@Brodehouse said:

I was into this game until the last 2 hours. Then the gameplay became the most aggravating, nauseating experience possible and the story just made me angrier and angrier. I cannot in recent memory think of a game that left me as angry as I am now. Near the end I was mashing execute on anyone I can because I was so fucking angry, so sick of the conflict that every ten minutes made me more furious. Maybe that was their intention? It's stupid, because I play games to relieve stress, not to get wound up tighter than a corkscrew and be on edge all Goddamn day.

Catherine left me confused and mildly annoyed, Mass Effect 3 left me more confused and the annoyance had to grow over a couple days... LA Noire, I was just glad it was over because I hated Kelso as a character. But I can't think of anything that actually made me physically angry. I wanted to break the Goddamn controller in my hands just because I hated absolutely everything that was happening.

I felt much the same way. The back quarter of Spec Ops pissed me off at the time, and I'm still struggling to think of a reason why. I wasn't dying a lot, I wasn't getting caught up at choke points or failing, but for some reason I just kept getting more savage, took more risks, and took every opportunity I could to bash some poor bastard's brain in. I think if I could have spat on the people I killed, I would have. I wanted it to be over, but not because I disliked my time with the game, or found the mechanics to be bad. I wanted it to be over so I could stop thinking about it.

I felt a lot like you before the coup de grace in the last twenty minutes or so. I didn't want to think, or be forced to feel all of this shit that had built up over the course of the game. I wanted to go back to flag waving and clear distinctions between good and bad, black and white, but I had to see it through. I think that's a powerful experience a game can give you, something that no other medium can. There's nothing wrong with merely wanting popcorn entertainment out of your hobby, but I won't knock Spec Ops for making me feel exhausted, pissed off, and in the end, numb. I'll commend it.

@Zaccheus said:

@Brodehouse: Sounds like a pretty powerful experience. I leaned more to the desperate sorrow and exhaustion, but that's just my personality. It's definitely not a "relax and unwind" kind of game.

No the fuck it is not, and I am definitely up for more of this type of experience. I also played the game on Suicide Mission from the start, and I've been tempted for awhile to go back and try again on FUBAR. I feel like the higher difficulties really add to the tension and stress in a good way.

@DanTheGamer32 said:

@NoRemnants said:

@Oldirtybearon said:

Spec Ops: The Line is a goddamn masterpiece.

Game of the Year.

If the actual gameplay mechanics weren't so bland I would seriously consider it being mine. The story is incredibly well thought out and they pull it off spectacularly.

How about 'Rough Diamond of the Year'?

I think this needs to be a legit category.

After a day to cool down from it, I'm still pleased that they told this story. For me it was the gameplay. I've never subscribed to the "too much gameplay/action" criticisms of other games, in an age where games are shorter do they really want less? I appreciate how the enemies aren't bullet
sponges (at first), but theres just too fucking many of them. Maybe it's my fault for playing it on normal, I usually play most Call of Duty and action-centric games on easy (especially if they handle poorly), but near the end of the game I was spent. Completely fucking exhausted with the whole affair. I don't respond to exhaustion with sorrow or despair, I respond with aggravation and anger. I killed _so many dudes_, I must have killed that entire city twice. Just completely sick of having to kill men to achieve a pointless goal. I suppose that's what soldiers feel.

Maybe it's giving these guys too much credit to assume they studied Brecht and were using repetitive, clumsy gameplay to alienate naturalistic sympathy and cause introspection... But I was ready for that game to be over a good 90 minutes before it decided to stop. The last mission I was assuming was going to pretend to close things up and then give me another 25 minutes of unappealing combat scenarios.

It sounds like this game, despite its flaws, does a lot of things right. I hope it bleeds over into other games I actually want to play.

Too little too late for me. 10 chapters of boring brown shooter and 5 chapters of attempted story does not a good game make. The fact that they want 60 dollars for 3 hours of gameplay is awful.

@CornBREDX:

That sounds like a story way too awesome for a shooter.

I read about this game today in the papers, and despite being a shooter (at least it's third-person-perspective...), I was rather intrigued. I was pretty sure there would be a "all-in-your-head" twist when I read about Walker's mental issues, but the set up with that Konrad person seems pretty well done.

From your perspective, how hard to play do you consider this game for someone who never really played a shooter? My only experiences with shooting-gameplay is Mass Effect 2 and some Fallout... ^^;

I also read the game is short, so how many hours did it take you to finish it (approx.)?

@CornBREDX:

Ok, thanks a lot :)

@buckybit: You don't actually have to kill anyone in the section you are alluding to, you can just shove.

Just tried the alternate ending where you get in a standoff with the Marines instead of surrendering your weapon. I managed to beat it on Fubar. Wasn't as hard as I thought it would be, but a nice little addition to an already visceral game. The trick is in knowing where to take cover at the start, and I personally did not use the lock on cover system when using that spot.

@CornBREDX: @NeilRapalee:

You two seemed to have observed the game the most. I haven't played it yet but read so much about it, that I can't wait to play it to fully understand the plot.

So from what I read, the Delta Team was sent in to find out about the status of Konrad after his signal was received, then leave. But Walker being biased about Konrad, seeing him as a hero, pushed further. At the end he is told by the Konrad hallucination that he had many opportunities to just leave Dubai, but he didn't because he wanted to be a "hero". So if Walker would have left sooner, not much of all the "bad shit" would have happened. But isn't that kinda contradicting? I mean, he was tasked with a reconnaissance mission, of course he has to investigate. Doesn't that mean there isn't much choice for him to leave, as it would mean to abandon his mission? That confuses me a little.

Also, I read about all the horrible mistakes and choices Walker did, that ultimately brought insanity upon him (and brought him the hostility of several if not all of the games factions). Now, I know about the white phosphorus incident, but what else did he screw up?

