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[PATV] Wednesday, August 29, 2012 - Extra Credits Season 5, Ep. 2: Spec Ops: The Line (Part 2)
I always got the impression that the squadmates were not real they represented the fracturing part of Walker's mind as they started off getting on with each other yet as Walker broke down even more they started fighting in the way of his mind fighting between being sane and insane.
I'm a lit student who's focus and ultimate goal of study is to explore the narrative possibilities, forms, and mechanics of games and I've gotta say; you've just gotten 2K a sale. I plan to eventually write a dissertation on games as literature and this sounds like a pretty good game to include for analyzation, especially considering how meta it gets. It's wholly unusual to see a game's theme move outside of itself and try to comment on ideas outside of its own narrative in a meaningful way and Spec Ops seems to do just that to impressive effect, even if the multiplayer mode is a "Cancerous growth." Hopefully this game will turn into some kind of sleeper hit and we can get more deep thinkers like it; I know I wouldn't mind having some games on my required reading.
That's interesting because I had a similar thought regarding the player as not controlling Walker himself, but rather his last vestige of sanity as the character dragged you down to his metaphorical hell. Like James, when I played through I shot the ropes myself because I saw myself (the player) as his last glimmer of redemption. I'm an American airman, you see, so I naturally felt pretty bad about gunning down brothers-in-arms. Like the character was doing these atrocities against my will even as I pulled the trigger. I beat the game in the morning and couldn't shake the guilt all day afterward. Bravo, Yager.
fuck, this is a magnificent review. is "review" even the right word? this is a magnificent demonstration. this is a thing I want to be a part of. nobody else I'd heard talking about the game had mentioned that the "choice" moments had non-binary responses, and that's what turned this from an "oh, okay, intelligent writers" game to a "really should probably do that shit" product.
A very good episode. You know what the sad thing is though? I've looked around. Reviews, Let's plays, opinions... The majority does not seem to get what the game is trying to tell them.
Most people tried to have fun shooting things and were not even phazed by the phosphorus-scene. Hell, Gametrailers had lines like this in their review:
"You'll feel like there's something to think about, but it's not gonna bother you, as you go about your business."
or
"The game realises, that the desire to see just how screwed up things can get is a better motivation than fullfilling an actual military objective."
How blind can you get? They even knew that the game was based on Heart of Darkness, but they still mistook the violence as sensationalism, dismissed the choices as "pop quiz moments" without realising that you could act differently than the game demands and generally judged the game as an ordinary 3rd person shooter. Okay, I can't really blame them for looking at it as a regular military shooter. How often is it that a game like this comes along. To notice NOTHING AT ALL though? Seriously? Is that were playing games like Call of Duty and its airport scenes gets us? That things like these can pass as normal for some people? *sigh* I don't want to come across as the upholder of all morals, or that I grasped everything the game is trying to tell us the fist time I played it, but it still depresses me how this game was received...
Some Let's players at least felt remorse after the phospherus thing, but even these people thought it was just there because modern shooter games are sold on their violence. They found it to be gross at best and amusing at worst, but nearly none of them had a realisation at the end.
The only review that actually noticed what the games qualities are, was the one made by Yahtzee for Zero Punctuation. How Ironic is that? The series that usually only does mock-reviews is the only one (I saw) that got it right.
I hate to say it but the majority of players seems to be emotially dead, which really makes me wonder now if Fox News and all the people saying Videogame violence messes with us aren't right? At least to the degree that these overly violent games make us lose all sense for the horrors of violence and what inflicting it on others really means.Then again that's not just videogames but modern media in general. Doesn't make it any better though…
On the one hand, I totally agree; games have developed and grown in an environment where players aren't normally challenged to think deeply in the same way that, say, a novel might necessitate, largely due to functional reasons. It's hard to focus on gameplay when you're bogged down by big ideas, personal hesitations, and self-searching. As the EC guys said, it's not fun. Because one of the prime directives of gamers is "play" games have developed in a direction which hasn't explored a lot of that deeper narrative meaning and we, as gamers, have gotten used to not having to think about that. We're used to things being more or less as they appear to be or, at the very most, thinly veiled behind a plot twist to be revealed at a later stage. A game that challenges the player to think not only reflexively and strategically but critically about the narrative is, as far as I am aware, almost unprecedented and certainly very rare. What Spec Ops has done is ballsy; it attempted to do something that games aren't really used to doing in a genre known the least for doing it and perceptions of it suffer because of it. In a sense, I would definitely say that gamers are generally ill-prepared to make a narrative trek like this. Spec Ops appears to be the kind of game I would play with a pen and paper on the table to annotate as I play, something I don't think a lot of gamers would ever dream of doing.
But emotionally dead? That might be a bit of a stretch. While it's true that gamers of all walks were ill-prepared to take on the kind of challenge it is to truly dig into a story like Spec Ops, I don't think it's all doom and gloom quite yet. Spec ops was a game that visually emulated the Modern Warfare type shooter and, once lumped with that lot, did very little to defy that expectation up to the point where things start to turn and it did so on purpose. In a sense, spec ops is a trap which lures in COD players and then sits them down and asks them just what they thought they were doing. I'll admit, before EC started to buzz about it, even *I* was fooled. Full disclosure, I haven't been able to play the game yet, but from what I'm hearing, this sounds like relatively high mid-level stuff, the kind of stuff that people might not get even if it were in book form. I almost want to say that the lukewarm "Crappy COD clone" reaction is what they were shooting for, to force that demon of Glorification of Warfare out into the open so we could poke at it.
