I totally agree. When I played fusion I was confused why Metroid had story and stuff. I just wanted about super Metroid with exploring and doing stuff. That said i remember that i enjoyed the game but nothing I wanted to revisit again. I played a lot of super Metroid back in the day and I even tried to complete the game as fast as I could making a save and did it in under 4 hours. I was so proud and this was back in the 90s before I knew anything about speedrunning.
Guild wars 2 do this brilliantly. All zones and content is pretty much always relevant even at max level and been playing for years. It is strange that other games doesn’t do this.