Choices in spec ops the line8/3/2023 ![]() ![]() The only method you have to tear yourself away from the evil that saps Walker’s mind is to stop playing. The rest of the game so hangs on the shared experiences of Walker and the player, but when it matters most, when the player has to decide how much their progress is worth, they are ignored. The only way to stop Walker and yourself is to stop playing the game, and I wasn’t about to not play a game I had paid big money for (another reason to lower the price), especially when I would get no feedback from that decision except from myself. ![]() Never again do I get to make a choice about what moving forward means to me. The reason the aforementioned moment worked so well is that me-as-player’s need to move forward aligned with Walker’s as we both chose what was easy and wrong. Which brings me to the third and final way SO:TL could be one of the best pieces of media ever made: 3. For the rest of the game, it might as well be unvarnished truth. “You are still a good person” is, for a moment, a deeply cutting insult, an absolutely devastating ironic assessment of what you are at that moment, what you have done, which playfully blurs the line between player and protagonist in a stunningly creative way. ![]() It’s baffling how they could get it so right and then fuck it up so bad. The player has no say in the rest of the game’s events. Thing is, though, this is the only moment in the entire game that works so well. The fact that any art can make me feel so strongly is fucking incredible, and I’m proud that games are proving they can do this. It’s not a pleasant emotion, but art doesn’t need to be pleasant. I wasn’t feeling sick over my morally repugnant character, but my morally repugnant self. SO:TL made me ashamed of me-as-player, of the guy sitting on the couch. I’m used to me-as-presence-in-game-world being a bad guy. There’s only one person responsible, and it’s not Walker. Killing those civilians is murder, and that can’t be justified. The loading screen is the game’s facile attempt to rationalize it away.īut to have made that decision is something that can’t be ignored. I wasn’t just along for the ride, I wasn’t just some guy on a couch. “You are still a good person,” that disingenuous loading screen reassurance stuck in my mind. SO:TL’s crowning achievement is, as part three argues, the scene where Walker mows down a mob of civilians, tearing the game/player detachment to the ground.Īm I sure I’m a good person? Did the game make me shoot that mob of civilians blocking my path? The answers don’t come so easy when you can’t pin the responsibility on it being the only way to move forward. I’m not really making those choices from a moral, emotional standpoint-I’m weighing options as a player on a couch, detached from the plot and the characters, seeing the situation as a series of branching game paths rather than anything real. When I betrayed the elves who paid me to kill werewolves in Dragon Age: Origins, I didn’t feel bad about it. Mostly, I’m just trying to see where the story goes on that particular “evil” path. I’ve made the “evil” choice in games before. Parts 1-3 can be found in the sidebar to your right. The following is the final installment in a Heave series by Tom Harrison on the recently released third-person shooting game Spec Ops: The Line and how/why it pushes gaming as a medium while also retaining some of its most frustrating habits. Culture How Gaming Almost Peaks in “Spec Ops: The Line” (Pt. ![]()
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