Game has no player choice

Who controls Walker?

>It hammers Walker. Not you

The fucking LOADING SCREENS chew out YOU

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Who controls You?

Nobody

I like the gameplay but I agree with you. The storyline is seen as high art but it leaves you wondering what the message was.

People take this game way too seriously.
It's just a game teaching a lesson about hard determism.
Yes, not playing the game you payed for is ridiculous.
But, the fact that you played it was hard determined.

>only has bad endings
"Welcome to Dubai" ending is fucking awesome and proves your entire shitshow of argumentation wrong.
Seriously, if you people are this dumb, why don't you just stay away from discussion? The game flew over your head. Fine. Not everyone is meant to be smart: it's called normal distribution. But Jesus the least you can do is not to draw attention to your own stupidity.

The message is that American foreign policy in the middle east is fucked and we never should have got involved to begin with

You're a nobody?

Nice bait
Now go back to Fortnite

when he said "welcome to Dubai" on the radio i initially heard it as "welcome to mah pie" and was confused since there wasnt any pie featured in the game

>Yes, not playing the game you payed for is ridiculous.

Yeah, like MGS2. I paid for a game to play as Solid Snake, not some whiner that would be better in a fucking JRPG, complete with an ending that has unresolved plot elements

Nobody controls me. In other words, there is a lack of person that controls me. The same cannot be said of Walker. Now, who controls Walker?

I really really really like games where there is a canon bad ending. It's so rare, and I can't just google games like that because that gives away the ending. It's so tiring like in movies, you just know the good guy is going to win, there is no tension or excitement.

well, protagonist*, not the good guy. sometimes the protagonist is bad and wins but that's the same thing.

>Now, who controls Walker?
I don't know.
I never played it.

I'll ask a different question. Would Walker do anything without player input?

>game was originally supposed to have a branching storyline but they ran out of funding
>Williams rewrote the story on a napkin at the last moment to spite one of his superiors
>paid marketing by a bunch of high-profile YouTubers and gaming portals praising features that were in the press back, but not actually in the game (player choice and consequence)
Yup, sounds like the kind of game Yea Forums would unironically lap up and have threads about for years and years.

Source for any of this bullshit? Because it sounds like absolute bullshit.

He probably has a number of idle animations.

Look, dude.
It's about time you grew up. Not everything needs source, you fucking pig.

>"bad ending"
and who is the authority on whether endings are good or bad? The faggot OP? lmaong at ur life

The first one is previews of the game from paper mags. Can't really source those for you, but it's fine if you don't believe me. Though the decision they made, about keeping the "evil" path of the branching storyline, was at the very least interesting in the industry climate of the time. The second is easily Googlable and comes from the only interview with the writer (Williams) in existence. So, I'm not going to spoonfeed you. The third is reviews. Watch/read a few. They aren't hard to find. If you've played the game, it should be easy to tell when they're spouting bullshit dictated to them by the publisher.

>happy endings are the only good endings
fuck you for even thinking this, you have no taste

The message is: in first/third person shooters like Call of Duty and Battlefield, all you do is follow objectives and you magically do the morally right thing and save the world in the end. Here is a game that wants to tell you that sometimes shooters can be made where you don't actually save the world or are the good guy with a happy ending just because you played till the end.

retard

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The writer/developer dictates what Walker is meant to do in the game, not you. Why would you feel guilty about being railroaded in a video game?

Mario is always meant to go right and jump to flags in SMB2, because the developer made it that way. Why would you feel bad about being railroaded to go right as Mario? It's how it was made.

Yeah, that is about what I would expect.

I've read pretty much everything related to the game from the very announcement, and NONE of what you are saying adds up. They never promised choices and consequences, neither did ANY of the demos and preview materials do that either. In the interview you mention, Williams talks about a lot of things, but never says anything about having to change the structure of the game. When he laments what the publishers wanted, he talks EXCLUSIVELY about the forced and tackled-on multiplayer, which, to quote him, "went completely against everything they were trying to say with the game".

The entire story, start to finish, is absolutely, 100% predicated on the lack of choices outside of the ending, and without it, it would NEVER MAKE ANY SENSE WHAT SO EVER. Until you can bring up solid evidence, I'm calling you a pathetic fucking liar.

The game never ran out of funding, and it was never designed with branching storylines in mind. The absolute core of the experience, the very fist idea from the very conception of the game, was what we get. A cruel mocking of the pseudo-realistic military shooter. The fact that you morons are too dumb to understand it does not justfy you lying off your fucking assess.

I don't wanna be considered rude or inappropriate, but I don't understand all the commotion surrounding the game.
Most of the people that die in the game are darkies - like calm down.

Would Walker commit any war crimes that he commits in the game Spec Ops The Line, including, but not limited to, the infamous use of white phosphorus, without player input?

hahahaha what kind of response is this

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no, the point is, the player is written to spend all game going after a Makarov equivalent, a big bad villain, just like in Call of Duty. but in this game, your expectations that killing this Makarov will solve all the problems in the game world is subverted completely.

/thread
Next question?

I tried to not use the white phosphorous advancing by brute force, and the game won't allow you to.

If they let you really TAKE the choice it could have had some meaning.

>Would you kindly...?

>hey look everyone we made this anti-war and anti-violence game
>sure we designed it so that killing people would feel fun, but it's totally against war and violence!

Messages like that never work in vidya .

WALKER CAN'T SEE THE LOADING SCREENS
WALKER CAN'T SEE THE LOADING SCREENS
WALKER CAN'T SEE THE LOADING SCREENS
WALKER CAN'T SEE THE LOADING SCREENS
WALKER CAN'T SEE THE LOADING SCREENS

It's about PSTD as well

Its a borderline horror game, hammering down the idea that doing horrid shit in war is unavoidable and playing a hero is futile.

