Journalist and blogger Leigh Alexander, in her Daily Variety review of Kojima Productions and Konami’s Metal Gear Solid 4

This is one of those statements that sounds true on first blush, but falls apart under more serious scrutiny. While Metal Gear Solid 4, like its predecessors, is packed with numerous lengthy cutscenes, the way those sequences are written is less similar to film than it is to Greek theater and the rhetoric of philosophical debate. As we said in our Newsweek essay on MGS 4, one of the signatures of Kojima’s MGS titles are their “…lengthy Socratic dialogues, in which two soldiers—Snake and one of his rivals—debate the nature of conflict, loyalty and human nature.” We’re hard pressed to think of many Hollywood movies that employ this technique, and we seriously doubt this is what Sony Pictures has in mind for its in-development film. (Kojima also likes to use his cutscenes for documentary-like expository sequences; finally, there are the games’ equally well-worn Codec conversations, which are more reminiscent of radio plays than film.)

It’s understandable why reviewers and journalists believe that “Kojima’s vision for games cleaves so closely to that of film,” given his extensive use of non-interactive cutscenes—far more than the majority of his peers. But a closer examination of how these cutscenes are put together shows that Kojima is actually drawing on a variety of narrative techniques and traditions, of which studio filmmaking is merely one example among many. In other words, just because it looks like a movie doesn’t mean that it’s made like one—a fact Sony Pictures will no doubt discover as it develops the screenplay.