Written by: Odien90 <br>Nintendo confirmed this Tuesday, September 9, that *Metroid Ravenous* — the next 2D chapter starring Samus Aran — arrives **January 28, 2027**, with the bounty hunter stranded and injured on an alien moon, forced to drain life energy from her own enemies just to survive. The detail that got lost in the reveal's noise is the one that actually matters: for the first time since *Dread*, Nintendo is testing whether it can sell a morally compromised Samus, and that changes what kind of game *Ravenous* needs to be. ## What the trailer actually showed The reveal landed inside this week's Direct, in a segment noticeably shorter than the block Nintendo devoted to *Zelda*'s 40th anniversary the day before. Even so, the company gave enough concrete information to already sketch the shape of the game: - **Setting**: an alien desert, seemingly taking place after the events of *Metroid Dread*, with Samus falling into the sand and having to claw her way back to the surface. - **Antagonists**: a group of five cloaked figures, faces hidden under wide-brimmed hats, whose nature wasn't explained in the trailer. - **New mechanic**: an energy-siphoning system, where Samus absorbs a foe's life force until it dissipates entirely — the centerpiece of the marketing and of the game's own title. - **Returning mechanics**: the parry introduced in *Dread* is back, alongside a new ability to run across water and a dash that warps Samus through walls. - **Release date**: January 28, 2027, less than five months after the announcement — a tight window by the franchise's usual standards. The trailer's key line, delivered by Samus herself as she crawls through the sand, sets the tone: "It's eat or be eaten." That's not just a punchy soundbite — it's literally the verb describing the new ability. ## A Samus who feeds on her enemies isn't a small detail Here's the point that reveal-day coverage, fixated on specs and dates, mostly skipped past: "drain life from your enemy" mechanics carry design weight that goes beyond combat. Games that lean on this kind of system — from *Bloodborne* to *Returnal*, and a good chunk of the recent roguelike wave — usually tie the mechanic to a narrative of degradation, a character losing something of themselves in order to survive that way. Samus has never been written as a morally ambiguous hero. She's cold, competent, almost always in the right. Putting her in a position where she's absorbing life force from creatures — and having the game's own text call it "eat or be eaten" — points to a darker register than anything the 2D series has attempted since the original *Fusion*, back in 2002, when the X parasite also turned Samus's survival into a biological, not just tactical, problem. The timing of the announcement inside the Direct itself is also worth noting. Nintendo spent most of the week's attention on the *Ocarina of Time* remake and the *Zelda* 40th-anniversary celebration, including parallel announcements like amiibo and Switch 2 hardware tied to the anniversary. *Ravenous* got slotted into a smaller, later Direct, without the same promotional weight. That could simply reflect production scheduling — but it's also consistent with a pattern the company repeats: save prime real estate for what's already a guaranteed hit, and test riskier bets in secondary showcases. *Metroid* has never been a sales phenomenon on the level of *Zelda*, even with *Dread*'s well-received reception, and a game that shifts the protagonist's moral tone is, by definition, a gamble. There's no official confirmation yet of which studio is handling development — Nintendo didn't mention it in the reveal, which is itself unusual, since MercurySteam's involvement with *Dread* was announced upfront back in 2021. What exists right now is a date, a two-minute trailer, and a question Nintendo chose not to answer yet: how far is this Samus actually willing to go to survive that moon. Source: https://gameinformer.com/nintendo-direct/2026/09/09/nintendo-reveals-metroid-ravenous-a-new-2d-entry-out-in-january