ViewtifulJC
Banned
Let me just say that ENDING SPOILERS
that final plot twist is just the DUMBEST fuckin' thing. The DUMBEST. I can suspend my disbelief pretty far, but I think that one snapped it
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Killing is Harmless: A whole book of critical analysis on 1 game (Spec Ops The Line)
- Thread starter Messofanego
- Start date
Messofanego
Banned
A lot of people interpreted Spec Ops as a critique of real-life violence, but as a lot of people in this thread are saying, I think it has more to say about war games.
Thanks! I haven't had the chance to read this before. At a glance, Achebe's criticisms seem to be more in line with my complaints about how they handled the native language in Dubai than the game's international politics, albeit the poor depiction of natives was a much greater issue in Heart of Darkness. With that said, does Conrad's racist interpretation of Africans have any bearing on the setup or introduction of the novel?
Edit: As an aside, ErikB really should finish the game. :lol
On the topic of Call of Duty, what's been the general tone of the recent games? I keep on seeing youtube commercials for Black Ops 2 accompanied by AC/DC's Back in Black. I realize this is mostly just marketing's doing. But I haven't played the first Black Ops or MW3, and for the life of me can't remember any music from the first two Modern Warfare games.
I ask because when I think back to the military shooters of last gen, when it was all WWII all the time, the tone was pretty somber across the board. What sticks out the most in my mind is playing the Market Garden in Medal of Honor Frontlines to this. Watching Allied and German soldiers fight and die while that played was poignant and chilling
much more than anything I experienced in Spec Ops. Real talk.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
Dude, like I said before, that point in Spec Ops is totally subjective, at least as you try to argue. To many of us it didn't feel off. That is kind of your opinion and not much to do with inaccuracy and more with tone.
Many good novels, poems, music, films, etc starts with ludicrous stuff. Not everything needs to be "gradual" or "starting in a grounded position".
PD: About your actual point, Yeah, I don't remember how it starts also, to be honest, but I don't think it would matter that much for the point that the essay tries to make.
XANDER CAGE
Member
The soundtracks to recent Call of Duty aren't anything to write home about, other than maybe the pretty cool spooky music from No Russian. The tone in the Modern Warfare games is much more "WOO YEAH FIGHT THE BAD GUYS" than Black Ops, which is pretty grim and morally grey, although still not as heady as the original Modern Warfare's obvious moments of critique (the opening drive, the nuke, etc).
Battlefield 3 has a much more interesting tone, honestly, it's just that the campaign sucks. But goddamn if the mood the soundtrack sets isn't awesome.
That being said, Spec Ops is definitely more overtly intelligent than either Call of Duty or Battlefield, but they have their interesting moments.
CornBurrito
Member
I honestly don't see a problem with war games treating violence as a good thing (or having binary us vs them scenarios) unless they would desensitize us to real life violence.
jim-jam bongs
Member
oh shit, ErikB got permed.
further evidence that spec ops is an incredible and important work of post-modern art.
eh I have a pretty big problem with it, but that's probably neither here nor there in the context of this discussion.
further evidence that spec ops is an incredible and important work of post-modern art.
eh I have a pretty big problem with it, but that's probably neither here nor there in the context of this discussion.
My point in drawing the comparison between Spec Ops and Heart of Darkness / Apocalypse Now was to stress how the location in Spec Ops was largely insignificant to the story. Yager did not genuinely research the location or understand its political significance. That's perfectly fine, if one acknowledges that Dubai could have easily been replaced with any other city, with enough effort.
Edit: To clarify, the realistic depictions of the Vietnam/Cambodia and Africa in Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness respectively are incredibly important to the stories they are trying to tell. Also, the relatively grounded introduction of each work is part of the reason why the turning point and subsequent transition of their characters, in my opinion, are much more profound, interesting, and worthy of critical examination.
To your point about one's enjoyment being subjective, I completely agree. I said something along those lines in the official thread a few months back:
It was probably my mistake for not mentioning this in the beginning.
I KNOW! Which makes this shit all the more ridiculous that it's a writer saying!
