I want to start out by saying that I love Metal Gear.  Having played through many of Kojima's games though, I wonder if I would have enjoyed the series equally had it been some sort of anime series or comic book franchise.  While MGS 4 had truly satisfying gameplay for what seems like the first time in the series, actual gameplay was a lot shorter than I would have liked.  Final Fantasy games are the same way for me - it seems like I struggle through the gameplay at times just to get to a cool cutscene.  Unlike Metal Gear, Final Fantasy games are not too short, but instead feel tedius.  I almost feel as if often what you're doing is simply filler in order to make the player feel as if they're really investing a lot of time into the characters and gameworld when in reality, not much happens over the course of hours of play.

Is waiting for a cutscene a legitimate reason to be playing a game?  At what point does a game suffer from over reliance on FMV and other forms of passive storytelling?  It seems like many people confuse the concept of games being driven by story with games being driven by movie content.  While games often resort to fleshing out story by using noninteractive (or barely interactive) cutscenes, there are examples of games that avoid it.  Valve probably does the best job of this, as far as I have experienced; from the Half-Life series to games like Portal, Valve both tells a good story while keeping the player more engaged.

Maybe I'm taking this in the wrong direction.  These are just some of my scattered thoughts on the subject.  My love for the Metal Gear series is a strong one, but as I mentioned earlier, at times I question if it is a love stemming from my passion for games, or whether it is stemmed from my interests in sci-fi movies, anime, comic books, etc.  It's probably a bit of both.

Should game develops continue to heavily utilize methods from Hollywood as Kojima does or would we be better served by developers that focused on the unique qualities the game platform can offer?

I think that all games do is open up a whole load of possibilities for interactive entertainment, as long as there's game there, it should be up to the developer to choose what story they want to tell and how they want to tell it. Games are much more open and interesting that films.

If done effectively, like MGS4, I feel games can achieve a lot of what films already do in terms of story, effects, entertainment, et cetera, et cetera. I for one don't want to see a MGS film adaptation because I feel MGS4 already fulfills that need; it provides high quality character interactions, a compelling story, and a phenomenal conclusion. However, not every game would benefit from having these high-budget, high-concept traits. It depends on the game I suppose.

i think MGS4 got closer to the perfect mesh between movies and games than ever before. i am talking specifically about the moments in the game where a cut scene seamlessly flows into gameplay like right before the first encounter with the gekko, the first encounter with the "frogs" and so on. and also Kojima (masterfully) literally combined movie and game in parts of the game like the Europe bike chase and also in parts like the microwave sequence and the split screen parts and even the final fight.we will definitely start seeing things like this to the max in the future now, wether its kojima or not

Metal Gear Solid has always suffered that old complaint about how it's "too much movie" and "not enough game".

The problem with that argument, as I see it, is that the person complaining is always someone who came to Metal Gear Solid with the mindset of: “I want an action game.” But Metal Gear Solid isn’t an action game. To quote the “Colonel” in MGS2, “This is a role-playing game, isn’t it?” Indeed, GW. Indeed.

Hideo Kojima’s stories are over-the-top. They are not realistic, and they’re not meant to be. They’re meant to be complicated and complex, dramatic, character-driven and yes, fun too.

But the funny thing about Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid stories is that they’re tailored to fit in the videogame medium perfectly. Elements that would be a burdon to a movie are a boon in a videogame.

Consider a MGS3 movie. In the span of a couple of hours, a guy, admittedly a super-spy ultra-secret agent guy, but still a guy gets dropped off in the jungle, where he then has to avoid getting caught by a huge number of guards pacing the grounds of a Soviet base, where he encounters numerous super-powered villains who he, as a seemingly normal guy who’s found an arsenal of guns on the base, is able to defeat in a timely fashion, all while finding out about this giant walking tank that can launch a nuke, the political intrigue behind why he’s really there, the backstory of his main enemy and former mentor, et cetera, et cetera.

First of all, that’s going to be a very long movie. But even ignoring that, without taking part in the actual sneaking around, the fighting against super-powered villains, and so forth, a completely passive audience would both have a very hard time accepting the story, and moreover be overwhelmed by the whole situation. It would seem completely unfathomable.

But when you’re playing the game, and when you’re the person that’s sneaking around and defeating these enemies and finding out these truths, it becomes more acceptable. It goes from looking impossible to being completely believable because you just physically did it. Even though these random supervillains pop out of nowhere for very flimsy reasons it all seems somehow sensible. And by the time you reach the giant, nuclear-weapon toting robot at the end, you feel like, “Yeah, maybe Snake can pull this off.”

Anyway, the ultimate point I’m making is that for the story he wants to tell and the characters he wants to develop,  Kojima’s best medium is the videogame, not the movie. Admitedly, it’s a videogame with a lot of cut-scenes, but hitch all those cut-scenes together in a movie without any gameplay in between them, and the whole Solid Snake mythos will feel too artificial and contrived.

Total seperation

Who cares?

As far as I'm concerned there is no line. If someone wanted to make a game where all you did was hit a button that said play and then you watched a movie I wouldn't mind. It wouldn't really take advantage of the medium, but I wouldn't care.

why should there be?

I think there is a place for the interactive movie approach, one for Valve's very hands on approach and one for just pure gameplay, no story games.

There should never be a line dawn. There will always be exceptions to conceptions held by individuals about appropriate game length versus cut scene length. As gaming becomes more and more mainstream and begins to over shadow the film industry anything could happen. People could end up playing an entire game with only quick-time events for the player to interact.