Why You (Probably) Didn't Get Lost in Metroid Dread 

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.

"Enemies on the other side of a wall can encourage you to blast through hidden blocks." David Jaffe in shambles rn

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.

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 just love how THAT room is becoming a bit of a meme in the community

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!

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.

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.

I got lost at a couple points due to overlooking something. Didn't happen for long but it happens.

This game was far easier to navigate than even Samus Returns, but swaps navigational difficulty for its tough combat and Emmi challenges

You underestimate my ability to get lost.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

"Why You Didn't Get Lost in Metroid Dread" Anakin Voice: You underestimate my power!

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 just killed that floating eye mini boss ... and i am freaking LOST

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.

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.

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.

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!

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 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 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

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.

Your analysis & attention to detail is incredible. Awesome explanation.. thank you.

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.

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.

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.

So glad to see this series still going. Just watched through the whole playlist and was worried when the thumbnails stopped saying boss keys.

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

I was eagerly waiting an episode on Metroid Dread, love this series

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.

your uploads are so good. Keep up this great series man. Great job!

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.

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.

I kinda noticed but it is great to see your video, because it gives a lot of clarification on why it was easy to go through without taking the wrong path. They certainly did an amazing job of blocking the ways back and put the right indications for us to follow the right steps forward! 🙌🏼

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.

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.

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.

Your channel is amazing. As a hobby dev, I find your content inspiring and super helpful. Keep it up ❤

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.

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

11:44 "enemies on the other side of a wall can encourage you to blast through hidden blocks" david jaffe in shambles

Freakin nailed it, bro. Man what a great channel

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...

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

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.

I loved the video. I am playing the first time through. At last stage but going back for everything missed. I always play my Metroid games multiple times

Speak for yourself, I think I went back and forth between the couple locations hundreds of times before figuring out what to do

The sequencing of this game is like Metroid Fusion, but quiet.

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.

After playing through the game a few times, I find this video so fascinating. I first watched it after my first play through, where I 100% the game. It took me around 12 hours, during which time I got hopelessly lost as I focussed more on filling in my map than following the breadcrumbs. I got extremely lost, rarely used the teleporters, and was terrified of the EMMIs the entire time. Then, knowing I wanted to get all the ending rewards, I saw this video. Knowing what to look out for made my next playthrough much easier to do quickly, and I managed it in under 4 hours. Then I did the same thing in hard mode. Honestly, I don’t think I would have realized these tricks without this video, as I’ve only really completed Samus Returns and I’m not as familiar with metroidvanias. Awesome video, totally worth my re-watches!

Thank you very much for this video! I really wondered why Metal Dread was so easy to me from the exploring side of things, now I know!

"Why you didn't get lost in Metroid Dread?" the only correct answer: because my name is not David Jaffe

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.

There was only one place in the game where I got stuck (for about an hour), and that was the first time I encountered the magnet-pull-down platform. I misinterpreted it when I first saw it, thinking you had to stand on top of it, and put it out of my mind. It's also kinda tucked away in a spot that's easy to overlook and you are unlikely to revisit when re-exploring. It was my only way forward and I completely misunderstood its purpose hahah. Apart from that, I completed the game without doing a ton of unnecessary backtracking and it honestly felt kinda short, despite being a full-length 2D Metroid game and even after 100%ing it.

15:01 WEIRD!! While listening to this video, I’m playing my first ever playthrough of Super Metroid, and I just went through that 1 way door at the exact time your video mentioned it. Hell yeah

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.

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.

This video has sold me on Metroid dread. A Metroid that cuts out huge swaths of wasted time exploring sounds like a perfect game

I didn't really realize it when playing the game (except for the teleports being conveniently close to like locked paths that I very recently got the ability to unlock), but I totally feel the same way. I can't really remember all that much of Dread's map like I can of super Metroid and hollow knight. granted I've played through hollow knight plenty of times, but I don't have much time in super Metroid, and I can still recognize most of the rooms you show throughout your videos. what I do see in dread is that people that usually don't play metroidvanias getting a good grasp on the game and not having those feelings of frustration when you dont know the way forward. great video!

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.

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.

Well made video and clear explanation

EEEA!!! I unexpectedly and completely lost myself there! Thank you so much

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.

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.

This is my first metroid game, and I like how this world is helping me I've tried metroidvania before but always get lost then have to put the game down and get on with work life for a couple days and when I pick it up again I have forgotten everything I was meant to be doing. But with this it helps me remember, once I finish this I will definitely go back and try my best to get a bigger completion rate.

Great video! I definitely fall into the last category of players lol. Did a 100% completion on my first playthrough, now I'm working on doing sequence breaks and seeing how little I can get away with getting before I beat the game

Poor David Jaffe, first the japanese tip video and now this. The blows just keep coming.

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.

