''Complexity is a negative value in story writing. The whole idea is to present your story in as simple a way as possible -- even introductory writing teachers will harp on the concept of less being more.''.. no it sure is not negative, cause some things ARE complex in life, not everything is simple, of course it's important whether you can bring your story in a good way to your audience, but complexity is part of our world..

Deus Ex and Fallout 1 are probably in my top 5 of best videogame stories of alltime, easily above Xenogears. And yes, I've played it.

Feel free to read my whole post, as I addressed your point of "there exist complex things and these require more complex explanations" in the next sentence.

I'm not making any specific comments about MGS4, I'm simply saying that explaining things in an elegant and intelligent fasion makes more sense, and this may be the way in which the reviewer is referring to the story.  For example, you can write a routine for a computer game engine in a complex way, or you can find a very elegant and smart way to write that routine.  Certainly, you can't do it all of the time, but if you win 9 times out of 10 you are a fantastic programmer.  I imagine the same holds true for writing.

MGS 4 isn't going to be perfect.  The whole point is that Kojima and Konami learn how to improve it for MGS 5. Does anyone know if they're planning to work on MGS 5 right after MGS 4?

A perfect example of this is Dave removing the logic boards from Hal in 2001. There is so bloody much going on in that scene and it's presented in such a simple manner that no matter how many times I see it, the scene absolutely floors me.

TheBigFatJ said "Complexity is a negative value in story writing. The whole idea is to present your story in as simple a way as possible"

Certainly, there are complicated issues in this world and an example of one is teen-pregnancy abortion and adoption yet I never felt that the storyline in Juno was particularly complicated. Complication in story telling when unnecessary is not a virtue ... certainly, some issues will require a more complicated story but if you go too far it becomes a problem.

I'm glad it's story focused but this worries me that I'll be lost.

I finished the original MGS but only got about halfway through the 2nd and skipped the 3rd altogether. Plus it's been so long since I played the original that I've forgotten most of what happened in that one :(

the story being to complex is no reason to bring down the rating...

I read the rest of BigFatJ's post, but I just don't agree that complexity is by definition negative in writting; it only becomes a problem if you can't present it well.. maybe BFJ means that too..

ooooooh maybe you mean with story writing not the plot itself, but how it's written down..