Jack Mathews, the lead technical engineer on the first three Metroid Prime games, has expressed his disapproval of the open-world motorbike sections in Metroid Prime 4. He believes that the Sol Valley area, where players can explore on their Vi-O-La bike, was a distraction that diverted development resources from the rest of the game. Mathews thinks that the technology used to create Sol Valley was a significant departure from the standard Metroid Prime gameplay and that it was a risk to implement such a new type of gameplay in the game.