Metroid Dread is actually real--can you believe it? And while it was shown off in Nintendo’s E3
Direct and Nintendo Treehouse, we recently had the chance to learn even more about it
thanks to a media preview featuring some new gameplay hosted by Nintendo Treehouse staff,
Bill Trinnen and Nate Bildorf, along with a Q&A session with the game’s producer Yoshio
Sakamoto to find out even more juicy details about the game’s development,
including what exactly happened over its 15 year development period,
what inspired new EMMI enemies, and whether this is really the end of the road for 2D Metroid, plus
tons more. So here’s the 12 Things We Learned, along with some brand new gameplay along the way.
And no, before you ask, they wouldn' tell us anything about Metroid Prime 4, Sorry!
Okay, let’s address the elephant in the room: Is Metroid Dread the last 2D Metroid, as the trailer
seemed to possibly imply. Thankfully, Sakamoto quickly cleared up that it isn’t. According
to Sakamoto, Metroid Dread represents more of a pause, or perhaps the start of something new in
the series, rather than an end point. He continued that he doesn’t want the series
to end--and in fact, that they already have a new episode waiting in the works,
though he unsurprisingly had no specifics to share yet. Ooh, exciting.
While development may have began 15 years ago, Nintendo hasn’t been working on Metroid
Dread for that entire time. Sakomoto notes that they actually abandoned the concept early on due
to the hardware limitations of the Nintendo DS at the time, which prevented the technological
concepts from matching their vision, and this they decided to put the game on hold.
But it wasn’t on hold for too long, relatively speaking at least, as they
tried to restart the project again some later, buuuut stopped again for the exact same reasons.
You could almost say, they were dreading it.
As it turns out, part of the reason Nintendo first met with Mercury Steam, the game’s developer,
was to assess whether they could eventually realize the concept of Metroid Dread,
which their experience with Samus Returns soon after demonstrated was possible. Who
knew the title “Samus Returns” was even more literal than we could have ever imagine?
Speaking of Mercury Steam, Sakamoto noted that development of Dread has largely been similar
to Samus Returns, with Sakamoto in communication on a daily basis--and that the teams effectively
came together as one mind to see the project through. He also mentioned that though he has
the title of producer, he’s also been heavily involved in the creative side of things too.
Metroid Dread has always been envisioned by Sakamoto to be the game that followed Metroid
Fusion as the next proper 2D sequel. Specifically to build and expand on
the tension introduced by the frightening SA-X adversary, now in the form of the E.M.M.I’s,
and mixed with the more typical Metroid style of gameplay to create something new and exciting
The Metroid Dread of today is entirely faithful to the original concept as envisioned 15 years ago,
with Samus, a powerful warrior, being confronted by an overwhelming enemy that chases her. But,
Sahamoto said that the E.M.M.I gameplay turned out even better than he first imagined 15 years ago
and seeing it realized made him really satisfied. The EMMI’s have a super neat but unsetting design.
And Sakamoto stated that the desire to create tension and the fear of being chased by something
powerful is what helped influence the E.M.M.I’s design, with Sakamoto wanting to create something
that was unsetting, and communicated the unfeelingness you’d expect from a robot
that exists solely to track Samus down. Despite how intimidating the E.M.M.I’s can be,
Sakomoto doesn’t think of Metroid Dread as a horror game. Instead, he said it’s about
encountering fear, standing against it, fighting it, and eventually beating it.
On the topic of cutscenes, Sakamoto noted that we should expect ones similar to those in Samus
Returns, as they’re useful for increasing character expressiveness along, maintaining
tension, and helping to tell the story, which Sakamoto stressed was very important this time.
When asked if he was at all concerned about Samus’s faster and more agile movement
being at odds with the game’s darker atmosphere and tension-based gameplay,
Sakamoto responded no, he wasn’t. Instead, he thinks the faster and more agile movement
is a total benefit to the entire game. Though on the topic of faster speed and
its influence on speed running, Sakomoto noted that there are otherwise no additional
changes in the game to facilitate speed runners as compared to previous titles.
hey unscripted andre here and hopefully you enjoyed the 12 things that we learned from the key
one day with mr sakamoto himself which is super cool and informative now beyond that though as
i had already mentioned we also got to see a bit more gameplay of the game i think largely covering
things we'd already seen in the treehouse but they go over a few more details a little bit more
in depth and gave us a better look at the game in general too and i just have to say overall i am so
excited by metroid dread i am loving what seems to be the intense evasion of the new enemy creatures
and how they move is so unsettling um i love how they can spin around and follow after you by going
through uh small corridors and like basically ventilation ducts it's all looking pretty unique
by metroid standards and that is what's really exciting the fact that you really have to think
about how you're moving through these environments now not just how you get from point a to point b
but how you avoid these enemies along the way and avoid being caught by them now we did learn that
if you are caught by one you can do a counter to get to get away otherwise it is a one-hit kill
they will just instantly take you out if you don't counter however with the enemies the timing on it
is even tighter than most others meaning it's going to be a bit tough to get away from them
if you are caught so it's probably best to avoid that if possible now one thing that might help you
avoid the enemies as you may have saw in treehouse is the new phantom cloak that you'll acquire at
some point which basically makes samus invisible to the emmys at least uh to sight i believe they
touch you you're still left vulnerable to them um now the downside to the cloak well two of them is
one you move really slow with it on and two is the fact that it's costly depleting your health
meaning it can leave you extremely vulnerable and use it too often so you gotta be careful to
balance your usage of it so i love that how they're adding like stealth mechanics to metroid
you know far more than existed before and that's really exciting to me i think it's gonna really
ratchet up the tension as mr sakamoto touched on himself now of course you're not gonna encounter
these enemies constantly because they exist in these rooms are separated by pixelated doors
that's how you know when you're in an emmy room or not if you pass through a pixelated door and
even when you are in a room um you can try and avoid making sounds to avoid tipping them off
and i'm really liking the overall balance we're seeing here where you know on the one hand you
the typical action of a metroid game in addition to puzzles such as one where we saw where they'd
reverse i think the lava flow or some kind of liquid flow uh in order to create an opening
later on or something and then three are these new stealth-based mechanics which are really going to
make you think about traversing the environment in a whole new way as a concept earlier
so yeah i can't wait to go hands-on with this myself because it's just looking like a ton of
fun it's nice to have 2d metroid finally back especially in hd on the switch running at 60
frames per second by the way and i think this is just a metroid game a lot of people have been
waiting for particularly with the fact that as sacramento himself said they were looking
to do something a bit new with it by taking the elements of the sax and really just ramping them
up with the envy creatures but doing it within the context of a standard metroid game and that's
so exciting this is going to be a really uh just kind of like action-packed tension-filled
metroid and i really can't wait and uh yeah that's pretty much all i've got for you today
so hopefully you enjoyed again these 12 things and hopefully you learned something new from it
and with that thank you for watching make sure to click the subscribe button and ring that
bell for more metroid dread in the near future hopefully and with that we'll catch you later bye