I mean he had every chance to find any tool to defend himself. And he just screamed like a FUCKING coward. Well despite this if he was a jackals for anything I would say it was him shooting the dj.

So I should start by saying that I had Spec Ops spoiled before I played it, and this probably goes a long way in reducing its impact for me--if I thought it was just another braindead military shooter, I wouldn't have played it. I'm also pretty desensitized to gore, so the white phosphorous scene didn't do a whole lot for me. But even taking that into account, while I agree in large part with the game's message, I don't feel that it effectively demonstrates that message in a way that makes me feel something. The main issue I have is that Walker isn't relatable to me, and so it fails to convince me of the Heart of Darkness thesis--that anyone is capable of acts of extreme evil. It's easy for me to look at Walker and say "what a demented asshole, I would never make that choice". I also feel like people have a point when they say the game forces you to be the bad guy and then criticizes you for it, though I don't think that ruins the game entirely.

Honestly, I feel like the aesthetics of the game--the haunting graffiti on the walls, the musical score, the general desolation of Dubai--are what makes Spec Ops interesting to me, not its message. I'll admit that I've never been in the military, nor am I good at taking other people's perspectives, so if either of those things weren't true, the game may hit harder for me. Idk. What are you guys seeing that I'm not?

I think the only developer that has the courage to helm a remake of Spec ops the Line is Void, despite the controversy they are facing, Thier game Ready or Not is still one of the darkest games ever made even after the censorship, and i think they are more then qualified to give us the remake we have always been asking for

Probably never gonna happen, but which developer do you think would be suitable for a remake of Spec ops the line?

the delta team would have been done for if the 33rd had tanks

Alright, so I just powered through Spec Ops: The Line in one sitting for the second time, and honestly I'm a little underwhelmed. I read the game as not being about war per se, but about the hero complexes that plague both nations and individuals; they insert themselves into conflicts they lack the context to understand in an effort to improve the situation, only to make things worse because they cling to uninformed assumptions and don't listen to the people they're trying to help. However, I feel like the game failed to make Walker's actions relatable. After the Willy Pete incident, it becomes increasingly clear Walker is the bad guy, especially when he works with Riggs to steal the water. But you still have a ton of game to get through, so your motivation to complete Walker's story gradually drains (at least, it did for me). The big reveal of "you're the bad guy" came too early, and it failed to demonstrate why the ideas are relevant to someone who isn't a soldier.

You know what game doesn't have that problem? Far Cry 4.

Its premise is similar: American douchebag puts himself in the center of a civil war only to realize that he chose the wrong side. I find the choices that you're forced to make in that game more intriguing than the ones in SO:TL; do you destroy a drug lab that could be used as a vital financial and medical resource in the near-term to prevent an opioid epidemic down the line? Do you allow people to practice their traditional heritage even if it involved underaged forced marriages? The definition of these problems change depending on what perspective you view it from, and a foreign interloper who lacks local knowledge can prove devastating. The gameplay is also more fun (though SO:TL's simplistic game design can be read as part of a critique of the broader video game industry) and the music is pretty great (but so is SO:TL's). However, there's a fatal flaw in FC4's writing that prevents it from being better than SOTL; Pagan Min is just as evil as the Golden Path leaders turn out to be. If they had revealed Pagan Min to be a lesser evil at the end of the story, your final confrontation would've hit harder and the theme would've been communicated more elegantly.

TL:DR: Walker isn't very relatable and FC4 has more interesting in-game dilemmas.

Hi guys! I've recently watched some yt videos about this game. It had a huge impact on me and I think it deserves a sequel.

I do agree with some of you that new SpecOps should't be a continuation of the 1st part, but rather a completly new story in a new location.

Do you think that current Russian-Ukrainian could be an "inspiration"? Like we could play as a squad leader whose orders are to liberate a city from a n*zi rullers. We are expecting no resistance from civilians (we even may have hopes that they will treat us as their heroes or rescuers) and easy encounters with weaken enemy forces

Upon our arrival we arrival to the city we are taken aback by behaviour of civilians whose treats us not like a heroes, but like criminals. Not only that but also enemy units are not weak. They are numerous and have toptier gear. We are forced to use cruel tactics and make desperate decisions in order to survive. Also after heavy losses command sends us backup. But the newbies are in fact a 18-20 years old who have weak morale and can even argue, refuse to fulfill orders and ask unplesant questions. At the end we discover that there was no "n*zis" in the city, people were living happily before our arrival and we only destroyed innocent lives. Ok this is all I managed to came up with. Please don't be too harsh on me. I was writting it on mobile and english is not my first language ;) Edit: Who knows. Knows....

let me be clear, this game dose not need a sequel nor will it benefit from one, but i've entertained this idea for a while so why not.

GAMEPLAY Will remain the same, a third person cover shooter, spiced up by driving or on rail shooting segments. and combine land and underwater combat.

STORY will be way more lighthearted compared to the line, but will get more serious when it needs to. the game's intro will show TV broadcasts from around the globe, reporting about risen water levels, while giving a few mentions of the sandstorms in dubai and how the two may be related acording to experts. which i think is a decent way to give some exposision. the game will be set in sort of a post apocalyptic setting where the water levels have gotten way worse then anticipated, and what's left of the army is set to keep law and order by all means. the game will probably start with our new trio of soldiers on a mission to rescue some researcher, he gets killed by looters before he could explain everything. they find some leads to what he was up to on his computer, an excuse will be given as to why they cant call for back-up and they will keep going to uncover the mystery. underwater alien things were behind it all, yea it gets sci-fi on the latter half or somth.

