Why Spec Ops: The Line Mattered 

I had the chance to talk to Nolan North at a con, and he said that Captain Walker was undoubtedly his most "underrated" role in terms of fan recognition. He told me he thinks about his work on that game at least once a week.

One of my favorite memories of this game was after the terrible phosphorous scene, I played the next few missions. I wasn't really paying attention because my mind was still on how I and my team just murdered a bunch of civilians. I was just playing like a zombie, going through the motions. My roommate walked in and says "Oh, you're playing another hero war game? Whatever...", and just walks to her room. Then a loading screen pops up as I had just finished a scene. And written on the bottom of the screen was "Do you feel like a hero yet?" The first time a game had ever successfully taunted me. I turned off the game and went outside for a walk.

“Expiring licenses” are 2 words that make me fear for the eventual digital only distribution of video games as we’ve witnessed game publishers and the big console creators do not care about preserving their own art……all other forms of art are preserved for future generations to enjoy but not games for some reason

You make a movie, you pay for a licensed song, and the movie gets to live forever. You make a video game, you pay for a licensed song, and it's only a matter of time before it's scrubbed off the internet. None of this bullshit is fair. This is exactly why people pirate everything.

The way media can just be made unavailable (at least via official means) is disconcerting. It once again shows that preservation, even in legal grey areas, is important.

I've played Spec Ops : The Line when it came out. I was 20, and I had the idea that I could write a book about a civil war for water in a Dubai covered in sand after disastrous sandstorms. So when I saw that the game set up was exactly what I had in mine i bought it, just to see what they did with it. And I do believe that this game, that left me with such a sense of awe and dread by the end did actually deeply modify my perception of what I was playing. It did make me realize how much people I was killing in Assassin's Creed, how much detachment I had regarding killing humans in video game and etc. As I continued to grow up It became genuinely hard for me not to feel a bit disgusted by some titles, and it oriented my choices of game towards way more family friendly titles. Actually, now that I think about it, Spec Ops : The Line is in fact the last military shooter I ever played. It didn't happened overnight like I had some kind of holy revelation, but yeah Spec Ops : The Line did revolutionize my personnal approach toward the medium and what I looked for in video games.

"Do you feel like a hero yet?"

I remember vividly this game, not for the phosphore scene but for a gameplay moment You just went through a long and exhausting gun fight, you're walking in a corridor then suddenly something moves and sprints towards you. You shoot, it drops dead, and your teammates start yelling "what are you doing ?". You just shot a civilian. Not in a cutscenes, you're the one who pulled the trigger I honestly had to take a pause after this moment because it was so brilliantly done I felt at a small scale how civilian's casualties can happen

The part that made me go "oh, hmmm.." is not the phosphorus scene, it's a part near the end where I went through a window and immediately shot a guy before he had the time to get his weapon. Then the narrator in the earpiece said something like "Why would you do that? He was not armed" and the character answers like "how do you know that" or something like that, and it was at that point that I realized the narrator was actually speaking to me, the player, and not the in-game character.

Do they want us to pirate games or something?

From what I understand, it's being removed because the licensing for certain songs used in the game is coming to an end. Here's what I don't get, when you pay the licensing fee to have a song in your movie, the song is part of the movie forever. Why isn't this also the case for video games?

One fact that I remember that showed how committed to the premise they were: the fatigue you hear in the main cast's voices over the course of the game is real. They recorded all of their parts in order, in a single day-long marathon recording session. As a result, you can hear their voices progressively break down over the course of the game until they're all totally blown out and can barely talk anymore. It's brutal to hear, but it really drives home how broken the characters themselves have become by the conclusion.

Honestly, I don't think the fun gunplay hurts Spec Ops as a piece of art. If you talk to veterans, many of them say that actual combat can be a real rush *at the time*

One of the most interesting things I've learned about Call of Duty as a franchise is that there's a scene in one of the games that has you walking through a destroyed highway strip that was bombarded by Russian troops, which was called the "Highway of Death" in-game, and this on its own doesn't seem too bad... ...only the "Highway of Death" was a real historical event where a highway strip was bombed in the Gulf War, and it was an event carried out by American troops

At the end of the 80s and during the 90s many game dev companies and publishers closed and the game rights they made and sold got lost in a legal void and disappeared. Moreover most players didn't care about old games back then, the retro-gaming wasn't a thing yet as all the players were young and they wanted the latest thing. Despite that, there was always a community who cared and preserved those games. They did things as incredible as creating emulators to replicate an old computer into a PC, and dumping old code from arcade boards, cartridges or cassette tapes into PC files. And they did a great job keeping the past alive. My point is, games won't be preserved by big companies, they will be preserved by players. And I know Spec Ops: The Line will be there, somewhere in the internet, in some abandonware website. It won't be lost.