Do I think they could have better prepared the gamer for the depths they'd be facing? Probably. Do I think that the broad reaction indicates that we have a lot of growing to do as a narrative medium? Definitely, both on the creator and consumer sides. But I wouldn't yet say that it's an indication that we're damaged. Not yet and this game and the murmuring praise of it is a great indication that we may not.
I've mentioned these before, but you should try Russian developer Ice Pick Lodge's stuff, Pathologic and The Void. While the former is hampered by a clunky translation, it borrows from Brecht's concept of Epic Theatre to speak to the *player* rather than the *character* (which, incidentally, confuses the hell out of the character) and comment on decision making in games.
The latter is a game that goes as far as to *lie* to you about how it's played because the person advising you in the tutorial-esque section of the game either doesn't realise the consequences of what she's telling you to do, or has an ulterior motive (possibly both).
Both go the way of creating an experience that is compelling rather than fun, leaving you emotionally drained
@Diggers1917 Yes! Ice Pick Lodge are amazing, it's kind of agonising that their games are so flawed, but at the same time it adds to the effect in a weird sort of way. You know they're currently running a Kickstarter, right? http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1535515364/knock-knock It says something about the studio (OK, and about me) that I'm willing to give them $47 for an unspecified pledge reward...
@runBAMrunfaster in particular if you're studying game narrative, you should definitely check out Pathologic, and if anyone can't make it all the way through the game (understandable, it's so bleak and so broken), there's a great 3-part analysis on RPS here, here and here
I pretty much agree with you there and as I said I don't blame people for not picking up on the deeper meaning the first time they play spec ops. What is shocking to me though is how some gamers and reviwers manage to completely dismiss everything that is going on in Spec Ops. It seems like you haven't played the game yet so I won''t spoil what i am talking about specifically, but if you still believe everything that happened in this game was for your enjoyment after finishing it, then something is wrong with you. It's not just that they dismiss it as a CoD clone, but that they think commiting horrible crimes against humanity is the hook of the game they're supposed to enjoy. Making claims like Gametrailers did in their review is downright ignorant at best, and apathetic at worst.
Well, as Konrad said... it takes a strong man to deny the truth...
I really like the knock down and execution mechanic. Because ammo was so scarce, the ammo bonus was pretty valuable but it took a reasonably good feel for Spec Ops to be able to get in close in the middle of a firefight. For me this resulted in an awesome narrative reinforcement because as I got more experienced at Spec Ops, the number of executions went up. This made Walker seem more brutal and amoral as the game progressed, reflecting his fracturing mind and descent from soldier to killer. All of which was not only reflected through game play mechanics but the actual choices that I was making naturally as a player from moment to moment without any thought to "what would my character do now?"
I "love" game breaking choices, like in Metroid Zero Mission when you can use the wall jump to get to areas early on before you have the required ability to reach them, even beat the game when you're supposedly under powered. Adding game breaking choices to life like games, such as Spec-Ops is something I definitely want to see more of. Being able to frighten the crowd off instead of unloading bullets into them because a "video-game-console-CPU-with-predetermined-data-tells-me-to" breaks the 4th wall. I am denying the machine, "a manifestation" of the status quo, (it seems like something the Kinect should be capable of doing out of the box). What is nice is that it gives us "real" free-will in a game, but that free will is preprogrammed... so then again....
This was one spectacular game. But there was one issue that many people complained about which was how the phosphorous scene was set up in such a way as to give you absolutely no choice BUT to kill the innocent. This, some people have described as cheating, stumped me too until I heard Walker's reaction to his actions. He absolutely did not accept that it was his fault which led to the massacre. Instead he blames a third party for whatever happened. What an amazing example of gamers refusing culpability for their actions. The fact is that if you don't use the device, you don't kill them. But having "no choice" but to use the device, you feel the developers are responsible. And when a generic villain is brought up, you immediately commence further carnage to get "justice". What a game. I hope many more such games are made.
+5
DethStrobeMaster of NoneDenverRegistered Usernew member
That's what I love about Spec Ops. It really makes you question the player character.
The same reason that you’d use to describe yourself as Gorden Freeman killing Combine soldiers or yourself as Master Chief killing the Covenant. Freeman and Master Chief don’t get a choice to not kill. And neither does Walker.
Spec Ops, breaks that bond we have with our characters, thus making us question the concept of the player character. Are we really Walker? Is his own choices our choices? If we are Walker; are we monsters, are we the last bit of humanity in Walker, or are we merely viewers watching a man breaking?
When Walker tells Lugo, “No, there is no choice.” He’s not talking to Lugo, he’s talking to you. Choice is an illusion in video games. Rather then make believe there is a right and wrong binary answer to every situation, Spec Ops just straight up spits in your eye and tells you there was never a choice to be made in the first place. The choice was always just in your head.
@chopper161 - I think it goes deeper than that. Lugo and Adams are Walker's two conflicting desires. Lugo represents his need to complete the mission and be a good soldier. Adams represents Walker's need to help people.
Also, once again, SPOILER check, just in case you glanced down reflexively.
Did you notice the irony in the way they died? Lugo prioritized the mission over saving lives and got lynched by the civilians you failed to save. Adams prioritized saving lives over the mission and died so that Walker could finish the job.
The guy who does the voice acting for Konrad, who tells you that you are getting a little too attached to the video game is a real actor.
I fact he's Bruce Boxleitner.
The guy who played Tron.
How's that for some fucking symmetry? The guy who was in the classic movie about "being absorbed into a game" is now the voice in a game about the same damn thing.
Yaeger, my hat is off to you.
I also feel I should point out that Israel used white phosphorous against civilians in Gaza (in fact I believe the image you used of WP in the first video was actually from Gaza) but I don't want this to turn into a "flame war".
