Spec Ops: The Line;I now have PTSD.

[Bradeck]

So I just finished my first playthrough of Spec Ops: The Line, and I need someone to tell me I'm a good person. I literally feel such self-loathing right now.

When I was asked to make decisions, I felt I was making the right decisions at the time, in the context of what was occurring around me. Then, at the ending sequence, I began to reflect on all the choices I had made, and realized every single one was a horrible decision. Each one was viewed in a larger context, and revealed how wrong I was. (Trying mightily to not give spoilers here!)

I know I'm pretty far behind the curve here on experiencing this game, but please, someone help me. I haven't been made to feel this way about a game, ever. Even when I was in Iraq, the things that occurred over there didn't phase me as bad as this did. What an amazing story.

Unfortunately, in the end, I just couldn't let myself get away with the atrocities. Brilliant game writing here folks.

PS - What choices did you make along your path?

 

[Zhukov]

I still don't see how that game manages to make people feel bad.

Don't get me wrong, it's pretty good stuff, but why would I feel responsible for nasty stuff that the game railroads me into doing?

As for what choices I made... I tried to free the two hanging guys by shooting the ropes, but they both got shot by the snipers (not that it matters, since they were both dead anyway). I mercy-killed that one guy who was on fire. I scared the lynch mob away by firing into the air.

I actually felt good about all those choices. They were completely irrelevant though. The big event doesn't give you any choice.

Can't remember what I chose at the end, since I went and watched the other endings on Youtube straight after.

 

[Erttheking]

I still don't see how that game manages to make people feel bad.

Don't get me wrong, it's pretty good stuff, but why would I feel responsible for nasty stuff that the game railroads me into doing?

As for what choices I made... I tried to free the two hanging guys by shooting the ropes, but they both got shot by the snipers (not that it matters, since they were both dead anyway). I mercy-killed that one guy who was on fire. I scared the lynch mob away by firing into the air.

I actually felt good about all those choices. They were completely irrelevant though. The big event doesn't give you any choice.

Can't remember what I chose at the end, since I went and watched the other endings on Youtube straight after.

Well one person pointed out that you CAN do pretty damn awful stuff without the game forcing you too, mainly one scene near the end. I didn't know that you could scare the mob away and I opened fire on them. When I learned afterward that I had the chance to scare them away, I felt like CRAP. I pretty much reloaded my save and went back right away.

 

[Daystar Clarion]

How people feel bad after playing this game is beyond me.

Heavy handed attempts at emotional manipulation and mediocre gameplay pretty much cemented it as my 2nd most boring game of the year, right after AC3.

Glad I only played £6 for it, and I still feel a little ripped off.

 

[Thandran]

How people feel bad after playing this game is beyond me.

Heavey handed attempts at emotional manipulation and mediocre gameplay pretty much cemented it as my 2nd most boring game of the year, right after AC3.

Glad I only played £6 for it, and I still feel a little ripped off.

A bit probably depends on what you expect when you first start playing the game, in my opinion.

I played the game without knowing a thing about it and was quite pleasently shocked. A few weeks ago I played through The Walking Dead and after reading that it has one of the best stories, that it is a truly sad tale with heart - wrecking twists... it didn't affect me as much it probably would if I played with no prior information, like Spec Ops: The Line.

My humble thoughts.

 

[wabbbit]

How people feel bad after playing this game is beyond me.

Heavey handed attempts at emotional manipulation and mediocre gameplay pretty much cemented it as my 2nd most boring game of the year, right after AC3.

Glad I only played £6 for it, and I still feel a little ripped off.

A bit probably depends on what you expect when you first start playing the game, in my opinion.

I played the game without knowing a thing about it and was quite pleasently shocked. A few weeks ago I played through The Walking Dead and after reading that it has one of the best stories, that it is a truly sad tale with heart - wrecking twists... it didn't affect me as much it probably would if I played with no prior information, like Spec Ops: The Line.

My humble thoughts.

This is what I don't get, admittedly I'm only about 75% through Spec ops but I haven't seen anything that has met the criteria of "ZOMG" emotionally from the gameplay. Does it end with me having to wear my team-mates skin whilst stomping on puppies or something? Or am I just so used to certain stuff in games that I've missed something?
Walking dead on the other hand, that was genuinely the only time I felt emotional from playing a game I think!

Maybe it's because I just kept hearing about how "shocking" the games decisions are that I was just expecting more? Hype can kill a game experience Don't want to start a flame over it, but I just found the game a little... bland. Only paid 3.50 for it I think from GMG so can't complain.

 

[bananafishtoday]

How people feel bad after playing this game is beyond me.

I still don't see how that game manages to make people feel bad.

Out of curiosity, did you see Walker as a character distinct from yourself who you observed act, or did you project yourself into him and see his acts as your own? I don't mean the "choices" (the game was strictly linear); I mean everything that happened in the game.

I ask because after talking to a lot of other people who'd played Spec Ops, it seems like that's the big difference between those who were deeply affected by it and those who weren't. I think seeing yourself as Walker is necessary to complete the willing suspension of disbelief with a game like this one. Otherwise it just doesn't work, in much the same way that, say, LotR would seem silly and contrived if one focused on the fact that Middle Earth doesn't actually exist.

