A New Metroid Game, called Metroid Dread, is Coming This Year - E3 2021

Around the middle of Nintendo’s E3 presentation, they made a point of saying that the new Metroid Prime 4 game, which people have been eagerly awaiting for years now, was still being made. We assumed, at that point, that this meant that Nintendo was just going to nod at it and apologize for the lack of updates, something not unlike what they did with Breath of the Wild 2 at the last Direct before this one. However, instead of apologizing, they sidelined us with a reveal that there would, in fact, be a new Metroid game coming out this year: not a Prime, not a spin-off, and not a remake — but an honest-to-god Metroid 5, called Metroid: Dread.



Metroid games have always skirted on the edge of horror, with several game sin the franchise putting you toe-to-toe with a powerful enemy that you have to avoid until you can find a way to beat them up later. It appears as if Dread is taking that concept up a notch, as this time Samus will be fighting — and avoiding — invincible robots that appear more than able to kill her effortlessly should they get their hands on her.

Judging by the fact she’s not wearing her iconic power armor, we can assume that’s part of the reason she’s so relatively defenseless against these bad boys.

Gameplay wise, it’s looking to be following a similar trend as the Metroid 2 remake for the 3DS: in addition to plasma blasts, missiles, and bombs, Samus will have a handful of hand-to-hand moves like parries and bashes to turn her enemies into corpses. Which means it should be a little more action-heavy when you’re not running from murder robots.

Either way, it looks like a worthy entry into the series. We can expect to learn more later this year.