People who think the story is well executed are like climate change deniers. The story is cluttered, the characters disgustingly underdeveloped and there are huge gaps between what was promised and what was delivered in terms outside of the gameplay experience. The game is basically made of nice ideas.
The characters are ideas. They don't develop, they just do what their type is expected to do. Only Huey has some development and while that is not badly executed, it was moronic to put his kind of development into a character that can't be killed for continuity reasons, because it made little sense to let him live after all the atrocities he was directly or indirectly responsible for. Everyone else ranges from completely flat to almost completely flat. We get no interaction between the characters that doesn't revolve around the plot. We get data, in-game facts, information, but no character interaction. The only notable example are the charming Hamburger tapes that give a bit of life to Code Talker and Miller. Ocelot has no character at all. Quiet is reduced to being a sad warrior in love. But what does she like? What does she dislike? She has no personality other than waifu qualities like "being nice and brave and loyal to her man".
The themes of the game are ideas. Revenge. Language. Illusions. Parasites. All nice ideas, all begin nicely, but none of them get expanded on. There is no discussion of the layers, meaning and ramification of revenge. Just a lot of people being angry and Huey being silly. Language would've been more interesting if the whole bunch of languages spoken at Mother Base would actually be important. But they were only a smokescreen for the infection, not of actual importance. Parasites were reduced to the status of nanomachines instead of being used as a metaphor for global parasites in politics and diplomacy. And well, I already gave my thing to the wasted opportunities of illusions and fakes.
The game failed to be more than a nice idea with amazing gameplay.