>Until you can bring up solid evidence, I'm calling you a pathetic fucking liar.
Geez, defensive much? I don't really have enough of a stake in proving you wrong to scan and translate an article from a Polish mag for a thread that may or may not be gone in 10 minutes. You can keep believing what you want.

>If they let you really TAKE the choice it could have had some meaning.
On the contrary, it would mean nothing at all. Are you people 12 or something?

>read a book
>main character does something abhorrent
Wow that's pretty abhorrent of him

>watch a movie
>main character does something abhorrent
Wow that's pretty abhorrent of him

>play a videogame
>main character does something abhorrent
OMG HOW ABHORRENT OF ME HOW COULD I DO THIS

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I'm guessing killing people would be fun irl as well, that's why messages like that are made

Walker was just being a pussy. There's casualties in war, get over it.

because they're retarded and they think it's DEEP and are too stupid to even understand or know what unreliable narrator bullshit it is

In other words, you are full of shit. What is really sad is how far you need to go to defend the fact that you pulled shit out of your ass and tried to get away with it. At least have the fucking dignity to admit to yourself what you are doing.

How the hell do you know?

Stop being a fag, dude.

Lmao @ /pol/mutts seething over this game and trying to make excuses about how they were forced to do it

It’s funny because it mimics real life

Later on you can choose to either shoot at angry mob or shoot the air to scare them away.

No, it would mean that the player is willing to take the path of least resistance to achieve the goal, no matter the cost in lives, which is KIND OF SORT OF what the game makes Walker guilty of. Both Walker and the player could be aligned in their blithe disregard for (virtual) human life, but no. Instead, you're forced to gas the civilians, or else face infinitely spawning, faceless mooks.

Okay lemme get this straight. You are called many names on Yea Forums. Faggot, gamer, soikuk, whatever. You are shamed for liking the taste of dicks. You shrug it off.

But then, ooh watch out. A GAME and a game developer tries to shame you as part of the gimmick that the game is linear and railroads you into doing horrid shit. And you cant stop crying about it. Really?

Just die there.
Crisis solved.

Doubtful. Walker was aware of the intro scene on the helicopter when he relives it later in the game. That implies he has meta/4th wall breaking consciousness in-game.

>In other words, you are full of shit.
You need to calm down. I just provided an interesting anecdote that resulted in a somewhat unique game that is Spec Ops.

It's your business if you want to believe it was all Williams's UNPARALLELED GENIUS or whatever else. I know for a fact it was a very fortunate set of circumstances that led to it coming out in its final state. And I'm happy to know those can happen in the vidya world.

videogames bad movies good
videogames cause mass shooting, movies don't

kek this guy

Yeah, or shoot the ropes, there are small details are thare outside of the "press X to continue" promt in the screen through the whole game, which made the white phosporous mandatory had way less impact than they had intended.

It’s because that’s not the real reason they’re crying about it. That’s just an excuse they use to keep making threads about it. The real reason they’re butthurt is that they’re amerimutts or anglos who don’t like the anti-military narrative

Every war has its collateral damage of civilians. The psychological horror aspect of the game is that your hero does traumatic shit he didnt mean to do, but all those people are dead anyway. And the rest of the game he has to live in such huge denial that he starts hallucinating, while in the meantime he's becoming more and more violent. You can notice this in the killing animations, early ones are like professional stealth stabbing motions, later on they range from sadistic stabbings to casual executions with the rifle from up close.

It's because you have agency there.
You don't any agency in a book or movie (unless there are those gay choice books.)

The game is not even fun, it's enganging, but the gameplay is mediocre at best, and it's on purpose.

t. DUDE TRUST ME

You people really are on the mental level of a 12 years old... WHY DOES THE GAME NOT MAKE LET ME ALWAYS BE THE GOOD GUY!?

You absolutely, 100% missed the point of the game. All that you proved is that the game and the developers are right. and you are fucking morons. Every single ounce of derision you feel like the game is leveling at you is 100% justified.

You were forced to do it though. Have you played the game?

Hahahahahaha there it is

>You are here to be something you will never be, a hero.

Are you a fucking shill or something? We're just calling out bad game design and poor moral compassing. What's up your end to crticize us for talking about video games?

Cease the participation of same sex relationships between males, nigga.

>"WAAAHHH Silent Hill 2 is shit because James already killed his wife and you were never given the choice not to!"
Way to miss the point of the game.

Bro... what the fuck???? Was planning to to play Silent Hill 2 for the first time next week.. could have used a spoiler tag at least....

>getting personally offended by a game
and Yea Forumsedditors say you need mute nameless MC to feel immersed, just look at this game, people take even voiced named TPS characters and take offence on their behalf, if this isnt immersion then idk what is

Bad game design? What would be a better design for this game, according to you?

But, gay sex is ASS-SOME!

FUCK! I didnt realize! I'm sorry user...

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You DID play as Solid Snake.
You ALSO play as Raiden.

You were never promised anything else.
They never showed anything except the Tanker Chapter.
You ASSUMED that the entire game would be Snake.

just forget about it, faggot

Have you played the game? There is a section where you are fprced to use white phosphorus on civilians or the plot won't advance. This is out of step with the game's previous pace, where you could make these moral decisions and not be railroaded.
This railroading on using white phosphorus to gas civilians is fucking horrible to make you do, but then the loading screens criticize your "choice" like you had a say im the matter.
Allow an option to bullet down all the terrorist's shooting at you and not uselessly drop chemical weapons on fucking woman and children?
I gunned down at least fifty people during that sequence thinking "surely the game isn't going to force me to melt civilians to continue the plot." How dissapointing...

a classic

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People were upset because Raiden is probs gay and looks like he shouldn't even be in the men's restrooms never mind behind enemy lines.

