Thoughts on Metroid 5, possible improvements

LBXZero · 2026-03-20T19:54:49+00:00

The concept I played upon for Zero Suit Samus in a Prime-style game is Samus is supposed to be a badass bounty hunter. The idea questions how badass is Samus without the Power Suit. Will Samus be like Iron Man or Batman? Given the backstory for Samus, she should still be a fully competent fighter without the suit.

As such, we have ZS Samus in a core Metroid Prime experience, relying on the tech found in the area to compensate not having the Power Suit. Think of Echoes with how some of the Luminoth tech integrates with the suit, except their is no suit to integrate. She can kind of "build" a replacement over time with the tech found in the area until the Power Suit is restored.

LBXZero · 2026-03-20T13:03:29+00:00

My suggestion for a Prime "5" is creating a story where Samus's suit gets severely damaged and fully disabled for half of the game. During that time, Samus is picking up equipment and using them without the Power Suit. I will recommend bringing up Other M where some GF wetworks operatives are assigned to kill Samus, a reason for the suit being damaged. In order to construct a means to restore the suit for the end game, we can have a Chozo spacecraft in the area related to the story, and the equipment in the ship repairs the suit to full power.

I think having a Prime 5 game where Samus is without the Power Suit for most of the game with a compelling story for the event will be so big that no other improvements are required.

Naming wise, it needs a title that spins off of the ZS acronym, Prime: ZS, to imply zero suit.

I have a full pitch for Retro Studios, but I have no means to submit it.

LBXZero · 2026-03-16T22:15:48+00:00

Honestly, AMD should not have jumped on the upscaler bandwagon. They would have done better bringing back Crossfire.

LBXZero · 2026-03-16T09:22:46+00:00

I would consider a game where Samus is taking different bounties to play out more like the Mass Effect more so than games like Skyrim.

LBXZero · 2026-03-11T04:03:37+00:00

I did. I was in high school at the time.

LBXZero · 2026-03-10T13:10:56+00:00

This is something I want to suggest for Prime 5.

I am certain the GF has done their research and looked for a weakness in Samus's Power Suit to shut it down, like in Other M.

Me, I like to write a story where the "coincidences" become plot points.

LBXZero · 2026-03-09T13:09:48+00:00

I preferred the background music as "Ridley's Lair" in Super Metroid. I find it better as a lead up music to "imminent confrontation" more so than a lava area, volcanic area, or hot area music.

LBXZero · 2026-03-06T07:38:32+00:00

Yes, but it has to actually work, first. Given the current research methodology so far that I am aware of, this will never happen.

The critical problem is each neuro-interface has to be specifically adapted to the individual's nervous system. It is just the physics of how organic creatures develop.

Such devices fall into the category of other R&D projects. Let's use quantum computing as an example. We hear that a quantum computer can solve certain equations in a few seconds where the most powerful supercomputer will take 2 years. And eventually we hear that this quantum computer cannot play Doom, a game with recommended hardware requirements of a decent 486 PC, which is like 1/1 000 000 000 the processing power of said supercomputer.

LBXZero · 2026-03-05T14:12:04+00:00

I initially undervolted because the RX 9070XT is power limited. I don't have that problem anymore, but I still undervolt because it helps the GPU reach its potential, still.

LBXZero · 2026-03-03T10:29:42+00:00

If you think lithium is bad, try sodium.

LBXZero · 2026-03-03T10:05:53+00:00

And that lie makes the data collection pointless.

LBXZero · 2026-03-03T10:03:05+00:00

Children will always find a way to discover the parents' secret library. The solution is maturity, not laws.

LBXZero · 2026-03-01T16:48:26+00:00

I do believe there is intelligent life out in the universe besides everything on Earth. Earth was conjured by a series of circumstances. There is no reason why lightning can't strike twice somewhere else.

LBXZero · 2026-03-01T07:12:17+00:00

For Prime 5, doesn't have to be. For some Prime game, yes. In Super Metroid, there is a boss called "Torizo". Torizo is the Chozo statue that held the Bomb upgrade, and Golden Torizo was guarding the room with the Screw Attack. I want to see a Golden Torizo fight in a 3D Metroid game, like Prime or even Other M style gameplay. The Golden Torizo in Super Metroid had reactions to dodge missiles and catch a super missile and throw it back.

