Hahaha, oh wow. Ninja Theory's fanboys have gone into full damage control mode in this thread. After all of the time they dismissed legitimate criticisms with "You only hate it because they changed his hai!" it feels so karmic.
Since people are talking about story now, I felt like copy and pasting a really good post about it from a different forum. Enjoy.
"imo, MGR's story is way better for these reasons; one, Raiden is a much more interesting character than new Dante; he has a very understandable and compelling motivation, he wants to prevent innocent kids from being brainwashed into merciless soldiers like he was, while at the same time the irony is that he regresses into his old Jack the Ripper persona in order to accomplish this task.
I think this makes Raiden way more relate-able than Dante, whose only definitive motivation for most the the game is revenge, which slowly develops into a sense of duty to protect the weak. Raiden also wants to protect the weak, but it works better in his case because the story makes it very clear how traumatic Raiden's past was, and by making the audience better understand what motivates Raiden, we can better understand why he does what he does, as opposed to Dante's motivations which boil down to the same old revenge story followed by spending time with Kat, and I'm really not convinced that just spending a little time with her would make Dante change his ideals that much.
The other thing is that MGR actually has themes and uses them. Maybe a little too hamfisted at times, and maybe it's been said before, but at least it's saying something, and it really wouldn't be Metal Gear without the political commentary. And the game is filled with them; fighting for a cause you believe in, how much control we have over ourselves and our true natures, how we justify our actions, how far and how much you'll sacrifice for the greater good, what that greater good is, free will, etc.
By comparison, DmC has very few themes touched upon, and they're often unexamined or not handled well. For one, the villains are played very straight, and they demonize corporations and media without any real thought. Because the villains are done so straight, it gets weird when suddenly near the end you start to see them as not so evil and more human, but by that point they're still supposed to be the villains, and they seem unintentionally sympathetic rather than it being intentional. The best the game has to offer thematically is the question of should humans be controlled for their own protection, but it's not explored very much and in the end this doesn't seem to have any real consequences. I guess the message is "anarchy is good, " but I know a lot of people would find a lot wrong with that. There's also themes of family and I guess how far someone will go for their family, but I don't feel like the characters were interesting enough for me to even really care.
With all that said, I can't definitively say why so many critics think DmC has a good story and why they think MGR is bad other than tonal differences. I don't think they really pay much attention to the actual plot, dialogue, or characteristics so much as the tone of the scenes. And for the most part, DmC tries to keep most of the important parts really heavy and dramatic, as opposed to MGR having some flair to even its dramatic moments. MGR really is a very "gamey" game, and I think just having that kind of tone makes a lot of critics simply ignore the story details like themes and character motivation. DmC gets touted as having a better story mainly because it simply takes its story more seriously, good or bad, and that's enough to convince critics. If MGR was neutered of its over the top anime type style but kept everything else intact I think mainstream critics would like it more.
I can't think of anyone who liked DmC's story giving a good explanation of why they liked it. I already explained why I think MGR has a good story. I love Thunder Cats 2011 and I can go on and on about why I think that has a great story if only to make people understand my opinion, but I haven't found anyone who's really tried to explain why they enjoy DmC's story, to make me see their point of view."
