//Every fiber of me wants to post this without a spoiler warning, but I’m not actually capable of being that much of a dick. Spoilers ahead//

You may have heard that Spec Ops: The Line is an interesting game, and it is. You may be considering playing it. You may even have bought it. I am here to save you, and the whole of Dubai from that reckless action. You must not Play Spec Ops: The Line. I have already travelled down that dark path, and all I can do is send this message back to you in the hopes that I can redeem myself. But I know that I can’t. This is all I can do.

Your mission in The Line will not go as planned. You will burn 50 innocent people to death, you will destroy the remaining water supply, and you will kill the entire 33 platoon, who are only there to help. You will get your squadmates killed, you will doom the region, and you will be blamed for every drop of blood spilled as you work your way through Dubai. Not just by the developers, not just by the people within the game. By yourself.

“Surely there must be a way around those things” you might say. “They can’t design a game that gives me the ability to commit terrible acts without at least giving me some choice. I have paid 60 (or maybe 30) dollars, why would Yager want to punish me and all of those innocent people for supporting their company?”

But there isn’t. There is not choice that you can make within the game that will prevent you from killing thousands of people needlessly. Whether this was to make a point, or to grab headlines, or merely out of sadistic pleasure, I don’t know. What I do know is that The Line traps you and forces you to do terrible things. Perhaps you will choose to put the blood of Dubai on Yager’s hands. I leave that to you, and your god if you have one, to sort out.

Whether or not you blame the developer, you are still making the choice. I am warning you now, you have no excuse. At the very end of the game I was reminded that my original mission was recon and nothing more. That I was to exit the region once I found survivors.It's too late for me, but you can select that option from where you are sitting. Don’t put the disc in your console. Don’t download the game from Steam. The only way to save Dubai, is not to play.