I had a similar experience with the game as the OP btw. The game absolutely wrecked me, and in the end I was incredibly relieved to have the suicide option because I was so badly in need of the catharsis it provided.

 

[Zhukov]

How people feel bad after playing this game is beyond me.

I still don't see how that game manages to make people feel bad.

Out of curiosity, did you see Walker as a character distinct from yourself who you observed act, or did you project yourself into him and see his acts as your own? I don't mean the "choices" (the game was strictly linear); I mean everything that happened in the game.

Uh... neither?

I guess If I had to choose I'd say I mostly saw Walker as a distinct character.

Thing is, I can't really project myself onto whose actions I have no influence over. Even if it's just mostly inconsequential dialogue choices a la Mass Effect, Human Revolution or The Walking Dead. That's enough for me to start thinking of the character as "me" or as "my character". Spec Ops didn't have that. It kinda tried with those few choices, but that wasn't enough, at least not for me.

On the other hand, Walker didn't have any defined personality that I can recall. You don't know anything about his past, his likes and dislikes, his sense of humour, or... anything. SO I really didn't care about anything that happened to him except out of curiosity. I guess I kinda felt sorry for him toward the end, but that's about it.

So Walker kinda floats in the middle for me.

 

[gorfias]

As long as you were really trying to do the right thing, I think everyone here still likes you fine. You do have me very curious. I've just started the thing and am liking it a lot.

 

[bananafishtoday]

How people feel bad after playing this game is beyond me.

I still don't see how that game manages to make people feel bad.

Out of curiosity, did you see Walker as a character distinct from yourself who you observed act, or did you project yourself into him and see his acts as your own? I don't mean the "choices" (the game was strictly linear); I mean everything that happened in the game.

Uh... neither?

I guess If I had to choose I'd say I mostly saw Walker as a distinct character.

Thing is, I can't really project myself onto whose actions I have no influence over. Even if it's just mostly inconsequential dialogue choices a la Mass Effect, Human Revolution or The Walking Dead. That's enough for me to start thinking of the character as "me" or as "my character". Spec Ops didn't have that. It kinda tried with those few choices, but that wasn't enough, at least not for me.

On the other hand, Walker didn't have any defined personality that I can recall. You don't know anything about his past, his likes and dislikes, his sense of humour, or... anything. SO I really didn't care about anything that happened to him except out of curiosity. I guess I kinda felt sorry for him toward the end, but that's about it.

I saw the "choices" the other way, actually... I mean, I totally see how they could come off as a half-assed attempt to inject "choice" into a linear experience without derailing the narrative, but I took them as serving the game's linear narrative. They're not meant to provide the illusion of freedom a la Mass Effect; they're meant to remind the player that they're operating under constraints (and comment on the futility of war imo.)

For instance, it was very deliberate that the illusory "save Gould vs. save hostages" choice that ended the same way no matter what was right before the WP scene and the Lugo: "We don't have to do this, there's always a choice" Walker: "No, there's really not" exchange. I think the choices were there to impress upon the player their lack of freedom, while at the same time affecting their mindset differently depending on which choice they made.

To quickly sum up my experience:
I chose to save the hostages over Gould because I was the "good guy," then white phosphorus made me feel like shit. The hanging scene, however, I refused and killed the snipers instead. This gave me a second wind, making me feel like I could "rebel" against the system and be the hero. This tied in nicely with the "get the water = save the city" arc. When CIA bro crashed the trucks I was fucking furious--I had grand designs on saving everyone, and he ruined it (in my mind), and I let him burn. As shit went downhill, I felt more and more that I'd become the monster I was trying to fight. This culminated with the Lugo lynching scene, where I was so mentally exhausted and defeated that it didn't even occur to me I could fire into the air. I let the crowd kill me, hoping for an ending, but when it just reloaded, I fired into them. This, plus the harsher barks and loading screen taunts, essentially broke any desire to keep playing except to see it through to the end.

You're right on Walker having no personality. Really, he's as close to a cipher as you can get without having a silent protagonist. (I think this is meant to make it easier to project, a la Gordon Freeman.) I didn't notice this until playing it a second time, but Walker never does or says anything in cutscenes that changes the story or the game state. All his lines and actions do is preserve or return things to the pre-cutscene status quo. In essence, "he" never does anything--the player does everything, even though it's a linear game.

(I hope this doesn't come off as argumentative... that isn't my intention. The game affected me a lot, so I'm trying to relate my experience and better understand yours, rather than trying to debate their validity.)

 

[Casual Shinji]

I still don't see how that game manages to make people feel bad.

Don't get me wrong, it's pretty good stuff, but why would I feel responsible for nasty stuff that the game railroads me into doing?

As for what choices I made... I tried to free the two hanging guys by shooting the ropes, but they both got shot by the snipers (not that it matters, since they were both dead anyway). I mercy-killed that one guy who was on fire. I scared the lynch mob away by firing into the air.

I actually felt good about all those choices. They were completely irrelevant though. The big event doesn't give you any choice.

