curl-6 said:
He will; he's announced he's retiring and Prime 4 was his last game, so somebody else will have to produce the next one. |
Hasn't he also announced his successor, being another Japanese guy? And he said Prime 4 was the "first chapter of the Sylux Saga", all of which says to me his influence will very much spread into future games even if he's not involved directly anymore.
I've no ill will towards him but I do feel he's taken the Metroid Prime series in the wrong direction. Prime 1 and 2 were great. Hunters and 3 were starting to show signs of the series turning into something very different from the core identity of the Metroid franchise, but 3 was still great in spite of those things. Then we got Federation Force, and now Prime 4... and yeah, the series seems to be centered more and more on "cool" and "cinematic" elements, and the Galactic Federation is getting more and more attention with each entry despite how little anyone continues to care for them.
Strangely enough for a guy who "rarely plays games but watches movies often", I don't think any of the Metroid Prime games had good storylines at all, and they got worse the more narrative-driven got. These games excel at interesting world-building and lore, learning about the history of the places you explore, but not so much the actual story of what happens during the games. Prime 2 had the best balance in my opinion, giving you just enough of a story to care about whilst not too much for the weak writing to get in the way. None of the Prime games come close to the narrative quality of Fusion and Dread in my opinion, or even the subtle storytelling of Super Metroid.
