Metroid Dread – Took 15 years due to technical limitations

Metroid Dread – Took 15 years due to technical limitations

Yoshio Sakamoto worked on several games in the Metroid series, revealed to journalists why it took the team fifteen years to produce and deliver the upcoming Metroid Dread game for the Nintendo Switch.

Sakamoto had the idea for Metroid Dread 15 years ago and the project had started and stopped numerous times along the years. The reason for this is Mr. Sakamoto wanted the concept to revolve around Samus Aran being pursued by a deadly undefeatable force however the technical limitations of the hardware at the time had prevented the team from fully fulfilling his vision. Now with the reasonably powerful Nintendo Switch system, and a great development partner in the form of MercurySteam, they have managed to fulfil Mr. Sakamoto’s vision for Metroid Dread.

“I wanted to create something that was unsettling for players, and also would communicate this unfeeling-ness that’s inherent in something that’s robotic.”

MercurySteam:

“The reason that I actually met with them was in the hope that they’d be able to realize the concepts that I had for Metroid Dread,” Sakamoto explains. “In meeting with them, I got the sense that they were a team that we could work together with towards a singular concept, and realize this goal that I had in mind for Metroid Dread.”

The Verge thoughts on the non playable demo and Mr. Sakamoto’s thoughts on the long-running project:

“From the live gameplay demo I watched, the E.M.M.I. robots are appropriately terrifying, hunting down Samus with cold, calculated precision. For Sakamoto, watching it all come together so smoothly has almost made the long wait to realize his vision worth it.

“It’s really better than I imagined those 15 years ago when I had the idea for this,” he says.