I think it comments on player agency in video games but doesn't do anything outside of that. There are points where the game forces you to do things in order to advance the story and then berates you about it later. While that leads to an interesting narrative piece, it falls flat because the player isn't presented with an out other than turning off the game. I just think that the narrative would have had much more of an impact if the player arrived at that point by their own choices rather than being forced there.
But the game is critiquing the modern shooter. In those games, the player traditionally isn't given a choice in their actions, and the player typically doesn't care. By making the gamer do horrible things, and then condemning them for doing them, it becomes a much more effective indictment against games like Battlefield or COD, and the players. It's all around a much smarter choice than giving players an obvious out.
Spec Ops: The Line is certainly interesting but I think people are over-elevating it's story because it's a video game that actually tries something. It does do some interesting things but it's heavy handed and doesn't really take advantage of what's unique about the medium.
Wait, what? It takes the player's agency, an element that's iconic of video games to the point of being the definition of their existence, and throws the logical consequences of it in the player's face in one of the most gutwrenching ways to date.
But the player actually has no agency. Everything is predetermined.
Look at the part of the game were you do The Horrible Thing. There is overwhelming sense beforehand that no good will come out of doing The Horrible Thing. Your squadmates even say so and when the main guys says "We have no choice", one squadmate responds saying "There's always a choice". But in actuality there isn't. No matter how much the player tries to fight through without doing The Horrible Thing, they are stuck in a dead end with no other way to progress, fighting infinitely spawning enemies with perfect aim. Exasperated, the player says "Alright game, have it your way" and does The Horrible Thing which, surprise surprise, goes horribly horribly wrong.
Then for the rest of the game, the game blames the player for doing The Horrible Thing he was forced to do. And by blame, I don't just mean the game frequently presents the player with the tragic consequences and rubs it in the player's face at every opportunity (which it does). I mean in the loading screens, the hint text will literally say "This is all your fault".
Fuck you game. No it isn't. Forced me to do this and there isn't any way not to short of hacking the game, because that's the story you want to tell. But it has no resonance in a game because the player never chose to do The Horrible Thing. The player is forced to do it.
Although it came out first, The Stanley Parable works as a really good satire of what Spec Ops is trying to do. In The Stanley Parable
the Narrator is trying to tell the story of Stanley who realizes he's a character in a game set on a predetermined path, but manages to break free of the game. But that story itself is a predetermined path in a game which Stanley is slave to. If at any point Stanley doesn't go to where the Narrator wants him to go, the story breaks down and the Narrator tries to get him back on course with coercion, threats, trickery and just plan locking him in a room. I feel that Spec Ops is the Narrator who feels really proud of themselves telling such a "subversive" game story, but can only do that by locking down the player's path and eliminating any real choices.
It's kinda like a somewhat better version of NG3, where they want you to kill as many people as possible(the only option in the game), gives you bonus points for doing it as vicious as possible, then calls you a psychopathic freakshow of a human for, ya know, playing the game the way it's supposed to be played.
Hey
Hey
FUCK YOU, Team Ninja
Force you to come along to the scene of the crime, then turn around and slap you in the face, "Why did you do this!?"
Errant Signal [starting from 9:43] argues that's the point:
It's a game that by highlighting a lack of choice as it turns you into a monster begs you to consider what it means when a game presents shooting people and moving on as its only mechanic. Just as Walker blames everything on Conrad, the player is intended to shift [their] culpability for these things onto the game mechanics, because, like Walker said, you have no choice.
The antagonistic nature of 'gamers' is getting really tiring.
Hate Tim Rogers all you want, the dude was one of the few who was putting forth some sort of intellectual discussion on games. He doesn't hit it out of the park every time but when he does it, it's good shit.
His 12,000 word analysis of Earthbound... maybe. His Bioshock pimpslap? Yes'um.
The Line is a big ol' poopy game in my mind, but it tries to do something and this guy is also trying to do something. Props for taking games more seriously, even if it's not landing in the endzone on the first try.
It is a game where the best thing to do is not to play the game?
It is a Toxic Meme, in that if their message gets across it kills further development. So I dunno. So it is a shooter that people who don't like shooters are more likely to want to play, and they don't like shooters so they wont play it?
I am sure it is all very noble, but from a keeping your company going point of view it seems dumb as fuck. And I don't think anyone likes being lectured at.
