Spec Ops: The Line

[kerraig UK]

I find it perfectly reasonable. One can certainly criticise a domain within which one is merely an also-ran, but one had better prepare for dismissal and derision. The inexpert are, by definition, only ever right by accident, putting Spec Ops -- with its ludicrous b-movie plot and oft-interminable gunplay -- in a shabby position to go around criticising its field.

Look here, there's a bit at the end of Cannibal Holocaust where one of the characters poses a thoroughly undergraduate anthropological question in a hopeless attempt to recast the prior ninety minutes of risible exploitica as insightful cinematography. That's Spec Ops, that is. It thinks it's Funny Games, but it's Cannibal fucking Holocaust.

Absolute bullshit. This game has so much more to say than Funny Games, which is in itself an expertly made, but paper thin critique of violence as entertainment. That film is subtle as a housebrick and just as manipulative as Cannibal Holocaust. Spec ops is still clunky and heavy handed in places, but in other areas it is staggeringly subtle and nuanced.

A point about the language the civilians speak:

They all speak Farsai, not Arabic. Is that symptomatic of Walker's PDST from whatever happened in Kabul, which in turn implies he is mad from the get-go?

Wow I didn't pick up on that. Very interesting. Could be argued that Farsai is the language of a lot of low paid workforce in Dubai, but it could also be a telling part of Walkers PTSD

Much the same as i do for real life soldiers, I see death on the battlefield as fair game - you go to fight to potentially die for your cause or country.

But the environment in this game wasn't a battlefield. It was a natural disaster and a rescue mission

I was only playing through because of the positive comments in this thread and wanting to get it over and done with. I can't even remember any imagery from that section with the exception of a burnt woman holding a baby?

I don't think I'm desensitised to violence at all though

Seriously!?

Is it just me or are the outcomes of all the "choices" the same apart from a different achievement and chatter from your team mates?

yep, for me that was a big part of the message. Once heavily armed young men are put into stressful situations, most decisions turn out to lead to death and destruction. In most games I get infuriated by 'fake' choices. But I don't think Spec Ops is about choice or morality in the usual game presented way. i think it's trying to say you don't have any good options

This isn't just in the dialogue. I found out recently that:

At at least one point in the game, you pass some lush and verdant trees, but if you turn back to face the way you came - which you have little reason to do - they'll be dead husks.

I'm also a big fan of how almost the entire game has Walker's squad going down, down, and further down. You almost never climb to a higher altitude - the game is a topographically impossible descent into hell.

I hadn't picked up on either of these. will need to play it again now. I did notice fairly early on how

during the first really big conflict as it's starting to get really violent, the ground just opens in a very unbelievable was and swallows you up. At the time I thought it was shoddy level design, but now I think it was symbolic that this is you descending into the bloodlust

[Cosmic_Guru]

Having replayed the first chapter again there is clearly huge ambiguity throughout the game e.g in the intro video

the army jacket is draped over the door, thus hiding the name badge from view - we don't know for sure who this was

. I am not sure you can put any definitive interpretation on the events of the game. However, the

the speaking of Farsi throughout

would seem to be a major clue

I can however verify that the executions don't necessarily start cleanly with a shot in the head - my first one was a hefty boot stamp to the face.

[K]

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.

It kind of did that at one point, I think. Once when I died, instead of the game fading out to the loading screen, it cut to a very distorted and weird looking screen with an eerie, glitchy, looped sample over the top. When it cut back to the game, instead of it fading in from black, it faded from white – i.e. waking up from a dream in film language – and Walker was stood there rubbing his head woozily. It kind of implied that his death was just another hallucination. Or maybe it was a bug.

[kerraig UK]

It kind of did that at one point, I think. Once when I died, instead of the game fading out to the loading screen, it cut to a very distorted and weird looking screen with an eerie, glitchy, looped sample over the top. When it cut back to the game, instead of it fading in from black, it faded from white – i.e. waking up from a dream in film language – and Walker was stood there rubbing his head woozily. It kind of implied that his death was just another hallucination. Or maybe it was a bug.

No I got that too. And it left a really indelible mark. More of that please game designers. Horror games especially, should really be fucking with us by now. Remember the mannequins moving around in the shopping mall in condemned? Well what if the whole mall changed shape, became non linear etc. Fairly sure Max Payne 1 fucked about with this too no?

Games seem to have forgotten a lot of the tricks they tried early on. remember having to pull your controller out in Metal gear solid, or the mental flashes in eternal darkness?

