I try really hard to maintain my journalistic integrity, especially with a controversial game like this. So bear with me as I try and cover the story here without grimacing, guffawing or any amount of snark. Here goes.
Recently, Kensuke Tanabe, producer of Metroid Prime: Federation Force, discussed the reasons for the graphical variation in a “Mission Briefing” video. According to him, there were many challenging hurdles to overcome making a multiplayer team game on the 3DS, or any handheld, for that matter. He went on to clarify that the objects you would need to shoot would be naturally much smaller on a handheld screen, which is why they went with the rounded, chibi art style.
Kensuke further clarified that the “rounding” technique resulted in compression of the terrain vertically, which allowed for more information to be displayed on screen. According to the producer, “This resulted in a different aesthetic but we wanted to prioritize providing the very best gameplay experience”. While the success of this approach is yet to be measured, it’s nice to know there might be some reasons to explain the drastic departure from the previous Metroid games. We’ll see for sure once 3DS owners get their hands on Metroid Prime: Federation Force this August 19th in the West, August 25th in Japan and finally September 2nd in Europe. Stay tuned to oprainfall for more Federation Force news as it hits.
