Let's say we had a choice to not use the white phosphorous (Spec Ops: The Line spoilers)

[Solarisirolos]

I had always interpreted that the right choice was to shoot at the soldiers and end the game right there. Personally, I believe that the other option of ending the game right there was to give the player the same kind of feeling Walker has of finishing his mission. Most people probably would want to just continue the game to experience the story and because they paid for it, while Walker has a similar feeling in how much he wants to go continue.

 

[ellers07]

Seriously, I just don't get why so many people harp on about the game not giving you a choice at this bit, when choosing something else would just ruin the game's story.

I'm not sure if it would ruin it, but it would definitely change the tone of the game and probably not for the better.

I can see where people are coming from in wanting a choice. I think we've gotten used to having choices in our games, which is a feature that deserves praise when done correctly. That doesn't mean that all games should allow the player to make choices, or at least not all of them. Maybe I'm biased because a good story is what I look for in most games. The whole reason I played Spec Ops in the first place was because someone said it had a surprisingly good story. That's not to say a game can't have a balance of both, but there's also no reason it has to. The developers clearly felt the white phosphorus incident was a key plot point that shouldn't be altered. I'm inclined to agree. Sure it's a bit of a downer of a game, but I found it depressingly satisfying. That's just my opinion though which is worth absolutely nothing.

On a side note, I find your avatar slightly frightening and inexplicably disturbing, yet so hypnotic...

 

[Adam Galli]

I would have used the willy Pete anyway. At the time you couldn't be sure who in ACUs was friendly or not.

 

[xefaros]

I'm just sad that the casualties were so low. I wanted to burn more civilians.

GTA V now with moddable white phosphorous on top of a tank,crowd control to THE MAX

OT:Spec ops the line counted too much on the story,which had plot holes to say the truth, and not the mechanics which ended up a mess.Any choices the game would have prompted you to make would still make you look like crazy,that was its point you saw a mess and you gone bonkers.To any extend of the story it ends up a snuff story made to shock you which falls short if you compare the moment of white phosphorus to

Spoiler

your crew member gets hanged by the same people someone might consider saving

In the end the game itself turn against all alive things in it even yourself so even if there was a choice it is removed later on.

 

[Gethsemani_v1legacy]

The thing these people who think it is a stupid plot point tend to miss is that the game isn't trying to make you feel bad for using the WP, it is trying to make you feel bad for playing a modern military shooter with the intention of enjoying the action. The game is driving home the point of just how badly it affects Walker (who spends the rest of the game sliding into insanity) and pointing out what a bad person he is, while also using a meta-level to drive home the question what kind of gamer would willingly play a game that involves committing warcrimes without ever thinking twice about what's going on right in front of them.

People harp on the game because the game spends a great deal of time harping that there's always a choice and when it actually matter they take the choice away from you and then harp on and on about how you're the bad guy for making a choice when you didn't actually make one. And please don't give me the bs of "you could've turned off the game", that's not making a choice at all, that's a non choice. If I'm supposed to be in Walker's shoes and actually care about what happens in the game then I don't have the choice to poof out of existence.

No, but the game points out several times before the WP-sequences and a few times after it that Walker is going beyond the parameters of his mission when he decides to push further into Dubai instead of pulling back out as soon as he finds survivors (which was the squads primary mission). Turning off the game is an acceptable choice if you find the content objectionable, just like you'd stop watching a movie or reading a book that provides objectionable content. That's actually one of the main points Spec Ops is making: That by our continued insistence on playing the game we are, as the gamer, in fact complicit in the atrocities that happens because we always have the choice to stop playing, but because we play on we also let these scripted sequences happen. Then we blame Yager Development because they "forced" us to perform these atrocities in the game, instead of blaming ourselves for playing along "because that's the game".

 

[Do4600]

You need to change the title of this thread, you are totally "that guy" now.