THIS IS WHY ARCHIVES AND LIBRARIES ARE IMPORTANT! always save a backup, somewhere, somehow. information and knowledge is priceless and precious.

When I played it, I was one of the people for whom the White Phosphorous section fell flat. I saw in the overhead camera a large group of people, not moving, all bunched together, while a huge battle is going on a few feet away from them. I thought "those are civilians" and didn't fire the last shots but it wouldn't let me progress until I did. But yes that's also the point too. Yeah it works as a surprising reveal if you don't see it coming, but if you do see it coming the fact you can't do anything about it is just another bad thing you have to do because war leads to nothing but horrible outcomes. You're not making these decisions- the general, the politicians, the leaders who sent soldiers into a place equipped with White Phosphorous made that decision. It's not a secret hidden stockpile that is found and hauled out in a dire moment, it's actively set up on the battlefield with a mortar and targeting system ready to go. And prior to that point I had been happily using it against human beings already. Those soldiers were also people, and no one deserves having White Phosphorous happen to them. So I saw it coming and balked at it being forced, but that's real life. When it gets to the point that a country is sending soldiers into a place like that with those weapons, the outcome is easy to see coming. Seeing it coming and doing it anyway is the decision this country makes. Because war crimes aren't accidental, they are deliberate. That weapon is there to be used.

Those loading screen tips that start saying shit like "Do you feel like a hero yet?" and "You are still a good person." is what I remember most vividly from playing this game, and I would argue is one of its most effective subversions of tropes. Because those tips are always about gameplay mechanics, either meta conceits that are part of the loop or control details, things that are really zoomed in and very detached from characterization or motivation, so skipping loaded moral challenge messages directly to the player that way is quite explosive.

This War of Mine makes you suffer the horrors of war. Spec Ops: the Line makes you commit the horrors of war

It's one of the best "Heart of Darkness" stories ever made in videogame form.

There was a great video essay about Spec Ops: The Line that really opened my eyes when it came to video game violence. Went something like this, Spec Ops: The Line was never about punishing the player for there deeds in the game but rather asking questions on how they viewed it, the big one was "do you feel like a hero yet?". Now before I continue look at games like Dishonored, Cyberpunk 2077, Splinter Cell Blacklist and many others that give you the options of Lethal vs non-Lethal, now how many games don't give you that non-Lethal option? How many games gives you that opportunity to split you opponents in half with a chainsaw? How many games give you visceral gory feedback? As I said before the game SOTL isn't trying to punish you and say "Look he/she is a psychopath." But it's questioning you on how easy it is to pull that trigger against a pixel, was it easy using the throwing knives or the machete? Did you choose to slit you opponents throat or blow their limbs off them? Was it badass or gross when you snap someone neck and hear a meaty crunch? Was the reaction you elicit a bit of disgust and awe? Developers can and should always have Violence as one of there tools for game making. BUT the true measure of us (the consumer) is whether or not we acknowledge that line/violence. Example from personal experience: I remember being as brutal as a warmonger in Cyberpunk, I tore, shredded and killed anything that either I didn't agree with or cause I wanted too. Then for some reason I decided to be as pacifist, knocked people out, tazed others, avoided and used other avenues to complete a gang hideout without killing everyone, then after a week in I remember pulling out a revolver and splattering a punk's brain matter all over the wall, and to see that gore after so long of keeping people together, I wasn't mortified, or crying, just an audible "Damn." came out of my mouth. Spec Ops: The Line is asking as well as questioning, how far are you willing to go for an objective, and is it easy to reach into your heart of darkness to kill people if you know they aren't people/real people, where do you draw The Line. My Favorite Quote from this game (I might butcher it, so sorry) was, "We drew the line, that was our starting point."

The problem with The Line is that its main selling point cant be sold

The dialog right before the prompt that leads to the white phosphorus scene is so brilliant. It's obvious that it's asking the big question of whether simply turning off the game is a valid choice.

