Kynan Pearson

Retro Studios was and continues to be an amazing studio filled with incredibly talented and collaborative people. Working on the Metroid franchise was a dream come true. Working with experts in every field made it easy to trust in your teammates and learn something new with every experience. There’s really no other studio like it. It was hard work but we always felt we had to give it everything we had and make games that were worthy of the Nintendo name.

When I got to Retro Studios I was working alongside a good friend of mine, Jason Behr, who was the lead level designer on the first Prime. We had previously worked together while at Iguana (Acclaim Studios Austin) so there was already trust there and we were able to hit the ground running. Making a new game, sequel or not, is a challenging experience. The pressure is there any time you attempt to make something great but if you fear failure then you can second guess your own decisions and become paralyzed in making any forward progress. It’s best to just work as hard as you can as a team and continue to improve things as much as you can before the end. Metroid Prime was a fantastic game and everyone wanted to make a game that continued the Metroid legacy but provided a new experience.

All games are team efforts so there’s no one person responsible for any single part. It’s all a collaboration of constant iteration and improvement. I have many fond memories of working with great people who were always willing to go the extra mile and make hard adjustments no matter how much rework it would require because we all cared about the game enough to do anything we could. The team was full of cool and interesting people and I feel it shows in the games. There aren’t really any games that feel quite like the Metroid Prime games. We were all willing to try new things or do things differently and that’s a big part of the culture.

By its very nature traveling between two different dimensions is complex. In order to make a complex route through dark and light world variations there needed to be some relatable clarity in how the world flows. An easier to cluster standard world structure made up for a more complex back and forth between dark and light.

I’m proud of the Metroid Prime games. Most of the time when I look back on games all I see are the flaws and compromises but in the end I know that everyone did the best they could at the time. It’s all subjective too, since no two players have the same experience. I believe Prime 2 is difficult but there are people that appreciate that. I believe Prime 3 took advantage of the unique elements of Wii hardware. Everything that made its way into games was because people on the team were excited about doing them. Once a game is out it’s up to the players to decide how they feel about it.

The Wii was exciting because it was different. It’s always nice to be forced to think about things differently because it’s interesting and fun to go into undiscovered territory. Mark Pacini and Mark H.H. worked heavily on the Wiimote aiming and gameplay mechanics and it was always exciting to jam on ideas together and figure out interesting ways to improve the feeling. The Wii was a totally different beast than the GameCube and allowed for many unique mechanics that weren’t possible on any other system. The Wii remote in particular was an actual revolution at the time. Pointing, motion, acceleration and form factor opened up the ability to think about things in a more creative manner because they weren’t ever available until packaged so nicely together in the Wii Remote.

Every decision in mechanics changes how a game is planned. Beam stacking impacted planning in the same way that any other tool does in any Metroidvania style title. Beam stacking just increased the need to utilize other tools since beam switching wasn’t a mechanic requiring manual player involvement.

About a year into the development of Metroid Prime 3 I left Retro to pursue another opportunity. After around 3 months studio creative director Mark Pacini asked if I would come back. I missed the team and was very excited about the future so I returned. I was fine going uncredited on Prime 3, since I had left during development, but the studio ended up listing me as special thanks anyways. All in all I worked around the same amount of time on both projects but handled significantly more level design on Prime 2 and more event planning on Prime 3.

I think there are many possibilities that could lead to an exciting and interesting multiplayer Metroid title. Does Metroid need to be multiplayer to be successful? Of course not. Could it be multiplayer or include multiplayer and be successful? Of course. It all depends on the idea, effort and execution. I love Jack and consider him a friend, but I definitely still believe Metroid could potentially have many exciting multiplayer possibilities, they would just need to be unexpected and different from standard common multiplayer ideas.

SkyTown required lots of effort in general and took a large group of designers, engineers, artists and animators to pull off. I personally worked on event planning for SkyTown. This mostly involved figuring out elements we could use to polish and differentiate areas in order to keep variety up and make each separate pod memorable. The level designers, engineers and artists for this world had it rough because of all the custom work it took to make a world unlike any other in the 3 Prime games. There were no walls preventing players from seeing the entire collection of pods so making it work at 60 fps was no small feat at the time.

A bunch of us worked on the Screw Attack. We came up with the idea to limit it’s usage so it doesn’t allow players to gain vertical height. Once we had these limitations in place the really hard part was tuning wall jumps and making sure the camera presentation was polished and allowed players to understand the timing of the mechanics.

I enjoyed the Ing and Luminoth because they were a new and unique element of Prime 2 that added to its atmosphere. The music in the game also helped express the feelings I associate with the luminoth and Ing. I love the Chozo as well but there’s always something special about discovering something different that expands the universe. New things allow you to absorb the world without relying on prior experiences. I’d love to see them return someday but I’d also enjoy seeing new races and enemies that defy expectations and allow for creative options. Part of the joy of playing Super Metroid was discovering new things that hadn’t existed in the Metroid universe prior. Things that surprise players imprint on them and become new memories. The Metroid universe leaves infinite room for the expression of interesting and diverse concepts. I personally don’t think I’ll ever stop having new ideas for Metroid games.

Andrew “Android” Jones had done a concept of an Ing with it’s legs extended out to look like outstretched fingers. A Luminoth was below it and symbolically it invoked imagery suggesting a puppeting scenario. The Ing are extra creepy because they have 5 legs and move around like a hand. This image was always pretty powerful and thought provoking, sticking with me ever since.

Many of my great memories and highlights are about the people, many of whom are still good friends to this day. During Metroid Prime 2 the team was smaller, so everyone had more responsibilities. I blocked in a little under a third of all of the rooms and halls in the game so the pace was insane but satisfying. I loved working with the amazing talent at Retro and SPD and got to hear many fun stories from everyone’s past experiences (which I can’t share). The great part of working with talented people is that you’re constantly learning new techniques and philosophies which you will continue to carry into the future.

I love wordplay and always have fun naming things. I came up with the names for Amorbis and Quadraxis. Amorbis is a combination of the words armor, morbid and enormous but directly includes orb (which the three creatures attach to). Quadraxis is much simpler as it’s just quadruped mixed with Axis.