Spec Ops: The Line

[squirtle]

Do you have to change it in gamepad options?

[DocG]

Shit me, that's the one. That's… non-intuitive. Thanks APM!

[redman]

I was going to post very similar, particularly about not playing it

I'm really glad that they took this approach to the game though. I would have preferred though if it felt more like me that made the mistakes / choices. At the gate I would not have chosen that option and even at the end I purposely aimed away from the civilians. Of course the lives of the soldiers are important too but there is a reason why the game dwelled on the mother and daughter burnt alive. It felt a bit hollow for me because the game made me do it. Again this idea of just walking away is never going to happen. The game even says at one stage: 'How many people have you killed today? What do you care it's just a game.' And they're right.

The only bit that I thought was unnerving was the helicopter attack on the tower. It was completely wrong for him to do it. No (sort of) accident like the Gate. He was genuinely liking it and I think it's the first time a game made me feel uneasy like that.

I liked it but the story left me confused.

Again I didn't get as much out of it as other people in the thread but if it's something that makes other developers think 'we can do something at least different with the story' then brilliant.

[KriessG]

I'm so happy the general amount of love this is getting. I worked on this title one and off for two years in a QA management role, and saw it grow in to this. Sadly, a fair amount of time was (in my opinion) wasted on the MP side, which some of us all believed that no one would touch, and we thought that the game should just be SP only, or SP and COOP. Unfortunately, management obviously didn't think that.

MP was actually fun in parts, but coming from someone who plays mainly COD and Battlefield for kicks, I knew it would never get the time of day. And it didn't. If they hadn't of had to do all the MP work, I reckon this could have come out a year sooner than it did.

Still, the SP is great. Even thought I wasn't a tester, I must have played through it 10's of times over the years. I still might pick up a PAL copy now I'm home and play through for old times sakes and to have in the collection. If you missed it, I highly recommend The Darkness 2, another great shooter with a fun storyline that I don't think got the attention it deserved.

[Smitty]

I'm so happy the general amount of love this is getting. I worked on this title one and off for two years in a QA management role, and saw it grow in to this. Sadly, a fair amount of time was (in my opinion) wasted on the MP side, which some of us all believed that no one would touch, and we thought that the game should just be SP only, or SP and COOP. Unfortunately, management obviously didn't think that.

MP was actually fun in parts, but coming from someone who plays mainly COD and Battlefield for kicks, I knew it would never get the time of day. And it didn't. If they hadn't of had to do all the MP work, I reckon this could have come out a year sooner than it did.

Still, the SP is great. Even thought I wasn't a tester, I must have played through it 10's of times over the years. I still might pick up a PAL copy now I'm home and play through for old times sakes and to have in the collection. If you missed it, I highly recommend The Darkness 2, another great shooter with a fun storyline that I don't think got the attention it deserved.

It's great. The haters can go hang - i've not been so excited by the narrative in a game for a very long time. And it looks and plays great too. Well done.

Zero Punctuation rated it as one of his games of the year, and said the story was a milestone in games, which I agree with.

[robdood]

@redman: you say you were a bit confused by the story, but that's kinda the whole point! You don't understand your motives for, your reason to, or purpose of the murders you commit, yet you still carry right on and do it.

[Monbee]

I was going to post very similar, particularly about not playing it

I'm really glad that they took this approach to the game though. I would have preferred though if it felt more like me that made the mistakes / choices. At the gate I would not have chosen that option and even at the end I purposely aimed away from the civilians. Of course the lives of the soldiers are important too but there is a reason why the game dwelled on the mother and daughter burnt alive. It felt a bit hollow for me because the game made me do it. Again this idea of just walking away is never going to happen.

That's sort of the point though - it's really easy in games to just Do The Right Thing, as you're so removed from the situation. A 'be moral/be a bastard' videogame choice would make it like everything else, and rob it of its impact as commentary. He's not a monster, he's a normal human being conditioned to dehumanise others and then put in a terrible situation. There is no choice, there's just the natural consequences of that setup.

By forcing you to act horrifically, the point it's making is that entering into war forces horrible things to happen. You don't need to stop playing for its point of 'the only way to stop these things is not to play' to be effective - it's drawing a parallel with real conflict.

[snowbind]

But that's part of the games larger commentary on player agency in games and the classic 'hero' that most games portray.