I really hope this becomes like Allen Wake where a few years ago it was delisted for "licenses" but got added back due to popular demand.

I had a similar argument with an old acquaintance over the original Dishonored. They were so *mad* that the game had all these cool powers and different ways to kill enemies, but then "punished" you for using them. He just could not see that power and it's abuse was a major theme of the game.

See also the entirety of the Drakengard/Nier series. For 20 years, Yoko Taro has been trying to draw attention to the fact that a lot of video games as we know them today are geared towards embracing the psychopathy of being a serial killer.

Spec Ops holds a special place in my heart because I actually learned and internalized something from it. "Your good intentions mean nothing, when your actions are monstrous" So to see this monumental game vanish because of some licensing BS... It REALLY sucks. :(

I know it sounds anti-consumer and very dumb in other contexts but I wish there were more Trojan Horse games like Spec Ops: the Line. Games where you go in, expecting to get the experience you want, only to leave overwhelmed, experienced something you didn't think you needed. AAA games with impact like this are very rare and it's a huge loss to the artform that they're disappearing for new audiences.

Here in Italy during the 5th year of highschool we have to create a "Tesina", a term paper of variable length about a random subject. I picked "Are videogames a form of art?" and Spec Ops:The Line was my starting point. (I'm glad I did, I would've failed that year if it wasn't for that damn term paper that bumped up my score to a passing grade) I used it to connect various school subjects like the obvious inspiration it took from Heart of Darkness and consequentially Apocalypse Now, managed to connect it to the "4th wall breaking" writers of the early 1900's in Italy like Pirandello and then science, history ect ect. I hold very very close to my heart this incredible title that is often talked about but rarely seen. It created a great atmosphere, didn't outstay its welcome and told a memorable story. It's a damn shame that all of that for most of the public will become much harder to experience. It is one of "Those games", those games that once you've finished you feel weird. Not accomplished, not happy nor sad. Empty? Sad? Nothing at all? Very few games can make someone feel like that, this was definitely one of them. I can only hope that some sort of compromise or other action will allow the game to stay on Steam and other major platforms for I can only wish for people to experience what a ride this game was

I was lucky to buy Spec Ops The Line on a deal at GOG just the day before it was removed from digital stores, since I had feared this would happen very soon, and I was right. I have had it on Steam for several years and finished it, but I wanted to officially get a no-DRM copy!

Dang, I'm a pretty tiny youtuber, so it was a surreal moment to see my video pop up in the scroll near the end! Spec Ops the Line is one of my favorite games of all time, so I'm glad it's being talked about more again, even though it's for ultimately a sad reason.

I think a lot of people miss that the game isn't about war, but war video games. it's not "what if we took a military shooter and then showed the actual ramifications of being in a war", it's "what if we took a military shooter and then showed the actual ramifications of being *the protagonist in a military shooter video game"* like so many games have you play as some group of good guys, then go through a gameplay section where you murder 30 people, then in the next cutscene you're the same good guys, then you go through a gameplay section where you murder a hundred people, and you go on like that without ever acknowledging your body count and it never effects your character or their crew. but in spec ops, you go through a gameplay section where you kill 30 people and then in the next cutscene your teammates are like "oh my god did we just kill like 30 people" and then you go through a gameplay section where you kill 100 people and they're like "holy shit that was so many people how is this even real" and it goes on like that until your crew fractures and you completely detach from reality. people complained that the shooting was repetitive but i think that was part of the point, to drive home that you were killing an unrealistic number of people. by the end of the game, you have killed nearly EVERY PERSON in the city on BOTH sides. it's not a realistic commentary on war, but it IS a realistic sendup of war video games. people say the white phosphorus section is forced, but how many video games require you to end an unimaginable number of simulated human lives as a necessary part of your interaction with the work? the game makes you recognize that the gameplay violence is happening in the same narrative as the rest of the game, and looks at how the world would actually react to the average mass murdering video game protagonist. I've always said that spec ops isn't about how video game violence desensitizes us to real life violence, but about how video game violence desensitizes us to **video game violence**

*”Do you feel like a hero yet?”* That very line shall haunted me forever to reminded me war is brutal to the point that stripped away humanity inside.

WELP! Gotta boot up my PC to continue seeding again, the ratio is gonna be crazy lol

I was able to snag it off GOG just before the take down. The fact that it went down without warning is just despicable. I'd say 2K should be ashamed, but we know that's not possible.