Games like these really make it obvious how basic gamers are. The story is a really bad ripoff of Apocalypse Now but with none of the decent writing that made that enjoyable. If this game were a film it would be laughed out of theaters in a heartbeat for being so poorly written and pretentious.

The game itself is just a generic, entry level third person shooter. One wonders why this game is still talked about.

As yopua re given agency to solve situations in a different way in other parts of the game as said by So giving the player the same level of agency will make the whole narrative more coherent and the later reflection on the actions taken blindly following the trail of "objectives" more impactful for those who did so.

Mutty wutty is a sensitive suzy who would’ve guessed?

>Would Walker commit any war crimes that he commits in the game Spec Ops The Line, including, but not limited to, the infamous use of white phosphorus, without player input?
Autism

>Allow an option to bullet down all the terrorist's shooting at you and not uselessly drop chemical weapons on fucking woman and children?
And the moral lesson would be what? That there is ALWAYS a nice solution to everything? Again, are. You. A FUCKING CHILD?!
Is it impossible for you to accept that not every game exists specifically to suck off you cock and specifically congratulate you personally how you are the bestest of them all?

The fuck is wrong with you?

>>game has no player choice
>>only has bad endings
>>only way to "win" is "just don't play the game you payed us money for lol"

That's the soldier experience

>There is a section where you are fprced to use white phosphorus on civilians or the plot won't advance
There's a theory suggesting that Walker is in purgatory when you, the player, control him when he calls in the WP. And he's reliving through what he did.

That's what the game means for you to do. You don't have to be offended by something you have no control over as a player. Is Mario given an agency to go left in SMB2?

The point is, either railroad all the "decisions" like or leave the same agency level through the whole game, but the sudden change was a bad design choice.

The designers could make it so the civialns die anyway no matter what you do, either you kill them or the terrorist do, they have the power to design teh game ina way where no good choice is made.

>There is a section where you are fprced to use white phosphorus on civilians or the plot won't advance. This is out of step with the game's previous pace, where you could make these moral decisions and not be railroaded.
The whole point of the game is that war is dirty and there are no true heroes in war. If you were given the chance to save everyone and only kill "bad guys", then there would not be that message.

Its like Silent Hill 2 prologue chapter where you're allowed to choose whether to use the pillow or not. Whats the fucking point going to Silent Hill afterwards if you werent playing with a murderer in self-denial?

They could have made a different bad end for not using the shit. Ideally a somehow worse bad end so that you can't get ask for free pats on the back for being a good boy. This would actually be better because then people would have discussions on what they did, and which they thought was "less evil" instead of "I did the good thing!!!". Being railroaded into one bad action instead of having to choose between two bad actions is what we're talking about.

Plausible.
There's evidence to suggest that we aren't really in control of our actions, anyway.
And sometimes we can only know what we'll do in a situation is when it actually happens.

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Too late

>WHY DOES THE GAME NOT MAKE LET ME ALWAYS BE THE GOOD GUY!?
Why does the game not let me be the bad guy either? Why am I an idle participant in a story that's clearly trying to invoke a feeling of responsibility for my actions?

I wish there were more games where the story isn't about "winning" anything, beating some evil, tired overused us vs them horseshit. Sadly, developers would rather not risk putting this kind of storytelling in their games and use narratives that appeal to a wider audience. Heroic good guy nonsense.

>7 years later
>Yea Forums is still rectally ravaged over this game

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God you people are dense, it fucking hurts. I feel fucking sorry for the developer, this must have been a tough fucking lesson for them. "Don't ever have any kind of faith in your audience, they are ALWAYS going to be dumber than you expect!"

The whole point of the game, you drooling, spastic cretin, is how the player relates to linear narrative of highly questionable ethics. I have no idea how this fucking fact, which is explicitly stated in several segments of the game, managed to fly over your head. It's not about asking person whenever they think dropping white phosphorus on women and children is right, because that is not exactly an interesting question.

It's about making player ask himself how does he, himself, relate to the character he plays in IN A CONTEXT OF STRICTLY LINEAR AND PREDETERMINED NARRATIVE.
The whole fucking point was to take CoD, and then drop down the rose-tinted heroism glasses. To remind people that the simple heroic power-fantasies they regularly endorse are actually kinda fucked up, and to make them formulate their own fucking answer to that fact.
Sadly, you cretins fail at the very first fucking step, and even before the game starts actually asking you questions, you already screech and cry to mommy that the big game did not make you feel heroic enough, the big bad meanie!

You are fucking pathetic. If you want to know what the entire world looks down on gaming industry: YOU ARE THE REASON WHY.

>If you were given the chance to save everyone
>hurr durr the ONLY kind of choice ever possible in video games is whether you save or kill everyone!!!1 no middle ground, no nuance!!!
No wonder you think Shit Ops is genius.

Play grand strategy games, you can do whatever teh fuck you want there, there is literally no narrative.

But it does. There are a couple of "bad guy" or "vengeful asshole"-choices in the game. Like letting the CIA guy burn or shooting into an angry mob. Or going on a mad rampage and trying to kill the relief forces come to rescue you.

That is a good question. Why did you pick up a game that is CLEARLY following the steps of CoD and BF where you are ALWAYS an idle participant in the first place?

What is the middle ground in a war situation in the middle of a battle? Slightly injuring civilians and then feeling sorry for it?

>The whole fucking point was to take CoD, and then drop down the rose-tinted heroism glasses.
Yeah, except Spec Ops does the exact same thing that Modern Warfare 2 did before it. You control a character tied by a strictly railroaded scenario, thinking he is sacrificing innocents for an ultimately greater good, only for that character to realise too late they were making things worse in the end.

Here's the difference though. Modern Warfare 2 was subtle about it. Spec Ops beats you over the head with its message instead.

I think you are not grasping the whole coutnerargument, as said in other posts, Bioshock does the same thing in a smarter way.

