We Finally Know More About Metroid Dread's Unstoppable Enemies

Nintendo shocked the world at E3 2021 by announcing "Metroid Dread," the first new mainline game in the series in nearly two decades. The trailer featured Samus being chased by an unstoppable enemy, the E.M.M.I., which behaves somewhat similarly to Mr. X in the "Resident Evil 2" remake. In a new blog post, Nintendo has provided more information on E.M.M.I., the highly agile and deadly robots originally designed for research purposes.

According to the blog post, the Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifier (or E.M.M.I for short) were sent to the uncharted planet ZDR in order to investigate the existence of the shapeshifting X parasite, last seen in "Metroid Fusion." The Galactic Federation lost contact with the E.M.M.I. and sent Samus to find out what happened. Upon arrival, Samus finds the E.M.M.I. robots have become corrupted, which leads to it pursuing Samus.

While not typically Samus' enemies, the E.M.M.I. will prove to be challenging obstacles. Each E.M.M.I. will freely patrol its zone, performing one of three actions, depending on the color it is displaying. Blue light indicates patrol mode, which means it is unaware of Samus' presence. Yellow light indicates investigation, typically of a suspicious noise. Lastly, a red light indicates the high speed pursuit of a locked-on target — and if Samus is caught, it mostly likely means her end.

Despite the first half of the blog post making the E.M.M.I. sound unbeatable, there are ways for Samus to survive encounters with the robot. Whenever the E.M.M.I. catches Samus, she has a slim chance to escape with a well-timed melee counter. According to Nintendo, "this window of opportunity has such narrow timing of success you may consider it nearly impossible to land a counter." In other words, stealth and evasion may be the best (and only) options in most circumstances

There are E.M.M.I. zone doors, which confine the robots to a single region to patrol. Samus can freely move between the doors, but they lock while the E.M.M.I. is pursuing Samus. In order to lift the lockdown, Samus must shake the E.M.M.I. 

The frequency and size of the E.M.M.I. zones are limited, as constantly having the deadly threat pursuing Samus might make for too stressful an experience. To help lose the mechanical menace, Samus can use her Phantom Cloak ability to turn invisible and move without making a sound. She is undetectable in this mode, but it has a limited meter, which burns faster while moving.

"Metroid Dread" releases for the Nintendo Switch on October 8, 2021.