How dare someone talk about Metroid and talk about major sales when I haven’t made a bold prediction yet

Likewise though, while not being a fan of said series doesn't make your criticisms invalid, when you start to make arguments against the inherit appeal of the franchise without many supporting points to back that up other than "this might make the games more popular", or without even a sense that you understand why people like the series as it currently stands at all, then your entire thread becomes harder to digest...

At this point in time, the only leg your arguments actually have to stand on is that if you said this about Zelda before Breath of the Wild came out, a lot of people probably would have disagreed with you. But, that's not actually a very compelling argument, in part because we're dealing with hypotheticals in such a scenario, but also because at best it's just a reason not to immediately dismiss your perspective. 

I don't want Prime 4 to be the same a Prime 1-3, because I'm not really one for wanting continuations needlessly. I want the game to be different from the prior games. In fact, I wouldn't mind if Prime 4 ended up being renamed with an entirely different, non-Prime subtitle, because honestly associating "the good" 3D Metroids with one subseries doesn't really make much sense in the long run. But again, your arguments don't give much credence to why Metroid should take a radical shift other than "it might be more popular". There are games as popular and even some more popular than Metroid with the same formula, so I don't think the formula is the biggest problem. 

THE NITPICKS (The response): 

One of the things that sticks out to me for example in your argumentation is when you act as if the ability for the game to be somewhat non-linear because of sequence breaking is some kind of special attribute to Metroid 2. This is a thing for the entire 2D Metroid series (except Fusion). It actually become a more prominent part of the games with Super onwards. It's even a thing in Prime, though that series in general is definitely more linear. Super Metroid is literally the title most famous for sequence-breaking. When remaking Metroid with Zero Mission, the developers went out of their way to intentionally make almost every part of the game (aside from some boss battles) skippable. This isn't just posting an argument that has little backing to it, this is actually knowing next to nothing about a series, then claiming to know how to make it a big success. On a similar note, though I can't criticize this too much because it's just an expression of a feeling and feelings are impossible to argue against, thinking that the first two Metroid games in comparison to Prime are less desolate and lonely is just bizarre to me. If anything, I think a big problem the franchise has is that all of the pre-Prime games focus too much on desolation, whereas Zero Mission and Fusion focus too much on the wonderous and fantastical elements of science fiction. The first few games are bit too dark, Super Metroid is a game I'd never want to live in, and Zero Mission and Fusion are a bit too pop (well, Fusion is horror-like, but not really as desolate or isolated). Prime is actually the only one that probably got a perfect balance in this regard, it has a lot of pretty colors, with a lot of wildlife and vegetation clogging the screen and making the world lively, but it also has desolate areas, isolated locales, and ambient soundscapes. It strikes the perfect power fantasy world balance: it's beautiful enough to want to inhabit but scary enough to want to be a badass in. 

Another example where I get the distinct impression you are arguing from a perspective which lacks some critical information about the games but don't like them and want them to satisfy your needs is when you say that Metroid needs emergent storytelling. The first irony here is that I don't think the cut-up cutscene narrative of Breath of the Wild constitutes as  "emergent storytelling". The second is that you start talking about how missable optional dialogues create "emergent storytelling" while talking about how Metroid should follow in those footsteps, when that's literally what the scanner system facilitates and is one of the most popular aspects of the Prime series. It's optional text that pops up on the screen giving you detailed background lore and story reasons for what is going on in the games. Sure, it might not fit the criteria of being a "dialogue" with another character (as if Link has anything interesting to say to the NPCs to begin with and they aren't just essentially text dumps), but that's a separate point; more directly linked to your idea about getting rid of isolation in Metroid. It doesn't make sense as a point against Metroid not having emergent storytelling, by your criteria it does. Also, Metroid Prime 3 already implemented people you would talk to in the world and got rid of most of Metroids desolation. It's not a particularly notable game in the series and it's only the 5th highest selling.