If the narrative is prefertimed then they shouldn't have allowed the players to have agency in solving situations in different ways (like NOT shooting the mob) and have all railroaded, but forcing just one action to be railroaded IS bad game design, no matter how hard you wank to Yager.

The game's reviews and hearsay surrounding it advertised an engaging storyline that plays with player agency and makes you feel guilty for the events that transpire. I thought it would be an interesting experience. Unfortunately, it turned out to be a hamfisted mess AND the gameplay wasn't even good.

>If the narrative is prefertimed then they shouldn't have allowed the players to have agency in solving situations in different ways (like NOT shooting the mob) and have all railroaded, but forcing just one action to be railroaded IS bad game design, no matter how hard you wank to Yager.
The choices affect the ending. Just like in Silent Hill 2 no matter what you murdered your wife. But the choices in the middle of the game determine how James ends his journey, either comes to grips with reality, goes full cultist or at the bottom of the lake.

>The choices affect the ending.
So then why are some pivotal actions left in the hands of the player, while others only offer a poorly concealed illusion of choice that otherwise pits you against infinitely respawning enemies?

The add campaign LITERALLY AND SPECIFICALLY DESIGNED TO MAKE IT LOOK LIKE CALL OF DUTY, you mean?

Are you fucking retarded? How do you people manage to even breathe? How did you not chocke on a hotdog yet?

>The add campaign
Who the fuck is talking about the ad campaign? Are YOU retarded?

Just watch apocalypse now lol

>6 years later
>Yea Forumsrainlets still seething over this game
video-essay youtubers sure did a number on this board huh?

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alright, so you guys killed a bunch of innocent people with white phosphorus and the game said mean things to you. stop being so sensitive.

Show me the fucking stuff that made you think this is a choice-heavy game you fucking mongoloid. Go on. The fact that you are a COMPLETE FUCKING RETARD, who builds COMPLETELY FUCKING RETARDED EXPECTATIONS, and cannot grasp a very basic fucking story is not anyone else's fault, you dipshit.

You are an idiot. There is nothing wrong with the game, or with anyone else. You are beyond being a burden of a state. That is the fucking summary of this fucking problem.

This game is unironically best played pirated. I promise you, the game will have a lot more impact if you don't have that "uhhh but I paid quite a bit of money for this game, devs, I'm not just gonna not experience it" thing in the back of your mind.

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>Show me the fucking stuff that made you think this is a choice-heavy game you fucking mongoloid
In all honesty? TB's pretentious clusterfuck of a review. Sue me for thinking he couldn't possibly be THAT wrong about this shitshow of a game.

To make the point home you can't be a hero although you and the main character tries. There is no redemption in war. Only madness.

That... doesn't really answer the question.

I got it for free from Humble Bundle. Easily the best way to jump into the game is with no strings attached.

The game is DESIGNED to deliver the message that no matter what you do you must must must kill civilians with white phosphorus to advance.

Why is it the game's problem that you didn't take the message well and complain that it forced you to do it? Why are other people seemingly ok with it?

>yep there's insurgents and dead soldiers
>let's go back home and tell command
The end.

If the message is that you must kill civilians in order to progress the game, why does the same game later try to guilt trip you into feeling bad for it? It was, as you say, the only way to progress the game. Who's guilty of this situation: me or the developers?

Yes it does. The point is its a psychological horror game and meant to simulate the feeling of a war trauma.

I was thinking more shooters. I like games with narratives, just tired of the mass appeal "go and kill bad guys for le fatherland/president/agency" bs. Last fps I genuinely enjoyed for its campaign was arma 3. It wasn't flashy or anything remarkable, even boring you could say, but that's what sold me on it. That "shit like this could easily happen tomorrow in your own country" scenario.

The crowd was throwing rocks, no grenades. Jesus, you really are fucking retarded.

The game is about Walker, and it is also a commentary on the "America (or whatever country the player controlled) Fuck Yeah!" attitude of shooters that were all that were available at that time. It's pointing out the fact that if a character, like Walker, really were involved in an action that had them killing hundreds of people the situation would fuck them up, especially because the chances of unintended civilian casualties would be absurdly high.

Up to that point all shooters never had civilians involved aside from one particular airport scene (and even then it was the bad guys fault), and despite touting a "modern war" label was exceedingly archaic in how it depicted battle fields.

The entire point of the white phosphorous scene, for example, was a critique of CoD 4's AC130 scene, where the protagonists don't have to worry about civilians even though they are bombing a village.

The game is not criticizing the player, it is criticizing the genre.

Why do you feel guilty at all after being guilt tripped by a literal video game that forced you to do something?

Is it truly not possible to say 'oh ok that's pretty dumb, i cant really do anything about that, sorry i guess, what a twist.' and not feel guilty? really?

>Why do you feel guilty at all after being guilt tripped by a literal video game
I don't. Hence "try". I'm asking why the attempt is even made.

Because the other similar games don't do it and this game was trying to be smarmy.

And you don't understand what the loading screen is actually saying. It is highlighting that it is a game, and other games don't even bother with placing civilians in it at all even though they try to have a 'deep and meaningful' cinematic story. The game is actually asking you if you want more from the stories other than just mindless bullet hosing, and if not, then why choose games that represent a modern military with modern ideological conflicts?

>The fucking LOADING SCREENS chew out YOU
>this isn't real, why should you care
Yeah, game is really letting you have it.

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That's my only complaint, should've had a retreat option

Laughably juvenile attempt at thematic maturity wrapped around a painfully mediocre and generic shooter

>I don't. Hence "try". I'm asking why the attempt is even made.
But you do. You screech and whine and bitch about the game being bad for not giving you your pat on the back.

