Unlike the MGS games, the story has so many opportunities to take a nuanced stance on issues of the internet (aghem, Chiral Net), data collection and the obvious metaphor of Amazon.com. It wastes every opportunity to tell a story about how the internet is inherently good even if it's controlled by Bridges. The game is spent building bridges without any question of whether those bridges actually make us more connected or more distant.
Furthermore, the "extinction event" i.e. the death stranding is presented as something which is inevitable to all species rather than something which is explicitly caused by and solved by humans.
It's just really strange seeing all this low hanging fruit go to waste. There are plenty of other problems such as character names and plotlines being overly literal. The exposition dumps are way too much, even compared to MGS which is famous for them.
Overall though it just comes down to the game having an utterly bizarre viewpoint on the world's problems. I had thought that to overarching theme of "rebuilding America by connecting everyone again" would at least touch on the current state of US politics where people are more divided than ever. Unfortunately, the game chalks that problem up to an inevitable event of nature rather than something humans could actually prevent.
Going into the game as a huge Kojima fanboy I basically gave the story way too many chances to redeem itself and it just gets worse.
So bad, unfortunately, that I'm forced to reassess his other games. Surely they have their faults which "come with the territory" of crazy anime style plotlines. But are the good parts even attributable to Kojima? Did somebody special from his Konami team not make it over to Kojima Productions?
Anyway, having said all that, the gameplay was pretty cool, the world itself was beautiful and I do suggest you at least check it out if it goes on sale or something. Meanwhile I'll be waiting for Kojima to hopefully tell better stories in the horror genre as he's suggested he may do.