#SPEC OPS THE LINE ART CODE#

I still have issues with how this scene in particular was executed. I tussled over putting this image in this piece. Up until this moment, you have hints and inclinations that the people who have sent you here to do these things - it’s their fault, not yours. I dread to say, but I liked what happened here. Nolan North’s voice frames the evolution of a character going from the typical soldier to a battle-worn monster. 'It's Not Your Fault.' - a loading screen from Spec Ops: The LineĪn abrupt scene of citizens in Dubai exposed to white phosphorus while a radio far off in your auditory periphery blares music fit for a heroic Vietnam War film highlight reel. The wise men and women of Yager constructed this sandstorm laden world of Dubai to deconstruct the senses and obstruct the ideal vision I’d cultivated over years of Call of Duty and Battlefield play. Multiplayer games where one mistake results in reading a quote by Donald Rumsfield while waiting to respawn anew - ready to kill again. And I do find it quite odd that Yager and 2K took on the task of educating a generally male audience to the immediate effects of PTSD. Beyond being a black man in America, I don’t get to experience what active soldiers experience. It’s just that you have to get to those moments by slaughtering and shooting the standard wave of bad guys. Spec Ops: The Line wants you to feel absolutely awful for what you are doing and why you are doing it. When in reality, it’s an experience filled with just as much game design turmoil as it has intentional player punishment. This divisive game, that, on face value looks like a standard “shoot dudes” game. It was an uphill battle that only bore fruit critically, instead of financially. Both dealing with a game franchise that suffered from failing sales and general disinterest from the vast gaming populous. Writers and team leads from Rockstar Vancouver coupled with an eager development team from Berlin. Some of it I wonder if they knew, even abstractly, would be a reaction from the player.

#SPEC OPS THE LINE ART CODE#

I’m projecting so many folded edges of hidden notes within the code of this game - most of it, my own inclinations of what I want this game to be. Well, not the ‘turning off the console part.’ The part where I should “feel” something about killing polygons - ones and zeros that were given life by a game studio. There were difficulty ramp ups in Spec Ops where I seriously wanted to stop killing soldiers and just turn my console off. In Spec Ops: The Line, you occasionally stick to your cover, almost to your soldier’s detriment while a horde of refugees and soldiers lob grenades, sneak around cover, making no place feel THAT safe. In Resident Evil games, the fumbling controls supposedly ‘add’ to the experience of avoiding a mansion of zombies. There is this part of my brain, I like to call it the “Resident Evil 2 - Tank Controls Segment.” It’s where I rationalize poor mechanics of a game adding to the intent of the crafted experience. However, there are, mechanically - unfun aspects of The Line where I struggle to criticize. The Call of Duty’s and the Battlefields of our current murder-positive gaming zeitgeist serve their purpose. This game is isolating itself by pointing out the foibles of its more well known contemporaries. The lead game writer, Walt Williams, intentionally crafts scenarios where the experienced player is left thinking if giant kill rooms and spawn closets are making fun of the common trope found in first-person shooters, or merely an homage? As the in-game difficulty and enemy A.I. Hoping, in the future these words serve to get us closer to the actual debate we should be having, socially. I can only hope these words function as a jumping off point. What happens when a game like Spec Ops: The Line comments on soldiers sent to wars they weren’t mentally equipped to fight? What happens when we acknowledge the long-term, and often - immediate, effects of killing in the name of country and how can a game, effectively, pull that off? There are so many games out there telling the player that killing can be without conscience and is often better that way. I feel, based on the game’s ‘totally bad ass military shooter cover’, it is almost trying to trick an implied demographic. This game really accomplished it’s underlying goal of horrifying me. I’ll never never play Spec Ops: The Line again, but I want you to.

I’ve been actively trying to promote the power of games and with that the many conversations they can stir. 'Do You Feel Like A Hero?' - A loading screen from Spec Ops: The Line

Spec ops the line art