Crossing Spec Ops: The Line

[ToastiestZombie]

My problem with the white phosphorous scene was the way the game tried to make me feel guilty about it afterwards. You know, with the walk through the burning bodies and the cutscene with the dead mum and kid.

It didn't work because the game didn't give me a choice beforehand. If it had said, "Either use the phosphorous or face a really tough fight on foot" and I had chosen the phosphorous then it would have worked fine. But as it was, I didn't feel anything because I wasn't responsible. It was as if Bioshock had started telling me off for killing Andrew Ryan.

Agreed. It was a well-made scene, but it would justify it further if you could actually attempt to attack the Gate on foot. They could make the battle almost impossible (or literally impossible), so that you're forced to go back and use the mortar simply to make things easier for yourself. That would actually make the aftermath your responsibility, even if the game did rig the playing field for that.

Believe me, they did that. I tried, about 5 times in fact. I just kept dying and dying until I finally thought "God, I have to use the mortar".

OT:This article actually put that bit in a new light for me. So yeah, good article.

 

[bells]

that section was good, it was damn near perfect. Because it's real... there is no "Super Hero" here. You can't beat an Entire armed platoon with armored vehicles with just 3 guys and limited Ammo... it would be STUPID to even try.

But walker was all about the mission, he can't stop. It's success at all cost... So, you need to use the mortars. You can start the fight on your own, shoot as many soliders as you want... but if their barrage won't get you, their snipers will... there is just no way around it. If you WANT to continue, if you WANT to pursuit your mission, you must play dirty and use the Mortar.

The little validation you have for your actions is that just a little earlier than that you saw that your enemies ALSO used the same tactics, so you feel like you're just giving them back...

Then you learn that YOU started the whole mess and that Walker simply can't accept that he screwed up, he was there to Rescue people and he ends up killing pretty much everyone he was supposed to save AND destroyed an ACTUAL rescue mission in the process... just because he was blindly loyal to his mission.

 

[Darth_Payn]

Yes, I know, hence the sarcastic "good job Spec Ops".

Yeah, but short of paying someone to dump you in the uncharted jungle or a real-life warzone for a few months, I don't see how the game could adequately prepare you for moral failure.

Conrad's point, at least as I read, is that Europeans of his time could sustain the delusion of being more moral than the "savages" around them not because they were a different class of people, as they believed, but merely because of the environment in which they lived.

I dunno.. If you give people a moral choice with success and failure, most people will choose success, in fact if they make a mistake they'll reload their save game and go back and make the choice again. Why not? They're sitting in a comfortable room somewhere eating crisps and playing with fictional characters on a video game console.

I think there's a good argument that it's not possible to replicate Heart of Darkness in video game form, but I think there's also a very good point that if we're going to try then we need to accept that a loss of agency is required to tell that story, because it's not the story of us, of fat people living in luxury in nice houses, it's the story of what our fat arses would do if we were deprived of all the things which allow us to view ourselves as moral people.

I agree to an extent. I think there definitely is a demand and need for something that valuable, but I really disagree that Spec Ops is it.

It feels like they've tried cherry picking bits from both the novel and Apocalypse Now, thinking that it worked in the past and the overall message and purpose is muddled in the final product. In Apocalypse Now there was never a question that Willard wouldn't find Kurtz, their meeting was inevitable. But in a game, attempting to try and pull the "war makes villains of us all" angle and then try and spin that with the whole "you, the player, are responsible" when no choice is ever given - even if there's a clear distinct possibility for it - is disingenuous.

Now, had Spec Ops, for instance, given that moment and let the player choose what to do it still could have spun the same story forward from that point and deliver the message of ruthless, brutal slaughter by allowing the players actions define the person they become towards the end. Do you sneak by the opposition or do you go in, guns blazing? Did you shoot that wounded guy on the ground or walk by? Let that work seamlessly into the ending and I'd be right there with you, hailing Spec Ops as a leap forward.

But having a forced decision like that lead to one single outcome every time and then pretend like it's a moral tale about something? Pfft.

Spider, you are dominating this discussion thread & have beat me to every point I was about to make, but more articulately, so I agree with your ideas & would like to subscribe to your newsletter, as Homer Simpson once said.

Was SpecOps marketed at any point in its development as a deconstruction? No. What you're talking about was what made me quit playing Homefront, because my character (if you can call a guy who doesn't talk & gets yelled at a lot as such) was dragged from set piece to piece, including that game's bomb-the-enemy-with-phosphorous bit, where shit went downhill and I felt I had little bearing on events. Back onto SpecOps, it is kinda cheap of them to put the story on hold until you do that horrible thing & forced to feel guilty about it. It's total bullshit. Do I have to link to TvTropes' YouBastard page again?