Thanks :)

So Now I have finished it and really liked but i have some major questions

So Walker IS NOT Konrad ? Konrad was just dead all that time, damned 33rd was cruising in dubai and our 3 protagonists were just sent as a Delta Team ? But then why walker was insane from beginning of the game? He was talking to Konrad wa to early before he should be insane

Or is Walker a Konrad ? He wears his uniform at the end

@HiCZoK said:

So Now I have finished it and really liked but i have some major questions

So Walker IS NOT Konrad ? Konrad was just dead all that time, damned 33rd was cruising in dubai and our 3 protagonists were just sent as a Delta Team ? But then why walker was insane from beginning of the game? He was talking to Konrad wa to early before he should be insane

Or is Walker a Konrad ? He wears his uniform at the end

As far as I got it, Konrad killed himself after broadcasting the signal you hear in the beginning of the game. Walker isn't insane from the start, he is just biased towards Konrad because he once saved him in Kabul. He wants to be a hero like he thinks Konrad is, which leads to all the mess he creates. After the horrible white phosphorous incident, Walkers mind splits (dissociative syndrom) to be able to deal with what he has done. This happens when he stands infront of the burned mother and child, where you see his face up-close, and Lugo and Adams are arguing behind him. That's why the hallucination of Konrad is painting the image of that burned mother and child at the end, highlighting this incident as Walkers loss of sanity.

I think Walker wearing Konrads uniform at the end is a metaphor. Just like Konrad, Walkers intentions were good, but his decisions were ultimately wrong and costed a lot more than if he had just left and done nothing.

So I didn't get an epilogue? I didn't even get a choice, Walker blew his muhfucking brains out; unless there wasn't a prompt and I am supposed to just choose? But man what the fuck? I mean, I didn't get the whole 'gaming making me feel like shit' thing like others did, apart from the whole white phosphorous bit; I guess the whole shooting US soldiers isn't really a big deal to me with this being a videogame and all.

But yeah, did I pick all the choices that led my Walker to just fucking top himself regardless?

@AlexW00d:

Too bad the game didn't grab you that much. It's actually a memorable emotional experience if you let it happen, it's not about shooting US soldiers, it's more like a journey with a man desperately trying to do the right thing but failing ultimately and being unable to bear with the horrifying consequences. But oh well. Back to your question.

As far as I know you have 3 choices: Shoot yourself, let Konrad shoot you, or shoot Konrad. After Konrad counts to three you should be able to control Walker, either aim and shoot at yourself or Konrad to not let Konrad just shoot you.

On one forum someone said he'd heard if you make all the more civil vs combative choices Walker is wearing his own vs Konrad's uniform at the end and he explains what happened to the Humvee driver vs saying "Who says I did" when asked how he survived.

If this is so, I need to do another play through and choose differently. I keep forgetting you can rescue the civilians instead of trying to save Gould because I keep skipping that cutscene. I'm curious as to how it plays out if you save the civvies anyway (please don't tell me).

With some choices it's hard to know what is the more civil option though, like whether to kill Lt. MacPherson in The Refugees chapter. If you let him live you have to kill the 4 guys that ambush you after rappelling down. I guess the civil choices are slanted toward saving citizens vs killing soldiers, but there's not many places where you have that option.

should i play this game over max payne 3, dead spacxe 2, witcher 2, alice madness returns?
those are the 4 games I have to play through 
 
convince me (I didnt read the first post)

@steveurkel said:

should i play this game over max payne 3, dead spacxe 2, witcher 2, alice madness returns? those are the 4 games I have to play through convince me (I didnt read the first post)

I would play Dead Space 2, then Max Payne 3, then Spec Ops: The Line, in that order, esp if you've not bought them yet. Reason being you'll get better pricing that way, and the first two mentioned are easily good enough to be GoTY candidates.

SOTL is not quite as good a game as those first two IMO, but it is well worth playing and offers a unique perspective on the shooter genre.

@Frag_Maniac:

I doubt this is true. There is an explanation of all 4 endings:

http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?124504-Spec-Ops-The-Line-All-Endings

What you get is only based on your final decision.

@Morrow said:

@AlexW00d:

Too bad the game didn't grab you that much. It's actually a memorable emotional experience if you let it happen, it's not about shooting US soldiers, it's more like a journey with a man desperately trying to do the right thing but failing ultimately and being unable to bear with the horrifying consequences. But oh well. Back to your question.

As far as I know you have 3 choices: Shoot yourself, let Konrad shoot you, or shoot Konrad. After Konrad counts to three you should be able to control Walker, either aim and shoot at yourself or Konrad to not let Konrad just shoot you.

Well I got all the rest of the stuff, but it just didn't seem to hit me as hard as others, maybe it's cause I played it over a week? I dunno, I wanted it to ruin me, which is why I bought it. I am glad I played it though, that ending made me literally WTF.

And damn it, I just thought it was one big cinematic. Although I am kinda glad with the ending I got, made everything feel final. Thanks for making me a bit less confused, lol.

@AlexW00d:

Yeah, it really was cinematic. I was surprised how much effort they put into Walkers facial expressions, at least in the close-ups. At times I even thought it outdid Heavy Rain, of course HR is a lot older (and didn't use pre-rendering), but for a game made for the shooter audience, Spec Ops put a lot of effort into the emotional part. I have rarely seen video game faces looking so alive with so little motion. Just look at Walkers face. Aww.

@Morrow: I didn't really like the actual pre-rendered scenes, as they were still at the same resolution as the console version on my PC, so it looked terrible compared to ingame, but yeah, the in-game cinematic stuff was real good. I kinda wanna play it through again, but then I wanna have that one playthrough as MY playthrough. Hmmmm. But for sure there was definitely a lot of emotion in that game, they definitely did that well.

