I don't hate that this game is linear. I very much dislike that this is the direction that I've heard the series goes in the future, and I to resent a game that claims in it's intro to be a direct sequel to Super Metroid being as aggressively railroady as it is, but I don't conceptually hate the linearity as it stands. I also think, ignoring the elephant for a moment, the story so far is actually pretty good. The x parasite is neat, and the evil Samus is pretty cool, basically being unstoppable because she's just late game Samus. That fucks extremely. Samus is part Metroid now, in addition to being part bird, and that rules

What I do not like, at all, actually, is the framing of this whole story. You are being ordered around, told exactly where to go and how to do it the whole time by a computer acting as your commanding officer, all the while Samus reminisces about her old commanding officer, who used to order her around and be a misogynist at her, but like, in a cool way, or something. You cannot open doors because the voice Samus gets briefed by says you can't. You don't really find items, you start with all of them, kinda, you just need a computer to re-enable them.

Even pretending that Other M doesn't exist (we live in 2002 right now, that game doesn't come out for another 8 years), this sucks. You largely don't get progression because you found a cool item you get to use in other places, you get progression because the voice in the computer room said you can progress now. I really don't like this framing. I do think there really is something to like here, and I think I am going to be enjoying a lot about this game. Just. Did they have to frame it like this. They could have come up with any other excuse to get text blurbs pointing you in a direction and it would have been better than this. Metroid Prime did that! Just by giving you Samus's internal thoughts and notes and suit notifications, the game gives (entirely optional, mind you) pointers on where your progression is without making Samus subordinate to Some Guy. Luckily they never did this again and every Metroid game in the series is a non-linear adventure and Samus would from here on out be portrayed as a lone wolf that never takes orders from anyone and I get to pretend this is true until I get to the year 2010.