Thursday, June 16, 2016

Metroid Wild


I keep confusing the title of the new Zelda game and I often write "Breath of the World" or "Breath of the Wind", one time even "Breath of Fire". And I'm not the only one with that problem... To avoid this malapropism I call the game "Metroid Wild" in my head instead, because that has a nice ring to it and it's not that far fetched.

I was actually quite disappointed, when we learned that the Wii U wouldn't get a Metroid Prime 4 or even a new Metroid at all. But as I already said in a previous post, Breath of the Wind, errrhh Wild... is basically now Science Fantasy and rents a couple of ideas from the Metroid series.

I'm getting a lot of Metroid vibes from all Sheikah technologies. You enter the Sheikah shrines via an elevator, very similar to the ones in Metroid. The Sheikah Slate lets you scan the environment and acquiring a new Rune actually plays the Zelda "Get Item" jingle in a similar sound style as in the Metroid Prime series. They even put a Mini Thardus in there...

And this doesn't feel wrong to me. Metroid and The Legend of Zelda always shared many similarities in gameplay. They are both Action Adventures with an open world and item based progression, but one was Fantasy and the other Science Fiction. Items like Morphball Bombs, Ice Beam, Grapple Beam and Varia Suit turned out to be technological counterparts of various items from Zelda... Since I love Zelda and Science Fiction, I started to play all the Metroid games in 2008 and even call myself "TourianTourist", despite being primarily a Zelda fan.

Now, Metroid had its peak with the Metroid Prime Trilogy and the franchise doesn't seem to go anywhere right now. While I still would love to see a new Metroid game at some point (especially a side scrolling Metroid on the 3DS would have been awesome), I'm really digging the Science Fantasy direction for Zelda and welcome this new "Metroid Wild" game.

(If the game really had the possibility to play as a female Link, it would be cool, if you could make her look like Samus. You can chose different hairstyles for Link, from what I've heard.)

3 comments:

K2L said...

Zelda does what Metroidn't, as the 90s commercials would say

Brian said...

Yes, I felt the same metroid vibe too. The constellation markings on the walls, the phazon like blue glow... but the elevators in the shrines were the most obvious. I even hummed the little metroid elevator song by accident the first time I saw link ride one down ;]

Marandahir said...

I'd love a spin-off game where Link and Samus have to team up and use their various tool-boxes to solve puzzles and explore worlds and subterranes together.