I knew you'd notice how convenient the teleport stations are haha. It's almost like Dread doesn't want you to *get* lost, more so that they want you to *feel* lost by regularly shuffling you around the map. Throw that in with the EMMI areas, which are difficult to navigate for obvious reasons, and Dread sort of simultaneously disorients you yet keeps you making progress. Is it linear? Maybe, but it disguises it extremely well and I think it makes for a tremendous experience.
If it weren't for the Points of No Return peppered into areas a good way before getting the item you need to circumvent them so often, or another item that lets you loop back around the long way, the game would be much less linear but also a fair bit more confusing.
Typically in a game if I find I am going the "right" way, I'll purposely go in a different direction for fear of missing a secret or something, Metroid dread broke me of this, eventually I surrendered too the game and said fine I won't try and explore Also spoilers? haven't quite finished the game yet
David Jaffe is a loser but even a broken clock is right twice a day. There are many, many instances with enemies on screen, but unaccessible and without destructible block between them. Even if it was intuitive, it's inconsistent and that's a problem.
I actually found my old Metroid habits worked against me with Dread. I think the “point of no return” implantation was good and helped me from being overwhelmed, but at times in the middle of the game I would unnecessarily backtrack and go back to explore somewhere random, when the path forward was really nearby through a tele-porter.
Same, I did a lot of unnecessary looping around lmao. Usually they'd still reward you with like one extra missile pack along the way, or the opportunity to get slightly further along a future path before coming to a second lock.
2 years later, I know, but I feel the same way. I'm just now playing it and all my old Metroid habits do not work whatsoever. The map letting you have markers on certain doors helps though
@@grimruben really? To be fair I was also about that age when I beat it but I remember it taking me the best part of a year whereas I beat dread on the day it came out… albeit with the entire day dedicated to it. Felt like I was opening a Pokémon booster box in 1 day 😂
At 13:14 (room where u have to blast the ceiling) I think, I was shocked and amused by it too. Like DAMN that’s gonna need a lot of aloe gel for that burn.
The game does everything it needs to do to get you to figure that room out. The only thing it doesn't do is spell it out for you completely like oh I dunno a god of war game might. God of war was great for combat but it wasn't about exploring. Exploration wasn't the gameplay so you had to have your hands held more... Well I guess that's how people feel anyways, I'd be fine if they let go a bit more. For Metroid though, why even play if you just have an arrow pointing you in the right direction? Even if they used other tricks to guide you in dread it's waaaaay more satisfying then just an arrow or a flashing block or whatever
Playing dread for me was like feeling lost at all times while still going forwards at all times. A controlled sense of lost. Very weird feeling that was. But a blast to play!
Completely agree. I always kept screwing around to find new locations, little did I know I was just following the story. My exploration was actually getting me through the mission the way the dev wanted
@@anselgrabill6316 There's a phenomenon I've been noticing for years, any games that give you multiple paths, one being the important way forward and the other being a dead end with a treasure, trying to guess things in the right order can range from mildly annoying to hugely frustrating (if the way forward locks you into a big cutscene and now you can't get back) this one I just couldn't win with that. it's kind of cathartic finding out i was being guided.
I actually laughed out loud when I saw this title. Seems like you're on the far opposite end of the spectrum from me, haha. I was SO lost so frequently, my first playthrough took four hours longer than yours! I think I tend to be so squarely focused on action and execution in games that I overlook what other players might see as unnecessary handholding. Clues like that never seem to enter my working memory. I backtracked so far at one point that I sequence broke my way into getting the Pulse Radar after the Flash Shift, and it felt like the designers taking pity on me! Which is a good thing; I NEEDED IT. It's my 2021 GotY for sure, easily one of my favorite Metroid games, and I've finished it four times since then. Excellent vid, it's always enlightening to see what games are like from another perspective!
I can vividly remember feeling very lost on my first and even second visit to the water area, the game has a very smooth progression curve when you are on its track, but if you fall off that track it can be a wholely different sort of lost. Not to a detriment though, I genuinely loved finding myself actually having to backtrack for any clues I'd missed, and barring one annoying floor I just somehow forgot to shoot, the whole experience feels good to play even when derailed.
The fact that the game rewards you for sequence breaking with a secret cutscene makes this game a 10/10 for me. That level of foresight and intricate knowledge of the game’s design and how players will abuse it deserves massive praise
calling it a cutscene is kinda exaggerating. But the remarkable part is how they intentionally added that ability for sequence breakers with a hidden morph ball launcher in the boss room. You need the bombs to even uncover the launcher, though you might discover the block in front with the missiles and then come back later since all uncovered tiles like this are recorded on the map screen. Only to discover something that seems to serve no purpose... except as one of the few hints that Dread gives you that sequence breaking is indeed possible, and that the first real window for it is right before Kraid.
Basically u need to do a tricky movement glitch to find the grapple beam than you use that to Finn’s bones which can open a secret bomb launcher in kraits room and using it sends you into his belly button and than you spam bombs and he dies
This metroid game definitely makes you want to speedrun. The sequence breaks and movement techs make you feel like a god when you do something out of critical order, even if it was intentionally left open for you to do.
I think lots of them were intentional, there are so many really easy to do sequence breaks. And I encourage everyone to give it a go and try them in a second playthrough. The game is basically begging you to replay it, I think is a big part of its design and ignoring it is somewhat missing the point, or not trying to analyse what the developers were trying to do. I believe that the first playthrough of Dread is more of a tutorial, so of course it is easy... you are learning the controls and the combat. But once you do even just a few sequence breaks, the map really opens up, several teleporters and elevators become optional, you can do things out of order and even some boss fights become optional.
@@inrevenant I honestly don't think so. I don't personally think hollow knight is a very replayable game. Specially if you like 100% completing your games. It took me 70+ hours to complete the game with the boss rush and everything. And I did attempt to do a second playthrough... That I abandoned, the start is honestly kind of slow and your initial movement ks kind of boring... Unlike super metroid or metroid dread, where you have a ton of movement options from the start, you start hollow knight really basic. I think Hollow Knight does the metroidvania trope of exploration and getting lost better, maybe even better than super metroid. But I don't find it as replayable or as rewarding to control, specially in the early game. Loved the game though
@@diegog1853 Idk if I'm in the minority, but I adored hollow knight even more on my second playthrough! Got to 105%, excluding the pantheons, trial of the fool and NKG fight. And I'd love to play it again when I have time. To each their own.
Being a Metroid fan, I noticed the developers' tricks fairly quickly, and I thought I would hate what they were doing. I was pleasantly surprised, however, and enjoyed the wild ride they threw me on and was very impressed with how well they handled the tricks and the integration/synthesis of the map. A work of art, really, in its own right--just the design of the map itself.
I noticed it right away too, and it kept bugging me the whole game. I wanted to backtrack and freely explore and simply could not, more often than not. It felt hand-holdy in a way that wasn't at all welcome for me. I like to puzzle out how to progress the game and not have it spoon-fed. Still a very enjoyable game, and I hope they make more, even if it does the same things.
I have the exact opposite opinion. It turned me off and I stopped playing after the 4th area... I just have no desire to keep playing any longer. I liked the original Metroid more than these new carrot on a stick/guided tour hand holding gaming sessions.
I pretty quikly realized too that the next power-up was always magicly popping in front of me, but since i wanted to play the game i didn't tried too hard to get out of the way. Also, the number of locked items felt so big it was a little too sad to search them at each new power-up wich ones i unlocked so i pretty soon gave up and waited until the end of the game to 100%
I appreciate that you acknowledge the different types of players, and that different people enjoy the series for different reasons; how something that one person finds annoying is exactly what another person is looking for. I'm in the "plays multiple times" camp.
The devs knew they'd have to thread the needle between being open for series veterans without leading players by the nose, AND avoiding making new players feel overwhelmed. I'd say they nailed it about as well as I could've hoped.
Yes this was much better then fusion or even Zero Mission which I know people love and I did too but it still had markers pointing you to places. Also if the game wants to lead me the first time a bit, then cool, as long as I can break it somehow in future runs which it absolutely does and I absolutely did.
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point in the next decade, Nintendo ends up releasing an open-world style Metroid game -- like BOTW. They already did an amazing job with BOTW, halfway did it with Sword/Shield (only part of the game), and going by the trailers for the newest pokemon game, it looks like they're going full-steam-ahead, so that's two _major_ IPs that Nintendo has transitioned to open-world style gameplay.
The game did a great job of tricking me into thinking I was discovering my way forward with pure cleverness. But I’m also miserable at reading maps and remembering locations in video games, so Dread was the ideal Metroid experience for me.
I feel like something left out of this discussion was the need to make Metroid Dread accessible to new players, leading to the slightly more hand-holding nature of the game. Nintendo invested a ton in marketing for this game, and is likely trying to make Metroid their more mainstream grown-up game, but needs to make it easier to get into. While I love games that are more challenging to navigate and traverse, I think that (especially with Nintendo's current audience), it's challenging to get people into that on a first try. I think Metroid Dread did a fantastic job of being satisfying for Metroidvania enthusiasts while still being approachable enough for a first-timer. I think this is a great step in the right direction and I'm optimistic that as the Metroid audience grows, the games can get more complex with time.
If their goal is accessibility to the most players, why not also put difficulty modes? The difficulty is clearly designed only for hardcore players, much like getting lost in some other Metroid games is designed for hardcore players. They just shifted where they decided to make it hard. Before finding where to go was the hard part, and now it's the combat that's hard. I think they sacrificed one from of accessibility (one that hurts me because I like very non linear design) in favor of another. What I'm saying I don't think the games prime philosophy was accessibility so it's a shame it sacrificed non linear design in its name.
Thank you for your post, but there’s been historical examples of dumbing down games for audiences which ended up backfiring and creating disappointment with handholding.
As a level designer (and a HUGE Metroid fan), I LOVED what they did with the points of no return. The way I played the game, I placed map markers on all the spots I wanted to return to later, and then I carefully studied the entire map each time I got a new power. What I realized is that the points of no return will limit access to previous areas, but not always in the same way! Sometimes I would come to the conclusion that I was completely unable to backtrack at that point, but other times I realized that I actually COULD go back to a certain area, but I'd have to loop around through ANOTHER area because of how a fidget spinner or a grapple block had closed one path but opened another. That is the reason I never gave up on backtracking and getting all the items, because even though I knew that passages were always closing behind me, I never knew exactly which passages, how many, and if they'd still let me access parts of that area if I took the long way around. Special mention definitely goes to Ghavoran, because I'd spend so much time scrolling through the map there, thinking "Wait, I can't get over there. Wait no, I can! Oh, nevermind, I can't. Hmm... Actually, I can, but unless I can fit a Screw Attack through a one-block opening, I'll have to teleport all the way down to Burenia and climb back up!" and I did, and it was fun, because to me, successfully planning a route while ogling the map is just as satisfying as actually playing the game. That said though, I did find that the pacing jumped ahead a bit at the end, when you find yourself already standing at the final boss' doorstep before realizing that the entire world had opened up completely about an hour back. Presumably, that's where most of the cut content would've taken place, creating a bit more of a build-up and also filling out the suspiciously empty spot in the top right of the map. And since this comment is already a wall of text, I might as well add that I really enjoy how the world is portrayed in the backgrounds of this game. If you peer into the back of the scenery, there's always some detail that connects the room to the rest of the zone, whether it's a tube that dissappears off into a vent, hinting at a secret area, the support pillars and guard station entrances that connect the Dairon labs to the surrounding cave system, or the fact that you can see the curvature of the Elun dome while descending the catwalks in western Ferenia. It feels similar to how the Souls games often let you spot upcoming locations waaaaay ahead of time, but only if you know exactly where to look and what to look for.
As a game player I hate this design mentality. I would never buy your games (if I knew you are the level designer). Why? It's simple... contrivances. This kind of level design is not thoughtful, it is "rat" in a maze levels of "someone controlling your progress" while unseen forces blocks, corrals, or prods you towards something. There is a reason many fans of Metroid did not receive Dread very well, I am one of them. I played the original Metroid on NES so I am "old school". This problem is not just confined to Metroid Dredd, but when paths are "arbitrarily" blocked like this it breaks immersion because it begs the question "who did that to me? and why?". Now... if this "fits" into the game narrative then that is "fun" for example... when you entered a boss room in Super Metroid that door would "lock"... you see THAT makes sense. But in Dread where rocks fall blocking your path, or water levels change, or specially & conveniently placed explosion rocks are both blocking and providing access to new areas while blocking old ones does NOT make sense and it offends a scruitinous mind. Metal Gear on the nes worked in similar ways. You had to find keys to get through doors, but all of that makes excellence sense given the game setting. So it is definitely possible to do these things "right" while you and Dread are doing them all wrong. Every game that boasts "open exploration" that has these gimmicks are a failure to me. They don't belong in them! If they must be used, then use sparingly, but Dread not only used them a plenty, it throws it right into your face. And yes... I heard the "excuses", the idea is to build "Dread" in the player making them "feel" like a rat in a maze. Well... that's fine... except they are all "natural formations" and constant caveins "well placed explosives" conveniently positioned water leveling and hidden passages are NOT natural. To me, MetroidDread was a complete failure on all levels of what could have been a fantastic game! This is failed deverlopers taking a great IP and using it to make a game while "not understanding" what makes Super Metroid so good! The game was designed to provide sequence breaking and speeding running a thing "but according to developer logic" and THAT is a fail. Open woulds should always be... "here is your move set" now lets see what you can do. It's NOT "here if your move set" oh... by the way... we put "gimmicks" into everything to see how well you tolerate all of these "gotcha's". I never finished playing Dread, it is one of my "regret" purchases now because I knee jerk purchased that game expecting something great... but it was not.
Yep, this game had the perfect balance between getting lost and finding things, where the "lost" part was actually enjoyable because it didn't last that long.
Happened to me once because I forgot about the diffusion charge in the charge beam 🤷🏼♂️ but yep, didn’t last long. Very satisfying when you figure it out
I got 3 or 4 times, but when I did get lost, I got lost for a really long time. Finding the where to go after getting the space jump kept me lost for the longest time.
I got lost once and scoured the whole map looking for areas to go, and it ended up being that lava area with the blocks hanging down from the ceiling, as I didn't want to go through the lava or shoot the blocks (both of which would have worked fine haha). I did enjoy that part as traversal feels great in Dread, and the map wasn't so huge at that point.
Can I just say I really appreciate you giving such a good summary of a feature set that DIDN'T fit your own play style? The ability to acknowledge and appreciate a games mechanics seperate to your own personal experience is admirable. Good job, great video as always
I kinda predicted you wouldn't like Dread's world design when I was playing it, I did feel like the game was gently pushing me towards the next objective, and every time I missed the path forward, there were one of those points of no return that made it easy to find the hidden blocks I missed. Personally I think for the majority of players this is good design, since most players hate getting lost and having to remember that one room you are supposed to go next between hundreds of rooms. You can still do that in this game, in my first playthrough after I got the space jump I did remember those lights in the water area and went there on my own, without finding the teleporter, and it did feel pretty good. But for those that like to get lost and have to make mental notes like yourself, I can see why this game is a little disappointing in that regard, but for me I thought it was masterfully designed, I didn't feel like the guiding was aggressive at all like you mentioned, as you have said it's still very possible to get lost.
Yeah I noticed it immediately the game just pushes you forward, I love the game but I did find it slightly agressive... That being said the game is genius when you completely ignore the pushing forward and you te to go and break it (granted you need at least one playthrough to enjoy and execute this)
> I did feel like the game was gently pushing me towards the next objective I didn't feel like the game was very gentle with its pushing. The points of no return stopped me from doing what I want several times.
It was perfect for me. It made me feel like I was a bit lost, but never actually was. The videos point about “cognitive load” is huge for me and I believe is why I mostly bounce off this genre. It’s one of the few metroidvania games I’ve ever really LOVED for this reason. Just as an example, I HATE hollow knight. It’s just the definition of confusing & overwhelming to me.
My most negative experience with this world design is when I finally did circle back and look into optional areas, sometime after getting the gravity suit, and finding rooms clearly designed for the varia suit: hot, but with lava at the bottom that you still need to avoid. As I made quick work of them with the gravity suit, I genuinely wondered when I had the option to go here with the varia suit. There undoubtedly was a point when I could do that, but the world design just took me all the way from varia to gravity before I broke out and started wandering. I felt kinda sad for the rooms, like they were being actively sabotaged by the rest of the world. If you weren't dedicated to exploration for its own sake you'd never see the challenge they were designed to hold, you'd only see trivial roadblocks that don't mean anything to a late-game Samus.
the space jump makes it feel like you're wrecking the level 8 rattata kid with your level 73 legendaries because you missed him on route 1 at the start of the game
That's definitely been a theme since the gba games: the exploration after completing everything, and it does feel like it slightly breaks emersion. It's sort of what the prime series did too (though I find it slightly better since the ruins were required).
I was really glad to see you make a video on this. I remember never getting lost during my playthrough, so hearing about these design techniques more thoroughly makes a lot of sense. But I gotta say, while I personally don't mind either way how a Metroid game handles exploration, considering the sheer number of people I've been seeing on Twitter -- mostly a casual audience -- talk about just how lost they've been getting for hours, DESPITE this design in the game, I almost wonder if it would've ended up alienating too many casual newcomers if it was TOO spaghetti-like. It's curious to think about. Either way, in terms of an addition to the series that'll no doubt be the first exposure for a TON of folk, casual or not, I feel like they made a good decision making things far easier to traverse. Perhaps in future titles that invisible hand will guide us a little less, which'll be nice for me personally, but either way, I love the direction the series is going in
It definitely would have because look at how much they went out their way to address this and people STILL got lost. Unfortunately 10+ years from now there will be even more casual audience and these games won't exist. Video games are becoming as passive as watching a movie
In the future, perhaps they could make it so going almost any direction could help you progress, such as having one key open a lot of doors. This means you can get lost, but it is still possible to progress.
You make a great point about it being too spaghetti like, PKBeats, and that makes me wonder if the next mainline Metroid game might be a little more spaghetti like after more people were exposed through dread
Absolutely agree, somehow I feel that the direction it got, is the bets one out off all, they are leaving space for every kind of player, as well as displaying a Metroid game and it's story the best way posible, with a finale that leaves a world of possibilities to go to
@@lukamagicc you are right, yet I feel that Dread is an example of the games resisting that evolution of just cinematics that play for themselves, gameplay is first, and as we said, is still hard to understand for newcomers
I feel that a lot of the choices they made about guiding the player through was for those who have never played a Metroidvania/Metroid game before, especially considering this is the first actually new 2D Metroid in years, and for that, I can't really fault them. Guiding inexperienced players via an invisible hand can be extremely helpful, considering they won't be the most knowledgeable on various things veterans know.
I noticed this myself. Whenever I would come to a teleport, I knew I was meant to go through it at that exact moment. I literally never got lost once from beginning to end.
This was my first ever metroidvania and personally, I’m really glad the game was so linearly obvious. I was worried going in that I’d get lost and give up (and I nearly did on a few occasions, most embarrassing that exact room where you had to shoot the ceiling), but thanks to the path being so intuitive, I blasted through my first run and played twice more, 100%ing it (my first 100% ever) on the third. Thanks to this, I feel much more comfortable/interested in playing more, harder metroidvanias in the future. I’m also much more into fighting games a la Hyrule Warriors, so the timing-based and pattern-learning boss battles were really rewarding for me, which improved my experience of the game as well.
