I'm partway through dread and I'm like 90% sure he's going to betray me lol. the way it's worked so far is that there's special adam save rooms where the first time you find them you get a little call from him that basically just says "hay this thing is dangerous" about all the dangerous things. it's not skippable but it's just a few text boxes.

the idea is that your ship's radio is cut off from your suit, and you can only contact him from those special rooms. it kind of has the opposite effect of adam in fusion, instead of adam telling you where to go you're a cool badass who doesn't really need help.

there's one specific thing that I really liked: which was that adam tells you not to go in the hot rooms until you get the Varia suit. of course, you can totally ignore this and get those powerups early if you want, it's just telling you that you don't need to. it makes disobeying him feel cool

adam returning is clearly supposed to be some kind of meta thing, and I'm not sure if it actually makes the game better but like I get it lol.