Despite it coming out last year, Metroid Dread is still very much on the minds of many. As many praise the game for its slick looks, interesting bad guys via the E.M.M.I’s, and the return to the 2D gameplay style that hasn’t been seen in an original Metroid game since Fusion (remember, Returns was a remake of the second game in the franchise.) But even now, people still wonder about some of the decisions that went into the game in terms of how the team choose the right balance.
Thankfully, Producer Yoshio Sakamoto talked with Famitsu about Metroid Dread and discussed certain things that went into the finished product. Including why the game wasn’t as long as many thought it would be:
“We’ve made a lot of Metroid at this point and thought a lot about what the appropriate tempo for each game is. For Metroid Dread, we tuned the action to be appropriately quick. The game design of each Metroid complements the action and this time, this time it’s very easy to control, something I’m personally a fan of. I think this might be the best action we’ve seen in a Metroid game.
But naturally, the biggest part of the game was getting away from the brutal E.M.M.I. robots, something that Sakamoto made sure came off as punishing at points in the game:
We got used to the difficulty during development which made it hard to understand how it would feel as a new player. Balancing is difficult no matter the game, but both Nintendo and MercurySteam were determined to get the action elements feeling smooth. E.M.M.I. is unlike anything that’s been done before and we got lots of people to play it so we could tweak appropriate balance for an action game. One of the things we focused on was to make sure when a player hits a game over, they know what to try on their next attempt.
Be sure to check out our Metroid Dread review!
Source: Nintendoeverything