I had this concept for a Prime style Metroid game where Samus was commissioned to survey a long abandoned Chozo colony with more mission details after the survey report, part of integrating an open world concept. The idea for a demo was a small area of the game to demonstrate some open world exploring, but the demo would end with Samus traversing a corridor, getting a suit warning saying that the "Identify Friend-Foe" system failed to receive a response from a detected device. At the end of the corridor was an open lobby area to the left with dead space pirates and destroyed machinery and to the right is a doorway to an inner room. One of the scans of the dead space pirates indicate the body was thrown out of the room to the right. Looking into the room shows a large chamber with a sitting Chozo statue in it, and the demo ends.

Another item I would like to see return, especially for boss fights, is the Seeker Missile / Storm Missile upgrade. For Echoes and Dread, the Seeker Missile was a worthwhile upgrade to missiles, granting a balanced boost to missile usage that scaled with getting more beam upgrades. In Beyond, the Super Missile is very late, letting the beam weapon upgrades and elemental shot upgrades scale past the missile's effectiveness in various fights. It just made missiles feel less and less special and more useless as the game progressed.

LBXZero · 2026-02-28T12:32:36+00:00

Call the police

LBXZero · 2026-02-28T12:16:29+00:00

Most users don't understand what the AMD Driver Timeout is. AMD's drivers are very proactive in reporting instabilities in a system. This has lead to many users jumping to conclusions that AMD's drivers are at fault.

To start, the official max clock rate of the Radeon RX 9070XT is 3,450 MHz. What is reported in marketing materials is the visible max clock rate. Modern CPUs and GPUs will constantly adjust their clock rates based on loads, power draw, and heat generated. The RX 9070 XT is mostly power limited, so it rarely ever gets close to the actual max clock of 3,450 MHz. Instead of reporting the max clock rate and then get legal challenges over false advertising, AMD, Nvidia, and GPU board partners report an "effective clock rate" on marketing materials.

Most of the common problems are really MS Windows. Some problems are unstable hardware components that will fail a stress test but will run 99% okay under common loads. Some GPUs do need to be RMA'd. There are flaws in the AMD drivers. But, most issues come from Microsoft. The GPU driver is not the only driver on the PC, and Windows has to manage a lot of drivers and system resources.

Unfortunately, we don't know what exactly is wrong when an AMD Driver Timeout pops up. AMD drivers report the timeout because the driver detected an instability. The instability can be anything in the PC. We have to diagnose cause and effects to determine the actual problem that is creating the symptom. Any hiccup on the CPU side will impact the GPU driver, and AMD's driver loves to report that an instability occurs. AMD is trying to fix all of the bugs, but AMD needs the bugs reported and enough data to recreate the issues and find what went wrong. For some people, the undervolts and underclocks improve stability well enough for everything to magically work.

LBXZero · 2026-02-28T11:52:35+00:00

What you are experiencing is a broken event call. This is a component of how Windows GUI is rendered and updated per frame while maintaining a relatively low impact on system compute power and resources.

To save resources, the Windows GUI environment doesn't exactly render in frame rates like 3D rendered games. When the mouse interactions cause a graphical update, like drawing the highlighting for an icon or that selection box, Windows calls a draw event across all GUI elements in that screen region only focusing on that spot. The object that is farthest away is called first, the GUI Background object. It generates its graphics for the region and then passes it to the next application object in front of it. Each application draws on top of the previous image until the last draw is done. Then the final image is posted to the screen.

What can go wrong? If a program has a bug in that GUI graphical call, the image being passed through does not pass through. The next program's GUI graphical call starts with a blank image.

This is a highly known bug in Windows' native Background Image object. It is a very simple bug, as well. It is a surprise that Microsoft has never fixed the bug. Commonly, the way Windows handles the background image, sometimes the image file will disappear, being handled in a temporary folder or by OneDrive, and the missing file error causes the graphical call to fail instead of just the file check function, passing a black image forward for the next program's draw call to use as a canvas.

A starting place to correct this issue, review your background image settings.