I also feel like the way you are using the word "linear" in Metroids case is a bit of a misnomer. It's not wrong that the overall objectives of these games tend to be linear, but there's a lot of parts that make them less linear than just about almost all linear games out there (and linear games have been and are very popular still). I'll also restate I think you are using the word "emergent" incorrectly. 

HOW I WOULD CHANGE METROID (My own arguments): 

Now that I'm done nitpicking criticisms that do not really make sense to people who know Metroid, I need to specify that there are ideas you state here where I'm not really sure where the poor phrasing begins and the bad ideas end. That is to say, I'm not sure if I actually agree with what you're saying and you're just stating it poorly, or if you are stating it correctly and it's just a bad idea. For example, I actually think making future Metroids bigger and more open isn't a bad idea in and of itself. But making them "open world" is a bad idea. There needs to be a connective tissue behind the logic of opening a new area besides just "it was always available to you, you just never went there before!". In a way, Metroids logic behind unlocking new areas isn't even that different already from Breath of the Wild's more destructive environments being gatekeeped behind eating food or having better armor: both of them are about using a certain "logic" and treating the areas like soft-puzzles to unlock their inner contents. 

Another way in which I sort of kind of somewhat could stretch out your point to agree with you a little bit is if we talk about making Metroid more open in the sense of Dark Souls and .... Resident Evil. Ok, Resident Evil really isn't that much more open than Metroid, if anything it's more linear, but what I like about the way Resident Evil does Metroidvania design is that it sort of tricks you into thinking that no matter how linear the main objective is, the order in which you traverse every room is always important whether or not you're speedrunning the game. Because despite having objectives which aren't even unlocked through actual upgrades or extensions to your ability list (which for all intents and purposes, feels more limiting) ... the stress, tension, and the way upgrades are facilitated always makes the order you progress through the map important, whether it's the mansion, the R.P.D. station, etc. This is something I think Metroid gets a bit wrong, technically there are objectives you can beat in different orders, but honestly (and maybe it's because it's been a while since I beat Prime) I never feel it's that important which order you do them in. Though this might just be because I'm not a sequence breaking master (or because it's been a long time since I've replayed Prime, which doesn't focus on sequence breaking but more logic based non-linearity). The sole exception might be Zero Mission, though ironically Fusion would have been a prime (heh) candidate to test this out since it's the only Metroid game that takes away almost all of the power fantasy aspects of the Varia suit and makes Samus very vulnerable.

On the Dark Souls perspective, if we're talking about making Metroid a pseudo-open-world but not really an open world, looking to Dark Souls, specifically the original, is probably the best option you could go. It still has a sense of claustrophobia but there's a lot of open areas and the way you can progress at times can be very nonlinear. 

One thing that I think Metroid really needs to work on in it's non-linearity is how it's done. In the Prime games, it's basically "remember that you can come back here and get xyz powerups once you get x item". In a lot of the 2D games except Zero Mission, there is logic based non-linearity, but a lot of the non-linearity is not that, it's in non-beginner friendly sequence breaking (I exclude Zero Mission in this because it's super easy to sequence break in that). Walljumping in Super is hard for newcomers and just gives handcramps. I'd like to see more logic based decision making when it comes to non-linearity, which is where I guess the Resident Evil and especially the Dark Souls comparisons come in. To be clear, most of Metroids non-linearity is already "logic-based" in the sense that you have to remember which locations you can unlock on the map now that you have an upgrade, and there are usually multiple locations you can unlock per major upgrade. But there's a noticeable lack of real decision making unless you've already played these games multiple times, in which case even then there's usually one set path that's better. I'd like to see this aspect even more gamified. The issue is that, because most upgrades that unlock new areas don't have limited ammo, you're never going to run into a real decision on which of the newly-available areas you'll unlock first other than just basic stuff like "I think I should go here first because it's closer" or "I think I should go here first because that's where I think I need to go". Resident Evil does this better because there's item scarcity, so some rooms (usually the areas farther away from where you are that are riskier to get to) have more benefit to the player, but other rooms are a lot safer to get to or might have a key item. Dark Souls does this better because despite item scarcity not really being as much of a thing (besides Estus), the overall game is challenging enough that you'll want to navigate how to progress carefully. Some players are going to find going through the forests to get to Sen's Fortress faster, while others will find that too hard and will just go through the more tutorialized area. I kind of want a combination of all of these. Something I think Metroid could use a lot, although I have to specify that this can only be done in some areas of the game, not a majority of them, is something akin to a generic MacGuffin that allows you to unlock certain areas out of order, but also can only be used once per MacGuffin. Resident Evil already has an item like this, it's called "small keys", though ironically I actually think this might fit Metroid even more since it wouldn't be a waste of inventory space in Metroid. Maybe make it Chozo-related or something since they are basically the mysterious extinct elite race of the universe. 