Can't remember what I chose at the end, since I went and watched the other endings on Youtube straight after.

The choices hardly mattered, your resposibility lies in the fact that you kept going. As in, you kept playing the game. As you progress, things get worse and worse, but you continue on because you want to make it to the end of the game. And when you finally get there you realize there is no end, and that your resolve to keep going (to keep playing) is what caused all this misery.

In the end Walker is told all he had to do was to just stop and go home, but he kept going because you kept playing. It was the game's attempt to kind of hold a mirror infront of the audience. Whether it was really succesfull or not, I don't know, but it was interesting nonetheless.

 

[Sniper Team 4]

I felt sick, literally ill in my stomach, when I got to that one part and it was revealed what I had done. Because I had enjoyed it at the time. Yahtzee really nailed it when he said that you needed to remember your feelings at the time of the slaughter. When I was doing it the first time and I saw all those white dots, I was like "Ooooh, good-BYE!" and fired and smiled as I watched them all burn.
Then the game made you walk through your own handiwork, see the pain and death you caused, and I found myself shooting the people crawling because I couldn't stand to see them suffer. And then the game hit me with the big one and I had to stop playing for a bit because I was not feeling well.

 

[Bradeck]

Well, judging by the opinions expressed here, I am a bit of a dork, for falling into the story I was experiencing. I guess my only response is; What the hell is the point of paying for interactive media, more specifically a game that lauds itself as a story driven piece, if you refuse to take part mentally in the story?

It's honestly kinda dumb, if you'll excuse my saying so, to waste the time you claim to put into it. Who the hell cares if you're too emotionally numb to actually feel what the characters in the story are feeling? Why play it? There are multitudes of games out there designed for thoughtless enjoyment, where there is no feeling, no thought, just reaction to stimuli. Take any FPS multiplayer. Or Starcraft, or Warhammer 40k, or Civilization 1-5. It's somewhat like walking into a screening of Shindler's List and complaining that you can't understand why a German war-profiteer is helping Jews, because it's not realistic.

If you don't understand why we choose to feel something in response to this game/story, then I don't know what to tell you. I personally can't enjoy a game without a good story. Which is why System Shock 2 will always be better than X-Com, or Dishonored, Pokemon Whatevercolor, or Farcry.

 

[Jabberwock King]

An interpretation I came up with after I first got to the helicopter sequence (I didn't finish in one session, the dialogue was disturbing my family and it was late at night) was that we were being directly shown how people are flawed, and that if we can't overcome those flaws when it matters most they will drag us into being the kind of monstrosities we renounce. Likely wouldn't have gotten that idea had I gone on, it seems right to some extent, though the theme of "stopping" may undermine that idea.

 

[Jzcaesar]

Well, judging by the opinions expressed here, I am a bit of a dork, for falling into the story I was experiencing. I guess my only response is; What the hell is the point of paying for interactive media, more specifically a game that lauds itself as a story driven piece, if you refuse to take part mentally in the story?

No, you're not the only one. I can understand the people who say they don't feel bad for decision the game basically made you make, but the reason why the game worked for me was that, like you, I would've made the same decisions even if the game had made me choose. Because, like you, I desperately wanted to be the hero that Walker wanted to be. And, so the game brilliantly accomplished its objective of making me feel terrible.

The title of your thread describes how I would feel about this game. I was shell-shocked after finishing it.

And then the game hit me with the big one and I had to stop playing for a bit because I was not feeling well.

Yeah, that about sums it up for me.

 

[Woodsey]

It's nicely done, but it's also particularly navel-gazing and has to castrate its own gameplay in order to make its point. It's decent game-writing, but already I kind of feel as if the volume of praise Spec Ops has been given is leading to copycat stuff and weak defences of dodgy storytelling.

In the grand history of things, it won't matter.

 

[Zeldias]

It's nicely done, but it's also particularly navel-gazing and has to castrate its own gameplay in order to make its point. It's decent game-writing, but already I kind of feel as if the volume of praise Spec Ops has been given is leading to copycat stuff and weak defences of dodgy storytelling.

In the grand history of things, it won't matter.

You could say that about any ambitious (avant garde?) work, though. "Now that Ginsberg wrote Howl, shitty poets can just pretend they're trying to write something like that as a defense for their shitty poetry." Or Visions of Cody or Humanimal or Yellow Back Radio Broke-Down or whatever.

Navel-gazing? Why'd you find it to be that way? I actually found the game to be pregnant with some expansive criticisms. I definitely found it less navel-gazing than almost all the other shooters I've played (not that that's a defense of Spec Ops; just saying that I found it to have a lot to say outside of itself). As far as the gameplay, I found it decent; fun enough for me to play through the entire game in a single sitting, anyway. I don't really get what's supposed to be so bad about it. There was a lot of token stuff in the game (kill enemies with sand bits, for example) but otherwise, I found it pretty fun and decent. I don't play many shooters these days though, so maybe I don't have the most up-to-date thoughts on the subject and need to be enlightened. I just know I pointed the cursor, clicked, the bad guys fell down, and I felt that the weapons gave me decent feedback (played on PC, if that makes a difference).