Obviously this all comes down to personal taste.  I might have a transendant experience staring at a puddle on the ground and you might not even notice it.  It's all subjective to an extent.  

That said, I'm not pretenious, and you don't have to be cultured, to know that the Metal gear storyline and dialog are corny and flawed. To imply that the story in this game is some kind of great work or is some kind of deep commentary on the future of war or the meaning of life is just sad.  And it does show a lack of exposure to better material (just grab any random book of the scifi shelf in your local library). 

I challenge anyone to take the Metal Gear cut scenes (remove them from the game, which is exellent by the way) and show them on a big screen. The movie audience would walk out and demand their money back.  Present the dialog and story to a book reviewer or screen writer and they would tear it apart so fast and shelve it.   

Like I said, I really like the game.  It's very fun, has high production values, tries something new (the movie/game), and kojima should be commended for his efforts.  But don't make it something it's not.

Subtlety and nuance are two different things.

Subtlety is considered a good thing because is shows you are able to work your philosophy into the work without sacrificing that work. The story doesn't suffer for the philosophy and rather they are worked seemlessly into a whole.

And of course you want your philosophy to have nuance. It should be able to be disected and examined wihtout falling apart--a deeply explored, well reasoned system of beliefs. That's nuance. All arguments, philosophical or not, should contain nuance.

Subtlety and nuance are a couple of the hallmarks of intellectualism. For a guy that was just praising the intellectual nature of MGS, I'd think you'd want such things.

The disconnect I have is that Kojima really isn't in a position to teach me anything, for the simple facts that my interests have  already lead me to tread over the same ground as what's found in the games and that I leave no stone unturned in pursuing knowledge in subjects I'm interested in.  He can only share, not inform.  Others may not have looked into the topics he presents before, so to them there may be some lessons.  I do appreciate his ambition and singular vision when it comes to game creation though.

 I'm more interested in themes that are relevant on a more intimate or universal human level, like poverty, child abuse, jealousy, mental illness, death (which I think is touched upon exceptionally in MGS3 in the Sorrow "battle"),  nature vs. civilization, duty and responsibility etc. Cloning, PMC's, genomes, fate, destiny etc. are nice mental busywork, but in practice not really relevant or practical to daily human existence.

So all that's left is the characters, and video games aren't to the point where they contain naturalistic, nuanced character acting on par with great cinema. There are no video game equals to a classic Daniel Day Lewis or DeNiro performance in all their complexity and deep recesses of humanity.

And if there is one game that is an acheivement in interactive narrative, it's Silent Hill 2.  As haunting and phsycologically rich as anything I've seen in quite a while, and excels in the horror genre.

Has anyone else realized that DTG is just billy07? Remember he was the guy who would always talk about philosophy and MGS2.

The dialog doesn't seem that bad from what I have played of MGS4.  What's wrong with it?

 I haven't but now that you say so I think you are correct  he is billy07.

You're essentially saying that the philosophy should be compromised in exchange for a better storyline by saying the themes worked in should be done in a subtle manner. But why not vice versa? I think the storylines should be subtle (if even necessary at all), created around the central philosophy as merely vessels for the message. The themes should be the focus and handed to the viewer similarly to how a teacher hands the coursework to their students. The storyline should be implemented in a subtle manner simply to make the lesson/message more digestable or interesting but should not divert the attention from the fundamental messages the creator is trying to convey.

The philosophy doesn't have to necessarily take a back seat to the story. Housekeeping is, as I said, basically a work of post-structural philosophy. Gilead is one of the greatest works of theology I've ever read. But the power of both books' philosophy comes from the stories. They work almost as examples work in an essay--showing how the thoery works and why it does.

MGS's philospohy is tacked on in a way that has very, very little to do with the story as a whole. Rather, it stops the story cold when it think's it's time for some philosophy. And the philosophy is not very deep or, yes, nuanced. No offense intended, but if a teacher tried to teach a class around the philosophy offered in the Metal Gear games, it'd be a pretty shitty class. There's just not that much there philosophically in them. As I said above, it's Baudrillard for dummies. Or Nietzche for dummies. Depending on the specific game.