Surprisingly as backwards as it sounds, the more you replay dread the more open it becomes and entices exploration. The sequence breaks you mentioned where nice, but by far not the end of it. The game deliberately tries to teach you tricks on the first playthrough, which you can use on subsequent playthroughs. If you are going for 100% which many of us are on our first playthrough, you are confronted with really complicated shinespark puzzles. What players don’t know, these puzzles give you the basics for shinesparking end game. Why end game? Because it will be important on a later playthrough. The second playthrough you play through. You are going to ask yourself, can I do this with that, only to be rewarded with opening up the gated map, leading to early boss fights and or early items. What players don’t know is that the entire map was made to be sequence broken. Many blocks, secret passages are consecutively placed to make guide you to an item, in an unintended order. The best part, if you get said item early, the devs planned it, leading you to getting another item early and another. Making an entirely different Route, while being able to get lost and explore the whole map. Most of the time you feel like you are outsmarting the devs, only to notice, that they made a secret route, to an upgrade. And here’s the best part, those secret routes, are never meant to be explored on a normal playthrough. They don’t have tanks or are connected to the intended route. They are just there to be for sequence breaking. Best example. The very first EMMI zone features secret tunnels throughout frozen artaria, to lead you to the screw attack before experiment Z-57. After the shinespark puzzle in Burenia, there are secret tunnels that lead directly to the room pre gravity suit. An entire room has been added in Dairon, to get thr grapple beam early, and with it (you can also get following upgrade without the GB) you can get the bombs, with which you can get the flash shift and pulse radar early. Before Kraid mind you! All Aeion Abilities within early game. If you cleverly shinespark in Dairon, you can get the Super Missiles early, which are a great help for bosses like the chozo soldiers and Drogyga. After getting the ice missiles, you can get the cross bombs early by sequence breaking out of an intended area with the shinespark. In the same room, you can get to Burenia early ro get the gravity suit early, of course shinesparking required. In Ferenia, with cross bombs and the shinespark, you can get the space jump early. With the shinespark and screw attack you can kill escue in 10 seconds. The gravity suit, makes the purple EMMI sections a breeze. And all of these are dev intended and don’t require glitches, but clever thinking. If you sequence break one item, you are led by an invisible hand to sequence break all of them. 70% of the items are early obtainable, without glitches!!! All being intended by the developers!!! Talking abouz the first run through dread is doing a major disservice to the true openness of the Game. The openness may be hidden at fist, but the first playthrough is there to teach you, how to break out of the shell! All of those Missile tanks and E Tanks that where only possible with Shinesparking, where a tutorial for the „hidden” game experience for dread. So if any if you think Dread is linear and focuses less on exploration, please try sequence breaking the game. Only then you will truly experience the brilliant game design of Metroid Dread Of course Super is still superior in the SB department, with the reverse boss rush and all. But Dread comes really really close to Super Metroids openness regarding sequence breaking. Dread is significantly more open in that regard than Zero Mission.
Fair points and it's cool that Metroid offers this style of repeat play, but personally I found that it made the first playthrough kinda bland. The map felt so mechanical and artificial, not like an organic world I ever wanted to learn more about.
I have done a sequence break playthrough in dread and can second this post but I absolutely disagree with Dread being more open to sequence breaking than zero mission. In ZM you are free to not pick up most upgrades and finish the game with just the morph ball, a single missile tank, power grip, bombs, ice beam and the 3 unknown items required for a 9% item completion just because the varia suit is given automatically when you get the fully powered suit. You can fight ridley before kraid, grab the screw attack before the varia suit, get super missiles early, there are many different routes you can take to beat the game, all developer intended and also has a special ending illustration for hard mode under 15%. It's definitely the second most open game in the series for sequence breaking.
Kinda reminds me of what Mark Rosewater would call lenticular design. For a card game, you can make a card that seems simple to newer players yet complex to advanced ones. You do this by making an obvious intended use for new players to see, while advanced players can see all the edge cases it can be applied. The complexity is gaited by the amount of knowledge you have.
As someone who was really disappointed by the level design, maybe I should try that. I did LOVE how the end game shinespark puzzles taught me new ways to use the ability, it might be fun trying it earlier on. Not sure how much I'll enjoy having to escape so many one-way lock traps though, I feel like I could easily have my precious sequence breaking taken away by just stepping on the wrong tile lol I might give it a shot and play through the game a second time
The infamous ceiling you have to shoot earlier in the game.. the enemies in the room above are more of a backup solution. The other enemies crawl along the breakable blocks within the same room you are in. They are the primary and more natural cue to progress, as they cause you to shoot the breakable blocks by accident.
That didn't work for me at first, cause unless they were in my way, I only shot enemies if I wasn't at full health. I was at full health, and they weren't in the way, so I ignored them
@@Eidlones Maybe, but I'd say the majority of players shoot enemies most of the time because they otherwise cause problems. The spiders that crawl on that ceiling can launch acid blobs from their butts, which can bounce around and hurt you, so taking them out quickly is kind of important to avoid damage. The ones above you in the ceiling are also the annoying kind that are best dealt with by melee counter.
I feel like I played a different game than everyone else. I found that I was lost very often. Idk if it was my bad memory or if I didn't pay enough attention, but I got stumped quite a few times. I felt like I would gain an ability, discover some of the area, then spend a long time trying to figure out where to use the new ability. At one point, I remember getting an ability and searching almost the entire map before going to a small area in burenia and finally finding the boss. Am I alone in my experience?
Happend to me aswell. Think the issue is, if you go for collectibles inbetween (because you got a new ability to be able to reach things you remembered). If you kind of follow the game where it tries to lead you instead of exploring, it wont be as bad.
Yeah I actually had to look up where to go cause I went off looking for collectibles part way through. Went off the golden path and forgot where to go back to 😅
I am somewhat embarrassed to admit this happened to me too after getting the grapple beam. That is because I ran off the beaten path to go back to find something new to use an ability on, and I forgot where the game was pointing me.
I only got stuck finding the Varía Suit, instead of going just left, I explored all the map using the morph ball, I thought the suit was hidden in another area. The effects of playing Super and Prime 1 lol
For me personally, Dread struck the perfect balance between letting me explore and guiding me forwards. I did go right when I got the morph ball *on purpose* to go check all of those morph ball tunnels I had seen throughout the game so far... And it was slightly confusing in a cool way to realize that the final area I was targeting was where I was *supposed* to end up, just from the other side.
When it comes to the Morph Ball leading to the Varia Suit, I don't know if I've repeated a path from Point A to Point B. Granted I've only completed that section of the game 3 times, but that's sweet map design to allow for multiple paths to get to the same location. Of course, I did restart the game after the first time I got the double jump because I didn't understand the underwater jump mechanic *despite it literally being part of the description when the double jump is first obtained* and felt like I was completely stuck in the Ghavoran water, but I figured out the double jump on my second playthrough attempt. XD
Honestly - I appreciated being lead in the right direction most of the time. There was one or two times where I blanked the "obvious" progression route and accidentally explored a bunch - but since I got to explore more and pick up upgrades I missed then that was still an enjoyable experience. Mostly though, I'm just a lot busier nowadays - so I definitely appreciate a game that will give me a focused and concentrated experience if I'm willing to follow it's lead and not force myself to fight against it. Metroid Prime 1 will always have a special place in my heart - as my first Metroid game, and the one where I truly had time to explore and get lost in its environments. Metroid Dread was a concentrated romp from start to finish - and I even took the time out first time through to get 100% items. EDIT: It may have also helped that this was my second 2D Metroid game; the first being Fusion. Not being able to cakewalk the bosses definitely helped slow down my experience a little - and that might have helped break up the exploration a bit more than the average player.
This was my first Metroid game, and the strategies described here really made the experience for me. It’s not a coincidence that the most frustrating part of my first playthrough was shortly after getting the speed boost. The devs rely on you learning the shine spark to navigate easily to the teleporter that takes you to the grapple beam. I didn’t know how to shine spark and consequently got lost searching for progression in Burenia, when I was supposed to head back to Arataria through one of the teleporters mentioned in the video.
Noticed all of the "points of no return", or as I was calling them during my playthrough "one way doors", after the first couple of upgrades. I think the level design to make this happen is incredible, even though I would overall prefer a bit more freedom to explore as well. I feel like the limits on exploration would have been harder to swallow without the really fun combat, especially the boss and sub-boss fights, and the larger focus on the story than is typical in the Metroid series. And I was skeptical about the EMMIs going into this game, but those sections were awesome: frustrating to be caught but really captured the feeling of dread. This definitely felt like a soft-reboot of sorts, a way to make the genre easier to jump into for new players. And I hope lots of new players do try this out because I want huge sales numbers to encourage Nintendo to make more!
one interesting thing is that you end up studying the map just as hard as you would if you had full freedom.. you're tracing out the paths you could take, only instead of "hmm i could go this way.. or i could go that way.. which one should I do first.." with no real clue as to which path is going to ultimately be more beneficial in what order, if at all. Whereas in Dread you're tracing paths on the map going "well I can't go that way.. or that way.. oh but THIS way, I can go! .... but only if I'm careful not to go that way, which will lock me off." and it wouldn't have been so frustrating except for one or two parts where, only if you knew ahead of time, you could totally skip ahead of where it was funneling you. I'm reminded of several falling sequences where you had a brief window to grapple or dash into a gap, but if you missed it, too bad for now.
I noticed how Dread continually locked the door behind me and enticed me forward with teleporters pretty early on in my first playthrough and I felt a little underwhelmed by the exploration, but I also play metroidvanias for the lore and combat just as much as the exploration and both were incredible in Dread, so I didn't let it bog me down too much. I feel the exploration really shines in subsequent playthroughs, as backwards as that sounds, because its then that you start realizing that the game has way fewer hard backtrack locks and way more ways to get things early than you first realized. Doing a second playthrough getting grapple beam, ice missiles, and gravity suit early was a completely different experience to the normal progression, and motivated me to do the speedrun challenges for the gallery on both normal and hard mode
I usually see sequence breaks as valid paths outside the critical path, in Mark's Zero Mission Review I disagree with him disregarding them as valid alternative paths built in the game's level design The usual skills used for sequence breaking are even taught in the demo that plays on the Super Metroid title screen, I feel like the game gives you all the tools and it's just a matter of the player's creativity to use them to do things in a non- conventional way, similar to puzzle solving on Zelda BotW. But on Dreads's case, they purposely give you the morphball and bombs later in the game and limit the sufaces the wall jump work on so they can have more control over the player. The things needed for sequence breaking are like special secrets you will only find out after playing the game at least once. They add replay value, but don't help with the exploration on your first playthrough.
To be honest, I really wish that Dread kept map progress on new game plus the way Fusion does. I want to try replaying the game to see if I can’t get some of those upgrades out of sequence, but the fact that I’d have to literally plan it out *before* starting the game rather than being able to check around and figure out where the routes I missed the first time around are makes it seem less possible to me…
I'm personally a completionist when it comes to Metroidvania's, and this game was pretty great for that, because it was generally clear which way I had to go, so I would check around the other ways and clear out what I could find, then move on. That said, the one-way gates got INCREDIBLY frustrating when I was finishing up the last few unlockables, because a path would look clear on the map, but then it wouldn't be when I got there. I wish a late game powerup (say, power bombs) could have been able to destroy the flip gates. It would have saved a lot of tedium.
You must not have known then that if you take the elevator to Itorash and then go back down, all of the teleporters will connect to each other, so you can go literally anywhere easily.
Agree with this a ton, knowing where you need to go is equally useful when you don't want to go that way. And those valve gates really should've been toggleable with the last powerup at least.
@@nikxneon6615 Wait, really. FFS, I decided to go collectible hunting right before going to Itorash because I thought going there would be a cutoff point, or at least it would've felt weird to leave the final boss area just after entering it in order to go collectible hunting. Well, useful for future playthroughs, I guess.
Hi Mark. Having watched your Boss Keys before, my first playthrough through Dread was with that critical eye and noticed the Points of No Return whenever they happened. Something I thought would have been good to talk about was the much more detailed map in Dread than in previous Metroid games. Hollow Knight creators went with the decision of a minimally detailed map because they thought too many map markers would confuse players. Mercury Steam went in the complete other direction with Dread and noted every single obstacle in the path. And, ultimately, I think that is the better decision. In one of Nerrel's videos, he made an interesting note: the more detailed map listing every obstacle could effectively serve as another form of waypoint marker. The difference is, whereas games like Zero Mission explicitly put your next destination on the map, the more detailed map in Dread served to show various points of interest the player could now explore with their new abilities. It just doesn't explicitly tell you "You can get through THESE obstacles now!". And leaves you to find these disguised "waypoint markers" on the map screen for yourself. The more detailed map served as a tool to guide the player in finding the path forward. In a way that the player could find on their own, by effectively putting multiple "waypoint markers" on the map at once, disguised as obstacles on a more detailed map. And cutting down on player frustration of having to make their own notes.
You make a very good point about how the game uses the map to guide the player in a subtle, but effective way. Having every single "lock" marked on the map cuts down on the frustration a first time player might experience trying to remember all the places where they might have the ability to use a certain powerup to progress.
Excellent review/breakdown. I’m of the exploration crew and I sort of felt like I was getting dragged around the entire time. Once I decided to lean into it I felt a lot better about being taken for a guided tour.
after learning about the one-way door in Super, I started paying attention to points of no return, so I noticed a lot of the ones in Dread, but I also learned to welcome them and keep some of them in mind, especially with the ability to place markers in the map. They didn't feel as much like a direct interference in my gameplay but rather an invitation to visit the place again later, after uncovering more of the world elsewhere. I actually made sure to backtrack after finding out about Itorash so I could get some upgrades and visit some more hidden areas. The only thing I didn't do were the shinespark puzzles because I didn't know at the time that it was given more flexible mechanics and thought they would require some very heavy execution
The devs had a very difficult task balancing the, as you said, different "types" of players. Beyond the ones you mentioned, there are also the newcomers to the series who haven't played Super or Zero Mission, and aren't familiar with a plethora of indy titles available. They probably saw the trailer at E3 and the various highly enthusiastic reactions from various "influencers," said "this looks pretty awesome," and picked up a copy. They needed to be catered to as well. In my opinion, Dread struck as perfect a balance there could be in catering towards all of these concerns. In my first play through, I certainly noticed the one-way doors and the conveniently placed teleporters to keep distant locks easily accessible. I was largely thankful for them for the reasons you state (lower overall cognitive load). However, there were also times I did get lost (usually just missing the now openable "lock") and I ended up spending a bit of time doing a tour through old areas before finding the main path again. That was all time well spent, in my opinion. I always ended up picking up at least two or three new goodies, and provided a bit of a respite from always charging ahead. So, for me, it was a very classic Metroid experience, modernized for a broader audience without sacrificing the core aspects of the genre. When you consider it from that perspective, it really is quite an achievement, and I think it deserves all the praise it has been given. On top of that, the fact that you can sequence break the game and that the devs intended for you to be able to do so, goes to show that there's additional depth to be found in the game beyond the obvious intended path. You just have to work a bit harder to find them. Overall, the game exceeded just about all my expectations. In fact, the only complaints I had about the game are some of the damn shinespark puzzles. I had no problem locating all the items in the game without resorting to a guide (a first for me among all the Metroid games I've played), but I did need to lookup how to execute a couple of the shinespark sequences. This is probably just a personal preference; I know a lot of people really like them and find them rewarding. I just find them frustrating and un-intuitive. At least none of the shinespark puzzles were as difficult as some of those in Zero Mission (though the one in Burenia was close). Beyond that, I think it could have done away with a few of the one-way doors (or provided a way to remove them once they had served their purpose). But for me that's a very minor thing.
wow you put it perfectly. I've never seen someone summarize their thoughts in the youtube comments and hit the nail on the head so well. You're spitting fax 🗣️
To me, the video is incomplete because of tht very reason to not include sequence breaking into it. It is clearly intended and designed by he developers and Metroid has been about breaking the sequence since the very first game. It is not a traditional metroidvania where you can explore multiple paths at once and all of them are easy to find. In metroid, if you want to sequence break, you have to work for it. Also, shinespark puzzles are all about experimentation: "what can I do with this new item?" In every Metroid game speedboosting and shinesparking is one of the most rewarding upgrades you find since it tests your abilities as a player. All you have to do is sit down and figure out what you can do with it. I welcome that the game didn't tell the player how to do advanced tech and just let the player loose and free to figure out for themselves like Old school Metroid always did.
They didn't balance for several types of players. They only balanced it for casuals who don't actually like to explore. If they balanced it for several types of players then they wouldn't have made the design in such a way that blocks exploration for those that like to explore.
Well said. I would also add other complaints. The game isn't kool with those who prefer a d pad lol. That being said it makes playing with a analog in a side scroller better than any side scroller I've played... I think... I guess... Also load times are shit when traveling to new locations on the trolly or teleport thingy. Thought teleporting was supposed to be fast lol.
I found the game was extremely close to being a perfect metroid game (in my opinion) and that the only thing that could made it better was some more exploration or just slightly less guidance because I like taking a step back and trying to figure out what to do next but I also understand that a perfect balance is very difficult. However I feel like I should get stuck like that in metroid game more than never
Yeah, the game "tricked" me for the first few hours; I understood what it was doing, but BUT it started letting the other parts of my brain creep to the forefront for items and speedrunning. Other than Super M, this is the first Metroid game that I immediately started playing again after the credits, knowing that I wanted to get all the items. The shine spark puzzles were mindblowingly fun to work out, then execute, which took even longer. In other Metroid games, if I got stuck on a shinespark puzzle that wasn't essential, I would just leave it behind. I guess what I'm trying to say is that in previous games ALL I cared was exploration (thanks Super M and Prime), NOW I play for completion, speed-running, AND sequence breaking, which is crazy to me.
@@electroamp I also liked that the power bombs had good utility in the last boss battle. That sun like thing killed me way too many times until I discovered its weakness.
I literally just finished my first playthrough of Dread and I gotta say, it shot immediately up in my top 10 games ever. I've always loved the Metroid series, but in previous games I would often stop playing when I got frustrated by getting lost and not remembering where I'm supposed to go, so this "breadcrumbs" that you mention are perfect for me. Dread is such an incredible addition to the series, hopefully not the last one.
I picked up on all of this while playing, and with my history with the series, I honestly felt a little disappointed with how often you got locked in to the critical path. I don't mean to say that there's anything wrong with what Mercury Steam did (in fact, I'm amazed and impressed with their work), but I'm the kind of person who appreciates vague and cryptic secrets in exploration-focused games. Still, it was an excellent experience that I loved the whole way through.
@Lee Griffiths I think you have to take that balance if you want metroid to appeal to a wider audience. It’s nowhere near as linear and strict as fusion, but it doesn’t force newcomers to be lost for hours at a time because they don’t speak the metroid language. I think it’s a necessary evil, and the way the game lets you shrug off those rails if you try really hard (getting power ups early and skipping enemies, even skipping whole seemingly necessary items) is a testament to how amazingly this game was designed. I hate that some people had a bad experience with the guidance, but I believe that the game was designed for you if you’re willing to go back through a second and third time. Some of the most fun I’ve had with a metroid game has been me and my brothers plotting out a route to do a reverse boss order run of this game. While we ultimate realized we just didn’t have the tech to make it work, I still believe it’s possible (if you consider only bosses with boss doors). Regardless, imo this is a massive leap forward to creating a metroid game that holds up to super in every way, it’s not quite there yet, but I believe they can keep making progress to get there.
