Writers love Spec Ops: The Line because it perpetuates the myth that games need writers
I know you are greentexting here but there is a decent point to be made. I don't think stuff like Spec Ops or Call of Duty should really be in the same category as Pac-Man or Quake, because I think they bear closer resemblance to movies than games. Heck, I'll just say it; these games are basically the same as visual novels with a timer on the choices leading away from the bad end. The gameplay is essentially disconnected from the core of the game. You aren't progressing through anything, you are having setpieces spoon-fed to you, and you pull the levers and click the heads that make it keep going.
In Quake, you make it to the other side of the bridge because the exit is there, and you rocket jumped there yourself as a sequence break because that's what you wanted to do. In Call of Duty, you crossed the bridge because your squad leader yelled at you to do it, and if you pause it's listed in the objectives, and once you do an achievement pops up and the bridge is destroyed in a scripted sequence so you can marvel at the jets flying overhead. How is it that people think these things are even remotely the same?
Now, there's not nessesarily anything wrong with that, if the setpieces are well written and interesting. Sometimes I do just want a big spectacle and I think games can compete with movies in that regard. But I think the idea that something like Spec Ops is a step forward for games is kind of silly. It's a step forward for the twitchy visual novel shooter sub-medium that exists these days, but it does nothing new as a game. It has no real mechanical differences from the games it is commenting about, as it relies entirely on the story to make it's statement happen. Which might make it good writing, but doesn't say anything about it as a game. They could have written a column in Kotaku and saved a few million dollars, if impact as a "game" is what they cared about.
Also, this is going to be exactly like dying in Call of Duty 4 or what Watchmen did to comic books. It will be interesting and powerful exactly once, then it will be copied endlessly by everyone else, who will promptly miss the point. I hope you guys are ready for three to five years of games "tricking" you into terrible acts and then berating you!
I hope you guys are ready for three to five years of games "tricking" you into terrible acts and then berating you!
The Walking Dead should get the honour of being the origin of this trend. They made a whole game out of giving you shitty situations to resolve and rubbing your face in the consequences.
My quip about writers loving it is only sort of a joke. I think a lot of the love for Spec Ops: The Line comes from people who are either:
a. unsatisfied devs in the AAA blockbuster arm of the games industry who spend their professional lives toiling away on bottles in an attempt to capture the same lightning another more successful competitor captured 5 years ago.
b. games journalists who have to care about the state of the industry as a whole (and as such, spend a lot of time covering samey AAA games ruled by stoic white man with a guns).
c. people who care deeply about how games interacts with mainstream culture and how they are viewed by people with turtle-necks and liberal arts degrees.
For these people "Gritty Modern Shooter: The Video Game" looms large on the horizon, seemingly defining games as a whole. Then, Spec Ops: The Line comes along like The Network, Apocalypse Now and Jesus rolled into one, here to redeem games in the eyes of God and blow the doors off the whole AAA Spunkgargleweewee parade.
However, if AAA Spunkgargleweewee doesn't really affect your everyday life, and you are aware of things like Journey, The Walking Dead, Fez, Hotline Maimi, etc, the idea that games even need to be saved seems silly.
The Walking Dead at least gives you two bad choices you have to try to pick the best of. Spec Ops railroads you into one action, then guilts you for it.
It is reminiscent of The Great Gatsby. [WARNING: Great Gatsby spoilers in service of a strained analogy]
For years, The Great Indie has been wistfully staring out over the bay at the green light on the pier connected to the house where Mainstream Public lives with Spunkgargleweewee.
Indie wants to reconnect to Mainstream Public as he remembers a time not so long ago when they were happy together, and he sees the shallow and hollow marriage Mainstream Public and Spunkgargleweewee now enjoy.
He even knows about Spunkgargleweewee's flings on the side with Macho Pro-War Military Industrial Complex.
