Dread is not linear and at no point tells you where to go, having a certain order of what upgrade you get next ≠ being linear, because even Super and Prime have an upgrade order.

In Dread, once you get a new upgrade, you have to open the map and look what previously locked paths you can access now, sounds like a Metroid-like to me. It's not like Fusion where Adam is all the time telling you where to go and what to do, there is no point where Dread did that, Adam only tells you to return to your ship and good luck.

But Zero Mission does tell you where to go all the time.

But in Super, the only tool the game offers for sequence breaking is wall jumping, but I don't know if you can even skip any upgrade with it, most of the tricks players use to sequence break Super, are, in fact, glitches. You get early Super Missiles using a glitch, you open locked gates from the wrong side using a glitch, etc. Metroid-likes are not about sequence breaking, it's about the freedom to explore and backtrack, and having a sequence of upgrades you must get is not at odd with that as long as the game does give you that freedom, like Super and Dread do.

Yeah, that's pretty much what linear means: you follow one predetermined path.

Dread tricks you into thinking you are making choices on where to go or discovering a certain path. In reality, most of the time once you get a new upgrade the game does one of these things: putting you in a point of no return, guiding you through a teleporter that will take you near your next objective or pretend to give you multiple paths to follow, but only one of them providing actual progress. All of these scenarios leave you with one actual real path to go: the intended path. You can try to go elsewhere, but you'll end up being blocked in one way or another.

The fact that the game doesn't explicitly tell you where to go via text or with a big rounded mark on the map doesn't mean it's not guiding you through the path and making you do what it wants.

Now, that's not a bad thing per se. I loved Dread. I loved Fusion. I loved Zero Mission. But I'm not gonna pretend they are open world games. They aren't. And funniliy enough, they are great because they are mostly linear.

I disagree with this take. "Linear games that can be broken" describes a lot of great Metroidvanias, even Super Metroid. On a first playthrough, that game has a pretty linear path - it only opens up when you have most power-ups toward the end of the game, or on a second playthrough when you know how to walljump from the start.

The Metroidvania genre is at its core based on the idea of keeping the player on a path, and opening that path up as it goes. Even Hollow Knight, a great example of a more open game, keeps you on a pretty tight path until you get to the City of Tears. Silksong is the same way until you get to the Citadel. Both of these games do allow for alternative routes before you get to those main story points, but most first-time players will be funneled into a similar path because the different routes are usually too difficult to find (or just... too difficult).

I would absolutely call Metroid Prime 1 and 2 metroidvanias, even though they're extremely linear, because their linearity is disguised amid a wide interconnected world you can and will get lost in. Prime 3, that I'm not sure, because it has individual areas that feel more like a straight shot than an interconnected maze, and there are no direct connections between separate areas. Dread treads that line thinly as well, but the individual areas feel metroidvania-y enough.

Either way, yeah. Most Metroid games have been largely linear, some are just better at disguising it (MP1/MP2/Dread) than others (Fusion/MP3). I've always wished for the Metroid Prime games to open themselves up to sequence breaks a bit more, but I'm okay with them staying linear.

What? We must have played different games. Now that I think about it, the game did do that once, at that moment where the world was freezing and all doors were frozen except the ones you needed to go through. Literally at any other moment, every time I got an upgrade I opened the map and chose where I wanted to go with the new ability, many times, the way forward was close to the upgrade, but I was never obligated or told to go there.

There you go again. If you are "sequence breaking", you are admiting that there is a sequence to begin with.

Metroidvanias are not about sequence breaking. They are about not having a main sequence, period. Sure, there are main objectives, but they don't force you into one set path. You can explore the map and find those objectives through multiple ways. For example, in Hollow Knight you have like three or four different routes you can use to access City of Tears for the first time (one of the main areas of the game). All of them are valid, even if there is one that is more obvious than the rest. How many options do you have to access Burenia for the first time in Dread, for example? Or once ZDR is frozen, how many different paths can you take in order to reactivate the heat generator?

Super is more open than Dread in the sense that, while there is one "intended path", it's not uncommon that by exploring, getting lost and using your basic abilities you end up getting an upgrade or actually making progress. It's not completely open, but it's far less linear than Dread.

