At the beginning of 2019, it was officially announced that the development of Metroid Prime 4 had been restarted in the hands of the legendary Retro Studios. Since this announcement, Retro has made some significant hires, and indeed the studio has recently added two more environment designers to the team.
Specifically, Mark Capers and James Beech are now set to call Retro Studios their home, and some fans will certainly be familiar with their previous work. With respect to Capers, he most recently served as a designer on Playful Studios' 3D platformer New Super Lucky's Tale, and he also acted as a designer on Epic Mickey and Epic Mickey 2: The Power of Two.
Interestingly, Capers is not the first designer to recently move from Playful Studios to Retro, as Stephen Dupree did the same just last month. However, unlike Capers, Dupree had been part of Retro prior to his tenure at Playful, having worked on titles like Donkey Kong Country Returns and Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze, and his return to the studio is certainly an exciting prospect.
Beech, on the other hand, recently worked as a senior designer on Remnant: From the Ashes, a third-person action RPG that released to some acclaim just last year. Other notable titles on Beech's resume include Darksiders 3 and Crysis 3, and he also worked on the never-released Eternal Darkness 2.
To note, the exact projects that Capers and Beech are working on at Retro Studios has not been confirmed at this time, but it is certainly possible that they have joined the Metroid Prime 4 team. Indeed, this new entry in the beloved franchise is currently the only game that Retro is officially confirmed to have in development, and perhaps Capers and Beech will be focusing on its environments.
As previously mentioned, these are certainly not the first hires that Retro has made in recent memory. In October of last year, for instance, the studio brought on Halo artist Kyle Hefley as a lead character artist, and Retro is still looking to fill several more roles. Again, it is not definitively known if all of these new team members will be working directly on Metroid Prime 4, but one thing is clear: Retro Studios is in the process of hiring some very talented individuals.
Source: VGC