Spec Ops plays with this stuff a little and it is always effective. But gameworlds are not built from real materials. It is all in the designers hands. They can defy gravity, build impossibly huge structures, bend time. So why are 99.9% of games adhering completely to real world rules and logic.

This is a discussion for another thread I guess. But whenever I play a game like Spec Ops, or Psychonauts it always makes me sad to look at the rest of my gamepile and realise how generic it is. Think about how utterly shit Resident Evil 6 is, and how amazing it could be if it went down some David Cronenberg body horror/virus augmented reality route

[Smitty]

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.

Not to be tricky here, but Dubai itself was the symbol. Fighting there, in this freakish Disneyland of skyscrapers in the desert, that was the symbolism.

The greatest plans of man will come to naught against the onslaught of nature, of chance. Dubai is strangled by sand, Walker by chaos.

And it's a strange nexus of Western culture and Arab (?) culture. It's exotic and weird, but it feels familiar because of the forced and artificial western nature of the city. The skyscrapers and the sand, such a contrast - order and chaos alongside each other.

Familiar but unfamiliar is definitely a theme in The Line. This is a military shooter. All the tropes are present and correct. Oh fuck me, what just happened?

So like the experience of the game, Dubai feels schizophrenic perhaps in its character. Confused. It feels artificial too, like something out of a videogame. There's a note of surreality there.

If Dubai can be swallowed by the sand, so rich and powerful and west-aping, is anything for sure in this world? Like Walker, we we were foolish to think we could truly be in control when outside events were beyond our grasp?

[Smitty]

Also, I don't know it took me so long to notice this, but during the earlier discussion about

The Gate (I said mentioning what happened there was a spoiler, I realised that your descent into hell really starts at this point, this is point beyond which Walker starts to suffer a sharp disconnect from reality and the obvious point at which to turn back.

You do something terrible at The Gate. The Gate...to hell? The gates of Hell, right?

I mean, it all fits.

[kerraig UK]

Also, I don't know it took me so long to notice this, but during the earlier discussion about

The Gate (I said mentioning what happened there was a spoiler, I realised that your descent into hell really starts at this point, this is point beyond which Walker starts to suffer a sharp disconnect from reality and the obvious point at which to turn back.

You do something terrible at The Gate. The Gate...to hell? The gates of Hell, right?

I mean, it all fits.

Yeah personally that was one of the less successful, more immature themes. I would have liked something a little less obvious

[Smitty]

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 genuinely think you may have missed some stuff here. I mean, the enemy is meant to be the opposite of mindless.

The very first encounter with the 33rd sets things up - ''they're CIA, they're CIA!''

On a general note just listen to what they say during battle. On a more specific note try creeping as much as you can and listen to their dialogue before you attack.

You'll definitely need another play through. There are dozens of things I never noticed the first time around.

There's a whole bunch of drawing by kids showing what happened in Dubai. There's incidental dialogue I never heard before because I piled in - stuff that really underlines that these are people, not ciphers or targets, but people.

I didn't realise you can shoot the soldier being interrogated right near the start. But you can, and it changes what happens in the next scene.

[Rudi von Starnberg]

It kind of did that at one point, I think. Once when I died, instead of the game fading out to the loading screen, it cut to a very distorted and weird looking screen with an eerie, glitchy, looped sample over the top. When it cut back to the game, instead of it fading in from black, it faded from white – i.e. waking up from a dream in film language – and Walker was stood there rubbing his head woozily. It kind of implied that his death was just another hallucination. Or maybe it was a bug.

The game really starts to play around with reloading checkpoints as you near the end of it - the big one that stands out is:

Fighting Walker's hallucination of Lugo - if you die before reaching the next checkpoint, when you reload it's not Lugo at all but just a normal heavy, and Walker is again rubbing his head as if he's trying to force weird images out of it.

[Smitty]

Yeah personally that was one of the less successful, more immature themes. I would have liked something a little less obvious

Oh right. I liked it, i mean i didn't even notice it until after my second playthrough so personally I didn't find it too obvious, although it seems it in retrospect.

You didn't like the large amount of descending you do? Or the fact that Walker looks like a Hell-demon by the end?

I think the game has a bunch of tricks, some subtle and some not. I feel most of them work well, though.

[Smitty]

I can however verify that the executions don't necessarily start cleanly with a shot in the head - my first one was a hefty boot stamp to the face.