You can only follow one path in Dread unless you really twist the game or have previous knowledge of it.

Dread is linear. They lock the paths you can actually explore using some tricks, overall there are no clear branching paths. The few branching paths are very short, you only go there to get some minor HP or ammunition upgrades, and the you quickly go back to your main path

You can go back and forth, returning to few rooms where you can check for mysteries, but overall once you open a path the game immediately locks you out of another path to keep the experience as linear as possible

Ok, so again, without getting early super missiles or using other glitches, how much sequence can you break in SM? How many different paths can you take to get to Norfair or Maridia for the first time? Can you fight Phantoom before Kraid without glitches? Can you get power bombs before super missiles?

I'd say it's only linear until you get mantis claw I.e. third area (fungal wastes)

I'm saying this because I've reached crystal peak before the city of tears in my first playtrough

And you can actually reach it even before, but can't explore it without the Mantis Claw of course 

edit: Also, even on act 1 Silksong has a few optional brenching paths like Hunters March, Sinners Road, Blasted Steps, Wormways, Weavnest Atla etc. I think even parts of Bilewater ans The Slab can be reached in act 1. I agree the story progression FEELS more linear, because the 3-act structure and the fact some upgrades only come in act 2, but the game itself has a good degree of non linearity, just maybe not as big as original HK 

Edit 2: Reflecting a bit, for me Silksong lacks non linearity insides the areas themselves. I think the Citadel is really open to explore, as is some few areas like The Marrow. But most areas have very clear path progression. The Slab is the most obvious exemple, where you literally need to find keys to unlock different rooms.

It's different from OG HK where you have areas like Forgotten Crossroads, Fungal Wastes, Greenpath, Crystal Peak, Kingoms Edge and Deepnest where you have a more circular map design. Both OGHK and Silksong design their maps for you to reach some upgrade, but in HK you have different paths to reach them, while in Silksong I feel there is always only main path and the other paths are only for minor rewards and will often lead to deadends 

Of course you can fight Phantoom before Kraid without glitches. You can get to the Wrecked Ship early by either doing a perfectly timed walljump, or by doing a shinespark (though that'd require getting the Speed Booster without the Varia suit). Both are extremely difficult but doable without glitches.

One of the biggest sequence breaks that are easy to do in Super Metroid comes at that point in the game actually. The game expects you to go into Norfair to get the Ice Beam, then go all the way up in Brinstar for the Power Bombs, then all the way down into Norfair again to fight Crocomire and get the Grapple Beam, with which you can get the Wave Beam and return all the way up to Crateria and cross the lake into the Wrecked Ship.

Instead, you can go into Norfair and get the Wave Beam straight away with a walljump (and taking some spikes damage). That allows you to access Crocomire immediately from the other side, so you can get the Grapple Beam and Power Bombs without leaving Norfair. Just saves you the hassle of having to go back and forth across the map a million times, and it's all done with one simple walljump.

There's a lot of sequence breaks you can do in Super Metroid, like really a lot, just with intended mechanics like the walljump and Shinespark. But there is still a sequence. All Metroidvanias do (to an extent).

The game features areas that are dungeon-like, contained in the wider thematic area. Very much like in Skyward Sword they're built into the over-world of the area more or less seamlessly. Psychic abilities are pretty much the same as item upgrades. They're used to unlock paths and in boss battles. Backtracking scales up as the game progresses, but it is more like Metroid Prime 3 in terms of level design and progression than either Prime 1 (what I'd call metroidvania-lite) or 2 (hub with some interconnections between spokes.) 

If somebody liked Metroid Prime 3 and/or Skyward Sword they'll like this game. If they didn't like those games they probably won't. Most comparisons I have been seeing on the internet have been comparing this game to only Prime 1, and then saying it is "different from the old Primes" when in reality Prime 1, 2, and 3 had very different world-structures. Prime 2 and 3 were much more hub-like than Prime 1, and I think many people are forgetting that. In fact, many people are forgetting how tedious backtracking in Prime 2 could be (which is also true of Prime 1's end-game fetch quest.) 

Personally I wish Nintendo would have remastered 2 and 3 so these things would be remembered before this game released.