The third game shown during today’s Treehouse Live event was Metroid Prime 4: Beyond! The introduction cutscene reiterates that it is set in Cosmic Year 20X9. The Space Pirates, now led by Sylux, are being controlled by Metroids that can fuse with other organisms and take control of their minds.
The UTO Research Center on planet Tanamaar in the Desolan System has been attacked, and Samus, already there on a recon mission, has been dispatched. This is the introduction to the game, first seen in the June 2024 trailer. We also see what appears to be a non-chibi Mech from Metroid Prime: Federation Force!
Update: Analysis follows below. If you’re concerned about spoilers, you may want to avoid the rest of this post.
Sylux and the Space Pirates are leading a series of attacks on Federation Research Facilities, with the Tanamaar attack being the latest. Samus flies into the invasion, with Space Pirate destroyers from Metroid Prime 3: Corruption in the sky. She lands where we saw her in the 2024 trailer; her landing animation has changed slightly. As stated in the previous post, this sequence serves as the game’s tutorial. It ends with Sylux’s entrance, and a battle between him and Samus in a cutscene. He accidentally shoots the mysterious artifact, which becomes unstable and engulfs the entire facility in an energy blast that knocks Samus on her back. I’m speculating, but this could be how Samus is sent to Viewros.
There’s a new Item Acquisition Fanfare, and rooms are still named, but the classic “expansion acquired” jingle from the original Metroid Prime series remains. Objects that haven’t been scanned are now highlighted green in the Scan Visor, which was previously the color used for already scanned objects in Metroid Prime 2 and 3. Reused sounds include scanning, the “screech” when a Federation soldier is killed, and the Space Pirate death scream. The Threat Assessment on the HUD is now an exclamation point rather than a meter.
Samus appears to have new effort sounds, and there are now female Federation Marines based on the voices of the soldiers heard. The “tractor beam” effect of the Charge Beam returns, as do the aiming calibration door puzzles from the very start of Metroid Prime 1 and 3. It seems that Samus can now dash forward in combat too, in addition to side to side.
Update 2: GameSpot confirmed in their hands-on impressions that Samus’s face still reflects in her visor when she fires a shot at the wall. She now squints in the light’s direction. Unfortunately, there is no footage of this yet. According to another article they published, you can switch between mouse and gyro controls simply by moving your Joy-Con down sideways. There is also a dual-stick control scheme.
Update 3: Our founder Darren believes that the music heard when Samus is arriving on Tanamaar is an updated version of an arrangement of Samus’s theme on Super Metroid: Sound in Action, the Japan-only soundtrack for Super Metroid. You can listen to that here; it’s timestamped to the portion Darren recognized. Also, the Boost Ball is confirmed to be returning, as you can see at 10 seconds into Gamereactor’s footage.
Source: YouTube (full broadcast – the Treehouse segment on its own can be watched here)