[Smitty]

Argubably you are driven to carry right on though as you aren't given an option to turn back, surrender or talk then there really is one motive - survival.

You have no option to turn back, surrender or talk in, say, Call of Duty.

As Snowbind says, I don't think you're really understanding what the devs are saying about player agency, the nature of shooters and war.

You're always fighting on to an expected and inevitable glory in those games. You're always, ultimately, a hero. There are villians that you slay. You win. Objectives are clear. Results are clear.

The Line is all about turning all of that on its head. It's all about exposing the shallowness of the action hero narrative typical to modern shooters.

But beyond that, and this is clever, it's also a knowing commentary on the nature of war and also interventionism.

Place a soldier in a warzone and his primary objective is to survive. He will be scared and heavily armed. He may do terrible things to survive, to save his comrades or achieve his objectives.

This is not a good combination of things, and it's why everyone knows, from the lessons of history, that the presence of soldiers in wars and occupations can lead to quite terrible events. Unintended events. Unintended consequences.

Everytime you've felt stuck in The Line or you've felt forced into a decision, there's a good reason for that. That's part of the central theme. Place yourself in the shoes of a soldier who is trying to survive and can sometimes only make decisions (or at least they feel like they can only do this) that have no good outcomes. Or they make decisions which have unintended consequences.

That's what The Line is about. Those times when you felt the game was unfair - well, that's the point. Life is unfair. War is really, really unfair. Sometimes there are no good decisions to be made in life or in war. There are times when your options are limited, or at least you may think they are.

By placing himself in this situation, by pressing on, Walker continues to ensure his decisions are increasingly dictated by circumstances he can't control - making life or death decisions under pressure, trying to survive or achieve his objectives. He lacks control. The contexts start to determine how he reacts and in this he is clearly losing an element of free will.

Of course he could stop and turn back (in a narrative sense, obviously there is no mechanic for this as The Line is a shooter, not some crazy life simulating RPG or something). He could walk away and avoid being forced into tight spots where he has to make sketchy decisions. He could recoil from the gravity of the situation, his lack of options, his lack of knowledge and so on.

But he doesn't. Just as the player sits through horror after horror and a rising sense of unease with where the game is going (and what it is saying about shooters and them) but continues to play, hoping to be a hero, hoping for a satisfying resolution, wanting to see things out.

Like Walker, the player could simply walk away if they've seen too much suffering, committed too many acts of violence. Both Walker and the player could acknowledge their discomfort with what they've done, acknowledge their lack of control and decide that they don't want to kill people (Walker) or sit through more harrowing suffering and acts of virtual violence (the player).

But they don't.

Honestly, it all links up. It works on so many levels. I think it's quite remarkable.

Yes, some of it is a bit crude. Not everything is a complete success. But the devs are always trying, I think that's clear, and the game mostly succeeds. And where it really succeeds it does so with great aplomb, I think.

I think they deserve recognition for that.

[robdood]

Hear, hear

[redman]

@redman: you say you were a bit confused by the story, but that's kinda the whole point! You don't understand your motives for, your reason to, or purpose of the murders you commit, yet you still carry right on and do it.

Do the Devs know what the actual story is? I remember watching mulholland drive and after thinking what was that all about? David Lynch then wrote 8 clues or something to figure it out. I personally find this annoying. Just tell me what happened...

Don't get me wrong I think the fog of war was probably the most interesting part of the game. Right at the start a civilian ran towards me trying to escape something else and I shot her because I was so trigger happy (I turned it off and replayed that scene). I thought they could have done that more instead of forcing me to burn people alive. What I'm trying to say about that point is that if videogames can do something that films can't to drive that kind of point home then it's player participation and in particular if you choose that option. This was like watching a film; it just sort of played out in front of me. I shot the soldiers that were alive too, I'm a merciful nut-job.

I still don't get the player as agent thing. Agent of what? Walkers decisions? I might be confused here I'm not quite sure what player agency means

[redman]

ahh thanks I'll have a look at that

[Talvalin]

Just finished the game. Some thoughts:

The gameplay was better than I had expected. I played on Hard and you get flanked regularly, shotgun guys will charge you, grenades are thrown to flush you out of cover (but if you're quick, you can shoot the guy about to throw the grenade and it'll go off when he drops) and you have a variety of approaches. There were a number of sections that I had to do more than a few times, like the final rush and the section where Adams is injured and you have to fend off a horde of attackers. I was going to use the word "enemies" but it really didn't seem appropriate given the nature of the game.