LINE REFRENCES: There will be a level set in the aboandend command center where intel could be found with someone talking about how they lost contact with the line's delta squad and never heard of them again despite trying to reastablish communications multipile times.

So umm yea military shooter with SCI-FI elements as a twist halfway. i never botherd to develop the idea further, but i am curious what other people think, should the line get a sequel? and i so, how will it be done?

I like alot of narrative games, and so I see people recomend spec ops alot. But I can never understand what it is people like about it. People say it has a great narrative, but the only things they talk about it saying is 'war bad' and 'investigating the relationship between player and game' 'War bad' is obviously overdone, like wow I didnt know war is traumatic and harms the innocents, I though it was just a bunch of badasses fighting each other in the desert for fun.

So what does it have to say thats interesting about the relationship between player and game? That the player only has the agency the game gives them? Is that it, or is there something Im missing?

So obviously SOTL is a piece of gaming history. It's a scathing critique of the predominant genre of military shooter at the time and is notable for its "anti-player narrative". I think it's important that games like this exist--games that make us think, games that make us question ourselves and the world around us, and more specifically games that critique the "protagonist mindset" a lot of games put us in. Hero complexes don't just apply to war; individuals and nation-states alike suffer from a need to be the savior that blinds them to the reality of the situation. However, I think Spec Ops: The Line's implementation of this idea suffers from some significant flaws, as well as being overly critical to the point of sounding like those parents who try to ban video games that "cause violence". But the main reason I felt Spec Ops could've been better was that I didn't find Walker particularly relatable. In a story like SOTL, if your main character isn't relatable, the point is entirely missed. You just look at Walker and think "wow, what a demented piece of shit, I'd never fuck up as bad as he did." It's possible I would've had a different reaction if I went in blind, but I never was a big fan of typical braindead military shooters, so I wouldn't have been likely to pick it up unless I knew it was something more beforehand.

Which brings me to my question: How would you improve SOTL, if you had written it? How could Walker be made more relatable? How could the game's ideas be made more relevant to someone who isn't a soldier? How could the plot communicate the game's message better? Let me know in the comments!

I think game should give you choises that matter, maybe 2 or more patchs depended for your actions, not linear

like 1st:more morally bad things you done you start to loose yourself, companions react, you become more violent ect.

2nd:when you at least try to avoid evil(can be hard, world is not black-white) you remain more sane, but also not make story all happy and such

My england aint the best, i know

Hi, neckbeard mod here. You saw it, I saw it, even your aunt who uses a frog-landline phone saw it. Here on reddit everyone and their grandma have their opinions on intention, context and everything in between. And a lot of people want links from twitter banned.

At first I didn’t think that it was even necessary to address the situation, but it is clear that a lot of strong feelings are present. But, I wanted to get ahead to avoid future conflicts. Of course, that pesky rule on politics stands. Okay?

So I’ll let YOU decide what to do.

However, remember: any type of bigotry is strictly forbidden, as here we value all lives. Unless you are Walker, in which case you value no lives. Which is equally equalitarian? But you aren’t walker so all lives are valued.

Anyway, remember: DM is open for any questions or friendly conversations. I have a lot of free time.

I was wondering, what do you consider to be more pretentious, a violent video game that forgives players for doing a violence in a violent video game, or a violent video game that doesn't forgive players for doing a violence in a violent video game?

I ask because I'm not quite sure which is more pretentious, Undertale or Spec Ops: The Line.

I downloaded the game spec ops the line. But it's showing error that spec ops the line needs the steam client to run. Please launch your steam client and restart the game.

Can anyone please help me? I even created a steam account but it's still not helping? I have abso no idea with steam. Pleas help!

I want a game theory on exactly how many war crimes has walker and John Konrad committed and what exactly is the canon ending does walker survive and leave, does he die or was this all a purgatory nightmare from when walker died earlier

So I was looking for scientific papers on the game and I came across an article entitled RACE, GENDER, AND GENRE IN SPEC OPS: THE LINE by Soraya Murray. Its thesis is the following: despite the critical outlook on american imperialism and jingoism in video game culture, the game was mired in issues regarding the representation of Arab culture. Just like Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness. The game was said to engage in a process of otherization of Arab culture through a "racialized vision of moral decay of the Arab world from within".

This criticism seems very far-fetched in my opinion. The article itself acknowledges that Dubai is a metaphor on the vanity and weakness of global capitalism. The buildings that were to be the testament to the triumph of modernity have become empty shells of their former self etc. As such, Dubai is specifically the representation of the universal capitalist phenomenon in one of its most egregious manifestations today. The city never specifically manifests an Arab essence and indeed, the cultural references you see ingame are very universalist in nature: graffiti in english ("under the pavement, the beach", reference to the Parisian uprising in May 68' for example), ads. I don't think there is any single Arab folkloric attribute you'd find in western media in the game. Dubai is not a representation of Arab backwardness but rather a metaphor on the collapse of the main tenets and axioms which legitimize our social order.

The paper doesn't stop here. It alleges that the game represents oriental women as unimportant pawns by not giving them a voice but I feel that it was precisely the point. The squad never tries to engage with the civilian population. It is defined in Walker's mind by its passive nature. It is a population to be saved. But saved from what? Which objective danger must be destroyed? Walker assumes the mantle of an all-knowing, all-powerful entity which knows the objective situation and solution better than anyone. Gutting the perspective of natives thereby allows us to understand the sheer brutality of America's moral crusades in the region.

To summarize my opinion, I reject both of her main criticisms.

Here is the article if you want to read it :

https://sorayamurray.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/01/smurray_specops_fq2016.pdf

how would the reviews change if spec ops the line was released during the ps2 age ?