Spec Ops: The Line;I now have PTSD.

[ClockworkUniverse]

None of the actions you do actually have any consequences because it's a video game with imaginary characters.

Well, shit. Guess fiction shouldn't exist. I'll inform my local library; they'll be overjoyed about all the space you just cleared up for them.

 

[Saika Renegade]

I don't get why people feel like so horrible when playing that game.

None of the actions you do actually have any consequences because it's a video game with imaginary characters.

I'd hate to see you people in a real combat scenario.

Empathy.

Players who are especially affected can recognize and understand the emotional breadth what another individual goes through, whether that individual is a being of flesh and blood or a construct of electrons. That empathy, in a setting as obscenely horrific as Spec Ops, is emotionally upsetting to some players because, even for a moment, they can think to themselves, "Oh my God...what if I -really- did that?"

On that last point...I suppose I would rather have an empathic person in my platoon rather than a sociopathic one. There's a reason that most sniper cadres try to select -against- sociopathy in their ranks, after all; it's infinitely easier to instill rifle skills into a person without them, than it is to instill humanity in a person without it.

 

[IronMit]

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.

For me personally, I was projecting myself onto Walker (role playing) and as that immersed me it worked and had the effect it was supposed to.

However when it ended I realised that wasn't quite it....Walker mirrors/reflects the gamer but you aren't actually him.

Or the disconnect kind of happened at the white phosphorus scene...when Walker absolves all responsibility, reflecting the gamer blaming the game or is this where a disconnect between the protagonist and the player happens and you realise this is Walker's story and not yours?

A lot of people complain that they couldn't opt out of the white phosphorous scene so they are no longer role playing and seeing his actions as their own. I'm not sure if this is supposed to happen or if the desired effect failed here because those players weren't caught up enough in the ride to go along with it in the moment.

 

[IronMit]

I don't get why people feel like so horrible when playing that game.

None of the actions you do actually have any consequences because it's a video game with imaginary characters.

I'd hate to see you people in a real combat scenario.

On that line of thinking why would you watch any movie, tv show, read any fictional book and or play any game?

 

[the clockmaker]

I don't get why people feel like so horrible when playing that game.

None of the actions you do actually have any consequences because it's a video game with imaginary characters.

I'd hate to see you people in a real combat scenario.

Yep, their ability to link emotional responses to abstract situations ('how would I feel if that was me') as shown by their posting a few words on a website shows an inability to cope with stress situations. Personally, I feel that their feeling slightly sad after encountering a sad piece of media is an appropriate response (while I appreciated a lot of the themes and scenes in the game, they did not personally affect me all that much). Now, I hope the OP is engaging in hyperbole with regards to suffering PTSS, but I don't see people claiming to have taken up drinking, disengaging from social life, acting with increased risk and aggression or generally indicating anything other than the appropriate level of emotional response.

TO give a comparison easily understood in a civilian context, I felt very sad after reading 'on the beach' (very good book by the way), but was still able to cope actually suffering through a rapid spate of deaths in my family. There are graduated levels of response.

And I would hate to see 99% of people in an engagement.

 

[Catfood220]

But here's the thing, you shouldn't feel bad because the game doesn't offer you a choice. Yeah, you thought it was the best way forward, but what if you hadn't? Tough, you have to use the mortar to advance in the game no matter what. You have no choice if you want to see what the rest of the game has to offer. It goes "here use this to continue" and then it goes "look, look what you've done you monster".

If the game had of given you the choice to take the easy option and use the mortar and kill every living thing or take ther harder option and you take out the enemy one at a time as you had been for pretty much the entire game, it would have held a lot more emotional weight when you you took easy option and it turned out to be the worst option but for the game to go "use this to continue...awww look what you've done now, I can't take you anywhere" is cheap and manipulative. Don't get me wrong, I liked the game enough to platinum it, I just don't see the point of feeling bad about something I had no control of.

Why is it important that the player have a choice?

Because the game is trying to get a emotional response from you based on your decisions and for the most part it works. For example, just after the water tankers have crashed and you come upon the guy who had been running the operation trapped under one of the trucks. You have the option to kill him or walk away and let him burn to death. The time that I walked away and you can hear him begging for death and screaming as he burns made me feel like shit. Yeah the guy was a deluded fool, but he deserved mercy. The same goes for after the hanging of Lugo and you have the choice to shoot the crowd or scare them off. When I shot at the crowd and was walking through the little settlement and there were a few people huddled in their homes scared. I felt bad about that too.

Both these moments made me feel bad because I had made those choices and could see and hear the consequences of my actions. Well done game for making me feel bad.

However, the white phosphorus was a fixed moment, something that you could not change or alter in any way shape or form, I tried. Because there is no choice, because it is simply something that you have to do to advance the game, there is little emotional weight because it is something I had no control over. I think that if the game developers wanted that scene to have real impact, they should have given me the choice as to which action I took. Imagine how bad it would have been if you had of gone, well just bombing these troops is an easy option over going down there and shooting my way through...oh no there are civilians. That would have made me feel bad because I would have made that decision rather than have it made for me.