Finally, Indie convinces his neighbour, Yager Gamers, to invite Mainstream Public over for tea. When Mainstream Public arrives, she is shocked to see Great Indie waiting for her and they begin a fling of their own; Walking Dead gets GOTY recognition, pixel aesthetic becomes common, serious people call Journey art.
The fires of love between The Great Indie and Mainstream Public have been restoked... but it isn't enough for Indie. It's not enough that Mainstream Public loves The Great Indie, she must also say that she never loved Spunkgargleweewee!
Spec Ops: The Line is proof! It lays the poisonous relationship she has with Spunkgargleweewee bare! How can she ever go back to him?! How could she ever admit that she could ever love such a monster?! Doesn't she know how he's cheating on her with Macho Pro-War Military Industrial Complex?!
Of course she does! She isn't a complete idiot. Yes, she loves rich narratives that don't rely on killing simulated brown people in Offbrandistan with fetishistically modelled licensed weaponry. But that doesn't mean that her relationship with Spunkgargleweewee is just going to be over, or that it was never real in the first place. She loves Spunkgargleweewee. She also loves The Great Indie.
Dejected, they go home. Indie lets Mainstream Public drive his big yellow car.
The big yellow car bit was going to be about Newtown Conn. and many people in the games press and the industry in general wanting games to own up to pushing violence culture and taking some of the blame (where as 5 years ago the wagons would have been circled) but to do so in a sort of jokey Great Gatsby analogy is gross.
To throw my two cents in, I think this game is important not because it points out to you how terrible shitty macho shooters are after you play a shitty macho shooter, but because it points out what games do as a medium. On the whole, games make you do things without questioning them. Game are complete manipulation, completely abstracting the actions that are going on in the game, and making you press buttons and keys and other control mechanisms in order to make those actions happen. Games can manipulate to do anything, even things you'd normally find morally repugnant, and Spec Ops says "Hey, this is what games make you do. Kinda scary, huh?"
To throw my two cents in, I think this game is important not because it points out to you how terrible shitty macho shooters are after you play a shitty macho shooter, but because it points out what games do as a medium. On the whole, games make you do things without questioning them. Game are complete manipulation, completely abstracting the actions that are going on in the game, and making you press buttons and keys and other control mechanisms in order to make those actions happen. Games can manipulate to do anything, even things you'd normally find morally repugnant, and Spec Ops says "Hey, this is what games make you do. Kinda scary, huh?"
Bioshock already did that 5 years ago though. I think a big part of the love Spec Ops: The Line gets is that it is a take-down of a very specific type of game that serious games people are getting sick of and retroactively hate.
Bioshock made that statement way before this game.
Yes, it did, but Spec Ops goes one step further. Also, lots of people MISS that that was the point of Bioshock's reveal, and don't understand that depth. Spec Ops is much more blunt.
On the whole, games make you do things without questioning them. Game are complete manipulation, completely abstracting the actions that are going on in the game, and making you press buttons and keys and other control mechanisms in order to make those actions happen. Games can manipulate to do anything, even things you'd normally find morally repugnant, and Spec Ops says "Hey, this is what games make you do. Kinda scary, huh?"
Unless you are broadening "manipulation" to being any cause that begets an effect, I don't think the generalization applies to all "games". And if you do go that broad, the same applies to everything, not just games. It's a possibility, not a causal outcome.
Jesus Christ, people. What's the first rule of complaining about something? Try it before you do. A lot of the points you're trying to make are either adressed by the game or irrelevant.
Outside of all the narrative ideas, Spec Ops was the best chest-high-walls-shooter I've played. The cover mechanics were smooth, the shootin' was satisfying, the set-pieces were neat, and I like how people died from a couple bullets instead of an entire clip.
Just finished The Line. For me it was a game with story about a man who wanted to do good, but ended up doing lots of fucked up shit. And for that, I liked it.