Walker saying he had no choice is just him paying lip service. He had plenty of choice, but kept going on because of his own reasons. Absolutely no one was forcing him. The player is the one who actually had no choice, since the game was forcing their actions.
And saying that it's okay that Spec Ops offers no choices because Call of Duty doesn't offer any choices doesn't make Spec Ops any better. It just means they're both poor uses of the medium for storytelling purposes. Unfotunatley Spec Ops relies the most heavily on it's story.
Walker saying he had no choice is just him paying lip service. He had plenty of choice, but kept going on because of his own reasons. Absolutely no one was forcing him. The player is the one who actually had no choice, since the game was forcing their actions.
And saying that it's okay that Spec Ops offers no choices because Call of Duty doesn't offer any choices doesn't make Spec Ops any better. It just means they're both poor uses of the medium.
It means that Spec Ops is effectively critiquing its contemporaries.
And besides, your comment on "lip service" is just as easily attributed to the gamer, since as you said before, the gamer has the choice to not play at all.
Fuck you game. No it isn't. Forced me to do this and there isn't any way not to short of hacking the game, because that's the story you want to tell. But it has no resonance in a game because the player never chose to do The Horrible Thing. The player is forced to do it.
That's the point of the game though. Nothing forced you to do it, but you did it anyway. Hell, you did it even though you knew it was going to go badly. Why? Because it's game, where doing the horrible thing doesn't really mean anything.
The game doesn't give the player a choice though, and given the other elements of meta commentary within the game it's reasonable to draw a conclusion that those comments should be taken in that context.
And saying that it's okay that Spec Ops offers no choices because Call of Duty doesn't offer any choices doesn't make Spec Ops any better.
That depends if you want a game that aspires to be a better game than Call of Duty, or a game that critiques CoD through its own medium. Not to mention there are choices in Spec Op's, they're just heavily ambiguous and meaningless, but they exist.
It just means they're both poor uses of the medium for storytelling purposes.
I guess, again, that depends on your viewpoint as to the true narrative the game is trying to tell - one of Walker in Dubai, or it that merely the framework used to critique the industry?
But the game is critiquing the modern shooter. In those games, the player traditionally isn't given a choice in their actions, and the player typically doesn't care. By making the gamer do horrible things, and then condemning them for doing them, it becomes a much more effective indictment against games like Battlefield or COD, and the players. It's all around a much smarter choice than giving players an obvious out.
Yeah, I understand that but condemning bad design through bad design is still ultimately bad design and even though the narrative swaps out glory for condemnation, from a gameplay standpoint, seeing the story is still a reward and you need to play through the game in order to experience it. There's also the achievement system which rewards the player on a higher level than the game narrative. I may have done these bad things and received my verbal lashing but I'm after getting a handful of achievements/trophies that make me feel better in the meta-game. You could argue that they're blood achievements but when they pop, I feel good.
But the player actually has no agency. Everything is predetermined.
Look at the part of the game were you do The Horrible Thing. There is overwhelming sense beforehand that no good will come out of doing The Horrible Thing. Your squadmates even say so and when the main guys says "We have no choice", one squadmate responds saying "There's always a choice". But in actuality there isn't. No matter how much the player tries to fight through without doing The Horrible Thing, they are stuck in a dead end with no other way to progress, fighting infinitely spawning enemies with perfect aim. Exasperated, the player says "Alright game, have it your way" and does The Horrible Thing which, surprise surprise, goes horribly horribly wrong.
Then for the rest of the game, the game blames the player for doing The Horrible Thing he was forced to do. And by blame, I don't just mean the game frequently presents the player with the tragic consequences and rubs it in the player's face at every opportunity (which it does). I mean in the loading screens, the hint text will literally say "This is all your fault".
Fuck you game. No it isn't. Forced me to do this and there isn't any way not to short of hacking the game, because that's the story you want to tell. But it has no resonance in a game because the player never chose to do The Horrible Thing. The player is forced to do it.
