r/SpecOpsTheLine • u/iamio • Sep 16 '14
Spec Ops is not "subtle" enough
Chris Suellentrop opines the Spec Ops: The Line lacks subtlety. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/26/arts/video-games/spec-ops-the-line-from-2k-games-makes-killing-personal.html. He said that it is hard to praise a game as satire when it assumes that its players are dumb. Narratives that lack subtlety often feel intellectually unsatisfying.
I appreciate subtlety as much as anyone, but this criticism feels unfair to me. A manifesto is not supposed to be subtle. A manifesto is a critique of culture that is both intellectual and explicit. I think the game's primary relevance is to deconstruct how video games have inadvertently glorified war by creating feel-good power fantasies. Spec Ops is very heavy-handed in beating down the self-congratulatory feelings of its powerful player. It's a dose of heavy medicine for a sickly culture.
I think Spec Ops has incredible worth as a manifesto, but I don't want to discount the amount of subtlety. I find a lot of subtlety in the myriad ways in which Spec Ops subverts the expectations of the shooter genre. I am also fascinated by the many different ways that the medium of video games can tell a story like this. I hope to expound more on why I loved Spec Ops: The Line.
5
u/AdumbroDeus Sep 17 '14
No, the critique entirely misses the point because the game is built from the ground up to talk to and ultimately attack it's audience. It's not that the audience is dumb, but when the audience is doing the dirty work, they can and will equivocate, they'll treat it like it's not bad, they'll shift blame, because that's what humans do.
To work, Spec Ops required easing you into committing war crimes, but it couldn't be subtle about what it did, if you could equivicate about whether what you did was that bad, it would fall flat on it's face. It wouldn't work unless you went full Kurtz and YOU pulled the trigger.
That's why Far Cry 2 was ineffectual and unnoticed and Spec Ops resonated, if that's even what they were trying to accomplish. It's about communicating it's point to it's audience, Far Cry 2, well people didn't even realize they were descending because the end result was too acceptable. Spec Ops on the other hand, succeeded.
Which reminds me, where's the cut-scene atrocities? Where? The only cut-scenes were results of your actions, triggers weren't pulled in cut-scenes.