@AlexW00d:

Hmm, I'm starting to think I might not be able to distinguish them ^^; Is the white phosphorous part in-game or pre-rendered? I watched all the cutscenes on Youtube and wasn't able to see much of a difference between them... so either Youtube made the quality look very similar or I have no clue lol.

@steveurkel said:

should i play this game over max payne 3, dead spacxe 2, witcher 2, alice madness returns? those are the 4 games I have to play through convince me (I didnt read the first post)

I would play Dead Space 2, then Max Payne 3, then Spec Ops: The Line, in that order, esp if you've not bought them yet. Reason being you'll get better pricing that way, and the first two mentioned are easily good enough to be GoTY candidates.

SOTL is not quite as good a game as those first two IMO, but it is well worth playing and offers a unique perspective on the shooter genre.

@Morrow said:

@AlexW00d:

Hmm, I'm starting to think I might not be able to distinguish them ^^; Is the white phosphorous part in-game or pre-rendered? I watched all the cutscenes on Youtube and wasn't able to see much of a difference between them... so either Youtube made the quality look very similar or I have no clue lol.

That stuff is ingame. There aren't a whole load of pre-rendered stuff in the game I don't think, so it's not too bad really. But the cinematic stuff is great.

@Morrow said:

@AlexW00d:

Yeah, it really was cinematic. I was surprised how much effort they put into Walkers facial expressions, at least in the close-ups. At times I even thought it outdid Heavy Rain, of course HR is a lot older (and didn't use pre-rendering), but for a game made for the shooter audience, Spec Ops put a lot of effort into the emotional part. I have rarely seen video game faces looking so alive with so little motion. Just look at Walkers face. Aww.

While I don't think it's a good game it certainly made me feel things that not a lot of other games have. I still dislike the combat immensely and feel that it is one of the worst shooters I've played in recent memory. Still, it at least attempted to tell a story that no other developers making shooters would. It is a ballsy move and it works at times. Some moments are pretty great, but they are short lived. Hopefully another dev examines this game and actually makes a competent shooter next time with this game's strengths in mind. It's worth a rent at least.

@Morrow said:

@Frag_Maniac:

I doubt this is true. There is an explanation of all 4 endings:

http://forums.2kgames.com/showthread.php?124504-Spec-Ops-The-Line-All-Endings

Well I'm sure those are in fact the only possible endings, but if there were any reason to doubt it, you'd have to look at the fact that that is merely something posted by a member vs anyone on the inside like 2K staff.

The reason I'm doubting there's a sane ending as described above is the story seems linearly set to make you feel the shock value of Walker's insanity at the end. Without forcing that on the player it would lose it's climax and general focus.

@Phatmac,

Curious as to what you disliked so much about the combat?

To anyone interested in discussing the story still, I know there's a thread but just wanted to mention to you guys there's a really good spoilercast on gamespot that sheds a lot of light on a lot of questions we've raised during this discussion. 
 
The endings make much more sense then even I realized after listening.  
Of course that's based on my take on the story. Other people's maybe different, but anyway, it's worth a listen. 
http://www.gamespot.com/features/gamespot-gameplay-special-edition-spoilercast-spec-ops-the-line-6386587/

My understanding of the ending is this:

1. Konrad died, but only a few weeks before your arrival. He had come in with the 33rd, from afghanistan, to evacuate the city. He failed, as we see from the half buried convoy in the beginning. After this, Konrad realized he couldn't evacuate the population of Dubai. He decides to set up a military ruled society so that he can ensure the survival of as many as possible until they are evacuated or it is safe to evacuate them himself. The 33rd assume control of supplies and such, but things start to fall apart. There is a mutiny within the 33rd and Konrad ends up executing some of his own men. Things escalate as civilians are made examples of. Konrad kills himself once he accepts his failure. The 33rd fractures into smaller groups, who you constantly face. They are still set up in their hierarchy with their specific tasks. Timing is important in my view here, it hasn't been more than a month since the 33rd really began breaking up.

2. After Walker burned 47 civilians to death with phosphorus he started losing his mind. PTSD? I don't know, not a psychologist. He can't take the guilt for what he's done so he begins blaming Konrad for it. He becomes delusional and blames Konrad for it all, even his own civie kills. He picks up the broken walkie-talkie and begins communicating with a Konrad that only exists in his own mind.

The nice thing about the game is that we have no idea what's real or unreal, so it's up to interpretation. This is my view on it.

I've just completed the game and rather than creating a new topic I'll just post this rant here:

The game flashed back to show you were very crazy from the start. If your original orders were to evacuate the storm wall and get out of the city (like it flashed back to) then why the hell did they send you there in the first place?

The game did a really bad job of defining who was fighting for who in the conflict in Dubai and for what reasons. Gould was in there trying to save the civilians (for reasons unknown), Riggs was trying to cover the whole thing up (he actually had the only one with a reasonable motive now I think about it), the 33 remained there for reasons unknown (and they couldn’t explain it at any point in the game because it would ruin the twist at the end) and Delta Force have absolutely no defined reason to be in that city, doing what they were doing.

So Walker was crazy the whole time, talking to a radio with no battery, seeing corpses and shooting them like it’s a test. I get all that, and I worked the Radio thing out long before the game revealed the twist. Konrad was acknowledging way too many of the players actions too fast and the other guys never said a word to him the whole game, it was obvious.

What I don’t get is that at no point did Lugo or Adams ever question what Walker was doing. Storming the city rather than evacuating (like Walker told them was the orders to god dammit!), shooting dead corpses, and talking to a dead radio for two thirds of the game. At some point the guys would question what the hell Walked is doing, they wouldn’t just sit there and go, “It’ll be fine.”