True, but they get gradually more brutal and sadistic as the game goes on. They're always unplasent but they are much more workman like at the start. They become angrier and more animalistic. A hard starmp turns into a frenzied head smashing, a rifle butt to the head becomes stuffing a rifle in someone's mouth (their eyes wild with fear) and making their head explode.

Grim.

[Smitty]

Oh and a point to remember about the Farsi,

remember that there's a piece of intel in the game which says that a lot of the people left behind were the poor service class (construction workers, servants etc), and we know from reality that a lot of those people would speak Farsi.

[kerraig UK]

I genuinely think you may have missed some stuff here. I mean, the enemy is meant to be the opposite of mindless.

The very first encounter with the 33rd sets things up - ''they're CIA, they're CIA!''

On a general note just listen to what they say during battle. On a more specific note try creeping as much as you can and listen to their dialogue before you attack.

You'll definitely need another play through. There are dozens of things I never noticed the first time around.

There's a whole bunch of drawing by kids showing what happened in Dubai. There's incidental dialogue I never heard before because I piled in - stuff that really underlines that these are people, not ciphers or targets, but people.

I didn't realise you can shoot the soldier being interrogated right near the start. But you can, and it changes what happens in the next scene.

Nope caught all that. There are some great incidental touches. But the core gameplay mechanic is mindless. The game needed stronger AI in those parts. Imagine soldiers throwing their guns down and surrendering, or even committing suicide. The combat was incredibly one note

Oh right. I liked it, i mean i didn't even notice it until after my second playthrough so personally I didn't find it too obvious, although it seems it in retrospect.

You didn't like the large amount of descending you do? Or the fact that Walker looks like a Hell-demon by the end?

I think the game has a bunch of tricks, some subtle and some not. I feel most of them work well, though.

I love the descending, and the way Walker starts to look more hellish. It drew me in brilliantly. I guess just as a fan of horror, gates are almost always used to signify either a descent into madness or a lowering of morality. So when I see or here of gates in stuff like this I tend to shrug

Oh and a point to remember about the Farsi,

remember that there's a piece of intel in the game which says that a lot of the people left behind were the poor service class (construction workers, servants etc), and we know from reality that a lot of those people would speak Farsi.

That's actually disappointing to me. I'd much rather see the Farsai as an indication of Walkers mental state

[Smitty]

Nope caught all that.

I guess what i'm saying is don't be so sure you caught all of it. I'm watching playthroughs now and no-one seems to stop to listen to dialogue. They pop every 33rd they see on sight, pretty much.

There's dialogue from the 33rd outside of combat.

It's ripe for a second playthrough, trust me. There's the intel to think about too, which you clearly didn't find all of, but nor would most people on their first playthrough (I certainly didn't).

[Smitty]

A more cynical, and almost nightmarish example comes soon after when Walker starts talking to Konrad over the radio. Lugo and Adams, correctly, assume that following Konrad's directions is going to end up being a wild goose chase, to which Walker replies that they have no other choice if they want to discover the truth. The orders displayed in-game simply state, "Obey." Free will? Funny joke... now would you kindly obey?

[kerraig UK]

I guess what i'm saying is don't be so sure you caught all of it. I'm watching playthroughs now and no-one seems to stop to listen to dialogue. They pop every 33rd they see on sight, pretty much.

There's dialogue from the 33rd outside of combat.

It's ripe for a second playthrough, trust me. There's the intel to think about too, which you clearly didn't find all of, but nor would most people on their first playthrough (I certainly didn't).

Oh yeah I think it'll get a 2nd playthrough, but as with all these games, I never engage in combat until absolutely necessary I remember listening to the guys smoking on the balcony, the guys behind the bar, the three blokes in the barracks and the conversation with that guy you expect to be the big bad. I maybe didn't catch it all but I knew story was key so I caught as much of it as I could.

[Smitty]

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.

Yeah, Walker's obsession with Konrad and what happened in Kabul is writ large from the beginning.

“Is John Konrad the greatest man I ever served with? Well…I don’t know. There was this one time in Kabul when he dragged my bleeding carcass half a mile to an evac chopper, so maybe I’m biased. But the facts don’t lie: the man’s a fuckin’ hero''

His bias is massive. He acknowledges this, but then claims the facts don't lie.

This attitude obviously infects the rest of the game.

[Smitty]

I'm watching videos of the cutscenes and walkthroughs and god damn it's just so good.

At the end of the fight in the mall, you find a member of the 33rd who surrenders.