And how THE FUCK did everybody's avatar pic turn into Justin Bieber??!!

 

[Sniper Team 4]

That part of the game made my physically sick in my stomach. And the worst, or perhaps best, part is that I played right into the game's hand: This is Konrad's fault. I'm going to make sure I end him now.
I did eventually start to lose faith in Walker, especially when his execution kills became extremely brutal, but I kept telling myself that this was on Konrad's head. That ending was a real kick to the gut for me.

I do wish that choice was actually part of it. I fully expected, on my second run, that when I saved the CIA guy things would have gone different. And the first time I had to chose whether to kill the guy under the truck or let him burn, once I fired that bullet I kept wondering, "Oh God, am I going to need that shot later?" When you came across Lugo being held hostage I was certain that wasting that bullet was going to get him killed. Anyone else feel like a monster when they leave that guy to burn? I wanted to hit the mute button, but I told myself not to. Being uncomfortable was what the game was going for.

 

[Lex Darko]

HAHA, this is so funny. If the Willy Pete scene didn't have Walker killing civies would the "detractors" complain about not having a choice to use the mortar?

As far as I see it, the only difference here from CoD:MW is Spec OPs doesn't give you an automatic game over screen when you hit civies due to fog of war.

In Spec Ops the game goes on after civilian friendly fire, unlike the CoD:MW which somehow is able to tell you a car with 4 people driving through a fire fight are civilians even though the only eyes on the car are a mile and half in the air; completely negating the concept of fog of war to give players guiltless fun killing the faceless bad guys.

And for all these people who keep talking about realism in games the Willy Pete scene is most realistic display of the aftermath of a bombing that I've seen in a video game. How many "realistic" shooters have you played where you kill someone with a grenade that lands at their feet and you just see the enemy roll over dead? There's nothing realistic about that, not the slightest thing.

 

[ritchards]

So this game only works because there are so many other 'shoot everyone without guilt' FPSs out there?

Imagine if this was someone's first FPS and they had not played (encountered?) the others. What an experience that would be...

 

[matrix3509]

But in a game, attempting to try and pull the "war makes villains of us all" angle and then try and spin that with the whole "you, the player, are responsible" when no choice is ever given - even if there's a clear distinct possibility for it - is disingenuous.

I am about to get a concussion from head-desking on account of how hard you are missing the point. Do you know what a videogame is?

I thought game designers made this point clear decades ago: You as a player, by the mere fact that you are playing the game, are, on account of the nature of videogames being interactive, complicit in any activities taking place in said game.

To then ***** about how the game didn't give you a choice, when indeed, that is the ENTIRE DRIVING FORCE behide the protagonist's decisions, is just ludicrous.

 

[zumbledum]

btw in the WP scene you can attack the gate normally without using it just go to the far left area. not sure the fights winnable but its good fun.

good game nice story glad it was made and i played it, but it lost any emotional power for me to , its the whole immersion breaking problem of you cant be sat there dumbfounded asking your own character WTF are you doing? are you just being full retard for giggles? and then feel any guilt or even culpability for his actions.

i do feel a little sorry for the devs/writers. i mean they were so caerful to make it a humanitarian mission into a natural disaster NOT a war, and everyone missed it.

 

[Blackout62]

So possibly useless tidbit in the grander scheme of things: There is a Humvee, in the white phosphorous scene, while you're bombarding the zone it is driving back towards the largest mass of white blobs. Sure when you're bombarding you think its part of a mounting defensive line, then you realize later that it had positioned itself next to the civilians, while everyone else was panicking those soldiers made a conscious effort to take their big gun and armored vehicle to go defend the civilians. It's a nice touch.

 

[Cosmitzian]

One thing i don't see mentioned about the game, but felt was lacking, is the fact that the spiral of delusion didn't exactly 'hit' the conclusion needed to give the player real reason to doubt Walker's perception.

Everything, including the last final battle, was still grounded very much in reality. This didn't set up the delusional ending as good as it could because the switch from 'real' to 'delusion' was too fast. All that separated the 'reality' was that little cutscene of us going up the road and greeting, the what i then thought to be real, remnants of the battalion. Given the last 5 minutes of the game, we had no reason, prior to the ending 'cutscene' to doubt Walker's perception of reality.

If after the final battle/bunker explosion, we would have had a short gameplay moment, with Walker reaching the tip of his madness, i think that would have settled in the feeling a lot better. Let me walk you through it.