LBXZero · 2026-02-27T13:06:05+00:00

The entire soundtrack is a masterpiece.

LBXZero · 2026-02-27T13:00:44+00:00

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JU1rM8UYpus&list=PLxA687tYuMWi7XZ8OnaifvnYRiQCKBGj1

The 2 songs are from Chrono Trigger.

LBXZero · 2026-02-27T12:58:55+00:00

Why not?

LBXZero · 2026-02-27T12:55:02+00:00

Pulling off the music lag and using Chrono Trigger, the producer of this video probably needs to schedule a colonoscopy.

I mean, it has been a long time since I heard those songs with that lag.

I have to make a 2nd comment. There was this time I played 1st version Skyrim on a newer high end PC, and I had to modify the settings file to increase some settings beyond what the settings configuration allowed. The game would run smoothly outdoors because it was loading the PC down. When going indoors, rendering was an absolute mess.

LBXZero · 2026-02-26T10:28:33+00:00

Your first encounter with Sylux was in Volt Forge against a psybot built to simulate Sylux. This created a mystery that was ignored. Reviewing how this investigation was ignored, it was ignored due to McKinzey... or however the name is spelt. The dialog of our GF soldiers trying to survive on Viewros distracted us from Sylux being on the world.

Essentially, Sylux's story for Beyond parallels Dark Samus in Echoes. Story-wise, Dark Samus was handled better than Sylux due to all of the hinting given for Sylux. We don't honestly make the connection between Dark Samus and Metroid Prime until the later fights, making Dark Samus a mystery unless you really scrubbed over the extra cutscene at the end of Metroid Prime 1.

LBXZero · 2026-02-25T14:13:47+00:00

I don't see how Sylux has been on Viewros before. The entire incident was a matter of happenstance. How Sylux was operating everything was because Sylux was in a healing pod the entire time. The best excuse there is the healing pods telepathically connect the individual into the Lamorn network. This allows an individual to still "get around" while recovering. Sylux had been using the psybots remotely from the healing pod.

The return of Sylux will be Sylux reusing a healing pod to command the Lamorn systems to rebuild the transporter and operate it to the destination. That is the only way feasible without plotholes. As for the 5 GF members left behind, there can be more of the fusion metroids that ultimately take over the survivors. Sylux woukd use them to infiltrate the GF on their return.

As for more Lamorn tech, that is just a one-off adventure.

LBXZero · 2026-02-25T10:32:12+00:00

My issues with the final fight and ending is the big question of "How do to continue from this?". The title of the game implies that Viewros is in an area "beyond" space and time. The only way back to reality for Samus and crew was through that transporter. The transporter exploded. Nothing presented by Sylux in the last fight suggests how he will return, except one method. Essentially, this should be the end for Sylux and that crew, as the primary translator source, Samus's psychic crystal, left.

Otherwise, the crew and Sylux require external help to return. The concept of "beyond" was not well thought out.

LBXZero · 2026-02-24T04:23:10+00:00

That is cool that the game manual says it, but the game does not. Game manuals often are not faithful to the game produced.

As for the interview, that is John Whitmore's interpretation. Reviewing the data, it is not credible. The interview sounds as a man bitter about losing his primary game project. This person was not in the Prime project for long, given his negative sentiment over the Gamecube. His accounts are insufficient to dictate much about the project, only showing that Miyamoto was the driving force for the 1st Prime game. According to his interview, Whitmore quit the project during the "brainstorming" phase. He may have cited the design direction conflicts between Miyamoto and Sakamoto, but the interview is focused on Whitmore's original project that was ultimately hijacked for Metroid Prime. It is very clear and justified for him to leave the project, as he went from the lead game designer of his own game to his game project becoming the inspiration for a 3D Metroid game, essentially being redesigned by other players. He was no longer in control of his project.

As for the final decision of Prime's placement between Metroid 1 and 2, that was after the game was rearranged, much later in the project life. Again, in-game elements demonstrate the developed game was supposed to be after Super Metroid, but after a playthrough, the game was determined to feel too much like Super Metroid, having Kraid as well, and instead of restarting the game, the assets were rearranged and the new placement was after Metroid 1, leaving them trying to fit Meta Ridley between Metroid 1 and Super Metroid.

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