Metroid Dread Producer Comments On Game's Difficulty

gamerant.com:

One of last year's most impressive releases would have to be Metroid Dread, the long-awaited sequel to 2002's Metroid Fusion. Upon release, it received a lot of praise from fans and critics, as the entry brings the series back to its 2D side-scrolling roots. It has been a huge success for Nintendo and MercurySteam, with Metroid Dread even winning an award at The Game Awards back in December. Many parts of the game stand-out for many fans, with one of the most discussed aspects of Dread being its difficulty.

Metroid Dread is considered by many fans to be one of the most difficult entries in the franchise due to a variety of factors in both its combat and exploration sections. This ranges from the ways one can get lost in Metroid Dread to the robotic EMMIs. The EMMIs in particular are regarded as one of the biggest contributors to the game's difficulty, as they can instantly kill Samus if she is caught by them.

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This harsh difficulty is commented upon by Metroid series producer Yoshio Sakamoto in an interview with Famitsu. He comments that, while the EMMIs are a punishing element of Metroid Dread, they were designed in a mirrored fashion to Samus' progression as she gets more power-ups. When asked about the game's faster pace, he explains the design philosophy behind it, stating that the action was developed to be easy to control, even at a faster pace. In his opinion, it is the best the series has to offer in terms of action and flow.

Sakamoto stated that balancing the game's difficulty was also a tough act, as he not only had to understand how a veteran of the series would play, but also how new players of Metroid Dread would approach it. He said that both