The point isn't that they should go away, the point is that taking up half of an interactive game with them is unacceptable in this day and age. Technology has improved to the point where engine-based scenes that allow player interaction are becoming the norm and are actually moving the industry forward in ways that movies could never do.

I completely agree with you. Kojima is nowhere near a great storyteller, he simply does not have the talent to make an incredible story. But that's not saying he's terrible. He's not. Kojima can still make quite decent simple stories... Snatcher and MGS1 for example:

Snatcher has a fairly generic plot, but the story was enjoyable and was well implemented in the gameplay.

MGS1 was his best effort. Sure it only used cutscenes, but Kojima kept things simple, as if he knew what his limitations were.

I don't mind, I love a well developed story

Well, being that you'll be upset if you skip the story, I'm assuming that you've also sat through the other MGS games when you had to sit through very lengthy cutscenes and codec conversations aswell? Being that Kojima is trying to end all the story arcs that deals with Solid Snake and Big Boss in this one game, how else do you (and Rocketpig) expect kojima to get it done? Should we expect a novel instead? I will agree with you that the cutscenes are far too long only if it's mainly filled with pointless crap scenes rather than explaination of WTF has been going on for the last decade. The worse part of all of this is that the same people that disagree with some of the high MGS4 reviews are eating this 90 minute cutsceneS claim like they've seen it for themselves. If people can sit through Lost Odyssey's 20 hours of cutscenes then MGS4 shouldn't be hard.

I just don't get why they didn't think to make any playable sequences in between, your saying there is nothing interactive worthy happening between those segments?

And even if you like the idea of 90 minute cut scenes then everyone would have been better off, with them spending more money and them making a better movie, then you could have a really refined pre-rendered film and see it on the big screen. Personally I'm a little annoyed at the length, although if it's all good stuff I don't mind, only and I stress ONLY if I could save my spot in the cutscene, only because I can rarely play more then 45 minutes to an hour, so this cutscene would never be seen in it's entirety by me. They also better let you rewatch scenes off a menu, I hate how many games don't have this option. Games with really good cutscenes, insane pivitol prerendered scenes, and they're totally gone once you pass them, it kills me. (Latest Culprits: Lost Odyessy, Mass Effect)

Did someone say movie?

On top of this it seems like a bizzare choice given what the theme of Metal Gear Solid 4 is supposed to be ...

If you're theme is "Free Will vs. Forced Control" you'd think that you'd use the interactive elements of your medium to offer people choice and (attempt) to control them rather than having Solid Snake debate to idea for 30 minutes.

 But what you find unacceptable, I'm actually looking forward to.  If you don't want a bunch of cutscenes in your games then I have no issue with that, and suggest you don't play MGS, but just because you can do something differently doesn't mean you should.  As long as there are people like me who look forward to these types of games and actually enjoy them, then there will be a market for these cutscene heavy games and you won't see them die off.

Hell I don't see this as much worse than your average RPG, and it'll probably have more involved gameplay than most turnbased RPG's. 

There is more to gameplay than the amount of time spent mashing the controller.  You know this right?

thats ridiculous