(lol?)
Anyway, my experience of 'Spec OPs' was the same as yours. The game is brilliant, and a genuine attempt at elevating video games into something meaningful.
But I wanted to mention that games don't have to be an "either/or" thing. You can have games that are deep and meaningful as well as entertaining. It's just a question of working additional meaning into a game, that players can choose to engage with or not.
In Education we call these "extension tasks". They are things we ask the bright students to do while we teachers assist the weaker students.
The point is that good writing should enable game designers to make games that are both engaging and meaningful.
'Bioshock' is no less playable because it's a critique of 'Atlas Shrugged'.
Of course this is not a criticism of 'Spec OPs'; the way they used the game play to reinforce the narrative point is incredibly clever, and effective.
I just think that if designers try they really can make games that can do both.
@ Vyse
I'll agree with you that those are really unfortunate ways to look at the game, but without offering the same excuses about what gamers are supposed to and/or do expect out of their "entertainment", the answer is not to simply give up and create no more art. I've sent an email to the reviewers from IGN, Gamespot, and Gametrailers asking them to re-examine the title without taking "multi-player functionality" into consideration or under the bias the game is supposed to be "fun". I encourage you all to do the same, especially if you were as affected by the experience as I was. After completing the campaign, I went to close the game and stopped dead as it asked me, "Are you sure you want to quit?" I sat for a full ten minutes staring at the innocuous little message that meant nothing to me before, but shouted at me now that I'd met Col. Konrad.
The medium occasionally creates truly compelling experiences, but there is usually an element of enjoyment that's supposed to be there. This is not that, this is an expression, a critique, an interactive drama, whatever. But it's not a game, not in the sense it's usually applied. It's art and we should be touting this experience as an impressive example of such.
First, you can't not deploy WP. If you try, you get shredded by endlessly respawning hostiles.
Second, you didn't mention exactly how much of the material is taken from "Apocalypse Now"/ "Heart of Darkness" which was written by, surprise, Joseph Conrad.
Mention that and Then your analysis tends to look like a bit of overkill.
As people pointed out, this game got really close to getting it perfect and then stumbled and failed catastrophically with the white phosphorus not actually being something you could avoid using.
The game should have had an insanely hard (like only 5% of gamer could clear it) way of beating that level (oh and have equally as hard on all difficulty level) where you don't use the WP, then it could have just a short scene where everyone congratulate you and then the game would end and a text from the dev would pop up saying something like "hey that was amazing, but there's still more content if you fail, so we'll load you back before and just use the WP to see it or just stop playing as that was you're story".
First every time the game try to make people who failed that sequence feel guilty, it would actually work. Because they really did fail, there failure is there fault. They weren't forced down a single path, but they had to resign themselves.
Second, you actually have something challenging for hardcore to look up too. I always want harder game, not so much for gameplay reason, but for story purpose. When a game congratulate me for doing something that "nobody else could have done" it always feel so empty because literally anybody could have done it, both in the sense that any player can clear the level but also that it was so easy that any NPC in the game could have done what I did. And then when a game tries to make me feel guilty because of my action, if I was forced down the path because of so called "impossible odds" that I know full well I could have done, it feel equally empty since I wasn't given a choice.
@meiam The thing is, I think you're coming at the game from the wrong angle. It's not about presenting you a canvas on which to write your choices, allowing you to navigate your way through moral challenges. That's not the kind of game it is; it's not Mass Effect.
Look at a game like Arkham Asylum. That game is tailored from the ground-up to make you look and think and feel like Batman. You don't have the option to up and murder people because it would go against that thesis -- it's not something Batman would do.
Similarly, Spec Ops is tailored to make you look and think and feel like Walker. Walker is not a proxy for you, the player. He is a character in his own right, and the game's goal is to bring you into his role.
You don't get the option to NOT dump White Phosphorus on those people because that option does not come to Walker. The game is not about you, the player, navigating morally through a war -- it's about Walker descending into madness, with you (as him) along for the ride.
You don't get the chance to NOT do evil as Walker for the same reason that you don't have the ability kill a bunch of people as Batman: it's not what the game is about.
Other games set you in the role of a hero. Spec Ops sets you in the role of a villain.
And if Batman gets to make you feel like a hero for performing heroics, which, let's face it, you never had the choice NOT to do -- why shouldn't Spec Ops have the ability to make you feel guilty for evil acts you didn't have the choice to avoid?
To put it more succinctly:
Suppose you made a game where the player takes on the historical role of Jack The Ripper. Should the player have the ability NOT to murder all those prostitutes? Are the developers obligated to put a "make all the right choices and don't do anything bad" path in a game which is about a mass murder?
We know things went terribly for Walker in Kabul. What if that "terribly" that he won't talk about is the use of White Phosphorous? Then the inability to avoid deploying it becomes part of his inability to come to grips with his trauma.
P.P.S. I played through this game with a friend who used to bake bread for a local Afghani restaurant called, you guessed it, Kabul. When they talked about Kurtz/Walker's dark past, I paused the game, slowly turned to said friend, and screamed WHAT DID YOU DO.
I don't get why people feel cheated by having to drop the WP. Just before that scene, Ludo says "we always have a choice" and Walker answers, "No. We don't." Your inner Ludo, the guy who just wants to have fun being a badass soldier just got slapped down. Brilliance!
The scenes in which Walker must make a decision, he makes those decisions down the barrel of his gun, looking his friend/enemy in the eye. When fate grabs the reigns he's looking at dots on a screen, playing a video game in which the camera moves down a narrow path with nothing but things to shoot.