You are proving the game's point, that there is something fucked up with identifying yourself with a protagonist in a violent fucked up narrative. I did play the game, I did not feel a shred of guilt, and I got an interesting character study of a man who gradually descends into madness, and when the game asked me how I feel about the thing, I gave my honest answer, and was rewarded with a pretty fucking bad-ass ending. In the process I somewhat reformulated my own views on how I do or don't relate to characters in game.

You are still here, still insisting that it is bad that the game made you feel miserable about yourself, screeching how NOT REALLY IT DID NOT MAKE ME FEEL BAD BUT IT'S SHIIIIIT HOW IT MADE ME FEEL BAD WHY DID IT NOT LET ME FEEL GOOD REEEEEEEEE!!!

You are just fucking insecure. If you really did not feel guilt, if you really did not crave approvement of the game, you'd never feel like the ending is guilt-tripping you into anything. You would not find anything offensive about the game.

This entire fucking argument, this entire fucking thread is nothing but people mad at the game because it did make them feel miserable. It's just that you fucks are so fucking insecure you need SOMEONE ELSE TO BLAME. And so you bitch, you whine, you screech, you do anything to make to convince someone else is at fault, because any shred of doubt about yourself throws you into violent rage.

The game was on fucking point and you are fucking living proof of that.

What did they mean by helicopter scene where he says “we’ve done this before”

>Bioshock does the same thing in a smarter way.
No it does not. Bioshock just tries to tie in the player following the narrative, but it does not actually question the player's morality. It might have done that if the player was forced to cause the plane crash by killing the pilot and all the other passengers.

Except MW2 side stepped the question, because the player is only assuming the role of a throw away character, and it is in the context of being with the explicitly labelled villains of the story. The villains are expected to do such things, and in the case of No Russian the player is just observing villainous action, much like the intro car ride and execution of MW.

>there is something fucked up with identifying yourself with a protagonist in a violent fucked up narrative
Wait, so I'm NOT supposed to empathise with Walker? Despite the game addressing me, the player, directly and placing the responsibility for the game's events on me? Or the fact that I'm allowed to make decisions for Walker multiple times throughout the game? Do I have agency or do I not, damn it?

>I'm referring to the moment when the crowd is throwing grenades at you but they don't explode.
The crowd wasn't throwing grenades, you stupid mother fucker.

>the player is just observing villainous action
The player is PARTICIPATING in a villainous action not only permitted by those who the game has had marked as the "good guys" until then, but also actively facilitated by the same people for an ill-perceived greater good.

Oh, and in case you really are that thick, the "good guys" in MW2 aren't really good guys. The main "good guy" is a psychopath with delusions of grandeur and a personal vendetta, which he also perceives as an ultimately "good" goal. Sound familiar?

You have, but some events are going to unfold no matter how hard you try to be the good guy. Thats the whole point of the story. Walker does a bad thing, then tries to reason away his guilt to a point of insanity. His weird blonde uncle who loves green jackets and pillows had the same thing going on.

The loading screens are clearly his subconscious, especially after they change at the end of the game.

There are a lot of suggestions and hints that Walker is either in hell, or at least purgatory trying to find redemption, and reliving Dubai.

That sequence was shifted to the start of the game at the last minute because the writer is a vindictive cunt, don't expect it to make sense. It wasn't meant to.

Yeah, it sounds like the typical "rah rah America fuck yeah!" we get all the time. Oh, wow, it turned out all to be a plot by the evil military heads. Again, in No Russians, the ones doing the actual killing of civilians are the bad guys, and the player only inhabits a throw away character that they can then condemn for being shitty. When the reveal of who the "real" bad guys are happens, the player can also feel secure knowing they can continue to wave the Star and Stripes or Union Jack and bring some hot leaded justice to the evil ones without having to worry about civilian casualties.

No, you simp, MW2 did not address the same question or criticism Spec Ops did. MW2 criticized the modern day industrial war complex, but it did not question what it would actually mean to be a soldier on the ground. The closest CoD had done to that point was in MW when the nuke went off and faceless Marine died after crawling out of the crashed chopper.

Wrong, there are many more clues, such as the fact that Walker is always descending while making his way through Dubai. The way some parts of the landscape will die and turn lifeless as soon as Walker has passed (there are points where you can turn back and see once living trees dead and gone). There are more too.

>Wait, so I'm NOT supposed to empathise with Walker?
How far you identify with him is up to you. The game addresses you as a player only about twice through out the whole narrative, one being a direct question to which you can answer either way, the other being ironic quips in loading screens literally saying what I am saying: that it is indeed up to you how you relate to the narrative.

The decisions you are allowed to make, you are allowed to make because they are utterly and blatantly inconsequential.

You have agency in deciding how you relate to the character, you spastic. How the fuck did you not realize this?

>Wait, so I'm NOT supposed to empathise with Walker?
You're kinda meant to go "Wait, Walker thats kinda fucked up, you're going nuts", while you're playing the game.

Nah, it was there as a rather cheap "this whole thing is a descend to hell" secondary layer from there start. Just another bone for players to toy with. It makes sense, it just isn't actually as interesting as the more direct interpretation of the story. It's like Braid.

>the player can also feel secure knowing they can continue to wave the Star and Stripes or Union Jack and bring some hot leaded justice to the evil ones without having to worry about civilian casualties.
What the fuck are you talking about? Price (because that's who we're talking about here) is out to get Sheperd (another villain masquerading as the good guy) because of a misguided sense of justice that he probably acquired under awful circumstances (in the gulag). He's almost exactly the kind of character that Walker is - a selfish prick trying to dress up his personal insecurities/vendettas in a cloak of righteousness.

As for the player taking control of another character in No Russian, having multiple PoVs has always been CoD's thing. If you can't follow a handful of brief sub-plots following an overarching story then perhaps the problem lies with you, not the game.

>kill the civilians
>literally a second (1 second) after the white phosphorous reveal, a guy yells "We never had a choice"
>wtf, we never had a choice!

