Those are the words of someone who clearly has not played trough the half life series.

Havent you been humiliated enough in this thread with your  borderline deitification for the MGS series and Kojima?

Its silly, stupid and borders on the insane.

My advice, quit while you are behind lest you be seen an even bigger idiot on these forums then we already think you are.

Tetris was not only a huge contribution to gaming but to society itself, Tetris was after all one of the things that helped thaw the cold war between east and west.

Not much story in Tetris now is there?

Nanobots, oh BTW Snake your gun is ID locked.

Cool, looks like he took my advice to heart.

lol, agreed.

Half Life's storytelling only works for those that want to kill za alienz without having to think too much, but puting Half Life and MGS in the same sentence as far as storytelling goes is really an insult for Hideo Kojima and his team.

Actually, mentioning Half-Life in a Kojima argument is an insult to Gabe Newell and his crack team of bad-ass game-making mofos.

Kojima is a self-absorbed blowhard who couldn't tell a story well to save his own ass. He repeats everything five or six times, he removes any sort of interaction on the viewer's part by explaining even the most mundane plot points in great detail, he rips all his good ideas from other more influential artists, his dialogue is downright terrible, and did I mention he's a self-absorbed blowhard?

With that said, he makes some pretty fun games. But this idolatry needs to stop. Even somewhat talented Hollywood directors - Christopher Nolan, for example - make Kojima's games, dialogue, and stories look bad. Compare him to some of the past cinema and literary greats like Kubrick or Poe and the comparison becomes downright comical. In short, Kojima is a fan service hack, nothing more. He hit it big with MGS and has yet to prove that he can duplicate that by putting together something even half as coherent and nuanced. Even then, MGS was far from fine art. It was much closer to a pulp rag in video game form than anything else.

But, go ahead and keep arguing with us about it. You'll find one or two supporters on websites like this while the rest of the world who knows better sits back and chuckles at your ridiculous notions of fine art and genius.

 Last time i checked Kojima was considered, by the educated people, a great director and writer, and even called a genius by some critics and even acclaimed screenwriters, so i guess common sense says you are the one in the minority, which is fine, no problem with it, but the way you express your personal opinions make it hard for anyone to take you seriously.

And what does a marketing director - Gabe Newell have to do with anything ? Did i say anything about Ryan Payton or something, 'cose they have the same job in the companies...i mean, do you even read what you are writing before pressing "post" ?

Now why would you compare MGS writing with Hollywood style writing ? They have little in common as MGS uses anime type of storytelling. Sure, the production values in MGS games are indeed Hollywood caliber as far as camera direction and artistic photography goes, but the style of the storytelling is anime at it's purest, so, i dunno, maybe you should like, do more research before posting completely wrong and out of place comments and comparisons.

Last time this conversation came up, I mentioned one of the themes of HL that I found in HL2; namely, that of a humanity that has lost all claims to being human anymore.  Some people said that this theme wasn't present, and would not accept it until I found a developer commentary expressing it. I wasn't going to do that; that eliminates any level of thought from the process.  However, it made me go back to replay the game to see if somehow, I was wrong.

The results?  Well, I think I will let this quote ripped straight from HL2:Episode 1 say it all (and prove that my analysis wasn't nearly as deep as I remember it being, but it's a view I held since before Ep1 was released, so I can forgive my recollection):

From this, I can only conclude that some people have no appetite for nuance or interpretation in their games; a 'good' story to them is heavyhanded, oblique, obtuse, etc.  Any subtlety will be unappreciated, uncaptured, and will be taken as a weakness in the work rather than a weakness in the viewer.

I've reached the conclusion that it is simply not possible to have any resolution with the people who prefer this other method of storytelling; they *want* to be led, hand-in-hand, through someone else's viewpoints, without any room for interpretation, without any level of thought going into it as well.  If they are told 2+2=4, they will memorize it by rote; there is no thought behind the _why_ of 2+2=4.  It's just a string of characters; the theory behind the 2, behind the +, all that is lost on them because it is neither what they want from a story nor what they are looking for in a story.

In short, it is just two different styles of writing; the 'fact based' method vs. the 'analysis based' method.  I know which I prefer, and which leads to a deeper understanding of the concepts.  However, some will never want this deeper understanding; they would rather just have the so-called 'facts.'

Not really. Many of the best narrative-driven games ever made have no graphics at all.