In Metroid Dread's surprise trailer at E3, fans were shown a terrifying stalker-like enemy known as E.M.M.I, a robotic entity inspired by the SA-X from Metroid Fusion. Not much information was revealed in that first trailer other than an E.M.M.I's general role, but Nintendo has recently dropped a bit more information about the new Metroid antagonist in a recent Metroid Dread report.
With this new report and the gameplay shown at Nintendo's E3 Treehouse live stream, fans are starting to piece together how E.M.M.I will act in-game and a bit more on their role in the game's story. The second Metroid Dread report was entirely themed around the E.M.M.I, giving players more information on the entity and even revealing a new Amiibo for them.
An E.M.M.I is already known to stalk Samus throughout the game as a seemingly unkillable force that requires Samus to flee whenever they appear. The Treehouse presentation certainly made it seem as though there was no way to stop an E.M.M.I once it started hunting down Samus. There's more than one E.M.M.I, too, with the recent report giving players a little more context on how these robotic entities were created.
E.M.M.I stands for Extraplanetary Multiform Mobile Identifier, revealing that E.M.M.I's were originally designed to be research robots. They were created by the Galactic Federation, which happens to be the same organization that Samus works for. This means that something made the E.M.M.I's deployed to planet ZDR go rouge. At some point before Samus arrives on ZDR, the E.M.M.I's on ZDR ceased communication with the Galactic Federation.
The development team of Metroid Dread adds in the report that the E.M.M.I's have a significant amount of strength and are emotionless robots. With an unknown number of these robots on ZDR corrupted by an unknown force, the E.M.M.I are not something to take lightly. That being said, the second Dread report did give players a bit of information about how they can survive an encounter with one.
E.M.M.I patrol distinct areas on the map called E.M.M.I. Zones when they aren't actively chasing Samus. Players can watch the light they're giving off to determine if they've noticed them or not, with a blue light meaning that Samus is currently undetected. A yellow light means that they've heard Samus but haven't seen her and are inspecting where the sound came from, while a red light means that they've seen Samus and are going into pursuit mode. Even when they detect Samus, they won't chase her outside of their zones, but that doesn't mean players can simply escape the area. When Samus is detected, E.M.M.I zones are locked down, and all doors into and out of the room are locked. The only way to escape is to hide from the E.M.M.I or to get them to lose Samus.
When an E.M.M.I goes into pursuit mode, Samus isn't completely defenseless, though. While an E.M.M.I cannot be attacked normally, the dev team mentions that a well-timed melee counter-attack can help Samus escape, though it's unknown if this counter disables an E.M.M.I completely or just stuns it. The dev team also stresses that this counter is tough to pull off, making avoiding detection a player's best bet.
Samus has another way to fight the E.M.M.I if she manages to power her arm cannon up with a mother computer. A mother computer can be found in each zone where E.M.M.I patrol and will let Samus use two different Omega attacks: the Omega Stream and Omega Blaster. These attacks will take some time to charge, though, and Samus must remain stationary while charging.
As a final note, the report confirms there will be variants of the E.M.M.I. So far, it's confirmed that Samus will encounter the standard white model, a yellow version and one that looks to be broken. According to the dev team, these different variants have unique abilities, though what these abilities are is currently unknown.
Developed by MercurySteam and Nintendo EPD and published by Nintendo, Metroid Dread releases for Nintendo Switch October 8, 2021.
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