There is nothing, and I mean nothing, more schlocky than some variant on the old "but it was all just a dream", which in this case is the old "Everything that took place during the Falling Action is a coma dream/crazy delusion/dying hallucination of the hero who failed at the movie's climax is now crazy/dying/dead" Normally this type of crap is usually just fodder for sophomoric "deep" alternate ending theories. But to have the writer of the game endorse this for his own creation is face-palm inducing.
Way to completely invalidate everything that happens in the last fourth of your own game!
So the player gets to the finale and after being jerked around by false choices throughout the game, finally can make a decision on their own which will determine the ending they get, right? Nope! They're all equally pointless because none of this even happens!
And for what? A cheap gotcha moment? Not only is it an eye-rollingly bad cliche, but nullifies the other much more interesting endings. Walker goes back home but has to carry the weight of everything he has seen and done with? That's interesting! Walker goes nuts and becomes just like Konrad, the monster he tried to fight? That's interesting! Walker goes to Dubai, fucks shit up, crashes a helicopter, hallucinates then dies? That's.... completely lame.
Way to ruin your own story Spec Ops
Way to completely invalidate everything that happens in the last fourth of your own game!
So the player gets to the finale and after being jerked around by false choices throughout the game, finally can make a decision on their own which will determine the ending they get, right? Nope! They're all equally pointless because none of this even happens!
And for what? A cheap gotcha moment? Not only is it an eye-rollingly bad cliche, but nullifies the other much more interesting endings. Walker goes back home but has to carry the weight of everything he has seen and done with? That's interesting! Walker goes nuts and becomes just like Konrad, the monster he tried to fight? That's interesting! Walker goes to Dubai, fucks shit up, crashes a helicopter, hallucinates then dies? That's.... completely lame.
Way to ruin your own story Spec Ops
Dammit I told you not to get me started!
Freeza Under The Shower
Member
An A for effort, at least. I would probably read it at some point.
(I have a bookcase filled with unread books. How is that for a backlog?)
(I have a bookcase filled with unread books. How is that for a backlog?)
CornBurrito
Member
Care for a PM discussion then? I'm actually very interested now.
TheBaronOfNA
Banned
I know that feeling
I kind of see your point in that sense now that you clarify, In any case, it was a good conversation.
Agree to disagree. My interpretation of the
They're Dead Jim interpretation is that Walker is reliving the decisions he'd made, so whatever happened in life, happened in the hell he's going through. We (the player) don't know what decisions these are until we make them, but they're retroactively cast in stone from there. Far from invalidating the ending, it gives it more resonance in my opinion. No actions Walker takes up to that point would lead anywhere good. At the end, no matter what you pick--go psycho, go super psycho (i.e., actually win the psycho portion), go home and get the white out screen--Walker's screwed and can't save himself. He's stuck reliving the end of his life over and over again.
jim-jam bongs
Member
lol I hoped you wouldn't say that.
nah, it's just an irrational gut feeling kind of thing which is likely more a product of my hippy parents than anything I'd care to articulate. when you grow up having to go to a friend's house to watch terminator because your mum thinks it might make you a serial killer you end up with some hang ups about the glorification of violence, fictional or otherwise.
ViewtifulJC
Banned
Messofanego
Banned
Wow, this guy left 53 posts in this thread alone! Maybe he'll finally finish the game and slide into cover.
^^The grenade indicator appearing as soon as he slides into cover amuses me way more than it should.
Yeah but now we've gone from a military shooter in a (somewhat) realistic setting that examines the consequences of combat to the a story about a guys eternal cycle of personal torment and damnation in hell. That's what I call jumping the shark. And this is all backed up by what? The color of scene transitions? If this theory was posed by anyone other than the writer it would laughed out of the building. Even still, I kinda think he's just messing with us.
Absoludacrous
Member
He really did play his own version of Spec Ops in this thread
jim-jam bongs
Member
special opinions: the line
papersleeves
Member
This game looks very interesting. I've heard about it before from gaffers mentioning it here and there, but never actually took the time to understand what was so good about it because of how bland and generic it looked like.