One thing i loved about SOTL was how it showed Walker slowly going insane without using scripted cutscenes that shoved the insanity down your throat At the start of the game, all members are tactical Lugo pointing out the enemies' locations practically and Adams informing you about his situation calmly On the other half of the game, specially after the white phosphorus scene, Lugo is screaming the enemy whenever something is going on, and Adams is always scared and angry But the best goes for Walker himself At first when he executes his targets, the executions are clean and fast, and he just says "Target Down" But after the phosphorus scene, his executions are much more bloody, like purposely shooting the target in the knees and then shooting them in the head. He also either screams, or tries to justify his actions by saying it was the Enemy's fault

This game had such a huge impact, not only on the industry, but on me individually. It was the first video game I played that criticized my actions in the game, like GMTK said, it was kinda groundbreaking in war game story telling. I was in college at the time, and spec ops helped me understand that games can be art, even if they aren't a stereotypical "art" game. It's hard to put into words how upsetting it is that it's just gone from stores.

I just checked, and I've only got 3.5 hours in SOTL, but it already left a huge impression. Early on you are fleeing through an old hotel, and go through the remains of a civilian camp. I'm running down a hall, feeling the pressure of being separated from my squad, and a figure runs around the corner. No time to think, just act. Shotgun. BAM. Bogey down. It was just a woman. A resident in fear, desperately running from the chaos of war. If it's hesitated she would have run away, if she'd been a threat and I hesitated is be dead. I had to put the game down after this, because it hit so hard that I had just accidentally killed a non combatant out of sheer stress and fear. Well done, SpecOps

I wish they would just patch out those 2 bits of music they no longer have the license for... better to have silence then no game at all. Also: there's another reason a lot of media portrait the us military as "heroes"/the good guys": the US military! Since shortly after WWII they ended up having a last say whenever a movie etc. got made and could practically direct/censor what american companies produced. The creators usually got "help" from the military in form of borrowing material/knowlege from them. But if your movie did not look the way they wanted it wouldn't be able to be made.

NO MATTER what media. everything should be available to the public. Movies, Pictures, Games, Music... There's so much lost media that i part of our history and a snapshot of the time.

I think I'm gonna yell (or cry). I had the game in my Steam wishlist and I really, really wanted to play it. I wish I bought it sooner and seeing this notification made my heart drop.

I really appreciate your courage in tackling such a sensitive topic, and the usual politeness and expertise with which you did it. Honored to be a patron of yours. Thank you, Mark.

It was really important to me as I played it in 2013. In 2012 I did a combat tour in Afghanistan. I saw and participated in some pretty horrible things. Put a gun in my mouth and pull the trigger to stop seeing them every time I close my eyes things. This game helped me, somewhat, come to a finality over how I felt equally for things I did as the things I saw. The ending where you put a gun in your mouth and pull the trigger acted as a proxy - a fucked up outlet for that impulse. Convincing myself the mortars I called for in Afghanistan never did what the mortars did in the game helped the mental bleeding a bit until I could get help and properly work my way through those feelings. In some ways overblowing things I did to the level of the things you see in the game helped me walk back from the edge a bit. I felt like that monster, maybe even rightfully so, but understanding the gulf between a monster and feeling like one is quite wide and there might be room to heal. I don't know, maybe it was a stupid game, I haven't picked it up again since 2014 or so and conflating my own problems with it was a silly way to realize I badly needed help. Killing yourself at the end of game should feel shocking not relieving.

Very cool seeing you link Professor Bopper's stuff, he's got be of my favorite voices in video game analysis/essays and has lots of thoughtful vides on game design, narrative, mechanics, and gameplay.

I played this game while home from work, having just had major dental surgery. I was sweaty, dizzy from all the painkillers I was taking that only slightly numbed the constant pain, and had to think about holding the bloody gauze in my mouth. I played the game for about 10 hours then collapsed, had a restless sleep of no more than 4 hours, and woke up and finished it. I felt about as sane as the player character when I chose to believe I could go home at the end. An unforgettable and harrowing experience.

