there are also many guys who say ''I hope MGS4 won't get too many cutscenes, cause if I want to see a movie I'll go watch a movie!''.. well if you want the greatest story, then go read a great book one could say.. just as video games aren't movies, they aren't usually literature either.. but they usually aren't even supposed to be literature!.. besides Xenogears of course.. :)

yeah, and then there are people like me that love the great mix that MGS has with story and gameplay. When you beat the game you get a theater mode (at least in MGS 1 and MGS 2) so you don't have to play at all. I love those because you can easily get updated on the story. At the same time, you can play through the game and skip every cutscene and codec conversation if you want.

 Well that's because videogames are the most fun, =P.

@ Windbane

Don't confuse my message, I actually enjoy Metal Gear Solid's plotline, as well as characters (Snake is actually one of the more fleshed-out characters in the videogame industry).

But don't disregard RocketPig's point, either. Because MGS does have faults in storytelling, and can't compare to top-tier movies or literature. Not saying we should be making a comparison, but some people do.

in videogames, the story has always been secundary, the gameplay has been what it's all about, but the developers of course saw early on that you have to have something to tell , some sort of plot, to make the gameplay have some sense, that's why even shooters have plots, only games like tetris and bomberman don't need a plot.. but overtime, they also understood that a plot can bring so many extra's to a game, and thereby also to the experience.. and it differs per genre of course.. but gaming didn't start with the story, but it started with gaming, playing.. and in all those years many games came to be known also because of their stories and games became more focused on stories and in some genre's the story became a very important part of the experience itself, like with japanese rpgs, they need a story by definition and the better the story is, the greater that is for the game....................................... my bottow line is, that in the core of everything, it first is about playing, and then the story comes comes into the picture..  while for a novel or a book the story comes in the first place.. that's a whole different position to take off from

how can a story be too complex, surely thats a good thing in a game, many games have awfull storys that are incredibly simplistic or just based on films.

Yeah, I'm not saying it's Casablanca, which I love, btw, if you are just looking at story. It's not perfect. But if you are comparing the different mediums, MGS is one of the top games, and a lot of that has to do with its story. It just seems like rocketpig hates all videogame stories and will be upset any time anyone says they like a story in a game.

so the story of a novel MUST be great.. if it isn't, the whole novel fails, but for a game or most games, the gameplay must be good first, and then please also the story! but a game won't fail if the story isn't the best out there when the gameplay is great.. while a novel will always fail when the story is flat, unoriginal or boring.. (and even all this counts mostly for rpgs, other genre's don't even need great stories at all, to be great games).. so expecting great novel-like stories from games, escpecially when they aren't rpgs, is maybe asking too much.. but ey man.. I love great stories in great games

Too much shooting?

I sure haven't heard that complaint for a while.

Which, in turn, shows why they have so much more potential laden into their very nature. 

I admit that I have yet to see a great story in a vdieogame. What I've seen is a bunch of very good ones... Which shows the potential (yet mainly untapped) of the genre. Fallout, Grim Fandango, Deus Ex... All very good.

Part of my problem lies with people accepting mediocrity in gaming when there are so many brilliant works to draw from in other media... Take BioShock, for example. It tried to play up what it was and fell immensely short because I doubt anyone in Irrational took the time to understand why Objectivism was so fascinating and instead went for the cheap sci-fi tricks and insulted everyone who expected a real journey through Rapture (a brilliantly designed world, I might add).