Daystar Clarion said:
It would have probably worked if it wasn't so blatantly obvious.
A huge mass of white specks all concentrated in one area? I fucking knew what was going to happen before I did it (no, the game wasn't spoilered before I played it).
I appreciate what the game was trying to do, but for me, it just failed at every attempt at emotional manipulation.
I wasn't trying to be a hero like the game kept accusing me of, I just wanted to play a good game, and unfortunately, this game relies on its story and not it's gameplay mechanics to entertain the player.
If the story doesn't grab you, like it didn't with me, then all you're left with is a really mediocre shooting gallery.
Pretty much this. Yager themselves made the comment that you weren't supposed to twig that these were civilians, because the way the game railroads you into killing them doesn't make sense otherwise. You can simply not shoot them, and you'll fail the mission. Which doesn't help their narrative overmuch, and their later criticisms of you for doing it fall flat, particularly if you played the game because you'd been told it had a critical and interesting perspective. Yes you can just turn off the game and refuse to play it, a point the game makes numerous times. Of course, if you want to hear out the entirety of their message you can't, so I guess there's a pretty massive problem with their message being contradicted by the way you'll have to recieve it. It's hard yelling at deaf people. I don't really buy the part about being able to not play it to avoid this either. There are plenty of other points where you're railroaded, but it doesn't have that same disconnect. Following orders, or Walker's crazy plans, working with the CIA, including the part with the water, that crazed soldier, the buildings etc. The difference is in this one, you get time to think, it's possible to see through it, and it's too gamey. When the game criticises you for making the lives of the people you're trying to save worse, or for mass-murdering Americans, at least that criticism works. I did those things, in full knowledge of what I was doing, and at the time, I didn't really care. I was just doing what the game told me, and the story made that make sense. It falls flat when I refuse to do something which in the context of the game should not be a failure state, and which in the context of the narrative, constitutes a decision which the narrators would presumably approve of, so that the developers can criticise me for a position I don't actually hold, and construct an entire narrative around something that I did so that I could hear what they had to say. It's like showing up for a lecture, and having the lecturer curb stomp you to make you show up to the lecture. It's fucking stupid. It's the Bono of video games.
And while the game tries not to cheat, they do take advantage of the Walker-is-crazy/Unreliable Narrator thing several other times, and the game would have done well to exploit this. Because when the player chooses not to shoot the civilians with the mortar, that shouldn't result in a game over. There are other points in the game where you're given similar choices, and there are peaceful solutions, and some of these are really excellent (Particularly the mob scene). The game gives you the choice immediately before: You can refuse the white phosphorous, and try to shoot your way through. You'll die, but you can try. The game gives you the choice, if only for a moment. Hell, if they mixed the soldiers with civilians, or had the soldiers retreating through them, I probably would have killed them all and not noticed.
I played the game for their narrative on games and choice. The constant "DO YOU FEEL LIKE A HERO YET?" BS that you encounter later was incredibly annoying, since I was not playing it in a mindset that needed to be told how horrific everything was. Instead you get lambasted, even if you're agreeing in part, or whole with their message, which I think would have to be the only reason someone would continue with the game. When the game starts trying to make you feel like a monster, because you want to hear what the game has to say, and you don't give two shits about Gears of War in Modern Warfare's clothes, and you're left thinking that you've put more thought into the message of the game than the devs? That's a massive failure.
Honestly, I think SO: The Line does a really shitty job of the criticism it does, and especially the games it criticises, which it doesn't even manage to replicate on a visual level. The reason it's so good is the absence of anything better, of any navel gazing at all from developers about shooters. It's great criticism, only because there is no criticism.