The ending pissed me off. If you let Konrad shoot you, it’s exactly the same as if you shoot yourself in the head, which is FUCKING DUMB BECAUSE KONRAD DOESN’T EXIST. I would understand that if you let Konrad shoot you it could be played off as you shooting yourself but don’t then give me the option to shoot myself god dammit. If Konrad shoots you, that should be symbolic of you succumbing to the madness.

I mean at no point in the game did anyone say, “Dude Konrad’s dead.” to Delta Force...why? The soldiers at the end were a figment of Walkers imagination, that’s fine. What about the battalion that was attacking Adams. They just thought fuck it and left the city after killing one dude? It’s made to look like Konrad killed himself but why? You could say guilt of trying to evacuate the city and have 1300 people die but there’s no way Walker could have known that because he was told that story by his own imagination...

The best ending is shooting Konrad and shooting the people who come to rescue you, as the game plays it off as a vicious circle where once all’s said and done, another member of the company will come and kill Walker but will also be cast into madness along the way. Shame that all the people and water are gone so that won’t be able to happen.

Note, that was an email I sent to my girlfriend this morning explaining why I hated it so much, so any weird wording is down to me addressing an individual rather than making a more coherent forum post.

TL;DR: The ending for Spec Ops: The Line is GARBAGE!

The game is pretty legit... I can't think of a story told in any other game that comes close to this... not in terms of the themes or story points... but the overall feel and the storytelling was integrated well with the overall game design,,, to be honest I can't think of a game that integrated story/design this well since MGS4... if anyone else knows please let me know...

I just finished it, I thought it was quite good, not nearly the crazy twist I was hoping for, kind of sussed it early on with the radio, a trick I have seen in other media. Still for a vider-game it was certainly more engaging then most 3rd person shooters.

@Scalvin11 said:

My understanding of the ending is this:

1. Konrad died, but only a few weeks before your arrival. He had come in with the 33rd, from afghanistan, to evacuate the city. He failed, as we see from the half buried convoy in the beginning. After this, Konrad realized he couldn't evacuate the population of Dubai. He decides to set up a military ruled society so that he can ensure the survival of as many as possible until they are evacuated or it is safe to evacuate them himself. The 33rd assume control of supplies and such, but things start to fall apart. There is a mutiny within the 33rd and Konrad ends up executing some of his own men. Things escalate as civilians are made examples of. Konrad kills himself once he accepts his failure. The 33rd fractures into smaller groups, who you constantly face. They are still set up in their hierarchy with their specific tasks. Timing is important in my view here, it hasn't been more than a month since the 33rd really began breaking up.

2. After Walker burned 47 civilians to death with phosphorus he started losing his mind. PTSD? I don't know, not a psychologist. He can't take the guilt for what he's done so he begins blaming Konrad for it. He becomes delusional and blames Konrad for it all, even his own civie kills. He picks up the broken walkie-talkie and begins communicating with a Konrad that only exists in his own mind.

The nice thing about the game is that we have no idea what's real or unreal, so it's up to interpretation. This is my view on it.

This is is pretty much my take also, as you say for all we know he was crazy from the very start.

@SamStrife said:

I've just completed the game and rather than creating a new topic I'll just post this rant here:

The game flashed back to show you were very crazy from the start. If your original orders were to evacuate the storm wall and get out of the city (like it flashed back to) then why the hell did they send you there in the first place?

The game did a really bad job of defining who was fighting for who in the conflict in Dubai and for what reasons. Gould was in there trying to save the civilians (for reasons unknown), Riggs was trying to cover the whole thing up (he actually had the only one with a reasonable motive now I think about it), the 33 remained there for reasons unknown (and they couldn’t explain it at any point in the game because it would ruin the twist at the end) and Delta Force have absolutely no defined reason to be in that city, doing what they were doing.

So Walker was crazy the whole time, talking to a radio with no battery, seeing corpses and shooting them like it’s a test. I get all that, and I worked the Radio thing out long before the game revealed the twist. Konrad was acknowledging way too many of the players actions too fast and the other guys never said a word to him the whole game, it was obvious.

What I don’t get is that at no point did Lugo or Adams ever question what Walker was doing. Storming the city rather than evacuating (like Walker told them was the orders to god dammit!), shooting dead corpses, and talking to a dead radio for two thirds of the game. At some point the guys would question what the hell Walked is doing, they wouldn’t just sit there and go, “It’ll be fine.”

The ending pissed me off. If you let Konrad shoot you, it’s exactly the same as if you shoot yourself in the head, which is FUCKING DUMB BECAUSE KONRAD DOESN’T EXIST. I would understand that if you let Konrad shoot you it could be played off as you shooting yourself but don’t then give me the option to shoot myself god dammit. If Konrad shoots you, that should be symbolic of you succumbing to the madness.

I mean at no point in the game did anyone say, “Dude Konrad’s dead.” to Delta Force...why? The soldiers at the end were a figment of Walkers imagination, that’s fine. What about the battalion that was attacking Adams. They just thought fuck it and left the city after killing one dude? It’s made to look like Konrad killed himself but why? You could say guilt of trying to evacuate the city and have 1300 people die but there’s no way Walker could have known that because he was told that story by his own imagination...

The best ending is shooting Konrad and shooting the people who come to rescue you, as the game plays it off as a vicious circle where once all’s said and done, another member of the company will come and kill Walker but will also be cast into madness along the way. Shame that all the people and water are gone so that won’t be able to happen.

Note, that was an email I sent to my girlfriend this morning explaining why I hated it so much, so any weird wording is down to me addressing an individual rather than making a more coherent forum post.

TL;DR: The ending for Spec Ops: The Line is GARBAGE!