Other amazing details: Executions. In the first few levels they are perfunctory shots. In later levels Walker tortures his enemies. Shooting them in the leg first or smashing their teeth out on the barrel of the gun and cursing them out as he does so. Nastiness.
Headshots. The first sniper section has you making headshots on a half dozen guys. Each kicks up a little blood spray and they go down. In the second half of the game, headshots with the same Scout rifle make heads explode and a torrent of blood spews from the gory neck stump.
These guys didn't miss a beat in depicting the narrative through gameplay.
One aspect I like is that lampshades just how ridiculous, and rather thoughtless the plots of most shooters really are. You don't think about it because in the moment you're too busy having an exciting gun battle, but when you actually stop and look, you realise that nothing the enemies do actually make any sense.
Like, why are they even shooting at you at all? They must obviously recognise you're Americans come to help them, so why is everyone you meet out to kill you? Why is no one asking for a ceasefire so someone can explain what's really going on? Why is no one asking to get out of the city? Why are they guarding places which are deserted and have nothing to offer? Why would they possibly need to guard the Radioman who seems to do nothing except play some music for fun? For what possible reason does Konrad want to stay here? What can he possibly get out of ruling a deserted city which is now nothing more than buildings full of sand? Even if he wants to stay, why isn't he letting his soldiers, the guys he's meant to look after, make an effort to leave if they want? And if they have working helicopters, why the hell aren't they using them to get out of there and call for assistance?
But these questions are never asked. Instead Walker keeps insisting that all they have to do is take out Konrad, the big bad guy, and everything will magically solved. Because hey, it's a game, you're not meant to think about the social and political ramifications of what you're doing and what will happen afterward, you're meant to be the awesome hero! And that's all that matters!
BTW, I just discovered that the voice of Adams is Kid from Kid 'n' Play. I can no longer watch this game without imagining Adams sporting that ridiculous flattop hairdo.
The white phosphorous scene in this game kicked me in the balls. I played it like any other armchair genocide we’ve seen since CoD4. I literally felt pain after playing that part of the game. Everything about that scene is excellently made, from the character's tone of voice to that last searing image that nobody who plays this game will forget.
I totally agree, it is entirely possible to make a game that is both entertaining and meaningful. Just look at Shadow of the Collossus; on the one hand, you're fighting giant monsters, having adventures, and saving the girl to one of the best soundtracks I've heard in a game. On the other hand, you're murdering sixteen relatively benign, if not benevolent, beasts to redeem one life to dire consequences. I don't think it's an either/or thing either, but for now, I think it is largely necessary as more developers figure out *how* to add more interpretive meaning to their narratives, they can also congress and work out ways to make those same games more fun to play.
I do think that, depending on the narratives, some games like Spec Ops just shouldn't be 'fun' in the traditional sense; that they're fulfilling, that they build the player up, etc. But I definitely think we can have a good time AND think deeply simultaneously.
At the moment, games remind me of film, right as film was figuring out all the tricks they use today to be awesome.
People who get in arms about the white phosophoros scene ignore one important choice you could make:
Put down the controller and turn off the game.
Konrad lampshades this at the end when you flash back to some of the first words Walker says: their mission is to get in, find survivors, and leave. Walker has no orders to attack the gate. He has no orders to find out the truth or bring Konrad to justice. There is no reason for Walker to do anything more than find the first survivors, realize that Dubai is in deep trouble, head back out through the storm wall, and call in reinforcements.
But that's not how a video game works. In a video game, the hero presses on and gets to the bottom of things and solves the big mystery. In a video game, you keep playing and at the end you find out all the answers and you feel good. In a video game the moment you go beyond your orders is the moment the real plot begins.
In a video game, the moment that the screen goes black and white and you spend some time bombing people who don't shoot back is a "breather level."
In Spec Ops: The Line, that "breather level" is a setup for the biggest punch in the gut in the entire game.
People who look at that scene and protest that there was no choice, and the game blames you for doing it. . . congratulations. You just got the experience the creators wanted. You kept going by video game rules, and got real world consequences, and now you're throwing the blame on someone else.
I also feel I should point out that Israel used white phosphorous against civilians in Gaza (in fact I believe the image you used of WP in the first video was actually from Gaza) but I don't want this to turn into a "flame war".
The video finishes and there is an ad for the US navy.
This is what I was talking about last week when I said I was worried the message would be too one-sided, anti-military. Having done more research into the game, and after this week's episode, I realize it wasn't one-sided at all. Unfortunately, people will always miss the nuances of a message so they can view everything as "one thing is good, one thing is bad." The message of Spec Ops was not that the military is always wrong or that all violence is bad. That sort of message is completely unsustainable under real scrutiny. The fact that people have mentioned US soldiers liking this game is proof that it's not a message against our military. It's a message against the CoD-culture's understanding of what being a soldier is like. We just want the fun of headshotting without understanding the repercussions it brings.
I think the game actually highlights the fact that many American soldiers are heroes because they go through the kind of stuff that causes Walker-crazy without becoming Walker-crazy. Whether or not you agree with American policy, that message stands up.
That message stands up even more when you compare it to a nation fighting for their right to even exist on the Earth that actively avoids civilian casualties in a war against those who willingly use human shields.
If you're interested in the sort of paradoxical idea of free will in video games, The Stanley Parable is a great choice. It's an amusing and insightful look at how strange the idea of choice in games really get when you realize that ultimately all of your choices were preprogrammed into the game. (There are games that subvert this, but only some and only in certain genres.)
