Early Game Loading Screen: Use Cover Mid Game: Do you even remember why you came here? Late Game Loading Screen: The US Military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants, But this isn't real, so why should you care?
@@vahlok1426 Just finished playing it a week ago, I missed that one. The one about anguish, the "Freedom is what we do with what's been done to us." Great stuff.
My favorite thing is that appears in The Pit. Pretty early in the game, well before it starts dishing out the passive aggressive messages. Its uncharestic wording compared to the generic tips up until then makes it so creepy.
I asked Nolan North about this game a couple of weeks ago at a panel, he said he was so proud of the work he did on it as Captain Walker and he was extremely disappointed with how poorly the game sold. He said if he could ask his for hard Uncharted fans to play one game from him other than that it would be this, he loves the message this game has. It's a shame it's sales suffered due to its generic name and high amount of competitors.
the gondola Hmmm gameplay sucked. It was a generic COD game. The story wasn't even all that compelling. Trying to make me feel bad whilst forcing a premise down my throat is quite annoying. Then again I'm not a sadistic developer.
You realize that you're currently on a video that goes into the game's strengths in easily ten times as much detail as you're lavishing its weaknesses with here, right? Unless you show some respect for my intelligence by actually expanding on your points here and refuting at least some of the points in the video, I'm going to continue to believe you're baiting for attention
The better way to do this is probably “we will back your vision fully now that you’ve given a bunch of actionable goals that you’d like to achieve and we support it”. Just handing people a checkbook and telling them to do whatever can often really backfire
No one's gonna mention the fact that in the beginning of the game, when you enter the city is a Stop sign, and Conrad said that everything could've been avoided if he just stopped
Yeah. WW2 could have been avoided if everyone just surrendered to the Nazis. There's never an excuse to fight, you should just roll over to the first person who demands something of you. War and violence are **never** acceptable options. /s
@@Fidozo15 No, I just wish people would stop acting like war is literally always the most worstest thing 5evar that should always be avoided, while ignoring that sometime it really *is* the right course of action. America was right to get involved in WW2, and I'd argue should have done so sooner. not to mention, war often sees the development of technologies that are helpful to all mankind. We would not have Penicillin if not for war. We would not have the computers we're using to have this conversation _right now_ without war. tl;dr- I just really dislike blatant black and white world views. And as much as this game may be one that many people enjoy, as much as its message may be counter to what we normally encounter in war media, that doesn't mean it's not showing its own black and white world view.
Spec Ops The Line's strongest gut punch is actually one of its mechanics: executing an enemy gives you ammo for both equipped weapons. The scar-h smg and grenade launchers are a powerful draw to use, but you will very rarely find enemies that use them or drop or ammo for them. But, any enemy you down can drop ammo for them, by melee killing them in a few second window where they are moaning in pain. This pushes players to think like Walker - an instinctive killer - by making the player listen for the siren call of a man's agony to brutally execute him in order to feed your strongest gun.
I didn't realize this until like chapter 13. I actually avoided doing this because I deemed it too cruel and felt like the game was goating me. After I realized it though I executed everyone in site if I could.
I was playing this game on the recommendation of this video. I stuck a soldier with a sticky grenade. He dropped his gun and panicked and ran towards his Comrads. One of them bashed him in the face and then dove on his body to save the rest. Idk how you code something like that into your AI but it’s little stuff like that which really makes this game.
Fuck me I threw one and they ran towards me. I blew up into smithereens the same way you can do when you get the grenade launcher. Like how tf does this game have it but nothing of the current games do?
I showed it to a friend, he would occasionally update me about how he thought of it. 1. "Nothing special, I don´t know why you recommend this so highly, it´s setting is pretty cool I guess. 2. "Well, there´s some fucked up shit going on, is this secretly a horror game all along?" 3. "Holy shit, what the hell is even going on with all these hallucinations? What´s with all the civilians? Is Walker losing his shit? Or am I?" 4. "Okay....now I know why you recommended it so highly...that was quite the ride...what the fuck."
Couple years ago My cousin was complaining about how most games had the same story and weren't that interesting anymore. I made him play this. I sat him down, got him some snacks and a drink and told him I wouldn't be joining him, how he needed to distractions. All I could hear from the next room was : "oh fuck..." every 30 or so minutes.
One small point people miss is that Walker is already suffering from PTSD and hallucinations caused by his time in Afghanistan when they enter Dubai. In the first enemy encounter, Lugo says he speaks Farsi and will try to talk to them--but people in Dubai speak Arabic. Farsi is a dialect of Persian, which is also spoken in Afghanistan and called Dari. So even in this initial moment, the player is subtly told that the narration is not entirely reliable and the squad is not as whole as it may appear. It also connects this fictional conflict to a very real, very ongoing conflict with its own fair share of atrocities and justifications.
This. I noticed that but didn't cared too much. This adds even more with Walker fought at somewhere and didn't wanted to talk about as the loading screen tells.
Excellent point. I thought it was strange that they just so happened to meet a group of Farsi speakers in UAE. I guessed it was just a chance meeting with Iranian expatriates but your explanation clears up why with great justification.
Holy shit I just realized it now. Also in the first few chapters enemies speak some lines in Turkish which is inconsistent for dubai. I tought it was just lazy writing but after reading your comment I think it is the opposite.
actually you're told this JUST before that when you heard Conrad state the death toll, which is "18 thousand, 250" something he never said in the initial transmission given to us by walker.
mrunitforge Do you know what? The level designer put the signal there cos the scene felt too empty without something in the top half of the screen. It wasn't meant to have any artistic interpretation.
@@saulblanco9891 Even if something isn't "meant" to be interpreted artistically, that doesn't mean it can't be. How many interpretations do you think somebody could glean from the lyrics to bohemian rhapsody, even though those lyrics were allegedly written as nonsense? That's the deepest value of art, the ability to attach yourself to it and broaden your perspective because of it. And as kacper said, these points are not mutually exclusive. Is it not possible that the DEV who was tasked with making the scene less empty came up with a cool, subliminal indication of the horrors to come? Such an intention behind an addition to the game certainly isn't out of the ordinary. I would say with the themes of this game, it's quite likely that the stop sign was put there for some deeper artistic reasons beyond it's surface level design purpose. Never claim something "wasn't meant to have any artistic interpretation", if someone can interpret something from a piece of art, then that's good enough. Whether the artist meant for it to happen or not, that artistic interpretation is a sign that the artist did their job well.
@@Selrisitai Vick was only referring to how the opening and cast seem to fill those tropes, but as you see Spec Ops goes far beyond that. Just your own observation shows that Spec Ops took the trope and turned it over.
One thing I will say in defense of Lugo and Adams continuing to follow Walker after he'd shown signs of instability - deniability. Continuing to follow him meant that they could say "We were just following orders!" and thereby shift responsibility onto someone else... just as Walker had done with Conrad.
Wow, never thought of it that way! You are brilliant! This is the best explanation I have seen on why Lugo and Adams kept following Walker through those questionable moments!
I didn't say that it was a *good* excuse - just that that's the one that two stressed-out soldiers in the middle of hostile territory might try to take refuge in.
ironballs16 I like that idea. It makes it seem like they also had some mental instability caused by the events they took part in, just not as much as Walker, maybe because they actually weren't in charge.
The game would be a lot better if I could rush a lot easier I ain't playing a forced cover based shooter all day that's so boring. It's looks like one of the best mediocre games compared to so many other games but still. Strong 5 out of 10 game.
That is such a good and bad outcome when you think about it. On the one hand, you put the game down before you committed more "attrocities" but on the other hand, it was likely because it wasn't uniquely violent enough to continue capturing your attention.
I just picked up on something.. The whole game makes you go further and further down into the abyss. Until the last chapter where you eventually go up. Not only up but also on top of the tallest point of Dubai. The ascension. The final judgment. You don't talk with Conrad. You are negociating for your soul.
In another video, a guy said the scene was a hostage negociation and the player was left with the choice of blaming Walker or not for what he (the player) did. "You did this." "No. _You_ did." takes another meaning with that interpretation.
@@thelittleredhairedgirlfrom6527 Thank you! Also, love your profile pic and name. Never found out what happened to Charlie and the little red haired cutie. But I'm happy for a callback.
The final scene with Konrad possibly references the five stages of grief. Konrad: "I'm going to count to 5, then I'm pulling the trigger." Walker: "You're not real, this is all in my head" [Denial] Konrad: "Are you sure? Maybe it's in mine. ONE." Walker: "No, everything, all of this, it was your fault!" [Anger] Konrad: "If that's what you believe, then shoot me. TWO." Walker: "I-I didn't mean to hurt anybody." [Bargaining] Konrad: "No one ever does, Walker. THREE." Walker raises his gun. [Depression] "FOUR." "Is this really what you want, Walker? ... So be it. FIVE." [by shooting himself, representing Acceptance]
@@artaum5635 he was dead all along, this is basically him confronting his demons of what I'm guessing he did in Afghanistan but replaced with Dubai where he died in the helicopter crash
Writing on Games - It was a great video, but I can't really say it was all that fresh. You can easily find other analysis videos that touch on everything said here, with the exception of multiplayer, which was a delight to see him do a breakdown on.
considering how the creator was forced to include multi player, and his sarcastic comment about how essential multiplayer was to the shooter genre in that interview, I think he deliberately made it as broken s possible as defiant fuck you to the studio.
I mean, yeah? Are our morals and sense of reason meant to majorly change in 3 years? Because i see absolutely nothing about that quote that could even age
In reality,the reason the “haven’t we done this before” was actually a last ditch effort from the devs,because the publisher wanted to mess with the story a bit,and one of the devs was quoted saying “if anyone’s gonna screw with the story,it’s gonna be me.”
Sounds like a bitch move to me. Fucking with your own story because they dared tell you to have an In Medias Res opening. He should've used that to heighten the story like a good writer. I think the scene would've worked better without it. Maybe do the implication of how far gone Walker was by the time of the helicopter sequence. Since most of the game is a flashback, it should've used the fact by pressing start, you already fucked Dubai up. It would've hit harder. If he was gonna add something to it, maybe have Walker say something "badass" in both versions. Something that sounds tough and cool in the opening, but by the time you get to that point, with the added context, he sounds unhinged and psychotic.
The most compelling thing about this game wasn't the shooting, but the game questioning the morality and ethics of why you shot. That's a really interesting idea I'd like to see taken further with more branching paths and options.
Anonnymouse Hacker im not gonna deny that the gameplay was generic and nothing new, what i will stick to is the depth and intriguing direction of the narrative. When was the last time you played a game with a story this complex up til this game? Not counting games past Spec ops the line. All i ever saw was patriotic shoot em up carbon copy clones and honestly thats still a problem now a days for the military shooter games. At the end of the day though we dont have to agree and thats ok we all have our own preferences this is just me expressing mine.
I actually didn’t know you had a choice to not mow down those civilians after Lugo’s death. It’s scary that the thought of shooting in the air never occurred to me, Christ.
Does anybody realized that Walker's tone of voice changes, after the helo crashes? I don't mean the cutscenes or the scripted ones; when he shoots, or orders his squad, he has a much deeper and angry tone.
Yea dude I enjoyed it tbh I also like the how the squads dialogue changes the deeper you got Into the game, going from tango spotted to kill that fucker or how gruesome walkers executions get deeper into the game
That's was actually one of the first observations that I did about the how detailed this game is. I think it was during the part were I was charging into the Radio Tower that I realize that Walker and the rest of the Squad were starting to get unnecessarily violent during the Executions and Call outs
I first played this game on a ps3 with no internet access. The part during the intro credits that displays your online profile name just said the name of my offline user profile. It said: Special Guest (my real name.) That was the freakiest thing in the world to 16 year old me.
On the part about this being his personal hell and that he's actually dead, I'd like to disagree with that being taken literally. I think what he means by, "Who said I did.", is that he may be physically alive but he's dead inside and wracked by PTSD and guilt for his actions. He may have left Dubai, but his soul never did. And it possibly implies that he took his own life later down the line after returning home, like many other veterans do.
Sorry to respond to this comment so late down the line, but I want to place something here for anyone else who might see it. The fades present in the game are on purpose. When the game fades to black, that's a normal transition. When the game fades to *white,* that implies walker is deluding himself. He's misremembering, misunderstanding, or otherwise hallucinating the actions and events as they actually happened. This fade to white happens at *many* points in the game, and it's worth noting when it does to question, truly, *"What the fuck is going on?"* In the final scene of the game, just as walker climbs in the Humvee, the game fades to white. Walker never makes it home. This is a delusion, just like every other delusion this man stumbled his way through. This isn't even interpretation; the writers have gone on record as this being the *canon* of that ending in particular, as well as asking players to look through transitions and remember "Where was it black, where was it white?" Watch this video again, particularly in the story section, to catch some odd examples that really through some confusion into what events actually happened. The entirety of chapter 1 is fade to white. Nearly every fade in that is fade to white. Meeting the radioman? Fade to white. White phosphorus scene? A dark irony, as it includes fades to white. The game is far less honest with its events than it first appears, because it is pulling an old troupe in a new and mostly unrecognized way-Walker is an entirely unreliable narrator, and we are left to piece together what really happens from a mind that is broken, scarred, and reliving a muddled haze of memories in the final moments of a life lost in a helicopter crash. The head writer admits that his own interpretation is that the crash killed Walker. If anything could be see as "the intention to how you understand the story," it is this. The fades to white, the late-game surrealism, the foreshadowing long before Walker's mind could be injured enough or aware enough to start blaming itself truly. The fear, the cluelessness, the refusal to leave even long after Walker himself starts to admit that maybe it really is time to go. Adams and Lugo, perfect foils and critics of Walker himself, too perfectly for any normal "squad mates" to ever be. Their names appearing in the list of deceased, long before either is slated to be dead. Before the crash, the game has moments that are surreal and foreshadowing, intending to portray just how Walker reliving this mission is him reliving the mistakes he made. Konrad's face on everything, hanging Lugo, their names appearing in a memorial wall of the deceased *without the inclusion of their first names.* Things that would only appear in a mind which saw that as normal, just how everything in a dream makes sense to your own mind, until you wake up and realize the absurdity of what you believed to be true. After the crash, the game kicks into high gear; it is surreal, it is fantasy. Things happen well beyond the realm of reality, events unfold that no normal human could do or make sense of. How does the 33rd still have so many high-echelon troops to throw out you? Why are these storms perfectly balancing on your sins? Why did none of them shoot you as they watched you run from Adams? How are only 9 soldiers left alive, and why do they point you to a Konrad they would know is dead, without so much as missing a beat? They go so far as to say "Where he's always been waiting for you." They wouldn't know without being pure figments of imagination, conjured by a dying mind to complete their own narrative that, yes, *you* are the monster, and it was time to face the music of what you have done. What an amazing game. It may be 2.5 years old now, but maybe this video deserves an essay response to its own essay.
@@SpecialAgentCake The only thing I have a problem with is the idea of "hanging Lugo" on the glass of the building when rapelling into the crevasse. It's more likely to be a glitch, since the reflections arms are up above the head with the hands almost together - the same as Walker's rappel animation. Lugo's arms are not over his head when he's been lynched and hanged by the psychotic mob.
@@Vulgarth1 That's not a glitch. That is very clearly and purposefully done, on Lugo's side no less, which is the only character among the three that dies specifically by being hanged. Beyond this, you seem to be forgetting all the times bodies are strung up as a warning throughout the game. While some are left hanged by their necks, possibly to show that's how they were executed, plenty more are shown strung up by their hands. In this secondary case, it's obvious that the bodies were dead *before* being strung up, and are being placed up as a warning, threat, or trap. You should never be so quick to write off something in this game as being an easter egg or accidental glitch. A glitch doesn't happen to 100% of players who play the game, and the story is far too detail-oriented to throw subtext as subtle as Konrad's face at you in the game to stumble at the obvious foreshadowing parallel of the death of another main character.
@@SpecialAgentCake Not to mention, adding onto your point, that a glitch having to do with reflection doesn't make sense here. A reflection in a game is very specific, and cream a ghost reflection like that doesn't just happen without a character in front of it. At least to my knowledge it doesn't seem like that's likely.
MAJOR SPOILERS A quote from one of the many loading screens: "If Lugo were still alive, he would likely suffer from PTSD. So, really, he's the lucky one."
What a shitty message. "Hey veterans with PTSD, you'd all be better off dead!" But hey, anything for that pretentious edge to make people feel bad for wanting to have fun with a video game.
@@fortnight5677 Because people don't have to necessarily like a given work to think it deserves to be thought of and talked about. If all you want is an echo chamber for your own positive views on things, that's fine, but it's not what everyone wants.
When walker says “who said I did.” I didn’t take that him actually being dead. I took that as saying who he was before died and who he is now. Is a version of himself that is broken. I don’t walker died at all in the story
Well yeah, everyone did as that's the obvious interpretation. That line hinting towards Walker being stuck in his own personal hell throughout the game is much more interesting.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT I WAS PLAYING THE GAME AGAIN AND I JUST NOTICED ! Between many occurances Adams will shout " Walker Wake up!" , " Open your eyes Walker!!!" This means walker was hallucinating after the helicopter crash ! And adams was the only one who survived and he was trying wake walker up !
My personal theory is that this is all just Walker reliving the events in his head, this is his PTSD; We're just reliving his memories, and the choices we can make are him wondering about if he could have done things differently then how he did them, and if it would have changed anything. The answer is it wouldn't have. But he lives through it over and over again anyway, whether he wants to or not.
Is it not okay to describe Spec ops the line a deconstruction of military shooter games? My favorite was probably some artistic reference where near end Colonel John Konrad painted the burnt mother/child of Walker using White Phosphorus results. as both Walker and Konrad looked at side by side. Walker: "You did this" Konrad "No, you did" A reference to ww2 era a german officer occupied france and strolled through a french artist art gallary and notice a particular art piece of horror of war and asked the french artist similar manner. "You did this?" "You did...." something like that.
The story you're telling is actually a famous encounter that Pablo Picasso had with a German officer. The officer asked Picasso if he was the one that had done The Guernica (about the destruction of the town of Guernica by the Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War). Picasso answered "No, you did".
