UI Breakdown: Metroid Prime
For this UI breakdown we will be time travelling way back to November 17th 2002 to look at one of the most critically acclaimed titles of all time, the Nintendo Game Cubes first person action adventure Metroid Prime. But why do a break down of a 14 year old title, what can we possibly learn from examining the UI on a platform that doesn't exist anymore? Well there is a couple of reasons to do this at this time and place :
1: Not only has Metroid Prime have fantastic Art Direction it is often quoted among the top ten games of all time (reason enough?).
And..
2: Sonys Playstation VR releases this month which would have been an ideal peripheral with which to experience Metroid Prime first person adventuring.
So while pondering if I was going to buy a Playstation VR I had a look at what software was available on it, a few of the titles looked interesting but nothing quite grasped me. But then I got to thinking of dream titles that I would love use with the PlayStation VR. And what would be more perfect than the fantastically atmospheric and immersive first person shooter Metroid Prime? With its claustrophobic alien world and its dynamic diegetic UI there are few games perfectly suited for that VR experience. In fact when I started to look up videos of Metroid Prime to reminisce, memories flooded back of just how effective it in its ability to immerse without VR, in fact it wasn't even widescreen! How it was so successful at this I believe was a lot down to the design ethos Retro Studios taken too while producing Metroid Prime and the fantastically executed diegetic UI.
So in this article we are going to look at how Metroid Prime was designed, how the design influenced the UI and finally the art direction of the UI itself. But first lets look at the new hardware that has inspired this UI breakdown in the first place!
PlayStation VR
On October the 14th Sony will be releasing the Playstation VR and with this new hardware comes a bunch of interesting new ways to create gaming UI. Using a headset the user will see hyper-real 3D environments come to life with a custom OLED screen. This device will really enhance the experience of playing games from the first person perspective. By putting you directly in the PoV of the protagonist using VR technology it. Will open up new and exciting opportunities for UI designers. By using positional LEDs and a tracking camera whichever way you turn the 360 degree immersion of PS VR will make you part of a living, breathing world in the immersive first person perspective.
First Person Perspective
Games from the first person perspective viewpoint are of course not a new genre. Throughout video game history titles like Wolfenstein 3D to modern titles such as Call of duty, have adopted this popular viewpoint to immerse the player into a video game world. Things that these two games share in being first person perspective shooters are: the hand outstretched with the gun at the bottom of the screen and the UI elements such as ammo counters, scores and timers are pushed toward the edge of the screen. Over time as the technology became more sophisticated things such as camera shake was added when you jumped, motion blur when you turn quickly etc. But all first person shooters still boil down to the same basic elements that what made up the very early 1st person shooters.
Metriod Prime is itself a first person shooter and it shares these exact elements that make up Wolfenstein and Call of duty. Although when you play Metroid prime it has a very distinct playing style that is unique to the experience and I can say I haven't seen any other first person shooter since that feels the same. In the next segment were going to look at how the developers Retro games studio made Metroid prime to see how they managed to achieve this and then examine what if any impact it has on the user interface.
Bringing the Metroid Experience to 3D
“We didn’t want to make just another first person shooter. Making a first person shooter would have been a cheap and easy way to go. But making sure the themes and concepts in Metroid were kept was something that we wanted to do. And translating those things into 3D was a real challenge”.
Retro Studios president and CEO Michael Kelbaugh
This is Retros studios underlying design ethos that has made Metroid Prime so very different from other first person shooters. To understand why Metroid Prime feels the way it does to play we need to look back at what the Metroid series was before to understand how Metroid Prime became what it is.
The Metroid series in the past were all action platform games that had the player controlling the Intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran. Her mission was to seek out the Space Pirates and battle them across alien worlds, she has to stop them from attaining power from the mysterious alien creature the Metroid. These games were all side scrolling platform titles that you mostly consisted of jumping from platform to platform and shooting enemies.
“We used Super Metroid as our kind of Bible. But as we’d been sold on the concept of first-person; we couldn’t see how to put the ball into the title. In fact, it was actually on the chopping block for a long time. We thought that concentrating on the exploration through platforming might be good enough.”