Piracy is, as always, a great way to preserve art

It's cool to see you do a video on the softer art/narrative side. Your videos are often pretty mechanically focused (and excellent) but I appreciate the change of pace

Spec Ops: The Line reminds me of one scene in the movie "Brothers" featuring Tobey Maguire as Sam and Jake Gyllenhaal as Tommy. Sam was captured as a PoW and forced to bludgeon a fellow American soldier to death with a pipe while being recorded for terrorist propaganda. When Sam is free and returns home he has a meltdown due to the psychological effects of war, he's confronted by police who try console him, calling him a war hero. He responds with "I'm no fucking hero, I'm no fucking hero! Do you _know_ what I've done?". That line has always stuck with me and kind of mirrors the one in Spec Ops; Do you feel like a hero yet? Media like Spec Ops and Brothers highlight how military action is romanticized. Being showcased as admirable, heroic and veterans suffering the psychological fallout of combat are told generic phrases like "thank you for your service" by people who are none the wiser to what they've been through. For characters like Walker and Sam, they're anything but people worthy of admiration.

I am so happy I picked up this game before this happened. I bought it on a whim years ago, not thinking much of it, but when I finally played it it changed my life. I knew then, that I wanted to be a game developer.

I've been waiting for years for you to get to this game! I can't wait to see what you have to say. Let me share my story with the game: I was at a boring part of my life, not much to do, so I went looking for a fun game to torrent (don't pirate kids). I saw The Line trending, so I downloaded and started it. I loved the graphics, and the characters were more talkative than I'd experienced in other shooters, so I was having fun. Then it all started to go to hell... I pushed through and finished the game, hoping it would get better. I didn't know what to feel. I'd been gaming for 20 years but hadn't experienced anything like that. So I went to cleanse my pallet by playing Star Wars Jedi Academy, for some fun action... But I couldn't! I was at a point in the game where I was supposed to drop down and ambush some stormtroopers, but they were just chilling and talking about speeders they liked... I did kill them. But then I felt sick. So I stopped playing. And didn't play any single player killing games for years. I read a book about the game too, Killing is Harmless. It was helpful to understand what The Line did to me. It notes that the only way to "win" the game, is to stop playing. Anyway, the Line changed how I think about games forever.

The biggest problem I had with Spec Ops was that I had no choice. I don't feel bad about the actions I took in game, when I was forced to take them. I feel way worse, when a choice backfires on me in BG3 for example.

Didn't expect Mark to talk about things other than gameplay design and game story. Definitely should talk more about the moral side of gaming and how games affect the society. You are the best, never stop making videos plzz

I do not fear as much for old games, but I do fear for any potentially good game somehow coming out of modern AAA studios (hey, anything is possible!) since they are slowly moving to online-only, un-"backup"-able entries.

This game broke me at the White Phosphorous scene and yet I couldn't.. not finish the story. A decade later and I still think about it every now and then. I'm still an avid "shooter gamer" but I look at campaigns differently now.

Man, that hurts, I've never played the game seen it countless times in YT videos praising video games, always skipped those parts cause I wanted to buy it and experience it's story some day, never managed to due to other titles going in the way. And now I won't be able to experience it, like, ever? That's devastating

There is a scene in Hot Shots 2 where the heroes are shooting up the place, killing bad guys, the kill counter is going up like a video game and one of them looks at the camera and says "War, It's fantastic!" While done in jest, the meaning is the same.

Having no volition in a horrible experience can definitely be a stumbling block for the medium in attempting to do this kind of thing. So many developers keep grasping unto film one to ones in narrative conveyance but the distance between character and passive viewer in that medium lends itself to this narrative better than an interactive experience.

What I love most about Spec Ops is that the game just completely refuses to let you feel like a hero, like most other games do. It is, I'd argue, the only game where you play as an actual terrible person. Most other games, even when you play as bad people or you can make terrible choices, at least let you justify your actions on some level or signpost the choice as bad. Meanwhile, what makes both Walker and the Player horrible in Spec Ops is that you want to be a hero, which leads to more suffering than you could ever cause intentionally. But most importantly: There isn't even the option to be "good". Walker will always be a monster, what does that make you? Edit: clarified my position on the relation between player and Walker a bit.

Still have my physical xbox 360 copy (so glad it's backcompat). I remember liking it when I first played through it but hating how some of the choices you have are forced to always have a gruesome outcome, which by the time I finished the game I muttered to myself: "It wasn't my fault". But upon replaying it, seeing how the game makes you choose through actions instead of quick time events/dialog options, noticing subtleties in the levels/characters and watching retrospectives/analyses of it, I started respecting the game even more. It has some flaws, but it's a game everyone should experience at least once.