@Lee Griffiths This was 100% my problem with the game. Still really enjoyed it, but every time I got an upgrade I would think to myself "Oh! I remember this and this place where I can use it!" and happily go back to use it, only to find out I've been blocked out of 90% of the area and am being (in my opinion not so subtly) railroaded forward. So many times I'd be trying to explore and accidentally stumble upon an area that blocked me in, leaving large swaths of the map untouched with no idea what's in them or how much I actually missed. My favorite part of some of the more modern metroidvanias that I've played is how free the experience felt, and I never felt free in dread. Being unable to reach an area because I lack the powerup is one thing, but being blocked in by contrived falling debris, randomly plants appearing for no reason, or suddenly locked doors did not feel good. These methods did not feel subtle, and while this would have been more difficult, I feel like some kind of effort could have been made to keep us in the areas we are supposed to be in without changing the world to lock us in and actually railroading us.
The sad part is that even though sequence breaking is possible to spice up the gameplay, the game still forces you to do the critical path because of another item roadblock instead of letting us skip through certain sections. If you get the Grapple Beam and Bombs early, you can head straight to Burenia and get the Flash Shift, but you still won't be able to get far enough until you defeat Kraid in Cataris to obtain the Diffusion Beam, which is needed to access the lower section of Dairon to get the Speed Booster.
we need to petition to encourage metroidvania devs to put "jaffe rooms" in as a joke that are near identical to the room in dread just to keep the joke going lol
An important (and likely intended) effect of Metroid Dread's map design is that it makes it easier to come back to the game after putting it down for a few days. If you play the game in one sitting, it might feel like you never need to fit too much into your memory, but if you take frequent breaks, it's nice that you can quickly get back onto the critical path without having to re-explore for hours and regenerating your mental map. I don't think you noticed or appreciated this feature very much. Also, Metroid Dread's global map design is actually very interconnected - it's just not as obvious. You need to work harder to break off of the critical path than previous games. Metroid Dread has shifted away from 'obvious complexity' and towards 'hidden complexity.' Obvious complexity is something that intimidates newcomers to the series by adding more of barrier to entry, whereas hidden complexity gives you the best of both worlds: new players won't notice it (hence, 'hidden'), but experienced players will enjoy the challenge of digging for the challenge. If you completed the game with only 39% completion, then clearly you didn't seek out the 'hidden complexity' of Metroid Dread.
Well to me, there is a big problem of reasons to explore this hidden complexity as you phrase it. At the beginning I was trying to explore out of the way but I was blocked obviously and since the collectibles have no value and are just reachable by blasting every wall basically, I had 0 motivation to actually seek this hidden complexity and felt a bit bored by it. Too bad
@@poledra4153 It only seemed easy for you *because* you waited until you had every powerup. For many items, there are multiple solutions, and the "easy" solutions usually use late-game items like Space Jump boots and Gravity Suit, as well as the interconnected teleportals. There are some pretty tough item "puzzles" that require creative ability usage and backtracking if you want to collect them earlier. That's an example of hidden complexity that was, well, hidden to you.
@@hugo_ghp7804 Chances are that in many situations where you were "blocked obviously" there was actually some creative way to backtrack or explore that you simply missed. If you weren't "motivated" enough to look for challenges, that's not really the game's fault. Metroid Dread is actually very open-ended, and there are several intentional sequence breaks that the developers put in that only motivated players are going to find.
I'm kinda in two minds so far with Dread. On the one hand the feeling of movement and navigation is superb, but on the other there's been times where I got a new power and felt like I was being shuffled towards the next one rather than being given a chance to explore and find the way myself. Like the avenues for discovery were a little too narrow. Overall I am enjoying it a lot though.
Until I started sequence breaking, the only main I felt was that I was being herded into moving where the devs wanted me to go. It felt like Fusion to me, but without the blinky "TARGET" label on my map.
In my opinion that feeling comes from how claustrophobic the rooms are. Look at the map, and you see that each room is shaped exactly how it needs to be. In super metroid, the rooms are much larger and rectangular, making them more open. In my opinion that openness adds much more to atmosphere than the rooms shaped just how the have to be, and then crammed with stuff.
I got a little annoyed by the point of no returns at times, like when I got an ability, remembered an item I could now get on the other side of the biome, but that part was now locked off and I was forced to move on. But the combat and pacing was near perfect, so I loved the game and the end-game item hunt, going trough all areas with all abilitys and being able to just easily cross all of those Points was very satisfying. Plus some of the items are very well hidden or behind tricky speed-booster puzzles, so there was still a sense of exploration in that item hunt.
I really strongly feel like the game's number scale for damage and health is way off basically from Kraid onward. Did you know the golden Chozo bot deals 300-400 damage with its spear? Why do we have so many health upgrades for the sole purpose of allowing you to survive 3 or 4 hits to an endgame boss? If you want it to be a threat, then make it feel earned, rather than the same boss for the fifth time just with More Numbers. I did 100% item completion and got to the final boss and then got stunlocked in the corner for more than have my health because I missed a jump over his melee combo and he just stood on me. Metroid Dread may be the finest playing Metroid game to date, but it is by no means perfect in execution.
@@JoshTheValiant The flaw with that argument is that all the bosses in this game rely heavily on pattern recognition. After you've been beaten enough times, eventually you'll be able to beat a boss with minimal scratches. Therefore, upping the damage and restricting your margins of error is, in my opinion anyway, a decent way to make the boss threatening. For sure, fighting a recolor of a previous boss isn't that big a deal since the strategy doesn't change, but knowing that it will hit you harder and demand even more precision from you is a perfect way for them to be more threatening for this game.
I didn't think they final boss could stunlock you. Yes, you can absolutely get cornered, but there was always just enough room to escape after a combo, so long as I was jumping toward the wall behind me, and not toward the boss (as I erroneously tried on a few of my attempts). The latter will definitely make you feel like you get stuck there, but you're not actually.
I kept getting lost specifically in a loop between a couple of the teleports, and I can't quite recall which item I was missing for progression. I should probably play through again.
As someone who played Metroid in the ‘80s and had played every mainline game, Dread feels more like a Metroid-inspired game than a true Metroid game. Superficially it seems like a Metroid game, but there’s a lot they didn’t get right. Namely the atmosphere, music, exploration. All of this in exchange for many boss fights and mini-boss fights. It felt like a game that was way more skills-focused. I’m questioning if we’ll ever get a proper 2D Metroid game again. I enjoyed Samus Returns, but something was lost with Dread. I’m hoping Nintendo gives someone else a crack at the series or does it in-house next. Something like Super or Zero Mission with updated graphics and gameplay.
@@Labyrinth1010 "As someone who played Metroid in the '80s" ... ... Dude. You sound absolutely miserable to be around. Go back to playing Metroid on the NES. Dread is easily one of the finest installments of the Metroid series since Prime. You do not come off as superior for playing Metroid in the 80's; you come off like an ass.
@@0ThrowawayAccount0 piss off, dude. It’s a freaking opinion. The gold standard of Metroid games is Super. How much of that game is about combat and skill? Metroid games are first and foremost about exploring, not combat. There are many that share my opinion. It’s ok to have different opinions on things. Really. It’s ok. Mercury Steam didn’t get the vibe right, the essence of a Metroid game. Retro did. Prime got it right.
Honestly I felt it's the way fusion should have been done. It gives the player some sense of agency, but allowing the developer to tailor the experience and narrative.
I can’t stand spending hours not sure where to go. Hollow Knight was really frustrating to me in that way. So something like this is more up my alley - the freer exploration for me came at the end when I was looking for pickups.
Yep, I absolutely loved Dread's fast pace. I already went though it twice to get the bonus endings and it's great how you're constantly guided by the world. I think I prefer this style to the other games. You're not constantly lost or just pushing towards a dot on the map.
I kinda enjoyed this setup for that reason as well. On my first playthrough i just progressed naturally, grabbed whatever upgrades i came across and made my way to the end. Second playthrough, i followed mostly the same progression, and then once i got the final upgrade, i decided to go back and explore the world to get 100%. I liked how you can focus on advancement at first, and then switch gears and focus on pickups. And since controlling Samus and moving around the map is so enjoyable anyway, and the puzzles are so well crafted, going back and finding everything across the map was a wonderful experience for me. And then even after all that, i still had the option to start more playthroughs and play around with exploring to find possible sequence breaks. What's not to love?
Yeah I gave up on Hollow Knight for that reason. Not only is it hard to tell where you need to go, it takes forever to move around the map so it makes it a chore to try things out. There's too many places to go at once when I haven't even unlocked all the moves yet.
Got this for Christmas some time ago. Those points of no return bugged me from day 1. I wanted to explore and go back to the places I remembered to go to. When I stopped resisting I finished the game in a couple of hours. It felt like the game had fun with me and more like a movie...
Extremely. If I didn't want the possibility of backtracking or getting lost, I wouldn't have played every Metroid before Dread. It's part of what makes this genre. Get more capable, expand your reach into world. Dread actively thwarts that key mechanic. And that just blows.
@@ebi_tempura That might help in a couple scenarios but not in most. Dread uses a wide variety of ways to lock you into their path including high water, rotating barricades, one-way doors, and even freezing the entire map for no reason and no pay off.
For me, the effectiveness of worlds that feel massive and complex yet never makes you feel lost or confused is what separates a finish from a completion, as much as I loved super metroid, the thought of 100% completing that game sends chills down my spine (I still haven't even finished it yet), and for me personally, dreads way of steering me in the right direction without shouting it is what led me to 100% it multiple times. And best of all, I never had to look at a guide once (I love you Hollow Knight, but I was never gonna get close to 100 without some help). So yeah, to each their own, everyone has a different take on what they like about metroid and thats ok, great vid as per usual.
Yeah I love hollow knight but don't play it if you are a 100% completionist and refuse to look up guides. The devs have said multiple times they don't want people to find everything. On one hand it's part of what makes that game feel massive, you can walk through the crossroads for the 16th time and notice a breakable wall. That wall leads to a whole freaking boss fight. What else did you miss?? On the other hand I think the true ending was a little too hidden, I get it was supposed to be for people who really sunk their teeth in but in practice most people are just going to look up a guide.
Yeah I get that, its something I respect A ton, but I'm A completionist at heart a I could resist getting 100% on that game, its just that good (never going to make it to 112% though, godmaster can step on a lego brick)
I had a blast with Dread, but I did feel let down by its guided linearity. I want to get lost and explore. After awhile I realized the game was putting me exactly where I needed to be, and took some of the magic out of what I am attracted to in metroidvanias.
I remember fighting the linear aspect and based on my experience from other Metroid games, I instantly back tracked and that's actually what caused me to get lost or felt I was soft locked. I picked up on the navigation aspect based on the teleport locations that made it undeniable that I was in the right area. I also remember getting the bombs and bomb jumping my way into secret areas and getting the nostalgic Metroid feeling I was expecting. I loved it!
@@metalicarus8372 a games journalist who got stuck in the room at 13:15 which I also have begun to call ''The Jaffe Room'' That's probably the reference being made :) The clip I've seen shows him going to ALL the different blocked off paths before going back, then proceeds to make zero effort at moving forward, because aparently, ''all rooms are dead ends'' Well, this is a metroid game, if all rooms are dead ends, start blasting.
I remember when I got to Dairon and encountered the Yellow Emmi, it was impossible to move forward because of the platform that raises a wall. I gave up trying and went to Cataris, not knowing that was exactly what I needed to do.
I actually noticed that too and it pissed me off. I wanted to see what I had missed and clear out the area first, but the game said I had to go the way they wanted.
I would love to go back and see my first playthrough since I hated how much I was being led forwards by the game that I just wanted to go explore something elsewhere... and yeah i got lost and slowly accepted that the game was just going to push me forwards til the end and then I would have a fully open map to explore with all of the abilities. By the time I beat the game I didn't want to explore it and felt like that entire experience wasn't really exploring at all.
The beauty of dread is this video is kinda right and wrong. Yes you can be guided but the devs knew how old school fans would take this, so they encourage just breaking the hell out of the game with all the sequence breaks. To the point of it even influencing boss design.
@@BMW-sd6nn there’s literally no reason for me to ever not get grapple beam & gravity suit early because not only are they directly on the normal path so you don’t have to go out of your way (unlike bombs, flash shift, speed booster, or super missiles early. those are still fun but they’re such detours i don’t usually bother) but they’re also just such insane timesavers that don’t require any glitches
@@BMW-sd6nn There's twice as much areas where sequence breaking is discouraged, like how they changed how heat damage works. It's "You're allowed to sequence break as long as we let you"
@@ezralaguna Sorry can't get you link right now but I think its on the Japanese Nintendo youtube channel and its tips for the demo if that helps. The first tip actually shows the room David Jaffe got stuck in, so maybe they felt it wasn't obvious enough... or they are having a jibe at him.
Honestly this aspect of the game, the frequency of the "point of no return" bugged me. I'd get a new power up, want to head back to a blocked area, only to be railroaded, with the endgame having the same miniboss on loop. This game is great! Amazing bosses, Interesting lore for Metroid, but I just wanted freedom.
The pacing of Dread was my favorite part. The cut scenes and power ups were so perfectly spaced throughout the game that it always felt like I was progressing. Something that has annoyed me with other games in this genre (including Hollow Knight - which I really liked - and even some older Metroid games) was feeling like I didn't know where to go next for too long.
I felt exactly the same as you. The points of no return were the most egregious trick, and the one that frustrated me the most on my playthrough. I didn't backtrack for items until literally right before the final boss for this reason.
Same. As a fairly experienced player who really enjoys to explore, I noticed the points of no return so quickly that I started looking for when they did it just to see what they came up with. Only about 3 times did I backtrack, first 2 there was barely anything to unlock because no sufficient abilities, final time was right before final boss. And even then I felt that I might've been missing an optional ability because some of the harder speed boost puzzles (did not know fully how it worked). Still ended on 80% completion though, and enjoyed the game a whole lot. The final boss was also perfect imo. All that buildup about Raven being a challenging foe, and boy did he deliver his punches while brushing off almost all damage.
I think that might have been a mistake. Every time i found something out of reach with my current abilities, i marked them on my map. Whenever i got a new ability, i would try to return to those spots and was confronted with the points of no return. Those then didn't register at all like roadblocks, but like any other puzzle in the game instead. Also made it so i never took a "cleared" area for granted, and helped me feel lost and in danger for much longer than they could have done with only new areas being unknown territory. Felt like the map itself was an enemy to be beaten at its own game, rather than just a set of walls guiding me to the next story beat. This also allowed me to find weird ways to beat puzzles in ways i wasn't sure were intended at the time. I had a blast.
I actually backtracked fairly often, and was surprised at how open it was. There were several one-way doors, but most of them could be bypassed if you didn’t try to go back immediately after the shut. The only doors that frustrated me were the ones in Ghavoran as I felt the training wheels should be off. Other than that and a bit of over reliance on Teleportals in a few instances, I thought the exploration was great, definitely better than Fusion
As one of the many that grew up on Fusion, I took to Dread’s level design like a snug glove. Admittedly, I’m a kind of player that doesn’t really enjoy getting lost at all, and I could *not* find things to enjoy from Hollow Knight because of it. The straightforward action, and the ease with which the level design guides you were things that kept me coming back to Fusion a lot. They were so enjoyable on their own that it got me to do “100% Under 2 hour runs” way back then. So to me, Dread felt more than anything like a true evolution of Fusion’s design. It’s dialogue is short and easy to breeze through, and isn’t forceful about where to go. Stuff like the Flash Shift and improved Counter keep combat fast and kinetic, and make bosses even more of a joy to destroy. And the structure and scale of the game means that it’s very replayable. And while yeah, for basically any first time run, stuff like sequence breaks aren’t something you’ll think about, those things create more incentive to replay. To experiment, and see what you can do with knowledge of the map beforehand. That’s something I admired about Super and Zero Mission, even if I never got as much into those games. There’s definitely a good argument to be made over “Exploratory Metroid” Vs “Straightforward-Action Metroid”, but I think it’s possible for both sides to exist.
I believe that this would be a very cool field to advance the debates beyond what has already been accumulated. how to maintain this balance? what are the challenges that arise in imbalance? the comments in the video are very rich in offering different points of view and this is wonderful, even if just having flashes of other experiences already shows how much diversity and feelings the game can bring out. I would really like to see more talk about this design emerging from the notes that came in response to the video haha that would be too cool.
Super Metroid was intricately designed so that you could breeze through most of the game without backtracking or getting lost, while still retaining a nonlinear design. I think modern vania games like Hollow Knight are missing the kind of fluidity and seemlessness that Super Metroid offered.
I hadn't thought about it like that before, but you're right. Dread's design is very similar to some of the more open sections of Fusion, and it's similar to Fusion is a bunch of other ways too.
@@jonathanharoun5247 I agree. I’m playing hollow knight right now and some times ill wonder into a new area, completely explore it and gain no more clarity on it’s importantance or my progress in the game. It’s cool to have areas like this for lore, but for game design, it feels messy.
I would really love to see you take on Dread's sequence breaking more thoroughly (which I don't see as distinct from exploration, at least with a game that expects it to this extent.) You acknowledged it at the end of the video, but an analytical approach to when a sequence break significantly opens up more of Dread's map, and when it doesn't, would be fascinating. I suspect (although I'm not sure) you might appreciate that aspect of the level design more if you dig deeper into it.
sequence breaking is part of what makes metroidvania world design to begin with. You could make an entire video about how just doing red tower early in SM basically immediately breaks the entire game open.
a video about this dimension of the game would be ideal to really give that notion of "casual player" or "expert in the genre" that the developers apparently chose to create.
Even as a veteran of Metroid I actually really liked the pace this sort of level design provided. Without the game locking you back out I think navigation would be pretty tough as it’s harder for me to distinctly remember what connects to where compared with other Metroid games for some reason. I think the game more than supplements the lost difficulty on this way by making the bosses in general harder than most of the series. As well as having all the emmi sequences making exploring a faster, more frantic experience until you take that emmi down.
Me, 10 hours after finding the Phantom Cloak and having no idea what I'm supposed to be doing next, oh and also having been eaten alive about 150 times since then: "Yeah, I'm gonna need to watch this one closely."
Wait a minute... 3:36 for real!? I have the Phantom Cloak but I don't have the Morph Ball, yet somehow I have access to almost the entire map (of course, by "entire" I mean I can get to both ends of it). I must have broken something somewhere...
Dread was my first Metroid game, and my second Metroidvania. And the lack of obvious direction coupled with a very subtle but concrete adherence to the critical path helped me not feel like I was throwing myself against a wall the way I sometimes felt playing Hollow Knight. And, even though the path was more or less handed to me, I still felt very _smart_ for continually uncovering it. And, ultimately, while it could’ve been more earned in retrospect, I don’t think that smart feeling can be discounted.
I'll take the clever "invisible hand" guidance over Fusion's literal waypoints. There are plenty of sequence break opportunities for those who want them. All Metroid games are linear, the question is how "wide linear" they go.
I still think waypoints on an open ended map are the way to go tho. I've seen people whine about Hollow Knight's beginning. I've literally NEVER seen anyone do it after finding the Hollow Knight's statue - the point in which the game receives three large waypoints. Specially with how one of them essentially traps you and makes you come out on near the abyss, where the only things you can do is go collect the double jump. The devs literally did a Dread point of no-return-y, except the size of the gate and fall are so big it barely feels like it, and if the trip in there really annoys you, there's a stag station anyways. That moment was the best compromise. I think that the REAL problem with Metroid right now tho, is the lack of completely 100% optional bosses and upgrades. Yes, I know that you can skip shit. But on a conventional run through Dread, the intended path makes you visit everything except for, and that's arguable at best, the cross bomb. I wish we went back to beam sidegrades instead of strict upgrades and some were made optional and only required for 100%.
fusion's waypoints were a "this is your general destination, figure out a way to get there", and most of the time they weren't even accurate. actually finding your way there was the fun part.