Spoiler: very serious story spoilers

I honestly don't think it would have mattered, at this point in the game Walker is already convinced that he's doing what's right for the city even though he's systematically weakening the only thing keeping these people alive and killing those people en masse.

Why is nobody concerned with the fact that at that point in the game you've already killed something like five times the amount of civilians in that ditch with your rifle?

The real conflict in Spec Ops: The Line is not him killing civilians with white phosphorous. It's that Walker arrives on the scene in the first level with an incredibly frail grasp on the situation and proceeds to act as though his Call of Duty-esque, we're the good guys, every war video game hero, macho military mentality is the correct way to approach it.

The first level: "Take out those choppers!" Is every first person shooter since Call of Duty 1, then they proceed to show your squad acting just like those assholes from Bad Company telling stupid horrible jokes.

This game is about disillusionment, the reason they set these characters up as nearly generic shooter heroes is because they want us to be alienated when their method of dealing with this situation turns them into monsters.

The reason we feel alright with how the game starts is because we're comfortable with the idea of shooting people wearing scarves over their heads with Ak-47s.

The first two levels or so all you're doing is killing civilians, like I said, why does nobody have a problem with this?

The part with the white phosphorus in this game is only the point where you begin to understand just how wrongly this character is acting in this situation. It's unavoidable, you've ALREADY killed civilians, that's the point, Walker is ALREADY acting insane, but it's how we expect him to act because that's how video game characters act in this situation, and they are okay with how they act.

The white phosphorus is there to continue to create doubt in the actions of these characters that began when they begin fighting their own military. The nightmare doesn't start when he burns those people, it starts when the game starts, it's the white phosphorus that lets us know we're in a nightmare and begins to show us the consequences of Walker's attitudes and actions so far and foreshadows the suffering and murder of both his friends and the people he says he's trying to save as a result of his character's flawed assumptions.

They put personifications of video games characters into a situation they would easily handle in any other game and they try to make that situation react realistically to them, and the results are truly horrific. Which begs the question among many, many others I had at the end of the game which the game itself poses in one of it's loading screens:

"The US military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants, but this isn't real so why should you care?"

The answer for me was: "I really don't know" This game left me with serious meta philosophical questions that I felt I needed to answer before I played another shooter. Every game has the ability to ask these questions but few do, why?

 

[V da Mighty Taco]

snip.

How is that in any way an important spoiler?

Oh no! Now you know that there is white phosphorous in the game and you use it! That sure reveals all the major plot twists!

That's not just a major plotpoint - it's the major plotpoint in Spec Ops: The Line. It's the equivalent of Bioshock's...

Spoiler

"Would You Kindly"

... twist and is widely regarded as the defining moment of the entire game. How is it not an important spoiler?

Captcha: "toy soldier"

 

[Muspelheim]

The Player: This isn't my fault. It was rigged from the start, I didn't have an option.

The Game: No, you didn't.

The Player: It's unfair!

The Game: Yes, it is.

The Player: This is bullshit!

The Game: Yes, it is.

Think of it, it's not entirely unlikely that Walker had similar thoughts himself. I actually rather like that, as cruel as it is. Sometimes, there's just shitsandviches left.

 

[sethisjimmy]

Let me start off by saying "you can turn the game off" is a terrible cop out of an argument. This is not actually an example of a meaningful choice the game presents you with. The game doesn't actually have any meaningful choices. It doesn't really matter, plenty of games can be good without lots of meaningful choices. But trying to pull that "you could have stopped" crap is really lame. You can stop any game, at any time. It doesn't make it a feature of the game. Just because you chose to continue doesn't mean you actually had a choice within the game situation.

Plus if you had "chosen" to turn the game off at that point, you'd be unable to criticize it for not having played the rest. Very clever Spec Ops fans, very convenient

No but seriously, I feel like that part of the game was flawed in a few ways. The dialogue amongst your comrades implies you actually do have a choice, and the game sets the situation up like a choice, giving information you need to make a decision in a cutscene and then you start playing the game outside the actual operation controls for the WP. On top of that, the clear moral choice they push you towards is not to use the WP. Your comrades describe how terrible it is and don't think you should use it, even though the protagonist tells them there's no other way, almost as if he knows the developers have set up an infinitely spawning killzone right in front of you.