I did actually quit the game. It was at the “choose one of the hanging lads to shoot” bit. It wasn’t that it was more reprehensible than what I did leading up to that moment, it was the last drop. It felt like the game ‘had won’. I didn’t want to do this anymore. It felt like the point in the story where my imagined self would refuse to do anything but sit down in the sand and let whatever was about to happen to me happen.

I would like to add that even Metal Gear Solid, while heavily critical of the military industrial complex, nuclear warfare and the way governments exploit their soldiers and cast them aside when they are no longer useful, it still falls into the traps of idealizing soldiers as a concept, gushing over how cool military hardware is such as fighter jets, tanks and guns, romanticizing the ideas of military duty and camaraderie, and even downplaying the role of PMC's in sustaining suffering and warfare when it's the MSF or Diamond Dogs doing it. Also the act of tactical espionage action being as fun as it is downplays the overall message, that's a problem that is a burden that games will always struggle with it, how fun/engaging gameplay system is too much that just overwrites the intended feeling that the story wants to evoke.

I played Spec Ops a while back. I remember thinking it ran into the problem a lot of games run into when trying to do 4th wall breaks or meta-narrative, which is blaming the player or trying to make them feel guilt for things that are required to continue the game. Like 'turn off the game' I don't think counts as a valid option most of the time, because that's not a choice within the space it's exiting the space. You don't stop the in-universe war crimes in Spec Ops by turning the game off early, you just stop your own perception of them. I think the choices they give you and the horrors presented might have worked better through a lens of 'this stuff is fucked up' more than 'you should feel bad'. But that is my perspective. Either way, I'm sad to see it go, or at least become harder to acquire. Whatever I think of the details, it's definitely a thought provoking game that brought important issues to the fore.

I feel like I'm the only person who really liked Spec Ops but just completely did not care about the metatextual element. For me it was a really compelling story about a soldier descending into madness and desperation, that made some clever use of genre conventions (like the progressively more agressive and unhinged combat barks). I think that's why I can intellectually agree with many of the criticisms people make of the game's plot while also not being bothered by them. The story was always Captain Walker's, not mine, and I think Nolan North's incredible performance contributes a lot to making him stand as a seperate person rather than just an extension of the player.

As someone who grew along side war all my life you see things differently. As a kid me and my friends were playing call of duty and it was fun, we did it sometimes to escape reality as games should do. As I grew older and held an actual rifle - firing in training with tears in my eyes, it helps you see the world differently and especially those games. The actual noise, recoil, dust, heat, it is something that video games have never been able to pull off and shouldn’t (for obvious reasons), to see death with your eyes (something that a lot of my friends suffer from) or just hearing every other week that another friend around my age died while fighting… Its kinda nice hearing about a different game that open your eyes to those feelings without actually taking you to a war zone.

Despite being relatively short compared to some of GMTKs other videos, this is still possibly my favourite.

Specs ops the Line is important because "war is le bad". What an insightful game

Gigantic kudos for nailing such a huge concept within Metal Gear that's often misunderstood, and yes, Spec Ops is indeed a modern masterpiece.

Also I want to point out that reviews at the time claimed that the actual shooting was mediocore at best. It was compared to contemporary shooters and seems subpar in terms of how „fun“ it was. Hard to believe these days, but most reviewers really did not get it at the time. The title was a financial disappointment and never really got the appreciation it deserved outside of a few videos like this one. I found extra credits through their review of spec ops actually because they were one of the few that really „got it“ even back then.

To answer the question, "What does playing this game say about us, about the games that we choose to play?" Absolutely nothing! It's fiction. It's possible to enjoy wargames while disagreeing with jingoism and the military industrial complex.

Drakengard, Shadow of the Colossus, NieR, and Spec Ops. The OGs of game deconstruction if you want more games like this, love the video

I remember playing Spec Ops: The Line back when it released and being blown away with the direction the game went. I had played the previous Spec Ops games and always thought they were just pretty decent shooters. Then they dropped footage of The Line and it was now third person and I was like, "oh, cool twist" and then when I'd watch developer interviews on Gametrailers and such. The devs would focus on the setting, with sand, and how you could shoot out windows to let sand pour in and such. That was the stuff they focused on, nothing about the story, it was pitched as just another badass shooter. They did so well with hiding the dark turns.

