Alex seemed to miss a hint for the one he was stuck on for a bit at around the nine minute mark: The spikes point in the direction of the next platform.
"I didn't catch anything political about that." can never be sure with Dan if he's trolling or not.
It's hard to believe that Kojima's high school level philosophy could go over anyone's head. He's got the subtlety of a sledgehammer. Maybe a sledgehammer-equipped bipedal war machine.
Perhaps some degree of obliviousness is entirely consistent with thinking that the absurd lore-fest that is the Metal Gear series is a pinnacle of storytelling.
Also - while I kind of get not getting a young guy/boy to do the little brothers VO - this is so clearly a woman, it's distracting.
From the Wikipedia article: "Child actors Charlotte McBurney and Logan Hannan provided their voice for Amicia and Hugo respectively."
I think anything with extensive child VO runs the risk of irritating some people, regardless of who they get to perform it, but I actually found the earnestness in this convincing to the point that I'm concerned I'd find it too heart-breaking if I played it. But that may be because I'm just a big wuss.
EDIT: Looking into it a little further, it looks like the French language actor for Hugo was someone called Cecile Gatto; is that what you're referring to?
Judging by when Trevelyan delivers his lines (and my memory of the game), I'm pretty sure the game guides they use in this episode are slightly wrong about the boss damage. Here's how I think the cycle actually works:
When Trevelyan takes any damage, he becomes invulnerable and starts running to his next waypoint.
If you get too close to Trevelyan before doing him damage, he will start moving to the next waypoint anyway.
When Trevelyan reaches a new waypoint, he becomes vulnerable to damage again.
Due to the second point, in the frenzy Dan would sometimes set Trevelyan going before he'd received any damage. In these instances, I believe he could still "catch up" damage-wise by shooting Trevelyan once before he reaches the next waypoint. This is what's happening when Alec occasionally delivers a line while running.
I believe the standard plan is to always shoot Trevelyan before he starts running, but if he does set off before that, I'd recommend putting a single bullet in his back so that you don't completely miss out on the damage-dealing opportunity.
Other than that, my only other recommendation is that at the start it might help to angle up a little with C-Up so that the distant end of the first walkway is closer to the centre of the screen – I'm guessing that would make the auto-aim more likely to work at greater distances. I remember learning (or at least thinking I'd learnt) what part of the blue sky gradient I had to point at to have the best chance of killing that first guard.
1) Why is Alex stuck saying "inevitably" over and over? I had never heard him say that before. Is it a calendar word of the day thing?
I came back here to posit that perhaps he had a bet with someone regarding how many times he could say it in a single video. I get that we all lean on verbal crutches to varying degrees, but it's kind of an unusual one, and as you said, seemingly out of nowhere. A lot of the things didn't really seem that inevitable to me...
Anyway, I guess I should be glad I don't have people examining which words I happen to overuse.
JamesM's comments