There are many ways you can go about making Metroid more open while still maintaining some level of linearity for those "ah-ha!" Metroid moments. One way I'd go about making them more open is having a Metroid that focuses on "one entire planet" (even if not a realistically massive one, don't want the game to be bloated in size), with landing pads at different parts of the planet. At first you start with one or two landing pads but as you progress you can unlock more of them. The thing is, how you unlock them might be unique and where you unlock the landing pads might be in a completely different area of the planet from where the landing pad actually is. It's hard to visualize for sure but in this respect, what you'd essentially be doing is unlocking different "hubs" throughout the world. The hubs and the areas stretching out from the hubs would be somewhat non-linear in the sense that you can do a lot of those objectives whenever you want, allowing players to strategize what upgrades to get and what challenges to do at what specific times. BUT, and this is a thicc but, the main objectives would be closer to the end of these branching paths (or just parts of the hub that are entirely sectioned off), and those areas would be hardlocked behind certain upgrades. This way players can chip away at any zone they want as they please (which is kind of done in the games but not to this non-linear extent), but when the time calls for it the developers could still put ah-ha moments and moments of non-linearity. At first the game would be pretty linear, then as you progress you can strategize more which areas to go to at what times, and then there'd be some hardlocked portions, and then the cycle would continue. You could, quite literally, progress each corner of the map. In such a scenario, it'd probably be a smart idea to make the center of the planet the central goal, so you always have a feeling of "eating away" at the barriers to the middle (or the core if you choose to take the objectives underground too). This also would make the theme of finally getting to the middle of the planet more relevant from a gameplay perspective. 

I think the idea of making Samus's ship more of an integral part of the game is a good one, and again it was actually somewhat done in Prime 3. But making it more of a home is actually a great recommendation. Specifically I think the game that had the biggest problem with this was actually Super Metroid. The area in which you land in Prime 1 is chilled enough and there's enough stuff to explore in the Tallon Overworld that it's not too much of a problem just revisiting the ship every once in a while and filling up your ammo and energy and saving. In Super your ship felt too mechanical and it was kind of disappointing that the overworld didn't feel like a respite from the harsh world (again, something that Resident Evil and Dark Souls do very well). I think an idea here might be that in a future 3D Metroid game, not a Prime title, remove the fact that every save point refills your energy and ammo, and also make energy and ammo more scarce. Make the ship the only part that refills both without any work from the player. This would also work well with the ship being a functioning home to the player and the most reputable and reliable save point that you can move around. The save points thing was mostly to accommodate for the fact that grinding for ammo and energy is really unfun in first person, which leads to the next part .... 

One thing that absolutely has to happen with 3D Metroid after Prime 4, is a good 3D Metroid that's in 3rd person. 

