I'm so glad that someone had the foresight to convince Kojima to put his hours of garbage read out by cheaper actors into tapes that are entirely optional accessible only to those who give two shits about some ridiculous "story."
Having said that though, I'm, by and large, entirely with the story this time. Big villain wants to do bad stuff, I stop him, then I'm tying up loose ends with subsidiary characters. Really simple-to-follow stuff that requires no knowledge of the previous games (except Ground Zeroes, I suppose. But even then all you need to know is that you got blown up and now you ain't got no arm). I've sort of followed the story in my own way and played every game to completion except for the PSP games, Peace Walker, so there's a little extra for me cause I can recognise some of the characters before they went bad. It's kinda nice seeing them without the ludicrous baggage of the later games.
Hell, the game itself is massively repetitive (Christ almighty how many games set in an open world will have you "capturing outposts" a la Far Cry and Just Cause) but is just an absolute joy to play. Fuck knows how many hours I've spent on it (must be 20-30 odd) but I'm still enjoying sneaking into places and busting heads and sometimes not busting heads. I haven't even tried things like the decoy balloons and stuff and it's still fantastic and fresh each time.
AND, it has its own "No Russian" moment with a remarkable, honest to god, a remarkable level that pulls in everything you've done over 20 hours and says "Now what the fuck you gonna do." And you'll ponder your motives and get on with it, which is bad enough. But then you open "that room." And... well, it's brilliant, and has no reason to exist in this game (because "Kojima", right?) but I'm so super glad that it does.
That and the stellar opening mission will stick with me long after I've finished it. And I've only got a couple of levels to go, I think, but I'll leave that until tomorrow so I can start the next 52.