>identify
Empathy is not identification, you moron. Re-think your argument.

That is literally what it is satirizing. There is no "pacifist run" of a Call of Duty game. Furthermore, why should you even be given the option to feel good about yourself for playing a game glorifying cancerous US militarism? And, even above that, the game calls "you" out on being a fucking piece of shit getting your rocks off on vicarious violence as a vehicle for criticizing the greater American industry of uncritical, unreflective games about killing (and killing "bad guys").

I swear to god most of you retards would fail a 7th grade English language arts class.

Actually, you need to make up an argument of your own to begin with, you moron. Whever you feel empathy or not is completely irrelevant to anything we were talking about so far.

Have mutts never heard of “Heart of Darkness”?

the game isnt trying to make you self insert as a walker. it is trying to make the players and walkers motives and worldview align. the tips at the start are straight to the point gameplay tips, just like how walker is still relatively sane. the tips get more brazen as walker goes more insane because he loses his sense of reality. and that same losing the sense of reality is delivered to the player in these increasingly more intimate loading screen tips that break the fourth wall and turn you paranoid.

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This game was stylish as fuck and had a great message amongst all the vast swathes of games idolizing military actions as heroic and uniformly beneficent. It actually promoted a message of introspection and understanding your own actions better and it used the perfect medium for that message because games require inputs and actions from the observer themselves, making them feel for these moral messages even more. They obviously had to force you through some sections to drive the narrative forward, but the fact that it’s a video game still amplified the message even more and that’s probably why so many people got triggered or butthurt over it...it actually affected them. If anything this outrage just shows the game accomplished what it set out to do.

>game has no player choice
>except you can choose endings

based retard

It’s ironic people complain about this game specifically not giving you choice and then criticizing an aspect of choice driven narratives that’s present in all video games that market themselves as having choice. And it’s not ironic just because other games do it too, it’s ironic because Spec Ops The Line actually has one of the best implementation of “choice” mechanics, where the moments actually feel integrated to the gameplay so much so that you don’t even realize you made an important choice until after you do it.

this. I only realized there were potential other endings I had missed while the credits were rolling. like "oh, at that moment I actually could have done this thing, and that action not only fits with how the protagonist could be feeling but it's also totally appropriate to the game design, I just didn't have that impulse."

*wolf howls intensify*

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I love Yea Forums discussing this game

This game had too much story.
It was fucking boring. I was just sitting there politely waiting for the many cutscenes to finish.
Story should not be in a shooting game. Especially not unnecessarily long one.

Of this is bait it’s really low quality, if not, you are a retard.

2019...
I am never forgotten..

Well at least you say there politely. I appreciate that bud.

Lame, obvious "actually, war is bad bro" moralizing that has its cake and eats it too.

what war? the game doesnt take place during any war.

>NOOOO DONT TELL ME WAR IS BAD HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KEEP LIVING LIKE AN IGNORANT RETARD?

Woah, dude, I know what I'm talking about, okay.
I'm a pretty smart guy, most people I know say so.

>only has bad endings
what are you talking about? my character went back home with the recue team.

>game starts as a recon mission
>turns into rescue mission where you kill refugees to rescue americans
>eventually youre killing americans to rescue refugees
I love how insane the game is even right from the start.

>"You had a choice, you could have just not played"
>Ok
>Return game and trade it for Black Ops 2

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Si Yeager was working in a f2p space sim or some shit like that? Did they even release it?

((they))

I liked this game
it did something different
>crying about a good ending
not everything has a good ending, and a good ending is not always a possibility and the ending being "bad" is not clear since if everything went as planned Walker would be shooting up more villages for the benevolent american goverment

Objectively speaking, there isn't a good or bad ending.
What does it actually mean to be good or bad?

Some would argue that Spec Ops has a "good" ending.

>game has no player choice
>only has bad endings
It might be your favourite but not every game has to be Undertale dude

>vg community as a whole asks for games where you play as the villain
>finally get one
>reee just let me self-insert as a heroic badass!
this is why video games will always be shit

Yes in the cutscene
The player bombs enemy combatants and then the devs scripted already dead civvies to appear

Remember when this first came out and I tried out the demo. Don't think I've ever nope'd out of a game so fast in my life.

>Main menu is an American flag waving
>With the national burger anthem in the background
>Starts out with a turret section
>Game is about shooting sandniggers in a desert

Still to this day I'm embarrassed to have ever downloaded such shite

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>play a videogame
>main character does something abhorrent
wow that's pretty abhorrent of him
>Game: HOW ABHORRENT OF YOU

99% of the enemies you kill in the game are american soldiers or civilians. it's a bait and switch.

I really have to wonder if this is a bait, but if it's not, then let me share a secret with you: It's not what it looks like. It's quite literally a criticism of american military jingoism in videogames.

It's amazing how insecure you people are. Ever heard the term "delusion of reference"? You should look into it.

>I think this is bait but I'm still gonna take it
Into the trash you go

>>Main menu is an American flag waving
More specifically, it’s an upside-down american flag, which means that there’s extreme danger in the area.
>>With the national burger anthem in the background
It’s Jimi Hendrix’s version of the Star Spangled Banner, which was played at Woodstock 1969 as a protest against the Vietnam war.
>>Starts out with a turret section
Bog-standard gameplay section from other shooter games that turns meta later on into the game
>>Game is about shooting sandniggers in a desert
You’re either fighting civilians or american soldiers.
It’s far from my favorite game and I’d even argue against playing it because it gets tedious and boring by the end of it, but I do like what it tries to do.

It's applauded by zoomers who think forced narrative is good.

>Keep going down

Keep sucking boomer dick and judging people with that boomer head.

