History Headscratchers / SpecOpsTheLine

** Because, to Walker, Konrad is the greatest hero he knows. And for Walker to be an even better hero, Konrad has to fall. Specifically he has to be dragged down to the levels of insanity and violence that Walker is at instead of Walker working up to the heroism of Konrad.

** Futhermore, in the context of a US vs Middle East war "lose" doesn't necessarily mean the latter invades and occupies the former. Inflicting severe casualties on the US military, making it a living hell for the US via oil embargo and terror attacks, and/or forcing the United States to a humiliating peace deal could all easily constitute as a loss. War is expensive, but if the chaos in Dubai really did stir such a hatred amongst the rest of the region then they would be willing to pay that price... and the US wouldn't. And that is even before adding the already mentioned possibility of intervention from third-parties like China and/or Russia.

** Because, to Walker Konrad is the greatest hero he knows. And for Walker to be an even better hero, Konrad has to fall. Specifically he has to be dragged down to the levels of insanity and violence that Walker is at instead of Walker working up to the heroism of Konrad.

* I know that Walker was psychologically damaged and that he needed to project his guilt onto someone; but why Konrad? I thought that Konrad had been his commander and his friend once? Also didn't Konrad save Walker's life in Afghanistan? Why choose a guy you liked to become your own personal villain? Why not choose some random evil person from a fictional story or even some bad guy from real life?

** If you look carefully after you decide whether or not to shoot "Konrad" (though this is especially noticeable in the ending where you let him shoot you), you'll see that the tower is actually in an advanced state of disrepair (the pool is filled with sand, the glass is opaque and cracked, etc. Presumably that entire sequence was an hallucination.

* This is probably only a minor issue but why does the fake Konrad use the term "we" and why does Walker say "you" when referring to one another? Walker is technically talking to himself as the fake Konrad is an extension of his own personality, there is no we (the both of them) or you (Konrad as an individual). Is his mind so damaged that the line between reality and his own personal fiction began to blur, or did he just think it would be weird to say, "You're wrong me! I'm a totally stable individual, zombie Konrad over there is only taking a nap! When he wakes up you and me can confront him."

* This is probably only a minor issue but why does the fake Konrad use the term "we" and why does Walker say "you" when referring to one another? Walker is technically talking to himself as the fake Konrad is an extension of his own personality, there is no we (the both of them) or you (Konrad as an individual). Is his mind so damaged that the line between reality and his own personal fiction is beginning to blur, or did he just think it would be weird to say, "You're wrong me! I'm a totally stable individual, zombie Konrad over there is only taking a nap! When he wakes up you and me can confront him."

** If you look carefully after you decide whether or not to shoot "Konrad" (though this is especially noticeable in the ending where you let him shoot you), you'll see that the tower is actually in an advanced state of disrepair (the pool is filled with sand, the glass is opaque and cracked, etc. Presumably that entire sequence was an hallucination.

** If you look carefully after you decide whether or not to shoot "Konrad" (though this is especially noticeable in the ending where you let him shoot you), you'll see that the tower is actually in an advanced state of disrepair (the pool is filled with sand, the glass is dull and cracked, etc. Presumably that entire sequence was an hallucination.

* Walker finds Konrad in the tallest building in Dubai with a massive water fountain that is still operational right outside its front doorstep. Did no one find this water source and think to use it to survive? Even if the water in the fountain isn't drinkable there have to be pipes leading to a water source.

* Why would destroying the tanker trucks doom the survivors to die of dehydration? The largest tanker trucks only carry 35,000 liters, and there are 5,000 survivors. Even if they only drink a liter per day (probably not enough to survive in Dubaï), there was only enough water in the trucks for two weeks. Seems to me the survivors were doomed either way.

** Good question, but regarding the Emirati government, there's at least an explanation for possible resistance to the idea that would have helped cause the evacuation plan to fail. Namely: they are [[SingleIssueWonk fanatically determined to make Dubai pay off however they can,]] and the sandstorm coupled with the evacuation would in essence force them to write off the entire project as the failure most people already make of it. Naturally, this would not have gone down well, and even if they did eventually come around the sheer inertia getting there would have caused problems.... and by extension nicely tying into the themes of "Projects going overboad in creative and horrible ways" and "taking Altruistic projects without knowing the motives one has for taking it in the first place." Consider [[SelfDemonstratingArticle their extreme reaction to the game just for showing a ruined Dubai]] about just how irrationally protective they are the city.

** Good question, but regarding the Emirati government, there's at least an explanation for possible resistance to the idea that would have helped cause the evacuation plan to fail. Namely: they are [[SingleIssueWonk fanatically determined to make Dubai pay off however they can,]] and the sandstorm coupled with the evacuation would in essence force them to write off the entire project as the failure most people already make of it. Naturally, this would not have gone down well, and even if they did eventually come around the sheer inertia getting there would have caused problems.... and by extension nicely tying into the themes of "Projects going overboad in creative and horrible ways" and "taking Altruistic projects without knowing the motives one has for taking it in the first place." Consider [[SeldDemonstratingArticle their extreme reaction to the game just for showing a ruined Dubai]] about just how irrationally protective they are the city.