Although it came out first, The Stanley Parable works as a really good satire of what Spec Ops is trying to do. In The Stanley Parable
the Narrator is trying to tell the story of Stanley who realizes he's a character in a game set on a predetermined path, but manages to break free of the game. But that story itself is a predetermined path in a game which Stanley is slave to. If at any point Stanley doesn't go to where the Narrator wants him to go, the story breaks down and the Narrator tries to get him back on course with coercion, threats, trickery and just plan locking him in a room. I feel that Spec Ops is the Narrator who feels really proud of themselves telling such a "subversive" game story, but can only do that by locking down the player's path and eliminating any real choices.
okay, this question is only tangentially related to the thread, but does Spec Ops: The Line have a co-op campaign? I feel like I need to give the game a try.
okay, this question is only tangentially related to the thread, but does Spec Ops: The Line have a co-op campaign? I feel like I need to give the game a try.
I'm not sure I agree. Spec Op's range of critique is defiantly wider than Stanley but they ultimately say the same things in the same ways on this specific subject. Stanely has the faux-choice of the stairs, Spec Op's the faux morally ambiguous choices.
I find Spec Ops: The Line fascinating because it simultaneously shows the potential strength of using the elements of player agency in video games to form a particular commentary as well as showing the unavoidable inherent weaknesses and contradictions of doing so.
I'd argue overall it just makes the ongoing debate about story's role in video games even murkier and more unsolvable than it was before.
I guess, again, that depends on your viewpoint as to the true narrative the game is trying to tell - one of Walker in Dubai, or it that merely the framework used to critique the industry?
My litmus test for if a piece of entertainment (I usually apply this to movies, but here I'll apply to this game) is that it is A) enjoyable on the surface level, and that B) it has something deeper and interesting about it. A Micheal Bay movie might be cool explosions and giant robots that's neat to look at, but it offers little else, so it fails part B. I watched The Sky Crawlers, which has meaty sub-text and is a confounding bore to watch through, so it passes part B but fails part A. It's the ones that get both that find themselves on my shelves.
Spec Ops is purely part B. It's a critique of the industry, but that doesn't do the game I'm playing any favors. It doesn't do the gameplay any good, since it decides to critique dudebro military corridor shooters by being a military corridor shooter, just a sub-par one. Yes I know behind the scenes in development the story came after the decision to make it a military shooter, but that doesn't help the end product any. So it's gameplay isn't that good so it has to get by on it's story. Well the story gives the illusion of choice when there isn't, which is frustrating. Then game then goes on to basically say "Fuck you for playing this game". No fuck you game, I could have had better uses of my time (the more I think about this game and discuss this game the more I've come to despise it). The game is a neat critique, sure, but playing it is a boring, frustrating experience and the game berates you for doing so.
And if the game is arguing the only right choice is to not play the game, then judging by the sales numbers, most people made the right choice.
Edit: To more specifically answer the question poised to me, I want the game to tell both stories. But the game is only interested in using Walker's story as a vehicle for critique, even if it's to the detriment of Walker's story (no choices). But I'm not playing a critique, I'm playing Walker's story. Walker's story is the story I'm invested in during the minute-to-minute of gameplay, but the game only truly cares about the story as a critique. When I finish the game, I don't care how good the critique is because I'm so frustrated playing Walker's story.
Spec Ops is purely part B. It's a critique of the industry, but that doesn't do the game I'm playing any favors. It doesn't do the gameplay any good, since it decides to critique dudebro military corridor shooters by being a military corridor shooter, just a sub-par one. Yes I know behind the scenes in development the story came after the decision to make it a military shooter, but that doesn't help the end product any. So it's gameplay isn't that good so it has to get by on it's story. Well the story gives the illusion of choice when there isn't, which is frustrating. Then game then goes on to basically say "Fuck you for playing this game". No fuck you game, I could have had better uses of my time (the more I think about this game and discuss this game the more I've come to despise it)
And if the game is arguing the only right choice is to not play the game, then judging by the sales numbers, most people made the right choice.
This is sort of where the contradictions start to creep up. A person may have the very real and understandable assessment that Spec Ops tells a very compelling story with a very compelling theme and presentation style, and yet just isn't a very good game. What kind of conclusion is one supposed to reach from that assessment that isn't eventually colored by individual biases and tastes? How does one answer the question "Is Spec Ops: The Line worth playing?"
Essentially, would you say Nier's commentary on the hero's journey is anywhere close to as relevant as Spec Ops' commentary on the modern shooter? Serious question, as I've not played Nier.
Both games trade heavily on their respective genre conventions and so can be viewed as ironic commentaries on them, but their basic intent is to aggressively subvert player expectations and comment on the way mythic tropes (nationalism/patriotism in the Spec-Ops case, heroism/chivalry in Nier) are often flimsy self-justifications for atrocity.
