Nintendo has suggested the incredible response to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild and its open-world pivot was partly responsible for Metroid Prime 4: Beyond’s own freely-explorable desert section.
Unlike older Metroid Prime games, this year’s Switch 2 shooter gives Samus both a speedy sci-fi bike and a large stretch of desert to drive over, which also serves as the connective tissue between the game’s more traditional, linear, directed levels where our bounty hunter goes on foot (or folds up into a ball… dealer’s choice.)

