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Discussion Mark Brown Presents - Metroid Dread Boss Keys (or, Why You Didn't Get Lost in Metroid Dread)

WonderLuigi said:
I'll forever disagree with the "100% gets to a game that might be similar to better games from the past". Same argument people use to defend Tropical Freeze's easiness.
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Thought I was alone in thinking Tropical Freeze was easy. I think I should play Returns again because I remember it being harder.
 
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O man can I get a timestamp of the Jaffe mention? 🙏

Still making my way thru the game and kinda dreading any accidental spoilers.
 
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I have not managed to play Metroid Dread yet but I already know the level design is stellar, because Mark Brown made a video about it.
 
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Great video as always from GMTK and it explains my feeling of always going in the right direction.
 
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I wonder if there was a feeling behind the scenes that this would be the first 2D Metroid that a lot of people will have played. I think there was a conscious desire to not alienate people for whom Dread is their first rodeo, but to also not dissuade veterans.

I think Dread was mostly a success in this regard. It quietly guides you, but still gives you the capacity to get lost - which evidently some people in this thread took advantage of! Brown does call it patronising, but I don't think he's particularly critical of the game. I haven't seen many veterans decry Dread too heavily, which is something.

I do wonder if the patronising point is less to do with Dread and more to do with the familiarity one has with Metroid and its idiosyncrasies. Metroid has a distinct level of design which has essentially been iterated upon since Super. Dread doesn't try too hard to break out of those confines, which might lead to more experienced players seeing all the tells that newcomers might miss.

I dunno. It's an exceptionally hard balance to get right.
 
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In two words: game design.

An enemy placed near a breakable wall, a noticeable closed door that you had to leave, etc...
 
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I made similar observations about the game blocking paths behind you along the way and how I personally appreciated it in the ST. I know some feel differently about it, and can see that it takes some of the exploration away when your options are more limited. I just felt like I didn't have to waste too much time backtracking while moving along the critical path as the game gently pushed me towards the right direction. I got enough of exploration when going for the 100%.

Also, a big takeaway from the video was that the few seconds of Tropical Freeze gameplay made me really want to play Tropical Freeze again. I never bought the Switch version, but will I have to?
 
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Imagine coming to a Metroid thread to share your hot takes on Donkey Kong.

Anyway, the video is spot-on with its description of Dread. I definitely noticed most of the things he mentioned in the video while playing. In general I didn't mind them at all since they usually felt natural. HOWEVER, I did heavily dislike that one instance of the "lava/fire plant" randomly appearing in Artaria since it just felt like the devs had no idea how to block you from backtracking (and honestly, considering how small Artaria is by that point of the game, also feels unnecesary).
 
Good video. That some clever level design and i can't say i really noticed it when playing. I think the only points-of-no-returns i actively noticed where the fidget spinners lol And i still managed to get lost twice in mid0game, probably because i didn't catch on that the teleporters guide you to the areas you can use your recent upgrade. I'm the exploration type of player so i love getting lost in Metroid.
 
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jnWake said:
Imagine coming to a Metroid thread to share your hot takes on Donkey Kong.

Anyway, the video is spot-on with its description of Dread. I definitely noticed most of the things he mentioned in the video while playing. In general I didn't mind them at all since they usually felt natural. HOWEVER, I did heavily dislike that one instance of the "lava/fire plant" randomly appearing in Artaria since it just felt like the devs had no idea how to block you from backtracking (and honestly, considering how small Artaria is by that point of the game, also feels unnecesary).
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Yeah that was probably the one 'blockade' that kind of annoyed me, since it was one of the most noticeable and arbitrary. Why is there suddenly a plant here? Overall not a big deal, it just jumped out more than the rest
 
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finally watched this this morning and he really articulates the game design well.

i kept telling people i cant believe how im just barreling through the game. midway through i stopped trying to fight it and let the game fast track me all the way to the end, without getting lost once. it felt very linear but not in an annoying way.

seems like the old days of allowing the player to get lost and explore are over, with other examples of metroid solving the issue by simply telling you where to go. i prefer dreads method of just pushing the player in the direction they need to go without saying it out loud.

and im not complaining. as much as i loved hollow knight i did eventually fall off it, cause the exploration overtook the progression and i just didnt know where to go, or didnt have the patience to re-contextualize what my thought process was the last time i was playing. like "why was i over here again? what was i doing? where was i going?"

i need to be able to take long breaks from a game and have the ability to figure out what i was doing in the last session. i just dont have the patience to retrace my steps for an hour so i can start making progress again.
 
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I definitely tried to fight the "guiding hand" of this game, and I think that's where I ran into some minor frustration with the world design. It felt like so many areas got closed off and I just felt like I couldn't explore to the extent that I wanted to.

Great video as always from Mark. Really puts into perspective some of the minor problems I had with Dread but couldn't really articulate myself.
 
Great video, love Boss Keys.

I did really appreciate what Dread was going for in terms of level design, but it's true that it's ultra different from Super Metroid. (Which I still prefer)
 
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Something that I think was understated, was how it contextualized the old trope of using new upgrades in old areas. I mean, yes, upgrades are right around the corner, and the way forward is close. But, each loop you go through within the world, you really feel the progress you have made, because it uses older upgrades in the progression as well. It’s a shame that he didn’t bring up the fact that the world actually changes throughout the game too, lending for an amazing sense of progression, and allowing you to experience new gameplay in old areas.