@@QuintaFeira12 they don't stop whining because of the waypoints, it's because they've already liked the game and understood how it worked by the time they got that far
@@nousername191 nah, zero mission's critical path was criminally easy on those parts, you could just advance mindlessly wihtout checking the map for the marker at all. Fusion liked to present an obvious but intransitable path to your destination and then make you search for a hidden path.
I picked up on a lot of the guiding techniques quite consciously, and its really cool to see someone else repeat my thoughts back to me. Really good video, thanks!
It is amazing how Mark managed to put all my feelings about Dread into words, even when I myself struggled with explaining it myself. Im firmly in Team navigation regarding metroid games
Playing super metroid for the first time, I can only appreciate just how much Metroid Dread guides you even more. I absolutely hate getting lost in Super Metroid. I don't like feeling like I'm wasting time just because I went the wrong way. Or I didn't notice some obscure small path I could take. Or that there is an enemy that will clear the path for me. I'd rather just be guided and enjoy a well designed experience.
I never felt too guided on my first playthrough of Dread, I think they've done a really good job at making the player feel lost while also making sure that the path forward isn't unnaccessible
The problem is that they've also made sure that the path back is almost completely unaccessible. Sure, fine for players like you who just want to press forward. Awful for seasoned Metroid players who actually like to explore properly. Every time I wanted to go out of my way to explore, I was f***ing blocked.
@@thenonexistinghero Not only that, in past metroid games, they give you a new item and expect you to backtrack to be able to use these new items and find new paths. When in this game you back track get completely lost for an hour or so just to find out you needed to press forward and shoot an invisible wall.
Personally I felt like Dread was the perfect balance of linearity and non-linearity. It led to a really tight pacing and a good gameplay flow. Even after I was bottlenecked into an areas I would always make an effort to go back and explore the area I was cut off from later. Reaching 100% completion was super rewarding.
Honestly after the first world completely cuts you off from the EMMI area it really soured me on backtracking. I love the backtracking in these games, it's my favourite part, but Dread really likes to completely wall you off so many times and you just feel like you're wasting time trying to backtrack. At some point I did like Mark Brown and just got all the upgrades before really exploring the map for real - which wasn't really great.
I loved the smooth feeling of this game coming from tight controls and animations. I think this kind of exploration, which made me not get stuck too much, helped this feeling by not interrupting the journey.
The fact that what feels like exploration at first turns out to be more linear than it first appears, and in particular the idea that you're being invisibly guided along a linear path through the game is actually thematically appropriate to the game's story. I won't give any spoilers though.
@@somerandomchannel382 Oh my god I couldn't agree more... They went too far in the blocking. I feel they need to take the lesson from super metroid's highjump/icebeam lock when you fall in the room in red brinstar right after the wave beam one way: the best locks in these games can be picked without having you do shit like shoot through the wall by sliding and jumping into the ceiling... You don't technically need the varia suit in super metroid, it's just that if you're not extremely good, you will not make it through the hot areas, making those very hot areas my favorite god damn locks in the series. When I got to the first hot room in dread, I was excited to be able to do the exact same thing, only to discover that A: they all have even more locks in them, so going through them early is almost always useless, and B: you will die before you can even do the skip anyways to the 50 fucking damage per tick. There are only 3 places you can get lost in Super if you have the skills the game expects you to have (so no IBJ, shinespark, wall jumping, etc.), immediately after icebeam if you don't get the grapple beam, immediately after space jump, and the entirety of maridia. For the first two, the solution is relatively simple, just rearrange the map so there is an obvious pathway from ice beam to grapple beam/swap their locations so that you can't escape norfair/ lower brinstar without getting the more obscure upgrade and make a more direct pathway from space jump to ridley's lair. For maridia, that just needs an entire rework, because maridia SUCKS
@@somerandomchannel382 have you played it tho? I didn't yet but it seems really well designed, i don't think they went too far with the block for what i'm seeing here, since it keeps you from getting lost by going in the wrong direction BUT i'm with Boss Key in the sense that they should've made some collectables outside of the main path for those who want to explore. [But as i said, i haven't played it yet so my opinion is purely based on my other Metroid experiences and this video]
@@VCXZ883 also for me, it was very late in the game when this happened. It stops holding you hand a little, but it still leads you the right way. When you fail to see it, then you begin to wander off and get lost.
I was watching the invisible hand the whole time thinking: "Oh no! Not another Fusion!", but soon after I completed the game, I found the speedrun, and immediately, there were sequence breaks left and right and glitches being discovered like the pseudo-wave beam, and I'm optimistic about my second playthrough.
@@Itsakoopahere It's still not nearly as good as super metroid. Don't praise the game devs for skips that involve glitches, only early bombs/flash shift (a waste of time), early super missiles (virtually useless, there are no super missile outside of the intended path) and early gravity suit/cross bombs deserve any recognition for the devs, and of those only 1 is actually useful or interesting... meanwhile in super metroid, kraid is almost optional, power bombs can be gotten as your 4th item, space jump can hypothetically be skipped (but it will be PAIN), etc... I don't think getting to ridley without gravity suit is possible without glitches, but it might be. I never looked into it too hard because it was far too painful...
@@bastian_5975 I mean, we can get screw attack at any point after speedbooster. Gravity is possible soon as you have ice missiles. Space and spin boost are completely optional. You can get grapple as soon as you have Varia, and then go get bombs if you'd like. The game is pretty linear up until just before vanilla diffusion beam, at which point your options really open up (if you know the speedrun strats)
I remembered playing dread and being like, damn it’s really easy to get lost in this game. And then I played an old Castlevania game and realized, oh shit dread’s been really good at giving subtle hints of where to go all along
I think it is a near perfect balance of guidance and disorientation. I loved that it had a seemly faster pace without literally telling you where to go. I definitely got lost a few times but not enough to where the game became frustrating. It was an enjoyable experience throughout. Everything I want out of a Metroid game Excellent video BTW. Great topic to discuss and analyze.
I loved Dread to bits honestly - and I think you should really examine how the game exponentially opens up as you progress. Basically once you reach Ghavoran, the critical path becomes more of a critical yarn ball. Unlike the early grapple+bombs route which you have to go back to Kraid anyway for the Diffusion Beam, the game goes completely off the rails once you get Ice Missiles. Ice Missiles let you access the following items immediately: Cross Bombs, Gravity Suit, Storm Missiles. Storm Missiles let you access space jump, which also lets you access gravity suit. But cross bombs ALSO let you access space jump as well. Gravity suit lets you access screw attack, which lets you also access cross bombs. Screw attack also lets you access Wave Beam, which puts you back on the linear path for the end of the game with Power Bombs. Best of all - while you can see these as "sequence breaks", a LOT of people have found these alternative routes on their own, assuming them to be the intended way forward. As for my own first run of Dread, I ended up following the most basic critical path sure, but I never realized it was leading me on as I did so. I was almost defiantly going against the grain as I played, constantly thinking once I got something "ok where can I go with this that isn't the immediately obvious route", only to find myself on that route anyway.
You can get Super Missiles as soon as you get speed booster and you also have access to gravity suit as soon as you get ice missiles in ghavorran. space jump is entirely optional and you can complete the game without getting the upgrade.
"where can i go that isn't the immediately obvious route" was exactly the same thing i tried doing, and yet i still ended up on the correct path. these devs really thought of every path
i got cross bombs early on my first playthrough because i wasn't sure if the missile expansion leading to the cross bombs boss was an intentional ballspark puzzle or not and just went for it lol
As someone who’s first Metroid game was Fusion, I instantly fell in love with this game. I ended up finishing my first playthrough at around 12 hrs with 64% completion, but I’ll be playing this one for years, I’m sure.
As someone who loved hollow knight and got all achievements plus some with the bonus things like hall of gods and path of pain, Metroid Dread was phenomenal. Easily my game of the year. The combat and movement in Dread is just on another level, Samus just feels so good to control. Plus the boss fights are amazing, think the only flaw I saw with those was the x chozo warriors but otherwise enjoyed every fight. As for exploration, I’ve 100% the game four times now and while you keep sequence breaking and speed running separate from exploration, I’d argue they are one in the same. All Metroid games have pushed players to attempt sequence breaking/speedrunning with the clear time rewards. Sequence breaking simply gives players alternate methods of exploration and as you pointed out, the devs very intentionally wanted players to sequence break. For my first play through, when I noticed how the game subtlety guided the player I came to appreciate the world design so much more, and instead of taking the obvious route that was just nearby, I’d mark it in my map using the marker system and return when I had collected all the bonus gear I could scattered around the map.
I feel like it truly combines both worlds, Dread _can_ be for those veterans who are looking for ways to break the sequence, and having tons of mobility options that mastery requires a lot of skill. But it also welcomes newcomers all the same with invisible guiding techniques shown in this vid that keeps them engaged and not frustrated by giving them too many options at once. Combat is great, boss fights are great. What's not to love about this? Glad you enjoyed it man, from one Metroid fan to another.
I think they did the right move with this game. While I enjoy exploration in Metroidvanias, I also respect Metroid games trying to present something different with each installment. As someone who's a Metroidvania fan, this game felt very linear, but seeing casual people playing through it gave me another perspective and allowed me to enjoy its guided nature. It's definitely a step up from Fusion in exploration, but it also doesn't leave you clueless in many instances, like Super Metroid did. It strikes a nice medium I feel and allows people new to the genre to get a taste of the Search Action these games offer. While games like Super Metroid and Hollow Knight can be alienating at times with their open ended nature(I see no problem with that, but that's coming from a fan of the genre), Metroid Dread is a perfect entry point, I feel, next to Zero Mission and Fusion. This feels like the perfect game to gather new fans and to (hopefully) expand upon in a future sequel.
For me at least with HK so many of the alternate paths are still equate to progression. I got lost a lot but I always came out of an area with a new tool. In Super (despite loving it) I often just got kinda stuck and felt like I was just searching around the same areas over and over for that one specific way forward.
Same lmao, I realized it was my fault instantly when I looked at where I needed to go on the internet, it was right there but my idiot self just went the other way
I also got lost. Right before getting Super Missiles I went in the wrong direction and ended up wandering around the map for an hour before returning where I had been and found the missiles.
OMG, this is exactly what I thought when I was playing it. The map seems overwhelming and confusing, but somehow, you always end up where exactly need to be.
For me after learning to speedrun this game and going through it around 30 times now, i felt like i haved open this game in a way it will never feel the same way for a first timer getting items in complete different order, routes that will actually make you say "that was possible" its been truly such an amazing experience speedrunning this game and new strats are still being found. So i love this game so much.
I absolutely HATE getting lost in games. It’s so frustrating just aimlessly wandering around until you rage quit or just give up and go online to find the solution/location.
@@InvestmentBankr you sound nothing like a gatekeeper.....I agree with holdholding and FULL linearity been a bitch but come on, calling a "baby thing" is very wrong, a game should give instructions, my favorite one is grabbing my attention to the right path without telling or forcing me to go there. Every single "hard" game you like does that, dark souls freaking love that, every enemy, every grab thing should be placed to guide the player, not make them walk with no idea for where to go. This for a lot of people is boring and a game should be acessible to the most.
@@diegomedeiros456 gatekeeping is a meaningless buzzword for fear of standards. The gameplay loop IS exploration. Thats why this game isn't megaman. The close connection between key/weapon and door is obvious proof this is watered down. You can't argue games have gotten harder as time goes on. Better, maybe....maybe... to much opinion there, but harder? hell no.
While I can appreciate being challenged in exploration and navigation every so often, I absolutely *despise* being directionless to the point of wandering aimlessly for long stretches of time. A lack of direction with no foothold, nothing to latch on to when my patience exhausts, is one of the most surefire ways to get me to drop a game in irritation. There is a limit to how lost I can be before I just give up. While yes, Dread is rather aggressive in its indirect guidance, I honestly prefer to have it than not or barely at all. I thought it was all quite clever and usually pretty subtle in how it was executed. But what also deserves a mention here that wasn't touched upon in the video is the map screen. For the first time, the map will show you exactly what each door requires once you have the needed ability, where you have encountered destructible blocks and what destroys them (such blocks also stay revealed once uncovered, unlike in previous games), collectibles are marked on the map once discovered and specify if they have been collected or not, save- and transport rooms are colour-coded and hidden collectibles are hinted at through by having a section of the map flash, so you're not left bombing every wall of every room aimlessly. This further assists in navigating and especially makes the collectible hunt much more respectful of the player's time. All in all I absolutely adore Dread and man, I can't wait until this game gets to make a GDQ appearance. It's gonna be wild.
"Why you didn't get lost" Speak for yourself, you can _never_ underestimate how bad my sense of direction is! (Still loved the game, but there's a reason my completion time was 12 hours.)
@@AlexTr0uble 12 hours was like, 92%. I had to go back afterwards and do the shinespark puzzles after I beat the game (I didn't know the tricks like "walljumping while speedboosted" before).
seriously, how do you get lost in this game? I feel like its built so well that my directionless ass managed to never be "lost" for more than 1 minutes, and then I'd feel even dumber because it was kind of obvious
@@brya9681 At a couple of points late in the game, it opens up so much that there are a handful of places you can go, and even more places where you can _almost_ go, but you'd have to check to make sure. Especially if you go out of your way to explore and collect goodies everywhere, it's pretty easy to overlook or forget, like, three completely unmarked blocks you have to break.
I did find myself lost a couple times in this game, always due to the same singular accessibility failure. Occassionally you would get locked in an area, and eventually, the only way to go is blocked by one of those red heart's in the wall that you have to shoot. I'm red-green colorblind and so I would often just straight up not see the heart the first time in the room. I would end up running around the locked space in circles, completely unable to find the way to go. These red hearts are also uniquely the only destructible set piece which isn't shown on the minimap, so if I tried to scan the minimap for the "one path I haven't checked yet" there would be nothing. As the final cherry on top, most of the sections where I got lost in this way included a teleporter or travel location, making the explorable (but still constrained) space spread over one of the games few loading screens. So I would get lost, and then travel through the slow loading screens 2 or 3 times looking for a destructible block which isn't on the minimap and which I can't see as clearly due to a disability. Granted, I was never permanantly out of luck, but I was lost in this way for at least 20-30 minutes at least twice, one of which I ended up having to look up a guide to find the red heart. This could've been prevented by not using a red destructible, or even better, just putting hearts on the minimap once you've been in that room. It made for an incredibly frustrating and pace-ruining experience in an otherwise super fun and pretty well polished game.
it would be interesting to have the option to optionally release these markers, or how many are desired by the player, neh? even being able to change the color of some things would be nice.
I knew you'd notice how convenient the teleport stations are haha. It's almost like Dread doesn't want you to *get* lost, more so that they want you to *feel* lost by regularly shuffling you around the map. Throw that in with the EMMI areas, which are difficult to navigate for obvious reasons, and Dread sort of simultaneously disorients you yet keeps you making progress. Is it linear? Maybe, but it disguises it extremely well and I think it makes for a tremendous experience.
If it weren't for the Points of No Return peppered into areas a good way before getting the item you need to circumvent them so often, or another item that lets you loop back around the long way, the game would be much less linear but also a fair bit more confusing.
plus, speedrunners are breaking it apart anyway, so really it's best of both worlds
You nailed it with this analysis. I have nothing to add.
My thoughts exactly.
Typically in a game if I find I am going the "right" way, I'll purposely go in a different direction for fear of missing a secret or something, Metroid dread broke me of this, eventually I surrendered too the game and said fine I won't try and explore
Also spoilers? haven't quite finished the game yet
"Enemies on the other side of a wall can encourage you to blast through hidden blocks."
David Jaffe in shambles rn
This didn’t work for me either. Only two of those blocks are breakable, so after shooting the wall and seeing that it didn’t break, I gave up
@@duane6386 ouch
repost to make god of war devs angry
David Jaffe is a loser but even a broken clock is right twice a day. There are many, many instances with enemies on screen, but unaccessible and without destructible block between them. Even if it was intuitive, it's inconsistent and that's a problem.
@@duane6386 actually there's 4 or 5 breakable blocks in a row there.
I actually found my old Metroid habits worked against me with Dread. I think the “point of no return” implantation was good and helped me from being overwhelmed, but at times in the middle of the game I would unnecessarily backtrack and go back to explore somewhere random, when the path forward was really nearby through a tele-porter.
Same, I did a lot of unnecessary looping around lmao. Usually they'd still reward you with like one extra missile pack along the way, or the opportunity to get slightly further along a future path before coming to a second lock.
2 years later, I know, but I feel the same way. I'm just now playing it and all my old Metroid habits do not work whatsoever. The map letting you have markers on certain doors helps though
You underestimate my ability to get lost.
we got you Jaff
Same
This game was far easier to navigate than even Samus Returns, but swaps navigational difficulty for its tough combat and Emmi challenges
Try fusion, which imo is harder combat than dread but even more linear!
@@ToxikDnB544 I thought dread was harder. I even beat fusion when I was 4. Fusion is still my favorite though.
hey croton!!
@@grimruben really? To be fair I was also about that age when I beat it but I remember it taking me the best part of a year whereas I beat dread on the day it came out… albeit with the entire day dedicated to it. Felt like I was opening a Pokémon booster box in 1 day 😂
@@ToxikDnB544 did you even consider that you might be better at metroidvainas lol
I just love how THAT room is becoming a bit of a meme in the community
what room?
At 13:14 (room where u have to blast the ceiling) I think, I was shocked and amused by it too. Like DAMN that’s gonna need a lot of aloe gel for that burn.
Gotta love the Jaffe Room. You have to wonder how many game journalists got trapped in it.
The game does everything it needs to do to get you to figure that room out. The only thing it doesn't do is spell it out for you completely like oh I dunno a god of war game might.
God of war was great for combat but it wasn't about exploring. Exploration wasn't the gameplay so you had to have your hands held more... Well I guess that's how people feel anyways, I'd be fine if they let go a bit more. For Metroid though, why even play if you just have an arrow pointing you in the right direction? Even if they used other tricks to guide you in dread it's waaaaay more satisfying then just an arrow or a flashing block or whatever
I'm surprised people got stuck there since my first thought was to shoot the ceiling, but I guess it's unfair to assume they've played as much Metroid
Playing dread for me was like feeling lost at all times while still going forwards at all times. A controlled sense of lost. Very weird feeling that was. But a blast to play!
Completely agree. I always kept screwing around to find new locations, little did I know I was just following the story. My exploration was actually getting me through the mission the way the dev wanted
@@anselgrabill6316 There's a phenomenon I've been noticing for years, any games that give you multiple paths, one being the important way forward and the other being a dead end with a treasure, trying to guess things in the right order can range from mildly annoying to hugely frustrating (if the way forward locks you into a big cutscene and now you can't get back)
this one I just couldn't win with that. it's kind of cathartic finding out i was being guided.
I actually laughed out loud when I saw this title. Seems like you're on the far opposite end of the spectrum from me, haha. I was SO lost so frequently, my first playthrough took four hours longer than yours! I think I tend to be so squarely focused on action and execution in games that I overlook what other players might see as unnecessary handholding. Clues like that never seem to enter my working memory. I backtracked so far at one point that I sequence broke my way into getting the Pulse Radar after the Flash Shift, and it felt like the designers taking pity on me! Which is a good thing; I NEEDED IT.
It's my 2021 GotY for sure, easily one of my favorite Metroid games, and I've finished it four times since then. Excellent vid, it's always enlightening to see what games are like from another perspective!
I can vividly remember feeling very lost on my first and even second visit to the water area, the game has a very smooth progression curve when you are on its track, but if you fall off that track it can be a wholely different sort of lost. Not to a detriment though, I genuinely loved finding myself actually having to backtrack for any clues I'd missed, and barring one annoying floor I just somehow forgot to shoot, the whole experience feels good to play even when derailed.
