Nintendo has revealed that restarting the Metroid Prime 4 development a second time wasn’t an option, even as the team recognized that gaming trends had moved on from their original plans.

The game, now called Metroid Prime 4: Beyond, launched last month on Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 after almost ten years in development and a switch to a different developer. While reviews were mostly positive, some players felt the game’s support characters and desert hub world seemed outdated.

In a recent interview with Famitsu, the development team addressed the game’s long production time. They explained that Beyond’s design came from an early goal to add open-world elements to the series.

“At the start of the project, perhaps due to the influence of The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, we saw a lot of comments on the internet saying ‘we want to play an open-world Metroid’,” the team said.

However, as the game neared completion, the developers seemed to have concerns about whether their chosen direction still matched what players wanted. Even so, another reboot was “out of the question,” likely because Metroid Prime 4 was first announced back in 2017. Further delays would have pushed the project even further beyond its original timeline.