The game director of Metroid Dread, José Luis Marquez, revealed during an interview what he believes to be an essential element for the Metroid seriesthat is, the fact that at the beginning of the adventure Samus has to lose everything or almost everything.
“In the case of the Metroid games it’s exactly like this: you can’t start the game without losing something. It’s practically mandatory,” Marquez said. “Otherwise I think you might be disappointed. I can already see you exclaiming ‘what? Do we have everything available from the start? It can not be!’.”
Although ironically, the game director highlighted a principle common to all Metroid episodes, which characterizes the game’s progression system, allowing the protagonist to recover his skills little by little.
There is more
Metroid Dread has sold over 3 million copies, so MercurySteam has done it an excellent job with this episode, respecting the canons of the franchise but at the same time trying to introduce some new elements.
During the interview, the game director also touched on other topics, for example the duration according to him is ideal for a metroidvania: Marquez said he is a fan of more compact experiences, which avoid artificially filling the campaign and thus dilating everything.
The author also revealed that don’t appreciate the introduction of soulslike elements within this genre of productions, and while he understands the requests of some fans, he has made it clear that he is not the type who likes to purposely make a game difficult.
As we know, MercurySteam is continuing to work on two big games, one of which could be linked to the Metroid series.