* Is it really realistic that Dubai wasn't successfully evacuated since the sand storm destroyed the city? America has had a long history of coming to the aid of other countries, we helped rebuild Europe and Japan after World War II for example, and that example is followed by the presence of U.S soldiers like Walker in Dubai. That isn't even talking about other countries: The Arab countries don't care about Dubai? Europe doesn't care? Asia? Even without the help of those other countries what prevented men like Colonel Konrad from successfully getting those people out of there?

** Maybe that's the point, original poster. One of the major themes of the game is how people can take on altruistic projects but not understand their own motives for doing so, and how this lack of understanding can lead to the degeneration of the original project into folly and tragedy. John Konrad ostensibly led the 33rd into Dubai to organize the evacuation, but some ingame intel suggests his underlying motive was to bolster his reputation after his failures in Afghanistan. Walker had at least three different goals (find and save the 33rd, save the surviving civilians of Dubai, kill Konrad), but the game makes it crystal clear that all these goals were chosen by Walker's need to prove himself a hero. In both cases their desires led both Konrad and Walker to embark on projects they were in no way prepared to successfully carry out, resulting in stopgap measures, overreactions, and death. I view Riggs, Gould, and the rest of the CIA team through a similar lens. They claim their actions were necessary to prevent a general war in the Middle East, but their fundamental goal was to prevent America from looking bad on the world stage. They might have been able to achieve that if they had simply broadcast to the world what happened in Dubai and arranged a relief effort, but they overreacted, assumed the worst at every turn, never conferred with anyone but themselves, and decided the best course of action was to incite the 33rd and the remaining civilians to destroy each other. When that failed, they killed the city. Riggs was far more lucid that either Walker or Konrad, but he was just as delusional about his motives.

** My guess is that Riggs and the CIA believed that China and/or Russia would get involved in such a conflict, hence the belief that the US would lose. As for what would provoke it, the only explanation I can think of would be that because of the Colonel's apparent war crimes, anti-American beliefs could be "justified" as correct and blown out of proportions by Middle Eastern regimes such as Iran, which would lead to regional outrage and conflict.

* Why did Riggs say that if the Middle East declared war on the United States that we would lose? I seriously doubt that they could defeat the American Military. Maybe if Russia or China got involved we would probably lose, but what interest would they have in Dubai? It seems rather absurd to me that a war would want to be started over a rouge Colonel's actions. First of all Colonel Konrad was trying to help the people of Dubai and his failure to save certain people was an accident, he had good intentions at heart. Secondly any nefarious deeds that Riggs felt were necessary to cover up could easily be counted out in the international community as the actions of a Colonel who went awol. The whole war business seems improbable both in the sense that we would lose and that there would even be justification for war in the first place.

* Why did Riggs say that if the Middle East declared war on the United States that we would lose? America has the Most Powerful Military in the History of Mankind, even the entire Middle East combined wouldn't reach even a modicum of the United States' Military might. The wars that were fought in Vietnam and Iraq could have been won without the need for a conventional war at all, the U.S Air Force alone has enough bombs in its arsenal to blow any country it wants off the map and that isn't even talking about nukes, and when the enemy fought conventional battles with us they lost every battle. The Iraq War hasn't been taken very seriously because we have been up against an insurgency, but if we had a conventional uniformed enemy threatening to invade and destroy us you better believe we would do everything in our power to stop them and they would be destroyed. Germany, Japan and China can all attest to how devastating our bombing raids can be. The Middle East would really want to screw around with us?

* Why did Riggs say that if the Middle East declared war on the United States that we would lose? America has the Most Powerful Military in the History of Mankind, even the entire Middle East combined wouldn't reach even a modicum of the United States' Military might. The wars that were fought in Vietnam and Iraq could have been won without the need for a conventional war at all, the U.S Air Force alone has enough bombs in its arsenal to blow any country it wants off the map and that isn't even talking about nukes, and when the enemy fought conventional battles with us they lost every battle. The Iraq War hasn't been taken very seriously because we have been up against an insurgency, but if we had a conventional uniformed enemy threatening to invade and destroy us you better believe we would do everything in our power to stop them and they would be destroyed, Germany, Japan and China can all attest to how devastating our bombing raids can be. The Middle East would really want to fuck with us?

** Walker was probably already traumatized by the Kabul incident and the white phosphorous incident simply caused him to utterly snap. The latter question can be answered by the MST3KMantra.

* OK so the ending reveals that the real Colonel Konrad was dead before Walker ever even arrived in Dubai. Who was commanding the 33rd Battalion then? Walker encounters soldiers that talk about the man as if he were still alive and still in command and Adams and Lugo interact with these men so they can't have been imaginary. Surely someone realized that their commander was dead and stumbled across his corpse?

* How do the snipers from when you "have" to choose to kill either the soldier or the civilian (or [[TakeAThirdOption shoot the ropes]]) manage to injure your teammates if they're imaginary? I could understand it if it happened to Walker (since it's his delusion), but ''Adams'' got incapacitated by them when I shot the ropes, so yeah.