Metroid: Dread diary 2

I got stuck in the area around where I encountered the 2nd EMMI. According to the game’s built-in progress log, this one is called EMMI-025M, for what it’s worth. The first one was called EMMI-01P. I don’t know what the names mean.

I have found an Energy Tank, and a few missile containers, but I can’t get to them. The map has a lot of areas that are cleverly designed to allow one-way transit only in places, creating bottlenecks and flows that force me to follow a route. At each of these spots, I’m forced to decide to commit and go through the one-way or backtrack or take another route. There’s a few places in this area where I encounter the one-way on the wrong side of it, so I can’t proceed through, and there I see the power-up item. And so far, I can’t figure out the right way around.

The only other thing left to do in this area seems to be to play cat and mouse with the EMMI-025M. I enter its patrol area, and mostly I’m preoccupied with avoiding the thing, hoping to not get detected and chased. This keeps me from searching the room thoroughly. I find that if I keep ahead of EMMI-025M, and keep moving, I can avoid it detecting me, but this doesn’t seem to gain me anything.

I take a few laps of the EMMI-025M’s patrol zone, wondering what I’m supposed to do, when I notice in one spot there’s some water, and the ground platforms I’ve been walking across appear to be floating on pontoons. Over to the left, I notice what appears to be a pressure plate. These blend in with the regular background pretty well, and it takes a trained eye to be able to spot them, but I’ve found a few places where they are more obvious — usually they’re save points or weapon or life energy refill points, and they generally have very obvious kiosks and machinery around them to help you spot them. This one doesn’t so much have that, so I must have ran past it a good fifty times before I noticed it.

I stand on it for a few seconds, triggering it, and the water drains and the floating floor segments drop, exposing a low passage that I can squeeze through if I use my slide.

This must be the way forward, so I take the new path. It leads me to a new area within Artaria, and I explore a bit, encountering some random weak enemies. I find a missle container, and then my first Energy Tank that I can collect. It’s not the same one that I found earlier but couldn’t get to. But this one, I can get easily, and so I do. This doubles my life energy and gives me a little more confidence. Although, so far there hasn’t been a whole lot of combat, and what there has been has either been very easy, or with the EMMIs that I can do nothing against and have to run from. So life energy doesn’t seem to be all that necessary, yet. I’m sure at some point it will become vital.

Continuing to explore, I work my way through the complex, and eventually discover a chamber with a familiar-looking statue that appears to be offering a ball-shaped item to me. I take it, and it turns out to be the Charge Beam power-up. So now if I press and hold the cannon button, I can charge up a more powerful attack, and also this charged-up beam will enable me to open certain doors that I couldn’t open previously. There’s a few of them right in this immediate area, and I go around and try to explore more.

I find another chamber, what appears to be some kind of control room, and activate it. This changes the flow of magma, which is apparently in use as some kind of power source for this area. During my exploration I had encountered a few doors that led to areas that were glowing red hot and did damage to me, and I had to retreat back to the normal-temperature area. Activating this thing doesn’t seem to have cooled down those areas any, so I’m not sure entirely what I just accomplished.

But there’s a new bit of story revealed, and ADAM tells me that my mystery assailant may have been a Chozo warrior, and that this area appears to have been a settlement of their species. Apparently they may have been responsible for reprogramming the EMMI and turning them against me. ADAM again re-iterates that I’m currently powerless to confront the EMMI and will have to be very careful, avoid them, and flee if I encounter them, and that my primary objective is to return to the surface of the planet and rendezvous with my ship.

I’ve made a bit of progress, but now I’m not sure where to go next. I guess returning to the areas I’ve been and seeing where I can go now that I’ve gotten the Charge Beam.

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