I went into this game back in the day excactly as descibed in the video. It came to me via a friend along with a few other shooting games. I had no idea about its plot. The transformation of the story as you progress through it was subtle but I often caught myself thinking "what the hell is going on here?" By the time I reached the end, I was blunt. completely speachless. I remember it to this day as one of the best games I've played when it comes to storytelling. I keep recomending my friends to play it yet they think it is just another shooter, despite my attempts of telling them otherwise.

From my point of view, there's little difference between Mario shooting bananas at fantasy creatures and a soldier character shooting at enemy characters. Both bear no resemblance to what actual war is. It's not just about the shooting people part, it's about being shot, it's about others wanting to kill you, it's about fighting for your life. Also, every war is different, is going on for different reasons and really complex. Saying just "war is bad" doesn't convey meaningful information. Wars don't start because someone naively thought it was good. I think no medium can capture this accurately.

I really appreciate how you cite the articles throughout the video

Fun fact: after the phosphorus mortars dropped and Walker and his team were walking by the corpses, Lugo does not point to Walker he points directly to YOU the player.

good sir, i am speechless... hands down. not going into details, but you touched something very important here. in a very fair and significant way. much love. keep up the great work

All the people criticizing Spec Ops: The Line for not giving you a "choice" in committing the various horrible acts are frankly missing the entire point of the game. The game is a criticism of the military power fantasy, where your actions are ultimately heroic, and necessary, that criticism would completely fall apart if you could "avoid" using the white phosphorus. The game is trying to say "you want to be the hero so badly? here's what that actually entails!" and people got mad the game essentially didn't let them be the hero. It's ironic.

The DoD has policies to prevent anti war movies from being made. They have an office dedicated to liaison with film makers. Make an anti war movie, or act as a store front for one, and they’ll never help you again. That’s no subject matter expertise, no access to bases, etc. They will shut you out. Think about it - it’s been 23 years since 9-11. Everyone knows, even guys like me who deployed five times, that it was all for lies. What movies or games have we got that even touch on it?

spec ops and Silent hill 2 both really changed the way I look at games and what they "could" be. and both are now hard or impossible to play. It makes me realize how important game preservation is especially in this all digital world we live in where we don't really own anything. the problem is only getting worse and it makes me sad to think how many great games may be lost to time or eventually become unplayable.

The problem with Spec Ops: The Line is that the moral choices weren't choices. The game completely lost me when it forced me to drop WP on the civilians because I didn't have a choice. No matter how long you fight the enemies keep coming and you simply can't progress in the game until you do Bad Thing. As soon as I realized that I MUST do Bad Thing it stopped making me think about the consequences of my actions and made me feel like I was being beaten over the head with its message. I've talked to people about it in the past and they come at me with "You could have chosen to stop playing." which is a huge cop-out, but they are right in a way. I should have stopped playing because I hated every second of the game after that because all I could see were the rails I was on.

"Do you feel like a hero yet..?"

Won't be long when we all start singing "Do what you want 'cause a pirate is free, You are a pirate!" when it comes to Digital-Only goods.

That Truffaut quote reminds me of a story I heard that when Kurt Vonnegut told his wife he was going to write a book about his war experiences she told him not to because there was no way to do it that didn’t make war look appealing.

Spec Ops: Player, go do the thing. Also Spec Ops: You monster, player! How could you do the thing!? If you listen closely while ingame, you can almost hear the developers getting high on their own farts.

Spec Ops: The Line is like this weirdly beautiful mix of KA Applegate's letter to the Animorphs fandom, Miranda's "Oh, you think this has nothing to do with you" speech and that old deviantart pic that says "click for naked pirate girls!" that then switches to the character asking "what does that say about you?" when you do (I am not a perfect man) Spec Ops was never going to be a great professor giving an eloquent lecture on the merits of nonviolence - but that's fine because that isn't what it's SUPPOSED to be. Spec Ops places a multicar trainwreck on the screen and then proceeds to poke and prod us as players so that we're agitated and frustrated in parallel with the characters as they suffer. But why? Because we're a part of this, in a way - the game goes so far as tell us we are when it starts. Even if it didn't, we're a part of this because it's an interactive medium. Audiences critique media all the time. Turnabout is fair play. The point is to poke you and prod you and agitate you into doing some self-reflection. What were you expecting out of this game? Why? I feel like what stuck in a lot of people's craw wasn't just the deconstruction of the general hero narrative that these types of games regularly peddle in - but, rather, the gall to look past the smoldering wreckage and players on the digital stage; the sheer audacity to look directly at the player in the audience and ask "Are you not entertained?"