 

[Shpongled]

But here's the thing, you shouldn't feel bad because the game doesn't offer you a choice. Yeah, you thought it was the best way forward, but what if you hadn't? Tough, you have to use the mortar to advance in the game no matter what. You have no choice if you want to see what the rest of the game has to offer. It goes "here use this to continue" and then it goes "look, look what you've done you monster".

If the game had of given you the choice to take the easy option and use the mortar and kill every living thing or take ther harder option and you take out the enemy one at a time as you had been for pretty much the entire game, it would have held a lot more emotional weight when you you took easy option and it turned out to be the worst option but for the game to go "use this to continue...awww look what you've done now, I can't take you anywhere" is cheap and manipulative. Don't get me wrong, I liked the game enough to platinum it, I just don't see the point of feeling bad about something I had no control of.

Why is it important that the player have a choice?

Because the game is trying to get a emotional response from you based on your decisions and for the most part it works. For example, just after the water tankers have crashed and you come upon the guy who had been running the operation trapped under one of the trucks. You have the option to kill him or walk away and let him burn to death. The time that I walked away and you can hear him begging for death and screaming as he burns made me feel like shit. Yeah the guy was a deluded fool, but he deserved mercy. The same goes for after the hanging of Lugo and you have the choice to shoot the crowd or scare them off. When I shot at the crowd and was walking through the little settlement and there were a few people huddled in their homes scared. I felt bad about that too.

Both these moments made me feel bad because I had made those choices and could see and hear the consequences of my actions. Well done game for making me feel bad.

However, the white phosphorus was a fixed moment, something that you could not change or alter in any way shape or form, I tried. Because there is no choice, because it is simply something that you have to do to advance the game, there is little emotional weight because it is something I had no control over. I think that if the game developers wanted that scene to have real impact, they should have given me the choice as to which action I took. Imagine how bad it would have been if you had of gone, well just bombing these troops is an easy option over going down there and shooting my way through...oh no there are civilians. That would have made me feel bad because I would have made that decision rather than have it made for me.

The only decision of yours the game really cares is about is your decision to play a game, and continue playing a game involving the constant slaughter of civilians and allied soldiers, despite your conscious kicking in and going "hey, that wasn't a very nice thing to do". It doesn't matter if you blame yourself for doing it, which you shouldn't and which the game tells you not too, just as long as you thought for a second that what you were actually doing in the game was pretty damn horrific.

As for the white phosphorus stuff, sometimes there is no choice in life, sometimes things just have to happen that way, even if it's less than ideal. The game allowing you to take the completely unrealistic but genre standard route of you and your 2 buddies shooting your way through a crowd of several hundred soldiers at once just to be the heroes not taking the easy way out like 99.99% of the people in this world would would defeat the point. Obviously it's all a bit unrealistic but it is fiction, give it a break. The Walking Dead would hardly have been the same game if there was one option to just not ...(what happens to you near the end)... would it. Many things in fiction are quite contrived, once you can get over that you're on to a winner.

 

[elvor0]

I only paid 7USD for this game and I am glad. I was utterly disgusted by SpecOps: The Line.

It was mostly the portrayal of the Special Forces soldiers that bothered me. Those are the most elite, badass warriors America can offer. To get to the point where they are sent on a highly dangerous mission like that, they need a mind made of steel. They need to be able to overcome the most horrific of situations. The way they broke down, the way they were downright unprofessional, was highly disrespectful to the real Special Forces.

I also did not feel bad for a single decision in the game. They did what needed to be done to get on with their mission. Anyone who is shocked by anything that happened in the game needs to open a history book about WW1 or WW2. Watch a video of the mountains of dead jews. That's true horror. This game was an insult and a pathetic attempt to manipulate the emotions of people.

It wasn't supposed to be directed at or "representing" the special forces though, it was directed at the Modern Military Shooter(MMS), which themselves don't accurately represent the special forces. Y'know that line, "You came here because you wanted to be something you're not; a hero"? The story not only relies on the player putting themselves in Walkers shoes while they're playing, but also on the fact that people playing it when it came out wouldn't be aware of the hype and stuff, or what they were getting into. They would be getting into the game because they want to shoot shit, and pretend to be the manly man saving mumbai from the terrorists.

It's one of those games that you just can't tell people about at all when telling them to play it, otherwise they develop unrealistic expectations, or it ruins the point of the game. It was a critique on the MMS, in that people play it to feel heroic, saving the world etc etc, when in reality you're just as bad as the people you're fighting, the entire point of the game is summed up in that line, "You came here because you wanted to be something you're not; a hero", that isn't directed at Walker, it's directed at YOU, the player. Those terrorists weren't terrorists, they were actually freedom fighters and protectors of the innocent, looking after the civilians, but you don't question that, of /course/ they're terrorists, they're wearing head towels, middle eastern looks and are carrying AK-47s.