I know this is reviving an old thread. But the ending is actually the most genius part of the game. "Welcome to Hell" indeed. You see, the game is a figment of Walker's imagination, not just in the hallucination sense, but in the sense that he died in the helo crash after escaping from the radio tower. The whole game is nothing but Walker reliving his own personal hell , stuck tracing the steps of the horrible deeds he did in dubai. That explains all of the "plot holes". Call it a cop out, but there are very specific hints in the game that tell you Walker died. Like seeing Konrad's face on some advertisements and billboards. So i dont think it was something the writer just tacked on at the end. In the Gamespot spoilercast he said that was his interpretation of the story as the writer, and he was surprised more people didnt pick up on it. So who knows if the events we play in the game are even *real* or exaggerated by Walker's deranged, guillt-fueled mind.

A lot of the stuff is explained in the story if you are willing to pay attention. 33rd remained because the storms were too bad to evacuate, initially Konrad wanted to help, but the situation quickly got out of hand when the worse storms rolled in. Then Konrad killed himself after losing complete control of the situation, becoming a brutal killer and doing show executions of civies and soldiers to keep people in line. After Konrad kills himself there is a bit of fuzzyness. I would assume the soldiers and radioman wanted to keep the idea of "Konrad" alive, so as to keep the civies following orders(who knows how many people *actually* knew that Konrad was dead). In my mind there is/was a coup after people found out that Konrad killed himself, that the 33rd fragmented and there were groups of soldiers, ones who liked being the bosses of city, and those who were honestly trying to help(white phosphorus scene "we were trying to help"). But i might be extrapolating way too much. Of course, then you throw that actual coup that is mentioned in the game, the CIA using the 'insurgents' as tools to cover up what the 33rd did do in Dubai.

To the part about Lugo and Adams not saying anything? Regardless of their situation, soldiers are trained to listen to their higher-ups, if your boss tells you to do something , you fucking do it godamnit. You are a soldier in a delta squad sent on a remote mission where you dont really have an operator to talk to, you listen to the orders of your commanding officer. They dont get really suspicious until after the WP events. The exchange between Lugo and Adams about "him turning us into a murderer" isnt about Konrad, its about Walker. Walker was turning them all into murderers, and they didnt realize it until it was too late. They were already damned into the heart of darkness with Walker. Walker is driven by his hero complex, under first the guise of saving Konrad, then under the guise of saving civilians, then out of sheer vengeance for the things he perceived as forced by Konrad. Lugo and Adams cannot protest, and maybe somewhere deep in their minds they only stuck with Walker because he was their chance for survival, maybe they thought they could convince him to just leave, or maybe like i thought about the 33rd they were secretly starting to enjoy the endless killing spree as much as Walker/the player.

But in the end, isnt the great thing about this game that we can even have this discussion? Let alone the meta-discussion about player agency and misrepresentation of morals/moral choices in games.

@Phished0ne: Well said. I don't remember many games that made me question my own morality, this one did. I remember the part where Logo gt lynched by the mob. The entire time you're trying to get to him I kept telling me myself that I'll save him no matter what. When the h whole scene of walker trying to revive him was playing I was telling myself that I', going to kill all of them. It never occurred to me that you can shoot in the air and if it did I really didn't want to. I just wanted to kill them all.

Need to replay this shit asap. I recently read a post reminding people that the main antagonist's name is Konrad, not Kurtz. Joseph Conrad was the author of Heart of Darkness, not the bad guy up the river. So Konrad is the voice of the game's writers, especially at the end. I guess other people picked up on it, but I didn't. However tired the writing may be compared to movies or books, it just doesn't happen that a video game manages to blow my mind months after I've played it. Fucking awesome.

@SolongWrex: The best part about the game, the game talking directly to you, the player.

"YOU did this"

"How many Americans have YOU killed today"

"Do YOU even remember why YOU came here?"

Then the kicker, Konrad(the writers/devs) berating the player for their perverse enjoyment of their own kind of Hero Complex. I could really talk about this game all day, its great.

It brings up so many points, especially opening the discussion about if us as players should feel bad for enjoying shooters. Not because of the "digital violence" but because of how shooters boil everything down to black and white. Games like call of duty could be dangerous, but not because of making our children more violent, but because it sanitizes thoughts. It keeps people from thinking about war as anything more than a black and white action film where we are good and they are bad. In real life, everything is grey and although everyone involved tries to do what is right, things go terribly wrong. (See: Battle Of Mogadishu, The July 12 2007 Baghdad airstrike, etc). These are all things that should be talked about in our space, but developers just want to pump out cheap "bubblegum" action flicks where you mow down faceless enemies.

Campster talked about this in an "errant signal" video, he breaks it down quite a bit and delves pretty deep into the meta-discussion.

There are a couple of interesting details I notice and have not semen anyone else point out. Once is the level desing, there is a lot of verticality in this game you are constantly going down, into darkness, into hell. Another really cool detail, is that on one level you are fighting in really big hall and there are some statues of angels hanging from the ceiling, they look like they are falling and one they actually fell and broke on the ground. A fallen angel is a reference to Lucifer, ruler of hell. I really liked those metaphorical touches.

@Phished0ne: And it's not like every game in which you kill something has to make you cry for the victims' families, but I do wonder if games should be moving on from this whole notion of killing everything to win. There are twenty-four Xbox 360 games on my shelf, and in only two three of them is killing or combating sapient beings not the main focus of gameplay. Maybe I just have a penchant for violent games, who knows. Spec Ops is a shooter, so you know going in that there's probably going to be shooting involved, but looking back, it's a little worrying how quickly and seamlessly the game transitions from "find survivors, report back" to "let's kill everything we see". It's instant, and you never look back. Walker keeps saying that it's the only way, there's no choice and so on, and the player keeps going, reflexively, against insurmountable odds. It's like Walker's giving you a live commentary of how you've been conditioned to act in video games.