Mario doesn't try to make you feel bad or guilty about going to the left

>payed

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The point is that Walker's mission was recon and there was apparently a feature that never made it in where Walker could pull out his radio and report back to HQ and the game would end. The first level is entirely you fighting looters in jihadi-style clothing and you see them killing an American hostage, which leads you down the standard shooter fare of having to take matters into your own hands to save them yourself like the big shooter hero you are. It's this mindless following of objectives and forgetting what you were there for in the first place that ends up with Walker killing the regiment he was sent into save and blowing up Dubai's remaining water supply.

The game doesn't criticise (you) for taking a choice in this specific game. You never had a fucking choice in the first place.
No, the game criticises you for being a person who buys, plays, and enjoys modern military shooters. It's part of its overall takedown of that genre.
When in Battlefield or CoD or whatever you get in a helicopter/AC-130 and rain holy fire down upon some arabs/russians/whatever generic PMC villain you don't ever think about whether you should be doing it.
The entire game gives you standard FPS set pieces except with context and consequence. It then revels in telling you "You still having fun, bitch?" This is YOUR fault. The fact that you consume this type of shite is why it keeps getting made. YOU are the reason there's no choice in this game, we HAD to include a "rain death from above" section because that's what modern military shooters do! We HAD to make you kill thousands of soldiers because the power fantasy makes you feel like a hero.

Giving you a consequence-free opt-out would completely ruin the entire point of the game.

>We made an irredeemably shitty game and bankrupted ourselves to own CoD playing zoomers
Based

>I'm referring to the moment when the crowd is throwing grenades at you but they don't explode

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That's real "art" in every sense of the word.

It does not even necessarily bitch you out, the degree to which you take the concerns the game voices personally, and a degree which you interpret them as criticism of Walker is largely up to YOU. It mostly asks questions, goes "you do realize that these kinds of stories are fucked up, right? Do you identify with the heroes? Did you ever think about it? Do you feel connection even now?"

The ending gives you a clear choice. The "Welcome to Dubai" ending is so fucking cool because it literally allows you to say "yeah, I know and I don't give a fuck, I'm here to have fun shooting". And the game goes "fair enough".

It's people who have problem actually distancing themselves from Walker who take it as a personal attack, as a criticism directly aimed at them. Proving that yeah: they are easily played and fucked up.

Even at the end of the game, they clearly did not understand that the major point is to draw distance and gain perspective on what Walker (and by extention most generic war game protagonists) do.

It's not saying "You are a bad person for playing the game." In fact, it LITERALLY AND EXPLICITLY SAYS THE OPPOSITE at one point.
It's just saying: you should get some perspective on what these kinds of games and their heroes are really doing.

I've missed that line in that thread on first reading, and HOLY SHIT.

The "none of this is real so why should you care" line comes to mind.
I agree that the game does essentially tell you that if you're just there to have mechanical shooty fun you're OK. But then you're not the type of person who's desperately going to ask for a "good choice" where you're not ""evil"". What do you care, you get to shoot people either way.
If you actually want to endulge in your fantasises of being the hero and saving the day by shooting people then you're basically Walker.

Which generally applies to the kind of people who usually buy the CoD games annually and think Soap or Price are super cool people. If you're not that type of person the game doesn't hit anywhere near as hard.

Games that always come to mind here are things like Wargame Red Dragon or World in Conflict. Games where you fight closer to how a modern military fights, by shelling the ever loving crap out of a position where enemies may or may not be. Spotted a sniper somewhere in a city block? Fuck it, call down artillery on the entire block, you're bound to hit him eventually. There's absolutely zero room for any kind of heroics.

I mostly hated it for the bad gameplay. Ended up quiting it around chapter 11 or so I think. Right after the ship graveyard I think, or at least that was the last set piece I remember.

I dont think the game is even trying to discern between "good" or "evil" since walker is literal schizo moving forward guided by voices he hears in head. His perception is warped and it's leading him from atrocity to another and regardless his character mostly stays "heroic" throughout the entire game and those war crimes are framed as just things he happens to stumble upon and its all someone else's fault. players dont question this because you proceed levels in third person shooter by killing enemies and moving forward. the game starts out subtly but it eventually starts asking the player why are you going forward, who are you killing, why are you killing? etc. I dont see it guilting the player at all but instead demands more active observation of the medium, specifically military shooters.

Well, yes, it essentially gives you scenarios that are extremely common in modern military shooters and then it adds context and consequence.
That's why I put good and evil in quotation marks, only people desperate for that approval are mad about not having a "good" ending or a "good" choice.

You are right. If by the time Walker sets out to take over the radio tower and just "warn everyone to leave the town", you are still not aware of how fucked up the whole situation has become, then you are basically like Walker, deluding yourself instead of facing the reality, which for those people, makes the ending a bit more... personally aimed. But if you, like most people, already become fully aware of how contradictory your in-game goals are with the logic of the story, you can still detach yourself a see it as a character study, just telling a tale of a really fucked up person, and occasionally checking up with you about how do you feel about the situation.

Same logic basically applies to the "I'm just here for the character study" logic. You wouldn't want Walker to suddenly become sane and and be a real hero all of a sudden. You want him to go even deeper into madness because that makes for a better story and more interesting character.

The people who are complaining about not having a choice are the ones that the game criticises the most.

you can stop reading and close the book
you can stop watching and pause the film

Films and books don't send you back 5 pages/one scene because you weren't good enough at killing dudes.

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There's also the important factor that most Loading screens directly aimed at the player are phrased as question. When the game says "How many Americans have you killed today?" if you've managed to detach yourself from Walker you'll just say: well, zero and go on. Unless you've actually killed some Americans before committing to your gaming time in which case... maybe you shouldn't kill people? If you're desperately trying to be this shootyman hero it'll hit hard. The game only hits you if you let it.

