It's clear that the development team at MercurySteam were in tune with various elements of the Metroid fanbase, including speedrunners and those curious players that try everything possible to shake up the game by finding shortcuts and new methods. This emerged previously with a fun little trick for fighting an early-ish boss if you 'break the sequence' and get an item ahead of schedule. Now another trick has emerged for the same boss that's equally cool.
Spoilers, obviously.
As previously discovered, MercurySteam included a way to fight Kraid with bombs, that most of us will have missed. In order to get the bombs before that fight you need to do a bit of clever sequence breaking away from the standard route, but the fact it was programmed in showed that the developers knew players would look for different approaches to the game's progression, and therefore designed certain tricks and shortcuts to be discovered.
You can also get the Flash Shift before Kraid, and a tweet from last week (and now popping up on more of our timelines) shows that if you shift into the boss as its eyes flash, you trigger a cool up-close attack sequence.
Poor old Kraid, it seems like the developers decided to make them the victim for multiple sequence breaking attacks.
There's certainly a speedrunning community developing around the game, too, though the recent 1.0.3 update did fix a bug that effectively neutralised a particular category. It was explained, though, that the change was made due to "a possibility that it may occur unintentionally" and spoil playthroughs of normal players. Some have moved on to update 1.0.3 and reverted back to other speed routes and categories, though some will avoid updating and continue running the 'unintended' route.
In any case, this flash shift attack on Kraid is another fun little bit of design in Metroid Dread that's really there for speedrunners and sequence breakers to discover. Perhaps there are more yet to be found.
Comments 32
God, I beat it 5 times in the launch week alone and this game just KEEPS calling back to me.
Man, the bombs thing feels obvious in comparison to this.
Who would even THINK to Flash Shift into Kraid's face like that?
I wonder what other flash attacks are possible?
But yeah, it's counterintuitive since this is a dodge move, not used for attacks anywhere else. Or is it?!
This is SO COOL. MercurySteam! Incredible development team. Hope they will work for Nintendo for many years to come.
What a homerun this game is.
It won't win... but this SHOULD be GOTY. Such a complete and fully realized game... with an equally realized meta game.
@Muddy_4_Ever
It's nominated for GOTY on The Game Awards!
https://thegameawards.com/nominees/game-of-the-year
And you can vote for it too.
But I agree that it's unlikely to take the award.
This is a pretty cool little addition. I still cling to the impossible hope that there is a secret Ridley room.
@Muddy_4_Ever I put my vote in for Metroid Dread in Game of the Year & Best Adventure Game! I’ve not played a lot, but by far my GOTY. Maybe my favorite Metroid period!
Can’t wait to see if there are more sequence break shenanigans from Samus! 😁
BTW, Sakurai, can we PLEEAAASSSEE have one more character? Raven Beak could be S-Tier! I’d like to think he’s a shoe-in for Super Smash Bros for Super Switch!
But here, can you tell me how to beat RavenBeak? He’s kicking me arse 😅
@Muddy_4_Ever You know, as little as i actually liked dread...i love this reasoning!
Going by the absolute trainwrecks that have been released lately (GTA, Battlefield etc.), Dread is a finished, polished game right out of the box.
Yeah, i take that as GOTY, as sad as it is
@AmplifyMJ when he's gold, he's invincible, don't waste your missiles. When he taunts you, use a melee dash on him then wait for a counter. The black orbs take 4 missiles to destroy and this will replenish ammo. These tips should get you to the 2nd phase, good luck!
I do like Dread, but it seems more like game of 20 years ago than game of the year. It looks like a GameCube game. If you showed people playing Metroid prime in 2002, that in 2021 people would have dread, they'd think something terrible happened to halt technological progress.
Love the little details like this. I got the bomb before Kraid, but I can't even fathom getting the phase shift before Kraid. Sounds like a challenge.
What the heck?? This game, man. This game.
Here’s hoping we get a sequel, or even some kind of DLC expansion, within the next few years.