The white phosphorus scene has a lot in common with the first bioshock's twist, being that we play video games believing we have choice, that's a lot of the appeal towards them, interactive media, but in reality it's just an illusion, a false sense of choice and freedom. In spec ops you killed civilians because you chose too, then if you tried not to, it's obvious there was no choice. You either did it because you didn't care or did it because you had no choice. And this parallels a lot with the hardships of war, when push comes to shove, what are you going to do, and how are you going to justify what you've done, because sometimes, there is only thing you can do.
i also love the fact that walker is practicing good trigger discipline at the start of the game and having the finger always on the trigger around the end
The most powerful moment in the game for me is really understated, but it hit really hard. It happens sometime around chapter 5 or 6. Here's how it goes: You're fighting in a camp full of civilian hostages, the enemy pelting you with mounted machine gun fire from several positions. You and your comrades cower behind thick cover, the rubble from the continuous gunfire raining down on you. Without any chance of taking on the guns front on, you decide to have your squadmates stay put so you can attempt a flank. The intensity is incredibly high, tension so thick in the air you could cut a chunk off with scissors. You begin your sprint, making your way towards the entrance to a hallway that leads around to behind your opponents. You run like hell, and safely make it into the hallway. Running along, you turn a corner and see someone running in your direction *bang* Without even realizing it, you just gunned down an innocent civilian. This moment perfectly illustrates the game's themes without even a line of dialogue. You couldn't distinguish soldier from civilian. What to you was an enemy charging you, was simply a scared, innocent person running down a hall. Harrowing.
I did that too. It was instinctive, and it made me stop for a moment. Once thing I find interesting about it is that it doesn't happen again the entire game as far as i know. It only happens once.
Funny enough that you brought this up, I just played the game yesterday and went through this exact sequence. I brought up my sights just as I noticed someone running towards me, but I had a good enough reaction to not instinctively shoot on sight the moment I noticed it was a civilian women running towards me, but instead of asking for help, she ran back the other way away from me. I had decided to let her live and ran past but just as some enemies came in sight around the corner and I aimed and fired, she at that exact moment ran in front of my line of fire and I accidentally shot her. That was a big moment for me in the game and made me rethink what I was doing. I don't think it was intentionally put in, but because of my fear of the enemies (I played on the highest difficulty, and so a few shots would easily kill me, making them really annoying and dangerous) I had lost situational awareness for a brief moment and even though I was empathetic and didn't want to kill her despite my efforts, she still ended up as a casualty of that battle and my action. The reality of that and how it relates to real life conflicts which are way more intense life/death situations, really struck me at that moment and how even the smallest choices could lead to tragic moments that can't be reversed.
R Jotun Józef Korzeniowski to be precise, I've read somewhere that Heart of Darkness' brilliance is putting Polish Character(nature) in British Culture *insert immigration joke*
I think Joseph to the contrary got an unmatched view of humanity, and his history as a writer and a person seems to underline this idea. Especially his short story Youth, which I personally prefer over heart of darkness due to the clarity of vision and the autobiographical nature of it. And I think like most other non-brits that british culture is a bit of an impossibility unless it's a culture of multiculturalism. However much they like to huff about history &c. Everything they have they owe to immigrants :)
Don't know if you'll see this comment because how long ago you posted this video, but on the subject of the multiplayer I was actually one of the beta testers for the original MP build around 2010. The release version was much more dull and standardized compared to other shooters. Basically, the 2 factions had 3 classes on each side with unique abilities. The Damned had scout, heavy weapons, and demolitions. Scout had the ability to send out a pulse and highlight all the enemies on the map for a couple seconds (you could even see them through walls) if they stayed in cover without moving for 10 seconds, with the drawback of all the enemies having you highlighted, but I can't recommend the second ability. Heavy weapons could have MGL, RPG, etc. as a replacement for the pistol, and had the secondary ability of the ballistic vest which reduced gunshot damage to the chest. Demolitions had reduced explosives damage received and I can't remember the second ability. It also didn't have as short of a TTK. The Exiles were the fun ones to play as in my opinion. First was the enforcer, which had a damage bonus that increased the lower their health was, and dropped a grenade on death. The vulture was pretty unique with it's scavenger perk. When you killed one of the damned, they would drop a small box that if you walked over, it would give you a bonus based on which enemy you killed. Killing the scout would drop a scanner that would highlight enemy positions without highlighting yourself, demolitions would give you a flak jacket that was a 20% temporary health increase (once this damage was received, you did not regenerate it, you could only pick up a new one), and heavy weapons would give you an extended mag that instantly refilled the magazine of your current weapon with 20% more capacity and did not take ammo from your reserve (pretty powerful if you manage to steal an enemy grenade launcher, as you couldn't regularly pick up more ammo for it on the map) which is lost as soon as you reload. I can't remember the second perk. Finally, my favorite, the hunter. The hunter was the only one that didn't have any abilities that boosted a stat in some way for combat advantage. The first was highlighting enemy footprints in the sand so you can stalk them, while the other highlighted enemies through walls like the scout, but you weren't highlighted to them and the range was extremely short, about 25 feet or so. The factions also had different weapons. The Damned had lower power and lower recoil weapons that worked well at range, while the exiles had higher recoil and higher power weapons that excelled at shorter range. This lead to an asymmetrical play style that made the exiles really hunt down the damned, but there wasn't a large imbalance of power. Also, the sandstorms in beta were much fiercer, you couldn't see almost anything more than 5 feet away with the exception of a muzzle flash, so you might get a hail of bullets and flashing lights towards your position if you aren't careful with your shots (partly why I loved the hunter, follow the footprints and just execute someone like a ghost, great for making people upset). I was honestly upset with the condition and changes to the multiplayer in the release version, with the really big differences being the XP or damage reduction in certain situations like you mentioned. I think this was before the multiplayer was contracted out and originally done by Jager but I could be wrong or misremembering. TL;DR The multiplayer in beta was great, they screwed up the release version.
That actually sounds great. There's not that much asymmetric games that rely not just on a character skills but also a map composition, gameplay mechanics and general atmosphere around player. What was described could work and work very well since the base premise is already solid for a standard shooter. And adding in atmosphere into multiplayer can hook players for a long time.
Whenever I see praise being heaped on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)'s campaign for being "mature, bold, and realistic", I just laugh because Spec Ops: The Line did it far better six years ago.
MW wasn't realistic enough for you because the protagonist wasn't insane? You know not every single person that experiences combat gets brain melting PTSD, right?
those people just desperately wanted a new CoD4 event and rejuvenation time in their lives, or for a new generation, whether it was real or not... but it isnt coming for CoD, still so much greed.
I liked cods campaign, like yeah, it doesnt hit you anywhere near the way the line does, but it was still immersive and grounded enough to deliver a message
Great analysis. Spec Ops is such a clever and criminally underrated game. Watching this makes me almost want a big budget remake with the technical polish to match the brilliance of the writing and voice acting.
Yeah, it was pretty unanimously praised when it first came out, and that praise has stayed pretty consistent over time. It's not that widely known, but most people that are familiar with it have a positive opinion of it. You're confusing "underrated" with "under-appreciated."
I guess because the game play is pretty awful. I just finished it again yesterday, and it truly is a terrible playing game. The story, themes and characters are top tier though.
Did you ever notice how the level design rarely makes you go up? Each major chapter ends with dropping down a ledge or across a zip line. So there's a literal aspect to walker's descent as well.
@@almost_friday9745 Hmm. Given everything, you might be right. But if we were dead, we wouldn't have been able to interact with the people or Ghould or Daniels. We wouldn't have experienced what we did after I launched the white phosphorus. And if we were, Konrad would've told me. You can't hallucinate if already dead. But then again.....your theory....just might be correct.
You know, with all the twists and turns in this game, and the theory that this is all Walker's "Personal Hell", I could honestly see this game falling somewhere within the Silent Hill universe.
I've heard about this game quite a lot. Never played it, it seemed like a typical 3rd person shooter, and thought that all the praising of it's story meant it was on a similar level as CoD4:MW. Then I was looking for something easy, quick and fun to play, and I didn't want to do another run in the CoD franchise or BF:BC2. So I thought - why not give it a shot. Now, I've finished it half an hour ago. Now I feel like a piece of shit.
My dad loves shooters, fighting games and sports games, but doesn't like story heavy games too much. But i knew i had to make him play this game after i finished it. One day he wanted to play something, i left my xbox on the living room with only Spec Ops The Line to play and forced him to give it a try. So he played it. The next day he was like "It's fun, i love how it looks, the blood and the sand stuff" (something like that). The next day, i'm going into the bathroom, he stops me and says "What the fuck? Why are you making me play this?" I asked why he said that, and was because he played the white phosphorus scene. The next day he was even telling my mom about it, he had never before felt something like that because of a videogame. And maybe a day or two later im in my room watching videos, he comes in and says "I finished the game... this fucking game... Amazing" Then i saw him playing it a few more times. He absolutely loved it and anytime he hears people talking about stories in videogames, he brings up Spec Ops The Line. 2020 edit: Had to come back to add that last night while we were drinking and playing Modern Warfare he went on for maybe and hour an a half, about how it could be a movie or a tv show, thinking of the cast, how reveals and twists could be set up, etc. So even though he hasn't played it in a couple of years he still loves it.
My dad's the guy that plays Skyrim and kills everyone not essential - then activates the console commands so he can remove the essential tag and kills whomever's left.
There's a fanfic called Afterglow which takes place directly after the Shooting Konrad ending all the way to Falcon-1's appearance, and it merges seamlessly with the campaign's storyline. I recommend you read it just for the heck of it.
@@TheJayson8899 you got basically one of the most accurate war stories, showing that soldiers duty isnt as fun As games and propaganda makes it look, and all the attrocious things you are forced to do and witness while on tour of duty, but hey Im just talking to an empty Space, go play Battlefield or something
I was the perfect candidate for this game. 11 to 12 year old me was a COD fanboy. I played every game to completion, multiplayer, campaign and, if available, spec ops. To this day MW1 & 2 remain some of my favourite shooters. But after Blacks Ops 2, COD was crowned my favourite franchise. I then decided to go through as many shooters as I could before Ghosts came out. Battlefield came first, amazing. Rainbow 6, loved it. Bioshock, spectacular. Then I played Ghosts and was horrified at all how dull it was. I wanted more, I wanted a better shooter fix, like an addict. So I decided to move onto third person games. Gears of War, meh. Uncharted, now we’re talking. It goes on and on but around early 2015, when I was around 13 I saw Spec Ops: The Line. I thought, “never heard of this franchise before, looks pretty good.” So I bought it at a dirt cheap price expecting nothing. I went home and began to play. Helicopter opening? Seen it before. Local militia? Seen it before. Black serious side kick and wise cracking jackass recruit? Seen it before. I got to about Chapter 5 and stopped playing. I was bored. I didn’t care much for killing American Soldiers seeing as though I am not American. So I moved on. Dead Space, Splinter Cell, Mass Effect, Hitman, it goes on but I eventually decided to 100% every game I had before I sold my consoles. Amazingly, and by sheer luck, Spec Ops The Line was the last game I had on the self. Ugh, do I really wanna play this again? Might as well get my money’s worth. So I started up the game, typed in my name and heard the familiar voice of Mr Nolan North in a military shooter. Then I saw my name in the credits. My interest peaked. I was no stranger to the 4th wall but what could a military shooter do with the 4th wall? So I pushed past the early chapters. Then it happened. Chapter 8. Now, let me stress, I was now figuring out something was off. I guessed that one of my squad was the villain. I guess I was right. I didn’t even blink firing the white phosphorus, not a care in the world. I didn’t fire at the vehicle, I fired at the mass of white outlines. With intent to kill all of them. Walking through it? Nah, just enemies, red dots, the bad guys. Then I saw the mother and the child. I literally froze. Wait what? Nah, this was a trick, it isn’t real. This moment scared me more than anything in my life. If I was in that scenario, I just killed a ton of innocent people and said ‘I am the good guy.’ Then ‘This isn’t my fault.’ Then I thought it will be explained or justified later. Then the water supply. Then I blew that fuckers head off. Then the tips began to change. Then the radioman is assassinated. Then the characters got brutal. Then Lugo dies. Then civilians berate and riot against you. Then Adams blames you. Then Adams dies. Then Conrad is revealed to be dead. Then I sat, controller in hand, aiming at Conrad as he spouted off the truth. I then learned I could shoot myself instead. If you tell me you fully understood this game on a first playthrough you are flat out lying. It has a hypnotic effect on you, convincing you everything is justified up until the helicopter crash where the game reveals what it thinks of you and how everything around you, Lugo, Adams, Conrad, the game itself and even Walker, who kept claiming it wasn’t his fault, subtly blaming the player, thinks you are a murdering psychopath. And considering what happens if you dare think back on what you’ve done, you can’t help but agree. It actively discourages you to keep playing but the search for answers, the chance that it is all worth it pushes you to keep going. It even warns you that the answers you seek are not going to please you. Smashing enemies heads in, creating bloody messes as Walker screams in utter rage, unable to stop himself shoving his pistol into the mouth of another human being and blowing his head off, watching up close and savouring the brutality of it, watching Walker switch from making quick and precise orders like “Watch that gunner” to the most unnerving line I’ve ever heard in a video game due to how he expressed hatred towards another human being, one he didn’t even know, in a way that makes the soldier sound like an annoyance rather than a person “I want him dead”. The façade of Walker fades and we are shown what happens when you strip someone of their right to claim they are good, you are left with raw and primal emotions. Nothing else. Identity is irrelevant on a battlefield. And if you spend long enough on a battlefield, your identity withers and dies. Without the identity of Walker, there’s nothing left for you, the player, to protect yourself with. You can’t hide behind, it’s a video game character, anymore. It’s you. Have you ever gotten so angry that you sound inhuman in your threats? No? I’m willing to bet you have at least once lost all control and felt nothing but total rage. That is Walker by the end, that’s all that’s left. Rage and the desperate need to justify his actions. Walker is the rage. You are the desperate search for justification. And when you are told there is no justification, that you are to blame for all of this and YOU and YOU alone killed possibly thousands of innocent civilians and, at any point, could’ve just stopped by putting down the controller, accepting what you’ve done, and returning to reality, or in Walker’s case, the HQ to report back from his RECON mission. By tearing away any chance of justification, the rage is unfounded and so fades. So what’s left? Regret? No. There’s nothing left. It mixes in Walker and the player, making them distinctly different but uniting them at the end so the player fully understands that they are using the excuse that Walker is a character to deny that THEY chose their fate. The ending supports this. The player has control. It’s not Walker taking aim, it’s the player that gets to choose which is why the two Walkers have differing animations. It was your choice. It has always been your choice. The stress was unbearable. But I shot Conrad. It was over. I won, right? It’s justified because I won? Then the epilogue, the final kick to the balls, when I surrendered to the soldiers and the game ended. I survived, so I won right? No. I replayed the epilogue all the ways I could. Killing the soldiers felt wrong but it felt as if Walker had transcended my control. He was lost and survival is all that mattered, if survival is even real. Then getting killed by them felt calming, knowing that Walker escaped his hell. But then I figured out what the real ending was. There is no epilogue. The only way to end it, the only way to escape, the only way to know what is truly real, is to shoot Walker in the head. 13 year old me, no matter how naive understood that THIS was what I had been doing throughout all these shooters. Killing people because I was deemed ‘the good guy’ by myself. A realisation such as this, to a 13 year old, changes your outlook on video games. Suddenly Farcry 3 looks like very similar to this idea but The Line fully realises this idea. It was hard to replay the game, knowing how every person you kill was simply trying to protect themselves from you, specifically you. I haven’t touched a shooter since, nor will I ever do so again. The last game I ever played, my favourite game of all time, Spec Ops The Line, is one of the greatest experiences out there. Go play it. Now.
SkyOut I was only listing the games I played to show that my mind was opened up to all these different types of games with different narratives, I never intended to imply any quality or anything. But pretty much agree with you on all those you listed as like a snappy summary.
I noticed it when the game started but truly didn't know what the point of it was. I just thought it was a cool nod to the player, like, "hey you're here! Thanks for playing!". But that was well before i got into the story.
Personally, I love Spec Ops. It may not be the best, but I love it. One thing I noticed in my first play through, one of several, was Walkers animations all throughout the game. Particularly, the executions. Early game they are quick, efficient, pretty standard commando style killing. Mid game you see the first changes. They're longer, new or different. Bloodier, reflecting Walker's drive. Mid to late? Savage, ruthless, but still keep the old animation's style. Late game? They look tired. Walker struggles to bring up a fist on a downed enemy. The ruthless and anger is still there, but it's clear that Walker is depleted. Perhaps I'm reading too deep, but this is something I always appreciated. Another point, raised in the video, is the voice acting. Darling game the soldiers of Delta are crisp, efficient. A quick "reloading" Mid game, angry or upset, shouting. Late game, they sound depressed, Walker just complains when he reloads. Anyway, if anyone bothered reading this far, any thoughts on this more subtle (or not) gameplay differences in narrative?
Brutal Demon Yes! This is a genious detail and I'm glad more people got it! There is also a strange scene after you allow Lugo to kill you when he is disguised as a heavy, which I can't find anywhere. After you die, there isn't a normal loading screen, but a vision of some sort, after which Walker comments on briefly and Lugo disappears.
I've never noticed those things, but perhaps I was too young for that :D Guess it's time to play it again. However I absolutely love this game. I honestly felt sort of "emty" and depressed couple of days after finishing it, the game really makes you think.
I noticed many of the same things. The game does such an amazing job of showing the toll these events are having on everyone, from tone of voice to blood and sand all over them that they are not even bothering to try and remove. The level of attention paid to the details of this game is astounding.
I have to say, with the parts that didn't play out until the ending, like Lugo and Adams questioning why Walker stopped at the two hanging men. It could be explained as Walker blocking out some things. I feel like this is shown after the choice is made when Adams says "don't do this." He knows Walker is losing it, but they're barely surviving with the three of them. Seperating would not be viable as it would be a death sentence for all of them. After all, they have a mission, and they know PTSD is a thing. They may think it's Walker trying to cope. Just my personal take on it.