Well I just got the game during the Steam Winter sale (hey look, Midweek Madness.) and finished it in a couple days, and I have to say that I wished I hadn't spoil the story for myself. I enjoyed it overall and felt it did leave an emotional impact on me. I wonder how much more effort can be put into the single player campaign if resources were not put towards the multiplayer aspect? Like I somewhat understand the "unofficial" ending of just putting down the controller, you are listed in the opening credits as "Special Guest," maybe a another ending where the "camera" is actually controlled by a reporter who bails out of the mission?
I don't see where you guys got the idea of quitting the game being metanarrative. The closest thing I saw to meta comentary is the idea that the main character has to be completely insane for the narrative and gameplay of a standard military shooter to fit together. Beyond that, most of what I got out of the story had to do with the psycological stresses of modern combat, which was tied to the gameplay pretty damn well.
I finished Spec Ops. It was fun, I enjoyed it thoroughly. It didn't make me think about anything particular deep because I've read Heart of Darkness and seen Apocalypse Now, so the concepts it was presenting weren't particularly novel even if it's the first time (arguably, note Bioshock) that it's being presented in this particular medium.
To me, I was always just playing a game. It's what it was, I wasn't actually drawn in by the experience because I never really had a true choice during the game. It was always "Play the game" or "Don't play the game", which isn't a valid choice when someone has paid money for entertainment. Of course I was gonna finish the game, I paid money for it.
Now, if during the first half hour I had been introduced to the 33rd and been given the option to just retreat and call in what we found... and there had been a nice cutscene and credits after that choice, that would have made the game brilliant. Because that gave me a choice and a startling result. Then if I had gone back into the game to replay it and make a different choice, thus playing through the rest of the game because I had chosen to, I would have actually had a better connection to the characters.
Also, the rest of the allusions to Capt. Delta_Force going batshit crazy were very well done.
I think the "Meta game" that was going on was a novel concept, but seems to have fallen short. "You're not a monster." said the loading screen. Well, yeah, video game. I didn't burn people alive in a pit and cause a human flesh recreation of Virgin with Child. That was my video game character, Capt. Muscles.
Comments
In Quake, you make it to the other side of the bridge because the exit is there, and you rocket jumped there yourself as a sequence break because that's what you wanted to do. In Call of Duty, you crossed the bridge because your squad leader yelled at you to do it, and if you pause it's listed in the objectives, and once you do an achievement pops up and the bridge is destroyed in a scripted sequence so you can marvel at the jets flying overhead. How is it that people think these things are even remotely the same?
Now, there's not nessesarily anything wrong with that, if the setpieces are well written and interesting. Sometimes I do just want a big spectacle and I think games can compete with movies in that regard. But I think the idea that something like Spec Ops is a step forward for games is kind of silly. It's a step forward for the twitchy visual novel shooter sub-medium that exists these days, but it does nothing new as a game. It has no real mechanical differences from the games it is commenting about, as it relies entirely on the story to make it's statement happen. Which might make it good writing, but doesn't say anything about it as a game. They could have written a column in Kotaku and saved a few million dollars, if impact as a "game" is what they cared about.
Also, this is going to be exactly like dying in Call of Duty 4 or what Watchmen did to comic books. It will be interesting and powerful exactly once, then it will be copied endlessly by everyone else, who will promptly miss the point. I hope you guys are ready for three to five years of games "tricking" you into terrible acts and then berating you!
My quip about writers loving it is only sort of a joke. I think a lot of the love for Spec Ops: The Line comes from people who are either:
a. unsatisfied devs in the AAA blockbuster arm of the games industry who spend their professional lives toiling away on bottles in an attempt to capture the same lightning another more successful competitor captured 5 years ago.
b. games journalists who have to care about the state of the industry as a whole (and as such, spend a lot of time covering samey AAA games ruled by stoic white man with a guns).
c. people who care deeply about how games interacts with mainstream culture and how they are viewed by people with turtle-necks and liberal arts degrees.
