 2 Echoes Samus has been summoned to this planet called Acre to rescue a galactic trooper federation squad which has been stranded. So she's under the pretence that she has this one contract: to go in, get these guys and then come back out.
"But as in all interesting stories, it's all very different and things are not quite what they seem on this planet. It's not quite as simple as just finding those guys.
"So Samus finds herself in the middle of this struggle on the planet which has been going on for many, many years. What's happened is that this conflict actually split the planet in two and there are now both dark and light versions of this planet. They're both struggling to be the prominent planet, they're both struggling for existence."
Of Light and Darkness
"Samus finds herself in the middle of this struggle between light and dark, good and evil and everything in the game involves those two aspects, the duality of dark and light.
"What you'll notice in the E3 build right away is that Samus is fighting space pirates, her long time rivals. But the space pirates aren't the main enemies because when the planet was separated, in the dark Aether a new type of evil was created called the Ing.
"In the light world there is a very passive race called the Luminoth who are under duress and ask Samus for help. The Luminoth and the Ing have been at war for many years as the Ing are trying to destroy the light world. Samus has to travel back and forth into the dark world to help destroy the dark world because the Ing are a huge menace. That's the general plot and it leads into the new game mechanics we've developed and all the new things we've developed for Metroid Prime 2 Echoes."
Bring on the weapons
"One of the first things which is evident is the change to the weapon system. Throughout the game Samus is receiving weapons and technology from the Luminoth who inhabit the light world. So Samus is able to use technology which becomes more powerful when she gets to the dark world.
In the E3 build we've shown two weapons, the light beam and the dark beam. What we're trying to do is bring that duality into all of Metroid 2's game systems and this is a very good example of that."
The darkness and the light
"On a simple level the light beam weapon is very effective against creatures from the dark world. Conversely the dark beam is very effective against creatures of the light world. We've also tried to do different things with the charge and discharge features of the weapons. For example the charge beam of the light weapon becomes a kind of buckshot or shotgun equivalent - and the charge function of the dark beam is actually a kind of blob-like liquid which will home in on creatures and entangle them, effectively freezing them.
"You'll also noticed that the beams use ammunition, which is very different for the Metroid franchise and we're trying to have an interesting reasons for the player to switch weapons. We didn't design it to become a heavy ammunition management system - but instead a very supplementary and complimentary system.
"If you use conventional weaponry to take out the Ing it's a lot harder to do, but switch to the light beam and it becomes relatively easy because they're very susceptible to light. So the idea is that switching between beams transcends many different types of gameplay, not only in combating enemies but this duality also comes through turning things on and off.
The light beam makes things grow, the dark beam makes things shrivel up. We really wanted to imbue the whole game with reasons to switch back and forth between the weapons, because they're essential for solving puzzles."
A tale of two worlds
"Another large duality that we're looking at right now are the two worlds, the player can only enter and exit from between portals. The dark world is a mirror opposite of the light world. It's such a horrible place that you'll actually take damage by simply standing in the dark world.
"In the E3 demo, the pirates are in this area which has been abandoned and they can't get off. They've been mining Phazon material which was first introduced in Metroid Prime 1. Since Phazon mysteriously appears in the dark world, space pirates being a brutal race have figured out how to open portals to the dark world and have been sending their guys through to get Phazon, but not all of them make it back alive.
"So that's the context of the E3 build, but you'll also notice there's a lot more action than the last Metroid Prime game we showed at previous E3s. That's just an example of part of the game. But Metroid Prime 2 remains very much an exploration type game, traversal, collections of items, everything that's made the Metroid series so interesting to people and so much fun.
"We've many other plans including many more puzzles, more traversal and we're also including things like bringing the screw attack into 3D, as well as including many new features including two new visors for Metroid Prime."
Enter Dark Samus
"We're also introducing a new character into Metroid Prime 2 called Dark Samus. Now Dark Samus is sort of a mystery because we're seeing Dark Samus, but Samus herself has no idea what's going on.
"Although Dark Samus isn't the main enemy of the game, she does encompass an interesting side story and again expands on the duality we're shooting for.
"Dark Samus was very challenging because in Metroid Prime 1 we spent a lot of time working on bosses who were five storeys high, so we had to come up with new ideas for Dark Samus to make her interesting even though she's only the same size as Samus. I think she turned out pretty kick-ass. Just another example of some of the things we're trying differently in this game."
Environmental action
"The other thing we're trying is to make the environments more challenging with larger traversal areas and higher polygon counts. We're using a lot of new graphical techniques including indirect texturing especially in the dark world.
"There's been an extensive time put into cinematics for the game, because we're really trying to infuse Metroid Prime 2 with more of a cohesive story which explains what's going on with Samus.
Stay tuned for more Metroid Prime revelations, direct from Retro, next week.
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