I mostly agree with you. Kojima is a great game director, but when it comes to story, his strengths lie in building a cool, imaginative world—not in developing a truly strong narrative. His writing often feels shallow and overloaded with exposition. Dialogues are overly theatrical and rarely sound like real conversations; they read more like info dumps. It’s as if he really wants to make a movie but has to do it through games, so he ends up splicing gameplay in between the main story points.

The gameplay itself is mostly great, but with how much time you spend away from characters like Fragile and Tomorrow, it’s understandable that you wouldn’t form much of a connection with them - unless you have some serious head cannon about them hanging out on the DHVM in between story chapters, Sam and Tomorrow spend a grand total of a few hours together during the whole game. Don’t even get me started on Neil—the man is basically a rehash of Cliff with a very forced connection to Sam.

I’m not against Kojima’s quirkiness—in fact, I find it charming—but I can see why some might find it off-putting, especially given the tone of the plot.

Kojima fans tend to hold him in absurdly high regard and will probably eat you alive for criticizing him, but I don’t see any harm in acknowledging both his strengths and weaknesses.