Game Director Mark Pacini explaining the difficulty of creating Pov Metroid
By using Super Metroid as the basis for game mechanics in Metroid Prime they have created a very unique feeling game that doesn’t play like just another first person shooter. An example of why this would be Metroid Primes inclusion of the grappling hook power up found in Super Metroid. The grappling hook upgrade is another firing mode on Samus gun arm that when triggered can fire out an electrical rope that Samus can swing from to reach higher areas in the levels. In a 2D platform this makes sense you run the sprite to the end of the ledge jump and then fire the grappling hook, swing Samus and then land the sprite to where you need to go. But in a 3D POV game this is a very difficult thing to achieve and make feel right.
If Metroid Prime was approached as just a straight up first person shooter you can guarantee that something that requires intricate jump timing such as a grappling hook would have probably been scrapped. But in Metroid Prime it completely works and feels very natural, a lot of the effectiveness is down to the HUD and camera work. As you swing with the hook the camera sways back and forth, as you jump the HUD blurs and as you land the HUD judders as you come in for landing.
Metroid Prime Diegetic UI
Samus’ helmet has a holographic heads-up display, which the game simulates, features a radar display, a map, a health bar, a danger meter for negotiating hazardous landscapes or materials, ammunition for missiles, a health bar and name display for bosses. This display is holographic-ally projected on to the inside of the helmet, so when Samus moves to jump the HUD moves with her. Turning quickly, dropping down a great height or taking damage all move the HUD appropriately too. These animations increases the level of immersion by enhancing these actions with subtle and sometime not so subtle motion directly influenced by player interaction.
A huge part of the Metroid series was the seeking out of suit upgrades. A lot of the game revolves around the discovery of such upgrades such as the double jump ability and then finding out where to use it on the map to progress further into the game. Metroid Prime also sticks to this formula but have a few new types that actually affect the HUD and how you use it to interact with the world of Tallon IV.
Vision Modes
A lot of other games have used thermal vision, in particular modern shooters mostly in for night missions so you can pick out enemies. Metroid Prime uses thermal vision for a much wider array of activities. While using the thermal visor you can use it to detect objects emitting heat including hidden door locks, alien machinery and of course enemy targets. This visor mode will also act as a night vision enhancer allowing you to see properly in pitch-black areas. There are certain sections of the map that are incredibly tough to navigate without the use of the thermal visor.
The X-Ray Visor allows you to see through solid objects. It can also detect invisible objects (they do exist) and you’ll also be able to properly track certain enemies like the Chozo Ghosts and some other other hard to lock onto enemies such as the Flicker bats.
Scanning
Throughout your exploration of Tallon IV you will encounter all kinds of life forms some hostile some not, its important to know enemy from friend. There is also a lot of environmental elements such as minerals, artifacts and machinery that you might need to learn about if you want to survive. If the player chooses to learn more about Tallon IVs many inhabitants and its varied environments you can use the scanner mode that’s built into Samus suit. When focused onto the chosen subject you push a button and the HUD brings up various information about that subject, imagery and descriptions mostly but in some cases information on weaknesses.
The Scanning mechanic is introduced so very early into Metroid Prime so that the players wont miss out on scanning opportunities, if they feel they need to they can continue doing throughout the game and in the process potentially being more immersed world of Tallon IV by engaging with the lore. Its actually worth noting that there is a a completion rate associated with scanning everything thing on Tallons IVs world, although It has been noted that its not that fun!
“In the US even now people hate scanning, but it’s popular in Japan. So we tried to make it more ‘collectable’ and more informative in terms of describing how to beat enemies, etc. as we went along.”
Retro Studios president and CEO Michael Kelbaugh
This scanning mechanic is quite a clever design by Retro Studios as it allows the player to opt in to Metroid primes lore as opposed to having prompts about the world interrupt your playing experience. Quite often video games in particular RPG’s (a favourite among Japanese players) present a lot of information your way in order to push various lore on to you. For example you approach a new area in Biowares 1998 RPG Baldurs Gate, you are then treated with a small cinematic where a page of scrolling text with a voice over plays. Its purpose its to flesh out the story behind the next part of the map you have just discovered. The player has no choice whether this was going to be shown to them, so perhaps they could find this annoying or do not feel prepared at the time to do a bit of reading and would rather look at this later. Metroid Prime gives you the player a choice if they want too, this can make the game a smoother ride for certain minded players who are here just for the action.