@@BrawlyDaStar yeah, Lugo didnt put up with any of walkers shit and called him out on it multiple times, going to main mission points to just get them home, adams (until the end when all of them lost it) tried to stay with walker as again like you said, knows PTSD is a thing and it seems that he was closer with walker then lugo was
Yeah, that was the obvious interpretation in my opinion. Walker was too busy taking to Konrad, so he didn't here them talking to themselves about him. It is pretty clear in the actual scene that they think he's bonkers for sticking around there
The first chapters are all filled with fades to white and hallucinations of Konrad on billboards. This game becomes truly interesting once you realize that there is no evidence that ANYTHING that happens is real. Not even the most "established" scene, the helicopter fight, is even demonstrably real, as Walker outright mentions how "This happened before!" So, as far as we know, maybe those scenes were not real. Maybe Walker never even found a radio. Maybe Dubai never happened, and this is Walker's own PTSD after Kabul. Or maybe the entire game is just his mind coming up with a twisted thought experiment where he is forced to understand what being unstable would cause to others. Point is: there is no proof that ANYTHING in the game is real, and the mass amount of fades to white mean that at least 50% of Walker's journey was dreamt up.
28:00 Here's something I bet you didn't notice. Walkers scars have a very significant meaning If you look at the end of the game his scars are 1) The right side of his face. This represents his duality 2) His Temple. This is where most people shoot themselves when commiting suicide. It also represents how he lost his mind 3) Roughly the back of his neck. In ancient times it was believed when a demon took your soul they would take it through the back of your neck or head.
I personally have always seen Walker saying "Who said I did" not as him being dead, but as his mind having been damaged with all of his experiences and personal tortures. He feels he hasn't made it out despite having done so. He is still feeling tortured by all of the events leading up to leaving Dubai. The man who entered Dubai is not the man who left it, that man "died" in the metaphorical sense, not the literal. This is my personal opinion however, I very much enjoyed this game and this video as well. Keep up the good work!
OverwatchSniper First time I played, I went with the go home option not in the “I get to live,” sense, but as a “I need to go and face the music for my crimes against my brothers and the world we were meant to protect.” Basically something similar to what Michael Zelazny said in Deus Ex Human Revolution.
Razor ツ In Spec Op's the line: things and events that happen in reality or are accepted by Walker as being the truth: Fade To Black. Hallucinations and Fantasies that Walker experiences: fade to white. When Falcon One takes the AA12 out of Walkers hands and Walker say's, tired, but hopeful.... that he can finally go home and gets into the HUMVEE, the scene fades to white (Fantasy/Hallucination)..... yet when inside the same HUMVEE driving out of Dubai and talking to the driver, who asks him how how he survived and responding: "who say's I did": the scene inside the HUMVEE fades to black (Truth/Reality). Basically what this scene means is that while Walker has laid down his weapon and is taking the HUMVEE to go home and saying that everything is over and he's ready to go home; that is some secret hope and fantasy he tries to hope for; that this is a fantasy of Walker himself and every soldier: the idea of a soldier coming home from war. However in reality, when asked how he survived Dubai .... his response is his true feelings even despite his small, haggered, desperate hope and fantasy he tries one last time to hold desperately to, that in reality, while his body has survived and is going home; the man he once was and the mind he once had: did not survive Dubai. The reality is that he is going home now a changed, broken, haunted man; a shadow, a specter of what he once was; uncertain but unlikely to be the same and haunted and burdened with the horrors and atrocities he has seen, experienced and even committed. His mind and soul isn't really coming home from Dubai even if his body is going home; as battered and exhausted as it is. The man he once was, the former Captain Walker: died and was left in Dubai. All that survived and is going home is a PTSD raddled shell of what Captain Walker had become. In another ending Conrad said that the their is no such thing as "going home" for a soldier, especially for soldiers of Conrad and Walker's caliber: those are just fantasies that soldiers have, tell themselves and hold on to; and becomes increasingly fleeting and harder to reach out and hold onto the longer a campaign and the more horrors a soldier experiences or even commits. In reality all those soldiers can ever hope to find: is peace. And while some part of Walker tried to hold on to the one last, ragged hope of the idea he once had of "going home"..... in truth at this point, and even he realizes as he's being carried out of the sand filled, hellish landscape of Dubai: is that he can't ever really go home.... only hope he can find peace; somehow... somewhere... and that the man he once was: is dead.
33:55 I cringed at this part where he says any shooter needs to have multiplayer. You can almost tell he's guilty about saying it; like even he doesn't believe it but he has to drink the company kool-aid. Sadly, shitty multiplayer modes were forced on so many games that didn't need them, including Bioshock 2. The fact that they didn't learn their lesson after Bioshock 2 proves just how disillusioned the people calling the shots were. The same company, hiring the same studio, to add the same half-assed multiplayer onto a game that didn't need it. Hopefully the worst of this is past us. Single player games can be single player. Online can be online. We don't need to force both in one package every time.
This is precisely why the multiplayer in Spec Ops wasnt good. Yeager did NOT want a multiplayer included but the powers that be insisted upon it so they just shoehorned a functional multiplayer
11:30 Yeah you’re wrong about that one Shotguns do have the range of SMGs People just assume because of games that when you fire a shotgun at something more than a metre away the pellets just stop. For Christ sake people use shotguns to shoot ducks out of the air of course they have range They’re firing a spread of pellets all in one general direction
If anyone actually played spec ops multiplayer I'd be disgusted with them. It would mean they didn't play the story or worse they were very detached from the horrors that not only Walker goes through but themselves too.
Xenomorph Captain Vex Ghost of the brony community military games i play to escape my world and be a hero other games i play for fun if you dont do that thats you im not everyone and everyone is not me we all have our reasons for playing games
If the initial trailers for this game were to sell this game as a horror game and not a third person shooter, i think it would have more appeal. Like Yahtzee said in his Zero Punctuation videos, games are meant to be fun but they aren't always like that. Games that are meant to give the player a sense of dread and misery, much like horror games. And he saud Spec Ops could be identified as a horror game, not because it's scary but because it makes the player uncomfortable and uneasy
Yeah, it's the same portrayal of horror that Kurtz talks about at the end of Apocalypse Now. There's really nothing more horrifying than human cruelty.
All the stupid ass screaming and put noises made me so uneasy. Also I played on Suicide with a controller so it was hard too. So I was super uncomfortable.
Spec Ops: The Line did it's job, it made us Discuss, Question and Disagree. that is a bit more satisfying than another "Mission Complete". not to mention that it gave us this video.
This video is old, but I still feel compelled to comment anyway. I got this game on some Steam sale, I think it cost me a half chewed stick of bubble gum and a bowl full of grass clippings. I got a few levels in, completely lost interest, and went off to chase a squirrel or something. Then Origin gave away the Battlefield game where you get to climb into the back of a fighter and be Goose from Top Gun and I felt pumped and needed more tangos to shoot in the face, so I loaded up The Line and gritted my teeth as I got to grinding my way through it. I more or less played the game on autopilot, not really taking in anything up to the point that I mindlessly clicked on the Humvee, but the aftermath hit me exactly as the writers intended. I don't recall much more about my first play of the game other than thinking "wtf just happened???" as the game came to a close. My absolute favorite stories are the ones where the writers refuse to hold your hand and explain things prematurely, showing you things that don't make sense until you learn more about the world you're in as you move through it. This makes the second or even third time through a lot of fun. So I read up a bit to get a better idea of what I was looking at and went through it again. My basic opinion of the story is that from beginning to end, you simply experience Walker's descent into insanity. Maybe he dies in the helicopter crash, maybe he doesn't, I personally do not believe that it matters. It's what makes the game interesting, that there's a certain point where it's not really possible to know if what you're seeing is what actually happened, or not. After this video now I think it's fun to believe that there was a point where Adams and Lugo were killed, but Walker carried on, believing that they were still with him as strongly as he believed that Konrad was talking to him on the radio. This was more or less the last "modern" shooter I've played. After this experience the CoD style of action hero games all felt hollow and cheap. So now for my power fantasies.... I plan Doom. Thank you for the throwback video on this game. It's easily among the most fascinating and memorable experiences I've had through any kind of entertainment.
....huh no wonder the only recent shooters I've enjoyed had some element of fantasy I've been unconsciously avoiding the more realistic shooters because of this game think the most realistic ones I've played was pubg and seige even then one has a magic death wall and other has people running around with half an armys worth of equipment to the point they cant get there fat ass off the ground without the help of a rope
I just read this at the exact same time he said it in the video. I looked at the time and it was exactly 3:33. I'm worried I'll be sucked into a tear in the fabric of reality...
Wow, I never noticed the reflection of a hanging soldier where Lugo is supposed to be. Very clever! I believe the plot holes stemming from the great reveal are actually caused by the very nature of the narrative you describe, in that it's intentional. I know this requires a lot of faith in the author but here's why I think this. Walker--the person--is stuck in his own personal purgatory. The events in Dubai broke him. In an effort to deny what he saw, he constructed his own reality where those he meets, the story of the game and even the world itself is constantly judging him. The entire game is his conscience, and that conscience is torturing him for the crimes he committed. I especially liked the way the hallucinations are terrifying not just to the player, but to Walker as well. As the game progresses they freak him out more and more, and some apparitions actually seem to charge him or box him in. The change in lighting when white phosphorus is used eventually transitions to a inky black darkness contrasted by hellfire. Even subtler things, like the Konrad billboards, the inexplicably withered tree, the change in loading screens and the main menu, and especially the way you keep descending into darker and darker surroundings, push this theme of confrontation and self-torture. And finally, there are the times where the screen fades to white. It's a sign that something you saw, or are seeing, isn't real. This is of course what ties the entire thing together. The more you play, the more the game sets up Walker as something you don't see often in any kind of media: the unreliable narrator. That's why I think the plot holes, while unfortunate, were more or less deliberate. In the end, we don't know 100% what happened. Neither does Walker. ...This turned out longer than I wanted it to be. Anyway, thanks for the thought-provoking video! You definitely pointed out a few things I hadn't noticed.
@Anne Isopod What if it's not one easily missed thing but dozens of such things peppered over different places and they work more on a subconscious level, or as a bonus for people who're playing for the second time and thus are more receptive towards subtle clues to the later story chapters? I don't know for certain how far the game goes with this and how much might have been missed in this review, but such touches can be pretty neat, and denying that they're clever is a bit disingenuous. Certainly a lot more clever than when foreshadowing is laid on so thick, it essentially gives away the whole story. It can't ever be quite right, because audience can't be uniform in background and expectations, but understated certainly beats overstated.
@Anne Isopod actually it is, it judges the ability of the "player" to be aware of its surroundings, to don't be just a mindless happy trigger drone just following orders without the capacity to drawn it's own conclusions without the narrator telling him or she the history.
as much as i love this game and this video, i think that's just a texture to show the reflection of lugo rapelling and lowpoly makes it look like he's hanging
I honestly found the game’s combat very intense, especially at the end where the Damned 33rd stop messing about. I really loved the environmental design, near the end of the game I came across a room that the 33rd used to honour and remember their dead who were killed by Delta, with each individual name and rank written on the wall, with their plethora of dog tags hung on the wall. With a board to the right with the pictures and names of Delta squad, with Lugo ticked off. I really love this because I’m under the opinion of what makes human monsters terrifying, isn’t that they’re monsters, it’s because they’re human. And there are several scenes with the Damned 33rd that shows their humanity, talking with each about going home, but affirming why they stay and why it’s their duty to ‘save’ and ‘help’ people, willing to be called traitors because of their duty and wanting to feel like heroes. And if it weren’t for the actions of the ‘ungrateful’ civilians and insurgents, they wouldn’t have to do these awful things like executions, using white phosphorus etc. Showing how much they reflect Walker, who goes down roughly the same path as the 33rd, becoming Damned to a hell like them. The tragedy of the 33rd is that despite all the horrible things that they’ve done, they ultimately just wanted to be virtuous and again, feel like heroes, even when killing innocents, declaring martial law, forcing civilians to follow their orders on the pain of death, going through a civil war within their unit, killing their friends who they’ve come to know as brothers. Despite all of this they ultimately, just wanted to help people, but were confronted by the grim reality of the situation and their flaws as humans, yet never accepted it and instead blaming all of their problems and flaws on outside forces. Which ultimately Damned the 33rd.
Honestly I take the "who said i did" line as more of him being physically and mentally dead after all he has been through, though the theory you brought up is an interesting take but feels like a bit of a cop out.
Yeah I interpreted it the same. Walker finally gets out of Dubai but is forever haunted by his atrocities he's committed there. Basically him being in a living hell for the rest of his life.
finn .mov I reckon quite simply it is the most severe form of PTSD. Some soldiers come back from war relatively okay but still have their troubles while others come back completely ruined over what they saw or did. So in this game, by the end of everything, Walker is dead inside
21:14 I always thought it was a nice touch that Walker's eyes almost look like shattered glass in this scene, just like how his reality is shattered right in front of his eyes.
@@usagentgaming3079 Maybe Walker's been staring out a broken window the whole game, reliving his wholly cursed experiences like the broken man he is...
I too played this when I was like 18 I think and thought to myself that it was just another typical shooter. Boi was I wrong. This was the game that taught me, not everything is as black and white. That white phosphorus scene made me want to stop the mission all together. I guess this game is saying "Where do you draw the line."
How to win Spec Ops: The Line. 1: read objective as Locate survivors and return to base upon sight of life. 2: upon first fire fight completion turn off game... Mission complete.
So many people slept on this game, such a shame. I was 17 when it came out, and when I told people it had one of the best stories ever, for a video game, they just laughed and continued to play CoD of BF.
I remember how in the early segments of the game, it would give you the typical Unreal Engine 3 loading screen along with the games basic gameplay hints. and as levels pass by it starts getting existential. And that honestly spooked me
I just went from "I shoot glass to trigger sand falling down on my enemies. Got it." to "was my squad even real?" in just a span of a few hours from that game.
Okay, time to do something productive with my time. (Sees a new Raycevick video on Spec Ops) Ahhh, I'm sure I can spend another 43 minutes watching this video
You can also notice walker getting more mad and bloodthirsty against the 33rd when commanding your squad members to attack an enemy. In the beginning of the game it's just normal commands to take out an enemy, but more towards the later parts and ending of the game walker might say stuff like "I want him dead" or just straight up "Kill him!" along with more normal commands, when ordering lugo and adams to attack.
Awesome video. Just to be fair: "I've talked to soldiers...", I'm not arguing that the weapons are unrealistic (it's a videogame), but knowing what you can do with an "Assault rifle" up from ranges of 250-400 meters I'd say that is pretty accurate. And shotguns are always misrepresented in videogames with ridiculous low range of effectiveness, when in the real world they are used for HUNTING at long ranges (with various restrictions due to type of ammo of course). Like I said, awesome video, this is in no way criticism, just a pet peeve of mine I guess. Keep up the good work. Edit: Maybe people have commented about this already, I'm pretty new to this channel.
Yeah, shotguns can be used to hunt pigeons at 100 yards or something. But i'm afraid that at that range buckshot becomes much less lethal against a human.
This game surprised the shit outta me when I played it, I think it was a breath of fresh air during a time where miltary shooters followed the same formula. It's a shame that it sold poorly because if it sold well we might have seen a few more games try to tackle this theme. The only other game that distanced me from the person I was playing was when I finished the last of us. It had the same I don't wanna do this feeling, people hate on linear games but if done right taking that choice away from the player can be more impactful then giving us a save the universe button.
Linear narratives in games have their place when the lack of choice emphasizes the point the game is trying to make more so than an abundance of choice would. Spec Ops benefits wildly from that notion, but I'm not so sure about The Last of Us...I could be wrong, though...
Fantastic breakdown of this game. So much to it even I, and avid fan, did not know. There are a few other Items I found very interesting that you did not bring up. 1) The Snipers are keeping score: I did not notice this on the first playthrough, and like so much of Spec Ops, if you do not look for it, you will miss it. When you storm the sniper nest late in the game, if you look at the walls, you will notice the snipers are keeping score of their kills. They have stopped seeing the people they are shooting as people and only see them as points. Not that unlike what we often do as gamers, which just continues the narrative that you are not that different than Walker and his teammates. 2) The scene after the first helicopter crash: After the beginning and the crash, you cut to Walker in a high rise talking about Konrad and the mission. When you first play this, you think he is in his apartment before the mission has started. On my second playthrough, however, I noticed something: the zen garden in the apartment is the same one from the Penthouse at the end. It is at this point that Walker is trying to reconstruct the narrative into something where he is not responsible for the horrific acts he has caused. 3) The Intel: While some can argue the game cheats by retelling events after you learn Konrad is dead. the Intel you can find throughout the game, once again completely optional, contradicts Walker's narrative right from the start. If anyone who has played this game has not collected all of the intel, I would heavily recommend going back and doing so. It puts the enitre game into a new light. I gave Spec Ops my game of the year the year it came out. I still think it is one of the most impressive and important military shooters ever made, and I have recently been contemplating playing through it a third time. The game has stuck with me the way so few have.
I get why this is called 'The Line'. In war soldiers often cross a line in committing brutal acts either following orders or on their own accord. And in this game, it's clear characters cross a moral line and it's up to you to decide where you fall on this line. I have to disagree with you about the choice of the white phosphorous thing. It is absolutely your choice to use it. Yes you have to do it to progress but nobody is forcing you to buy the game to do it in the 1st place.
I personally think that "The Line" also strongly refers to the very linear design of the story. There are small choices but they don't have any impact. The player simply follows the path laid before, regardless of whether they should or not but simply because they think it is necessary. The name "Walker" also plays into similar themes.
I think it plays on a lot of similar phrases to do with "Crossing the line" and "drawing a line in the sand" (note the amount of sand imagery in the game). The Line has a lot to do with morality and forbidden actions in these phrases. Also the player character is Captain Walker because he "walks the line", I guess having connotations of being dangerously close to crossing it.
chaosof99 this makes considering actual military servants have to follow orders from their commanders. Basically falling in-line and operating as a machine with very little personal input on decisions. Game has a compelling story for sure.
You walk the line until you look down and realise that there is no line drawn in the sand beneath your feet. You look behind you and all you see are dunes and dust for miles. You've been telling yourself that no matter what happens, it'll be alright as long as you follow the path ahead. But... Was there ever a line?
The "years later..." Reviews are easily the best reviews on this site. Your exquisite script writing and damn near flawless editing make every second of the video engaging. You deserve so much higher praise and recognition on this platform. Keep up the amazing work and thank you for the gift that these videos are.
I disagree with the perspective that Walker is dead. My personal interpretation is that there were two versions of the story. One was not shown up until the helicopter sequence at the start, when it is indeed in media res. The rest of the game, up until the helicopter scene replays, is a twisted, warped flashback by Walker. Then, the two versions of the story merge, and you are forced to confront what Walker has done. In the first timeline, Walker commits the atrocities, and in the seconds, he attempts to justify his actions.
