The February 2022 Nintendo Direct brought news on a whole host of the company's biggest franchises. The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild 2 was conspicuously absent, but in its place were trailers for upcoming Kirby, Fire Emblem, Splatoon, and Xenoblade games, as well as reveals for fans of the Wii Sports, Mario Kart, and Mario Strikers franchises. Among these names, MercurySteam's acclaimed Metroid Dread also got another moment in the spotlight.
Metroid Dread was highly anticipated following its reveal at E3 2021, standing as the first new 2D Metroid game after 2002's Metroid Fusion and promising to wrap up a story in development since the NES era. Its success was self-evident, breaking franchise sales records and even being nominated for Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2021. With this in mind it's no surprise that Metroid Dread is receiving free updates, which offers hope that even more substantial content may be in the pipeline amid fans' long wait for Metroid Prime 4.
Metroid Dread's Free Updates
Though it's great to hear Metroid Dread is receiving new content, the slate of updates are not groundbreaking. The trailer at yesterday's Direct first revealed a free update that would launch later that night, adding two new difficulty modes to Metroid Dread. One is "Dread Mode," which can be unlocked after completing the game in Hard Mode and asks players for perfect execution under threat of one-hit kills. The other is "Rookie Mode," which increases how much health is recovered via items and decreases boss damage. According to an official Nintendo news post about the update, "This is a great choice for those who would prefer less intense action" and want to lean into its exploration elements.
Also included in the February 2022 update - though less central in its marketing - is an expanded mission result screen when finishing the game that tells players about metrics like their total completion time, item collection rate, and overall damage received. The Metroid Dread demo released around Halloween 2021 has also been updated to include a Rookie Mode option, which showcases damage reduction with the Corpius boss battle.
A second free update will drop in April that adds a Boss Rush, though it remains to be seen what else MercurySteam will add given quiet additions to the first update. Nintendo's news post also says My Nintendo members can receive double Gold Points when buying Metroid Dread (and other titles) through February 28, likely to celebrate the recent Direct.
The Future for Metroid Looks Bright
A lot of Nintendo Switch games add free new content over time, particularly party or sports titles like Mario Golf: Super Rush that can release courses or characters to keep things fresh. Others like Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Breath of the Wild used expansion passes to bankroll larger developments. Those latter cases released smaller sets of resources like new outfits before getting to their big story drops in the Cindered Shadows side story and The Champions Ballad DLC, respectively.
Something similar could be said for Animal Crossing: New Horizons, which coasted for about a year on free updates adding holidays and mechanics like swimming before dropping the paid Happy Home Paradise DLC. Given MercurySteam has shown a willingness to update Metroid Dread with new modes, it's entirely possible that DLC could add an addendum to Samus Aran's latest adventure. With Metroid Dread ending the current mainline Metroid story and adding a new set of abilities for Samus, DLC may be the way to establish whatever the developer is responsible for creating next. Hopefully every employee that works on this future content gets the credit they deserve.
Metroid Dread is available now on Nintendo Switch.
