I am not the biggest fan of violence in video games. Not necessarily just for moral and societal reasons (though those help), but because violence in many video games is boring. I am not saying that all games should strip violence from themselves (I support people being able to put whatever they want to in their game), but so many games seem to only use violence as filler; something to keep the player occupied as they go from point A to point B. Video games use violence as a crutch because it seems like that is the only thing that people can identify and understand quickly. This may actually be more indicative of psychology of people than video games necessarily, but whenever I play a game that uses an alternative to violence, it is something I celebrate. Sometimes I wonder if video games would be better if they really dealt with the violence they depict, instead of just using violence as a time-waster.
Spec Ops: The Line is an attempt to answer that question. In Spec Ops, the player is Walker, the leader of Delta force, leading his three person team into a devastated Dubai. Dubai has been destroyed by sandstorms, and the game begins with Walker trying to save the people of Dubai and confront Konrad, the military commander that seems to be running things. Walker was saved by Konrad years before, and his mission turns into obsession of how a man can go from a rational military commander to a dictator of sorts. Spec Ops is a pastiche of Heart of Darkness, and it slowly goes into madness as the narrative progresses.
The thing that makes this “madness” interesting is the contrast it has to the linear third person shoot game play the game adheres to. Spec Ops plays a lot like a Call of Duty (shoot all the guys and then you win) game, but as the goal of the game goes from saving everybody, to just surviving, the tone shift of the narrative paints the game play in a completely different light. The game starts as the player walks through abandoned cars, littered with casualties from the sandstorm, and confronts what the player assumes to be the same faceless “insurgents” that seem to be the enemy in every third person shooter set in the modern era. The game quickly shifts into fighting Konrad’s forces (the Damned 33rd) and as they communicate in the same sort of military speak that the protagonists do, the absolute morality of the mission begins to be muddled. It is this continuing muddling contrasting with the same game play a player might experience in any other third person shooter that begins to question both violence in the game, but also violence that prevails in the video games that Spec Ops is emulating.
This contrast between game design and game narrative shines the brightest when the player is confronted with a choice. Spec Ops doesn’t try and make all these choices explicit, it is up to the player to realize that they have the power to make a choice in the first place. Being in an extremely hostile environment makes making the “right” choice, or making the choice that will lead to survival, tough to do. That becomes compounded when the choices the player makes don’t pan out exactly they would expect. Should you save the guy who could lead you to the rest of the refugee hostages, or should you save the two hostages that could be killed right in front of you? Is there a right answer? In the end, it is something the player has to figure out for themselves.
That being said, it is hard to wholeheartedly recommend Spec Ops: The Line. It is a type of game that manipulates the player and the goal isn’t really to be “fun.” The game seeks more to make the player think and feel terrible than to try and fulfill any sort of power or mastery fantasy. It is this manipulation that can come off as pretentious. I agree that some of the narrative twists come off as something the player could have no real control over (an therefore can dampen agency), but by the end of the game, the narrative takes a back seat to how the game made me feel in the moment. There are moments of pure helplessness and it made me rationalize something that I would never do in any other context (I still feel a little embarrassed looking at my Playstation trophy list, which shows which choices I made at certain moments). It is that journey down how it feels to have to make decisions while everyone around you wants to kill you that made me think long and hard about violence and conflict around the world. Sure, I have read, heard, and seen many things about violence and conflict, but it was easy to sit and judge people when I never really been in any of those sorts of situations myself. Spec Ops: The Line gave me a little taste of how that may feel like. It made me more empathetic towards people who have to deal with those decisions on a regular basis.
Video games are typically played as entertainment, as escapism, and as something to let off steam, so when something comes along to try and try and make me think and feel bad about myself, I appreciate that experience. It is funny to me when people complain about “video games not being fun anymore,” because, as far as I can tell, most video games are so obsessed with being fun and accessible that they end up being mediocre as a result. It is already widely accepted that other entertainment mediums, music, books, movies, are compelling, and perhaps even at their best, when they are doing more than just keep the audience happy. Spec Ops: The Line is a great example of video games breaking the shackles of mindless fun and being something worth discussing.
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