wat
I didn't say I hated it.
I never said you said you hated it.
Then I wouldn't have applied my supposed repertoire, clearly.
But I think I will now, thanks for reminding me. While I do agree the story and writing in the game are quite good, considerably better than in most video games, in fact, the game has some serious issues with conveying it. Basically, the game is split into two main components: you have the story sections, in which you walk around and trigger scripted conversations and have the story told to you in a manner in which you have virtually no stake in, and you have the combat sections, in which you fight nameless, faceless, insignificant crooks by the legions that also have no stake in the unfolding story.
And why is this bad? It tells you a story and you get to shoot things, right? Well, yes. But neither component complements the other. Defeating the crooks is not in itself story-progressing and does not represent character growth because that's not what the story is about, and the story sections pretty much forget about the existence of those combat sections in order to feed you plot where they're not relevant in the slightest. Basically, you could remove 90% of the combat encounters in the game and the story would unfold in pretty much the same way. And if you do, the game would simply be a walking simulator, because all that is required of you to uncover the plot is to walk into dialogue triggers. You don't feel like you're uncovering the story of the game yourself, you feel like the game is merely telling you to sit back and listen while randomly throwing a jar of bugs at you that you have to take care of in order to continue.
The inclusion of voxophones does reward exploration a bit, but it's a very contrived way to feed you backstory, being literal story-telling devices, and most of the time they're just lying in the way of your main path, as if the developers wanted to make sure you wouldn't miss anything about their precious story.
I think that's the main gist of Irrational Games, really. They're great at making visually appealing fantastical worlds, filled to the brim with interesting backstory and the stories themselves are top of the crop. But they're bad game designers.