Well I think you're being kind; I really think that Kojima from the start didn't know what to do with Meryl. This happens a lot with game developer types that I've dealt with; once a female gets put into Love Interest Role, any and all characterization she had previously tends to go out the window. It does ping me out a lot when I see it, but I've gotten so used to it that it doesn't surprise me. I doubt it was even that intentional, it's just one of those ingrained biases.

And it doesn't make you bad not to be into Naomi, she just happened to hit a lot of my buttons, especially later on. Also considering that her "brother" is Fox... makes sense to me. Different strokes for different folks. ^^