Wow, if they really programmed all these extra fighting animations in JUST IN CASE you already have an item you're not supposed to - then that is absolutely incredible. Or they were very aware of sometimes very obscure sequence breaks. Which would be equally incredible.
@Moistnado This has to be trolling. Have you played Prime recently? Because I have. It still looks atmospheric, but the textures look visibly jaggy and dated on 50+ inch 1080p screens. In contrast, Dread looks sharp, colorful, stunning, with insane lighting and texture design on any similar screen.
It's not a realistic game, and it's not a 3D game. It's a stylized, insanely competent 2D side-scrolling platformer, and very much what a next generation sequel to 1994's SNES Super Metroid ought to look like.
Seems like some people really love this game. Well good for them I guess.
@Moistnado @AmplifyMJ And when he throws a sun up to the top of the room, drop a power bomb real quick to take care of it and save yourself a headache dodging its rays and Raven Beak at the same time
@Moistnado You have no idea what a Gamecube game looks like.
@Bret @Moistnado thank you for the tips!
@RupeeClock What's amazing is that the eyes are technically a visual clue / cue. I mean, it's only obvious now someone has found it!
@ThomasBW84
I think it may be that Kraid's eyes glow like that just before he goes to perform a counterable attack too, so it could be part of the tell designed to let you know to get ready to counter.
This game is just so well designed, really.
2 things:
1) the idea of using a defense move to attack just in a specific part of the game is really nice
2) being to get flash shift before defeating Kraid is a whole new ballgame
I've been playing Dread since launch and I couldn't be happier about that game
Starting to feel that members of Mercury Steam really saw this as a labour of love.
Although still slightly bitter at NLife spoiling Kraid’s appearance when they plastered him right on the article’s thumbnail. Would have loved to have had a blind surprise whilst playing.
@dudujencarelli You are right it does look like a sequel to a 1994 game. It does not look like a sequel to the 2002 game, like I said. I agree that it is colourful in places, but this is hardly an indicator of technological progress. It reminds me of Shadow Complex, a 2.5D game on Xbox360, released 12 years ago. I do not agree that it has insane texture or lighting design, or that it is particularly stylized. I think it is competently made, bare bones in places but a fun game. Maybe game of the year can just be fun, not pushing the possibilities of what last gen or hardware, or the gen before it (or before that even) can do.
@Bret Yes, perhaps an exaggeration. More like an Xbox 360 game. Reminds me of Shadow Complex.
In the 3ds Metroid return of Samus, which is VERY similar gameplay to Metroid Dread. There are some cool things you can do like this. I never documented them but I've played thru it many times and def did some weird out of order stuff. In that game there's purple acid that is supposed to keep you from going further until you kill all the metroids and put their DNA into a console that then drains it. But if you have enough E tanks you can just barely get through some parts without dying and get things out of order. There's one or two spots where you can do it with the lava too and grab some ammo upgrades early. I'm sure someone has posted in detail about shortcuts in return of Samus somewhere online
@StefanN Obviously, these so-called sequence breaks were intentionally included in the game (which means they're better described as alternate paths than true sequence breaks). Nobody would waste development time adding in stuff like this if there's a chance that it might never been seen through the course of actual gameplay.
@Moistnado Well, when you consider that the Wii U is about as powerful as the XBox 360, while the Switch itself (in TV mode) is near the level of the XBox One, then it makes sense that a Switch 2.5D game would remind you of one on the 360 while still being somewhat better looking. It may not be pushing the limits of the Switch hardware, but it's still beyond what could be done on the Wii U / 360 / PS3.
Idk. I didn’t think the Kraid boss was that great. Cool seeing it again. Kind of one note.
@Gwynbleidd I think Freek Raid may feel like a different campaign...
(And that people are using woke too much as a disparaging term)
@LUIGITORNADO I felt that it was probably the most badass I've ever seen Samus. Every cutscene of that fight against Kraid helped her personality shine through with zero words.
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