Imagine just watching the sequence after the bunker, you reach that bridge and realise that there's a final wave of enemies which you have to go through. The character then picks up two LMG's or one of the stationary Gatling sentries in the game, something ridiculous, and then advances on the enemies. The player can only reasonably go forward, the screen gets red as it usually does when you are near death, but you don't die.. hundreds of soldiers falling to your left and to your right as you wade through them effortlessly, trucks exploding for the pure visceral pleasure of carnage. You are a god amongst men, a god of war.

What would that sequence achieve? Make you question what you're seeing, set up the realisation that Walker really fell down the deep end.

 

[bells]

So possibly useless tidbit in the grander scheme of things: There is a Humvee, in the white phosphorous scene, while you're bombarding the zone it is driving back towards the largest mass of white blobs. Sure when you're bombarding you think its part of a mounting defensive line, then you realize later that it had positioned itself next to the civilians, while everyone else was panicking those soldiers made a conscious effort to take their big gun and armored vehicle to go defend the civilians. It's a nice touch.

Also, every time an explosion goes off Walkers face gets reflected in the laptop scree for a second... another very nice touch that mirrors exactly what yahtzee said about how these sections turn the player and the targets into senseless tiny little blobs.

 

[Thorenus]

(deleted)

 

[Guy from the 80's]

I saw a friend post a picture from the game on facebook and thought the artwork looked really nice. And the setting, ghosttown Dubai? Too good to be true. My friend also recomended it. So I had a few beers and thought this is going to be good!

I've only played it for maybe 20 minutes. I wasnt charmed by it at all. My first impression of the game was poor. A pointless helicopter/minigun unlimited ammo scence that was incredible boring. Walked around in the desert for a while and then quit in order to go back to Crusader Kings 2. Havent played it since (more than a month ago)

 

[Thorenus]

(deleted)

 

[In Search of Username]

Completely agree. That scene with the phosphorus was just so good. And the part where you replay that helicopter scene and begin to get deja vu - such a great way of revealing just how far from reality Walker has got to be. I love this game. And I love how from the title, trailers, hell, even from playing through all of the demo, you'd think it was the most generic thing in the world. Means the target audience for CoD and Battlefield might get something to actually make them think for once.

Oh, and those loading screens. Gradually changing from just giving you tutorials and backstory, to giving you philosophical quotes like 'Freedom is what you do with what's been done to you.' and then going on to simply openly ask what the hell you're doing. Such a brilliant touch.

 

[Angry_squirrel]

Wank wank wank wank wank.

That's all I'm hearing. "Oh, you don't like these choices? Stop playing the game you bought. Yeah, we totally made a product that costs 60 euros so we could tell you to stop playing it."

Bullshit.

Do you read a book, or watch a film, and complain that you're not being given a choice as to the protagonist's actions?

It's a linear game that is telling a story.

Don't complain because you're not given the choice to avoid something fundamental to the whole story of the game.

OT: I thought the story was brilliant, but the gameplay was about as bog standard as you could get. I've completed it once, and I don't expect to do so again.
The environments were great too

 

[draythefingerless]

But in a game, attempting to try and pull the "war makes villains of us all" angle and then try and spin that with the whole "you, the player, are responsible" when no choice is ever given - even if there's a clear distinct possibility for it - is disingenuous.

I am about to get a concussion from head-desking on account of how hard you are missing the point. Do you know what a videogame is?

I thought game designers made this point clear decades ago: You as a player, by the mere fact that you are playing the game, are, on account of the nature of videogames being interactive, complicit in any activities taking place in said game.

To then ***** about how the game didn't give you a choice, when indeed, that is the ENTIRE DRIVING FORCE behide the protagonist's decisions, is just ludicrous.

I think all the head banging is making you spectacularly miss the point.

Just because you are pressing forward on the controller doesn't make it you who is making the choices. Especially if there are none. You might as well claim that film is an interactive medium then, because you as a viewer decided to sit down and watch it.

But when the game forces your hand at doing something, and then pretends to be able to turn it around and say "AHA! This was your choice!" it is nothing but a poor manipulation and lousy game design.

I posted earlier that had the developers truly wanted to take this path and keep the message intact, they would have allowed the player options to play as they saw fit and calculated that towards the ending. But no, instead you are forced to take the cheapest, most obvious possible choice and then sit through meandering and poorly handled melodrama when the game tries to rub it in your face that you - well, did what it forced you to do.

That's not interactivity.

you can attack the base if you want. the game is just being real to the scene, because if you attack the base, your odds are near impossible. but you can try and attack it if you want. then you die, and its mission over. and if yo uwant, you can consider that end of the game.