Mass Effect had good voice acting. Heavenly Sword's voice acting was freakin' incredible, far better than anything seen in a MGS game and in that regard is probably the best video game ever produced. I guess that's what happens when you pay for top notch voice acting talent instead of putting an ad in the Penny Saver under "monotone guys who smoke 4 packs a day needed for voice work". The dialogue was far more interesting, also. I wouldn't even put MGS's voice acting on par with mediocre games like Gears of War or BioShock. Some of the conversations in MGS are just plain bad and had me laughing at the awkwardness of both the acting and the dialogue. I will give Kojima the benefit of the doubt and say that it's possible there was something lost in the translation but that still doesn't make it good.

I'm guessing that the style of MGS3's gameplay attributes to that because you're sneaking around in a jungle and you'll have to spend more time making your way through it as opposed to the more indoor MGS1 and 2 environments.

I can get through MGS3 in 6.5 hours, which is probably why I'm saying that. 

The voice acting is good for a game, although there are better, but it would be bad voice acting for a movie.

To be fair, MGS is not meant to be taken seriously. Many people take it seriously, but that's not the Kojima's intent. It's silly and it often pokes fun at itself.

Also, where did you get the 5 million number from?  If you're assuming that everyone who buys Metal Gear Solid thinks it has awesome voice acting, then you should say "3.96 million" since that's how many the last major installment of MGS sold.  However, this is obviously not the case since there are people in this thread who purchased the game and don't think the voice acting is all that great.

Which raises another question:

With modern video game budgets surpassing many movies, why do we continue to hold our standards so low when it comes to plot, pacing, storytelling, voice acting, and dialogue? Even the "greatest" video games ever created are completely laughable when compared anything resembling decent cinema.

I think, to a large extent, because it's not usually a focus of the game. I've only noticed a few occations where the voice acting was bad enough to bother me -- for example, Soldier of Fortune 2 had unbelievably bad voice acting, which was even worse if you spoke Russian.

Resident Evil 4 had terrible voice acting, but in a good way. The writing was jovial as well -- some of the things Leon said to the monsters ("hmmph! Monsters, there's about to be one less of 'em") were just hilarious.

I think there is also a little stigma when it comes to games as far as the A-list voice actors are concerned. Consider that there are only a handful of truly A-list voice actors with experience in big budget settings. If you can't get some of that A-list voice talent, then you're either getting B-list talent or taking your chances with an unknown. And I think this is where games often find themselves.

Look at how games have grown: originally programmers would also do the art.  As it became apparent that others could do much better and that you could significantly improve the quality of your game by hiring specialized artists, it became the industry standard.  I think the games industry is working toward this with voice acting, but as we all know voice acting is not even featured in the majority of games right now, even story driven/rpg style games. 

Bro, why would you even worry to much about gameplay. I'm playing MGS: The Essential Collection (MGS1, MGS2, MGS3). The first one I'm playing is MGS1, and that game talks a lot. I'm starting to think HK put to much cutscenes in the game.

The game looks amazing and it looks like it will equal both sides of the equation. 50% gameplay and 50% cutscenes. Just be happy that we are getting MGS4 in June and stop fucking complaining.

@Yojimbo

You still have a ways as well as a number of boss fights to go. Perhaps 60% of the way done?

IllegalPaladin: Thanks it shows how slow I am :D.

The Resident Evil series is supposed to be cheeky like that and therefore works with its terrible acting and dialogue. It's a parody of thousands of terrible horror films we've seen over the years (check out some Ed Wood films sometime if you haven't already).

There are only a handful of A-list voice actors out there but many actors have shown themselves quite capable of voice acting and doing it well. It shouldn't be hard to pull down some B-level movie talent to video games, at least for the main characters. It would be loads better than what we currently have now (just look at Heavenly Sword, the biggest name in that game was Andy Serkis, though to be fair, the guy is an amazing voice actor and absolutely nailed the Bohan character).

I think the problem with video games is that they refuse to grow up. The same developers who found anime fun and exciting as children grew up physically but remained loyal to the often bad and terribly cliched stories they loved as children. Given the geek nature of the business, very little is done to expand upon the simple "shoot 'em up/spout terrible one-liners" story arcs that games have been subject to since their inception. Gameplay has matured a great deal, as has music, but plot lines and dialogue are still almost as bad as they were 15 years ago.

Which is why gaming won't be taken seriously as an art form (excepting a few notable games from people like Will Wright or Team ICO) until it forces itself to grow up a little and truly challenge the medium as a vehicle for great storytelling.

Edit: I saw you added another paragraph. I agree with you. But what seems odd to me is that so much of gaming has evolved while this one aspect is still fuckin' terrible by anyone's standards. I hope we will see real writers start taking on video game plotlines and dialogue but I just don't see it happening anytime soon. I think that's one of the last things game directors will want to give up because it's probably one of the aspects they enjoy most (complete and total control over dialogue and story basically makes the game yours).