There is no arguing that Kojima can bring craziness and an insane amount of twists to his stories. But do you feel that where he fails at is the way he tells his stories? Does he take too much time to explain very little that could normally be said in a matter of seconds? Is Hideo's true best friend an editor?

Or do you feel that Kojima relays his thoughts perfectly to his games. Do you like the way Snake progresses the story? The questionable motives to the villains? Or the convoluted and out of nowhere crazy ending of MGS2 and the strange "You gotta be kidding me. Again?" ending to MGS4 are perfect ways to tell the story?

He has some wonderful stories and some great themes to be played with in his stories. But he is in dire need of going to an editing class.

Am I the only one who thinks he is very over rated?

Half of the time he's brilliant, and the other half he's horrible. I can't understand it.

(MGS4 spoilers? Not sure how that works here...)

Explaining the plot through those "power point presentation" scenes was just boring and the beauties all had the same story. "Soldiers invaded her village..." story time with Drebin after you had already killed each one was extremely tiresome. I was tempted to skip those parts but in MGS you're always afraid some massive plot point will be revealed in a seemingly unimportant scene.

Currently there is no one else in the industry that does the over the top stories like he does. Well, at least there is no one who's doing that to a huge franchise. I think that is amazing in itself.

I don't think he is, his stories are all ways convoluted i liked mgs 1 and 2-4 all sucked in my opinion, he is surpassed so much by many other developers.

Watching someone get married with a gunbelt around her waist, on a airport strip.
yerrrrrrr

I think he's a very talented storyteller. His stories are deep with lots of meaning, and intriguing to boot.

I'm not sure but I do think that he has certainly grown since the original MGS.  

I do like the way he tells stories... but I do think he got a little carried away in the later stages of MGS... he left a lot of loose ends that had to be tied up in 1 game.

One of the things I think shows how good his story telling is deciding in MGS2  to tell a story and have us players view Snake from a 3rd person view, which I thought worked pretty well.

I'm a huge metal gear fan, and I can admit that sometimes it can get a bit tiresome, but I thought that explaining everything in MGS4 was necessary because it is the last game. You want to get that closure if you are a true fan.

And I'll admit, the ending made me cry a bit.

He is pretty good i think.

I don't know, really. His stories throughout the MGS franchise have been interesting, he just tels them so badly. Like Turtlemayor333 says, a lot of times though, his scenes turn into powerpoint presentations with the characters sounding like they're reading from the Wikipedia.

I've only played the first one, but from what I can tell of cutscenes I've seen from the other games he is quite good at making a story and conveying it in the game, but he does so in a very slow and cumbersome manner

So yes, his best friend is an editor.

Also by good storyteller, I don't mean he's like the next Charles Dickens or anything. I just mean better than most people making stories for games

I really want him to make a live action film. So does Uwe Boll I think, he knows Hideo would make his stuff look better.

I think he is a decent storyteller, but I don't think he knows how to use the unique aspects of video games to his advantage...hour long cutscenes aren't they way to go in my opinion.

Absolutely Not

I can see the flaws in his storytelling for sure, yet somehow I'm still more interested in what he has to show than any other game out there. It may be convoluted and drawn out but it's still more intriguing than Gears of War or Final Fantasy.

He would be an awesome storyteller, if he could make any damn sense.

Ugh.  To be honest I don't think he is... at all.  I think he has potential though.  But he just doesn't know when the hell to shut up.  And the MGS series reek of pretentiousness.  I think story is super important to games, but the story can only be as good as the dialouge/script will allow it.  I do NOT need to hear Otacon cry for 20 minutes about how he slept with his step-mother.  I do NOT need Rose to call me up over and over with 10 minute codec scenes about how I won't sleep with her at night, (and being fearful of skipping them lest I miss something ACTUALLY fucking important/relavent to the story)

I know a lot of people say, "there's all these cutscenes and dialouge because the story is that good!"  And I'd love to agree.  But the fact of the matter is at least 50% of all the dialouge in that game is either re-hash of what the character before them said or irrelavent.  The game not only would have been more accessible to more players with less codec scenes and more gameplay but more coherent as well.