Metroid Prime Hunters did introduced a few alien races. Maybe make a game revolving around of one of those races?

Which reminds me, Retro still did not explain that ship at the end of Prime 3.

Why not focus on the earlier part of her career, since the middle and end have been explored pretty thoroughly?

Something like a Metroid: Origins.

I think a reboot is a bad idea. There's still plenty of life left in the series, and it hasn't slid into decadence.

I wish they would just put som sort of story into a Metrod game, it might make them actually something other than boring and depressing to play. None of this "The Chozo were once here, but now they're not and this planet sucks" type stories that were in the last few Metroid games.

Going by Other M it'll be very "50 shades of gray"-like.

I hope there's very little "story" in the game to be honest. I want them to go back to the Metroid Prime roots: A vast mysterious planet, a cool background story that isn't forced upon you and lots of freedom and challenge for the player. I just didn't like the direction Prime 3 took with all the new characters. That feeling of isolation was lost.

What i had meant by "Mr. Exposition" in the OP was somewhat tied in to my other idea. The shipboard AI can hold conversations with Samus to help flesh out a little bit of what's going on, without having to contrive other characters to get in the way. Beat Phantoon, and maybe on the elevator ride to the next place, Adam explains a bit about Phantoon's history with the Space Pirates and how it fit in here, that sort of thing.

As long as Samus ass is shown in HD I will be happy, you don't need to give me a good story... I just need Samus to have a sexy moment this time at least just 5 seconds.

Samus decided to fight against the federation, and halfway through the game she decide to join the space pirates. After defeating the federation the space pirates try to kill Samus, and when doing so the destroy a wall of the metroid breeding room in tge federation HQ, leading to their escape, and Samus escapes when everyone is confused by the chaos. She then in her second game tries to find the Chozo to find a way to remove the space pirates, and at the same time dealing with Metroids. Thats all I can think of XD

Story wise, bring in a new threat, probably not the Federation since the company line Retro was told while developing the Prime series is that Samus while a bounty hunter is always the good guy fighting for justice so I doubt they'd make her go against the law of the land. But really, outside of coming up with a new token reason to keep calling the series Metriod, it shouldn't be that hard explaining away things in Fusion such as the ugly Fusion suit or whatever.

The biggest hurdle is probably figuring out what direction they want to go, either a Prime like First Person experience, attempting a 3rd person adventure with 3D movement or trying to go back to a side scrolling experience. Other M was basically a hybrid that failed partially because they really tried to do a lot of new things with it such as make it casual friendly, feature side scrolling and non side scrolling sections and actually trying to add more of emphasis on character and story. Which came to a bad result that while not disastrous will go down in Metriod lore as a black sheep of the franchise.

Idk about the story but i think we will see a Metroid like Prime for Wii U next year, prolly Retros game and a 2.5D game like Other M for 3DS. Other M wasnt great but it had potential and deserves another shot at that style graphics

This thread has actually wrongly identified Metroid's problem.

The biggest problem the franchise has today is not the story or the delivery of it, but gameplay. If one thing must change, it's the gameplay.
It's just not appealing to a big audience (+ 2 million people).

I think Nintendo needs to reboot Metroid like a shooter. Not in the generic COD way, but as a brand of their own.

Something like a FFP with real branching path's (no backtracking) combined with a full on multiplayer and co-op experience.
In other words a clever mix of FFA and FFP.