"You can just turn off the game." You can just give me back my 60 dollars while we're playing that game.

Hotline Miami has a similar point, I feel, but as I understand it's not just one specific moment that it tries to do this with There's hallucinations, character development that suggests your character doesn't want to be doing this anymore (read the infamous "Do you enjoy hurting others?" line)... but it also goes for the route of slowing itself down and making you take in the sights After every stage you have to walk back through the leftovers of the rampage you conducted - blood splatters, battered bodies, everything - and there's nothing to do mechanically at this time beyond just, walk from point to point, so you just have to soak in the fact that _you_ caused this mess, and you couldn't- no, _didn't_ stop in the moment to contemplate what you were doing ShyCorn did a great video about HM 1 and 2, would recommend

Wow, that's so weird. A few days ago on Reddit someone asked what game left you emotionaly shattered and I commented SpecOps The Line, which a few people agreed. Then I saw a post saying the game was being taken down from Steam and I already though it was weird that after so many years not hearing about the game, I got 2 things that reminded me of it. And now this, a full video talking about it.

Didn't this same thing happen with Driver: San Francisco a couple years ago? (Getting removed from Digital Storefronts)

This game will forever be part of my past and I'll make sure to never let go of it, beautiful things just can't ever last, how disappointing...

I had so many opportunities to grab it for $7. I'll just have to remember my experience playing it on ps3

Thanks for this hommage, really deserved!

This game is extremely important to me. It broke me out of the haze of pretty much only playing modern military shooter games. After that, I put down shooter games for a while. I still enjoy them from time to time, but thanks to Spec Ops I broadened my gaming palette and enjoy a wide variety of games and genres. I may have only rented it from the video store for a weekend, but I'll never forget the time I spent playing it. I literally would not be the same gamer I am today without it. To hear that the game is being delisted and soon may be forgotten just breaks my heart.

Remember everyone, Piracy is a moral imperative!

So what's interesting, ages ago I read about the "main" theme by the main writer, and the "secondary" theme by the junior writers. This is that the main writer set up the "players is bad guy" main theme, and the co-writers set up the "you cannot stop Walker from what he wants to do" side-theme for players who catch on and try to get Walker to turn back. This is necessary, because if the lead writer's message is "just turn off the game", the cynical response is "why did you make and sell this, are you giving me a refund?". Even if you catch on, there's nothing you can do unless you turn back right at the beginning, because once Walker realises Conrad is there, his obsession with saving him pushes him forward relentlessly. Walker will not give you a choice, you're going to the tower, you're "saving" Conrad. It was my only experience of the player character turning on the player in a video game, other than undertale.

To me the game fell rather flat, because when I came to the white phosphorus scene I suspected something was up and didn’t pull the trigger. “But thou must.” The game doesn’t account for/won’t let you not shoot, and then goes “Boo, look what you’ve done, you’re such a bad person!” So for me that scene shattered any sense of involvement I had in the story. The message to me was that the only winning move is to not play 🤷‍♂️

Sad to hear. What Spec Ops: The Line has that those other games mentioned didn't is it's subversion. They other titles you know what you're getting into by the box art or the trailers. Indie games like Undertale are almost expected to go against the norm. Specs Ops is genuine in what it tries to be and turns it on its head. Its one of those games where not having fun is the way it's meant to be played. I've never played the game, but I remember the discourse at the time. I always get it mixed up with Black Ops. I deeply respect what it wanted to say and appreciate that it existed.

For the vast majority of us the only times we really think about war is in our entertainment, we've outsourced the violence of defending our civilisation to other people. Confronting the issues surrounding even "minor" conflicts irl is often too big, ugly and seemingly without resolution. If you're not winning in the survival of the fittest then you may find the future has no place for you, your home, your people, ideals, traditions and dreams; all subject to the whims of the victors. So I think it's important that we do craft these experiences to remind people of uncomfortable realities. Exerting your dominance is both "noble, important and necessary" and "unmitigated nightmare".

one of the most underrated title out there. i never forgot how the twist of the story really make me awake at night thinking about all those past actions i did in the game...such an awesome game

If buying games isn't ownership, then pirating games isn't stealing