Former Metroid Prime Dev Calls Cancelled 'Project X' A "Frustrating Experience"

"It doesn't make sense and it's not even fun".

In the latest video published by YouTube creator KIWI TALKZ, ex-Retro Studios dev Paul Tozour gave an extensive interview around his time with the studio, including cultivating a positive working culture, how Metroid Prime 3: Corruption was influenced by Halo, and the studio's relationship with Metroid producer Kensuke Tanabe.


During the interview, Tozour goes into what happened post Metroid Prime 3 when the studio started work on the now-cancelled 'Project X'. Although Tozour understandably doesn't divulge which Nintendo IP the game was tied to (though there has been ongoing speculation that the studio worked on a game starring The Legend of Zelda's Sheik), he did share his thoughts on why the project proved particularly frustrating for him and and the circumstances surrounding this.


For context, Tozour states that Nintendo SPD (Software Planning & Development) would frequently rework much of Metroid Prime 2 & 3's design, with Tanabe himself contributing significant changes to certain boss battles. Tozour goes on to explain that Nintendo corporate didn't necessarily trust Retro Studios to create a Metroid game on its own, so Project X was therefore the studio's attempt to prove to Nintendo that it had the "design chops".


Ultimately, however, due to a number of factors at the studio - including the loss of resources thanks to the upcoming Metroid Prime Trilogy - Project X failed to get off the ground. Tozour explains that the project proved frustrating for him due to the "incoherent design docs" that were handed to him at the time:


"Project X was a very, very frustrating experience for me, because you know, I have a lot of design skills, right, I'm a multi-class character engineer and game designer, right, I've done a lot of both. And so when a design needs work, that's a problem for me. If a designer comes to me with a good design, hands me a design doc and said "here's what I want you to code, put a couple of months of your life into this" and it's a good thing that we can iterate to make it better, that's cool. But when they come to me with a design that is not even coherent, like it doesn't even make sense and it's not even fun like it's not even clinging to anything that could conceivably be fun."

 

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