I really feel that this episode of boss keys was a little half baked, and I really think it’s because Mark was disappointed in it. There is so much more to the design of the world and exploration than he led on. From what mark said, he seems to think that the thing Dread has going for it is pacing, combat, and boss fights. But there is so much to it than that! It has really clever puzzles, traversal mechanics, and platforming challenges too. I feel like all of those has went under the radar. Also, he really didn’t mention the Emmi too, which is like, one of the biggest reasons you’re pushed forward so much. You don’t want to exploration of emmi zones with the Emmi active, and more often than not the item the Emmi gives you allows for greater exploration of that area.
 
WonderLuigi said:
Yeah, that's my point. I didn't get anything in the previous games and they were still hard. TF was easier than a lot of Mario games.
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Lmao hold up dawg Mario games are incredibly easy. I’m curious on which Mario games you think are harder. Tropical Freeze got slammed for its difficulty lol.

That’s a rare opinion I’ve seen which is interesting.
 
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As the franchise reestablishes itself I think the games will have the opportunity to go back to letting the player get lost.

Not sure if anyone watched G4's Adam Sessler's review but he still ended up getting stuck and lost despite the way the game is designed. It just shows that it was nescesary, and they did it well.
 
Lozjam said:
Something that I think was understated, was how it contextualized the old trope of using new upgrades in old areas. I mean, yes, upgrades are right around the corner, and the way forward is close. But, each loop you go through within the world, you really feel the progress you have made, because it uses older upgrades in the progression as well. It’s a shame that he didn’t bring up the fact that the world actually changes throughout the game too, lending for an amazing sense of progression, and allowing you to experience new gameplay in old areas.

I really feel that this episode of boss keys was a little half baked, and I really think it’s because Mark was disappointed in it. There is so much more to the design of the world and exploration than he led on. From what mark said, he seems to think that the thing Dread has going for it is pacing, combat, and boss fights. But there is so much to it than that! It has really clever puzzles, traversal mechanics, and platforming challenges too. I feel like all of those has went under the radar. Also, he really didn’t mention the Emmi too, which is like, one of the biggest reasons you’re pushed forward so much. You don’t want to exploration of emmi zones with the Emmi active, and more often than not the item the Emmi gives you allows for greater exploration of that area.
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I think this is a general problem with Mark Brown's videos. He is obsessed with "number of paths you can take", completely pushing aside all other aspects of game design that goes into an action-adventure game. I had the same issue with his videos on Zelda games. It is a bit unfortunate that in the case of Dread, this perspective is, additionally, pretty limited, because it does not take into account the many ways the game does offer alternatives, though ones that are not actively encouraged by the game. I respect Brown's analytical view on games, but I do think his videos would vastly improve if he either took other aspects in consideration as well, or more clearly limited the scope of his videos to openly addressing only one aspect of game design and from a very specific angle (that angle being: he is of the opinion that the quality of a game increases when the linearity decreases).
 
Lozjam said:
Something that I think was understated, was how it contextualized the old trope of using new upgrades in old areas. I mean, yes, upgrades are right around the corner, and the way forward is close. But, each loop you go through within the world, you really feel the progress you have made, because it uses older upgrades in the progression as well. It’s a shame that he didn’t bring up the fact that the world actually changes throughout the game too, lending for an amazing sense of progression, and allowing you to experience new gameplay in old areas.

I really feel that this episode of boss keys was a little half baked, and I really think it’s because Mark was disappointed in it. There is so much more to the design of the world and exploration than he led on. From what mark said, he seems to think that the thing Dread has going for it is pacing, combat, and boss fights. But there is so much to it than that! It has really clever puzzles, traversal mechanics, and platforming challenges too. I feel like all of those has went under the radar. Also, he really didn’t mention the Emmi too, which is like, one of the biggest reasons you’re pushed forward so much. You don’t want to exploration of emmi zones with the Emmi active, and more often than not the item the Emmi gives you allows for greater exploration of that area.
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I mean, and don't get me wrong, I liked the game a lot, but: I kind of agree with him that pacing, combat, and boss fights were far and away Dread's biggest feature. I didn't even notice anything changing in older areas except for when Artaria freezes over later on, but that was also very brief and limited in scope. And as cool an idea as the EMMI are, I actually found them to be pretty much a non-factor in the game once you learn how they work and how to traverse around them.

Basically, Dread has probably the best combat and bosses of any game in the series (and probably best sense of movement, too), but it's nowhere near the top in exploration, backtracking for cool reasons, and environments. I actually found the environments to be pretty same-y and not all that well differentiated from one another.
 
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Twinsen said:
As the franchise reestablishes itself I think the games will have the opportunity to go back to letting the player get lost.

Not sure if anyone watched G4's Adam Sessler's review but he still ended up getting stuck and lost despite the way the game is designed. It just shows that it was nescesary, and they did it well.
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Here the review. His biggest complaint is actually getting stuck in the game.
 
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