It’s pretty sad to see Metroid Prime 4: Beyond already fading away just a couple of weeks on from its release. Slipping out of the charts already and failing to make much of an impact after an 18-year wait, it feels like something of a death knell for Samus’ 3D adventures. But if there’s any way to take my mind off the ennui this elicits, it’s to remember the NPCs talking at me while I was trying to play, and then perhaps be a bit glad. Although it could have been a lot worse: Astonishingly, as VGC reports, players have now discovered another 30 minutes of dialogue for its NPCs that was mercifully cut from the final game.
Universally recognized as the game’s worst choice, the fourth installment in the splendid Metroid Prime franchise has incessant nattering from a range of NPCs, who seem to be there simply to irritate Samus as she tries to get on with her exploring, shooting, and scanning. Samus’ wordless responses start to feel like the most remarkable act of passive-aggression as her gabby companions refuse to take the hint. And it’s so incongruous! It’s incongruous to the entire Metroid franchise, given the usually solitary nature of the suited heroine, and it’s incongruous to this game, given its post-colony setting of ruins. Leave her be!
So it really beggars belief that there was once an intention for there to be even more. YouTuber Bearborg, who will hopefully end up with more than 24 subscribers by the end of today, has uploaded all the conversations coming from the base camp during the game, which in the released version are mercifully limited to about seven-and-a-half minutes. There then follows a further 33 minutes of talking that was cut from the game, containing a whole lot of banality that’s supposed to be (scarequotes) “banter.”
The dialogue that’s been unearthed isn’t polished, with occasional moments of an old-school text-to-speech voice among the actors. All the performances are completely fine, and it was clearly intended to be background color when written and recorded, not plot-critical content. Thank goodness someone at some point realized this isn’t the right game for it. Were these comments optional extras in an RPG, or conversations from which you could walk away in an open-world, it would be harmless stuff. But the enforced nature of it all in Metroid Prime 4, amidst a series of games best enjoyed for their peace and quiet, remains such a weird choice.
