| PAOerfulone said: Finally bought and started playing Metroid Prime Remastered to prepare myself for Prime 4 - And yeah, it confirms to that those NPCs are necessary. For tutorial, world building, AND story-telling. |
Why does it need to be more beginner/newcomer friendly? There's nothing wrong with a series being a bit hardcore other than its sales potential being reduced and an established series getting dumbed down to try to appeal to the masses is a bad thing artistically. Like just imagine if one of your favourite video game series had an element you loved about it stripped away to appeal more to general audiences. That sort of thing happening will bother basically anyone.
I don't even fully agree with the premise that Prime 1 is bad for newcomers since it was the 6th best selling game on the Gamecube and was a notable system seller for the platform and one of the most beloved games on it. And the idea that adding NPCs is necessary to increase mass appeal for the series doesn't hold much water considering that Prime 3 only sold half as much as Prime 1 and not much more than Prime 2 despite the install base difference of the Wii and Gamecube and the former having a higher percentage of casual gamers owning it. Metroid is just a bit of a niche series and that's completely fine.
If anything it wouldn't surprise me if these NPCs make Prime 4 sell worse than if they weren't there since it's a game series with a bit of a hardcore fanbase and this one is doing something that a significant percentage of them dislike or even hate and the previews would've been extremely positive without this aspect. A somewhat niche series angering its established fanbase to try to appeal to more people can easily backfire with some of the fanbase avoiding it and it not really doing better with general audiences. If the goal is to try to increase mass appeal then there's surely a better way to go about it.
Last edited by Norion - on 23 November 2025