Story-wise, I liked how Walker's dialogue and commands became increasingly more aggressive and profane as the game progressed. "Target my mark" moved to "I want that fucker dead now!", "Hostile down" to something like "Kill fucking confirmed". His executions also became seemingly more violent, starting with a single shot to the head and moving to smashing his face in with your fist or gun butt and breaking some guy's neck.

I had been mildly spoiled about the white phosphorus moment, and I did notice that the last group of white dots weren't moving or firing at the camera but hit fire anyway thinking afterwards "Oh wait a minute." In the chapter where "Konrad" makes you execute someone, I tried running past (they shot Adams and then me) and then waited them out, which also resulted in dying. This is odd if that whole scene was in Walker's head, but then how else could the game force you to make the choice. I didn't realise you could shoot at the snipers. D'oh.

Did anyone else notice the bit where Walker says "Haven't we already done this?" when they all get into the chopper after the Radioman section. That did make me wonder about whether this was a post-death hallucination thing, but nicely done all the same.

The ending was pretty horrifying, as I had expected some form of closure with Konrad, even for all the deaths that I had inflicted by the end but I should have realised what was going to happen.

I'm going to play it again on FUBAR, but I will be paying close attention to the dialogue and radio chatter to see how much of the story is foreshadowed.

[squirtle]

I'm so happy the general amount of love this is getting. I worked on this title one and off for two years in a QA management role, and saw it grow in to this. Sadly, a fair amount of time was (in my opinion) wasted on the MP side, which some of us all believed that no one would touch, and we thought that the game should just be SP only, or SP and COOP. Unfortunately, management obviously didn't think that.

MP was actually fun in parts, but coming from someone who plays mainly COD and Battlefield for kicks, I knew it would never get the time of day. And it didn't. If they hadn't of had to do all the MP work, I reckon this could have come out a year sooner than it did.

Still, the SP is great. Even thought I wasn't a tester, I must have played through it 10's of times over the years. I still might pick up a PAL copy now I'm home and play through for old times sakes and to have in the collection. If you missed it, I highly recommend The Darkness 2, another great shooter with a fun storyline that I don't think got the attention it deserved.

The mention of Co-op is quite interesting.

Either playing online or with the split screen capabilities offered by the WiiU, it would be interesting to play around with the insanity angle where one person is seeing stuff the other person isn't. Have it randomly generating enemies for one person that aren't there for the other person, people talking to them etc etc. Could make for a really interesting co-op experience.

[errollw]

The mention of Co-op is quite interesting.

Either playing online or with the split screen capabilities offered by the WiiU, it would be interesting to play around with the insanity angle where one person is seeing stuff the other person isn't. Have it randomly generating enemies for one person that aren't there for the other person, people talking to them etc etc. Could make for a really interesting co-op experience.

With 3 or more people playing at once you could have the mechanic of having to hide your creeping insanity from your teammates, that'd be quite cool.

[KriessG]

There was Co-op once, but it wasn't as cool as the ideas described and I doubt I should say more than that.

[Smitty]

The Gould bit was a good example of the game being a bit fluid:

I went to save the civilians, then changed my mind - the game allowed me to kill the dude who was choking out Gould and play it like I'd let Lugo kill him.

And you can actually save the civilians too.

[NecroMorrius]

Good posts Smitty!

KriessG, did the multiplayer have an atrocity meter which granted you perks as you filled it up?

[Mars]

Just picked this up, will finish Alpha Protocol off and then dive in

[KriessG]

Good posts Smitty!

KriessG, did the multiplayer have an atrocity meter which granted you perks as you filled it up?

You can imagine it did if it makes you happy

Someone should try jumping in MP to see if they can even find a game... I left my US copy in the States otherwise I'd try.

[user removed]

I tried the MP last week, it's actually not too bad and had some nice touches to it. Though it certainly is a barren population there.

[KriessG]

I will buy a copy ASAP and we should all try it out for fun.

I do remember there is random sand storms which happen during the matches, that was a love / hate thing for testers

[James Ape]

I bought this today (thanks for the amazon.com link whoever posted it earlier! ), i'll reserve proper judgement until the end but i am finding the mechanics of the game quite boring, I'm already tired of shooting people in rooms and corridors. It definitely seems well made so far though, the setting is nice, if limited.

