Interview with Retro Studios - Metroid Prime 2

GI: I’m sitting here in Seattle, Washington with Michael Kelbaugh, President of Retro Studios and Bryan Walker, senior producer on Metroid Prime: Echoes. First of all, Nintendo showed off a pretty final build of the game yesterday and today. How has the development process been so far?


Kelbaugh: (laughs) See these bags under our eyes! We’re actually within a week of approval, so we’re running non-stop, working on the finals for submission. We’re working on the last little touches here and there and hopefully we\'ll wrap it up this week.


GI: Compared to the first Prime, how would you say the two development cycles have differed? Obviously with the first game, taking the franchise into 3D was a huge undertaking. Has development on the second game been easier considering that you already know how to work marvels with their 3D engine?


Walker: One thing that I’d like to throw out there is that we just didn’t take the last game engine and throw in new content. This is not an expansion disc. We really threw a lot of time and money at improving the underlying technology, so much so that people will immediately be able to see a much denser, a much richer experience. There’s about 20 to 25 percent more content per any given area in Echoes than in the last game. The Prime technology could run not Echoes.


GI: Did you end up completely overhauling the entire engine then?


Walker: There’s very little that wasn’t seriously improved in the underlying technology.


Kelbaugh: There are almost no assets that were we reused for Echoes. In 18 months, by the way (laughs).


Walker: And we really have to tip our hats to the engineers. These are the guys who could have just sat back and said, “We have a great engine, let’s just deal with that.” But these guys are absolute perfections and refused to let any opportunity for improvement slip by.


Kelbaugh: Not only that, but the team, for the most part, is intact from the first game.


GI: Is it larger now?


Kelbaugh: It’s a little bit larger but it’s also more experienced. We’ve streamlined the processes and we’re more efficient now, and we’re a lot more experienced with how to get a game out the door as a team. Just with that experience it was a lot more efficient process.


GI: How does Echoes stack up to Prime in terms of gameplay length?


Walker: We’ve been a great deal of what we call white paper testing with people who are very experienced with Prime and also people off the street, and we’re finding that the length is stacking up to be as long, if not even longer, than the original game. Not only that, we’re finding that the pace is better laid out. It’s a more even, enjoyable experience for both short and long play sessions.


GI: As far as bonus content, do guys have anything tucked up your sleeves?


Walker: You can expect to see some unlockable content, yes.


GI: So, does that mean there will be another unlockable Metroid game?


Walker: No comment (laughs).


GI: In my time with the game, I noticed that some of the action is really challenging now, even more so than it seemed in Prime. Is this something you set out to accomplish from the beginning?


Walker: There are some very challenging parts in the game, especially the boss fights. They’re really epic.


Kelbaugh: I can’t even begin to explain the effort that we spent on adjusting, tuning, and fine honing the bosses and those encounters. I can’t guess the percentage, but a large percentage of our efforts were spent just making sure that those experiences were triple A.


Walker: And the last finishing touches are still going in. 99 percent of the rest of game development studios out there would have shipped this game three months ago and it would have been solid. But given the dynamic that we have between our colleagues at SPD in Kyoto, with bouncing ideas and suggestions for improvement back and forth has really been a big help. It’s really taken this game to the next level.


GI: Aside from these two Metroid games that you’ve created, what’s next for Retro Studios now? Some companies seem to get typecast into making certain games. You think of Rockstar, you think GTA. You think of EA, you probably think of Madden. Is Retro going to be ‘the Metroid’ company? Or, are these two games going to be good experience for future projects?


Kelbaugh: Well, you know, I think we’re good at what we do. We like the franchise and we think we do it well, and with that said, we’d like to keep it. But also, we’d like to grow and see where the creative flow of the studio takes us. Certainly, we’d like to do other things but we’d also like to keep the Metroid franchise as well. The long term of Retro is to produce multiple SKUs. Right now we’re a one team house. Hopefully soon we’ll be able to pump out more titles.


GI: What do you think is really going to bring the gamers to buy Echoes, especially those who may not have played the first Prime game?


Kelbaugh: We spent a ton of time on making sure the multiplayer experience was true to the Metroid fan. You can slap a Deathmatch onto any game, you see it in 90 percent of the product out there, but we tried really hard to stay true to the Metroid fan so that multiplayer experience was a Metroid experience. And we feel comfortable that we’ve done that. To me, I’m really proud that we were able to accomplish that. It’s not just Deathmatch; there’s a whole morph ball element to it that’s unique to the title. We’ve just incorporated a lot of cool Metroid stuff and I think we’re the only ones that can do that.


GI: How do you think the public response will be from the public in regards to the multiplayer?


Walker: I think the Prime multiplayer is a social and viral experience. A guy has a roommate who’s never played the game sit down and play multiplayer and, boom, we’ve got another Metroid fan. I think that is one of the key advantages that multiplayer brings us as well as brings us exposure in a new market.


GI: Were there ever any thoughts of taking the game online?


Kelbaugh: We had a really aggressive schedule. 18 months from the get go. It just wasn’t something that we had the bandwidth to do. We talked about it but when we took a look at the resources needed, we just didn’t have them.


Walker: I’ve spent a good chunk of my career developing and supporting online games and to do an online game right is probably a two axe effort to do a good single player online game and we don’t want to do anything unless it’s as high of quality as we want it to be. And to take 18 months and an online game and do it justice, it just wasn’t possible.

"GI: In my time with the game, I noticed that some of the action is really challenging now, even more so than it seemed in Prime. Is this something you set out to accomplish from the beginning?


Walker: There are some very challenging parts in the game, especially the boss fights. They’re really epic."

Damn it!  Imagines the whole game being as much as pain in the ass as Phazon Mines and Omega Pirate.

Please, nobody mention the crashing bug that occurred in some copies of MP. It doesn\'t detract at all from the masterpiece that the game was.

Why would you even bring that up? Weird...

On another note...
[mm]
The game was in development how long?
How much hype was around it?
How long was it in the media?
How many games have bugs in them?
Do I even know what I\'m talking about?
[/mm]

[Living-In-Clip]

Originally posted by Blade
Please, nobody mention the crashing bug that occurred in some copies of MP. It doesn\'t detract at all from the masterpiece that the game was.

*sigh* Now I have no reason to post about MP.

Thanks for taking the fun out of my MP hatred.

^Im more or less with this guy^

ME can\'t wait.....But i have to say it would be nice is the American version has the same level of Difficulty as the UK one….

From what I have read , you ( yanks ) can get the space jump boots right from the word GO when you arrive on Tallon IV.

But in the UK version you have to wait to later in the game.