That said, after reading this topic as well as watching that video on youtube, it is definitely on my "to buy" list. I think I could enjoy a game like that. A game that makes you feel weird without exactly knowing why. Your subconscious understanding that what you are doing is fucked up while your mind is simply submerged by the cognitive dissonance created by the act of playing a game.
My only regret is that I am now aware of all of this. I wish I could of experienced it without spoiling myself that much so that I could of forged my own conclusion.
That said, after reading this topic as well as watching that video on youtube, it is definitely on my "to buy" list. I think I could enjoy a game like that. A game that makes you feel weird without exactly knowing why. Your subconscious understanding that what you are doing is fucked up while your mind is simply submerged by the cognitive dissonance created by the act of playing a game.
My only regret is that I am now aware of all of this. I wish I could of experienced it without spoiling myself that much so that I could of forged my own conclusion.
It takes a strong man to deny what's right in front of him.
This is a silly statement, sorry. Consider this question:
"Hello, would you like to have strawberry, chocolate, or vanilla ice cream?"
The outcomes are predetermined, but you still have choice within those outcomes. Just because there is a degree of predetermination going on doesn't mean that agency is suddenly a non-factor. Humans make limited decisions all the time. Complete, total, perfect, "I can do whatever the fuck I want" agency is something that belongs only to god or Impossible Man.
Haunted
Member
and if the truth is undeniable, you create your own. The truth, Erik, is that you're in this thread because you wanted to feel like something you're not: A hero. I'm here because you can't accept what you've done. It broke you. You needed someone to blame, so you cast it on me. A bombed game. I know the truth is hard to hear Erik, but it's time. You're all that's left and we can't live this lie forever. I'm going to count to five, then I'm
*salutes* ErikB
rosaceadude2112
Member
Max Payne 3 is another game I think worthy of some greater critical analysis. I'd love to see someone tackle it in more detail. To me, it seems like a commentary on the decreasing relevance of the action hero archetype.
Max is an aging drunk whose every endeavor ends in failure. He can't protect the people he's paid to, and often too stupid connect the dots on the mysteries before him. The real hero is arguably the desk jockey cop who directs Max to particular targets without ever pulling a trigger himself. Much like in Nolan's Batman series, the problems of rampant criminality are based in socio-economic inequalities and can't simply be be dealt with through brute force.
A common complaint of his redesign is that the bald head made him look like just about every other video game protagonist. All I can say is PRECISELY. He's vulgar, jingoistic(notice how often he espouses American values and berates the locals for speaking their own language) and sorely out of place, as highlighted by his garish hawaiian shirt.
In gameplay, Max is downright clumsy. His trademark dives often result in a tumble, leaving the player open to attack. The time it takes to get up from a prone position, swap weapons or even reload is often more than what the NPCs need to shoot him dead. His opponents are younger than he and far more capable, able to react quickly. Success requires that the player maneuvers Max strategically, playing around his various limits.
I'm sure there's plenty more to say on the subject. That's as much as I gleamed from a rental, but I'm now looking forward to any future steam sales in order to delve a bit deeper.
On the flipside though, the Max in 3 barely resembles the hero from the previous titles and the game is peppered with some pretty awful dialogue.
Max is an aging drunk whose every endeavor ends in failure. He can't protect the people he's paid to, and often too stupid connect the dots on the mysteries before him. The real hero is arguably the desk jockey cop who directs Max to particular targets without ever pulling a trigger himself. Much like in Nolan's Batman series, the problems of rampant criminality are based in socio-economic inequalities and can't simply be be dealt with through brute force.
A common complaint of his redesign is that the bald head made him look like just about every other video game protagonist. All I can say is PRECISELY. He's vulgar, jingoistic(notice how often he espouses American values and berates the locals for speaking their own language) and sorely out of place, as highlighted by his garish hawaiian shirt.
In gameplay, Max is downright clumsy. His trademark dives often result in a tumble, leaving the player open to attack. The time it takes to get up from a prone position, swap weapons or even reload is often more than what the NPCs need to shoot him dead. His opponents are younger than he and far more capable, able to react quickly. Success requires that the player maneuvers Max strategically, playing around his various limits.
