BakaSmurf said:
And the players that have nothing but complaints about being rail-roaded into performing the act by Yager did? Finding the action you're forcing someone else to do morally reprehensible doesn't change the fact that you gave them no other choice but to do it. It MAY have had a HELL of a lot more of an emotional impact if using the white phosphorous was optional (this could have been easily achieved by having the mortar have regular bombs available for use alongside the WP bombs), but it wasn't, and the in-game and mechanical explanation for NEEDING to use it is hacky at best, making it very, very clear that the lead writer just wasn't up to chops for making the player feel shitty for something they did without literally forcing the decision down their throat.
And if you're going to try and pull that "YOU CuLD HAVE TURNDED DEH GARME OFF AT ANY TIM HURR DURR DURRRRR!!!1!" crap just say it now so I can cease attempting to debate with you when you choose to stick by that hilariously flawed argument... But if you are going to try a well thought out rebuttal that isn't just repeated half-baked spew by the lead dev that is on the same level of Corey Hudson's "artistic integrity" bull shite, then by all means, go right on ahead good sir. Otherwise, I won't even bother replying anymore.
How is it not a valid response. You could have turned the game off.
What I hate in these discussions is how people refuse to acknowledge that there is no way to
win Spec Ops. You play it to experience the story, to soak up the criticism it has to offer on modern military gaming, and to experience the commentary it has to offer on player agency and choice/lack of choice in gaming.
I will happily play through Spec Ops again. And when it comes to the White Phosphorous scene, I'll go through it again. Because I love what the guys at Yager did with the narrative, and how it plays with expectations of what we expect from interactive storytelling. At no point will I rail against Yager for refusing to give me a cop-out during the White Phosphorous scene, because doing so would not only rob the game of its best narrative moments, but it would go against the entire point of the game. At no point will I
win Spec Ops, but I don't care.
Your argument seems to come from the perspective of seeing the game as something to be
beaten, not something to be experienced. If you can get past that sequence without fragging the civilians, then that would allow you to win at the WP sequence, and thusly win at the game. Which misses the point- there is no winning in conflict, only degrees of losing.
If you want to play a game where
you the player can win, where you can beat the challenges the game throws at you, then Spec Ops is not the game for you. So yes, the best response is to turn it off. In much the same way that if war movies really make you feel ill or uncomfortable, it's probably best to turn off your DVD copy of Apocalypse Now. Turning a piece of media off is a perfectly valid response. It is also perfectly valid for a developer to give you the choice of either turning off their game, or experiencing it the way
they wanted it to be experienced.
There is no way that giving you choice in the WP scene could have done anything but undermine the narrative and the themes of the game. Therefore, it works best as a railroaded choice, something made clear even by the dialogue in the game itself ("There's always a choice." "No, there really isn't.") If you're going to throw a tantrum because the game never gives you a choice, I would remind you that the majority of games right now still offer little in the way of choice, and hold the player responsible for things they never could have changed. The entire central setpiece of Bioshock is based on such a conceit-
"A man chooses, a slave obeys."
And yet I don't see people getting upset about that. Stop looking at Spec Ops as something that needs to be beaten, and start looking at it as something to be experienced. Is there anyway round the WP sequence? No. But why would you want to? The experience requires that the player be forced to go through that sequence. Up until that point in the game, the main character, and the player by proxy, has been going under the assumption that they're the good guys fighting against the bad. The WP sequence spins things round, showing in no uncertain terms that
the main character is the villain, and he just killed the only good guys the city had. The first time I realised that, I felt genuinely like I'd been punched in the guy. Making the sequence optional would be a total cop-out, as it would allow the main character to somehow remain the good guy, which goes against the very story the game was trying to tell: that your average MMS protagonist is at best a mentally ill psycho with a hero complex, and at worst an outright villain deriving pleasure from the horror and carnage that war bring.