Your reaction is exactly what the developers wanted out of that scene. Look at what happens in the lead up and follow through. You get to Dubai and Walker's mission is to do some recon then leave, but Walker pushes on despite what the mission originally was. Then when you get to the white phosphorous scene, despite what the other characters say, Walker is convinced that there is no choice and that they have to use the white phosphorous. Then afterwards Walker is still convinced that there was no choice and that "the enemy" is ultimately responsible for what happened because they forced his hand.
This is exactly how you're reacting. Despite going off mission, you kept playing the game. Despite the characters saying that you could just stop, you kept playing. Even when you had to use white phosphorous against people, you kept going. Now you're blaming the developer because "you didn't get to choose" despite being able to put down the controller at any time. The developer didn't give you a choice just like "the enemy" didn't give Walker a choice.
One of the best episodes of the now-defunct series Lie to Me featured Victor-from-Dollhouse as a soldier returned from Iraq with a silver star and a nasty case of PTSD. The show asks him to relive his experience in a virtual environment to help him try and recall the details, and turns what would otherwise be a standard Lightman-outsmarts-everyone-of-the-week into an excellent narrative about the effects of modern warfare on soldiers and the moral mire into which they are made to wade, again without denigrating the valorous service of these amazing individuals.
That's something I appreciated about the show and would probably enjoy about this game, asking people to see past the rah-rah military celebration but doing so with an understanding that these soldiers often find themselves in situations no one could have prepared them for and which cannot possibly have a good outcome, and in acknowledging that hell, is implicitly grateful to them for taking up this mantle.
Well you can stop playing at the WP scene, but by doing so the situation still "exist" in the game (you can consider it doesn't cause it's a game, but then so are the people you "killed" there just data, so you don't need to feel bad about killing them). Stopping playing the game is essentially running away from a situation, which I think isn't the right way to deal with tough choice.
All I'm saying is that here they failed in having the gameplay/mechanic reinforce the story, what I'm asking for doesn't require much work, yet they didn't do it. At the very least including it wouldn't have made the game any worse, and I think they should have included it not so much for the person who are going to succeed, but for the person who aren't.
Stopping playing the game is essentially running away from a situation, which I think isn't the right way to deal with tough choice.
But that's the thing. . . it IS the right choice.
Walker's job isn't to be a hero. He's not THERE to solve everything. His job is to go in there, find out what is happening and report back.
That's all.
He takes personal responsibility for something he has no right taking responsibility for. He expands his mission way beyond what his superiors asked of him.
There are MANY times in the game where Walker's teammates tell him, "We should pull out." But every time, Walker keeps going.
Even after that first incident when you kill American soldiers.
Even when it's clear that what's happening in Dubai is completely fucked up beyond what three men can handle.
Even when you're faced with a choice between "kill hundreds of people using one of the most horrific weapons known to man . . . or go home and report in like you should."
You keep going. Why?
. . . because it's a video game. And that's what you do in video games, especially linear shooters. You always move forward.
Even when EVERYTHING is telling you to STOP.
And according to the stories, many people did. Many playtesters stopped playing at the WP scene. They made their choice.
What kind of mind keeps pressing on even after seeing so vividly the results of their misguided actions?
What kind of mind does the same thing over and over and expects different results?
You get your answer to that during the second half of the game.
I just bought this game yesterday on the amazon bundle and it hasn't finished downloading yet. Gonna have to skip extra credits this week. Kinda sad i miss EC but kinda happy i get to play a new interesting game soon.
Posts
That's interesting because I had a similar thought regarding the player as not controlling Walker himself, but rather his last vestige of sanity as the character dragged you down to his metaphorical hell. Like James, when I played through I shot the ropes myself because I saw myself (the player) as his last glimmer of redemption. I'm an American airman, you see, so I naturally felt pretty bad about gunning down brothers-in-arms. Like the character was doing these atrocities against my will even as I pulled the trigger. I beat the game in the morning and couldn't shake the guilt all day afterward. Bravo, Yager.
Certainly would explain the general disconnect between the player's emotions and Walker's.
Most people tried to have fun shooting things and were not even phazed by the phosphorus-scene. Hell, Gametrailers had lines like this in their review:
"You'll feel like there's something to think about, but it's not gonna bother you, as you go about your business."
or
"The game realises, that the desire to see just how screwed up things can get is a better motivation than fullfilling an actual military objective."
How blind can you get? They even knew that the game was based on Heart of Darkness, but they still mistook the violence as sensationalism, dismissed the choices as "pop quiz moments" without realising that you could act differently than the game demands and generally judged the game as an ordinary 3rd person shooter. Okay, I can't really blame them for looking at it as a regular military shooter. How often is it that a game like this comes along. To notice NOTHING AT ALL though? Seriously? Is that were playing games like Call of Duty and its airport scenes gets us? That things like these can pass as normal for some people? *sigh* I don't want to come across as the upholder of all morals, or that I grasped everything the game is trying to tell us the fist time I played it, but it still depresses me how this game was received...
Some Let's players at least felt remorse after the phospherus thing, but even these people thought it was just there because modern shooter games are sold on their violence. They found it to be gross at best and amusing at worst, but nearly none of them had a realisation at the end.
The only review that actually noticed what the games qualities are, was the one made by Yahtzee for Zero Punctuation. How Ironic is that? The series that usually only does mock-reviews is the only one (I saw) that got it right.
I hate to say it but the majority of players seems to be emotially dead, which really makes me wonder now if Fox News and all the people saying Videogame violence messes with us aren't right? At least to the degree that these overly violent games make us lose all sense for the horrors of violence and what inflicting it on others really means.Then again that's not just videogames but modern media in general. Doesn't make it any better though…
I think you're right and I think you're wrong.