No. He is dead and he's in hell. Pay attention to the helicopter gameplay when he freaked out that they've done the same thing all over again. That let's you know that they are dead and they don't even know it.
I don't think he means dead in the literal sense more like deep depression "dead". Walker even years past this relives these memories because of PTSD in his perspective he's not living he's in his own personal hell.
I know im late, but ive read somewhere, that the devs didnt want to include the helicopter scene at the beginning. They were pushed to make it the start of the game though, because they got told by the publisher that "every military shooter needs to start with a bang" or some such. Pretty cool, that they still managed to implement that in a way, that its open to discussion and interpretation... in my book walker isnt dead as well btw.
That feeling when you watch a 40 minute review and find it short... I'm late to the party, but HUGE respect for not just playing through the game, dissecting it and its components and researching it's development history!
This video gave me the chills. Spec Ops The Line is one of my 10 favorite games ever, and though I replay it every year this analysis still pointed out things I've missed, like the hanging soldier during the rappel. Thanks so much for this amazing video, and for reminding me yet again what makes this game so special, flaws and all.
One thing you forgot to mention about multiplayer was that Yager included no trophies or achievements based on it where nearly every other game has as an incentive for people to try it. Seeing as how conflicted the development of multiplayer was, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a very deliberate action.
You also missed the fact that after Conrad says "welcome to hell Walker" he's says "we've been waiting for you" meaning Conrad (or in this case Walker) knows no matter how much good does he will still end up in hell instead of the usual "we've been expecting you" which expresses doubt
On your point about the game not giving you a choice to kill the civilians, I think that's the point. The game routinely presents choices or moral conflicts that ultimately don't mean anything or are unavoidable because the thesis of the game is you should never have played it in the first place. There's a moment where you have to either kill someone who stole water, or someone who killed five family members of the man who stole the water (or not kill either and end up killing many more), except, at the end, you find out they were corpses all along, and you'd imagined the whole thing. At the very beginning of the game, right around the tutorial, there's a Stop sign, asking you to turn away. The "choice" was to play the game. The strongest evidence for this is the way Walker talks about choice. He consistently frames himself as having no choice, and, as the player, you're meant to think the same. "I had to bomb civilians with white phosphorus to complete the game." The reason there's no in-game choice is because the choice isn't framed as an action within the game, it's framed as you choosing to continue playing. You can debate the efficacy of that, some may argue it's akin to blaming the actions in a book on the person turning the page, but, whether or not you think this "choice" was presented in a meaningful manner, whether there's any point to making the player complicit for moving forward in the game, I do think that was the point the game was making.
This game came out in June 2012. Player agency as a narrative concept had barely been explored in video games, with Braid and Bioshock being notable exceptions. Telltale Games had just released The Walking Dead, Undertale was still over three years away, and while the controversy about Mass Effect 3's ending was starting to boil over, that debacle had come from developer misjudgment, not intentional subversion. Spec Ops: The Line is one of the most miraculously timely games to ever exist. It was released in the exact year when its message would be the most relevant and the least expected, the last year before players would start learning to keep their guard up about what a video game asks them to do.
Wow, the graphics for this game really are beautiful and consistent throughout the campaign. I love when you are on top of the skyscraper and see the huge city below. Really atmospheric stuff.
I've heard one theory about why Adams and Lugo keeps obeying you and never asks any questions is because they are supposed to be Walkers consciousness like they are the angel and devil on your shoulders. Adams always enables your actions while Lugo questions you at every turn. And it's why Lugo is the first to die because now there is nothing that holds Walker back and he goes even more animalistic and brutal. But even Adams has a breaking point before he dies and that's when Walker is forced to face the truth of his actions.
I assumed there wouldn't be any more videos about people analyzing Spec Ops, and then comes this video. Probably my second favorite analysis behind the Errant Signal video, but luckily they both touch on different aspects of the game's story so they don't step on each other's feet too much. Subbed.
This video is so good!!! I cannot get enough Spec Ops discussion, and it's really nice to see people still talking about the game. Plus, I never knew the history of the game before this, so thanks for that. You've given me a fresh perspective on the meta narrative and important scenes (like I never noticed the parallels between Walker's fiery nightmare and Konrad's final monologue.) I have a lot to think about, and I might just have to play through it again. Obligatory Spec Ops quote: "Your eyes are opening for the first time. It hurts, doesn't it?"
I think you are wrong about the story: Walker didn't die in that helicopter literally, but this is the moment which he (in driving away ending) and we percive as a moment of near death thus the moment when he "dies" figuratively. It is a common way of talking about war and crazy stuff - to say that you (as of an old you, you personality prior to certain events) died there and now you are not you anymore. Now you don't know who you are. "I died somewhere in that mess" is a classic way of writing about war and I (want to) believe that all those things like helicopter sounds and such are there for one simple reason - the neverending doubt of Walker about whether he is still alive as of a person. The choice in the end is not actually a real choice, but a very accurate depiction of man's struggle to continue. Because even if you choose to live further - it is probably not you anymore, and "real" you died somewhere between those helicopters. And killing youself in the end is just a way of enforcing that death, the only last thing that "real" you can do after all of this. The only thing that you can do still being yourself. There are no survivors in war.
That is an excellent perspective. I always wanted to believe that somehow, Walker can still survive, not just to relive his torture. And that choosing to shoot Konrad was an attempt to fight your demons, rather than giving up.
a main level designer say that they put the helicopter level in the beginning because they needed to maintain the player interested,they feel that the first level of walking in the desert was to boring.
maybe he died in chapter 14... maybe the scene after the mortar was a scene of what he would have done if he survived, there's no way Lugo survived and fought them, maybe it's an illusion of some sort... think about the end, the colonel was never there... Was he...? Think about the very end when the soldier asked: how did you survive; he responds: Who said I did? Maybe this is just pure overthinking and nonsense, but it's a possibility of what really happened...
The year is 2019. I've never played this game. People thought MW3 was a mature compelling story that really highlights the horrors of war through its characters. I thought MW3 was a dogshit story and the original Call of Duty 4 and BO1 could never be topped. I always had that game as my bar. Had so much respect for it despite how its been lately. Then I decided finally to give this game a chance. I heard about it in highschool from my friend who was one of the people that believed MW3s story was amazing. On my 360 I watched the trailer and thought it as a generic third person shooter with a samd mechanic. Such a generic boring looking "here's another one" game. I skipped it. Now almost 5 years later I am 20 years old and I watched a game movie of Spec Ops the Line (its like a movie about a games story mainly the cutscenes with some gameplay in between for context) It was immediately boring but I gave it a chance. I kind of predicted the twist when he used the White Phosperous but when I got to that part I still couldn't believe it. It wasn't the burned corpses of civilians. It was that soldier missing his face. All of its features black and charred but his eyes. Wide open looked and this soldier that looked no different from the others that were killing you just a few minutes ago. Says in a raspy pathetic whimper. "Why...?" "We...We were helping" As the soldiers toss him aside like trash to witness the main event. That moment I paused. I didn't cry but as fast as I could I looked up if there was a way to prevent it. I called it it felt forced but it left an impression. So bad. I didn't even play it. But I still wanted to see if that could've been avoided. It can't. I was hooked the whole way through. And after the ending. I looked up the others. Then suddenly it all clicked. The soldiers weren't fighting for a cause. They weren't lunatics running at you with a knife to send some crazy message. They were desperate. To survive. This wasn't a military shooter with message like CoD. This was a critique. It was a psychological survival horror game. And you were the monster. You weren't fighting soldiers. You were fighting people who just wanted to survive. All those actions found in every other shooter game that were such a slog to watch became so much more real the second time I watched it. This was longer than I thought it would be but if you made it this You can buy it on Steam for the price of a pepperoni pizza and a diet coke. But this game will leave a taste in your mouth that never goes away. Play. This. Game.
Thank you for saying something against the white phosporus part. I very well remember seeing that the people were civilians and decided not to shoot at them, but then died because the game forced me to do it and then wanted to make me feel bad about it.
I tried three times to not use the white phosphorus. I tried to move from the roof, kill the enemy combatants that keep respawning and throwing grenades down on the apcs. But noooooo you HAVE to horribly murder. So much for "adapt and overcome".
andre brito obviously what the above comment said. At the time, those ac-130 sequences were the epitome of badassery, taking out baddies whether they be alone, trying to escape, or even if they were foolishly grouped up attempting to retaliate. It was the boot to an ant. Many players did not understand or very much care about how much power the game was bestowing upon them; it was simply a bigger gun. So when a story uses this mechanic and demonstrates its faults and costs, its very powerful. This was a stroke of genius on the writer's part in that the moment was experienced instead of observed. The player pulled the trigger, even if they didnt want to, just to progress the story. It really posed the question, is this really alright? Its a very powerful moment in the game.
Well you get plenty of praise from other games for doing things without options as well. So I feel that this is another way to parody other games. Did I get an option to not kill that dragon? Why am I getting praised for 'making the right choice' when I had no choice to not kill that dragon? Oh wait thats what The Line is parodying.
It worked on me because I was mindlessly killing soldiers, like I'd done so many times before, not thinking about it. The way I look at it now though: Walker blames Konrad for forcing his hand > Lugo and Adams blame Walker for forcing their hands > Players blame developer for forcing their hands. The game was never about choice anyways, so to act mad that suddenly you don't have a choice made no sense to me.
@@FreshTillDeath56 seems recent Windows 11 PCs are getting issues to run (although mine works fine) Also I wanna VR support tbh this must be so immersive
I remember saying something to this effect a long time ago similar to another video like this. I think one of the biggest things that people ignore or maybe the game isn't implied enough through the story is: water. or the lack of water through out the game. I think it was another low-key trope that adds to the narrative. If a person goes a very long time without water they suffer dehydration which leads to other symptoms such as fainting, more prone to irritability, loss of motor skills and others. Walker and his squad didn't drink any water throughout this entire game (if my memory is correct) and it's crazy to think something so menial can have an even greater impact on those involved.
What I love about Nolan North's voice acting in this is that it has three stages that it goes through as the game progresses. Stage 1 is at the beginning of the game, it's very professional and precise. Stage 2 is after the horrific stuff starts to pile on, where he gets a lot more aggressive, throws more curses into his lines, and even starts to yell at enemies. And then once everything falls apart, Walker just breaks down and is bloodthirsty, and it shows in his lines in stage 3. One part that really hit me when I played was after SPOILERS NECK ROPE GUY, and when I revive Adams, he yells "We have to fucking move now!!!" and his voice cracks. And there's no doubt in my mind the devs left that voice crack in there on purpose. Here's a video covering it, it's a fascinating watch. th-cam.com/video/RIFQzMgYS0I/w-d-xo.html
Early Game Loading Screen: Use Cover
Mid Game: Do you even remember why you came here?
Late Game Loading Screen: The US Military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants, But this isn't real, so why should you care?
Don't forget the best one:
"If Lugo were still alive, he would likely suffer from PTSD. So really, he's the lucky one."
Desmond theOrc Then there’s “Feel like a hero yet?”
My favorite was; "Don't worry, you're still a good person."
The loading screen is the best one
@@vahlok1426 Just finished playing it a week ago, I missed that one. The one about anguish, the "Freedom is what we do with what's been done to us." Great stuff.
One of the loading screen tips that I've seen that foreshadow the squad. "You can't give command orders when Adams and Lugo are gone. You are alone."
“No one can save you now.”
My favorite thing is that appears in The Pit. Pretty early in the game, well before it starts dishing out the passive aggressive messages.
Its uncharestic wording compared to the generic tips up until then makes it so creepy.
"An enemy is dead when he drops his weapon"
*Cue PTSD-filled Walker giving up his AA-12*
"You are a good person."
"If Lugo was still here, he'd probably be suffering with ptsd. So he's the lucky one"
I asked Nolan North about this game a couple of weeks ago at a panel, he said he was so proud of the work he did on it as Captain Walker and he was extremely disappointed with how poorly the game sold. He said if he could ask his for hard Uncharted fans to play one game from him other than that it would be this, he loves the message this game has. It's a shame it's sales suffered due to its generic name and high amount of competitors.
Do you know if there is a video of the panel in question? Id love to see/hear him talk about it!
Luke Bradley The game was utter shit and the story sucks.
back up your claim or it's bait
the gondola Hmmm gameplay sucked. It was a generic COD game.
The story wasn't even all that compelling. Trying to make me feel bad whilst forcing a premise down my throat is quite annoying. Then again I'm not a sadistic developer.
You realize that you're currently on a video that goes into the game's strengths in easily ten times as much detail as you're lavishing its weaknesses with here, right? Unless you show some respect for my intelligence by actually expanding on your points here and refuting at least some of the points in the video, I'm going to continue to believe you're baiting for attention
“No restrictions” must be the best rules for any developer ever and this is what happened when there are no restrictions
Except for the multiplayer thing
Sure until you get a game in development for 10 plus years aka star citizen or Squadron 42
Daikatana, my friend. No restrictions for a team with a vision, not primadonna "auteurs"
The better way to do this is probably “we will back your vision fully now that you’ve given a bunch of actionable goals that you’d like to achieve and we support it”. Just handing people a checkbook and telling them to do whatever can often really backfire
Was the last part a half life reference?
lets not forget the soldier in the menu dies and is eaten by a crow, his status changing every time you finish a mission.
I never noticed that :)
Yeah, I was fucking surprised at how much he had degraded from the moment I started playing to stopping nearing the end
I thought he was just napping and got some bird friends
Yeah I loved that detail. When he's dead by the end I was like "Oh shit, did I do that?"
He doesn't just die--you _meet him_ next to the flag near the end, on the overwatch of some tower, and _you_ kill him.
No one's gonna mention the fact that in the beginning of the game, when you enter the city is a Stop sign, and Conrad said that everything could've been avoided if he just stopped
Now its 420
@@lukky6648 OMG LMAO 420 FUNNY WEED NUMBER LOLOLOLOLOLOL 6969696969 😱😱😱😱😱😝😝😂😂😂😂😂
Yeah. WW2 could have been avoided if everyone just surrendered to the Nazis. There's never an excuse to fight, you should just roll over to the first person who demands something of you. War and violence are **never** acceptable options. /s
@@Shenaldrac need a hug bud?
@@Fidozo15 No, I just wish people would stop acting like war is literally always the most worstest thing 5evar that should always be avoided, while ignoring that sometime it really *is* the right course of action. America was right to get involved in WW2, and I'd argue should have done so sooner. not to mention, war often sees the development of technologies that are helpful to all mankind. We would not have Penicillin if not for war. We would not have the computers we're using to have this conversation _right now_ without war.
tl;dr- I just really dislike blatant black and white world views. And as much as this game may be one that many people enjoy, as much as its message may be counter to what we normally encounter in war media, that doesn't mean it's not showing its own black and white world view.
Spec Ops The Line's strongest gut punch is actually one of its mechanics: executing an enemy gives you ammo for both equipped weapons.
The scar-h smg and grenade launchers are a powerful draw to use, but you will very rarely find enemies that use them or drop or ammo for them.
But, any enemy you down can drop ammo for them, by melee killing them in a few second window where they are moaning in pain. This pushes players to think like Walker - an instinctive killer - by making the player listen for the siren call of a man's agony to brutally execute him in order to feed your strongest gun.
I didn't realize this until like chapter 13. I actually avoided doing this because I deemed it too cruel and felt like the game was goating me. After I realized it though I executed everyone in site if I could.
Anything for the sake of the mission...
wow
Doom-guy: "heh, they feel conflicted by the gruesome an violent-ways they're executing their enemies, pussies"
Holy shit that's so makes sense , i always looked for them to excuete them because the animations were so cool and brutal
I was playing this game on the recommendation of this video. I stuck a soldier with a sticky grenade. He dropped his gun and panicked and ran towards his Comrads. One of them bashed him in the face and then dove on his body to save the rest. Idk how you code something like that into your AI but it’s little stuff like that which really makes this game.
I saved stickies for the heavies so that's probably why I never saw that.
Holy fuck...for real??? I'm gonna test that out...that's fucken brilliant game design
Fuck me I threw one and they ran towards me. I blew up into smithereens the same way you can do when you get the grenade launcher. Like how tf does this game have it but nothing of the current games do?
@@MrAwesomeAsian22 It's all about how much work they put into these games, these days it's all about graphics and monetization.
I did that and watched the guy's teammate just put a couple in his head from behind cover before it went off.
Early game: "Priority Target! Focus Fire!"
Late game: "KILL THAT MOTHERF*CKER"
Possibly my favorite thing about the game. It's the little things.
@@samsonite789 Not so little when he shouts out bleeding.
I always regretted not finishing the first chapter because it was too boring :(
@@RalvinTY I think the game was fun and the story was interesting already in the beginning.
This is what got me absolutely hooked.
I just recently got my brother, who's never heard of Spec Ops, to play the game, and it was oddly satisfying to see him get gradually broken down.
KV CRAZYBOY It is rare but if you can find a let's player who gets really immersed is imo one of the best games to watch an LP of for the same reason.
do you have any recommendations for that as I cannot, for the life of me find what you describe and would love to see it.
I showed it to a friend, he would occasionally update me about how he thought of it.
1. "Nothing special, I don´t know why you recommend this so highly, it´s setting is pretty cool I guess.
2. "Well, there´s some fucked up shit going on, is this secretly a horror game all along?"
3. "Holy shit, what the hell is even going on with all these hallucinations? What´s with all the civilians? Is Walker losing his shit? Or am I?"
4. "Okay....now I know why you recommended it so highly...that was quite the ride...what the fuck."
KV CRAZYBOY I've got way to immersed into it.
The truth at the end simply... broke me...
Couple years ago My cousin was complaining about how most games had the same story and weren't that interesting anymore. I made him play this. I sat him down, got him some snacks and a drink and told him I wouldn't be joining him, how he needed to distractions.
All I could hear from the next room was : "oh fuck..." every 30 or so minutes.
One small point people miss is that Walker is already suffering from PTSD and hallucinations caused by his time in Afghanistan when they enter Dubai. In the first enemy encounter, Lugo says he speaks Farsi and will try to talk to them--but people in Dubai speak Arabic. Farsi is a dialect of Persian, which is also spoken in Afghanistan and called Dari. So even in this initial moment, the player is subtly told that the narration is not entirely reliable and the squad is not as whole as it may appear. It also connects this fictional conflict to a very real, very ongoing conflict with its own fair share of atrocities and justifications.