[Cosmic_Guru]

I haven't played much of anything since December, but polished this off over two sittings. I thought it was a very interesting game, although I am not sure I entirely understood what was going on. I found I was playing more and more aggressively as the game went on, with some gratuitous executions and other nasty stuff happening almost without compunction, which for me goes entirely against the gaming grain - whenever I role play for example I never kill without cause, ever. I suppose this is what the developers intended, but if so it was effective. I chose

to kill the soldier over the civilian and at the Gould situation I just killed every fucker who had a gun, which led to the death of Gould. I also killed some civilians after they appeared to be injuring me and took sadistic joy in completely shooting up the radio tower. I pulled the trigger at the end (? not at all sure about this bit other than the broken radio seemed to suggest it was all hallucinatory) and then after the credits I started up again - I thought at first it would just keep throwing enemies at me until I died a final time, but I was wrong there.

Great use of music (Hendrix ) and colour too. Not trading this one since I could easily play through again.

[robdood]

Hey cosmic guru.. Where you say you

pulled the trigger at the end, who did you shoot? You get to choose, you know!

I highly recommend you go back about 15 pages through the thread, there are some very interesting discussion points and things to think about

[Cosmic_Guru]

I aimed at

the guy in the T shirt who had been doing the painting as you enter the area

.

Caught up with the thread now and yes indeed some very interesting posts - credit to Smitty in particular. His comments reminded me of that (LSD influenced) scene at the bridge in Apocalypse Now where there is no longer any CO in place but some of the GIs are still shooting at empty space.

Also no-one seems to have remarked upon the rather strange inclusion of your gamer tag in the opening credits as "special guest" or somesuch.

[Smitty]

Also no-one seems to have remarked upon the rather strange inclusion of your gamer tag in the opening credits as "special guest" or somesuch.

Yeah, it's marking your complicity in the events to follow.

[Tangent]

Is there another game in the Spec Ops series, with the same developer, in the works?

[KriessG]

Highly doubtful after the years and history of this, plus the comments from a certain staffer once this got released eventually.

[kerraig UK]

Having now finished the game, read some stuff online, and pondered it I have huge respect for what was achieved here. It's not a perfect game, and there are sections of narrative, gameplay and tropes that could have been pushed further, but on the whole I was fully engrossed, disgusted, shocked and impressed throughout. Willie Pete left me with a feeling of emptiness and shock I hadn't before experienced playing a game.

I was slightly disappointed that Dubai itself seemed to be lacking any symbolic references throughout. I was expecting lots of commentary on mans folly, building monuments in the desert etc, but maybe that would have been misdirecting. much better to stay with the theme of, what I took to be 'The fog of war'. I was especially impressed at how the game managed to successfully subvert your actions from

being a rescue party in a natural disaster zone to fighting an unknown enemy for reasons unknown

I think a big key to all of this seems to be what happened in Kabul. And that was the one area that I was hoping for more resolution on. It felt to me like Walker had arrived in Dubai with PTSD already. At times I wondered if Konrad was even there, although i'm guessing as we see his corpse at the end he must have been.

One of my favourite beats in the game was that Walker saw Konrad as a good man simply because he had saved Walkers like in Kabul. That in his mind managed to vindicate Konrad of all sorts of atrocities before him. Keep your squaddie alive at all costs, even if it means dropping WP on civvies, and you're a good man. Of course Konrad laughs this off dismissively later.

I would have liked the game to play more with other conventions in the game. When having to retry sections a few times i'd have liked it to state something about your invincibility or your eagerness to persevere or something along those lines. Even just give me an option to 'stay dead' on the game over screen or something.

I'd have also liked more to have been made of the enemy troops. Wave after wave of identikit soldiers is a lazy way of getting a point across about a mindless enemy, when so much more could have been achieved just with some different skins and a few lines of dialogue.

I'd also have liked some more advanced gameplay mechanics with the sand and stuff. And maybe even a multiplayer that continued the subversive massaging and questioning of the gratification of violence, but I understand the limitations of game development and publishing.

Overall though I thought the game was incredibly refreshing and smartly designed. I really want more games to play with geometry, logic, linearity etc. The entire world is constructed by the designers so really anything should be possible. If Kubrick can create horror with impossible geometry in The Shining then there's no reason why game devs can't disorientate, amaze, confuse and frighten players by playing with logic in similar ways.

Now to catch up on this thread. expect a flurry of replies