After the guy starts reciting his rank and number, Walker stops him, pointing a gun in his face. He says, in a cold tone, 'you are not a prisoner of war, as far as i'm concerned you're not even a fuckin' soldier''.

He gets closer to the guy and puts the gun under his cheek. The soldier says ''you...you can't' - Walker interrupts him and says ''I can do whatever the fuck I want!''

Oh, Walker. You are lost.

[Talvalin]

Walker and Konrad:

It's also nicely done how Walker's descent into hell mirrors Konrad's. Walker progresses from shooting armed locals (who shoot first), to shooting fellow Americans (who also shoot first), to unintentionally killing civilians and then just shooting everyone on sight. There's a couple of moments where civilians are in the middle of a firefight (I think it's the one where you have to flank a turret in a building where the 33rd are rounding up civilians) and I pulled the trigger by reflex and shotgunned a couple of them by accident. The game just lets you do it and then leaves you to think about the consequences.

[Smitty]

It kind of did that at one point, I think.

As a sidenote K you might consider putting that in spoiler tags. It's exactly the sort of unique thing in the game that I think people would be best off discovering for themselves.

[Smitty]

Walker and Konrad:

It's also nicely done how Walker's descent into hell mirrors Konrad's. Walker progresses from shooting armed locals (who shoot first), to shooting fellow Americans (who also shoot first), to unintentionally killing civilians and then just shooting everyone on sight. There's a couple of moments where civilians are in the middle of a firefight (I think it's the one where you have to flank a turret in a building where the 33rd are rounding up civilians) and I pulled the trigger by reflex and shotgunned a couple of them by accident. The game just lets you do it and then leaves you to think about the consequences.

I know what you mean, but if you take the very first encounter, where you say the locals shoot first, why does that happen? They spot you and Adams talking suspiciously, and suspect you are plotting to attack them. And you are. They ultimately shoot first but it was your presence and your behaviour that lead to that outcome.

That's one of the themes of the game - your very presence precipitates violence. You don't have control over things.

The bit about accidentally killing unarmed civilians is a good one. You can do that at a few different points at the game. I was on a hair trigger (hey, just like the squad, right?) and I gunned down some civvies being chased by the 33rd when you first encounter them and Walker says you have to shoot otherwise they'll kill you (which is true). This is just after the soldiers kills the CIA guy interrogating him and you find the Grey Fox's teams little hidey hole full of intelligence.

After this you encounter the 33rd and they shoot first. But they think you're CIA.

So I killed some civilians there - I saw a person, I instinctively shot. It demonstrates the problem. And the game doesn't respond to this at all. It doesn't call you a bad person. The other squad members don't comment. The game doesn't declare 'mission failed, you killed unarmed civilians'.

It just happens. People just die, unarmed and armed alike, good and bad alike. All die without ceremony. Hell, almost all the characters in the game die, as well as all of or most of the remaining population of Dubai.

On a general note, and I was just thinking about this again, note how everyone in this game thinks they're doing the right thing, or even that they HAVE to do a certain thing. Konrad. The 33RD. Grey Fox. Walker.

Everyone thinks they are doing the right thing.

[Smitty]

Walker and Konrad:

I've also just remembered something important here - the intel file on Konrad which is a pre-Dubai Army psychological evaluation of him. It demonstrates that he was similar in mindset to Walker in some ways.

You can watch it here if you like:

[Don Rosco]

Wow, this was awesome. I had no idea. I'd only heard one or two little things about it, I thought it would be just a normal shooter with a couple of moral choices, but jesus they took it far. Really far. And so gradually. I went back to the start to get some intel I missed, and they're so clean and nice to each other. Compared to the end...jesus. What a game. So unsettling. Someone earlier mentioned similarities with Eternal Darkness, I was thinking the same. They both have this vibe that you just don't really know if you should be doing what you're doing.

Also it reminded me of a big favourite piece of music that I hadn't heard in years and years:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nT25glCNvjs

This game will stay with me for a long time.

Funnily enough, I bought it in a 3 for 2 deal along with Modern Warfare 3. Think i'll play that next, see what happens.

[Rudi von Starnberg]

If you've been paying attention then you'll start uncontrollably vomiting as a kind of Pavlovian reaction to playing such a disgusting jingoistic piece of shit.

[James Ape]

I just finished this, to be blunt perhaps any enjoyment I could have had with the story in this game was really hampered by the monotony of playing it. Neither gameplay or the story really did anything for me.