Speaking of that killzone, that part was pretty bad as well. I mean throughout the game you've just been mowing down hundreds if not thousands of goons single-handedly, and now the game is trying to pretend it's impossible for you to do that again? It's a completely contrived plot/gameplay device to get you to use the WP.

However I can see how, if the game had actually fooled you into using the WP without question, and you went in completely blind, not knowing what WP is at all, and you had ignored all previous dialogue, then I can see how it could make a deep impact. As it stands, when I played it the scene fell totally flaccid because I saw it coming and because I had actually attempted to shoot from cover only to realize that the enemies were respawning and they did much more damage here than anywhere else thusfar, and that was annoying.

Anyway jeez I am really ragging on the game. I don't really dislike it, I just feel it gets way too much praise mainly because of the climate and timing it was released in. Plus in a way I feel it really had potential to do much more with its message, and to further examine the relationship between player and character, as well as choice in gaming. However as it is, it's a solid action blockbuster with a very cool setting, and I look back on it semi-fondly for that reason.

 

[Distance_warrior]

I always thought it would be quite interesting if they did give you the choice where if you say no then you just see walker and co walking out of Dubai roll credits. Then I think I would do what most people would do in that situation and reload my save and see what happens. then I think I would legitimately feel guilty. But even though the game kinda fails at making me feel guilty for Walkers actions it makes me feel guilty for shit I have done in other shooters. You can't tell me that you didn't find the AC-130 ridiculously fun, or that you have never ever used a flame-thrower in world at war for moral reasons. Hell it got me back to thinking about my days plating rainbow 6 and how I would always use the incendiary grenades instead of the frag just because they were quite.

The game was never trying to make you feel guilty for walkers actions the blame for them fall squarely on him. the game makes you feel guilty for all the other shooters you have played without even the slightest consideration for the effects of your actions and the glee you felt in them for exterminating your fellow man.

 

[BakaSmurf]

But guys... you do have a choice! Its there, since the beginning of the game!


You turn the game off. The thing wasn't barraging you for killing the civilians, it was barraging you for doing so under blind orders. The only way to win is to not play. This has come from one of the head developers.

Is this developer willing to happily refund the full $60 that many paid on day one to get the game to begin with? Somehow I doubt it, which frankly, causes the validity of their argument to go soaring out the window. Expecting someone to put aside a game you made them pay a good deal of money for and call them a MUNSTAR! for doing otherwise is an absolutely bullshit move.

 

[Worgen]

I wish they had made it more gameplay that forced it instead press button to proceed. Like you could try to go forward but you would always be gunned down so that way they actually made it seem like more like a conscious choice you made instead of something you had to do to go forwards.

 

[sextus the crazy]

Ok, I've seen a few people saying how Spec Ops: The Line isn't that edgy or whatever because the game forces you to use the white phosphorous.

What if you could choose not to do it though? Say you had the choice to actually fight the enemies yourself (and win) instead of sending the drone in and accidentally killing a ton of civilians, or something like that?

The choice would ruin the whole thing. People would choose to fight cleanly because they know they can beat all of the enemies without WP because they can just stall it out like any action shooter game. Walker chooses to use WP because he knows that without artillery there's no way that they would be able to take on the enemy forces.

 

[Ryotknife]

so spoiler tags incoming

Spoiler

okay, so it WAS the phorporous event that was suppose to make me feel like an asshole. That whole event kinda confused me.

On the one hand, i tried NOT using it, its impossible to proceed.

On the other hand, it was like an episode of twilight zone where the military unit that has been going around massacring citizens now grouped up a bunch of them "to protect them".......dafuq? Honestly i thought it was the water truck event that was suppose to be the "do you feel like a hero yet?" event.