On the one hand, I totally agree; games have developed and grown in an environment where players aren't normally challenged to think deeply in the same way that, say, a novel might necessitate, largely due to functional reasons. It's hard to focus on gameplay when you're bogged down by big ideas, personal hesitations, and self-searching. As the EC guys said, it's not fun. Because one of the prime directives of gamers is "play" games have developed in a direction which hasn't explored a lot of that deeper narrative meaning and we, as gamers, have gotten used to not having to think about that. We're used to things being more or less as they appear to be or, at the very most, thinly veiled behind a plot twist to be revealed at a later stage. A game that challenges the player to think not only reflexively and strategically but critically about the narrative is, as far as I am aware, almost unprecedented and certainly very rare. What Spec Ops has done is ballsy; it attempted to do something that games aren't really used to doing in a genre known the least for doing it and perceptions of it suffer because of it. In a sense, I would definitely say that gamers are generally ill-prepared to make a narrative trek like this. Spec Ops appears to be the kind of game I would play with a pen and paper on the table to annotate as I play, something I don't think a lot of gamers would ever dream of doing.
But emotionally dead? That might be a bit of a stretch. While it's true that gamers of all walks were ill-prepared to take on the kind of challenge it is to truly dig into a story like Spec Ops, I don't think it's all doom and gloom quite yet. Spec ops was a game that visually emulated the Modern Warfare type shooter and, once lumped with that lot, did very little to defy that expectation up to the point where things start to turn and it did so on purpose. In a sense, spec ops is a trap which lures in COD players and then sits them down and asks them just what they thought they were doing. I'll admit, before EC started to buzz about it, even *I* was fooled. Full disclosure, I haven't been able to play the game yet, but from what I'm hearing, this sounds like relatively high mid-level stuff, the kind of stuff that people might not get even if it were in book form. I almost want to say that the lukewarm "Crappy COD clone" reaction is what they were shooting for, to force that demon of Glorification of Warfare out into the open so we could poke at it.
Do I think they could have better prepared the gamer for the depths they'd be facing? Probably. Do I think that the broad reaction indicates that we have a lot of growing to do as a narrative medium? Definitely, both on the creator and consumer sides. But I wouldn't yet say that it's an indication that we're damaged. Not yet and this game and the murmuring praise of it is a great indication that we may not.
The latter is a game that goes as far as to *lie* to you about how it's played because the person advising you in the tutorial-esque section of the game either doesn't realise the consequences of what she's telling you to do, or has an ulterior motive (possibly both).
Both go the way of creating an experience that is compelling rather than fun, leaving you emotionally drained
@runBAMrunfaster in particular if you're studying game narrative, you should definitely check out Pathologic, and if anyone can't make it all the way through the game (understandable, it's so bleak and so broken), there's a great 3-part analysis on RPS here, here and here
I pretty much agree with you there and as I said I don't blame people for not picking up on the deeper meaning the first time they play spec ops. What is shocking to me though is how some gamers and reviwers manage to completely dismiss everything that is going on in Spec Ops. It seems like you haven't played the game yet so I won''t spoil what i am talking about specifically, but if you still believe everything that happened in this game was for your enjoyment after finishing it, then something is wrong with you. It's not just that they dismiss it as a CoD clone, but that they think commiting horrible crimes against humanity is the hook of the game they're supposed to enjoy. Making claims like Gametrailers did in their review is downright ignorant at best, and apathetic at worst.
Well, as Konrad said... it takes a strong man to deny the truth...
That is some good goddamn game design.
Team Fortress 2 Backpack: Someone you love
The same reason that you’d use to describe yourself as Gorden Freeman killing Combine soldiers or yourself as Master Chief killing the Covenant. Freeman and Master Chief don’t get a choice to not kill. And neither does Walker.
Spec Ops, breaks that bond we have with our characters, thus making us question the concept of the player character. Are we really Walker? Is his own choices our choices? If we are Walker; are we monsters, are we the last bit of humanity in Walker, or are we merely viewers watching a man breaking?
When Walker tells Lugo, “No, there is no choice.” He’s not talking to Lugo, he’s talking to you. Choice is an illusion in video games. Rather then make believe there is a right and wrong binary answer to every situation, Spec Ops just straight up spits in your eye and tells you there was never a choice to be made in the first place. The choice was always just in your head.
Everyone cool? Yeah. SPOILERS. Double check.
@chopper161 - I think it goes deeper than that. Lugo and Adams are Walker's two conflicting desires. Lugo represents his need to complete the mission and be a good soldier. Adams represents Walker's need to help people.
Also, once again, SPOILER check, just in case you glanced down reflexively.
Did you notice the irony in the way they died? Lugo prioritized the mission over saving lives and got lynched by the civilians you failed to save. Adams prioritized saving lives over the mission and died so that Walker could finish the job.
The guy who does the voice acting for Konrad, who tells you that you are getting a little too attached to the video game is a real actor.
I fact he's Bruce Boxleitner.
The guy who played Tron.
How's that for some fucking symmetry? The guy who was in the classic movie about "being absorbed into a game" is now the voice in a game about the same damn thing.
Yaeger, my hat is off to you.
I also feel I should point out that Israel used white phosphorous against civilians in Gaza (in fact I believe the image you used of WP in the first video was actually from Gaza) but I don't want this to turn into a "flame war".
(lol?)
Anyway, my experience of 'Spec OPs' was the same as yours. The game is brilliant, and a genuine attempt at elevating video games into something meaningful.
But I wanted to mention that games don't have to be an "either/or" thing. You can have games that are deep and meaningful as well as entertaining. It's just a question of working additional meaning into a game, that players can choose to engage with or not.
In Education we call these "extension tasks". They are things we ask the bright students to do while we teachers assist the weaker students.
