We got our key and lore on why we have to go everywhere.
The green crystals are all over the place and can’t just sit in storage, but they’re a secondary objective (that is, not tied at all to the keys), so we wouldn’t actually have to go everywhere if the entire objective was just to leave. However, for once, we actually have NPCs telling us that the true objective of the game is to get 100% rather than just beat it, so of course I’m getting it. (I would anyway, but now there’s a lore reason.) I imagine that objective will be particularly nice for the ending when we get it.
I don’t know that the Control Beam couldn’t have been in earlier entries (real life technology improvement, I mean), but it certainly makes the most sense when everything has a “psychic” twist to it. And while the turn radius on the beam is sure to get on my nerves a little, overall, it’s pretty cool. Slowing down time means I don’t need to truly clear obstacles before firing, but I need to not have something immediately striking Samus or it doesn’t get to run the full distance. I just wish we could get some aftereffect or something from it so we could see the path I draw from another perspective. After all, the game effectively treats all hits from the beam as “simultaneous”.