Just finished Metroid Dread, and...

[crantheman]

Don't get me wrong, the game was a blast to play and had amazing story beats interwoven with gameplay. As a longtime fan of Metroid, Dread was a great step forward from the foundation the MercurySteam team cemented on making Metroid: Samus Returns back in 2017. But after my first playthrough I felt something was...off. Not with the core gameplay itself, but a lingering feeling I felt while playing the game. I felt like there was something missing from the game that previous 2D Metroid games had.

Then I realized something: I couldn't name a single track from the OST that was memorable except for remixes from past Metroid games. I did some research and the composers for Dread were very new to Nintendo (Soshi Abe and Sayako Doi). Abe had started at Nintendo with composing music for Zelda BOTW DLC, and Doi started out at Nintendo composing music for Super Mario Maker 2. Previously, Metroid: Samus Return's composer was Daisuke Matsuoka, who had great experience composing for a diverse array of Nintendo games dating back to 2010's Donkey Kong Country Returns.

I'm not sure if I'm the only person that feels this way, but I worry that the lack of musical identity within Dread will lead to future Metroid games lacking the quality of music found in Metroid games such as Prime, Zero Mission, or Super Metroid. Hopefully Metroid Prime 4 won't suffer the same musical pitfalls Dread has in its OST.

 

[Term]

I feel you. Samus Returns had the same issue somehow even in spite of it being a remake

I don't expect Prime 4 will have that problem, historically speaking, but if Mercury Steam are working on Metroid 6 right now, I do really hope they put some more focus into the OST