Metroid Prime 3 Was Originally An Open-World Game


Samus is making a return very soon with Metroid Dread, the conclusion to the iconic character's current story arc. While fans wait for highly-anticipated entry, reports have emerged about a previous episode in the popular franchise, mainly Metroid Prime 3: Corruption.

In an interview with KIWI TALKZ, Corruption's original Senior Producer, Byran Walker, stated that the third Prime game was originally pitched as an open-world adventure.

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Metroid Prime 3 Was Originally Going To Be An Open-World Game

Walker previously worked as a Senior Producer on Metroid Prime 2: Echoes and Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. When discussing Corruption's early development, he highlighted the Prime trilogy's Series Director, Mark Pacini's ambitious plans to make the third installment open-world, including making Samus's ship a playable asset:

Mark came forward with an interesting twist in the vision and some of the formulas for Metroid Prime 3 as compared to Metroid Prime 2. We wanted to a greater degree leverage the ship as a playable asset for instance. Mark was thinking much more ambitiously. Perhaps there was also an open world, less linear that he was proposing.

At the time, the idea was too big to introduce on the Wii, so this pitch was eventually scrapped:

We weren't able to prototype a lot of those, cause those were really, really big - we did have some ship prototypes early, but the open-world one was much bigger.

However, given Metroid Prime 4's long hiatus in news, the fourth episode could still introduce these plans. And given Breath of the Wild's success in open-world gaming, it is certainly possible Prime 4 could shift in the same direction.

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