Loved this. Pretty much exactly how I felt playing through dread. I loved everything about it, except for the fact that the exploration felt shallow compared to my OG fav super Metroid. And it's like you said, it's because the game is designed in such a way, through soft zone locking and aggressive guide posts and markers to basically encourage a near universally streamlined exploration experience. This video is really validating and insightful. Thanks for putting this out and keep it up! Loved dread btw, bought it on the first day and ended in a week. Hope to see more for this franchise ❤

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.

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.

“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? 😹

I understand your feelings towards these mechanics, I grew up on metriod and opened the game hoping for something like hollow knight, even thought metroid fusion is my favorite metroid game, these mechanics did feel pretty restrictive😅

im getting this game and pokemon soon! stoked to play em!

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.

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.

This being my first metroid game, getting lost was my greatest concern but I didn't even notice these tricks and loved both the exploration and the combat

Thanks, Mark, this is incredibly enlightening. I hope game designers will see your video and see this as a tale of caution as adding this fencing to the game design is potentially a major detractor of enjoyment for players who enjoy exploration. While they may have put a lot of game design brainpower into designing a plethora of clever ways to make passages "one way," ultimately this design decision caused me to let Samus remain stranded on a hostile planet at no fault of her own. In past Metroid games, I found that the fun was seeing paths that are initially inaccessible and taking the time to come back later. Often Samus progresses to a power at a dead end and then needed to backtrack and explore these now-accessible branches to make further progress or find extra rewards. The core premise is that the game map was initially very limited, but new abilities were essentially KEYS that expanded the explorable area. Another way to see it is that the unspoken contract between player and game was that if you spend the time to backtrack and explore, the game will reward you!! In Dread, the designers' intent to constantly limit the explorable space changed the formula without really letting me/the player know that this was going on. They left all these tantalizing pieces of fruit on the tree, but didn't allow me to go back for them. In essence, the game became much more linear (I know there are ways to use control tricks to break out these fences IN PLACES), but I was powerless to play the way not just that I wanted, but also the way previous Metroid games TAUGHT ME TO PLAY. These game designers broke the contract and didn't bother to tell me!! From what I experienced, there was a lot of cool new mechanics that I think expanded Metroid's game mechanics vocabulary, but overall it's a failure to communicate that they they had changed the rules. One solution would be to grey out or somehow indicate the subset of the explored map that is currently inaccessible, so that players like me wouldn't be constantly looking for ways to backtrack. Frustrating indeed.

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!

The amount of convenience in every level design is so Metroid

That little treat trick is hilarious. I can’t believe how easily I was manipulated with a trail of candy.

Those are amazing tools to be used properly. Blocking areas to get lost, crumbs, having locks close to the key-powers, covenient teleportation and more than one route going in the same place, are all good to help avoiding problems of metroidvanias of excessive big world map. Dread uses this too much maybe (I didn't played, I am geting this from the video) but some others metroidvanias can have this to keep the world explorable aways in a covenient size, not too big, not too small. It can also be used to lead to wrong ends actualy. In metroidvanias sometimes I want the player to first to find the locked door to after it to find the keypowerup to open it. This makes they think "I know what to do with this" and "I know where to go next", "I finnaly am going back there" feelings. Good feelings. So you could put some crumbs that lead to a closed door, for example, and the alternative path that leads to the keypower. So good tools

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.

As someone who loves backtracking to previous areas, these points of no return were really frustrating.

The fact that you used the clip of that *one* room while calling out people saying that it's a crime against game design is still funny, one year later.

I got lost a good amount in that game that for one of the parts i had to look up a walkthrough because I kept finding myself looping around to the same spot! I think it was after you defeat the first emmi or something, and a wierd looking plant stops you from proceeding a certain way. I do think they did a great job a guiding you, because that was the only time I used the internet to help me and most of the time I eventually found my way. Definitely one of my favorite switch games alongside breath of the wild

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!

I actually DID get lost 😂 my map-reading skills are way rusty!

5:28 that's why I got lost a few times in this game. I figured that the game puts the door you should go close to the item room, so I thought "hey, this is sounds too obvious, let's go back again to the previous area" and so I did. Eventually, I forgot where the "progress" door was, so many times it was all of a cruise around ZDR to find it.

You're completely spot on, this game had a very different approach to linearity when compared with Samus Returns and I never truly felt lost in Metroid Dread like I did for Samus Returns

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.

“Why You Didn’t Get Lost in Metroid Dread” That is, if you aren’t David Jaffe

I'm not a big metroidvania fan and have noped out of my fair share of them, primarily because I hate backtracking and not knowing where to go. I bought Dread on a whim and loved it. IMO it's 2022's GOTY. And a lot of it comes down to what you explained in this video.

This was my first Metroid title and now that I'm watching this I understand why I'm not frustrated with the navigation and exploration.