This. I noticed that but didn't cared too much. This adds even more with Walker fought at somewhere and didn't wanted to talk about as the loading screen tells.
Excellent point. I thought it was strange that they just so happened to meet a group of Farsi speakers in UAE. I guessed it was just a chance meeting with Iranian expatriates but your explanation clears up why with great justification.
God, I love the care put into the story craft.
Holy shit I just realized it now. Also in the first few chapters enemies speak some lines in Turkish which is inconsistent for dubai. I tought it was just lazy writing but after reading your comment I think it is the opposite.
actually you're told this JUST before that when you heard Conrad state the death toll, which is "18 thousand, 250" something he never said in the initial transmission given to us by walker.
The best thing is that just when you start the story it says STOP on a sign
mrunitforge Do you know what? The level designer put the signal there cos the scene felt too empty without something in the top half of the screen. It wasn't meant to have any artistic interpretation.
Sr Gato accidental win then :D
@@saulblanco9891 Both of these points are not contradictory
@@cperka1017 We. Are. One.
@@saulblanco9891 Even if something isn't "meant" to be interpreted artistically, that doesn't mean it can't be. How many interpretations do you think somebody could glean from the lyrics to bohemian rhapsody, even though those lyrics were allegedly written as nonsense? That's the deepest value of art, the ability to attach yourself to it and broaden your perspective because of it. And as kacper said, these points are not mutually exclusive. Is it not possible that the DEV who was tasked with making the scene less empty came up with a cool, subliminal indication of the horrors to come? Such an intention behind an addition to the game certainly isn't out of the ordinary. I would say with the themes of this game, it's quite likely that the stop sign was put there for some deeper artistic reasons beyond it's surface level design purpose. Never claim something "wasn't meant to have any artistic interpretation", if someone can interpret something from a piece of art, then that's good enough. Whether the artist meant for it to happen or not, that artistic interpretation is a sign that the artist did their job well.
"The stoic commander, black guy and smartass." Made me chuckle.
I do slightly disagree with the "black guy" comment, since I think Adams is a much stronger and more interesting character than "token black guy."
@@Selrisitai Vick was only referring to how the opening and cast seem to fill those tropes, but as you see Spec Ops goes far beyond that. Just your own observation shows that Spec Ops took the trope and turned it over.
@@derektran9404 yeah for once the black guy didn't die first
You taste like soot and poo.
@@Selrisitai it’s funny how stupid you are
One thing I will say in defense of Lugo and Adams continuing to follow Walker after he'd shown signs of instability - deniability. Continuing to follow him meant that they could say "We were just following orders!" and thereby shift responsibility onto someone else... just as Walker had done with Conrad.
Wow, never thought of it that way! You are brilliant! This is the best explanation I have seen on why Lugo and Adams kept following Walker through those questionable moments!
ironballs16 that's no excuse
I didn't say that it was a *good* excuse - just that that's the one that two stressed-out soldiers in the middle of hostile territory might try to take refuge in.
yes and what were they going to do, walk home? I assume they would get an extraction on mission accomplished or something, they had to go on
ironballs16 I like that idea. It makes it seem like they also had some mental instability caused by the events they took part in, just not as much as Walker, maybe because they actually weren't in charge.
when i was 10, i started playing Spec Ops, thought it was boring, closed the game, never played it again, now i realise i got the good ending.
The game would be a lot better if I could rush a lot easier I ain't playing a forced cover based shooter all day that's so boring. It's looks like one of the best mediocre games compared to so many other games but still. Strong 5 out of 10 game.
6 at best
That is such a good and bad outcome when you think about it. On the one hand, you put the game down before you committed more "attrocities" but on the other hand, it was likely because it wasn't uniquely violent enough to continue capturing your attention.
Honestly, gameplay wise if we weren't talking about the story or narrative, then yeah you'd be right.
You dodged a bullet there. I played this around 13 and it made me stop playing video games for months because of what I did
I just picked up on something.. The whole game makes you go further and further down into the abyss. Until the last chapter where you eventually go up. Not only up but also on top of the tallest point of Dubai. The ascension. The final judgment.
You don't talk with Conrad. You are negociating for your soul.
In another video, a guy said the scene was a hostage negociation and the player was left with the choice of blaming Walker or not for what he (the player) did.
"You did this."
"No. _You_ did." takes another meaning with that interpretation.
This is late, but please clap everybody
Sorry to necro this, but a hidden objective that pops up as completed in the game is "Keep Going Down"
Soldat Daniels 👏🏾👏🏾👏🏾
@@thelittleredhairedgirlfrom6527 Thank you! Also, love your profile pic and name. Never found out what happened to Charlie and the little red haired cutie. But I'm happy for a callback.
The final scene with Konrad possibly references the five stages of grief.
Konrad: "I'm going to count to 5, then I'm pulling the trigger."
Walker: "You're not real, this is all in my head" [Denial]
Konrad: "Are you sure? Maybe it's in mine. ONE."
Walker: "No, everything, all of this, it was your fault!" [Anger]
Konrad: "If that's what you believe, then shoot me. TWO."
Walker: "I-I didn't mean to hurt anybody." [Bargaining]
Konrad: "No one ever does, Walker. THREE."
Walker raises his gun. [Depression]
"FOUR."
"Is this really what you want, Walker? ... So be it. FIVE." [by shooting himself, representing Acceptance]
Thank you for reminding me of this.
Welp im depressed THANKS MAN
So is suicide the canon ending?
@@artaum5635 he was dead all along, this is basically him confronting his demons of what I'm guessing he did in Afghanistan but replaced with Dubai where he died in the helicopter crash
Man, you just blew my mind. *nods*
Man, it's rare that anyone says anything fresh about this game but you managed to do so at every stage. This is maybe my favourite video you've done.
Writing on Games - It was a great video, but I can't really say it was all that fresh. You can easily find other analysis videos that touch on everything said here, with the exception of multiplayer, which was a delight to see him do a breakdown on.
Writing on Games Fancy seeing you here! Do you have any additional thoughts to add about this game?
considering how the creator was forced to include multi player, and his sarcastic comment about how essential multiplayer was to the shooter genre in that interview, I think he deliberately made it as broken s possible as defiant fuck you to the studio.
Cobra is right, it's mostly a mishmash of what other review sites say, with a bit of touch of nostalgia.
Writing on Games spec ops has a way better story
Walker's wearing Konrad's jacket in the "return home" ending... Implying subtley that he and Konrad are indeed the same person.
@Hocus Pocus it's to symbolize walker now sees himself as the villain.
@Hocus Pocus you can pee without poo but you can't poo without pee
it's actually shown at the final confrontation with konrad, where Walker is talking to himself exactly what konrad is saying
It's like a fuckes up Tyler Durden
@@sethleoric2598 as if Tyler durden wasn’t fucked up already
3 years later and this analysis still holds great weight
"This isn't my fault!"
"Takes a strong man to deny what's right in front of him"
I mean, yeah? Are our morals and sense of reason meant to majorly change in 3 years? Because i see absolutely nothing about that quote that could even age
In reality,the reason the “haven’t we done this before” was actually a last ditch effort from the devs,because the publisher wanted to mess with the story a bit,and one of the devs was quoted saying “if anyone’s gonna screw with the story,it’s gonna be me.”
Loved Walt's book.
One of the devs said as a theory that walker and his comrades died in the helicopter crash and everything after that is walkers mind fucking with him.
That's so based.
Sounds like a bitch move to me. Fucking with your own story because they dared tell you to have an In Medias Res opening. He should've used that to heighten the story like a good writer.
I think the scene would've worked better without it. Maybe do the implication of how far gone Walker was by the time of the helicopter sequence.
Since most of the game is a flashback, it should've used the fact by pressing start, you already fucked Dubai up. It would've hit harder.
If he was gonna add something to it, maybe have Walker say something "badass" in both versions. Something that sounds tough and cool in the opening, but by the time you get to that point, with the added context, he sounds unhinged and psychotic.
The most compelling thing about this game wasn't the shooting, but the game questioning the morality and ethics of why you shot. That's a really interesting idea I'd like to see taken further with more branching paths and options.
love to see this in other games.
It's also very weird that this is a AAA videogame, i have also heard that la noire is a AAA mature game so i am impressed with this publishers
It reminds me of Apocalypse Now
Anonnymouse Hacker but its STORY was good.
Anonnymouse Hacker im not gonna deny that the gameplay was generic and nothing new, what i will stick to is the depth and intriguing direction of the narrative. When was the last time you played a game with a story this complex up til this game? Not counting games past Spec ops the line. All i ever saw was patriotic shoot em up carbon copy clones and honestly thats still a problem now a days for the military shooter games. At the end of the day though we dont have to agree and thats ok we all have our own preferences this is just me expressing mine.
I actually didn’t know you had a choice to not mow down those civilians after Lugo’s death. It’s scary that the thought of shooting in the air never occurred to me, Christ.
feel like a hero yet? xp
I shoot at the ground. It still works
There is actually a loading screen after that scene which has the words “Lugo would have probably suffered from PTSD so maybe he is the lucky one”
I remembered Lugo's words, "There's always a choice", so I tried everything I could do and I shot in the air to avoid killing anyone.
I shot the civilians and I never even thought of any other option in the moment, I did it without thinking and I felt like shit afterwards
Does anybody realized that Walker's tone of voice changes, after the helo crashes? I don't mean the cutscenes or the scripted ones; when he shoots, or orders his squad, he has a much deeper and angry tone.
he sounded so mad at his squad mate when Lugo died. My buddy was barely taking orders from me..
From "That's one!" to "He's done!" to "Ugh, this is slowing me down!" it for very eerie for me.
Yea dude I enjoyed it tbh I also like the how the squads dialogue changes the deeper you got Into the game, going from tango spotted to kill that fucker or how gruesome walkers executions get deeper into the game
That's was actually one of the first observations that I did about the how detailed this game is. I think it was during the part were I was charging into the Radio Tower that I realize that Walker and the rest of the Squad were starting to get unnecessarily violent during the Executions and Call outs
It's a symptom of traumatic brain injuries, and that's on top of everything that happened up to then.
I first played this game on a ps3 with no internet access. The part during the intro credits that displays your online profile name just said the name of my offline user profile. It said: Special Guest (my real name.) That was the freakiest thing in the world to 16 year old me.
Yeah same here bro
ckotherletters Yeah same here bro
Bro here same yeah
Yeah same here bro
Here bro yeah same
Yager?
"You can stop worrying about grenades now."
Stg Renegades
Jâger, you mean.
Stg Renegades Is there sar-casm in this?
iiPrescribed on Xbox One!
Jäger?
Stg Renegades Im glad to see im not te only one lol
Roses are red an animal is a cow incase you wondering you can stop worrying about grenades now
Got an ad for the us army while watching this.
Those are signs from Konrad
Go welcome some people to Dubai
The Damned 33rd are looking for new recruits.
Like no I just saw this no no
On the part about this being his personal hell and that he's actually dead, I'd like to disagree with that being taken literally. I think what he means by, "Who said I did.", is that he may be physically alive but he's dead inside and wracked by PTSD and guilt for his actions. He may have left Dubai, but his soul never did. And it possibly implies that he took his own life later down the line after returning home, like many other veterans do.
All in interpretation, lovely ain't it.
Sorry to respond to this comment so late down the line, but I want to place something here for anyone else who might see it.
The fades present in the game are on purpose.
When the game fades to black, that's a normal transition. When the game fades to *white,* that implies walker is deluding himself. He's misremembering, misunderstanding, or otherwise hallucinating the actions and events as they actually happened. This fade to white happens at *many* points in the game, and it's worth noting when it does to question, truly, *"What the fuck is going on?"*
In the final scene of the game, just as walker climbs in the Humvee, the game fades to white. Walker never makes it home. This is a delusion, just like every other delusion this man stumbled his way through. This isn't even interpretation; the writers have gone on record as this being the *canon* of that ending in particular, as well as asking players to look through transitions and remember "Where was it black, where was it white?"
Watch this video again, particularly in the story section, to catch some odd examples that really through some confusion into what events actually happened.
The entirety of chapter 1 is fade to white. Nearly every fade in that is fade to white. Meeting the radioman? Fade to white. White phosphorus scene? A dark irony, as it includes fades to white.
The game is far less honest with its events than it first appears, because it is pulling an old troupe in a new and mostly unrecognized way-Walker is an entirely unreliable narrator, and we are left to piece together what really happens from a mind that is broken, scarred, and reliving a muddled haze of memories in the final moments of a life lost in a helicopter crash.
The head writer admits that his own interpretation is that the crash killed Walker. If anything could be see as "the intention to how you understand the story," it is this. The fades to white, the late-game surrealism, the foreshadowing long before Walker's mind could be injured enough or aware enough to start blaming itself truly. The fear, the cluelessness, the refusal to leave even long after Walker himself starts to admit that maybe it really is time to go. Adams and Lugo, perfect foils and critics of Walker himself, too perfectly for any normal "squad mates" to ever be. Their names appearing in the list of deceased, long before either is slated to be dead.
Before the crash, the game has moments that are surreal and foreshadowing, intending to portray just how Walker reliving this mission is him reliving the mistakes he made. Konrad's face on everything, hanging Lugo, their names appearing in a memorial wall of the deceased *without the inclusion of their first names.* Things that would only appear in a mind which saw that as normal, just how everything in a dream makes sense to your own mind, until you wake up and realize the absurdity of what you believed to be true.
After the crash, the game kicks into high gear; it is surreal, it is fantasy. Things happen well beyond the realm of reality, events unfold that no normal human could do or make sense of. How does the 33rd still have so many high-echelon troops to throw out you? Why are these storms perfectly balancing on your sins? Why did none of them shoot you as they watched you run from Adams? How are only 9 soldiers left alive, and why do they point you to a Konrad they would know is dead, without so much as missing a beat? They go so far as to say "Where he's always been waiting for you." They wouldn't know without being pure figments of imagination, conjured by a dying mind to complete their own narrative that, yes, *you* are the monster, and it was time to face the music of what you have done.
What an amazing game. It may be 2.5 years old now, but maybe this video deserves an essay response to its own essay.
@@SpecialAgentCake The only thing I have a problem with is the idea of "hanging Lugo" on the glass of the building when rapelling into the crevasse. It's more likely to be a glitch, since the reflections arms are up above the head with the hands almost together - the same as Walker's rappel animation. Lugo's arms are not over his head when he's been lynched and hanged by the psychotic mob.
@@Vulgarth1 That's not a glitch. That is very clearly and purposefully done, on Lugo's side no less, which is the only character among the three that dies specifically by being hanged. Beyond this, you seem to be forgetting all the times bodies are strung up as a warning throughout the game. While some are left hanged by their necks, possibly to show that's how they were executed, plenty more are shown strung up by their hands. In this secondary case, it's obvious that the bodies were dead *before* being strung up, and are being placed up as a warning, threat, or trap.
You should never be so quick to write off something in this game as being an easter egg or accidental glitch. A glitch doesn't happen to 100% of players who play the game, and the story is far too detail-oriented to throw subtext as subtle as Konrad's face at you in the game to stumble at the obvious foreshadowing parallel of the death of another main character.
@@SpecialAgentCake Not to mention, adding onto your point, that a glitch having to do with reflection doesn't make sense here. A reflection in a game is very specific, and cream a ghost reflection like that doesn't just happen without a character in front of it. At least to my knowledge it doesn't seem like that's likely.
MAJOR SPOILERS
A quote from one of the many loading screens: "If Lugo were still alive, he would likely suffer from PTSD. So, really, he's the lucky one."
What a shitty message. "Hey veterans with PTSD, you'd all be better off dead!" But hey, anything for that pretentious edge to make people feel bad for wanting to have fun with a video game.
@@Shenaldrac It’s a sarcastic quote. It’s pretty obvious it’s not meant to be taken at face value.
@@Shenaldrac Why are you even here
@@fortnight5677 Because people don't have to necessarily like a given work to think it deserves to be thought of and talked about. If all you want is an echo chamber for your own positive views on things, that's fine, but it's not what everyone wants.
@@Shenaldrac You do know that it's meant to be sarcastic right?
That truly disturbing moment that haunted me for years after it happened.
Playing the multiplayer
theone whowondersthere lmaoooooo
Truly underrated comment
Ender Bartnik+ agreed
I thought it was going to be from the campain
theone whowondersthere 2:16 music?
When walker says “who said I did.” I didn’t take that him actually being dead.
I took that as saying who he was before died and who he is now. Is a version of himself that is broken. I don’t walker died at all in the story
I've always felt people interpret that line too literally for its own good. Walker went into Dubai, but the man that walked out wasn't Walker anymore
Exactly. I mean, I'm actually surprised that people actually thought he literally died.
Well yeah, everyone did as that's the obvious interpretation. That line hinting towards Walker being stuck in his own personal hell throughout the game is much more interesting.
HOLY FUCKING SHIT I WAS PLAYING THE GAME AGAIN AND I JUST NOTICED !
Between many occurances Adams will shout " Walker Wake up!" , " Open your eyes Walker!!!"
This means walker was hallucinating after the helicopter crash ! And adams was the only one who survived and he was trying wake walker up !
My personal theory is that this is all just Walker reliving the events in his head, this is his PTSD;
We're just reliving his memories, and the choices we can make are him wondering about if he could have done things differently then how he did them, and if it would have changed anything. The answer is it wouldn't have. But he lives through it over and over again anyway, whether he wants to or not.
Is it not okay to describe Spec ops the line a deconstruction of military shooter games?
My favorite was probably some artistic reference where near end Colonel John Konrad painted the burnt mother/child of Walker using White Phosphorus results. as both Walker and Konrad looked at side by side.
Walker: "You did this"
Konrad "No, you did"
A reference to ww2 era a german officer occupied france and strolled through a french artist art gallary and notice a particular art piece of horror of war and asked the french artist similar manner.
"You did this?"
"You did...."
something like that.
The story you're telling is actually a famous encounter that Pablo Picasso had with a German officer. The officer asked Picasso if he was the one that had done The Guernica (about the destruction of the town of Guernica by the Luftwaffe during the Spanish Civil War).
Picasso answered "No, you did".
Goosepumps so much
Picasso is shit anyway.
Congratulations Juri. Your comment is highly likely to be the most ignorant and utterly stupid on this whole section.
