This game is part of the reasons why I don't usually play FP Ss.
"And guess whose fault it is?"
I don't know. The designers?
I largely agree with this review. Spec Ops: The Line (and your review too) really hits at the heart of what bothers me about so many shooters — the complete inability to interact with the world in a meaningful manner without killing people. It's funny because just the other day, my younger brother was introducing me to Watch Dogs and when I asked him if there were ways to help people in the game, he told me I could kill gangsters. So the only way to help people is to kill people then?
I really appreciate Spec Ops for critiquing that fact. I think it's a great game precisely because it makes us realize we (so often) don't really have a choice and really pushes us to want one.
^
"You must Consume this Power Fantasy until you are willing to cross the Moral Event Horizon for epeen, [Evil Laughter]"
- Generic FPS shooter under a certain lens
And people wonder why the FPS genre if the whipping boy of Moral Guardians and their Murder Simualtor accusations. Is a pacifist run even possible in those games?
The thing is, though, given that most of the FPS playerbase is more there to "pwn n00bs" online than anything else; critiquing a violent power fantasy for being a violent power fantasy is like critiquing porn for being an unrealistic depiction of real-life, healthy sexual dynamics: the target audience knows, the target audience doesn't care.
World Whosball Champion 1945-1991
I didn't like Spec Ops: The Line. Mostly because the developers blamed the players for something they made them do, as explained here:
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Trivia/SpecOpsTheLine
That's why I prefer stealth/action titles over first person shooters: stealth/action gives you the option to use non-lethal force. Games like MGS and SplinterCell even allow you to simply sneak past guards, if the player is skilled enough to do it undetected.
I wouldn't mind failure so much, if I didn't fail so much.Leave a Comment:
We didn't have a choice
Spec Ops: The line is a functional game. If you played a buttload of third-person shooters, the mechanics might feel a little stale (I don't play that many TPS's, so maybe that's why I enjoyed the game so much despite the gameplay being "average").
However, the story is a thorough and insightful deconstruction of the modern military shooter. The main targets being the sanitized, guilt-free violence and the idea of player agency, or lack thereof in military shooters
Spec Ops: The Line does not make its violence pretty. Your characters are still death incarnate, but each shattered life takes a toll on their psyche. The violence they both witness and perpetrate breaks them down physically and emotionally until they turn into savage, vengeful killers. While most military shooters make you revel in your capacity for destruction, this game makes you grow to fear it.
Not that you had a choice.
In fact, Spec Ops: The Line highlights this aspect of military shooters in general. For all the strategic possibilities military shooters provide you, in the end, your only means to engage the "enemy" is to kill them. You usually won't notice this because you're violence is rewarded and praised, but in Spec Ops: The Line, it becomes increasingly clear that butchering your way through the game might not be the best idea. The moral, right call would've called for back up, pulled out, tried to negotiate. But you're characters can't do that, because they're in a game where progression is based on the increasingly immoral act of killing.
In the end, the game's question to the player is: How complicit were you in what happened?
You were the one controlling the main characters. You were the one who wanted to have fun by shooting everything in sight. You were the one who wanted to see the game to the end. The truth is, your characters never really did have a choice, because this was the nature of their medium.
And guess whose fault it is?