Same. Was always lost.
I'm the sam got lost real fast
Same
Literally everyone I know got lost. I still love it though.
The fact that the game rewards you for sequence breaking with a secret cutscene makes this game a 10/10 for me. That level of foresight and intricate knowledge of the game’s design and how players will abuse it deserves massive praise
calling it a cutscene is kinda exaggerating. But the remarkable part is how they intentionally added that ability for sequence breakers with a hidden morph ball launcher in the boss room. You need the bombs to even uncover the launcher, though you might discover the block in front with the missiles and then come back later since all uncovered tiles like this are recorded on the map screen. Only to discover something that seems to serve no purpose... except as one of the few hints that Dread gives you that sequence breaking is indeed possible, and that the first real window for it is right before Kraid.
@@Nirual86 I need to find a video of this. I'm intrigued
Basically u need to do a tricky movement glitch to find the grapple beam than you use that to Finn’s bones which can open a secret bomb launcher in kraits room and using it sends you into his belly button and than you spam bombs and he dies
RabiRibi: how cute
How do you do this? I’ve yet to beat the game
This metroid game definitely makes you want to speedrun. The sequence breaks and movement techs make you feel like a god when you do something out of critical order, even if it was intentionally left open for you to do.
I think lots of them were intentional, there are so many really easy to do sequence breaks. And I encourage everyone to give it a go and try them in a second playthrough. The game is basically begging you to replay it, I think is a big part of its design and ignoring it is somewhat missing the point, or not trying to analyse what the developers were trying to do.
I believe that the first playthrough of Dread is more of a tutorial, so of course it is easy... you are learning the controls and the combat.
But once you do even just a few sequence breaks, the map really opens up, several teleporters and elevators become optional, you can do things out of order and even some boss fights become optional.
@@diegog1853 hehey, you make it sound like hollow knight!
@@inrevenant I honestly don't think so. I don't personally think hollow knight is a very replayable game. Specially if you like 100% completing your games. It took me 70+ hours to complete the game with the boss rush and everything. And I did attempt to do a second playthrough... That I abandoned, the start is honestly kind of slow and your initial movement ks kind of boring... Unlike super metroid or metroid dread, where you have a ton of movement options from the start, you start hollow knight really basic.
I think Hollow Knight does the metroidvania trope of exploration and getting lost better, maybe even better than super metroid. But I don't find it as replayable or as rewarding to control, specially in the early game. Loved the game though
@@diegog1853 112% (but I get what you meant)
@@diegog1853 Idk if I'm in the minority, but I adored hollow knight even more on my second playthrough! Got to 105%, excluding the pantheons, trial of the fool and NKG fight. And I'd love to play it again when I have time. To each their own.
Being a Metroid fan, I noticed the developers' tricks fairly quickly, and I thought I would hate what they were doing. I was pleasantly surprised, however, and enjoyed the wild ride they threw me on and was very impressed with how well they handled the tricks and the integration/synthesis of the map. A work of art, really, in its own right--just the design of the map itself.
I noticed it right away too, and it kept bugging me the whole game. I wanted to backtrack and freely explore and simply could not, more often than not. It felt hand-holdy in a way that wasn't at all welcome for me. I like to puzzle out how to progress the game and not have it spoon-fed. Still a very enjoyable game, and I hope they make more, even if it does the same things.
I have the exact opposite opinion. It turned me off and I stopped playing after the 4th area... I just have no desire to keep playing any longer. I liked the original Metroid more than these new carrot on a stick/guided tour hand holding gaming sessions.
I pretty quikly realized too that the next power-up was always magicly popping in front of me, but since i wanted to play the game i didn't tried too hard to get out of the way. Also, the number of locked items felt so big it was a little too sad to search them at each new power-up wich ones i unlocked so i pretty soon gave up and waited until the end of the game to 100%
@@poledra4153 Nice name? Any reference to the Belgariad/Malloreon/Polgara by David Eddings? The Wife of Belgarath?
@@CD-vb9fi
It's an anagram of leopard, but with a "é" because i talk french
I appreciate that you acknowledge the different types of players, and that different people enjoy the series for different reasons; how something that one person finds annoying is exactly what another person is looking for. I'm in the "plays multiple times" camp.
Normies ruined gaming. Developers now NEED to make games dumber cause normies refuse to learn how to deal with harder challenges.
@@sunderland69 neck
The devs knew they'd have to thread the needle between being open for series veterans without leading players by the nose, AND avoiding making new players feel overwhelmed. I'd say they nailed it about as well as I could've hoped.
100%, I much prefer this over how fusion did it.
Yes this was much better then fusion or even Zero Mission which I know people love and I did too but it still had markers pointing you to places.
Also if the game wants to lead me the first time a bit, then cool, as long as I can break it somehow in future runs which it absolutely does and I absolutely did.
The community seem to be loving it, myself included so I'm hear for it personally
Honestly I wouldn't be surprised if, at some point in the next decade, Nintendo ends up releasing an open-world style Metroid game -- like BOTW.
They already did an amazing job with BOTW, halfway did it with Sword/Shield (only part of the game), and going by the trailers for the newest pokemon game, it looks like they're going full-steam-ahead, so that's two _major_ IPs that Nintendo has transitioned to open-world style gameplay.
@@flingage this is my hope for prime 4 if I'm being honest!
The game did a great job of tricking me into thinking I was discovering my way forward with pure cleverness. But I’m also miserable at reading maps and remembering locations in video games, so Dread was the ideal Metroid experience for me.
I feel like something left out of this discussion was the need to make Metroid Dread accessible to new players, leading to the slightly more hand-holding nature of the game. Nintendo invested a ton in marketing for this game, and is likely trying to make Metroid their more mainstream grown-up game, but needs to make it easier to get into. While I love games that are more challenging to navigate and traverse, I think that (especially with Nintendo's current audience), it's challenging to get people into that on a first try. I think Metroid Dread did a fantastic job of being satisfying for Metroidvania enthusiasts while still being approachable enough for a first-timer. I think this is a great step in the right direction and I'm optimistic that as the Metroid audience grows, the games can get more complex with time.
I agree. I've never played any Metroid, but by Mark's description, this approach screamed 'make it accessible to new players' to me.
If their goal is accessibility to the most players, why not also put difficulty modes? The difficulty is clearly designed only for hardcore players, much like getting lost in some other Metroid games is designed for hardcore players. They just shifted where they decided to make it hard. Before finding where to go was the hard part, and now it's the combat that's hard. I think they sacrificed one from of accessibility (one that hurts me because I like very non linear design) in favor of another. What I'm saying I don't think the games prime philosophy was accessibility so it's a shame it sacrificed non linear design in its name.
@@EdreesesPieces dark souls is popular but It's hard, why not the same thing with metroid?
Thank you for your post, but there’s been historical examples of dumbing down games for audiences which ended up backfiring and creating disappointment with handholding.
@@TheFoodieCutie examples?
As a level designer (and a HUGE Metroid fan), I LOVED what they did with the points of no return.
The way I played the game, I placed map markers on all the spots I wanted to return to later, and then I carefully studied the entire map each time I got a new power. What I realized is that the points of no return will limit access to previous areas, but not always in the same way!
Sometimes I would come to the conclusion that I was completely unable to backtrack at that point, but other times I realized that I actually COULD go back to a certain area, but I'd have to loop around through ANOTHER area because of how a fidget spinner or a grapple block had closed one path but opened another.
That is the reason I never gave up on backtracking and getting all the items, because even though I knew that passages were always closing behind me, I never knew exactly which passages, how many, and if they'd still let me access parts of that area if I took the long way around.
Special mention definitely goes to Ghavoran, because I'd spend so much time scrolling through the map there, thinking "Wait, I can't get over there. Wait no, I can! Oh, nevermind, I can't. Hmm... Actually, I can, but unless I can fit a Screw Attack through a one-block opening, I'll have to teleport all the way down to Burenia and climb back up!" and I did, and it was fun, because to me, successfully planning a route while ogling the map is just as satisfying as actually playing the game.
That said though, I did find that the pacing jumped ahead a bit at the end, when you find yourself already standing at the final boss' doorstep before realizing that the entire world had opened up completely about an hour back. Presumably, that's where most of the cut content would've taken place, creating a bit more of a build-up and also filling out the suspiciously empty spot in the top right of the map.
And since this comment is already a wall of text, I might as well add that I really enjoy how the world is portrayed in the backgrounds of this game. If you peer into the back of the scenery, there's always some detail that connects the room to the rest of the zone, whether it's a tube that dissappears off into a vent, hinting at a secret area, the support pillars and guard station entrances that connect the Dairon labs to the surrounding cave system, or the fact that you can see the curvature of the Elun dome while descending the catwalks in western Ferenia. It feels similar to how the Souls games often let you spot upcoming locations waaaaay ahead of time, but only if you know exactly where to look and what to look for.
As a game player I hate this design mentality. I would never buy your games (if I knew you are the level designer). Why? It's simple... contrivances. This kind of level design is not thoughtful, it is "rat" in a maze levels of "someone controlling your progress" while unseen forces blocks, corrals, or prods you towards something. There is a reason many fans of Metroid did not receive Dread very well, I am one of them. I played the original Metroid on NES so I am "old school".
This problem is not just confined to Metroid Dredd, but when paths are "arbitrarily" blocked like this it breaks immersion because it begs the question "who did that to me? and why?". Now... if this "fits" into the game narrative then that is "fun" for example... when you entered a boss room in Super Metroid that door would "lock"... you see THAT makes sense. But in Dread where rocks fall blocking your path, or water levels change, or specially & conveniently placed explosion rocks are both blocking and providing access to new areas while blocking old ones does NOT make sense and it offends a scruitinous mind. Metal Gear on the nes worked in similar ways. You had to find keys to get through doors, but all of that makes excellence sense given the game setting. So it is definitely possible to do these things "right" while you and Dread are doing them all wrong.
Every game that boasts "open exploration" that has these gimmicks are a failure to me. They don't belong in them! If they must be used, then use sparingly, but Dread not only used them a plenty, it throws it right into your face. And yes... I heard the "excuses", the idea is to build "Dread" in the player making them "feel" like a rat in a maze. Well... that's fine... except they are all "natural formations" and constant caveins "well placed explosives" conveniently positioned water leveling and hidden passages are NOT natural.
To me, MetroidDread was a complete failure on all levels of what could have been a fantastic game! This is failed deverlopers taking a great IP and using it to make a game while "not understanding" what makes Super Metroid so good! The game was designed to provide sequence breaking and speeding running a thing "but according to developer logic" and THAT is a fail.
Open woulds should always be... "here is your move set" now lets see what you can do. It's NOT "here if your move set" oh... by the way... we put "gimmicks" into everything to see how well you tolerate all of these "gotcha's".
I never finished playing Dread, it is one of my "regret" purchases now because I knee jerk purchased that game expecting something great... but it was not.
I got lost at a couple points due to overlooking something. Didn't happen for long but it happens.
Yep, this game had the perfect balance between getting lost and finding things, where the "lost" part was actually enjoyable because it didn't last that long.
Happened to me once because I forgot about the diffusion charge in the charge beam 🤷🏼♂️ but yep, didn’t last long. Very satisfying when you figure it out
Me too. Like after the first elevator you have to break the wall to the left. I didn’t see the crack, so didn’t know I could break it.
I got 3 or 4 times, but when I did get lost, I got lost for a really long time. Finding the where to go after getting the space jump kept me lost for the longest time.
I got lost once and scoured the whole map looking for areas to go, and it ended up being that lava area with the blocks hanging down from the ceiling, as I didn't want to go through the lava or shoot the blocks (both of which would have worked fine haha).
I did enjoy that part as traversal feels great in Dread, and the map wasn't so huge at that point.
Can I just say I really appreciate you giving such a good summary of a feature set that DIDN'T fit your own play style? The ability to acknowledge and appreciate a games mechanics seperate to your own personal experience is admirable.
Good job, great video as always
Always a good sign of an open minded fellow.
I kinda predicted you wouldn't like Dread's world design when I was playing it, I did feel like the game was gently pushing me towards the next objective, and every time I missed the path forward, there were one of those points of no return that made it easy to find the hidden blocks I missed. Personally I think for the majority of players this is good design, since most players hate getting lost and having to remember that one room you are supposed to go next between hundreds of rooms. You can still do that in this game, in my first playthrough after I got the space jump I did remember those lights in the water area and went there on my own, without finding the teleporter, and it did feel pretty good. But for those that like to get lost and have to make mental notes like yourself, I can see why this game is a little disappointing in that regard, but for me I thought it was masterfully designed, I didn't feel like the guiding was aggressive at all like you mentioned, as you have said it's still very possible to get lost.
Yeah I noticed it immediately the game just pushes you forward, I love the game but I did find it slightly agressive... That being said the game is genius when you completely ignore the pushing forward and you te to go and break it (granted you need at least one playthrough to enjoy and execute this)
Perfectly put. Nailed it to a tee.
> I did feel like the game was gently pushing me towards the next objective
I didn't feel like the game was very gentle with its pushing. The points of no return stopped me from doing what I want several times.
It was perfect for me. It made me feel like I was a bit lost, but never actually was. The videos point about “cognitive load” is huge for me and I believe is why I mostly bounce off this genre. It’s one of the few metroidvania games I’ve ever really LOVED for this reason. Just as an example, I HATE hollow knight. It’s just the definition of confusing & overwhelming to me.
@@martfp88 Even pushing the player forward is so well engineered I think it is genius.
My most negative experience with this world design is when I finally did circle back and look into optional areas, sometime after getting the gravity suit, and finding rooms clearly designed for the varia suit: hot, but with lava at the bottom that you still need to avoid. As I made quick work of them with the gravity suit, I genuinely wondered when I had the option to go here with the varia suit. There undoubtedly was a point when I could do that, but the world design just took me all the way from varia to gravity before I broke out and started wandering.
I felt kinda sad for the rooms, like they were being actively sabotaged by the rest of the world. If you weren't dedicated to exploration for its own sake you'd never see the challenge they were designed to hold, you'd only see trivial roadblocks that don't mean anything to a late-game Samus.
This is so true. I know exactly what room you’re talking about lol
the space jump makes it feel like you're wrecking the level 8 rattata kid with your level 73 legendaries because you missed him on route 1 at the start of the game
@@dazcarrr Puzzle: Clearly for the grappling beam
Me: Space Jump go WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE
That's definitely been a theme since the gba games: the exploration after completing everything, and it does feel like it slightly breaks emersion. It's sort of what the prime series did too (though I find it slightly better since the ruins were required).
I disagree. Personally, I did all those rooms with the Varia suit, and even accidentally found sequence breaks just wandering around the map. Woops?
I was really glad to see you make a video on this. I remember never getting lost during my playthrough, so hearing about these design techniques more thoroughly makes a lot of sense. But I gotta say, while I personally don't mind either way how a Metroid game handles exploration, considering the sheer number of people I've been seeing on Twitter -- mostly a casual audience -- talk about just how lost they've been getting for hours, DESPITE this design in the game, I almost wonder if it would've ended up alienating too many casual newcomers if it was TOO spaghetti-like. It's curious to think about.
Either way, in terms of an addition to the series that'll no doubt be the first exposure for a TON of folk, casual or not, I feel like they made a good decision making things far easier to traverse. Perhaps in future titles that invisible hand will guide us a little less, which'll be nice for me personally, but either way, I love the direction the series is going in
It definitely would have because look at how much they went out their way to address this and people STILL got lost. Unfortunately 10+ years from now there will be even more casual audience and these games won't exist. Video games are becoming as passive as watching a movie
In the future, perhaps they could make it so going almost any direction could help you progress, such as having one key open a lot of doors. This means you can get lost, but it is still possible to progress.
You make a great point about it being too spaghetti like, PKBeats, and that makes me wonder if the next mainline Metroid game might be a little more spaghetti like after more people were exposed through dread
Absolutely agree, somehow I feel that the direction it got, is the bets one out off all, they are leaving space for every kind of player, as well as displaying a Metroid game and it's story the best way posible, with a finale that leaves a world of possibilities to go to
@@lukamagicc you are right, yet I feel that Dread is an example of the games resisting that evolution of just cinematics that play for themselves, gameplay is first, and as we said, is still hard to understand for newcomers
I feel that a lot of the choices they made about guiding the player through was for those who have never played a Metroidvania/Metroid game before, especially considering this is the first actually new 2D Metroid in years, and for that, I can't really fault them. Guiding inexperienced players via an invisible hand can be extremely helpful, considering they won't be the most knowledgeable on various things veterans know.
"Why You Didn't Get Lost in Metroid Dread"
Anakin Voice: You underestimate my power!
I noticed this myself. Whenever I would come to a teleport, I knew I was meant to go through it at that exact moment. I literally never got lost once from beginning to end.
This was my first ever metroidvania and personally, I’m really glad the game was so linearly obvious. I was worried going in that I’d get lost and give up (and I nearly did on a few occasions, most embarrassing that exact room where you had to shoot the ceiling), but thanks to the path being so intuitive, I blasted through my first run and played twice more, 100%ing it (my first 100% ever) on the third. Thanks to this, I feel much more comfortable/interested in playing more, harder metroidvanias in the future.
I’m also much more into fighting games a la Hyrule Warriors, so the timing-based and pattern-learning boss battles were really rewarding for me, which improved my experience of the game as well.
This isn't a metroidvania game. It's a Metroid game.
@@moderusprime metroidvania
Play Hollow Knight if you want a bigger world.
@@raul4033 metroid. Castlevania (sotn) "borrowed" from metroid. Metroidvania is for the ps kids that didn't grow up on Nintendo and metroid
@@raul4033 yeah Metroidvania is more of a genre inspired by Metroid (and Castlevania I think) this would not include Metroid itself
Surprisingly as backwards as it sounds, the more you replay dread the more open it becomes and entices exploration. The sequence breaks you mentioned where nice, but by far not the end of it. The game deliberately tries to teach you tricks on the first playthrough, which you can use on subsequent playthroughs.
If you are going for 100% which many of us are on our first playthrough, you are confronted with really complicated shinespark puzzles. What players don’t know, these puzzles give you the basics for shinesparking end game. Why end game? Because it will be important on a later playthrough.
The second playthrough you play through. You are going to ask yourself, can I do this with that, only to be rewarded with opening up the gated map, leading to early boss fights and or early items.
What players don’t know is that the entire map was made to be sequence broken. Many blocks, secret passages are consecutively placed to make guide you to an item, in an unintended order. The best part, if you get said item early, the devs planned it, leading you to getting another item early and another.
Making an entirely different Route, while being able to get lost and explore the whole map.
Most of the time you feel like you are outsmarting the devs, only to notice, that they made a secret route, to an upgrade.
And here’s the best part, those secret routes, are never meant to be explored on a normal playthrough. They don’t have tanks or are connected to the intended route. They are just there to be for sequence breaking. Best example. The very first EMMI zone features secret tunnels throughout frozen artaria, to lead you to the screw attack before experiment Z-57. After the shinespark puzzle in Burenia, there are secret tunnels that lead directly to the room pre gravity suit. An entire room has been added in Dairon, to get thr grapple beam early, and with it (you can also get following upgrade without the GB) you can get the bombs, with which you can get the flash shift and pulse radar early. Before Kraid mind you! All Aeion Abilities within early game.
If you cleverly shinespark in Dairon, you can get the Super Missiles early, which are a great help for bosses like the chozo soldiers and Drogyga.