Yet he has like :(
"It makes early access titles look like they were made by Blizzard"
In light of recent events, this comparison no longer has quite the same effect.
@Chayan Das even then, Refeorged had a lot of network issues on launch
@Zoomer Waffen I mean kinda. Though overall they have a strong level of technical polish.
@Zoomer Waffen silence zoomer, you were not around for the Blizzard golden age
They suck now tho ye
Oh boy
@Zoomer Waffen starcraft and warcraft are both good??
The white phosphorus scene has a lot in common with the first bioshock's twist, being that we play video games believing we have choice, that's a lot of the appeal towards them, interactive media, but in reality it's just an illusion, a false sense of choice and freedom.
In spec ops you killed civilians because you chose too, then if you tried not to, it's obvious there was no choice. You either did it because you didn't care or did it because you had no choice.
And this parallels a lot with the hardships of war, when push comes to shove, what are you going to do, and how are you going to justify what you've done, because sometimes, there is only thing you can do.
In that case, I didn't need the developers judgement. Nor care for it as well. Which I guess you will say is entirely the point.
i also love the fact that walker is practicing good trigger discipline at the start of the game and having the finger always on the trigger around the end
His dialogue in battle and while giving squad orders also becomes increasingly more unhinged. There around 3 stages.
"Target down" becomes "Kill *fucking* confirmed" and "He's DEAD!"
"I'm reloading, cover me" becomes "Ugh, this is slowing me down.
The most powerful moment in the game for me is really understated, but it hit really hard. It happens sometime around chapter 5 or 6. Here's how it goes:
You're fighting in a camp full of civilian hostages, the enemy pelting you with mounted machine gun fire from several positions. You and your comrades cower behind thick cover, the rubble from the continuous gunfire raining down on you. Without any chance of taking on the guns front on, you decide to have your squadmates stay put so you can attempt a flank. The intensity is incredibly high, tension so thick in the air you could cut a chunk off with scissors. You begin your sprint, making your way towards the entrance to a hallway that leads around to behind your opponents. You run like hell, and safely make it into the hallway. Running along, you turn a corner and see someone running in your direction
*bang*
Without even realizing it, you just gunned down an innocent civilian. This moment perfectly illustrates the game's themes without even a line of dialogue. You couldn't distinguish soldier from civilian. What to you was an enemy charging you, was simply a scared, innocent person running down a hall. Harrowing.
That happened to me. I actually stopped in my tracks for a bit because I had to think about what I'd done.
Excellent recounting of the moment. Exact thing happened to me as well, and it pains me to admit it.
something similar happened to me in doom 3 lol it's not that big of a deal
I did that too. It was instinctive, and it made me stop for a moment. Once thing I find interesting about it is that it doesn't happen again the entire game as far as i know. It only happens once.
Funny enough that you brought this up, I just played the game yesterday and went through this exact sequence.
I brought up my sights just as I noticed someone running towards me, but I had a good enough reaction to not instinctively shoot on sight the moment I noticed it was a civilian women running towards me, but instead of asking for help, she ran back the other way away from me. I had decided to let her live and ran past but just as some enemies came in sight around the corner and I aimed and fired, she at that exact moment ran in front of my line of fire and I accidentally shot her.
That was a big moment for me in the game and made me rethink what I was doing. I don't think it was intentionally put in, but because of my fear of the enemies (I played on the highest difficulty, and so a few shots would easily kill me, making them really annoying and dangerous) I had lost situational awareness for a brief moment and even though I was empathetic and didn't want to kill her despite my efforts, she still ended up as a casualty of that battle and my action. The reality of that and how it relates to real life conflicts which are way more intense life/death situations, really struck me at that moment and how even the smallest choices could lead to tragic moments that can't be reversed.
Ahh, I love the smell of longform video game analysis in the morning
I'll get your surf board.
I woke up, I saw this was out, and I watched it
An Ordinator
So Crunchy
Smells like White Phosphorus!
And I love seeing a man with a Bastiat IM pic in the afternoon.
Based on one of the best novels ever made, Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
Yeah, I got serious chills from it, and the Kurtz vibe was very alive: "The horror! The horror!" Almost resonating through the entire game!
R Jotun Józef Korzeniowski to be precise, I've read somewhere that Heart of Darkness' brilliance is putting Polish Character(nature) in British Culture *insert immigration joke*
I think Joseph to the contrary got an unmatched view of humanity, and his history as a writer and a person seems to underline this idea. Especially his short story Youth, which I personally prefer over heart of darkness due to the clarity of vision and the autobiographical nature of it. And I think like most other non-brits that british culture is a bit of an impossibility unless it's a culture of multiculturalism. However much they like to huff about history &c. Everything they have they owe to immigrants :)
Craving Hibiscus What do you mean?
Seriously. The themes of Heart of Darkness lend itself so well to modern adaptions (and just a great read).
Don't know if you'll see this comment because how long ago you posted this video, but on the subject of the multiplayer I was actually one of the beta testers for the original MP build around 2010. The release version was much more dull and standardized compared to other shooters. Basically, the 2 factions had 3 classes on each side with unique abilities. The Damned had scout, heavy weapons, and demolitions. Scout had the ability to send out a pulse and highlight all the enemies on the map for a couple seconds (you could even see them through walls) if they stayed in cover without moving for 10 seconds, with the drawback of all the enemies having you highlighted, but I can't recommend the second ability. Heavy weapons could have MGL, RPG, etc. as a replacement for the pistol, and had the secondary ability of the ballistic vest which reduced gunshot damage to the chest. Demolitions had reduced explosives damage received and I can't remember the second ability. It also didn't have as short of a TTK. The Exiles were the fun ones to play as in my opinion. First was the enforcer, which had a damage bonus that increased the lower their health was, and dropped a grenade on death. The vulture was pretty unique with it's scavenger perk. When you killed one of the damned, they would drop a small box that if you walked over, it would give you a bonus based on which enemy you killed. Killing the scout would drop a scanner that would highlight enemy positions without highlighting yourself, demolitions would give you a flak jacket that was a 20% temporary health increase (once this damage was received, you did not regenerate it, you could only pick up a new one), and heavy weapons would give you an extended mag that instantly refilled the magazine of your current weapon with 20% more capacity and did not take ammo from your reserve (pretty powerful if you manage to steal an enemy grenade launcher, as you couldn't regularly pick up more ammo for it on the map) which is lost as soon as you reload. I can't remember the second perk. Finally, my favorite, the hunter. The hunter was the only one that didn't have any abilities that boosted a stat in some way for combat advantage. The first was highlighting enemy footprints in the sand so you can stalk them, while the other highlighted enemies through walls like the scout, but you weren't highlighted to them and the range was extremely short, about 25 feet or so. The factions also had different weapons. The Damned had lower power and lower recoil weapons that worked well at range, while the exiles had higher recoil and higher power weapons that excelled at shorter range. This lead to an asymmetrical play style that made the exiles really hunt down the damned, but there wasn't a large imbalance of power. Also, the sandstorms in beta were much fiercer, you couldn't see almost anything more than 5 feet away with the exception of a muzzle flash, so you might get a hail of bullets and flashing lights towards your position if you aren't careful with your shots (partly why I loved the hunter, follow the footprints and just execute someone like a ghost, great for making people upset). I was honestly upset with the condition and changes to the multiplayer in the release version, with the really big differences being the XP or damage reduction in certain situations like you mentioned. I think this was before the multiplayer was contracted out and originally done by Jager but I could be wrong or misremembering.
TL;DR The multiplayer in beta was great, they screwed up the release version.
That sounds downright playable
That actually sounds great.
There's not that much asymmetric games that rely not just on a character skills but also a map composition, gameplay mechanics and general atmosphere around player.
What was described could work and work very well since the base premise is already solid for a standard shooter. And adding in atmosphere into multiplayer can hook players for a long time.
Breaking your paragraphs isn't hard, please at least try.
@@magicalhermitcrab5912 eh who cares. its a youtube comment section
@@_grimleythesequel People who actually read comment sections care.
Whenever I see praise being heaped on Call of Duty: Modern Warfare (2019)'s campaign for being "mature, bold, and realistic", I just laugh because Spec Ops: The Line did it far better six years ago.
MW wasn't realistic enough for you because the protagonist wasn't insane? You know not every single person that experiences combat gets brain melting PTSD, right?
@@StevelyBruckShut You know you don't have to make giant leaps about a person's beliefs, right? You can just ask them to explain those beliefs.
those people just desperately wanted a new CoD4 event and rejuvenation time in their lives, or for a new generation, whether it was real or not... but it isnt coming for CoD, still so much greed.
I liked cods campaign, like yeah, it doesnt hit you anywhere near the way the line does, but it was still immersive and grounded enough to deliver a message
MW reboot campaign is trash
Great analysis. Spec Ops is such a clever and criminally underrated game. Watching this makes me almost want a big budget remake with the technical polish to match the brilliance of the writing and voice acting.
Darkly Tranquil How the fuck is it underrated? It's not obscure and its loved by almost anyone. It's like calling Shadow of the Colossus underrated.
Yeah, it was pretty unanimously praised when it first came out, and that praise has stayed pretty consistent over time. It's not that widely known, but most people that are familiar with it have a positive opinion of it. You're confusing "underrated" with "under-appreciated."
I guess because the game play is pretty awful. I just finished it again yesterday, and it truly is a terrible playing game. The story, themes and characters are top tier though.
Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two conflicting ideas simultaneously.
the more you know
FlyingFauxPas You are still a good person
"Do you like hurting people?"
"They're just criminals,its okay"
"But they have families too"
"Nooo its fiiiine"
if you were a good person you wouldn't be here.
or also known as doublethink
shotguns actually have a lot more range than depicted in games. a lot more. and the spread is about half as less
Yeah, shotguns irl can easily pulverize a target from 50 yards away lmao
Did you ever notice how the level design rarely makes you go up? Each major chapter ends with dropping down a ledge or across a zip line. So there's a literal aspect to walker's descent as well.
You forgot something!! When you look at the plaques and memorial, Lugo and Adam's name are on it
What??!
@@soldatdaniels8738 there is a theory that you, lugo, and adams were dead the whole time, and I think that it's actually true
@@almost_friday9745 Hmm. Given everything, you might be right. But if we were dead, we wouldn't have been able to interact with the people or Ghould or Daniels. We wouldn't have experienced what we did after I launched the white phosphorus. And if we were, Konrad would've told me. You can't hallucinate if already dead. But then again.....your theory....just might be correct.
@@soldatdaniels8738 It probably was just a scenario plot otherwise the story ending reveal wouldn't be much interesting.
You know, with all the twists and turns in this game, and the theory that this is all Walker's "Personal Hell", I could honestly see this game falling somewhere within the Silent Hill universe.
I've heard about this game quite a lot. Never played it, it seemed like a typical 3rd person shooter, and thought that all the praising of it's story meant it was on a similar level as CoD4:MW. Then I was looking for something easy, quick and fun to play, and I didn't want to do another run in the CoD franchise or BF:BC2. So I thought - why not give it a shot.
Now, I've finished it half an hour ago. Now I feel like a piece of shit.
I hear you man...
“Do you feel like a hero yet?”
We all do buddy...we all do.
Don't be too hard ourselves. After all we've done, we can still go home. Lucky us.
I also just finished it half an hour ago, I streamed it as well for my friend.
how many Americans have you killed today
My dad loves shooters, fighting games and sports games, but doesn't like story heavy games too much. But i knew i had to make him play this game after i finished it. One day he wanted to play something, i left my xbox on the living room with only Spec Ops The Line to play and forced him to give it a try. So he played it. The next day he was like "It's fun, i love how it looks, the blood and the sand stuff" (something like that). The next day, i'm going into the bathroom, he stops me and says "What the fuck? Why are you making me play this?" I asked why he said that, and was because he played the white phosphorus scene. The next day he was even telling my mom about it, he had never before felt something like that because of a videogame. And maybe a day or two later im in my room watching videos, he comes in and says "I finished the game... this fucking game... Amazing"
Then i saw him playing it a few more times. He absolutely loved it and anytime he hears people talking about stories in videogames, he brings up Spec Ops The Line.
2020 edit: Had to come back to add that last night while we were drinking and playing Modern Warfare he went on for maybe and hour an a half, about how it could be a movie or a tv show, thinking of the cast, how reveals and twists could be set up, etc. So even though he hasn't played it in a couple of years he still loves it.
IamXhedo Can’t have my dad play this game, even though it’s good, it’ll bring back old war memories and emotions
@@crazyxkid212 rip
My wife slapped me for this game :P she was horrified about the woman with a child scene :P
wew, I love your dad now... nice story!
My dad's the guy that plays Skyrim and kills everyone not essential - then activates the console commands so he can remove the essential tag and kills whomever's left.
There's a fanfic called Afterglow which takes place directly after the Shooting Konrad ending all the way to Falcon-1's appearance, and it merges seamlessly with the campaign's storyline. I recommend you read it just for the heck of it.
Link?
@@robertkovarna8294 m.fanfiction.net/s/12236790/1/Afterglow and archiveofourown.org/works/6983116/chapters/15912142
Thanks!
Which website is it on?
@@radarcore2125 Archive of Our Own
Wow, thanks for finally giving this game the deserved attention! Absolute masterpiece
Cool dass du es auch kennst :)
Deswegen bist du einer meiner lieblings TH-cam
What’s the song at 0:51
Silly exaggeration. Not a masterpiece.
@@TheJayson8899 you got basically one of the most accurate war stories, showing that soldiers duty isnt as fun As games and propaganda makes it look, and all the attrocious things you are forced to do and witness while on tour of duty, but hey Im just talking to an empty Space, go play Battlefield or something
"Hahaha! that's right, run you fucking coward."
*points a gun at him.
"Oh shit"
🤣🤣
I was the perfect candidate for this game.
11 to 12 year old me was a COD fanboy. I played every game to completion, multiplayer, campaign and, if available, spec ops. To this day MW1 & 2 remain some of my favourite shooters. But after Blacks Ops 2, COD was crowned my favourite franchise. I then decided to go through as many shooters as I could before Ghosts came out. Battlefield came first, amazing. Rainbow 6, loved it. Bioshock, spectacular. Then I played Ghosts and was horrified at all how dull it was. I wanted more, I wanted a better shooter fix, like an addict. So I decided to move onto third person games.
Gears of War, meh. Uncharted, now we’re talking. It goes on and on but around early 2015, when I was around 13 I saw Spec Ops: The Line.
I thought, “never heard of this franchise before, looks pretty good.” So I bought it at a dirt cheap price expecting nothing.
I went home and began to play. Helicopter opening? Seen it before. Local militia? Seen it before. Black serious side kick and wise cracking jackass recruit? Seen it before. I got to about Chapter 5 and stopped playing. I was bored. I didn’t care much for killing American Soldiers seeing as though I am not American. So I moved on. Dead Space, Splinter Cell, Mass Effect, Hitman, it goes on but I eventually decided to 100% every game I had before I sold my consoles.
Amazingly, and by sheer luck, Spec Ops The Line was the last game I had on the self. Ugh, do I really wanna play this again? Might as well get my money’s worth. So I started up the game, typed in my name and heard the familiar voice of Mr Nolan North in a military shooter.
Then I saw my name in the credits. My interest peaked. I was no stranger to the 4th wall but what could a military shooter do with the 4th wall?
So I pushed past the early chapters. Then it happened. Chapter 8. Now, let me stress, I was now figuring out something was off. I guessed that one of my squad was the villain. I guess I was right.
I didn’t even blink firing the white phosphorus, not a care in the world. I didn’t fire at the vehicle, I fired at the mass of white outlines. With intent to kill all of them. Walking through it? Nah, just enemies, red dots, the bad guys. Then I saw the mother and the child. I literally froze. Wait what?
Nah, this was a trick, it isn’t real. This moment scared me more than anything in my life. If I was in that scenario, I just killed a ton of innocent people and said ‘I am the good guy.’ Then ‘This isn’t my fault.’
Then I thought it will be explained or justified later. Then the water supply. Then I blew that fuckers head off. Then the tips began to change. Then the radioman is assassinated. Then the characters got brutal. Then Lugo dies. Then civilians berate and riot against you. Then Adams blames you. Then Adams dies. Then Conrad is revealed to be dead. Then I sat, controller in hand, aiming at Conrad as he spouted off the truth. I then learned I could shoot myself instead.
If you tell me you fully understood this game on a first playthrough you are flat out lying. It has a hypnotic effect on you, convincing you everything is justified up until the helicopter crash where the game reveals what it thinks of you and how everything around you, Lugo, Adams, Conrad, the game itself and even Walker, who kept claiming it wasn’t his fault, subtly blaming the player, thinks you are a murdering psychopath. And considering what happens if you dare think back on what you’ve done, you can’t help but agree. It actively discourages you to keep playing but the search for answers, the chance that it is all worth it pushes you to keep going. It even warns you that the answers you seek are not going to please you.
Smashing enemies heads in, creating bloody messes as Walker screams in utter rage, unable to stop himself shoving his pistol into the mouth of another human being and blowing his head off, watching up close and savouring the brutality of it, watching Walker switch from making quick and precise orders like “Watch that gunner” to the most unnerving line I’ve ever heard in a video game due to how he expressed hatred towards another human being, one he didn’t even know, in a way that makes the soldier sound like an annoyance rather than a person “I want him dead”.
The façade of Walker fades and we are shown what happens when you strip someone of their right to claim they are good, you are left with raw and primal emotions. Nothing else. Identity is irrelevant on a battlefield. And if you spend long enough on a battlefield, your identity withers and dies. Without the identity of Walker, there’s nothing left for you, the player, to protect yourself with. You can’t hide behind, it’s a video game character, anymore. It’s you.
Have you ever gotten so angry that you sound inhuman in your threats? No? I’m willing to bet you have at least once lost all control and felt nothing but total rage. That is Walker by the end, that’s all that’s left. Rage and the desperate need to justify his actions. Walker is the rage. You are the desperate search for justification. And when you are told there is no justification, that you are to blame for all of this and YOU and YOU alone killed possibly thousands of innocent civilians and, at any point, could’ve just stopped by putting down the controller, accepting what you’ve done, and returning to reality, or in Walker’s case, the HQ to report back from his RECON mission.
By tearing away any chance of justification, the rage is unfounded and so fades. So what’s left? Regret? No. There’s nothing left. It mixes in Walker and the player, making them distinctly different but uniting them at the end so the player fully understands that they are using the excuse that Walker is a character to deny that THEY chose their fate.