MAP SCREEN
If there is one aspect of Metroid Primes UI that fails to deliver that would be the Map screen area. The map screen is quite confusing as its a fully rotatable 3D map with no directional compass. Its a very unusual map to navigate as well, you select the segment on the left (see above) then it zooms in to reveal a wireframe 3D model of the corridors and rooms of that segment. You can now rotate and pan along this wireframe map in order to find out what you might be looking where to go next. The stick controls do not help neither, if I had to compare it to anything its almost as if you were inspecting a a wireframe model in a 3D modelling application but doing so with a game pad.
This is perhaps one area of the game where Retro Studios failed to adhere to there self imposed Design law. The Super Metroid map screen is 2D and that of course when using 2 axis to navigate really does work much more intuitively on a game pad. Perhaps to make the 3D map easier to use they should have locked in a 3D isometric perspective that you pan across instead of rotated. And have layered wire frame upon wire frame too, it makes it very unclear whats going on and can quickly lead you to being disorientated!
Art Direction
I have talked about the nature of art direction in diegetic UI before see here for more details. What was found is that the UI style is nearly completely dependent on the art direction and setting of the actual game itself. Metroid Primes UI exists in a diegetic manner within power suits visor. As the visor is part of the suit the elements of the UI within the visor have to fit in closely with the overall look of the suit. The suit in turn has to be made in such a manner that it looks part of the world of Metroid Prime. You can see in the image below this direction in effect :
Cyan blue glowing lines encompass various holographic widgets and glyphs that decorate the interior of the visor. This is mirrored on the interior control panel of the space craft Samus is operating. Any UI widget on the control panels would totally be at home if displayed within the Power Suit visor. You can also see this styling being applied to various computer monitors and other screens within the environments of Tallon IV.
Exploring certain areas of Tallon IV such as a lava pits or flooded caves vignette techniques are used on the visor that reflect environmental elements. For instance say you run through a jet of steam water droplets will appear around the edges of the visor. Or when you fight enemies who use freezing weapons against you a frost vignette appears on the visor. These are excellent graphical techniques that really do help immersion as player agency triggers them, it’s also a nice touch is that they are used very sparingly so they retain there freshness. One fantastically unique use of VFX that I’m sure hasn’t been done before occurred when you were in an intense firefight. When Samus is firing rapidly at close range with the power suit cannon her reflection would flicker onto the inside of the visor, mirroring the muzzle flash rate that is illuminating the interior of the visor. When the VFX triggers is really quite rare but when it does deliver an exciting dose of action that really pushes the boundaries on what you would expect from first person shooter VFX. Visually the designers at Retro studio really tried to hammer home first person immersion as many ways as they could.
Conclusion
Metroid Prime stands the test of time as a fantastic example of diegetic UI to this day and how a well thought out approach to refreshing a series can create new experiences for the player that were never expected. Through well thought out art direction, VFX camera work and of course UI the sense of immersion created in the game is fantastically realised. The Metroid series was always about isolation, exploration and shooter action. With the use of fantastic first person games design techniques it’s become the definitive metroid experience.
How can this experience be improved? I hope like me that through reading this you can see Metroid Prime would be a fantastic experience on a VR System. It’s a perfect title to really explore different VR experiences Metroid could bring to the VR scene, such as the grappling hook technique explained earlier how would that feel as you swing through the air? Perhaps imagine your own face flickering in the visor VFX during a gun fight? There’s so many opportunities to be explored here it’s a shame in all likeliness it’s not going to happen as there are no plans for VR for this Nintendo title. What about PlayStation VR? Of course there’s so little chance of this very successful series appearing on a Rivals hardware. But lets leave this on a high note, a mod for the PC’s Oculus Rift VR headset has been adapted for use with Metroid Prime running through an emulator!
Of course none of this is officially endorsed by Nintendo and chances are it’s not going to be a very smooth experience but it’s nice to think others out there can see the missed opportunity. While not perfect it’s still an exciting prospect that’s maybe gives hope to some chance however slim to see a new Metroid Prime, fingers crossed in VR.
