Metroid Prime 4: Beyond artist opens up about redesigning Samus’ HUD

After five years of relative quiet, Metroid Prime 4: Beyond finally showed up again during this summer’s Nintendo Direct. The gorgeous trailer set the tone with moody music, hostile new settings, and plenty of Space Pirates for intergalactic bounty hunter Samus Aran to blast into oblivion. In a post on X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday, Retro Studios’ lead UI artist Jon Wofford detailed the process behind the modernized redesign of Samus’ HUD — the view the player will see through her visor throughout much of the game.

“Metroid Prime 4 has been a dream project, and my favorite part has been designing, crafting, and animating Samus’s HUD,” Wofford wrote. “I learned a lot during MPR [Metroid Prime Remastered], and I hope it shows. Check out my artstation for a deeper dive!” Wofford’s post concludes with a link to said ArtStation, which has tons of screenshots and short descriptions from the artist about the process involved in each UI decision, as well as shout-outs from Wofford to his coworkers “Jordan Johnson, whose UI tech enables it all, and to Nina Morris, for her great work on scans,” plus his “amazing art director, Jhony Ljungstedt, for his clear vision and leadership.”

In an ArtStation caption on a screenshot of the HUD display from the trailer, Wofford explained that his “goal was to create a modern update to the visor that honors the Metroid Prime legacy.” The result is a more minimalist, line art-style look as compared to how the HUD looked in Metroid Prime Remastered (although since that was a remaster, it was an update to the appearance of the HUD that didn’t alter its technical layout).

A comparison between Samus’ HUD in Metroid Prime Remastered (left) and Metroid Prime 4 (right)

Image: Retro Studios/Nintendo and Image: Retro Studios/Nintendo

Of course, the best UI elements fit seamlessly into a world and don’t even feel noticeable, as Wofford noted in a reply to his post on X: “I think the trailer also does a good job showing that the HUD shouldn’t bother trying to compete with the incredible environments, characters, lighting, animation, VFX… I am constantly humbled by the talent on this team.”

Wofford’s UI design work at Retro doesn’t just include Samus’ visor display, but also the in-fiction UI that appears on various computers used by the characters in Metroid Prime 4. “They’re quite tiny in this shot [embedded below], but one of my other fun duties on this project was to concept and art direct all of the UI seen on the screens in this area,” Wofford wrote. “The actual in-game assets were built by Kenneth Kozan, one of our incredible Environment Artists.”

It’s pretty wild to think about how every single part of a game has a designer behind it — or several — working to make each piece add up to a cohesive picture of what is, in this case, a new entry in a long-running, comprehensive science-fiction setting. Wofford describes his coworkers as “actual wizards” on his artstation, which, fair enough.