There is that one good ending tho. Where Walker actually goes home. Unless we get into that "they died in a plane crash" bs

this game seems to be the biggest brainlet filter

self-insert fags btfo yet again

reminder that walker is dead.

the whole squads names are even on the memorials you can find in the game.

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World In Conflict does this better than Spec Ops in the sense that if you flatten a city block when you're not supposed to, the game will tell you and give you a "what the hell was that" moment.

walker was never alive in the first place. he's just a video game character.

>plane crash
Helicopter crash
>good ending
Yeah, if you considering going home with severe incurable PTSD a good ending. He probably an heroes like a huge amount of veterans after a few years. In that ending when one of the soldiers asks "How'd you survive all this" Walker replies with "Who said I did?". He basically lost his entire sense of self when he shot Konrad.

Uhh, not... really? Unless there's something I'm missing the most you get is a pilot or artillery commander chewing you out over the radio for giving him crap coordinates where no enemies were. The problem wasn't that you just destroyed some property, the problem was that you wasted a bunch of shells and flight time.
If you flatten an entire block to kill a single infantry squad nobody cares.

to add a bit to the discussion on the white prosperous scene. in a developer interview they said they originally were going to have an option to let you try to fight everybody instead and die, but because of console limitation the amount of enemies caused the game to run like shit, so thats why you're forced into the white phosphorus scene. there was originally supposed to be a pointless choice, the illusion of choice I guess since you're forced to use the white phosphorus or die

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>only way to "win" is "just don't play the game
>Don't play the game
>OMG how did this game fail to sell?
fucking kek

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I don't know why people parrot the don't play the game thing because thats explicitly not what the game is about. fucking idiots missed the point completly

the choice is still there. if you engage the 33rd with your guns there will be an endless wave of enemies and the game will be softlocked until you kill yourself by letting them shoot you. no story progression though, just throws you back to the previous cutscene.

kind of like hanekes funny games, but at least the movie is engaging enough so u can actually enjoy its genre aspect
this game is just boring to play on mechanical level

You say that as if the devs expected their game to sell.

Ehh... kinda. You can't go down the ladder until you use the WP. So I guess a "choice" to try and fight your way through all the way to the gate is missing.
Of course the game would need some way to 100% kill you if you try. Maybe that APC can just always oneshot you if you get close.

FPBP

what's worse is that nowadays when threads are made over it people on Yea Forums are too young to even remember it came out at a time when generic ass military shooters like CoD and MoH were fucking overflowing the market and shoving in the most inane mindless army shit they could.

with that said, i don't think it's worth it trying to analyze and criticize spec ops: the line over 7 years later when the brown'n'bloom military shooter fad that practically the whole game was made to criticize has pretty much ran its course. i'm guessing what we're seeing now is either the result of Yea Forums just being its usual self and now criticizing the game after it got its praise, or a sizeable amount of people here are now just too young to remember how bland and generic shooters were becoming at the time or looking back on it with nostalgia glasses and thinking SO:TL was criticizing their favorite games. i seriously doubt the devs intended for the game to be a long-lasting icon more than they were more determined to just make something different from the rest of the horde of military vidya at the time.

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Based

FPBP

/thread

The fact that anons are still talking about this game even when they hate it means that it is literally living rent free.

>waaaah no one likes my 2 deep 5 u cod ripoff
cope

the game is basically a meta commentary on military shooters and real world American foreign policies in the middle East. it's basically a horror adaptation of 'Heart of Darkness', only this time, it's in the desert.

The fact that a mid-budget hacked together "cod clone" is being talked about 7 years later is an amazing achievement.
How fucking often do you see people talking about "Medal of Honour: Warfighter" nowadays and that game had a much larger budget.

nigga I ain't even gonna read this, keep coping

>game has no player choice
Isn't that the point?
A lot of shooter games, even games with critically acclaimed stories, deny the player any meaningful agency within the story
Also, the game is a metaphor for USA's interventions in the Middle East.

bro, it's strongly implied that the beginning of the game is his final moment before dying in that crash and the rest of the game is him reliving the events of the game in purgatory and hell.

Here, have what you wanted. Now go shit up some other thread.

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>its another thread in which the retarded OP thinks the game is guilting him personally
> If you can't differentiate yourself from Walker then there is something wrong with your brain.
Feel like a hero yet?

It's a giant middle finger to the brown and bloom FPSes from the mid 00s, so it's beloved by the people who hate said shooters.

Game was by no means amazing. I liked its setting, surreal and horror undertones, and it had some terrific music backing combat encounters.

Spec Ops is asking you to critically examine its narrative. That's the whole point of the ending: Your choices are to admit that you are complicit with the narrative (And therefore should kill yourself for being a psychopath) or break from it.

It then lays out the remaining endings as how you break from the narrative. Are you ashamed of this kind of game? You leave peacefully, discarding the naive joy you took in being the hero. If you wish to rail against the message, you can continue to play, and are given an unfair challenge for you to lose against: You can keep your dissonance as long as you recognize the folly in it and accept your defeat.

Or, you can revel in your enjoyment of these games, which gives you the closest thing to a happy ending: You beat the final challenge and remind everyone around you: You do this for fun. This is a game and has no bearing on your soul. What happens in Dubai, actually and entirely, is harmless. Welcome, join the fun.

Good response and a good summary. Do you know whether the devs stated whether or not what their intentions were?

What the devs intended literally doesn't matter. When analysing fiction all that matters is what's in the work itself, any sort of bullshit intent the writer/director/devs may have had is irrelevant if it's not communicated properly in the work itself.

fpbp.
The problem with the game is just it was sold as something it wasn't, if you ignore all the "this game will make you question your morals" bullshit it's a very good game.

But it was literally sold as a standard "shoot some brown people" shooter, that was part of the whole bait and switch.

The point of the game was the illusion of choice, Walker can't change what he did no matter how hard he tries