After getting the ice missiles, you can get the cross bombs early by sequence breaking out of an intended area with the shinespark. In the same room, you can get to Burenia early ro get the gravity suit early, of course shinesparking required. In Ferenia, with cross bombs and the shinespark, you can get the space jump early. With the shinespark and screw attack you can kill escue in 10 seconds. The gravity suit, makes the purple EMMI sections a breeze. And all of these are dev intended and don’t require glitches, but clever thinking.
If you sequence break one item, you are led by an invisible hand to sequence break all of them.
70% of the items are early obtainable, without glitches!!! All being intended by the developers!!!
Talking abouz the first run through dread is doing a major disservice to the true openness of the Game. The openness may be hidden at fist, but the first playthrough is there to teach you, how to break out of the shell! All of those Missile tanks and E Tanks that where only possible with Shinesparking, where a tutorial for the „hidden” game experience for dread.
So if any if you think Dread is linear and focuses less on exploration, please try sequence breaking the game. Only then you will truly experience the brilliant game design of Metroid Dread
Of course Super is still superior in the SB department, with the reverse boss rush and all. But Dread comes really really close to Super Metroids openness regarding sequence breaking. Dread is significantly more open in that regard than Zero Mission.
Fair points and it's cool that Metroid offers this style of repeat play, but personally I found that it made the first playthrough kinda bland. The map felt so mechanical and artificial, not like an organic world I ever wanted to learn more about.
I have done a sequence break playthrough in dread and can second this post but I absolutely disagree with Dread being more open to sequence breaking than zero mission. In ZM you are free to not pick up most upgrades and finish the game with just the morph ball, a single missile tank, power grip, bombs, ice beam and the 3 unknown items required for a 9% item completion just because the varia suit is given automatically when you get the fully powered suit.
You can fight ridley before kraid, grab the screw attack before the varia suit, get super missiles early, there are many different routes you can take to beat the game, all developer intended and also has a special ending illustration for hard mode under 15%. It's definitely the second most open game in the series for sequence breaking.
Kinda reminds me of what Mark Rosewater would call lenticular design. For a card game, you can make a card that seems simple to newer players yet complex to advanced ones. You do this by making an obvious intended use for new players to see, while advanced players can see all the edge cases it can be applied. The complexity is gaited by the amount of knowledge you have.
As someone who was really disappointed by the level design, maybe I should try that. I did LOVE how the end game shinespark puzzles taught me new ways to use the ability, it might be fun trying it earlier on. Not sure how much I'll enjoy having to escape so many one-way lock traps though, I feel like I could easily have my precious sequence breaking taken away by just stepping on the wrong tile lol
I might give it a shot and play through the game a second time
He needs to pin this comment !!
The infamous ceiling you have to shoot earlier in the game.. the enemies in the room above are more of a backup solution. The other enemies crawl along the breakable blocks within the same room you are in. They are the primary and more natural cue to progress, as they cause you to shoot the breakable blocks by accident.
That didn't work for me at first, cause unless they were in my way, I only shot enemies if I wasn't at full health. I was at full health, and they weren't in the way, so I ignored them
@@Eidlones Maybe, but I'd say the majority of players shoot enemies most of the time because they otherwise cause problems. The spiders that crawl on that ceiling can launch acid blobs from their butts, which can bounce around and hurt you, so taking them out quickly is kind of important to avoid damage. The ones above you in the ceiling are also the annoying kind that are best dealt with by melee counter.
Ahhhhhh the famous "David" room!
I just found myself shooting missiles at anything remotely suspicious, but this isn't my first metroid experience.
I don't remember getting stuck at that room at all. I probably shot at the other enemies and accidentally hit the blocks
I feel like I played a different game than everyone else. I found that I was lost very often. Idk if it was my bad memory or if I didn't pay enough attention, but I got stumped quite a few times. I felt like I would gain an ability, discover some of the area, then spend a long time trying to figure out where to use the new ability. At one point, I remember getting an ability and searching almost the entire map before going to a small area in burenia and finally finding the boss. Am I alone in my experience?
Happend to me aswell. Think the issue is, if you go for collectibles inbetween (because you got a new ability to be able to reach things you remembered). If you kind of follow the game where it tries to lead you instead of exploring, it wont be as bad.
Yeah I actually had to look up where to go cause I went off looking for collectibles part way through. Went off the golden path and forgot where to go back to 😅
I am somewhat embarrassed to admit this happened to me too after getting the grapple beam. That is because I ran off the beaten path to go back to find something new to use an ability on, and I forgot where the game was pointing me.
I was the same
I only got stuck finding the Varía Suit, instead of going just left, I explored all the map using the morph ball, I thought the suit was hidden in another area. The effects of playing Super and Prime 1 lol
For me personally, Dread struck the perfect balance between letting me explore and guiding me forwards. I did go right when I got the morph ball *on purpose* to go check all of those morph ball tunnels I had seen throughout the game so far... And it was slightly confusing in a cool way to realize that the final area I was targeting was where I was *supposed* to end up, just from the other side.
When it comes to the Morph Ball leading to the Varia Suit, I don't know if I've repeated a path from Point A to Point B. Granted I've only completed that section of the game 3 times, but that's sweet map design to allow for multiple paths to get to the same location.
Of course, I did restart the game after the first time I got the double jump because I didn't understand the underwater jump mechanic *despite it literally being part of the description when the double jump is first obtained* and felt like I was completely stuck in the Ghavoran water, but I figured out the double jump on my second playthrough attempt. XD
"Why you didn't get lost in Metroid Dread?"
the only correct answer: because my name is not David Jaffe
lol
I can tell 13:16 was absolutely a jab at David Jaffe.
@@freetrader0000 Well, he got lost, so I guess he won't watch this video
Ja, very quickly the thought came to my mind that he should watch this video.... he probably won't though :P
Was that the guy who couldn't beat the cup head intro?
I actually got lost early on my first run but from a different section with hidden blocks
Honestly - I appreciated being lead in the right direction most of the time.
There was one or two times where I blanked the "obvious" progression route and accidentally explored a bunch - but since I got to explore more and pick up upgrades I missed then that was still an enjoyable experience.
Mostly though, I'm just a lot busier nowadays - so I definitely appreciate a game that will give me a focused and concentrated experience if I'm willing to follow it's lead and not force myself to fight against it.
Metroid Prime 1 will always have a special place in my heart - as my first Metroid game, and the one where I truly had time to explore and get lost in its environments. Metroid Dread was a concentrated romp from start to finish - and I even took the time out first time through to get 100% items.
EDIT: It may have also helped that this was my second 2D Metroid game; the first being Fusion. Not being able to cakewalk the bosses definitely helped slow down my experience a little - and that might have helped break up the exploration a bit more than the average player.
This was my first Metroid game, and the strategies described here really made the experience for me. It’s not a coincidence that the most frustrating part of my first playthrough was shortly after getting the speed boost. The devs rely on you learning the shine spark to navigate easily to the teleporter that takes you to the grapple beam. I didn’t know how to shine spark and consequently got lost searching for progression in Burenia, when I was supposed to head back to Arataria through one of the teleporters mentioned in the video.
Noticed all of the "points of no return", or as I was calling them during my playthrough "one way doors", after the first couple of upgrades. I think the level design to make this happen is incredible, even though I would overall prefer a bit more freedom to explore as well. I feel like the limits on exploration would have been harder to swallow without the really fun combat, especially the boss and sub-boss fights, and the larger focus on the story than is typical in the Metroid series. And I was skeptical about the EMMIs going into this game, but those sections were awesome: frustrating to be caught but really captured the feeling of dread. This definitely felt like a soft-reboot of sorts, a way to make the genre easier to jump into for new players. And I hope lots of new players do try this out because I want huge sales numbers to encourage Nintendo to make more!
one interesting thing is that you end up studying the map just as hard as you would if you had full freedom.. you're tracing out the paths you could take, only instead of "hmm i could go this way.. or i could go that way.. which one should I do first.." with no real clue as to which path is going to ultimately be more beneficial in what order, if at all. Whereas in Dread you're tracing paths on the map going "well I can't go that way.. or that way.. oh but THIS way, I can go! .... but only if I'm careful not to go that way, which will lock me off." and it wouldn't have been so frustrating except for one or two parts where, only if you knew ahead of time, you could totally skip ahead of where it was funneling you. I'm reminded of several falling sequences where you had a brief window to grapple or dash into a gap, but if you missed it, too bad for now.
Recently saw a better description: points of later return
I noticed how Dread continually locked the door behind me and enticed me forward with teleporters pretty early on in my first playthrough and I felt a little underwhelmed by the exploration, but I also play metroidvanias for the lore and combat just as much as the exploration and both were incredible in Dread, so I didn't let it bog me down too much. I feel the exploration really shines in subsequent playthroughs, as backwards as that sounds, because its then that you start realizing that the game has way fewer hard backtrack locks and way more ways to get things early than you first realized. Doing a second playthrough getting grapple beam, ice missiles, and gravity suit early was a completely different experience to the normal progression, and motivated me to do the speedrun challenges for the gallery on both normal and hard mode
I usually see sequence breaks as valid paths outside the critical path, in Mark's Zero Mission Review I disagree with him disregarding them as valid alternative paths built in the game's level design
The usual skills used for sequence breaking are even taught in the demo that plays on the Super Metroid title screen, I feel like the game gives you all the tools and it's just a matter of the player's creativity to use them to do things in a non- conventional way, similar to puzzle solving on Zelda BotW.
But on Dreads's case, they purposely give you the morphball and bombs later in the game and limit the sufaces the wall jump work on so they can have more control over the player. The things needed for sequence breaking are like special secrets you will only find out after playing the game at least once.
They add replay value, but don't help with the exploration on your first playthrough.
To be honest, I really wish that Dread kept map progress on new game plus the way Fusion does. I want to try replaying the game to see if I can’t get some of those upgrades out of sequence, but the fact that I’d have to literally plan it out *before* starting the game rather than being able to check around and figure out where the routes I missed the first time around are makes it seem less possible to me…
I'm personally a completionist when it comes to Metroidvania's, and this game was pretty great for that, because it was generally clear which way I had to go, so I would check around the other ways and clear out what I could find, then move on. That said, the one-way gates got INCREDIBLY frustrating when I was finishing up the last few unlockables, because a path would look clear on the map, but then it wouldn't be when I got there. I wish a late game powerup (say, power bombs) could have been able to destroy the flip gates. It would have saved a lot of tedium.
You must not have known then that if you take the elevator to Itorash and then go back down, all of the teleporters will connect to each other, so you can go literally anywhere easily.
Agree with this a ton, knowing where you need to go is equally useful when you don't want to go that way. And those valve gates really should've been toggleable with the last powerup at least.
@@nikxneon6615 Wait, really. FFS, I decided to go collectible hunting right before going to Itorash because I thought going there would be a cutoff point, or at least it would've felt weird to leave the final boss area just after entering it in order to go collectible hunting. Well, useful for future playthroughs, I guess.
@@nikxneon6615 Wait what do you mean? You can choose any teleporter you want as a destination? Does it tell you this?
@@Dharengo It tells you that just after unlocking the last teleporter. (I actually had the blue teleporter as my last one and not the one on Itorash)
Hi Mark.
Having watched your Boss Keys before, my first playthrough through Dread was with that critical eye and noticed the Points of No Return whenever they happened.
Something I thought would have been good to talk about was the much more detailed map in Dread than in previous Metroid games.
Hollow Knight creators went with the decision of a minimally detailed map because they thought too many map markers would confuse players.
Mercury Steam went in the complete other direction with Dread and noted every single obstacle in the path. And, ultimately, I think that is the better decision. In one of Nerrel's videos, he made an interesting note: the more detailed map listing every obstacle could effectively serve as another form of waypoint marker. The difference is, whereas games like Zero Mission explicitly put your next destination on the map, the more detailed map in Dread served to show various points of interest the player could now explore with their new abilities. It just doesn't explicitly tell you "You can get through THESE obstacles now!". And leaves you to find these disguised "waypoint markers" on the map screen for yourself.
The more detailed map served as a tool to guide the player in finding the path forward. In a way that the player could find on their own, by effectively putting multiple "waypoint markers" on the map at once, disguised as obstacles on a more detailed map. And cutting down on player frustration of having to make their own notes.
You make a very good point about how the game uses the map to guide the player in a subtle, but effective way. Having every single "lock" marked on the map cuts down on the frustration a first time player might experience trying to remember all the places where they might have the ability to use a certain powerup to progress.
Excellent review/breakdown. I’m of the exploration crew and I sort of felt like I was getting dragged around the entire time. Once I decided to lean into it I felt a lot better about being taken for a guided tour.
after learning about the one-way door in Super, I started paying attention to points of no return, so I noticed a lot of the ones in Dread, but I also learned to welcome them and keep some of them in mind, especially with the ability to place markers in the map. They didn't feel as much like a direct interference in my gameplay but rather an invitation to visit the place again later, after uncovering more of the world elsewhere.
I actually made sure to backtrack after finding out about Itorash so I could get some upgrades and visit some more hidden areas. The only thing I didn't do were the shinespark puzzles because I didn't know at the time that it was given more flexible mechanics and thought they would require some very heavy execution
The devs had a very difficult task balancing the, as you said, different "types" of players. Beyond the ones you mentioned, there are also the newcomers to the series who haven't played Super or Zero Mission, and aren't familiar with a plethora of indy titles available. They probably saw the trailer at E3 and the various highly enthusiastic reactions from various "influencers," said "this looks pretty awesome," and picked up a copy. They needed to be catered to as well. In my opinion, Dread struck as perfect a balance there could be in catering towards all of these concerns. In my first play through, I certainly noticed the one-way doors and the conveniently placed teleporters to keep distant locks easily accessible. I was largely thankful for them for the reasons you state (lower overall cognitive load). However, there were also times I did get lost (usually just missing the now openable "lock") and I ended up spending a bit of time doing a tour through old areas before finding the main path again. That was all time well spent, in my opinion. I always ended up picking up at least two or three new goodies, and provided a bit of a respite from always charging ahead. So, for me, it was a very classic Metroid experience, modernized for a broader audience without sacrificing the core aspects of the genre. When you consider it from that perspective, it really is quite an achievement, and I think it deserves all the praise it has been given. On top of that, the fact that you can sequence break the game and that the devs intended for you to be able to do so, goes to show that there's additional depth to be found in the game beyond the obvious intended path. You just have to work a bit harder to find them. Overall, the game exceeded just about all my expectations.
In fact, the only complaints I had about the game are some of the damn shinespark puzzles. I had no problem locating all the items in the game without resorting to a guide (a first for me among all the Metroid games I've played), but I did need to lookup how to execute a couple of the shinespark sequences. This is probably just a personal preference; I know a lot of people really like them and find them rewarding. I just find them frustrating and un-intuitive. At least none of the shinespark puzzles were as difficult as some of those in Zero Mission (though the one in Burenia was close). Beyond that, I think it could have done away with a few of the one-way doors (or provided a way to remove them once they had served their purpose). But for me that's a very minor thing.
wow you put it perfectly. I've never seen someone summarize their thoughts in the youtube comments and hit the nail on the head so well. You're spitting fax 🗣️
To me, the video is incomplete because of tht very reason to not include sequence breaking into it. It is clearly intended and designed by he developers and Metroid has been about breaking the sequence since the very first game. It is not a traditional metroidvania where you can explore multiple paths at once and all of them are easy to find. In metroid, if you want to sequence break, you have to work for it.
Also, shinespark puzzles are all about experimentation: "what can I do with this new item?" In every Metroid game speedboosting and shinesparking is one of the most rewarding upgrades you find since it tests your abilities as a player. All you have to do is sit down and figure out what you can do with it. I welcome that the game didn't tell the player how to do advanced tech and just let the player loose and free to figure out for themselves like Old school Metroid always did.
They didn't balance for several types of players. They only balanced it for casuals who don't actually like to explore. If they balanced it for several types of players then they wouldn't have made the design in such a way that blocks exploration for those that like to explore.
Well said. I would also add other complaints. The game isn't kool with those who prefer a d pad lol. That being said it makes playing with a analog in a side scroller better than any side scroller I've played... I think... I guess...
Also load times are shit when traveling to new locations on the trolly or teleport thingy. Thought teleporting was supposed to be fast lol.
I found the game was extremely close to being a perfect metroid game (in my opinion) and that the only thing that could made it better was some more exploration or just slightly less guidance because I like taking a step back and trying to figure out what to do next but I also understand that a perfect balance is very difficult. However I feel like I should get stuck like that in metroid game more than never
Yeah, the game "tricked" me for the first few hours; I understood what it was doing, but BUT it started letting the other parts of my brain creep to the forefront for items and speedrunning. Other than Super M, this is the first Metroid game that I immediately started playing again after the credits, knowing that I wanted to get all the items. The shine spark puzzles were mindblowingly fun to work out, then execute, which took even longer. In other Metroid games, if I got stuck on a shinespark puzzle that wasn't essential, I would just leave it behind. I guess what I'm trying to say is that in previous games ALL I cared was exploration (thanks Super M and Prime), NOW I play for completion, speed-running, AND sequence breaking, which is crazy to me.
this is a very interesting point "the game has led you to consider making these challenges more accessible than other interactions"
@@electroamp I also liked that the power bombs had good utility in the last boss battle. That sun like thing killed me way too many times until I discovered its weakness.
I literally just finished my first playthrough of Dread and I gotta say, it shot immediately up in my top 10 games ever. I've always loved the Metroid series, but in previous games I would often stop playing when I got frustrated by getting lost and not remembering where I'm supposed to go, so this "breadcrumbs" that you mention are perfect for me.
Dread is such an incredible addition to the series, hopefully not the last one.
I was eagerly waiting an episode on Metroid Dread, love this series
That makes two of us! Or maybe a million.
@@Vandreand Probably a million lol (me included)
I picked up on all of this while playing, and with my history with the series, I honestly felt a little disappointed with how often you got locked in to the critical path. I don't mean to say that there's anything wrong with what Mercury Steam did (in fact, I'm amazed and impressed with their work), but I'm the kind of person who appreciates vague and cryptic secrets in exploration-focused games. Still, it was an excellent experience that I loved the whole way through.
@Lee Griffiths yep, same. I hated feeling trapped. Imagine if you could take the teleportals anywhere...
@Lee Griffiths I think you have to take that balance if you want metroid to appeal to a wider audience. It’s nowhere near as linear and strict as fusion, but it doesn’t force newcomers to be lost for hours at a time because they don’t speak the metroid language. I think it’s a necessary evil, and the way the game lets you shrug off those rails if you try really hard (getting power ups early and skipping enemies, even skipping whole seemingly necessary items) is a testament to how amazingly this game was designed.
I hate that some people had a bad experience with the guidance, but I believe that the game was designed for you if you’re willing to go back through a second and third time. Some of the most fun I’ve had with a metroid game has been me and my brothers plotting out a route to do a reverse boss order run of this game. While we ultimate realized we just didn’t have the tech to make it work, I still believe it’s possible (if you consider only bosses with boss doors). Regardless, imo this is a massive leap forward to creating a metroid game that holds up to super in every way, it’s not quite there yet, but I believe they can keep making progress to get there.
@Lee Griffiths This was 100% my problem with the game. Still really enjoyed it, but every time I got an upgrade I would think to myself "Oh! I remember this and this place where I can use it!" and happily go back to use it, only to find out I've been blocked out of 90% of the area and am being (in my opinion not so subtly) railroaded forward. So many times I'd be trying to explore and accidentally stumble upon an area that blocked me in, leaving large swaths of the map untouched with no idea what's in them or how much I actually missed. My favorite part of some of the more modern metroidvanias that I've played is how free the experience felt, and I never felt free in dread. Being unable to reach an area because I lack the powerup is one thing, but being blocked in by contrived falling debris, randomly plants appearing for no reason, or suddenly locked doors did not feel good. These methods did not feel subtle, and while this would have been more difficult, I feel like some kind of effort could have been made to keep us in the areas we are supposed to be in without changing the world to lock us in and actually railroading us.