Spec Ops the Line should at the very least be recognized IMO with how deeply well thought the plot is despite borrowing very heavily from Fight Club, Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness. The execution though is questionable since as a game it doesn't stand up well on its own but you can't deny the BALLS 2K had in bank rolling this game and allowing the writers of this game to have a run with this story and how much it even dictated the inherit "fun" value, which as a result is almost non-existent. By itself it is hard to recommend since it isn't a game with an "interesting" story as much as it is a story/social commentary told in video game form. The end result though would mean that you wouldn't be able to enjoy the game because really the situations get increasingly worse once you cross that aforementioned "line" in the game. in the end you don't feel empowered, you don't feel any sense of "victory", and I kinda like how the game just deliberately just says that you shouldn't be enjoying it at all and though I'm not particularly looking for that in any form of media it can be quite an experience.

@Begilerath said:

There are a couple of interesting details I notice and have not semen anyone else point out. Once is the level desing, there is a lot of verticality in this game you are constantly going down, into darkness, into hell. Another really cool detail, is that on one level you are fighting in really big hall and there are some statues of angels hanging from the ceiling, they look like they are falling and one they actually fell and broke on the ground. A fallen angel is a reference to Lucifer, ruler of hell. I really liked those metaphorical touches.

Yes, the "Going down" theme was mentioned in the Extra Credits videos on Penny Arcade that were about Spec Ops, something that I didnt notice until it was brought to my attention. Yeah...you go down a lot in that game. Seemingly unrealistically, you are magically transported to the top of a building just to descend again.

@GaspoweR said:

Spec Ops the Line should at the very least be recognized IMO with how deeply well thought the plot is despite borrowing very heavily from Fight Club, Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness. The execution though is questionable since as a game it doesn't stand up well on its own but you can't deny the BALLS 2K had in bank rolling this game and allowing the writers of this game to have a run with this story and how much it even dictated the inherit "fun" value, which as a result is almost non-existent. By itself it is hard to recommend since it isn't a game with an "interesting" story as much as it is a story/social commentary told in video game form. The end result though would mean that you wouldn't be able to enjoy the game because really the situations get increasingly worse once you cross that aforementioned "line" in the game. in the end you don't feel empowered, you don't feel any sense of "victory", and I kinda like how the game just deliberately just says that you shouldn't be enjoying it at all and though I'm not particularly looking for that in any form of media it can be quite an experience.

Well its like movies isnt it? You dont watch Schindler's List because its fun. Spec Ops was a hugeeee step in the right direction, both for game development and for game discussion(especially in the "are games art?" form). I would love for someone to play this game in front of Roger Ebert, although he would probably just dismiss it as a "heart of darkness ripoff" and completely miss the point. Its a shame i think *a lot* of people completely missed the point on this game, or didn't WANT to see the point. I wonder how many people bought this game thinking it was just another shooter and got way more than they bargained for. Yes, 2K had balls the size of the bowling variety to release this game. Kudos to them, because from what interviews with the development leads and writers have done, they were completely on board. Theres an article on The Verge where they were talking about focus testing the game(i bet that was fun) among other things, i'll post an excerpt here:

Seeing players put down their controllers, get up and walk away from the game raised alarms with 2K producers. They were signed on to creating a powerful experience, but how powerful is too powerful? Someone asked "Are we comfortable with this?"

"This is where the characters have to look at the consequences of their actions and say: 'Should we have gone further? Should we have left? Should we leave now? Is it right to keep going?'" Williams answered. "And if the player is thinking about seriously putting down the controller at this point, then that's exactly where we want them to be emotionally.

"The producer on the game at the time turned to the head of product development and said: 'That's good art. The question is: Do you want to make a game that is art in that way?' And she posed that question … and 2K was like: 'We get that. Yeah, let's do it.'"

What does that say about the people at 2K, great things. Although those were the same people who ordered multiplayer to be tacked on(made by a different developer), that completely muddied up the message of the game. It even soured some reviewers, which is sad. In fact, in that same article Cory Davis referred to the multiplayer as "a cancer on the game" and that he felt bad for the devs who were made to do that job.

@Phished0ne said:

To the part about Lugo and Adams not saying anything? Regardless of their situation, soldiers are trained to listen to their higher-ups, if your boss tells you to do something , you fucking do it godamnit. You are a soldier in a delta squad sent on a remote mission where you dont really have an operator to talk to, you listen to the orders of your commanding officer. They dont get really suspicious until after the WP events. The exchange between Lugo and Adams about "him turning us into a murderer" isnt about Konrad, its about Walker. Walker was turning them all into murderers, and they didnt realize it until it was too late. They were already damned into the heart of darkness with Walker. Walker is driven by his hero complex, under first the guise of saving Konrad, then under the guise of saving civilians, then out of sheer vengeance for the things he perceived as forced by Konrad. Lugo and Adams cannot protest, and maybe somewhere deep in their minds they only stuck with Walker because he was their chance for survival, maybe they thought they could convince him to just leave, or maybe like i thought about the 33rd they were secretly starting to enjoy the endless killing spree as much as Walker/the player.

OK you'll have to forgive me for not addressing your whole post at this moment but I'm short for time so I'll just address the Lugo and Adams part.

OK so let's say they're following orders because he's their higher up and that maybe they're going to try and convince him to leave...at what point do they realise that following this guy is the wrong thing to do?

"Hey Adams, Walker is talking to a very clearly broken radio and he's having pretty deep and aggressive conversations with himself." Isn't that the point where you'd think common sense would kick in for them and they would at least say something...anything? No?