I really can't stress this enough. I seem to be the odd person on this site who likes first person and third person games equally, so it's not a thing against Prime's perspective. Moreover, it's a thing about Metroids 2d vs 3d appeal; more specifically how close Prime is to satisfying every part of 2d Metroid's appeal, and how it just narrowly misses it and becomes distinct. I don't think it's a problem for Prime to be distinct, but after Prime 4 we'll have had four games of that and not a single 3D Metroid that encapsulates every appeal the Metroid series offers. That's really the problem in my opinion, despite generally being more "immersive" it's not that Prime has entire categories of appeals specific to itself that aren't in the 2d games, moreso just that there's certain parts of 2d Metroids appeal it doesn't even incorporate or touch on properly. Whereas something like 2d Zelda vs 3d Zelda or linear Zelda vs non-linear Zelda has vastly different appeals, each with their own pros and cons, the Prime subseries simply does some appeals that are already incorporated into the original games slightly better (again, mostly the immersion), while actively taking out or barely touching other parts (the power fantasy of the action being ridiculously fast paced especially towards the endgame and the platforming) with no supplement. I think that's a real missed opportunity, mainly because there's no reason more atmospheric games can't have these elements. It's really just to accommodate that first person perspective. 3D Metroid games don't need to lack all of the elements of the 2d games, they kind of just choose to. 

All of this is to say that, ironically, while my reading of your post was mostly negative and that it wasn't a very good direction to go in, I actually really agree with a lot of the suggestions by @The_Liquid_Laser , who had an entirely different reading and liked your post a lot . Maybe I was a bit too harsh on initial reading of your post, but I do think there's a lot of bad-faith arguments that just sound like they're coming from someone who doesn't know Metroid. Then again ... I feel like Liquid Laser has one or two of those takes in their post (by their definition of manually refilling energy tanks and ammo, most if not all of the 2D games still do that, in particular I remember grinding for ammo and tanks in Zero Mission and Super a decent amount?). Also the part about the horror influence being diluted in Metroid is just verifiably wrong, Metroid Fusion and Metroid Prime 2 are the most horror-based Metroid games by far, with the only original well-received Metroid after that being Prime 3, so there's not really an evidence of dilution, moreso just good original titles being absent. Especially the part about messing with the players head and doing the unexpected, while Metroid should do more of that, Prime 1 literally has ghosts that the game doesn't communicate to you at all about till they attack you and they come as a big surprise. More horror in Metroid is something that I hope continues, though. The high tech ghost town is also a thing in most Metroid games to some extent? Especially in Prime 1/2. Ok you know what, never mind, as far as "I understand the franchise I'm commenting on" that post wasn't good either but the suggestions were at least! 

THE POINT (My conclusion):

There's probably some things I'm forgetting, but that's all I can think of right now. Point is, Metroid is cool and I don't think making it entirely or even mostly non-linear is the answer, rather the answer is in making more options that make the games sub objectives non-linear whilst still working in the confines of different "hubs".   

Edit: For some reason using underline for headings doesn't work with keeping the headings intended size. Fuck you VGChartz! Now I have to remove underlining. 

I feel like I would likely pass on a Metroid game where any methods to get an entry to that many units sold were used.

May as well call it a different name by that point

So, you agree with me then?

"It turns out that Metroid 1 was also the most successful Metroid game going by that same standard.  The real thing to ask is what was the underlying philosophy of Metroid 1?  Then apply it to a modern 3D Metroid.

3) Make the game a horror game in space - This is the most important thing to get right.  The first Metroid game was based on the first Alien movie.  A lot of elements that were put into the original game were meant to be unnerving to the player to give a kind of horror movie feeling.  Over time these elements have been diluted or lost. Here is what I'd suggest to put this back:"

No, because you are saying, the following elements have been diluted or lost over time after the first Metroid game, that those points should be in a new Metroid game and it would make it more successful because they follow the philosophy of Metroid 1.

I'm pointing out that those elements already exist in the rest of the series, it wasn't diluted. 

Why are people so against changing things? Ugh, makes me think of MegaMan fans that are happy with the 8 robot master structure as if being a "core mechanic" makes it less archaic and outdated.

You're arguing in poor faith. I'm suggesting changes that I think could push up the appeal of the game enough to sell 20 million.

No that will ruin what i love about Metroid