The ending supports this. The player has control. It’s not Walker taking aim, it’s the player that gets to choose which is why the two Walkers have differing animations. It was your choice. It has always been your choice.
The stress was unbearable. But I shot Conrad. It was over. I won, right? It’s justified because I won? Then the epilogue, the final kick to the balls, when I surrendered to the soldiers and the game ended. I survived, so I won right? No.
I replayed the epilogue all the ways I could. Killing the soldiers felt wrong but it felt as if Walker had transcended my control. He was lost and survival is all that mattered, if survival is even real. Then getting killed by them felt calming, knowing that Walker escaped his hell. But then I figured out what the real ending was. There is no epilogue.
The only way to end it, the only way to escape, the only way to know what is truly real, is to shoot Walker in the head.
13 year old me, no matter how naive understood that THIS was what I had been doing throughout all these shooters. Killing people because I was deemed ‘the good guy’ by myself. A realisation such as this, to a 13 year old, changes your outlook on video games. Suddenly Farcry 3 looks like very similar to this idea but The Line fully realises this idea. It was hard to replay the game, knowing how every person you kill was simply trying to protect themselves from you, specifically you.
I haven’t touched a shooter since, nor will I ever do so again. The last game I ever played, my favourite game of all time, Spec Ops The Line, is one of the greatest experiences out there. Go play it. Now.
This is the best review for the game I have ever read.
Nice novel
SkyOut I was only listing the games I played to show that my mind was opened up to all these different types of games with different narratives, I never intended to imply any quality or anything. But pretty much agree with you on all those you listed as like a snappy summary.
You are the most pretentious piss-stick I've ever met. Fuck off.
Perry Martin cute
Walker is one of my favorite unreliable narrators for a tale ever.
This game forever haunts me.
Wow I never even noticed the "Special Guest" credit. That's so cool, and really enforces the idea that you're not even really controlling Walker.
I noticed it when the game started but truly didn't know what the point of it was. I just thought it was a cool nod to the player, like, "hey you're here! Thanks for playing!". But that was well before i got into the story.
Joe the main screen sniper guy is the one observering and when the game ends he dies
Personally, I love Spec Ops. It may not be the best, but I love it.
One thing I noticed in my first play through, one of several, was Walkers animations all throughout the game.
Particularly, the executions.
Early game they are quick, efficient, pretty standard commando style killing.
Mid game you see the first changes. They're longer, new or different. Bloodier, reflecting Walker's drive.
Mid to late? Savage, ruthless, but still keep the old animation's style.
Late game? They look tired. Walker struggles to bring up a fist on a downed enemy. The ruthless and anger is still there, but it's clear that Walker is depleted.
Perhaps I'm reading too deep, but this is something I always appreciated.
Another point, raised in the video, is the voice acting.
Darling game the soldiers of Delta are crisp, efficient. A quick "reloading"
Mid game, angry or upset, shouting.
Late game, they sound depressed, Walker just complains when he reloads.
Anyway, if anyone bothered reading this far, any thoughts on this more subtle (or not) gameplay differences in narrative?
Brutal Demon Yes! This is a genious detail and I'm glad more people got it! There is also a strange scene after you allow Lugo to kill you when he is disguised as a heavy, which I can't find anywhere. After you die, there isn't a normal loading screen, but a vision of some sort, after which Walker comments on briefly and Lugo disappears.
Degradation of walkers soul?
I loved this game for the ruthelesness and depressiveness that becomes a warzone.
I've never noticed those things, but perhaps I was too young for that :D Guess it's time to play it again.
However I absolutely love this game. I honestly felt sort of "emty" and depressed couple of days after finishing it, the game really makes you think.
I noticed many of the same things. The game does such an amazing job of showing the toll these events are having on everyone, from tone of voice to blood and sand all over them that they are not even bothering to try and remove. The level of attention paid to the details of this game is astounding.
I have to say, with the parts that didn't play out until the ending, like Lugo and Adams questioning why Walker stopped at the two hanging men. It could be explained as Walker blocking out some things. I feel like this is shown after the choice is made when Adams says "don't do this." He knows Walker is losing it, but they're barely surviving with the three of them. Seperating would not be viable as it would be a death sentence for all of them. After all, they have a mission, and they know PTSD is a thing. They may think it's Walker trying to cope. Just my personal take on it.
Adams def knew walker was losing it... Lugo was losing it to lowkey
@@BrawlyDaStar yeah, Lugo didnt put up with any of walkers shit and called him out on it multiple times, going to main mission points to just get them home, adams (until the end when all of them lost it) tried to stay with walker as again like you said, knows PTSD is a thing and it seems that he was closer with walker then lugo was
Yeah, that was the obvious interpretation in my opinion. Walker was too busy taking to Konrad, so he didn't here them talking to themselves about him. It is pretty clear in the actual scene that they think he's bonkers for sticking around there
The first chapters are all filled with fades to white and hallucinations of Konrad on billboards.
This game becomes truly interesting once you realize that there is no evidence that ANYTHING that happens is real. Not even the most "established" scene, the helicopter fight, is even demonstrably real, as Walker outright mentions how "This happened before!"
So, as far as we know, maybe those scenes were not real. Maybe Walker never even found a radio. Maybe Dubai never happened, and this is Walker's own PTSD after Kabul. Or maybe the entire game is just his mind coming up with a twisted thought experiment where he is forced to understand what being unstable would cause to others. Point is: there is no proof that ANYTHING in the game is real, and the mass amount of fades to white mean that at least 50% of Walker's journey was dreamt up.
28:00 Here's something I bet you didn't notice. Walkers scars have a very significant meaning
If you look at the end of the game his scars are
1) The right side of his face. This represents his duality
2) His Temple. This is where most people shoot themselves when commiting suicide. It also represents how he lost his mind
3) Roughly the back of his neck. In ancient times it was believed when a demon took your soul they would take it through the back of your neck or head.
Bro.
He actually did it, my man.
Noatak Kenway the absolute mad man
Noatak Kenway ill take credit for this I was the first to ask him to do it
Noatak Kenway eat ass fuc
I personally have always seen Walker saying "Who said I did" not as him being dead, but as his mind having been damaged with all of his experiences and personal tortures. He feels he hasn't made it out despite having done so. He is still feeling tortured by all of the events leading up to leaving Dubai. The man who entered Dubai is not the man who left it, that man "died" in the metaphorical sense, not the literal.
This is my personal opinion however, I very much enjoyed this game and this video as well. Keep up the good work!
OverwatchSniper First time I played, I went with the go home option not in the “I get to live,” sense, but as a “I need to go and face the music for my crimes against my brothers and the world we were meant to protect.”
Basically something similar to what Michael Zelazny said in Deus Ex Human Revolution.
That scene fades to black. The scene didn't happen my dude.
Razor ツ In Spec Op's the line: things and events that happen in reality or are accepted by Walker as being the truth: Fade To Black. Hallucinations and Fantasies that Walker experiences: fade to white.
When Falcon One takes the AA12 out of Walkers hands and Walker say's, tired, but hopeful.... that he can finally go home and gets into the HUMVEE, the scene fades to white (Fantasy/Hallucination)..... yet when inside the same HUMVEE driving out of Dubai and talking to the driver, who asks him how how he survived and responding: "who say's I did": the scene inside the HUMVEE fades to black (Truth/Reality).
Basically what this scene means is that while Walker has laid down his weapon and is taking the HUMVEE to go home and saying that everything is over and he's ready to go home; that is some secret hope and fantasy he tries to hope for; that this is a fantasy of Walker himself and every soldier: the idea of a soldier coming home from war. However in reality, when asked how he survived Dubai .... his response is his true feelings even despite his small, haggered, desperate hope and fantasy he tries one last time to hold desperately to, that in reality, while his body has survived and is going home; the man he once was and the mind he once had: did not survive Dubai. The reality is that he is going home now a changed, broken, haunted man; a shadow, a specter of what he once was; uncertain but unlikely to be the same and haunted and burdened with the horrors and atrocities he has seen, experienced and even committed. His mind and soul isn't really coming home from Dubai even if his body is going home; as battered and exhausted as it is. The man he once was, the former Captain Walker: died and was left in Dubai. All that survived and is going home is a PTSD raddled shell of what Captain Walker had become.
In another ending Conrad said that the their is no such thing as "going home" for a soldier, especially for soldiers of Conrad and Walker's caliber: those are just fantasies that soldiers have, tell themselves and hold on to; and becomes increasingly fleeting and harder to reach out and hold onto the longer a campaign and the more horrors a soldier experiences or even commits. In reality all those soldiers can ever hope to find: is peace.
And while some part of Walker tried to hold on to the one last, ragged hope of the idea he once had of "going home"..... in truth at this point, and even he realizes as he's being carried out of the sand filled, hellish landscape of Dubai: is that he can't ever really go home.... only hope he can find peace; somehow... somewhere... and that the man he once was: is dead.
brano13177 wow. Ok
Didnt thought that there was another way to think about it
^^
33:55 I cringed at this part where he says any shooter needs to have multiplayer. You can almost tell he's guilty about saying it; like even he doesn't believe it but he has to drink the company kool-aid. Sadly, shitty multiplayer modes were forced on so many games that didn't need them, including Bioshock 2. The fact that they didn't learn their lesson after Bioshock 2 proves just how disillusioned the people calling the shots were. The same company, hiring the same studio, to add the same half-assed multiplayer onto a game that didn't need it.
Hopefully the worst of this is past us. Single player games can be single player. Online can be online. We don't need to force both in one package every time.
This is precisely why the multiplayer in Spec Ops wasnt good. Yeager did NOT want a multiplayer included but the powers that be insisted upon it so they just shoehorned a functional multiplayer
Fallout 76 says hello
"Let's all laugh at an industry,
That never learns anything,
Tee hee hee!" -Yahtzee, The Escapist
true, but bioshock 2 had great multiplayer
EA Games, are you reading this? Cause you really should!!!
11:30
Yeah you’re wrong about that one
Shotguns do have the range of SMGs
People just assume because of games that when you fire a shotgun at something more than a metre away the pellets just stop. For Christ sake people use shotguns to shoot ducks out of the air of course they have range
They’re firing a spread of pellets all in one general direction
D.DoT-Z that’s not balanced in a video games so it’s a valid complaint not everything is real life
This is why fear and doom have the best shotguns
Stephen Darling well this game was meant to be “realistic” and Raycevick said it wasn’t :/
@@diego2fuego869 yes in multiplayer games where balance actually matters this is a primary single player game
@@andrewmoore7022 single player games still need balance in order to make it a challenging experience
Spec Ops the Line Multiplayer is bad
...
Spec Ops had multiplayer...?
It is so bad that you need to ask this question
If anyone actually played spec ops multiplayer I'd be disgusted with them. It would mean they didn't play the story or worse they were very detached from the horrors that not only Walker goes through but themselves too.
I heard they were forced to add it to the game
Yager was against the idea, but 2K insisted so they hired Darkside Game Studios to develop the multiplayer.
Discuss about the traumatic events and the failed moral choices online wasn't the multiplayer?
The lines that got me when i first played this was "do you feel like a hero yet?" and "you came here to be something you're not, a hero"
Xenomorph Captain Vex Ghost of the brony community military games i play to escape my world and be a hero other games i play for fun if you dont do that thats you im not everyone and everyone is not me we all have our reasons for playing games
If the initial trailers for this game were to sell this game as a horror game and not a third person shooter, i think it would have more appeal. Like Yahtzee said in his Zero Punctuation videos, games are meant to be fun but they aren't always like that. Games that are meant to give the player a sense of dread and misery, much like horror games. And he saud Spec Ops could be identified as a horror game, not because it's scary but because it makes the player uncomfortable and uneasy
Yeah, it's the same portrayal of horror that Kurtz talks about at the end of Apocalypse Now. There's really nothing more horrifying than human cruelty.
All the stupid ass screaming and put noises made me so uneasy. Also I played on Suicide with a controller so it was hard too. So I was super uncomfortable.
Spec Ops: The Line did it's job, it made us Discuss, Question and Disagree.
that is a bit more satisfying than another "Mission Complete".
not to mention that it gave us this video.
First reply.
@@eli4677 fuck off
Third reply :D
Fourth reply
Final Reply. >:D
This video is old, but I still feel compelled to comment anyway.
I got this game on some Steam sale, I think it cost me a half chewed stick of bubble gum and a bowl full of grass clippings. I got a few levels in, completely lost interest, and went off to chase a squirrel or something. Then Origin gave away the Battlefield game where you get to climb into the back of a fighter and be Goose from Top Gun and I felt pumped and needed more tangos to shoot in the face, so I loaded up The Line and gritted my teeth as I got to grinding my way through it.
I more or less played the game on autopilot, not really taking in anything up to the point that I mindlessly clicked on the Humvee, but the aftermath hit me exactly as the writers intended. I don't recall much more about my first play of the game other than thinking "wtf just happened???" as the game came to a close. My absolute favorite stories are the ones where the writers refuse to hold your hand and explain things prematurely, showing you things that don't make sense until you learn more about the world you're in as you move through it. This makes the second or even third time through a lot of fun.
So I read up a bit to get a better idea of what I was looking at and went through it again. My basic opinion of the story is that from beginning to end, you simply experience Walker's descent into insanity. Maybe he dies in the helicopter crash, maybe he doesn't, I personally do not believe that it matters. It's what makes the game interesting, that there's a certain point where it's not really possible to know if what you're seeing is what actually happened, or not.
After this video now I think it's fun to believe that there was a point where Adams and Lugo were killed, but Walker carried on, believing that they were still with him as strongly as he believed that Konrad was talking to him on the radio.
This was more or less the last "modern" shooter I've played. After this experience the CoD style of action hero games all felt hollow and cheap. So now for my power fantasies.... I plan Doom.
Thank you for the throwback video on this game. It's easily among the most fascinating and memorable experiences I've had through any kind of entertainment.
....huh no wonder the only recent shooters I've enjoyed had some element of fantasy I've been unconsciously avoiding the more realistic shooters because of this game
think the most realistic ones I've played was pubg and seige even then one has a magic death wall and other has people running around with half an armys worth of equipment to the point they cant get there fat ass off the ground without the help of a rope
@@theirishviking9278 yeah same here, that Battlefield game I referenced was the last "realistic" shooter I played.
@@theirishviking9278 don't forget that one of the characters in siege barely has a head hitbox
'we have far to much in common with walker'
that is a fair statment
I just read this at the exact same time he said it in the video. I looked at the time and it was exactly 3:33. I'm worried I'll be sucked into a tear in the fabric of reality...
Wow, I never noticed the reflection of a hanging soldier where Lugo is supposed to be. Very clever!
I believe the plot holes stemming from the great reveal are actually caused by the very nature of the narrative you describe, in that it's intentional. I know this requires a lot of faith in the author but here's why I think this.
Walker--the person--is stuck in his own personal purgatory. The events in Dubai broke him. In an effort to deny what he saw, he constructed his own reality where those he meets, the story of the game and even the world itself is constantly judging him. The entire game is his conscience, and that conscience is torturing him for the crimes he committed.
I especially liked the way the hallucinations are terrifying not just to the player, but to Walker as well. As the game progresses they freak him out more and more, and some apparitions actually seem to charge him or box him in. The change in lighting when white phosphorus is used eventually transitions to a inky black darkness contrasted by hellfire. Even subtler things, like the Konrad billboards, the inexplicably withered tree, the change in loading screens and the main menu, and especially the way you keep descending into darker and darker surroundings, push this theme of confrontation and self-torture.
And finally, there are the times where the screen fades to white. It's a sign that something you saw, or are seeing, isn't real. This is of course what ties the entire thing together.
The more you play, the more the game sets up Walker as something you don't see often in any kind of media: the unreliable narrator. That's why I think the plot holes, while unfortunate, were more or less deliberate. In the end, we don't know 100% what happened. Neither does Walker.
...This turned out longer than I wanted it to be. Anyway, thanks for the thought-provoking video! You definitely pointed out a few things I hadn't noticed.
I wish I could save comments
@Anne Isopod What if it's not one easily missed thing but dozens of such things peppered over different places and they work more on a subconscious level, or as a bonus for people who're playing for the second time and thus are more receptive towards subtle clues to the later story chapters? I don't know for certain how far the game goes with this and how much might have been missed in this review, but such touches can be pretty neat, and denying that they're clever is a bit disingenuous.
Certainly a lot more clever than when foreshadowing is laid on so thick, it essentially gives away the whole story. It can't ever be quite right, because audience can't be uniform in background and expectations, but understated certainly beats overstated.
@Anne Isopod actually it is, it judges the ability of the "player" to be aware of its surroundings, to don't be just a mindless happy trigger drone just following orders without the capacity to drawn it's own conclusions without the narrator telling him or she the history.
as much as i love this game and this video, i think that's just a texture to show the reflection of lugo rapelling and lowpoly makes it look like he's hanging
Even in the final conversation with "Konrad" implies so much more when we start to dissect it.
I honestly found the game’s combat very intense, especially at the end where the Damned 33rd stop messing about. I really loved the environmental design, near the end of the game I came across a room that the 33rd used to honour and remember their dead who were killed by Delta, with each individual name and rank written on the wall, with their plethora of dog tags hung on the wall. With a board to the right with the pictures and names of Delta squad, with Lugo ticked off.
I really love this because I’m under the opinion of what makes human monsters terrifying, isn’t that they’re monsters, it’s because they’re human. And there are several scenes with the Damned 33rd that shows their humanity, talking with each about going home, but affirming why they stay and why it’s their duty to ‘save’ and ‘help’ people, willing to be called traitors because of their duty and wanting to feel like heroes. And if it weren’t for the actions of the ‘ungrateful’ civilians and insurgents, they wouldn’t have to do these awful things like executions, using white phosphorus etc. Showing how much they reflect Walker, who goes down roughly the same path as the 33rd, becoming Damned to a hell like them.
The tragedy of the 33rd is that despite all the horrible things that they’ve done, they ultimately just wanted to be virtuous and again, feel like heroes, even when killing innocents, declaring martial law, forcing civilians to follow their orders on the pain of death, going through a civil war within their unit, killing their friends who they’ve come to know as brothers. Despite all of this they ultimately, just wanted to help people, but were confronted by the grim reality of the situation and their flaws as humans, yet never accepted it and instead blaming all of their problems and flaws on outside forces. Which ultimately Damned the 33rd.
