How Metroid Dread's Morph Ball Refreshes The Series | Screen Rant
Metroid Dread has brought about the revival of the long-dormant, iconic side scroller series, and its compelling change to one of the staple items, the Morph Ball, offers a refreshing beginning to the game. Though there have been other Metroid games in the interim, Dread comes nearly two decades after 2002's Metroid Fusion, the previous mainline entry. The series was foundational in what has come to be colloquially known as the Metroidvania genre, and such a long hiatus raised concerns over whether or not the series could still innovate. Luckily, Metroid Dread is a modernization of the Metroid series' core elements, and its new take on how to use the Morph Ball helps it feel fresh.
Metroid protagonist Samus Aran is inextricably linked to the Morph Ball, an item that lets her curl up and roll through small spaces. It has appeared in every Metroid game featuring Samus, and is a permanent part of her identity as a video game character. From the beginning of the series in 1986's Metroid, the Morph Ball has typically been given to player early on. It's used in a variety of ways from exploring small tunnels, to fighting bosses, and even forcibly detaching Metroids trying to feed on Samus.
Dread makes the simple change of making the player wait for the Morph Ball item. In the first Metroid, the Morph Ball is literally in the game's first room, but Dread has players take on multiple E.M.M.I. robots and a boss before the Morph Ball is acquired in the second of Metroid Dread's multiple locations on the planet ZDR. This simple change to upgrade acquisition helps reinforce the hopelessness of Samus' dire circumstances while putting a new spin on the series' old Metroidvania mechanics.
Many Metroidvania sequels have to come up with a way to strip the player of all the upgrades the protagonist received in the previous game. Leaving them fully upgraded takes away a key aspect of the genre's design, where players use new items to return to previous locations and access new areas. At the beginning of Metroid Dread, Samus is confronted and left unconscious deep in ZDR by a mysterious Metroid Chozo villain. When she awakens to all of her suit upgrades missing, her objective is changed from investigating the planet to simply trying to get to the surface (and her ship) alive. Without the Morph Ball, a power that has almost universally been available to Metroid players, the first couple hours feel even more desperate as Samus has to pass multiple, inaccessible tunnels.
Instead, Samus is given a new slide mechanic, which lets players pass through short, ground level openings. Not having one of Samus' signature abilities is quite strange. Even people tangentially familiar with Metroid know that Samus can curl up into a ball, but Dread doesn't allow it for a significant chunk of the game. After so many years, Metroid Dread is fundamentally different than its predecessors because it takes away one of Samus' reliable (and expected) methods of traversal, using it as a way to prop up ZDR's labyrinthine atmosphere and bring a small but noticeable twist to the series' gameplay.