Meanwhile my roommate had to stop playing the game because the EMMIs were literally giving him panic attacks. I definitely agree that Fusion felt like it had more memorable developments happening on the station though
Dang! Yeah, I've heard of the E.M.M.I. having that effect on a number of players, and I certainly wasn't aiming to downplay that. It's totally valid. At the end of the day, MercurySteam did a solid job with the implementation of the E.M.M.I., and they serve their purpose well, in creating tense situations for the player to overcome. They're exciting to outmaneuver, and I never felt like they were unfair, or an obstacle that couldn't be overcome within a reasonable number of attempts. Their areas are designed in a manner that makes it easy for the player to loop them around, if necessary, which, in turn, makes it difficult to hit any real "dead ends". Additionally, the Phantom Cloak ability feels entirely optional, which I appreciate, since I prefer to stay on the move.
The thing is, maybe Sakamoto & MercurySteam didn’t wanted to make a Fusion 2.0 game. None of the Metroid game are the same if you look closer, they all have their own feel and it’s great this way.
Indeed, they're all fairly distinct from each other. To further clarify, it's not that I wished for Dread to be Fusion 2, but rather, I wanted it to serve as a natural progression of Fusion's strengths. Not simply going from SA-X, to E.M.M.I. (the leap is obvious there, and I would hope so, considering the 19 year gap), but factoring in other things, as well.
Think of the progression from the original Metroid, to Super. In some ways, Super was like a remake of the OG, before Zero Mission was. We're back on Zebes, but it's deeper, and more expansive. Kraid, Ridley, and Mother Brain are back as well, but bigger! Better! Know what I mean?
And yet, we wouldn't exactly sit here and call Super a shameless rehash of OG Metroid, because it's not. Instead, it uses the original game as merely a general template, and takes advantage of the massive jump from FDS / NES to SNES, to create something that meaningfully iterates upon the solid framework established by what came before it. The result, of course, is one of the greatest games of all time, but you don't need me to tell you that.
That sort of progression is something I sought from Dread. The game isn't a disappointment, or anything (on the contrary: it's excellent, and I've said that multiple times), but it's not all I hoped it'd be, either... and I guess that's okay. It's very difficult to make something that lives up to a collective fanbase's meteorically high expectations, that have been steadily building, over the course of two decades. What's important is that Metroid is finally back, and hope for its future has been reignited in a big way.
I mean I would go wild and say 2023 but MP4 is that year!