For these people "Gritty Modern Shooter: The Video Game" looms large on the horizon, seemingly defining games as a whole. Then, Spec Ops: The Line comes along like The Network, Apocalypse Now and Jesus rolled into one, here to redeem games in the eyes of God and blow the doors off the whole AAA Spunkgargleweewee parade.
However, if AAA Spunkgargleweewee doesn't really affect your everyday life, and you are aware of things like Journey, The Walking Dead, Fez, Hotline Maimi, etc, the idea that games even need to be saved seems silly.
For years, The Great Indie has been wistfully staring out over the bay at the green light on the pier connected to the house where Mainstream Public lives with Spunkgargleweewee.
Indie wants to reconnect to Mainstream Public as he remembers a time not so long ago when they were happy together, and he sees the shallow and hollow marriage Mainstream Public and Spunkgargleweewee now enjoy.
He even knows about Spunkgargleweewee's flings on the side with Macho Pro-War Military Industrial Complex.
Finally, Indie convinces his neighbour, Yager Gamers, to invite Mainstream Public over for tea. When Mainstream Public arrives, she is shocked to see Great Indie waiting for her and they begin a fling of their own; Walking Dead gets GOTY recognition, pixel aesthetic becomes common, serious people call Journey art.
The fires of love between The Great Indie and Mainstream Public have been restoked... but it isn't enough for Indie. It's not enough that Mainstream Public loves The Great Indie, she must also say that she never loved Spunkgargleweewee!
Spec Ops: The Line is proof! It lays the poisonous relationship she has with Spunkgargleweewee bare! How can she ever go back to him?! How could she ever admit that she could ever love such a monster?! Doesn't she know how he's cheating on her with Macho Pro-War Military Industrial Complex?!
Of course she does! She isn't a complete idiot. Yes, she loves rich narratives that don't rely on killing simulated brown people in Offbrandistan with fetishistically modelled licensed weaponry. But that doesn't mean that her relationship with Spunkgargleweewee is just going to be over, or that it was never real in the first place. She loves Spunkgargleweewee. She also loves The Great Indie.
Dejected, they go home. Indie lets Mainstream Public drive his big yellow car.
The big yellow car bit was going to be about Newtown Conn. and many people in the games press and the industry in general wanting games to own up to pushing violence culture and taking some of the blame (where as 5 years ago the wagons would have been circled) but to do so in a sort of jokey Great Gatsby analogy is gross.
So... yeah.
To throw my two cents in, I think this game is important not because it points out to you how terrible shitty macho shooters are after you play a shitty macho shooter, but because it points out what games do as a medium. On the whole, games make you do things without questioning them. Game are complete manipulation, completely abstracting the actions that are going on in the game, and making you press buttons and keys and other control mechanisms in order to make those actions happen. Games can manipulate to do anything, even things you'd normally find morally repugnant, and Spec Ops says "Hey, this is what games make you do. Kinda scary, huh?"
Edit: Ninja'd
To me, I was always just playing a game. It's what it was, I wasn't actually drawn in by the experience because I never really had a true choice during the game. It was always "Play the game" or "Don't play the game", which isn't a valid choice when someone has paid money for entertainment. Of course I was gonna finish the game, I paid money for it.
Now, if during the first half hour I had been introduced to the 33rd and been given the option to just retreat and call in what we found... and there had been a nice cutscene and credits after that choice, that would have made the game brilliant. Because that gave me a choice and a startling result. Then if I had gone back into the game to replay it and make a different choice, thus playing through the rest of the game because I had chosen to, I would have actually had a better connection to the characters.
Also, the rest of the allusions to Capt. Delta_Force going batshit crazy were very well done.
I think the "Meta game" that was going on was a novel concept, but seems to have fallen short. "You're not a monster." said the loading screen. Well, yeah, video game. I didn't burn people alive in a pit and cause a human flesh recreation of Virgin with Child. That was my video game character, Capt. Muscles.