Before I begin let me explain my opening moniker. I plan on starting a new weekly short segment, in which I rant on one particular topic. I will call this series "Reed Brown On: (Insert Topic Here)" because my name is Reed Brown and I will be discussing that topic. Aren't I clever? Well let's get to the topic at hand.
As everyone with a Sony console and an appreciation of games know Metal Gear Solid games have terrible dialogue. It's often the downfall of the series' otherwise "amazing" plot. I was thinking about some examples of the terrible dialogue and came to a conclusion on why it sucks. It's the perspective of Solid Snake. Solid Snake, in MGS4, is somewhere around a 30 year veteran, yet somehow he asks Roy Cambpell every question imaginable. Why in the world would Snake not know what an NPC was? They have FUCKING commercials for them!
The problem with the dialogue is that the player does not know what an NPC is, so Snake is used as a proxy in game. This convention works in other media like Harry Potter, because Harry is NEW to the wizarding world, yet Snake has been in the military all his life. Another example is the Comic series "Powers" where Christian Walker's partner Deena is new to the force and wouldn't know everything about the local superheroes. This of course isn't the only issue with Kojima's terrible dialogue but it's one of my biggest pet peeves.
