When Metroid Prime 4: Beyond made its arrival on Nintendo Switch 1 and 2 devices at the start of December, it was met with varied criticism from fans and critics alike, who clashed over many of the design decisions being used in-game. One such point of conflict was the open-world portion of the desert that you could traverse with the Vi-O-La bike, something that served as a bit of a low-point for the wider whole for veteran fans of the series.
It turns out Nintendo wasn't all too convinced by this element of the game either, but it also had no choice but to commit to it and leave it in the final version of the game, as has recently been confirmed in an interview with Famitsu.
After translation, it's mentioned that the open-world part was added to meet fans' growing desires for open areas in video games. This was conceived much earlier in the development cycle around the time when The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild was taking the world by storm. However, this was years prior to launch, and over time player habits changed to the point that open worlds were far less desired by the time late 2025 had arrived.
Nintendo then goes on to express: "In the end, the game took much longer than expected to finish, and we realized that players' impressions toward open-world games had changed. That being said, development had already been reset once before (when we started again from scratch with Retro Studios) so backtracking development again was out of the question, and we resolved to move forward with our original vision."
What did you think about Metroid Prime 4: Beyond's open world portion? If you have yet to experience the game, don't miss our review here.