The point is that good writing should enable game designers to make games that are both engaging and meaningful.
'Bioshock' is no less playable because it's a critique of 'Atlas Shrugged'.
Of course this is not a criticism of 'Spec OPs'; the way they used the game play to reinforce the narrative point is incredibly clever, and effective.
I just think that if designers try they really can make games that can do both.
I'll agree with you that those are really unfortunate ways to look at the game, but without offering the same excuses about what gamers are supposed to and/or do expect out of their "entertainment", the answer is not to simply give up and create no more art. I've sent an email to the reviewers from IGN, Gamespot, and Gametrailers asking them to re-examine the title without taking "multi-player functionality" into consideration or under the bias the game is supposed to be "fun". I encourage you all to do the same, especially if you were as affected by the experience as I was. After completing the campaign, I went to close the game and stopped dead as it asked me, "Are you sure you want to quit?" I sat for a full ten minutes staring at the innocuous little message that meant nothing to me before, but shouted at me now that I'd met Col. Konrad.
The medium occasionally creates truly compelling experiences, but there is usually an element of enjoyment that's supposed to be there. This is not that, this is an expression, a critique, an interactive drama, whatever. But it's not a game, not in the sense it's usually applied. It's art and we should be touting this experience as an impressive example of such.
First, you can't not deploy WP. If you try, you get shredded by endlessly respawning hostiles.
Second, you didn't mention exactly how much of the material is taken from "Apocalypse Now"/ "Heart of Darkness" which was written by, surprise, Joseph Conrad.
Mention that and Then your analysis tends to look like a bit of overkill.
"We have years of struggle ahead, mostly within ourselves." - Made in USA
The game should have had an insanely hard (like only 5% of gamer could clear it) way of beating that level (oh and have equally as hard on all difficulty level) where you don't use the WP, then it could have just a short scene where everyone congratulate you and then the game would end and a text from the dev would pop up saying something like "hey that was amazing, but there's still more content if you fail, so we'll load you back before and just use the WP to see it or just stop playing as that was you're story".
First every time the game try to make people who failed that sequence feel guilty, it would actually work. Because they really did fail, there failure is there fault. They weren't forced down a single path, but they had to resign themselves.
Second, you actually have something challenging for hardcore to look up too. I always want harder game, not so much for gameplay reason, but for story purpose. When a game congratulate me for doing something that "nobody else could have done" it always feel so empty because literally anybody could have done it, both in the sense that any player can clear the level but also that it was so easy that any NPC in the game could have done what I did. And then when a game tries to make me feel guilty because of my action, if I was forced down the path because of so called "impossible odds" that I know full well I could have done, it feel equally empty since I wasn't given a choice.
Look at a game like Arkham Asylum. That game is tailored from the ground-up to make you look and think and feel like Batman. You don't have the option to up and murder people because it would go against that thesis -- it's not something Batman would do.
Similarly, Spec Ops is tailored to make you look and think and feel like Walker. Walker is not a proxy for you, the player. He is a character in his own right, and the game's goal is to bring you into his role.
You don't get the option to NOT dump White Phosphorus on those people because that option does not come to Walker. The game is not about you, the player, navigating morally through a war -- it's about Walker descending into madness, with you (as him) along for the ride.
You don't get the chance to NOT do evil as Walker for the same reason that you don't have the ability kill a bunch of people as Batman: it's not what the game is about.
Other games set you in the role of a hero. Spec Ops sets you in the role of a villain.
And if Batman gets to make you feel like a hero for performing heroics, which, let's face it, you never had the choice NOT to do -- why shouldn't Spec Ops have the ability to make you feel guilty for evil acts you didn't have the choice to avoid?
To put it more succinctly:
Suppose you made a game where the player takes on the historical role of Jack The Ripper. Should the player have the ability NOT to murder all those prostitutes? Are the developers obligated to put a "make all the right choices and don't do anything bad" path in a game which is about a mass murder?
You know you can edit your post, right? :P You don't have to triple-post.
The scenes in which Walker must make a decision, he makes those decisions down the barrel of his gun, looking his friend/enemy in the eye. When fate grabs the reigns he's looking at dots on a screen, playing a video game in which the camera moves down a narrow path with nothing but things to shoot.
Other amazing details: Executions. In the first few levels they are perfunctory shots. In later levels Walker tortures his enemies. Shooting them in the leg first or smashing their teeth out on the barrel of the gun and cursing them out as he does so. Nastiness.
Headshots. The first sniper section has you making headshots on a half dozen guys. Each kicks up a little blood spray and they go down. In the second half of the game, headshots with the same Scout rifle make heads explode and a torrent of blood spews from the gory neck stump.
These guys didn't miss a beat in depicting the narrative through gameplay.
Like, why are they even shooting at you at all? They must obviously recognise you're Americans come to help them, so why is everyone you meet out to kill you? Why is no one asking for a ceasefire so someone can explain what's really going on? Why is no one asking to get out of the city? Why are they guarding places which are deserted and have nothing to offer? Why would they possibly need to guard the Radioman who seems to do nothing except play some music for fun? For what possible reason does Konrad want to stay here? What can he possibly get out of ruling a deserted city which is now nothing more than buildings full of sand? Even if he wants to stay, why isn't he letting his soldiers, the guys he's meant to look after, make an effort to leave if they want? And if they have working helicopters, why the hell aren't they using them to get out of there and call for assistance?
But these questions are never asked. Instead Walker keeps insisting that all they have to do is take out Konrad, the big bad guy, and everything will magically solved. Because hey, it's a game, you're not meant to think about the social and political ramifications of what you're doing and what will happen afterward, you're meant to be the awesome hero! And that's all that matters!
