Thread: Spec Ops: The Line - Decisions/Morality

I finished the game last night after picking it up during the tail end of the Steam Summer Sale this year and I have to say I was thoroughly impressed. Almost every time I launched the game on Steam, I received a flurry of messages saying things like:

"That game is so awesome" or "Let me know what you think after you finish"

I've never seen such a response from a game like this before. The story and the message at the center of this game is truly unique and I've found myself talking about it a lot lately with people - I figured I'd make a new thread about it and see what others have to say about the game.

Personally, I agreed whole-heartedly with Jeff Gerstamann of GiantBomb and his review of it.

The Line is more about showing you the horrible things that come about as a result of good-intentioned people going too far.

It's a shame that these tactics didn't find their way into a better game. Spec Ops: The Line is a stock third-person shooter with its share of turret sequences and cover-vaulting mechanics

Spec Ops: The Line Review - Giant Bomb

In my opinion, as a game, I thought it was pretty standard and uninteresting as far as the mechanics go. It didn't really do anything new or exceptional in terms of gunplay, game mechanics, or level design...But as for story/characters/morality, it definitely did something special.

Until I read some reviews and discussion boards after finishing the game, I hadn't realized just how thoroughly I had been duped by the developers. I didn't catch most of the hallucination sequences earlier on in the game. Even though it is just a game, they did a great job of making you feel the soul-crushing weight of your actions and how your need to act and make a decision sometimes doesn't lead to any beneficial outcome. Oftentimes in cinema - we see the bad guy give the good guy a choice (Like in spiderman when Green Goblin holds the tram car in one hand and MJ in the other and makes Spidey choose). The greater good would be for spiderman to choose the children over MJ, or so one might think - but Spec Ops: The Line plays off of your emotions so well and preys upon your preconceived notions in a way that is so unforgiving.

->Open Spoiler<-

The scenario where the two men are hanging from the bridge with snipers trained on them. One of them has done a seemingly minor crime and the other a more heinous crime involving the death of women in children. You are forced to make a decision where you pull the trigger on one of the two men, or do what most probably did, you shoot the snipers and continue your rampage against the 33rd (in which case both men die anyways).

I loved the subtle and grueling way that the game began to turn on you as you progressed. Once the morality of your actions is seriously in question, the tips and hints on the loading screens become criticisms and taunts that spit your actions back in your face. You see the characters as they descend into madness, becoming more jaded and vengeful - like mindless killing machines. The game really thrives off of your need for revenge. You have to have somebody to blame for making you do the things you did. Your hands can become clean again if you can somehow pass your judgement onto a more deserving guilty party.

The sequence with the white phosphorus, yes you know the one, puts perfectly into perspective the decision you just made with a similar decision to what real soldiers probably face in combat. I was outnumbered, outgunned, and I had to kill the enemy soldiers. The white phosphorus was the only weapon at my disposal and I had to use it. We came to save people, the 33rd didn't save people, and now we had to make the 33rd pay for not saving people, which in the process caused the deaths of 40+ more innocent men, women, and children. When you think about it, what really happened? Did I punish the enemy soldiers for their crimes, or did I punish the innocents for the crimes they were already the victims of? This is such a moral pot of chaos with the ultimate conclusion of "confusion". Because of the way it's presented, you the player are really forced to make your own decision on whether it's right or now. For some people, they just don't know, which I would think some soldiers returning from combat probably feel like as well.

I've never been in combat and I can't even come close to understanding what it must be like, but I imagine this game paints a little piece of how a real soldier must come to grips with the larger picture of what they are doing.

So, what do you guys think, who have finished the game? If you haven't played it, I highly recommend it, especially if you can get it during a Steam sale; I think I picked it up for $4.99

Since the gameplay was shit, I just hooked up my desktop to my TV to play it when I bought it.

This is one of the best games on PC. Not just in the last few years but in a long time(story alone that is).

Like you I too fell into the whole idea of the devs wanted to portray. I played the game on the hardest difficulty when I first picked it up. In doing so the game became almost unplayable hard. There are a lot of mechanics that are just frustrating in the game(maybe that was the point? doubt it but that would be funny). So I was understandably frustrated by the game(myself) as I was playing it. I became almost unhinged while playing. Taking on more brutal shots and finishing bad guys with a melee moves instead of a pop shot while they were on the ground. Just becoming madenly excited about every kill, just for the sole reason of "Fuck you game I beat you:"

->Open Spoiler<-

Then came the white phosphorus scene. The chapter before gave me a hard time so I was actually excited about using it. "Fuck those assholes they keep killing me." So I played through the scene and hopped down feeling like a badass. Then BAM! I saw what I had just done. The pain screams and the half dead soldiers walking towards you begging to be put out of their misery. A wave of remorse just flooded me, and this was before seeing the civilians I just killed. I ended up giving a head shot to every person I saw cause I just felt so shitty about the whole thing.

That was the moment I was sold on this game. Then after I played it again to look for the minor things that I missed the first time around. If you do finishing moves against downed soldiers the killing moves actually get more and more brutal as the game progresses. By the end you character will actual start bashing in the heads of the badguys.

On top of that the devs planned it out well. I was listening to a podcast they did and he was talking about how he wanted people to be sucked into like that. Then he talked about that the final scene of the game and how that was the point in the game where you were supposed to separate yourself from the main character and take the high road. That you were no better than he is if you went about things in a more brutal fashion at the end.

>Spec Ops: The Line


Played the game and it made me feel like shit when it was over.

For those of you who have not played it.. PLAY THE GAME ALREADY!

Pay CLOSE attention to the story -- especially the MULTIPLE ending(s)..

Zero Punctuations gave it a positive review.. a rarity...

Spec Ops: The Line | Zero Punctuation Video Gallery | The Escapist

Definitely. At the start of the game, I didn't do any executions. I thought it was inhumane and unnecessary. As the game progressed though, I got more and more angry with the enemies and by the end of the game I was executing every enemy I could.

Originally Posted by shatter99

For those of you who have not played it.. PLAY THE DAM GAME ALREADY!

And those who have played it, I'd recommend playing it again just to pick up all the log files. There's a lot of good backstory there.