the comment wasn’t “why don’t they”, it was “it would’ve been really ballsy”
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yeah I just think that there is like… an indescribably large chasm between “a mercurysteam production” and “retraining an entire school of industrial art production.” because I think about that a lot already.
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I feel I’m at least on the back side of the game now Got Gravity Suit and I’m mostly enjoying it. I’m 50/50 on the implementation of the EMMIs. The fiddliness of the controls as well as being a 2D space makes it feel like you got got just because of a tiny mistake with the interface instead of a bad decision. I also feel like the clutch escape windows are kind of a joke when the telegraphing is intentionally done to bait you and is not uniform even on same EMMIs. I’d certainly take an escape tool that would take a huge chunk of health just to make getting caught still be something to avoid but at least give you some wiggle room so you don’t have to see a game overscreen.
Aesthetically this game feels a little to clean. If not for the plot the EMMIs should be some kind of alien apex predator instead of some Apple branded stalker bot. On the other hand, Samus has never looked more toyetic. I want a figma of the Starter suit by the time I finish.
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nintendo did not have to contract mercurysteam for this project, and they have more than enough money to hire enough talented pixel artists to do it and do it well.
do you have any actual reasoning for there “not being enough pixel artists no more 
” besides “trust me, dude”? it seems to me that you could easily find dozens of highly skilled and experienced pixel artists who would trip over themselves to work on the first new metroid game in over a decade.
this really just comes down to nintendo still thinking metroid is too niche to spend actual money on. even farming it out mercurysteam and committing to 2.5D it just feels so aesthetically compromised.
though, again, they do deserve credit for keeping the controls extremely tight and responsive. it’s even better than bloodstained in that regard.
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I do not think this would be required for nintendo to make a pixel art game in 2021.
and like… cadence of hyrule is small-to-mid-sized indie game. there were a total of three artists on the main staff, only two of them were pixel artists. even if the metroid dread budget was comparatively small for a AAA nintendo release I’m p sure they could have done it in pixels for the same amount of money… but maybe not with mercurysteam since their entire CV is 2.5D games.
Dread’s animation systems would be difficult to do with sprites, no? ~270 degrees of movement on the arm cannon free aim alone. There is something gained in 2.5D besides cost savings.
maybe, but I personally feel that the game’s design would be tighter with just snapping to 45 degrees of articulation like all the other 2D metroids. dread was almost certainly originally conceived with that in mind anyway if it was meant to be a gba or DS game. and it feels tacked on here only as a result of the game being 2.5D. maybe it’s used more extensively further into the game and it will feel less tacked-on? still would probably rather play the version of the game that didn’t require it.
I really do not like the way the omega beam mechanic is implemented, I don’t like how the camera zooms behind samus’s shoulder for no reason.
all the 360 degree aiming shit in bloodstained sucked too. it always feels lousy trying to do that with an analog stick.
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I do think the “industrial production” angle is still key here – to do justice to it they would have to be working at a level and scale that simply no one does anymore, they would need a project director who knew how they wanted it to look and they would need to get a lot of people who might have experience working on cheaper projects executing at the same level. it would functionally be a new 2D studio
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nintendo has worked with pixel-based games more extensively and for longer than any of the major AAA developers at this point. that knowledge doesn’t just go away after 5 years, and they are generally not conservative about bucking this particular type of industry trend anyway.
and I mean, you’re right that having to switch to an older production style was probably an obstacle, but I don’t know why you’d posit such an ankle-gnawing concern as the reason when there is a much more obvious cause. like I really don’t think it’s any more complicated than “we’ve worked with mercurysteam before, they do 2.5D well, samus returns did well, that’s tried and true, let’s go with that”.
and while I hate to be that gamer who screeches about inferior western studios ruining their favorite japan-developed franchises, this situation just feels like a milder version of that. I still haven’t played samus returns but my impression is that it basically sucks but was just good enough to sell to and bel well-received by the metroidvania starved knuckle-draggers of reddit or whatever, basically guaranteeing that any future metroid games be sort of watered down and aesthetically anodyne.
and to be clear, I think I could be perfectly capable of enjoying this game in 2.5D form if it had very strong visual direction and production qualities. but if we’re imagining a world where mercurysteam didn’t make this game, why not also imagine a world where they committed to sticking with the production style of the game it’s a direct sequel to?
as it is, it feels like a stunning aesthetic downgrade from fusion, despite running on much nicer hardware and being made with a much higher budget. it just bums me out.
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FWIW the art direction makes a poor first impression and becomes more distinct from previous games as it opens up. Whether that’s an improvement, well, tastes vary.
I also enjoy how the scale of the camera (not the angle) changes but that’s not limited to 2.5D.
One problem is that the idea of “mainline Metroid game” is ponderous and basically bad. We don’t need “mainline Metroid games”. It’s no accident that the silver age of Metroid and Castlevania was a period when they were conceived of as minor portable spinoff series
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this also isn’t without precedent because that’s basically how mother 3 was eventually finished. though circumstances were different there of course.
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Brownie Brown was already making games in that production style on that platform. I’m not sure there’s an equivalent developer here?
For what it’s worth, I think the 2.5d vs 2d distinction isn’t the root of the problem anyway, and not even the budget is. The root of the problem is that you need a talented, experienced, inspired team who truly loves Metroid. MercurySteam doesn’t meet that high bar. Just like Bluepoint didn’t for Demon’s Souls, so their adaptation was also incompletely-authentic and was met with a divided reception, even though Bluepoint made wise calls on technology and also had a practically infinite budget.
In contrast, consider a mid-budget labor of love like my current most-played game, Guilty Gear Strive. It’s 2.5d, but it holds its own (I would go as far as looks better than) Third Strike. (If you don’t accept my subjective claim and think Third Strike’s art remains way better, that’s fine I get it, but you should still be able to see the sense in which my claim is correct.) It took more than a decade for 2.5d fighting games to reach that aesthetic tier and until one did it seemed to be impossible, then someone just went ahead and poured their soul into making one.
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yes thank you. this isn’t strictly a 2.5D vs 2D thing to me. I couldn’t agree more with everything @broco is saying here.
dread has this amateurish feel to it that many indie games of comparable scope and ambition simply do not, regardless of their chosen visual medium.
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Ghost Song is Metroid 5
damn I can’t believe this is still being made.
it actually kinda looks worse now but i choose to believe
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also the videogame tradition of repetitious labyrinthine subterranean cavern mazes exists to maximize limited art assets
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