The sad part is that even though sequence breaking is possible to spice up the gameplay, the game still forces you to do the critical path because of another item roadblock instead of letting us skip through certain sections.
If you get the Grapple Beam and Bombs early, you can head straight to Burenia and get the Flash Shift, but you still won't be able to get far enough until you defeat Kraid in Cataris to obtain the Diffusion Beam, which is needed to access the lower section of Dairon to get the Speed Booster.
@@firebal6129 You can take teleportals to any other area... that is if you activate *all* of them near the end of the game...
“Get stuck in a room and proclaim it a crime against game design”
Shows “the room”
Is it just me or was that meant for David jaffe? 😹
Absolutely 😂😂
has to :D
YEP!
I love this subtle jab it's brilliant
we need to petition to encourage metroidvania devs to put "jaffe rooms" in as a joke that are near identical to the room in dread just to keep the joke going lol
I just killed that floating eye mini boss ... and i am freaking LOST
There's 7 of them, you're gonna need to be more specific
After those bosses you get the ability to kill the nearby emmi and get a new ability.
An important (and likely intended) effect of Metroid Dread's map design is that it makes it easier to come back to the game after putting it down for a few days. If you play the game in one sitting, it might feel like you never need to fit too much into your memory, but if you take frequent breaks, it's nice that you can quickly get back onto the critical path without having to re-explore for hours and regenerating your mental map. I don't think you noticed or appreciated this feature very much.
Also, Metroid Dread's global map design is actually very interconnected - it's just not as obvious. You need to work harder to break off of the critical path than previous games. Metroid Dread has shifted away from 'obvious complexity' and towards 'hidden complexity.' Obvious complexity is something that intimidates newcomers to the series by adding more of barrier to entry, whereas hidden complexity gives you the best of both worlds: new players won't notice it (hence, 'hidden'), but experienced players will enjoy the challenge of digging for the challenge.
If you completed the game with only 39% completion, then clearly you didn't seek out the 'hidden complexity' of Metroid Dread.
It's not hard to get 100%
I waited that the game toldme to beat Raven Beak to go back and get all the items
Good point. That is a consideration.
Well to me, there is a big problem of reasons to explore this hidden complexity as you phrase it. At the beginning I was trying to explore out of the way but I was blocked obviously and since the collectibles have no value and are just reachable by blasting every wall basically, I had 0 motivation to actually seek this hidden complexity and felt a bit bored by it. Too bad
@@poledra4153 It only seemed easy for you *because* you waited until you had every powerup. For many items, there are multiple solutions, and the "easy" solutions usually use late-game items like Space Jump boots and Gravity Suit, as well as the interconnected teleportals. There are some pretty tough item "puzzles" that require creative ability usage and backtracking if you want to collect them earlier. That's an example of hidden complexity that was, well, hidden to you.
@@hugo_ghp7804 Chances are that in many situations where you were "blocked obviously" there was actually some creative way to backtrack or explore that you simply missed. If you weren't "motivated" enough to look for challenges, that's not really the game's fault. Metroid Dread is actually very open-ended, and there are several intentional sequence breaks that the developers put in that only motivated players are going to find.
I'm kinda in two minds so far with Dread. On the one hand the feeling of movement and navigation is superb, but on the other there's been times where I got a new power and felt like I was being shuffled towards the next one rather than being given a chance to explore and find the way myself. Like the avenues for discovery were a little too narrow. Overall I am enjoying it a lot though.
I was about to say something, but you just sums it up with your comment (:
I didn't really feel "free" until I got Space Jump.
Until I started sequence breaking, the only main I felt was that I was being herded into moving where the devs wanted me to go. It felt like Fusion to me, but without the blinky "TARGET" label on my map.
100%
In my opinion that feeling comes from how claustrophobic the rooms are. Look at the map, and you see that each room is shaped exactly how it needs to be. In super metroid, the rooms are much larger and rectangular, making them more open. In my opinion that openness adds much more to atmosphere than the rooms shaped just how the have to be, and then crammed with stuff.
I got a little annoyed by the point of no returns at times, like when I got an ability, remembered an item I could now get on the other side of the biome, but that part was now locked off and I was forced to move on. But the combat and pacing was near perfect, so I loved the game and the end-game item hunt, going trough all areas with all abilitys and being able to just easily cross all of those Points was very satisfying. Plus some of the items are very well hidden or behind tricky speed-booster puzzles, so there was still a sense of exploration in that item hunt.
I really strongly feel like the game's number scale for damage and health is way off basically from Kraid onward. Did you know the golden Chozo bot deals 300-400 damage with its spear? Why do we have so many health upgrades for the sole purpose of allowing you to survive 3 or 4 hits to an endgame boss? If you want it to be a threat, then make it feel earned, rather than the same boss for the fifth time just with More Numbers. I did 100% item completion and got to the final boss and then got stunlocked in the corner for more than have my health because I missed a jump over his melee combo and he just stood on me.
Metroid Dread may be the finest playing Metroid game to date, but it is by no means perfect in execution.
@@JoshTheValiant The flaw with that argument is that all the bosses in this game rely heavily on pattern recognition. After you've been beaten enough times, eventually you'll be able to beat a boss with minimal scratches. Therefore, upping the damage and restricting your margins of error is, in my opinion anyway, a decent way to make the boss threatening. For sure, fighting a recolor of a previous boss isn't that big a deal since the strategy doesn't change, but knowing that it will hit you harder and demand even more precision from you is a perfect way for them to be more threatening for this game.
@@hedgehoundable Not to mention the Chozo Soldiers *do* get some new tricks with the new recolor showing up.
@macross_56 That's my biggest criticism of the first two Prime games.
I didn't think they final boss could stunlock you. Yes, you can absolutely get cornered, but there was always just enough room to escape after a combo, so long as I was jumping toward the wall behind me, and not toward the boss (as I erroneously tried on a few of my attempts). The latter will definitely make you feel like you get stuck there, but you're not actually.
I kept getting lost specifically in a loop between a couple of the teleports, and I can't quite recall which item I was missing for progression. I should probably play through again.
Same
As someone who played Metroid in the ‘80s and had played every mainline game, Dread feels more like a Metroid-inspired game than a true Metroid game.
Superficially it seems like a Metroid game, but there’s a lot they didn’t get right. Namely the atmosphere, music, exploration. All of this in exchange for many boss fights and mini-boss fights. It felt like a game that was way more skills-focused. I’m questioning if we’ll ever get a proper 2D Metroid game again. I enjoyed Samus Returns, but something was lost with Dread.
I’m hoping Nintendo gives someone else a crack at the series or does it in-house next. Something like Super or Zero Mission with updated graphics and gameplay.
@@Labyrinth1010 "As someone who played Metroid in the '80s" ... ... Dude. You sound absolutely miserable to be around. Go back to playing Metroid on the NES. Dread is easily one of the finest installments of the Metroid series since Prime. You do not come off as superior for playing Metroid in the 80's; you come off like an ass.
@@0ThrowawayAccount0 piss off, dude. It’s a freaking opinion.
The gold standard of Metroid games is Super. How much of that game is about combat and skill? Metroid games are first and foremost about exploring, not combat.
There are many that share my opinion. It’s ok to have different opinions on things. Really. It’s ok.
Mercury Steam didn’t get the vibe right, the essence of a Metroid game. Retro did. Prime got it right.
@@Labyrinth1010 cry some more
The sequencing of this game is like Metroid Fusion, but quiet.
That is painfully accurate
Honestly I felt it's the way fusion should have been done. It gives the player some sense of agency, but allowing the developer to tailor the experience and narrative.
The gating of dread is way more organic and seamless than in fusion.
@@IIIXouIII to be fair they actually wanted to do a Fusion remake
differences here you can do multiple breaks while in fusion eh not so much
I can’t stand spending hours not sure where to go. Hollow Knight was really frustrating to me in that way. So something like this is more up my alley - the freer exploration for me came at the end when I was looking for pickups.
Yep, I absolutely loved Dread's fast pace. I already went though it twice to get the bonus endings and it's great how you're constantly guided by the world. I think I prefer this style to the other games. You're not constantly lost or just pushing towards a dot on the map.
I kinda enjoyed this setup for that reason as well. On my first playthrough i just progressed naturally, grabbed whatever upgrades i came across and made my way to the end. Second playthrough, i followed mostly the same progression, and then once i got the final upgrade, i decided to go back and explore the world to get 100%. I liked how you can focus on advancement at first, and then switch gears and focus on pickups. And since controlling Samus and moving around the map is so enjoyable anyway, and the puzzles are so well crafted, going back and finding everything across the map was a wonderful experience for me.
And then even after all that, i still had the option to start more playthroughs and play around with exploring to find possible sequence breaks. What's not to love?
Yeah I gave up on Hollow Knight for that reason. Not only is it hard to tell where you need to go, it takes forever to move around the map so it makes it a chore to try things out. There's too many places to go at once when I haven't even unlocked all the moves yet.
11:44 "enemies on the other side of a wall can encourage you to blast through hidden blocks" david jaffe in shambles
Got this for Christmas some time ago. Those points of no return bugged me from day 1. I wanted to explore and go back to the places I remembered to go to. When I stopped resisting I finished the game in a couple of hours. It felt like the game had fun with me and more like a movie...
As someone who loves backtracking to previous areas, these points of no return were really frustrating.
Extremely. If I didn't want the possibility of backtracking or getting lost, I wouldn't have played every Metroid before Dread. It's part of what makes this genre. Get more capable, expand your reach into world. Dread actively thwarts that key mechanic. And that just blows.
@@joesterling4299 early grapple. Then you dont really have thay problem as much
@@ebi_tempura That might help in a couple scenarios but not in most. Dread uses a wide variety of ways to lock you into their path including high water, rotating barricades, one-way doors, and even freezing the entire map for no reason and no pay off.
@@proteamdirector true. The game is only properly open when you also allow pseudo waves which are a glitch
I actually found it even more satisfying when I could finally loop back and reach those areas.
For me, the effectiveness of worlds that feel massive and complex yet never makes you feel lost or confused is what separates a finish from a completion, as much as I loved super metroid, the thought of 100% completing that game sends chills down my spine (I still haven't even finished it yet), and for me personally, dreads way of steering me in the right direction without shouting it is what led me to 100% it multiple times.
And best of all, I never had to look at a guide once (I love you Hollow Knight, but I was never gonna get close to 100 without some help).
So yeah, to each their own, everyone has a different take on what they like about metroid and thats ok, great vid as per usual.
Yeah I love hollow knight but don't play it if you are a 100% completionist and refuse to look up guides. The devs have said multiple times they don't want people to find everything. On one hand it's part of what makes that game feel massive, you can walk through the crossroads for the 16th time and notice a breakable wall. That wall leads to a whole freaking boss fight. What else did you miss?? On the other hand I think the true ending was a little too hidden, I get it was supposed to be for people who really sunk their teeth in but in practice most people are just going to look up a guide.
Yeah I get that, its something I respect A ton, but I'm A completionist at heart a I could resist getting 100% on that game, its just that good (never going to make it to 112% though, godmaster can step on a lego brick)
I got lost for an hour, and took me 15 hours for my first play through where I got 100%, and loved every minute of it.
I had a blast with Dread, but I did feel let down by its guided linearity. I want to get lost and explore. After awhile I realized the game was putting me exactly where I needed to be, and took some of the magic out of what I am attracted to in metroidvanias.
I remember fighting the linear aspect and based on my experience from other Metroid games, I instantly back tracked and that's actually what caused me to get lost or felt I was soft locked. I picked up on the navigation aspect based on the teleport locations that made it undeniable that I was in the right area. I also remember getting the bombs and bomb jumping my way into secret areas and getting the nostalgic Metroid feeling I was expecting. I loved it!
“Why You Didn’t Get Lost in Metroid Dread”
That is, if you aren’t David Jaffe
wth is that
@@metalicarus8372 A jab at a moron having trouble with "The Jaffe Room".
there were parts where i wanted to avoid a boss and attempted to find a way back and wasted a lot of time doing it
@@tallynnyntyg6008 Bets it gets called that if they make a randomizer someday?
@@metalicarus8372 a games journalist who got stuck in the room at 13:15 which I also have begun to call ''The Jaffe Room''
That's probably the reference being made :)
The clip I've seen shows him going to ALL the different blocked off paths before going back, then proceeds to make zero effort at moving forward, because aparently, ''all rooms are dead ends''
Well, this is a metroid game, if all rooms are dead ends, start blasting.
I remember when I got to Dairon and encountered the Yellow Emmi, it was impossible to move forward because of the platform that raises a wall. I gave up trying and went to Cataris, not knowing that was exactly what I needed to do.
I actually noticed that too and it pissed me off. I wanted to see what I had missed and clear out the area first, but the game said I had to go the way they wanted.
I would love to go back and see my first playthrough since I hated how much I was being led forwards by the game that I just wanted to go explore something elsewhere... and yeah i got lost and slowly accepted that the game was just going to push me forwards til the end and then I would have a fully open map to explore with all of the abilities. By the time I beat the game I didn't want to explore it and felt like that entire experience wasn't really exploring at all.
The beauty of dread is this video is kinda right and wrong. Yes you can be guided but the devs knew how old school fans would take this, so they encourage just breaking the hell out of the game with all the sequence breaks. To the point of it even influencing boss design.
@@BMW-sd6nn there’s literally no reason for me to ever not get grapple beam & gravity suit early because not only are they directly on the normal path so you don’t have to go out of your way (unlike bombs, flash shift, speed booster, or super missiles early. those are still fun but they’re such detours i don’t usually bother) but they’re also just such insane timesavers that don’t require any glitches
@@yourehereforthatarentyou it's so cool dude I love it, need to replay Dread again
@@BMW-sd6nn There's twice as much areas where sequence breaking is discouraged, like how they changed how heat damage works.
It's "You're allowed to sequence break as long as we let you"
Poor David Jaffe, first the japanese tip video and now this. The blows just keep coming.
Which tip video?
I laughed when he actually showed that section in the video. Felt like a very slight nod that his way.
@@ezralaguna Sorry can't get you link right now but I think its on the Japanese Nintendo youtube channel and its tips for the demo if that helps. The first tip actually shows the room David Jaffe got stuck in, so maybe they felt it wasn't obvious enough... or they are having a jibe at him.
The first joke had me wondering, jokes 2 and 3 made me certain he was calling out David. To be fair, the shade was well earned.
@@Kuranghi thanks anyway
Honestly this aspect of the game, the frequency of the "point of no return" bugged me. I'd get a new power up, want to head back to a blocked area, only to be railroaded, with the endgame having the same miniboss on loop.
This game is great! Amazing bosses, Interesting lore for Metroid, but I just wanted freedom.
The pacing of Dread was my favorite part. The cut scenes and power ups were so perfectly spaced throughout the game that it always felt like I was progressing. Something that has annoyed me with other games in this genre (including Hollow Knight - which I really liked - and even some older Metroid games) was feeling like I didn't know where to go next for too long.
You are probably going to enjoy the Ori games. They also have amazing pacing and make it easy to not get lost.
I felt exactly the same as you. The points of no return were the most egregious trick, and the one that frustrated me the most on my playthrough. I didn't backtrack for items until literally right before the final boss for this reason.
Same. As a fairly experienced player who really enjoys to explore, I noticed the points of no return so quickly that I started looking for when they did it just to see what they came up with. Only about 3 times did I backtrack, first 2 there was barely anything to unlock because no sufficient abilities, final time was right before final boss. And even then I felt that I might've been missing an optional ability because some of the harder speed boost puzzles (did not know fully how it worked). Still ended on 80% completion though, and enjoyed the game a whole lot. The final boss was also perfect imo. All that buildup about Raven being a challenging foe, and boy did he deliver his punches while brushing off almost all damage.
I think that might have been a mistake.
Every time i found something out of reach with my current abilities, i marked them on my map. Whenever i got a new ability, i would try to return to those spots and was confronted with the points of no return. Those then didn't register at all like roadblocks, but like any other puzzle in the game instead. Also made it so i never took a "cleared" area for granted, and helped me feel lost and in danger for much longer than they could have done with only new areas being unknown territory. Felt like the map itself was an enemy to be beaten at its own game, rather than just a set of walls guiding me to the next story beat.
This also allowed me to find weird ways to beat puzzles in ways i wasn't sure were intended at the time. I had a blast.
@@bok4822 Oh yes, Raven Beak punching you into walls felt MEATY.
I actually backtracked fairly often, and was surprised at how open it was. There were several one-way doors, but most of them could be bypassed if you didn’t try to go back immediately after the shut. The only doors that frustrated me were the ones in Ghavoran as I felt the training wheels should be off. Other than that and a bit of over reliance on Teleportals in a few instances, I thought the exploration was great, definitely better than Fusion
yeah, in this aspect Super tops Dread by a huge margin
As one of the many that grew up on Fusion, I took to Dread’s level design like a snug glove. Admittedly, I’m a kind of player that doesn’t really enjoy getting lost at all, and I could *not* find things to enjoy from Hollow Knight because of it.
The straightforward action, and the ease with which the level design guides you were things that kept me coming back to Fusion a lot. They were so enjoyable on their own that it got me to do “100% Under 2 hour runs” way back then. So to me, Dread felt more than anything like a true evolution of Fusion’s design.
It’s dialogue is short and easy to breeze through, and isn’t forceful about where to go. Stuff like the Flash Shift and improved Counter keep combat fast and kinetic, and make bosses even more of a joy to destroy. And the structure and scale of the game means that it’s very replayable.
And while yeah, for basically any first time run, stuff like sequence breaks aren’t something you’ll think about, those things create more incentive to replay. To experiment, and see what you can do with knowledge of the map beforehand.
That’s something I admired about Super and Zero Mission, even if I never got as much into those games.
There’s definitely a good argument to be made over “Exploratory Metroid” Vs “Straightforward-Action Metroid”, but I think it’s possible for both sides to exist.
I believe that this would be a very cool field to advance the debates beyond what has already been accumulated. how to maintain this balance? what are the challenges that arise in imbalance?
the comments in the video are very rich in offering different points of view and this is wonderful, even if just having flashes of other experiences already shows how much diversity and feelings the game can bring out.
I would really like to see more talk about this design emerging from the notes that came in response to the video haha that would be too cool.
Yes, as he said, this game is for you, an not for me. I wish I had known that before buying it.
Super Metroid was intricately designed so that you could breeze through most of the game without backtracking or getting lost, while still retaining a nonlinear design. I think modern vania games like Hollow Knight are missing the kind of fluidity and seemlessness that Super Metroid offered.
I hadn't thought about it like that before, but you're right. Dread's design is very similar to some of the more open sections of Fusion, and it's similar to Fusion is a bunch of other ways too.
@@jonathanharoun5247 I agree. I’m playing hollow knight right now and some times ill wonder into a new area, completely explore it and gain no more clarity on it’s importantance or my progress in the game.
It’s cool to have areas like this for lore, but for game design, it feels messy.
I got lost several times actually, but while being lost I got to look around and find side-stuff, so it wasn't that bad.
I was gonna say the same thing. I had fun exploring the area while I was lost, but I definitely just stumbled onto the right path later.
I would really love to see you take on Dread's sequence breaking more thoroughly (which I don't see as distinct from exploration, at least with a game that expects it to this extent.) You acknowledged it at the end of the video, but an analytical approach to when a sequence break significantly opens up more of Dread's map, and when it doesn't, would be fascinating. I suspect (although I'm not sure) you might appreciate that aspect of the level design more if you dig deeper into it.