You're right, the game isn't as horrific as some of the things that happened in WW1/2, but that isn't its focus, and neither is the MMS, it's the here and now, and it was directing its ire at the glorification of war in aforementioned games. There are heroes in war yes, but in the end, it's ugly, there's nothing glamorous about it, all you've done today is murder a fuck ton of people, and invent some egotistical narrative for yourself in order to justify your actions in a misguided attempt to become a war hero.

Not only that the game blurs the line of the fourth wall really well, things are said on multiple occasions that are addressed to the player, but work in context too. Plus there's the slow deterioration of the loading screen "tips" from stuff like "Get behind cover to take less damage" to "This is all your fault" "You can just leave now" (especially that one, which is supposed to be representative of Walker doing the right thing and leaving like he was supposed to) , and most importantly "Do you feel like a hero yet".

And look at that I've written a small essay...again ><

 

[MiracleOfSound]

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?

I agree with that, if it were an actual choice then yeah there'd be a degree of soul searching. But it was an unavoidable moment in progressing the game so my conscience was left clear and actually even felt a bit pissed at the game for trying to trick me into feeling bad.

 

[Eppy (Bored)]

Because the game is trying to get a emotional response from you based on your decisions and for the most part it works. For example, just after the water tankers have crashed and you come upon the guy who had been running the operation trapped under one of the trucks. You have the option to kill him or walk away and let him burn to death. The time that I walked away and you can hear him begging for death and screaming as he burns made me feel like shit. Yeah the guy was a deluded fool, but he deserved mercy. The same goes for after the hanging of Lugo and you have the choice to shoot the crowd or scare them off. When I shot at the crowd and was walking through the little settlement and there were a few people huddled in their homes scared. I felt bad about that too.

Both these moments made me feel bad because I had made those choices and could see and hear the consequences of my actions. Well done game for making me feel bad.

However, the white phosphorus was a fixed moment, something that you could not change or alter in any way shape or form, I tried. Because there is no choice, because it is simply something that you have to do to advance the game, there is little emotional weight because it is something I had no control over. I think that if the game developers wanted that scene to have real impact, they should have given me the choice as to which action I took. Imagine how bad it would have been if you had of gone, well just bombing these troops is an easy option over going down there and shooting my way through...oh no there are civilians. That would have made me feel bad because I would have made that decision rather than have it made for me.

That's a solid argument. I have to disagree, because:

1.) As a work of art, trying to tell a story and provoke a reaction in its audience, the audience's participation isn't necessary within the story proper. A reader generally has no direct involvement in the contents of a book; a movie-viewer cannot influence the course of a film.

2.) There is certainly a precedent for games without any significant element of player choice. As much as I dislike the majority of them you have things like the Final Fantasy games where you're essentially playing a movie. Somebody, I think it was Yahtzee, used the analogy of a DVD that you have to constantly keep hitting Play to progress through.

3.) Specifically, as a deconstructionist work about a genre which is generally strictly linear it is well-within its rights to give the player as little choice as it wants (or as much). SO:TL is not an RPG; it's a deconstruction of a shooter, and is using the lack of choice in that instance to present (as has been previously noted) a different kind of choice to the player - this game requires you to commit an atrocity, and the only way to not do so is to stop playing.

You are certainly within your rights to make the decision and be upset with the developers; as I read it that's one of the intended responses. By its nature as a deconstructionist work the game is pointing out the moral dissonance of the shooter genre; this kind of game is a thing that millions of people will buy and enjoy, and it routinely involves committing crimes against humanity. The devs at Yager were trying to point that out, not mindlessly participate in it.

Interestingly, I think there are only one or conditionally two REAL choices in the entire game;

Spoiler

the first is, obviously, whether or not Walker commits suicide, and the second (assuming Walker chose not to end it) is whether or not Walker slaughters the marines at the end or hands them his shotgun and comes quietly.

TL;DR

The developers are using the lack of choice in that instance to make a point about the nature of shooters, and I don't feel like it's fair to criticize a game for being deconstructionist.

EDIT: The Extra Credits videos posted earlier in the thread delve a little bit more into this, anybody reading this who hasn't watched them yet should do so.

 

[IGetNoSlack]

A man chooses, A slave obeys.

That's the point of the game in a nutshell.

The game is linear and the gameplay is shit for a reason. If you really DIDN'T agree with it, you'd have stopped playing. There was always that option, that....choice.

Choice. A trait you claim this game didn't have. To just stop. But you didn't. You pressed on, and when the game guilt-trips you, it is in the right for doing so.

 

[Glasgow]

A man chooses, A slave obeys.

That's the point of the game in a nutshell.

The game is linear and the gameplay is shit for a reason. If you really DIDN'T agree with it, you'd have stopped playing. There was always that option, that....choice.

Choice. A trait you claim this game didn't have. To just stop. But you didn't. You pressed on, and when the game guilt-trips you, it is in the right for doing so.

Exactly. THAT is the brilliance in the game.