If you find a door you can't open or that's out of your reach, it's because you don't have the right item to get to it yet, and it's your job to go out and find it. This is a game where the sense of progression is completely organic there's nowhere you can't go because you haven't reached the point in the story where it makes sense to go to that place yet. What is timeless is the series' trademark sense of progression and empowerment, which is fully intact here in Metroid Prime searching every twisted cave and corridor for new power-ups and upgrades is just as addicting and satisfying as it ever was, and since the game gives you very little in the way of direction, finding these items feels like a genuine discovery. Retro Studio's arresting, surrealist art direction is still a cut above most current first-person games (and its influence can clearly be seen in other atmospheric space games like Dead Space) though there's no denying that from a purely graphical standpoint the original GameCube version of the game is starting to ever-so-slightly show its age. Knowing these little details about every piece of shrubbery that passes you by won't help you beat the game, necessarily, but it makes Tallon IV feel like an actual place, rather than just a setting. What's more impressive though, is that even scanning small, technically insignificant environmental things like plants, pipes and foliage will give you in-depth summaries of their purpose on this planet. Scanning an alien's dead body might give you a clue to its cause of death, which may in turn foreshadow an encounter with a future enemy, and various hidden “Chozo Lore” entries start to reveal a subtle, overarching narrative.
The system does have its distinct gameplay advantages - scanning an enemy will reveal its weak point, and scanning certain terminals will activate doors and elevators - but most of your scanning will probably just be done out of awe-struck curiosity, and since the game constantly encourages and rewards this curiosity, it really ends up driving the entire experience. But using a clever tool called the Scan Visor, Samus, the game's silent female protagonist, can scan and learn about virtually everything in the environment, which slowly reveals the planet to be much more than it initially seems. You're stranded on this planet, so at first the only thing driving you forward is the desire to escape. Rather, the narrative in Prime is discovered, not told.