I agree. I definitely think that is something to dig into.
sequence breaking is part of what makes metroidvania world design to begin with. You could make an entire video about how just doing red tower early in SM basically immediately breaks the entire game open.
a video about this dimension of the game would be ideal to really give that notion of "casual player" or "expert in the genre" that the developers apparently chose to create.
Your analysis & attention to detail is incredible. Awesome explanation.. thank you.
Even as a veteran of Metroid I actually really liked the pace this sort of level design provided. Without the game locking you back out I think navigation would be pretty tough as it’s harder for me to distinctly remember what connects to where compared with other Metroid games for some reason.
I think the game more than supplements the lost difficulty on this way by making the bosses in general harder than most of the series. As well as having all the emmi sequences making exploring a faster, more frantic experience until you take that emmi down.
Me, 10 hours after finding the Phantom Cloak and having no idea what I'm supposed to be doing next, oh and also having been eaten alive about 150 times since then: "Yeah, I'm gonna need to watch this one closely."
Wait a minute... 3:36 for real!? I have the Phantom Cloak but I don't have the Morph Ball, yet somehow I have access to almost the entire map (of course, by "entire" I mean I can get to both ends of it). I must have broken something somewhere...
@@NintendoCapriSun Sequence Breaking is a classic part of metroid, congratulate yourself
@Nintendocaprisun Tim!
@@NintendoCapriSun You can jump and morphball in the air, I think I did the same thing to backtrack, but I could be wrong
"My favourite company AND drink into one man?!"
Dread was my first Metroid game, and my second Metroidvania. And the lack of obvious direction coupled with a very subtle but concrete adherence to the critical path helped me not feel like I was throwing myself against a wall the way I sometimes felt playing Hollow Knight. And, even though the path was more or less handed to me, I still felt very _smart_ for continually uncovering it. And, ultimately, while it could’ve been more earned in retrospect, I don’t think that smart feeling can be discounted.
I never felt like I was allowed to explore in this game, it feels more like I’m on a rollercoaster with a “progress game” button.
I'll take the clever "invisible hand" guidance over Fusion's literal waypoints. There are plenty of sequence break opportunities for those who want them. All Metroid games are linear, the question is how "wide linear" they go.
I still think waypoints on an open ended map are the way to go tho.
I've seen people whine about Hollow Knight's beginning. I've literally NEVER seen anyone do it after finding the Hollow Knight's statue - the point in which the game receives three large waypoints. Specially with how one of them essentially traps you and makes you come out on near the abyss, where the only things you can do is go collect the double jump. The devs literally did a Dread point of no-return-y, except the size of the gate and fall are so big it barely feels like it, and if the trip in there really annoys you, there's a stag station anyways. That moment was the best compromise.
I think that the REAL problem with Metroid right now tho, is the lack of completely 100% optional bosses and upgrades. Yes, I know that you can skip shit. But on a conventional run through Dread, the intended path makes you visit everything except for, and that's arguable at best, the cross bomb. I wish we went back to beam sidegrades instead of strict upgrades and some were made optional and only required for 100%.
fusion's waypoints were a "this is your general destination, figure out a way to get there", and most of the time they weren't even accurate. actually finding your way there was the fun part.
@@OpXarxa That sounds more like the earlier parts of Zero Mission.
@@QuintaFeira12 they don't stop whining because of the waypoints, it's because they've already liked the game and understood how it worked by the time they got that far
@@nousername191 nah, zero mission's critical path was criminally easy on those parts, you could just advance mindlessly wihtout checking the map for the marker at all. Fusion liked to present an obvious but intransitable path to your destination and then make you search for a hidden path.
I picked up on a lot of the guiding techniques quite consciously, and its really cool to see someone else repeat my thoughts back to me. Really good video, thanks!
It is amazing how Mark managed to put all my feelings about Dread into words, even when I myself struggled with explaining it myself. Im firmly in Team navigation regarding metroid games
Playing super metroid for the first time, I can only appreciate just how much Metroid Dread guides you even more. I absolutely hate getting lost in Super Metroid. I don't like feeling like I'm wasting time just because I went the wrong way. Or I didn't notice some obscure small path I could take. Or that there is an enemy that will clear the path for me. I'd rather just be guided and enjoy a well designed experience.
I never felt too guided on my first playthrough of Dread, I think they've done a really good job at making the player feel lost while also making sure that the path forward isn't unnaccessible
The problem is that they've also made sure that the path back is almost completely unaccessible. Sure, fine for players like you who just want to press forward. Awful for seasoned Metroid players who actually like to explore properly. Every time I wanted to go out of my way to explore, I was f***ing blocked.
@@thenonexistinghero Not only that, in past metroid games, they give you a new item and expect you to backtrack to be able to use these new items and find new paths. When in this game you back track get completely lost for an hour or so just to find out you needed to press forward and shoot an invisible wall.
Personally I felt like Dread was the perfect balance of linearity and non-linearity. It led to a really tight pacing and a good gameplay flow. Even after I was bottlenecked into an areas I would always make an effort to go back and explore the area I was cut off from later. Reaching 100% completion was super rewarding.
Honestly after the first world completely cuts you off from the EMMI area it really soured me on backtracking. I love the backtracking in these games, it's my favourite part, but Dread really likes to completely wall you off so many times and you just feel like you're wasting time trying to backtrack. At some point I did like Mark Brown and just got all the upgrades before really exploring the map for real - which wasn't really great.
I loved the smooth feeling of this game coming from tight controls and animations. I think this kind of exploration, which made me not get stuck too much, helped this feeling by not interrupting the journey.
The fact that what feels like exploration at first turns out to be more linear than it first appears, and in particular the idea that you're being invisibly guided along a linear path through the game is actually thematically appropriate to the game's story. I won't give any spoilers though.
The amount of convenience in every level design is so Metroid
This seems like metroid, the toddler edition. Hope a game with free exploration comes
@@somerandomchannel382 Oh my god I couldn't agree more... They went too far in the blocking. I feel they need to take the lesson from super metroid's highjump/icebeam lock when you fall in the room in red brinstar right after the wave beam one way: the best locks in these games can be picked without having you do shit like shoot through the wall by sliding and jumping into the ceiling... You don't technically need the varia suit in super metroid, it's just that if you're not extremely good, you will not make it through the hot areas, making those very hot areas my favorite god damn locks in the series. When I got to the first hot room in dread, I was excited to be able to do the exact same thing, only to discover that A: they all have even more locks in them, so going through them early is almost always useless, and B: you will die before you can even do the skip anyways to the 50 fucking damage per tick. There are only 3 places you can get lost in Super if you have the skills the game expects you to have (so no IBJ, shinespark, wall jumping, etc.), immediately after icebeam if you don't get the grapple beam, immediately after space jump, and the entirety of maridia. For the first two, the solution is relatively simple, just rearrange the map so there is an obvious pathway from ice beam to grapple beam/swap their locations so that you can't escape norfair/ lower brinstar without getting the more obscure upgrade and make a more direct pathway from space jump to ridley's lair. For maridia, that just needs an entire rework, because maridia SUCKS
But it's not Super Metroid level convenience.
Tell that to Metroid on NES lol
@@somerandomchannel382 have you played it tho? I didn't yet but it seems really well designed, i don't think they went too far with the block for what i'm seeing here, since it keeps you from getting lost by going in the wrong direction BUT i'm with Boss Key in the sense that they should've made some collectables outside of the main path for those who want to explore.
[But as i said, i haven't played it yet so my opinion is purely based on my other Metroid experiences and this video]
I actually did get lost, but it almost always seemed obvious once I found the right way to go. They did a good job.
Same. When I realized where I was supposed to go, I just felt like an idiot for not seeing it sooner.
@@VCXZ883 also for me, it was very late in the game when this happened. It stops holding you hand a little, but it still leads you the right way. When you fail to see it, then you begin to wander off and get lost.
I was watching the invisible hand the whole time thinking: "Oh no! Not another Fusion!", but soon after I completed the game, I found the speedrun, and immediately, there were sequence breaks left and right and glitches being discovered like the pseudo-wave beam, and I'm optimistic about my second playthrough.
unfortunately it's still extremely linear...
I had a lot of fun on my second play-through breaking the games normal sequence honestly
@@Itsakoopahere It's still not nearly as good as super metroid. Don't praise the game devs for skips that involve glitches, only early bombs/flash shift (a waste of time), early super missiles (virtually useless, there are no super missile outside of the intended path) and early gravity suit/cross bombs deserve any recognition for the devs, and of those only 1 is actually useful or interesting...
meanwhile in super metroid, kraid is almost optional, power bombs can be gotten as your 4th item, space jump can hypothetically be skipped (but it will be PAIN), etc... I don't think getting to ridley without gravity suit is possible without glitches, but it might be. I never looked into it too hard because it was far too painful...
@@bastian_5975 I mean, we can get screw attack at any point after speedbooster. Gravity is possible soon as you have ice missiles. Space and spin boost are completely optional. You can get grapple as soon as you have Varia, and then go get bombs if you'd like. The game is pretty linear up until just before vanilla diffusion beam, at which point your options really open up (if you know the speedrun strats)
@@bastian_5975 Oppsie Doopsie Doo! What I didn't want to hear!
I remembered playing dread and being like, damn it’s really easy to get lost in this game.
And then I played an old Castlevania game and realized, oh shit dread’s been really good at giving subtle hints of where to go all along
I think it is a near perfect balance of guidance and disorientation. I loved that it had a seemly faster pace without literally telling you where to go. I definitely got lost a few times but not enough to where the game became frustrating. It was an enjoyable experience throughout. Everything I want out of a Metroid game
Excellent video BTW. Great topic to discuss and analyze.
"get stuck in a room and proclaim it as a crime against game design".
A poke at David Jaffe
I loved Dread to bits honestly - and I think you should really examine how the game exponentially opens up as you progress. Basically once you reach Ghavoran, the critical path becomes more of a critical yarn ball. Unlike the early grapple+bombs route which you have to go back to Kraid anyway for the Diffusion Beam, the game goes completely off the rails once you get Ice Missiles. Ice Missiles let you access the following items immediately: Cross Bombs, Gravity Suit, Storm Missiles. Storm Missiles let you access space jump, which also lets you access gravity suit. But cross bombs ALSO let you access space jump as well. Gravity suit lets you access screw attack, which lets you also access cross bombs. Screw attack also lets you access Wave Beam, which puts you back on the linear path for the end of the game with Power Bombs. Best of all - while you can see these as "sequence breaks", a LOT of people have found these alternative routes on their own, assuming them to be the intended way forward.
As for my own first run of Dread, I ended up following the most basic critical path sure, but I never realized it was leading me on as I did so. I was almost defiantly going against the grain as I played, constantly thinking once I got something "ok where can I go with this that isn't the immediately obvious route", only to find myself on that route anyway.
You can get Super Missiles as soon as you get speed booster and you also have access to gravity suit as soon as you get ice missiles in ghavorran. space jump is entirely optional and you can complete the game without getting the upgrade.
"where can i go that isn't the immediately obvious route" was exactly the same thing i tried doing, and yet i still ended up on the correct path. these devs really thought of every path
i got cross bombs early on my first playthrough because i wasn't sure if the missile expansion leading to the cross bombs boss was an intentional ballspark puzzle or not and just went for it lol
As someone who’s first Metroid game was Fusion, I instantly fell in love with this game. I ended up finishing my first playthrough at around 12 hrs with 64% completion, but I’ll be playing this one for years, I’m sure.
As someone who loved hollow knight and got all achievements plus some with the bonus things like hall of gods and path of pain, Metroid Dread was phenomenal. Easily my game of the year. The combat and movement in Dread is just on another level, Samus just feels so good to control. Plus the boss fights are amazing, think the only flaw I saw with those was the x chozo warriors but otherwise enjoyed every fight.
As for exploration, I’ve 100% the game four times now and while you keep sequence breaking and speed running separate from exploration, I’d argue they are one in the same. All Metroid games have pushed players to attempt sequence breaking/speedrunning with the clear time rewards. Sequence breaking simply gives players alternate methods of exploration and as you pointed out, the devs very intentionally wanted players to sequence break. For my first play through, when I noticed how the game subtlety guided the player I came to appreciate the world design so much more, and instead of taking the obvious route that was just nearby, I’d mark it in my map using the marker system and return when I had collected all the bonus gear I could scattered around the map.
I feel like it truly combines both worlds, Dread _can_ be for those veterans who are looking for ways to break the sequence, and having tons of mobility options that mastery requires a lot of skill. But it also welcomes newcomers all the same with invisible guiding techniques shown in this vid that keeps them engaged and not frustrated by giving them too many options at once. Combat is great, boss fights are great. What's not to love about this? Glad you enjoyed it man, from one Metroid fan to another.
Joining on this too. Dread felt like the best of both worlds and a genius way to welcome all kinds of players.
Except game designers, apparently lmao
I think they did the right move with this game. While I enjoy exploration in Metroidvanias, I also respect Metroid games trying to present something different with each installment.
As someone who's a Metroidvania fan, this game felt very linear, but seeing casual people playing through it gave me another perspective and allowed me to enjoy its guided nature. It's definitely a step up from Fusion in exploration, but it also doesn't leave you clueless in many instances, like Super Metroid did. It strikes a nice medium I feel and allows people new to the genre to get a taste of the Search Action these games offer.
While games like Super Metroid and Hollow Knight can be alienating at times with their open ended nature(I see no problem with that, but that's coming from a fan of the genre), Metroid Dread is a perfect entry point, I feel, next to Zero Mission and Fusion.
This feels like the perfect game to gather new fans and to (hopefully) expand upon in a future sequel.
For me at least with HK so many of the alternate paths are still equate to progression. I got lost a lot but I always came out of an area with a new tool. In Super (despite loving it) I often just got kinda stuck and felt like I was just searching around the same areas over and over for that one specific way forward.
I actually DID get lost 😂 my map-reading skills are way rusty!
It’s actually my fault 😂 so used to hand-holding from other games I guess 🤔
Same, back tracked the whole map before I realized I could get to the last Central Unit with what I had.
Gonna be honest I find the map to be a bit hard to read at first. The colors made it really hard to tell what is going on.
Same lmao, I realized it was my fault instantly when I looked at where I needed to go on the internet, it was right there but my idiot self just went the other way
I also got lost. Right before getting Super Missiles I went in the wrong direction and ended up wandering around the map for an hour before returning where I had been and found the missiles.
OMG, this is exactly what I thought when I was playing it. The map seems overwhelming and confusing, but somehow, you always end up where exactly need to be.
For me after learning to speedrun this game and going through it around 30 times now, i felt like i haved open this game in a way it will never feel the same way for a first timer getting items in complete different order, routes that will actually make you say "that was possible" its been truly such an amazing experience speedrunning this game and new strats are still being found. So i love this game so much.
I absolutely HATE getting lost in games. It’s so frustrating just aimlessly wandering around until you rage quit or just give up and go online to find the solution/location.
yes but this just described "babies' first metrovania" 🙄 might as well be Duke Manhattan.
thank you, i fucking hate people complaining about linearity like its a bad thing
same. im ok to be a little lost but when games makes me lost for hours then fuck that.
@@InvestmentBankr you sound nothing like a gatekeeper.....I agree with holdholding and FULL linearity been a bitch but come on, calling a "baby thing" is very wrong, a game should give instructions, my favorite one is grabbing my attention to the right path without telling or forcing me to go there. Every single "hard" game you like does that, dark souls freaking love that, every enemy, every grab thing should be placed to guide the player, not make them walk with no idea for where to go. This for a lot of people is boring and a game should be acessible to the most.
@@diegomedeiros456 gatekeeping is a meaningless buzzword for fear of standards. The gameplay loop IS exploration. Thats why this game isn't megaman. The close connection between key/weapon and door is obvious proof this is watered down. You can't argue games have gotten harder as time goes on. Better, maybe....maybe... to much opinion there, but harder? hell no.
While I can appreciate being challenged in exploration and navigation every so often, I absolutely *despise* being directionless to the point of wandering aimlessly for long stretches of time. A lack of direction with no foothold, nothing to latch on to when my patience exhausts, is one of the most surefire ways to get me to drop a game in irritation. There is a limit to how lost I can be before I just give up.
While yes, Dread is rather aggressive in its indirect guidance, I honestly prefer to have it than not or barely at all. I thought it was all quite clever and usually pretty subtle in how it was executed.
But what also deserves a mention here that wasn't touched upon in the video is the map screen. For the first time, the map will show you exactly what each door requires once you have the needed ability, where you have encountered destructible blocks and what destroys them (such blocks also stay revealed once uncovered, unlike in previous games), collectibles are marked on the map once discovered and specify if they have been collected or not, save- and transport rooms are colour-coded and hidden collectibles are hinted at through by having a section of the map flash, so you're not left bombing every wall of every room aimlessly. This further assists in navigating and especially makes the collectible hunt much more respectful of the player's time.
All in all I absolutely adore Dread and man, I can't wait until this game gets to make a GDQ appearance. It's gonna be wild.
This video has sold me on Metroid dread. A Metroid that cuts out huge swaths of wasted time exploring sounds like a perfect game
...that's removing the whole point of metroid though.
"Why you didn't get lost"
Speak for yourself, you can _never_ underestimate how bad my sense of direction is!
(Still loved the game, but there's a reason my completion time was 12 hours.)
Did you get 100 percent completion?
@@AlexTr0uble 12 hours was like, 92%. I had to go back afterwards and do the shinespark puzzles after I beat the game (I didn't know the tricks like "walljumping while speedboosted" before).
seriously, how do you get lost in this game? I feel like its built so well that my directionless ass managed to never be "lost" for more than 1 minutes, and then I'd feel even dumber because it was kind of obvious
@@brya9681 At a couple of points late in the game, it opens up so much that there are a handful of places you can go, and even more places where you can _almost_ go, but you'd have to check to make sure. Especially if you go out of your way to explore and collect goodies everywhere, it's pretty easy to overlook or forget, like, three completely unmarked blocks you have to break.
@@swagner7767 I had almost 12 hours at 100%. I don't think you got lost that bad then.
I did find myself lost a couple times in this game, always due to the same singular accessibility failure. Occassionally you would get locked in an area, and eventually, the only way to go is blocked by one of those red heart's in the wall that you have to shoot.
I'm red-green colorblind and so I would often just straight up not see the heart the first time in the room. I would end up running around the locked space in circles, completely unable to find the way to go. These red hearts are also uniquely the only destructible set piece which isn't shown on the minimap, so if I tried to scan the minimap for the "one path I haven't checked yet" there would be nothing. As the final cherry on top, most of the sections where I got lost in this way included a teleporter or travel location, making the explorable (but still constrained) space spread over one of the games few loading screens.
So I would get lost, and then travel through the slow loading screens 2 or 3 times looking for a destructible block which isn't on the minimap and which I can't see as clearly due to a disability. Granted, I was never permanantly out of luck, but I was lost in this way for at least 20-30 minutes at least twice, one of which I ended up having to look up a guide to find the red heart. This could've been prevented by not using a red destructible, or even better, just putting hearts on the minimap once you've been in that room. It made for an incredibly frustrating and pace-ruining experience in an otherwise super fun and pretty well polished game.
it would be interesting to have the option to optionally release these markers, or how many are desired by the player, neh? even being able to change the color of some things would be nice.
Metroid is the type of game series where it feels open to explore but with clever design is actually a linear game that desguises itself well
“Enemies on the other side of a wall can encourage you to blast behind hidden blocks” while showing THAT room
Excellent