Design doc brings ton of information, concept art on rejected “Metroid 1.5”

Game Hooks:

In order to keep the momentum of the game moving there are several things we can do:

• Limit Samus’s abilities in certain areas and rooms of the ship, thereby forcing the player to deal with situation differently than expected.
• Increase the amount of morphball areas so we can try new ideas and concepts that we can bring into Metroid 2. I think a lot of people thought that the morphball rooms were some of the most fun in the game, lets crank it up to 11.
• The Mad AI, we can do all sorts of things to block progress. Lock doors, activate security systems, and fill rooms with deadly gasses or electrical fields…
• Controlling robots, from the Robot control HQ, Samus would have the ability to remote control robots in order to create diversions, navigate a setup, and gain access to areas that are otherwise un attainable.
• Mecha Samus, see below.

Co-op Multiplayer Component:

At a certain point of this adventure, Samus could have the opportunity to create an Android double of herself. In single player she can give it simple commands and it will fight along side her. Perhaps we can even have a side quest on the ship where you have to retrieve the necessary components in order to create Mecha-Samus. There has been something I have been thinking about for a while…What if we had the ability for any other player to control the co-op AI, at anytime? For example I start playing a game, and I have my Mecha double with me, Zaf comes over, and picks up the second controller, the screen would split in real time (see War of the monsters) and now Zaf can control the Mecha double for as long as he wishes. As soon as he puts the controller down and there is more than 10 seconds of no controller input, the screen would go back to full screen mode in real time. Sounds difficult to pull off, but maybe not.

Additional Multiplayer Goodness (Trust and Deceit):

As of last weeks design meeting, we were asked to further develop our multi-player and co-op ideas. Here are several ideas that would work great with this adventure.

Since the ship’s AI has lost the plot, I figure it would be interesting if the AI called in several other bounty hunters through out the galaxy all for the same purpose, a deadly game for the AI’s amusement. What makes this interesting is the fact that these other bounty hunters arrive at the same time as Samus. They can either work together or against each other, what it boils down to is a game of trust or deceit. Are the players going to work together, or against each other? Of course, we should try our best at least at the initial start of the game to force the players to work together. How do we as designers force them to work together? Here are a couple of ideas…

• Limit the abilities of all Bounty Hunters in order to force them to work together. This will cancel out them trying to trying to destroy each other in the beginning of the game. As the bounty Hunters grow more powerful, they then can decided weather to work together or not.

• Give the Bounty Hunters different abilities… One Bounty Hunter could be an expert at disabling security systems, another could be an expert with hacking systems to overcome puzzles, another could be a heavy weapons expert, while Samus of course, is a natural born leader with her varied weapon systems, morphball mode, and visors. This is what I consider “Star Wars” style of team management… everybody who made up the core group of the rebel heroes had different skills and abilities, but they had to work together to gain results.

• Start the Bounty Hunters in different sections of the ship and allow them to find each other. This would only work online, due to the fact we cannot stream for different locations at once. Capcom is working on an online Resident Evil for Play-station 2, which will allow up to eight players to start at different locations of the game world, and to succeed, they need to first find each other. If we decide to support Internet link, I would really like to see something like this, I think it could be a lot of fun.

I think that the additional Bounty Hunters, if they aren’t clones of Samus, need to be memorable and unique. They need their own specific weapons, their own “ball” mode, and that certain something that makes them a likeable character. I have no doubt that we could create some cool stuff, but we have to ask ourselves, will this still be a metroid experience?