I'm sure there's plenty more to say on the subject. That's as much as I gleamed from a rental, but I'm now looking forward to any future steam sales in order to delve a bit deeper.
On the flipside though, the Max in 3 barely resembles the hero from the previous titles and the game is peppered with some pretty awful dialogue.
Messofanego
Banned
Not sure if the Euphoria engine was used in such a metaphorical way since the clumsy jank of it was in GTA 4 and RDR and it's never commented to in some cool meta commentary ("I was getting stuck in geometry a lot more, risk jumps no longer rewarded since my younger days"), but I like the interpretation!
i love dreamweb!
I meant to address this earlier before ErikB went on his shit show. I'm having trouble understanding why you think Spec Ops critiquing a certain kind of a game by mimicking its style is such a bad thing, outside of a knee-jerk need to have a list of choices outlined during scripted sequences.
Spec Ops isn't condemning a game like CoD for not offering choices. It's condemning CoD for what it has players do. And it critiques it by apeing its style. The difference is that Spec Ops goes out of its way to highlight how horrible your actions are, making the player recognize that was they are doing is awful. The only reason you even feel the game should be offering you choices is because it's telling you what is going on is awful, sometimes in gruesome detail. And that's the point the game is trying to make.
So again, the criticism isn't that CoD doesn't "properly use the medium". It's what it makes players do to "win", and what that means.
Metal Gear?!
Member
No horde mode, but instead 4 short 2-player coop missions.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpsqafAdAb4
NinjaBoiX
Member
You know TDKR has been out for like 6 months? Well everyone, like everyone has seen it now, so don't bother with spoiler tags.
Oh wait...
Fucking hell, same thing with Mass Effect 3, if you haven't finished it within a week of release, prepare to tread very carefully on GAF, for all the big piles of spoil everywhere. Just use tags FFS, it's not hard!
Edit: apparently this is right at the start. Sorry, my bad!
That was in like the first five minutes of the movie. Sort of the point of that post. I'm not sure what you're complaining about here.
EDIT: That was also in the trailer.
snoopeasystreet
Member
That's fair and all but I'm someone who is a big proponent of "theme is not meaning" in video games. Ultimately, both Spec Ops and the games it's commenting on are the same thing. They're about completing linear a set of combat puzzles using automatic and semi automatic hitscan weapons, everything else is just purely aesthetics. From these aesthetics, Spec Ops replaces bravado for condemnation but it's meaningless, they're both about the same thing. Putting a different skin on the same thing isn't really taking advantage of what makes video games as a story telling medium interesting. To make a super blunt argument, you wouldn't calk a game like Dr. Mario a game about medicine or Mario despite it having a picture of Mario in a white coat and that you're matching viruses, it's a game about matching similar icons. So now why should we call Spec Ops a game about deconstructing the shooter genre?
To be fair, I do like Spec Ops for what it tries to and think more games should try things like it but I still think it's a failure when it comes to telling a story in video games. I'd much rather a game throw something interesting against the players and sees what sticks even if I do think it's flawed, video games are such a young medium and we don't know how to tell a story that takes the best advantage of it yet. I do think that we need to focus more on the player creating their own narratives and anecdotes from systems and mechanics rather than it being a prescribed story with a twist but who knows what the future may hold.
Messofanego
Banned
That sounds more like a preference thing because I don't think Spec Ops' narrative would be bolstered by that "immersive sim" design philosophy. None of those immersive games have had memorable narratives. I like the world states and reactions to your presence in those games, but leaving the player to create the narrative sounds a bit lazy like built-in machinima tools and a potentially divisive experience.
NinjaBoiX
Member
Ah, OK then, my apologies.
snoopeasystreet
Member
Yeah, it's entirely a preference thing that's why I don't consider someone who likes Specs Ops to be wrong, misinformed or anything else negative. The medium is broad enough to support very different methods of delivery and time will bear out which ones become the prominent methods of design.