"Hey Lugo, why is Walker having a mental breakdown over these hanging corpses and why has he just shot one in the head and now back to arguing with that radio?" At some point they would say something. At some point superiority counts for nothing when it becomes clear that the person in charge is an absolute, bouncing off the walls, nutcase.

If they were trying to help him, then would have been the point. He was already clearly insane and therefore not fit to do his job. I'm sure there's something in the army manual that addresses that point.

Honestly as well, I would say this is not a great game to have a discussion about because (in my honest opinion) it doesn't stem from the game being up and open to interpretation, it stems from the game having a straight up bad story and people are defending it because it tried something new. I give it an A for effort but an F for execution. The best games that ever illicited these types of conversations where the Metal Gear Solid ones because they were so well done and any number of things could have been right. This was an average game that tried to do something unique with the story (that is still sorely lacking in video games) and people have jumped onto it because we all crave this type of conversation about them.

@SamStrife: Yeah, that wasnt the strongest part of my point. But good job finding the weak spots to pick at ;)

In the end, its YOUR choices that make Walker look crazy in the scene with the two hanging corpses. YOU shoot someone, that is one of the rare places in the game where it gives you choices you dont know about. You can shoot the soldiers, you can walk away(making the 33rd open fire on you). I believe you can even shoot the rope hanging one of them. All of those actions make Walker look considerably less crazy. But once again, you take the game at face value and shoot one of them(because its what the game is ordering you to do). In turn making Walker look crazy to his squadmates. I dont think it would be crazy to stand and stare at the two hanging corpses. Its a terrible shocking sight. Keep in mind, we never *really* see what goes on in the (real world) when Walker is hallucinating, who knows if he is even actually talking?

All we know is that it reveals the hanging bodies as just corpses, and i believe that it is Lugo that says "He just stopped moving". Sure It might be a little weird if your CO just stood there and stared at two hanging corpses, and became unresponsive. But i dont know that it would set off the "holy shit this guy is batshit crazy" alarms at that point. Hell, who knows if the radio even *really* exists? Who knows If Walker even "talks" to Konrad. After all Konrad is in his imagination, so we dont know if any dialog between Walker and Konrad even actually happens. Its like Fight Club(correct me if i am wrong, but i havent seen the movie in a while) but you see Brad Pitt and Ed Norton talk to each other A LOT in that movie. But we never see it from an outsiders perspective, we see ed norton throwing himself around the boss' office and punching himself in the face. But we never really see a deliberate back and forth between Ed and Brad from an outsiders perspective. It never shows ed norton 'talking to himself'. I dont know why you assume that the dialog between Konrad and Walker actually even happens to outsiders.

Lets work on these points next:

1) Hell/Pergatory : I would posit that this whole game is an unreliable narrator(kind of a cop-out, i know but its worth discussing). You cannot trust what the game is telling you. Much like Lugo and Adams(arguably) shouldn't have trusted Walker after a certain point, i dont think you can *really* trust the narrative. Considering the writer has gone on record as saying, that the lead character is dead. Due to the framing of the story, your main character dies at the VERY BEGINNING OF THE GAME. But what does that tell you about the game? It frontloads the murder of the player character. Now, its not blatantly outright saying it but the hints are there, and the writer hasn't been shy about expressing his interpretation of the story.

2) Lugo and Adams cannot protest, and maybe somewhere deep in their minds they only stuck with Walker because he was their chance for survival, maybe they thought they could convince him to just leave, or maybe like i thought about the 33rd they were secretly starting to enjoy the endless killing spree as much as Walker/the player. : I think that is the most important point you chose to gloss over. Survival, Lugo and Adams just want to survive, they didnt want to be on this mission, they didnt want to go to Dubai. But that was their orders, so it was their job. Even during the opening of the game(after the opening helo sequence) when walking into Dubai, Lugo and Adams lament their mission. So its safe to say their end goal was survival. They stuck with Walker because surely without him they would be doomed to die in the sands. Especially by the point where they are starting to take fire. That man was their commander, regardless of whether or not they thought he was cracking, what would they do? shoot their CO in the head fake some elaborate story about how he was killed by insurgents? Now, this part of the argument can be chalked up to not knowing standards and practices for your CO going crazy on a mission. Probably call off the mission and go home, but..would they really make it home? Would they get killed anyway? Would they even make it past the storm wall?

3) Story?: What is the story here? Does it *actually* matter in the grand scheme of things? Spec Ops isnt a game about its story, its a game about games. Its a game about ripping apart the shooter genre. Its a game about the dangers you face when you have a whole media form that could do a pretty effective job at boiling down intense geopolitical events with a jingoistic hoo-rahh attitude. Because we love shootin gaemz and we dont really care what goes on in them because we just wanna blast people. We just want to be assured that (we) are the good guys, and (they) are the bad guys. We want to be a hero, but heros(in the video game sense) rarely exist in actual war. Soldiers are taught to do the EXACT opposite of what we see in games because "being a hero" will more likely fuck up more than it will fix. Its about taking unrealistic scenarios and framing them in realistic environments, based on realistic(or even semi-true) events, and the dissonance that creates. It muddies the waters of geopolitical understanding when you have a whole form of media based on shooting stereotypes of other types of people. Once again, not even touching on the games statements about player agency(or lack thereof), and the dissonance of surrounding "moral choices" in a game with mindless (arguably immoral) actions.

I really suggest you watch the Errant Signal(if you haven't) video I posted earlier, it sums up my feelings on the game to a T.

@SamStrife: At least to me the broken radio thing was not clear until the game showed me that it was actually broken, so to me is believable that your squadmates dont notice. The other odd behavior you notice could be something that your squatmates think is just you blowing some steam because you are in an extremely tense situation and you just need to shoot at something, although this is less believable.

