(SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.)
When Spec Ops: The Line starts it does absolutely nothing
interesting. If you have played a war shooter in the last five years you know
exactly what to expect. One small squad of soldiers who are likable enough to
warrant your sympathies when one or more of them eventually dies. Because
someone’s gonna die. Someone always dies. And that is the point of Spec Ops:
The Line.
This is war. Someone’s going to die. What Spec Ops doesn’t
tell you is that above all else it is you the player that will die.
Like I said, Spec Ops starts incredibly boring. Another
bland macho military shooter in a sea full of better competition. There is your generic Middle-Eastern setting.
Your non-white enemy insurgents. One “by the books” squad commander, one funny
guy and one black guy. To start off Spec Ops: The Line does nothing special at
all. And that is the point to it. To lull you into this sense of bland sameness
that you have seen a hundred times before. Spec Ops gets inside your head by
whispering little reassurances. It makes you feel safe and, to tell the truth,
bored. Sure there is an air of mystery about the opening chapters, especially
when the enemy switches from non-white insurgents to fellow Americans. But
everything plays out in the way you would expect it to. Your squads of brave
Delta force operators only kill the Americans in self defense. Walker, Adams
and Lugo were fired on first. The game makes that perfectly clear. Walker makes
the call that they need to figure out what’s going on in Dubai before they take
any official action. More self defense killing follows and nothing really
interesting happens.
This by the books formula of modern military shooter writing
is perfectly encapsulated in one event. Delta has fought their way into the
city looking to meet up with a CIA agent stationed in Dubai. They hope he can
give them the answers their looking for. But, oh no, he’s dead and an ambush is
waiting for them. It’s a videogame story telling cliché meant only to establish
that the enemy is really evil and you should hate and kill more of them. The
old bait-and-switch has been done in countless games before. What follows next
is, you guessed it, a thrilling escape complete with an entire mini-army of
troops for you to kill. There’s even a helicopter. During the escape Adams gets
injured. Not significantly, but enough to impress upon the player that the
stakes have been raised. The entire
bait-and-switch/escape sequence could have come straight from a Call of Duty
game. By now the player feels completely familiar with the game, its story and
the conventions of the genre. In other words, the player feels safe.
Only now does Spec Ops: The Line start to do something
interesting. It messes with the players mind.
My sardonic tone in the above paragraphs may have led you to
believe that Spec Ops isn’t fun. For that I apologize. The truth is actually
the exact opposite. Spec Ops: The Line is extremely fun. It has cover system
that doesn’t always work, but gunplay is tight. Squad commands work well and
the experience of killing a group of entrenched soldiers by drowning them in
sand is one that you will never forget. Spec Ops is fun. The escape described
above is fun. It has a face pace and even though the twist was predictable,
doesn’t make it any less enjoyable. I was sitting on the literal edge of my
seat during the helicopter escape. And even though the second half of the game
is full of memorable moments, it is this sequence that is most firmly implanted
in my head. Why is that? Because it is at exactly this precise moment in the
game that Spec Ops really starts to play games with the players mind.
During the frantic running away from a helicopter launching
missiles at the protagonists, a character by the name of The Radioman is
taunting the player. He starts by playing the crescendo of Verdi Deis Irae by
Guiseppe Verdi. Not your typical war shooter music. Compounded with that is the
fact that The Radioman is singing along to it. Then he starts chatting in a
frantic energy “Something’s about to happen”. The Radioman is on the edge of
his seat in excitement and so too is the player. His in game dialogue copies
what is going on inside the head of the player. “Something’s about to happen”.
But with the game running at a frantic pace you barely have time to register
what he’s saying, let alone realize that he was mimicking your thoughts;
expressing your want for violence and action as more than just a game fantasy.
You’re too busy playing the game to make a mental note, but subconsciously a
little mark has been made. And that is just what Spec Ops: The Line wanted. The
game has begun to mess with your mind.
Another thing about Spec Ops: The Line is that it is known
for its infamous white phosphorous sequence. Everyone talks of the emotional impact
it had on them. Walking through the burning, dying remains of enemy troops is
one of the most visceral experiences any videogame has ever offered. To top it
off, you must walk into and face the burnt corpses of all the civilians caught
in the cross fire. The moment climaxes in as the camera focuses on the burnt flesh
of a mothers face as she holds her child. By far it is one of the most disturbing
and sickening moments to ever to played. What makes it all the more impactful
is that you the player are responsible for this horrific mass murder. Spec Ops
was designed to have the white phosphorous mortar be your only viable option to
continue playing. You, the player, are given the tools and the game waits there
patiently for you to use them. Like most gamers, I didn’t think twice about
picking up the weapon and started firing away. Odds are you probably didn’t
either. So when the automated computerized firing screen comes up the player is
ready to get their killing on. What happens next is what makes Spec Ops: The
Line utterly unique and a revolution to the modern war shooter.
The automated computerized mortar sequence is not unlike the
AC-130 level from Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. That game laid the ground
work for the entire genre and any good competitor has a similar level. The
mortar sequence plays out in such a similar fashion that it obviously must be
Spec Ops answer to the illustrious level. But Spec Ops had a different plan for the
sequence. As the monitor screen for the mortar comes up you catch a momentary
limps of Captain Walker’s reflection in the glass. The mortars fire off and soon
the screen fills with white, the phosphorous burning them to death. And again
you see Walker’s face reflected in the screen. But if you’re really looking
beyond what you can plainly see, it’s not Walker’s face reflected in the
burning bodies, it’s your own. Just as
the helicopter escape was able to reach into the player’s mind, so too does the
mortar sequence. By showing Walker’s reflection as he looks into a screen full
of dying people Spec Ops: The Line is mirroring your experience of playing the
game. It subverts the fourth wall, reaches straight out and grabs you demanding
that you face the horror of what you had just done. Not Captain Walker, not the
developers, but you, the player. Spec Ops: The Line forces you to rethink
everything you knew about shooters and asks the most dangerous question of all.
“Do you feel like a hero yet?”
That is an actual quote from one of the games many fourth
wall breaking loading screens. The latter half of the game loses most of the subtlety
that the first half had built up. The game no longer whispers to you, it’s
already inside your head. Now it just screams: “This is all your fault”. “How
many Americans have you killed today?” “If you were a better person, you wouldn’t
be here.” Spec Ops breaks down the apathy
towards violence and killing that other shooters have accustomed the player to.
It directly addresses you and forces you to think about your actions. “The US
military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants. But this isn't
real, so why should you care?” Spec Ops uses a black sense of humor dripping
with sarcasm to impart you with a feeling of guilt. “To kill for yourself is
murder. To kill for the government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is
harmless.” If Spec Ops: The Line is
meant to mean anything it’s that killing, no matter what medium, is never
harmless.
You, the player that began Spec Ops is no longer there by
the end. I was deeply moved by what I had seen and experienced. It is a game
designed around violence, delivering a real and impactful experience. It
changes the player by reinventing the modern war shooter genre around them. It
breaks all expectations and forces the player to confront the hard realities of
a genre that profits off of killing people. In the end, Spec Ops: The Line
kills you, the player, leaving someone new in your place.
The final loading screen of the game said this to me and I
honestly cannot tell if it’s sincere or not.
“You are still a good person”.