I don't think you could make an emergent game where every player has a similar experience to Spec Ops but I do think you could create a system that would allow for someone to have an experience akin to it and that sense of personal story is far more interesting to me. If you're unsure about systemic narrative, you should really read some of the stories in the Day Z thread. That game builds a world and a rule set and let's the players do what they want within them. There are some amazing stories that people experienced involving things like treachery, subterfuge, murder, hostage taking/ slavery and I bet that if you look hard enough, you'll find someone who did wrong things for what he thought was the right reasons. Now not everyone will have these experiences but everyone will have their own unique one and that's just a far more interesting as a story mechanism to me. It's something only games can do.
GhaleonQ
Member
I will only add that Brendan Keogh is a good person to do this. Good post, good topic.
I'm not convinced by what I've read/watched of it, but we'll see if he can make a case through rhetoric rather than strictly drawing from the artifact.
Also, for any one interested in the idea of the game, I wrote a rushed-but-hopefully-enlightening series of things on a game that does this for role-playing games. The 1st is here: http://www.neogaf.com/forum/showthread.php?t=376513
The one thing I don't get is why Spec Ops is considered a sub-par Modern Military Shooter. It feels identical to any other cover based shooter to me, be it "high quality" ones like Gears of War or Call of Duty or "crappy" ones like Scourge Project or Quantum Theory. Sure I know of better games but they're all in different genres.
mocolostrocolos
Member
I understand the controversy surrounding this game.
I loved it, and while it has gameplay mechanics that we have already seen in many games, it's narrative and how the plot develops in the end depending on the decisions you take, is something that should be taken to account for future games.
It didn't surprise too much the plot, but how it was developed.
I loved it, and while it has gameplay mechanics that we have already seen in many games, it's narrative and how the plot develops in the end depending on the decisions you take, is something that should be taken to account for future games.
It didn't surprise too much the plot, but how it was developed.
This is a key point, because Spec Ops isn't just a criticism on CoD games, it's also a criticism on the players of those games. A major theme of Spec Ops is culpability. It assumes the player is culpable in the horrible acts for going along with these objective in order to "win", but never tests that.
Walker has his orders to leave and radio for backup, but there's never an option as a quick and extremely anti-climatic "good end" versus fighting on, even if the rest of the game is essentially the longest road to the "bad end(s)" ever. Without the option to stop versus the temptation to fight on for the "win", the condemnation of the player is entirely without merit and Konrad's speech at the end rings hallow.
(And YES, the option to not fight has to be acknowledged by the game because the feedback loop is an essential part on an interactive medium. Otherwise it's just fanfiction. And NO saying "just don't play the game" is not an option unless it comes with a refund for my 60 bucks. I don't buy games to not play them. ...Steam Sale backlog aside.)
As snoopeasystreet said, Spec Ops is pretty much the same as CoD, but just in a different wrapper. It does that to critique CoD by being as ugly as it and holding up a mirror. But it's also trying to hold up the mirror to the player under the false and untested idea that the player will do the horrible things for the "win" and not because there literally is no other choice. GAF, show of hands how many here tried to shoot the terrorists the first time you played No Russian. Luckily MW2 didn't call the player a complicit bastard for No Russian or that game disc would be going out the window.
If you feel all of these games are identical, wouldn't that suggest that you just don't care much about the genre?
To say that the way Spec Ops contextualizes what happens during gameplay is merely "aesthetic" really just shows a lack of regard for storytelling in gaming as a whole.
No logical person would describe the differences between The Green Berets and Platoon as merely cosmetic since they both are about the Vietnam war, so why do it with a game? The way a story handles its subject matter is important, and shouldn't just be scoffed at as meaningless. Hell, this is the first time I've ever heard someone even suggest that it was.
Last time I checked the battle of Guadalcanal happened in WW2
I didn't really play Spec Ops: The line as a critique of other modern millitary FPSes. It felt to me much more as a critique of war.
The mid game moment where you have to make a choice between either saving the civilians or saving the CIA agent Rick Gould and how they both lead to the same horrifying outcome didn't feel at all like some sort of Andrew Ryan "Would you kindly?" commentary on player agency but commentary on how information and knowledge is just *not available* in war time situations no matter what you do and people make decisions based on incredibly inaccurate or incomplete information.
Fuck, meant to say Platoon. Edited.