""At the start of the project, perhaps due to the influence of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, we saw a lot of comments on the internet saying 'we want to play an open-world Metroid,'" explained an unspecified member of Retro Studios. "However, Metroid's core element of 'increasing the amount of explorable areas by unlocking powers' is not very compatible with the 'freedom to go anywhere from the beginning' of open worlds. Thus, we thought to design a limited area that could be freely explored, and have that be a hub that could connect to other areas.""
"However, the development of Metroid Prime 4 took "longer than expected to finish" and had already been reset once in 2019 after Bandai Namco, the game's original developer, was removed from the project and replaced with Prime creators Retro. And in that time, Retro says fan feelings towards open-world games "changed." But, apparently, another reset was "out of the question," and so the team had to move forward with its open-world hub despite knowing that many players wouldn't be happy about it."
Designers responded to demand for an open-world Metroid influenced by Breath of the Wild. Core Metroid progression of unlocking abilities to expand exploration conflicts with open-world freedom to go anywhere from the start. The team therefore designed a limited, freely explorable hub area that connects to other regions. Development took longer than expected and the project was reset once in 2019 when Bandai Namco was replaced by Retro. Fan sentiment toward open-world games changed during the delay, but another reset was not possible, so the open-world hub remained. The team deliberately kept a slower adventure-game tempo rather than adopting faster shooter trends.
Read at Kotaku
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