jarrod said:
The problem with a first person Metroid is that it inherently limits movement based mechanics, which are also fundamental to the Metroid formula. Shinesparking, screw attacking, wall jumping, space jumping... these are all essential techniques that are either significantly limited or missing entirely in the Primes and as a result of this shift their pacing/flow and vertical world design suffer immesaurably compared to the rest of the franchise. To make matters worse, Retro's PR justification for going 1st person (aiming shots) is entirely negated by their own auto-targeting design. Given that, there's literally no good reason for the Primes to be 1st person over 3rd person... it inherently limits movement based mechanics and the auto-targeting negates any need for 1st person aiming. I'd say Retro's utterly failed in faithfully translating the franchise to 3D.
the best reason to put metroid in first person is because of all the tight corridors and tunnel crawling. that kind of stuff tends to cause trouble for 3rd person cameras. The only other option would be to go the DMC route, and limiting the camera would limit the sense of exploration for sure. With a franchise that was always built on exploration, a restrictive camera would have been very harmfull.
just about any franchise is going to lose a few things and gain a few things in the transfer to 3d. mario lost the linearity and simplicity and gained big massive levels and open ended gameplay, while preserving the basic platforming and atmosphere....
metroid prime preserved...
the exploration
the platforming (to some degree)
the structure
the atmosphere
it lost
some of the acrobatics
the ability to see samus while you play
it gained
the visor mechanics (which have been used very cleverly IMO)
bigger levels
more epic feeling
greater level of immersion due to First person perspective.
thats about as good a transition as you could ever hope for. in fact it's a better transition than mario made IMO, there were fewer things lost.
The metroid franchise was always kind of wierd. It was a
sidescroller that didn't have seperate levels, and didn't have "A to B" game structure. A sidescroller with lots of backtracking.. that was unheard of when the first game released and it never really became common even into the 16 bit era. Your character was armed with guns, but it didn't play like a side scrolling shooter, there was lots of platforming, but it wasn't really a platformer. combat was a minor obstacle compared to the real challenge... exploring and learning the world. Transfering it to 3d was gonna be hard, simply because there were no other 2d games with the same kind of gameplay that had been successfully transfered to 3d before, so you had to start from scratch.
some of the same things that seperated the original metroid from other sidescrollers are the things that seperate metroid prime from other FPS games... it's a first person game, with a seamless world instead of seperate levels, you have guns, but shooting doesn't matter and unlike most FPS it's full of backtracking and exploration is way more important than combat. It's an oddball among first person games in the same way that the original metroid was an oddball among sidescrollers.