They both play with the notion of "choice" in a ludic sense, and seek to make the player feel culpable for their actions in following an illusory black/white moral dichotomy.
Nier's construction is more elaborated, but essentially the intention is the same in that they are both moral "traps". Player expectation of standards of behaviour/morality are set by genre/scenrio convention, not action. This mindset is juxtaposed with the story protagonists obsessive devotion to their purportedly "righteous" mission, long after any moral high-ground has been conceded.
Like players seeing their game through to climax, the "hero" must see their journey through to the bitter end, even when its clear that there is no glory or virtue to be found there.
What concerns me, and why this post is absolutely not about criticism of SO:TL as a work in itself, is that the way this title is being highlighted whereas Nier was roundly ignored, seems like yet another case of cultural imperialism at work.
You want to elevate discourse, you need to be able to look past superficial aspects of presentation to what these "texts" are actually saying.
If Neir didn't want to get "ignored" the developers shouldn't have caved on their vision of having in the text and not really discoverable only by reading dev interviews and other exterior sources a hermaphrodite dealing with body horror by running around in sexually provocative outfits, because by caving they wound up with a cliched "crying clown" that, even while being (barely and insufficiently) commented upon in-game, at a glance (and beyond just that) looks like yet another Japanese game displaying a developer's severe societal issues with women (and which got further monetized seemingly unironically via DLC).
There's also a lot to be said for how deep a theme gets buried in the construct, because Neir's final ending (D, not B) simply requires too much effort for anyone not completely enamored with every bit of the content to get to. There's a world of difference in critical relevancy even in mediums outside of gaming when the work becomes inaccessible due to real-world constraints; I'm sure that there are plenty of outstanding experimental films being churned out every year but (especially pre-youtube) Brakhage gets vastly more exposure if only because Criterion made it easy to see a bunch of his stuff.
Like players seeing their game through to climax, the "hero" must see their journey through to the bitter end, even when its clear that there is no glory or virtue to be found there.
The tragedy of these games is I suppose that you need to "go the distance" yourself in order to appreciate what they are trying to do, and explaining these virtues to someone who hasn't involves massive spoilering and dilution of the effect on them through being forewarned of what to expect.
RE: Of All Trades
I don't think Yoko Taro "caved in" in any respect on his vision, he simply elected to pare away all uneccessary exposition so as not to make the story more confusing than necessary. Very admirable in my opinion. Ultimately as a story element Kaine's hermaphroditism is merely serves the central motif of "what you see, may be deceptive".
Her "otherness" is dealt with separately from her possession in the long text section at the start of scenario B in a fairly subtle and sympathetic way, so I can't say I agree with your argument that her dress style is just another piece of Japanese sexism, its just another example of the game playfully subverting familiar genre tropes and expectations. She's hardly a character that acts in the least bit soft or sexy at any point in the story.
Why would I want to be told off for my choice of entertainment?
(Actually, I bought it the day it came out, got to the bit where you fall off a skyscraper and stopped, because the demo for RE6 came out, and that was actually fun to play moment to moment. Since then, enough people I think are cocks have said they liked it it has rather put me off.
I kind of think that to really like it, you have to think it is preaching at other people, and not you)
I might pick up this game when it gets super cheap. I looked at some video finally, and it looks better than I expected. If it has a good story for once, I'll give it a go.
Why on earth did they call this game Spec Ops though? I actually remember the old Spec Ops games, and it was a budget series from the beginning. I think the PS1 games were $10 new at launch.
Why on earth did they call this game Spec Ops though? I actually remember the old Spec Ops games, and it was a budget series from the beginning. I think the PS1 games were $10 new at launch.
Out of interest, for people who like what this game was doing, when it says that people who like CoD are terrible people, do you think they are talking about you or someone else?
I might read this, as I thought the gameplay was excellent but the story a hackneyed Apocalypse Now / Heart of Darkness rip off. The story was the worst part of the game for me.
All due respect to the author and his idea to do this, but there's no way I'd pay $2.99 ($4.99 later) for this.
The game was promising but is a shameless apocalypse now "tribute". It has a couple of interesting ideas about player choice and narrative but that's about it.
I'd take the time to read this journos vanity project. But asking for my time AND my money on something this navel gazing? Sorry. Too far sir. Too far.