BTW, I just discovered that the voice of Adams is Kid from Kid 'n' Play. I can no longer watch this game without imagining Adams sporting that ridiculous flattop hairdo.
I totally agree, it is entirely possible to make a game that is both entertaining and meaningful. Just look at Shadow of the Collossus; on the one hand, you're fighting giant monsters, having adventures, and saving the girl to one of the best soundtracks I've heard in a game. On the other hand, you're murdering sixteen relatively benign, if not benevolent, beasts to redeem one life to dire consequences. I don't think it's an either/or thing either, but for now, I think it is largely necessary as more developers figure out *how* to add more interpretive meaning to their narratives, they can also congress and work out ways to make those same games more fun to play.
I do think that, depending on the narratives, some games like Spec Ops just shouldn't be 'fun' in the traditional sense; that they're fulfilling, that they build the player up, etc. But I definitely think we can have a good time AND think deeply simultaneously.
At the moment, games remind me of film, right as film was figuring out all the tricks they use today to be awesome.
Spoiler check again.
People who get in arms about the white phosophoros scene ignore one important choice you could make:
Put down the controller and turn off the game.
Konrad lampshades this at the end when you flash back to some of the first words Walker says: their mission is to get in, find survivors, and leave. Walker has no orders to attack the gate. He has no orders to find out the truth or bring Konrad to justice. There is no reason for Walker to do anything more than find the first survivors, realize that Dubai is in deep trouble, head back out through the storm wall, and call in reinforcements.
But that's not how a video game works. In a video game, the hero presses on and gets to the bottom of things and solves the big mystery. In a video game, you keep playing and at the end you find out all the answers and you feel good. In a video game the moment you go beyond your orders is the moment the real plot begins.
In a video game, the moment that the screen goes black and white and you spend some time bombing people who don't shoot back is a "breather level."
In Spec Ops: The Line, that "breather level" is a setup for the biggest punch in the gut in the entire game.
People who look at that scene and protest that there was no choice, and the game blames you for doing it. . . congratulations. You just got the experience the creators wanted. You kept going by video game rules, and got real world consequences, and now you're throwing the blame on someone else.
Just like Adams blamed Walker for Lugo's death.
This is what I was talking about last week when I said I was worried the message would be too one-sided, anti-military. Having done more research into the game, and after this week's episode, I realize it wasn't one-sided at all. Unfortunately, people will always miss the nuances of a message so they can view everything as "one thing is good, one thing is bad." The message of Spec Ops was not that the military is always wrong or that all violence is bad. That sort of message is completely unsustainable under real scrutiny. The fact that people have mentioned US soldiers liking this game is proof that it's not a message against our military. It's a message against the CoD-culture's understanding of what being a soldier is like. We just want the fun of headshotting without understanding the repercussions it brings.
I think the game actually highlights the fact that many American soldiers are heroes because they go through the kind of stuff that causes Walker-crazy without becoming Walker-crazy. Whether or not you agree with American policy, that message stands up.
That message stands up even more when you compare it to a nation fighting for their right to even exist on the Earth that actively avoids civilian casualties in a war against those who willingly use human shields.
Your reaction is exactly what the developers wanted out of that scene. Look at what happens in the lead up and follow through. You get to Dubai and Walker's mission is to do some recon then leave, but Walker pushes on despite what the mission originally was. Then when you get to the white phosphorous scene, despite what the other characters say, Walker is convinced that there is no choice and that they have to use the white phosphorous. Then afterwards Walker is still convinced that there was no choice and that "the enemy" is ultimately responsible for what happened because they forced his hand.
This is exactly how you're reacting. Despite going off mission, you kept playing the game. Despite the characters saying that you could just stop, you kept playing. Even when you had to use white phosphorous against people, you kept going. Now you're blaming the developer because "you didn't get to choose" despite being able to put down the controller at any time. The developer didn't give you a choice just like "the enemy" didn't give Walker a choice.
That's something I appreciated about the show and would probably enjoy about this game, asking people to see past the rah-rah military celebration but doing so with an understanding that these soldiers often find themselves in situations no one could have prepared them for and which cannot possibly have a good outcome, and in acknowledging that hell, is implicitly grateful to them for taking up this mantle.
All I'm saying is that here they failed in having the gameplay/mechanic reinforce the story, what I'm asking for doesn't require much work, yet they didn't do it. At the very least including it wouldn't have made the game any worse, and I think they should have included it not so much for the person who are going to succeed, but for the person who aren't.
But that's the thing. . . it IS the right choice.
Walker's job isn't to be a hero. He's not THERE to solve everything. His job is to go in there, find out what is happening and report back.
That's all.
He takes personal responsibility for something he has no right taking responsibility for. He expands his mission way beyond what his superiors asked of him.
There are MANY times in the game where Walker's teammates tell him, "We should pull out." But every time, Walker keeps going.
Even after that first incident when you kill American soldiers.
Even when it's clear that what's happening in Dubai is completely fucked up beyond what three men can handle.
Even when you're faced with a choice between "kill hundreds of people using one of the most horrific weapons known to man . . . or go home and report in like you should."
You keep going. Why?
. . . because it's a video game. And that's what you do in video games, especially linear shooters. You always move forward.
Even when EVERYTHING is telling you to STOP.
And according to the stories, many people did. Many playtesters stopped playing at the WP scene. They made their choice.
What kind of mind keeps pressing on even after seeing so vividly the results of their misguided actions?
What kind of mind does the same thing over and over and expects different results?
You get your answer to that during the second half of the game.
I did not! Is there a way to reply, then, too? This weird half-forum makes zero sense to me.