Finally, who says your squad did not try to stop you? a couple of times I had enemies transform into Lugo or Adams a once you killed them they transform back to enemies. Maybe in reality they try to stop Walker and he killed them.

@SamStrife said:

Honestly as well, I would say this is not a great game to have a discussion about because (in my honest opinion) it doesn't stem from the game being up and open to interpretation, it stems from the game having a straight up bad story and people are defending it because it tried something new. I give it an A for effort but an F for execution. The best games that ever illicited these types of conversations where the Metal Gear Solid ones because they were so well done and any number of things could have been right. This was an average game that tried to do something unique with the story (that is still sorely lacking in video games) and people have jumped onto it because we all crave this type of conversation about them.

I have to agree with you (though I think the stories in MGS are just as muddled). Personally I thought the gameplay in Spec Ops was terrible, rather than just 'average' as everybody says, but that was still not the biggest problem with it. I've forgiven games in the past for playing badly when they have a great story. Spec Ops was not, for me, a game with a great, good or even average story. I'd describe it as a brave, interesting premise, in a fantastic setting, executed very poorly and with far too much regard for its own uniqueness. I think the credit the game gets for that interesting premise - and now I recall how, in the Bombcast, @Jeff was keen to amend @patrickklepek 's description of it as a 'great' story, to that of an 'interesting' one - stretches a bit too far, probably because there is a lack of truly brave, interesting ideas within the shooter genre. For me, the story components and their emotional fulcrum were slapped together in such a haphazard fashion that by the end I just felt insulted.

I didn't believe that Walker's only choice was the white phosphorous strike, due to the clumsy railroading of that choice. Mostly as a result of this, I didn't register much emotional impact from that choice, and I didn't believe in the impact it supposedly had upon Walker, especially considering the scale of collateral damage in real world conflict (not to mention the cheap value placed on life in the game, due to the ridiculous overall death toll). I didn't believe that the gradual demonisation of Walker by his comrades, the 33rd, and even the self-satisfied loading screens ('this is all your fault'), was justified. I didn't believe in the transformation of the 33rd, from a bunch of power-drunk war criminals who leave Auschwitz-tier mass graves everywhere, to a bunch of guys who are just trying to do their best in a bad situation and defend themselves from Walker. I didn't believe in the CIA guy and the water nonsense, full stop. I didn't believe the game when it told me that Lugo and Adams had been following around an unquestionably insane guy and taking his orders. I didn't believe that the choice at the end made sense or had any impact, since I didn't empathise with Walker's emotional ruin. In short, I wasn't buying the guilt and moral doubt that the game was trying to sell me, because I thought the sales pitch was ridiculous. I certainly didn't believe the devs afterwards, when they argued that the story had limitations because it was a game about story limitations in gaming.

For me the writing in Spec Ops is no better, and actually a lot less coherent, than that of a dark popcorn action-thriller like Max Payne 3, it's just the latter type of game is not really laying claim to any fresh narrative ideas. The flaws and shallowness of its story are obvious, low-hanging fruit. With Spec Ops, the freshness of their basic premise has led to it being forgiven for many of its story flaws. Way, way too many IMO.

@Phished0ne said:

Thanks for posting this! Even after a few months, I still get really into it whenever Spec Ops: The Line is discussed.

@Ravenlight said:

@Phished0ne said:

Thanks for posting this! Even after a few months, I still get really into it whenever Spec Ops: The Line is discussed.

I've seen this argument, used by Errant Signal, pop up time and time again elsewhere, that "game X (usually Max Payne 3 or GTA4) has lots of ludonarrative dissonance and what makes Spec Ops cool is that it avoids it". I find that to be complete nonsense. If 'ludonarrative dissonance' is a bugbear for you, you should stay the hell away from Spec Ops because it is packed to the gills with it. It's a game in which you are asked questions about armed conflict and morality, yet the gameplay undermines those questions at every step, because the enemies you slaughter in their hundreds are some of the most unconvincing, vidyagamey enemies I've seen in years. They enter from obvious spawn points, absurd quantities in endless waves, with no regard for believable scale, and they come in varieties like 'plodding tank-like HW-guy' and 'super agile berserker knife-wielding guy', without any believable narrative justification. Compare to Max Payne 3, the poster boy for ludonarrative dissonance: enemies arrive in believable quantities, in believable scenarios, and are treated in a believable way by Max (Max laments being in conflict with them, sometimes he spares them even in gameplay, sometimes they have no interest in him). Whatever Spec Ops does better than other shooters - and it does do one or two things well (mostly art direction) - it sure as hell isn't avoiding ludonarrative dissonance.

@Laivasse: Well here is what it boils down to. Do you believe Anti-war movies are *actually* anti-war movies? The argument you are making is that just because something uses the mechanics of shooters, it cant lambast shooters. Just because a movie(like Apocalypse Now) has some intensely war-glorifying scenes, does that take away from its overall message? Or do those things NEED to be utilized as the sugar-coating on the bitter pill that is the condemnation of shooter mechanics. Obviously i fall more with the latter over the former, you need to use those mechanics to show the player how ridiculous the whole thing is. The fact that Spec Ops contains Ludonarrative Dissonance is what makes it work. Instead of completely ignoring it(ala Max Payne 3[a game i personally loved, but maybe i can compartmentalize better than others]) Spec ops leans into it, and then goes "know why this all felt wrong? because it IS all wrong". He never argued that Spec Ops was devoid of Ludonarrative Dissonance, he simply stated that the game uses that fact to the advantage of its overall message. You missed a lot of the more important points he made in that video, about games boiling down political strife to black and white. It muddies understanding of political issues. It helps to harbor non-understanding and outright fear of the unknown, instead of stressing people to find out more about the issues. It's the difference between Platoon and The Expendables.