Hi all,
Great sequence breaks. Keep 'em up!
There are some very tantalizing insights into the development of Prime 3 in the first of reportedly several interviews of Retro Studios personnel as posted on http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/.
Full article link: Retro Studios Answers The Dreaded “Metroid Dread” Question — And Other “Prime” Exclusives
There might be spoilers from beyond this point. Please don't shoot me if there are.
First, to cut to the chase (which the article doesn't, actually), Mark Pacini states that the "Metroid Dread" reference was a pure coincidence:
Fine, okay. My question is, what was that other "fictional element" supposed to be? Any guesses?
Second, more importantly, concerning speed-running and, implicitly, sequence breaking:
Also, from the earlier part of the interview, some of you will snicker when Pacini mentions that only 5 energy cells are needed to beat the game.
This, of course, leads us to several new Prime-3-related questions:
Retro has probably/definitely seen Paraxade et al's videos. Question is, how many things will they fix for the PAL/Japanese release? Will secret worlds be one of the areas which Retro will turn a blind eye to? (Probably.)
What does Pacini exactly mean by "we don't go out of our way to build things for them or to block them"? This seems to partially contradict what he says about the SB-ing community's potential influence on level design (in the sense that things can always be broken). This, of course leads me to inquisitively examine the design decisions behind the crippled traversal techniques in Prime 3, i.e. spring ball + only one bomb in the air morph ball jumping, as well as no-space-jump-if-not-on-flat-ground jump cripple... Also, what of invisible walls, then, if Retro isn't out to block sequence breaking?
Judging by Pacini's response, are portions of levels in Metroid Prime 3 "pre-destined" for sequence breaking? Are the location of secret worlds and handy little glitches (what of that invisible platform in Pirate Homeworld?) more than mere coincidence?
Anyway, there's some fodder for everyone. Yes, some of these questions are dumb, but that's for you to decide.
Extra credit: what do you make of the decisions in Metroid Prime 2 in light of this? Do you imagine there were explicit decisions in the original Metroid Prime that perhaps made sequence breaking easier?
Great sequence breaks. Keep 'em up!
There are some very tantalizing insights into the development of Prime 3 in the first of reportedly several interviews of Retro Studios personnel as posted on http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/.
Full article link: Retro Studios Answers The Dreaded “Metroid Dread” Question — And Other “Prime” Exclusives
There might be spoilers from beyond this point. Please don't shoot me if there are.
First, to cut to the chase (which the article doesn't, actually), Mark Pacini states that the "Metroid Dread" reference was a pure coincidence:
Quote:
MTV: What’s the story behind the apparent reference in “Metroid Prime 3″ to “Metroid Dread,” the rumored but never-confirmed 2D game some fans hope is being made at Nintendo?
Pacini: “It’s not what you think it means… it [w]as something that was overlooked and wasn’t in any way indicating anything about the handheld game. We know no information about the handheld games.
MTV: Are you suggesting that you got in trouble or something?
Pacini: Not at all. We actually had a fictional element of something else in the game that by a large coincidence could be read that we were giving a hint about “Metroid Dread” which was not the case. It’s a complete and utter coincidence.
Pacini: “It’s not what you think it means… it [w]as something that was overlooked and wasn’t in any way indicating anything about the handheld game. We know no information about the handheld games.
MTV: Are you suggesting that you got in trouble or something?
Pacini: Not at all. We actually had a fictional element of something else in the game that by a large coincidence could be read that we were giving a hint about “Metroid Dread” which was not the case. It’s a complete and utter coincidence.
Fine, okay. My question is, what was that other "fictional element" supposed to be? Any guesses?
Second, more importantly, concerning speed-running and, implicitly, sequence breaking:
Quote:
MTV: Your series is beloved by speed-runners, yet your studio has tweaked at least the first “Prime” game — after its initial release — to block off some of the speed-runner’s techniques. Why? And what’s your relationship with that community?
Pacini: We definitely love that community. That sort of community really helps to keep the game going. People are playing the “Metroid Prime” games long after they have shipped. I think that it’s really interesting to see what these guys are doing and how they approach finding ways to essentially break the game. It teaches us a lot about how to construct levels. No matter how solidly you build something, somebody is going to break it.
We don’t go out of our way intentionally to block off stuff or to hinder speed-runners. But at the same time we don’t want people blatantly breaking the game. But we do put things in there. A perfect example is hypermode. Hypermode is a speedrunner’s best friend. We did design it in certain ways knowing that we have things in there saying people are going to exploit this and it’s going to make things very simple for them to go through this, and you know what, that’s okay. It’s a smaller portion of the gaming community that plays our games. That’s the sort of thing these guys will enjoy chewing on.
We don’t go out of our way to build things for them or to block them from what they enjoy doing, but at the same time we will fix things when we find it. [With] the advent of YouTube and stuff like, two weeks after the game we found all these things. [We were] saying ‘Oh my god, they’re breaking the game left and right.” It’s actually kind of funny. It’s fun for us. A couple of things we’ll fix for the PAL version, we’ll fix for the Japanese version. But some of these we’ll just let go. The percentage of people who are going to find these are small, so we’ll just leave it.
Pacini: We definitely love that community. That sort of community really helps to keep the game going. People are playing the “Metroid Prime” games long after they have shipped. I think that it’s really interesting to see what these guys are doing and how they approach finding ways to essentially break the game. It teaches us a lot about how to construct levels. No matter how solidly you build something, somebody is going to break it.
We don’t go out of our way intentionally to block off stuff or to hinder speed-runners. But at the same time we don’t want people blatantly breaking the game. But we do put things in there. A perfect example is hypermode. Hypermode is a speedrunner’s best friend. We did design it in certain ways knowing that we have things in there saying people are going to exploit this and it’s going to make things very simple for them to go through this, and you know what, that’s okay. It’s a smaller portion of the gaming community that plays our games. That’s the sort of thing these guys will enjoy chewing on.
We don’t go out of our way to build things for them or to block them from what they enjoy doing, but at the same time we will fix things when we find it. [With] the advent of YouTube and stuff like, two weeks after the game we found all these things. [We were] saying ‘Oh my god, they’re breaking the game left and right.” It’s actually kind of funny. It’s fun for us. A couple of things we’ll fix for the PAL version, we’ll fix for the Japanese version. But some of these we’ll just let go. The percentage of people who are going to find these are small, so we’ll just leave it.
Also, from the earlier part of the interview, some of you will snicker when Pacini mentions that only 5 energy cells are needed to beat the game.
This, of course, leads us to several new Prime-3-related questions:
Retro has probably/definitely seen Paraxade et al's videos. Question is, how many things will they fix for the PAL/Japanese release? Will secret worlds be one of the areas which Retro will turn a blind eye to? (Probably.)
What does Pacini exactly mean by "we don't go out of our way to build things for them or to block them"? This seems to partially contradict what he says about the SB-ing community's potential influence on level design (in the sense that things can always be broken). This, of course leads me to inquisitively examine the design decisions behind the crippled traversal techniques in Prime 3, i.e. spring ball + only one bomb in the air morph ball jumping, as well as no-space-jump-if-not-on-flat-ground jump cripple... Also, what of invisible walls, then, if Retro isn't out to block sequence breaking?
Judging by Pacini's response, are portions of levels in Metroid Prime 3 "pre-destined" for sequence breaking? Are the location of secret worlds and handy little glitches (what of that invisible platform in Pirate Homeworld?) more than mere coincidence?
Anyway, there's some fodder for everyone. Yes, some of these questions are dumb, but that's for you to decide.
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