Not to be completely negative though, it looked very nice and i did like the hallucinations.

[Padlocked]

The narrative in the game and the events/choices you make are so much more powerful if you pretend these are real people you're killing.

"Why? We were helping"

Well, in te context of a videogames where I've arrived in a war zone where everyone is trying to kill me and I have no option, the why is irrelevant. As we move towards 4th wall breakages, it's even less relevant.

"Look at you hacker"

The first thing any game should do is try to engage me directly. To wait until the last third of the game to start challenging me on why I'm playing your average third person shooter is to miss an opportunity. There's no real subversion here, at least no more than that offered by my wife: "why do you play these children's games?".

"It's the videogames"

Multiple opportunities to do it better present themselves from a storytelling perspective. Have me captured, treated well, switched sides, held to account for my actions or actually assign some level of consequence to the choices I make beyond the single, most publicised event in the game.

It's still more than the sum of its parts though. I played for 4 hours solid last night and want to play it again now. it's impressive that a budget affair has managed to be so intelligent and at least moderately challenging, but I'm more interested in what the developers might do next than celebrating what they've done here.

[Smitty]

The narrative in the game and the events/choices you make are so much more powerful if you pretend these are real people you're killing.

"Why? We were helping"

Well, in te context of a videogames where I've arrived in a war zone where everyone is trying to kill me and I have no option, the why is irrelevant. As we move towards 4th wall breakages, it's even less relevant.

"Look at you hacker"

The first thing any game should do is try to engage me directly. To wait until the last third of the game to start challenging me on why I'm playing your average third person shooter is to miss an opportunity. There's no real subversion here, at least no more than that offered by my wife: "why do you play these children's games?".

"It's the videogames"

Multiple opportunities to do it better present themselves from a storytelling perspective. Have me captured, treated well, switched sides, held to account for my actions or actually assign some level of consequence to the choices I make beyond the single, most publicised event in the game.

It's still more than the sum of its parts though. I played for 4 hours solid last night and want to play it again now. it's impressive that a budget affair has managed to be so intelligent and at least moderately challenging, but I'm more interested in what the developers might do next than celebrating what they've done here.

The narrative in the game and the events/choices you make are so much more powerful if you pretend these are real people you're killing.

"Why? We were helping"

Well, in te context of a videogames where I've arrived in a war zone where everyone is trying to kill me and I have no option, the why is irrelevant. As we move towards 4th wall breakages, it's even less relevant.

"Look at you hacker"

The first thing any game should do is try to engage me directly. To wait until the last third of the game to start challenging me on why I'm playing your average third person shooter is to miss an opportunity. There's no real subversion here, at least no more than that offered by my wife: "why do you play these children's games?".

"It's the videogames"

Multiple opportunities to do it better present themselves from a storytelling perspective. Have me captured, treated well, switched sides, held to account for my actions or actually assign some level of consequence to the choices I make beyond the single, most publicised event in the game.

It's still more than the sum of its parts though. I played for 4 hours solid last night and want to play it again now. it's impressive that a budget affair has managed to be so intelligent and at least moderately challenging, but I'm more interested in what the developers might do next than celebrating what they've done here.

You're missing the point. It's a shooter. I don't know how many times this has to be repeated for people to take it in and understand it.

Man, you really weren't thinking much or paying attention if you saw no 'consequence to your choices' beyond one single terrible event.

[Padlocked]

Oh I understand what it is. I really don't need to be patronised about it, thanks.

I just disagree with you about the how much weight I should assign to the illusion of choice and consequence in the game, or in my psyche, or as an overall assessment of the place of violence in videogames and/or the portrayal of modern day theatres of war as mass entertainment.

Clearly there are more single events in the game than one, but I'm merely dismissing most, if not all, of them as smoke and mirrors.

[Puck]

Finding the story in this hard to follow and I'm not entirely convinced it's supposed to be, but the bit I just did is really confusing me. Without spoiling what's to come can someone explain why

the entire city is now going to die of thirst as a consequence of just two tankers of water being destroyed? What did I miss, how can only two tankers be so vital to the survival of the entire population?

[Down by Law]

Got a brand new copy of this from play.com today - £12.99!

It better be *fucking brilliant* because the demo sure wasn't

Genuinelly can't wait to get stuck in. Though I have to say it's thanks to the forum I got Dishonoured and that game is the cats pyjamas, so I have a feeling I'll enjoy it.