Honestly I take the "who said i did" line as more of him being physically and mentally dead after all he has been through, though the theory you brought up is an interesting take but feels like a bit of a cop out.
Yeah I interpreted it the same. Walker finally gets out of Dubai but is forever haunted by his atrocities he's committed there. Basically him being in a living hell for the rest of his life.
But how that explains the dialogue in the chopper scene ?
I feel like it was the game being self aware regarding the little preview from the prologue
finn .mov I reckon quite simply it is the most severe form of PTSD. Some soldiers come back from war relatively okay but still have their troubles while others come back completely ruined over what they saw or did. So in this game, by the end of everything, Walker is dead inside
21:14 I always thought it was a nice touch that Walker's eyes almost look like shattered glass in this scene, just like how his reality is shattered right in front of his eyes.
Yo! Scary warning might be needed on this one
They are like that the entire game actually.
@@usagentgaming3079 Maybe Walker's been staring out a broken window the whole game, reliving his wholly cursed experiences like the broken man he is...
@@usagentgaming3079 Not really. They start out pretty normal. Following the white phosphorus they shatter tho, in tandem with his dissociation
I too played this when I was like 18 I think and thought to myself that it was just another typical shooter.
Boi was I wrong. This was the game that taught me, not everything is as black and white. That white phosphorus scene made me want to stop the mission all together. I guess this game is saying "Where do you draw the line."
"You draw the line where you need it" - Capt Price 2019
How to win Spec Ops: The Line. 1: read objective as Locate survivors and return to base upon sight of life. 2: upon first fire fight completion turn off game... Mission complete.
Hmmm... Spec ops: THE LINE
@@heraclytesylvestre5317 you draw the line where you need it, because we need to find some ways to justify our senseless wars.
So many people slept on this game, such a shame. I was 17 when it came out, and when I told people it had one of the best stories ever, for a video game, they just laughed and continued to play CoD of BF.
sadge
Sits on the toilet, goes on phone, finds Raycevick video. FeelsGoodMan
You're gonna sit on that toilet for a 40 minutes then.
SnipahTV You spent 43 minutes on the toilet? Feelsgoodman
SnipahTV aawww man that's disgusting shit particles all over and inside your phone yuck
I remember how in the early segments of the game, it would give you the typical Unreal Engine 3 loading screen along with the games basic gameplay hints. and as levels pass by it starts getting existential. And that honestly spooked me
Kaoru Pangilan "You could have stopped"
I just went from "I shoot glass to trigger sand falling down on my enemies. Got it." to "was my squad even real?" in just a span of a few hours from that game.
Kaoru Pangilan The loading screen just started to guilt you as the levels pass
Okay, time to do something productive with my time.
(Sees a new Raycevick video on Spec Ops)
Ahhh, I'm sure I can spend another 43 minutes watching this video
Watching Raycevick is producting too
It's definitely 'producting'!
Ian Khoo Oh hello fellow Ace, you have good taste.
Who even are you
Andrew Rogers I assume you know me from an Ace Combat vid?
You can also notice walker getting more mad and bloodthirsty against the 33rd when commanding your squad members to attack an enemy. In the beginning of the game it's just normal commands to take out an enemy, but more towards the later parts and ending of the game walker might say stuff like "I want him dead" or just straight up "Kill him!" along with more normal commands, when ordering lugo and adams to attack.
Awesome video. Just to be fair: "I've talked to soldiers...", I'm not arguing that the weapons are unrealistic (it's a videogame), but knowing what you can do with an "Assault rifle" up from ranges of 250-400 meters I'd say that is pretty accurate. And shotguns are always misrepresented in videogames with ridiculous low range of effectiveness, when in the real world they are used for HUNTING at long ranges (with various restrictions due to type of ammo of course).
Like I said, awesome video, this is in no way criticism, just a pet peeve of mine I guess. Keep up the good work.
Edit: Maybe people have commented about this already, I'm pretty new to this channel.
Yeah, shotguns can be used to hunt pigeons at 100 yards or something. But i'm afraid that at that range buckshot becomes much less lethal against a human.
BigFatCone Especially since many games seem to treat 50-60 meters as an incredibly large distance.
This game surprised the shit outta me when I played it, I think it was a breath of fresh air during a time where miltary shooters followed the same formula. It's a shame that it sold poorly because if it sold well we might have seen a few more games try to tackle this theme. The only other game that distanced me from the person I was playing was when I finished the last of us. It had the same I don't wanna do this feeling, people hate on linear games but if done right taking that choice away from the player can be more impactful then giving us a save the universe button.
people hate on linear games because they think walking for ten mins between objectives is content.
Linear narratives in games have their place when the lack of choice emphasizes the point the game is trying to make more so than an abundance of choice would. Spec Ops benefits wildly from that notion, but I'm not so sure about The Last of Us...I could be wrong, though...
Fantastic breakdown of this game. So much to it even I, and avid fan, did not know.
There are a few other Items I found very interesting that you did not bring up.
1) The Snipers are keeping score: I did not notice this on the first playthrough, and like so much of Spec Ops, if you do not look for it, you will miss it. When you storm the sniper nest late in the game, if you look at the walls, you will notice the snipers are keeping score of their kills. They have stopped seeing the people they are shooting as people and only see them as points. Not that unlike what we often do as gamers, which just continues the narrative that you are not that different than Walker and his teammates.
2) The scene after the first helicopter crash: After the beginning and the crash, you cut to Walker in a high rise talking about Konrad and the mission. When you first play this, you think he is in his apartment before the mission has started. On my second playthrough, however, I noticed something: the zen garden in the apartment is the same one from the Penthouse at the end. It is at this point that Walker is trying to reconstruct the narrative into something where he is not responsible for the horrific acts he has caused.
3) The Intel: While some can argue the game cheats by retelling events after you learn Konrad is dead. the Intel you can find throughout the game, once again completely optional, contradicts Walker's narrative right from the start. If anyone who has played this game has not collected all of the intel, I would heavily recommend going back and doing so. It puts the enitre game into a new light.
I gave Spec Ops my game of the year the year it came out. I still think it is one of the most impressive and important military shooters ever made, and I have recently been contemplating playing through it a third time. The game has stuck with me the way so few have.
I get why this is called 'The Line'. In war soldiers often cross a line in committing brutal acts either following orders or on their own accord. And in this game, it's clear characters cross a moral line and it's up to you to decide where you fall on this line. I have to disagree with you about the choice of the white phosphorous thing. It is absolutely your choice to use it. Yes you have to do it to progress but nobody is forcing you to buy the game to do it in the 1st place.
@@wunderpuma4453 gramer Nazi
I personally think that "The Line" also strongly refers to the very linear design of the story. There are small choices but they don't have any impact. The player simply follows the path laid before, regardless of whether they should or not but simply because they think it is necessary. The name "Walker" also plays into similar themes.
I think it plays on a lot of similar phrases to do with "Crossing the line" and "drawing a line in the sand" (note the amount of sand imagery in the game). The Line has a lot to do with morality and forbidden actions in these phrases. Also the player character is Captain Walker because he "walks the line", I guess having connotations of being dangerously close to crossing it.
chaosof99 this makes considering actual military servants have to follow orders from their commanders. Basically falling in-line and operating as a machine with very little personal input on decisions. Game has a compelling story for sure.
You walk the line until you look down and realise that there is no line drawn in the sand beneath your feet. You look behind you and all you see are dunes and dust for miles. You've been telling yourself that no matter what happens, it'll be alright as long as you follow the path ahead. But...
Was there ever a line?
The "years later..." Reviews are easily the best reviews on this site. Your exquisite script writing and damn near flawless editing make every second of the video engaging. You deserve so much higher praise and recognition on this platform. Keep up the amazing work and thank you for the gift that these videos are.
Dominic Monteverde
Not to mention, *THAT VOICE*.
Dominic Monteverde Joseph Anderson is pretty good as well.
I disagree with the perspective that Walker is dead. My personal interpretation is that there were two versions of the story. One was not shown up until the helicopter sequence at the start, when it is indeed in media res. The rest of the game, up until the helicopter scene replays, is a twisted, warped flashback by Walker. Then, the two versions of the story merge, and you are forced to confront what Walker has done. In the first timeline, Walker commits the atrocities, and in the seconds, he attempts to justify his actions.
Rusty Shackleford
Oh damn that kinda works, not bad
No. He is dead and he's in hell. Pay attention to the helicopter gameplay when he freaked out that they've done the same thing all over again. That let's you know that they are dead and they don't even know it.
I don't think he means dead in the literal sense more like deep depression "dead". Walker even years past this relives these memories because of PTSD in his perspective he's not living he's in his own personal hell.
I think this is the ticket - the "HE WERE DED THE WHOLE TIM!" cliche is too hackneyed for this game.
I know im late, but ive read somewhere, that the devs didnt want to include the helicopter scene at the beginning. They were pushed to make it the start of the game though, because they got told by the publisher that "every military shooter needs to start with a bang" or some such.
Pretty cool, that they still managed to implement that in a way, that its open to discussion and interpretation... in my book walker isnt dead as well btw.
That feeling when you watch a 40 minute review and find it short...
I'm late to the party, but HUGE respect for not just playing through the game, dissecting it and its components and researching it's development history!
In a world full of Call of Duties, dare to be a Spec Ops: The Line.
Thank you for this Raycevick, fucking thank you
This video gave me the chills. Spec Ops The Line is one of my 10 favorite games ever, and though I replay it every year this analysis still pointed out things I've missed, like the hanging soldier during the rappel. Thanks so much for this amazing video, and for reminding me yet again what makes this game so special, flaws and all.
One thing you forgot to mention about multiplayer was that Yager included no trophies or achievements based on it where nearly every other game has as an incentive for people to try it. Seeing as how conflicted the development of multiplayer was, I wouldn't be surprised if this was a very deliberate action.
Of course, after all why reward you for acting like a "hero"
It's a very good choice imo
QB Mac Forgot to mention? More like isn't worth mentioning.
You also missed the fact that after Conrad says "welcome to hell Walker" he's says "we've been waiting for you" meaning Conrad (or in this case Walker) knows no matter how much good does he will still end up in hell instead of the usual "we've been expecting you" which expresses doubt
On your point about the game not giving you a choice to kill the civilians, I think that's the point. The game routinely presents choices or moral conflicts that ultimately don't mean anything or are unavoidable because the thesis of the game is you should never have played it in the first place. There's a moment where you have to either kill someone who stole water, or someone who killed five family members of the man who stole the water (or not kill either and end up killing many more), except, at the end, you find out they were corpses all along, and you'd imagined the whole thing. At the very beginning of the game, right around the tutorial, there's a Stop sign, asking you to turn away. The "choice" was to play the game. The strongest evidence for this is the way Walker talks about choice. He consistently frames himself as having no choice, and, as the player, you're meant to think the same. "I had to bomb civilians with white phosphorus to complete the game." The reason there's no in-game choice is because the choice isn't framed as an action within the game, it's framed as you choosing to continue playing. You can debate the efficacy of that, some may argue it's akin to blaming the actions in a book on the person turning the page, but, whether or not you think this "choice" was presented in a meaningful manner, whether there's any point to making the player complicit for moving forward in the game, I do think that was the point the game was making.
This game came out in June 2012. Player agency as a narrative concept had barely been explored in video games, with Braid and Bioshock being notable exceptions. Telltale Games had just released The Walking Dead, Undertale was still over three years away, and while the controversy about Mass Effect 3's ending was starting to boil over, that debacle had come from developer misjudgment, not intentional subversion.
Spec Ops: The Line is one of the most miraculously timely games to ever exist. It was released in the exact year when its message would be the most relevant and the least expected, the last year before players would start learning to keep their guard up about what a video game asks them to do.
Wow, the graphics for this game really are beautiful and consistent throughout the campaign. I love when you are on top of the skyscraper and see the huge city below. Really atmospheric stuff.
Games like this prove that Videogames are art
Bf 2042 rearing its ugly head in the corner
I've heard one theory about why Adams and Lugo keeps obeying you and never asks any questions is because they are supposed to be Walkers consciousness like they are the angel and devil on your shoulders. Adams always enables your actions while Lugo questions you at every turn. And it's why Lugo is the first to die because now there is nothing that holds Walker back and he goes even more animalistic and brutal. But even Adams has a breaking point before he dies and that's when Walker is forced to face the truth of his actions.
I assumed there wouldn't be any more videos about people analyzing Spec Ops, and then comes this video. Probably my second favorite analysis behind the Errant Signal video, but luckily they both touch on different aspects of the game's story so they don't step on each other's feet too much. Subbed.
This video is so good!!! I cannot get enough Spec Ops discussion, and it's really nice to see people still talking about the game. Plus, I never knew the history of the game before this, so thanks for that. You've given me a fresh perspective on the meta narrative and important scenes (like I never noticed the parallels between Walker's fiery nightmare and Konrad's final monologue.) I have a lot to think about, and I might just have to play through it again.
Obligatory Spec Ops quote:
"Your eyes are opening for the first time. It hurts, doesn't it?"
I think you are wrong about the story:
Walker didn't die in that helicopter literally, but this is the moment which he (in driving away ending) and we percive as a moment of near death thus the moment when he "dies" figuratively. It is a common way of talking about war and crazy stuff - to say that you (as of an old you, you personality prior to certain events) died there and now you are not you anymore. Now you don't know who you are. "I died somewhere in that mess" is a classic way of writing about war and I (want to) believe that all those things like helicopter sounds and such are there for one simple reason - the neverending doubt of Walker about whether he is still alive as of a person. The choice in the end is not actually a real choice, but a very accurate depiction of man's struggle to continue. Because even if you choose to live further - it is probably not you anymore, and "real" you died somewhere between those helicopters. And killing youself in the end is just a way of enforcing that death, the only last thing that "real" you can do after all of this. The only thing that you can do still being yourself. There are no survivors in war.
That is an excellent perspective. I always wanted to believe that somehow, Walker can still survive, not just to relive his torture. And that choosing to shoot Konrad was an attempt to fight your demons, rather than giving up.
imma take ur prespective
a main level designer say that they put the helicopter level in the beginning because they needed to maintain the player interested,they feel that the first level of walking in the desert was to boring.
maybe he died in chapter 14...
maybe the scene after the mortar was a scene of what he would have done if he survived, there's no way Lugo survived and fought them, maybe it's an illusion of some sort... think about the end, the colonel was never there... Was he...? Think about the very end when the soldier asked: how did you survive; he responds: Who said I did? Maybe this is just pure overthinking and nonsense, but it's a possibility of what really happened...
Righteous, I like this
The year is 2019. I've never played this game. People thought MW3 was a mature compelling story that really highlights the horrors of war through its characters. I thought MW3 was a dogshit story and the original Call of Duty 4 and BO1 could never be topped. I always had that game as my bar. Had so much respect for it despite how its been lately. Then I decided finally to give this game a chance. I heard about it in highschool from my friend who was one of the people that believed MW3s story was amazing. On my 360 I watched the trailer and thought it as a generic third person shooter with a samd mechanic. Such a generic boring looking "here's another one" game. I skipped it.
Now almost 5 years later I am 20 years old and I watched a game movie of Spec Ops the Line (its like a movie about a games story mainly the cutscenes with some gameplay in between for context)
It was immediately boring but I gave it a chance. I kind of predicted the twist when he used the White Phosperous but when I got to that part I still couldn't believe it. It wasn't the burned corpses of civilians. It was that soldier missing his face. All of its features black and charred but his eyes. Wide open looked and this soldier that looked no different from the others that were killing you just a few minutes ago. Says in a raspy pathetic whimper. "Why...?" "We...We were helping" As the soldiers toss him aside like trash to witness the main event. That moment I paused. I didn't cry but as fast as I could I looked up if there was a way to prevent it. I called it it felt forced but it left an impression. So bad. I didn't even play it. But I still wanted to see if that could've been avoided. It can't. I was hooked the whole way through. And after the ending. I looked up the others. Then suddenly it all clicked. The soldiers weren't fighting for a cause. They weren't lunatics running at you with a knife to send some crazy message. They were desperate. To survive. This wasn't a military shooter with message like CoD. This was a critique. It was a psychological survival horror game. And you were the monster. You weren't fighting soldiers. You were fighting people who just wanted to survive. All those actions found in every other shooter game that were such a slog to watch became so much more real the second time I watched it.
This was longer than I thought it would be but if you made it this
You can buy it on Steam for the price of a pepperoni pizza and a diet coke. But this game will leave a taste in your mouth that never goes away.
Play. This. Game.
NOW i get it when people says that Walker was the villian.Thanks man
@@juanojeda6559 No, get it when you play it. Don't read spoiler, man.
@@quangduongang6230 i've already played it
@@juanojeda6559 ah cool.
I thought you read the spoiler to get the story like some people. Weird how that's a thing tho
@@quangduongang6230 nah i saw this video after playing the game
Thank you for saying something against the white phosporus part. I very well remember seeing that the people were civilians and decided not to shoot at them, but then died because the game forced me to do it and then wanted to make me feel bad about it.
Yeah, it works more when the player isnt thinking about what they are doing.
I tried three times to not use the white phosphorus. I tried to move from the roof, kill the enemy combatants that keep respawning and throwing grenades down on the apcs. But noooooo you HAVE to horribly murder. So much for "adapt and overcome".
andre brito obviously what the above comment said. At the time, those ac-130 sequences were the epitome of badassery, taking out baddies whether they be alone, trying to escape, or even if they were foolishly grouped up attempting to retaliate. It was the boot to an ant. Many players did not understand or very much care about how much power the game was bestowing upon them; it was simply a bigger gun. So when a story uses this mechanic and demonstrates its faults and costs, its very powerful. This was a stroke of genius on the writer's part in that the moment was experienced instead of observed. The player pulled the trigger, even if they didnt want to, just to progress the story. It really posed the question, is this really alright? Its a very powerful moment in the game.
Well you get plenty of praise from other games for doing things without options as well. So I feel that this is another way to parody other games.
Did I get an option to not kill that dragon? Why am I getting praised for 'making the right choice' when I had no choice to not kill that dragon?
Oh wait thats what The Line is parodying.
It worked on me because I was mindlessly killing soldiers, like I'd done so many times before, not thinking about it.
The way I look at it now though:
Walker blames Konrad for forcing his hand > Lugo and Adams blame Walker for forcing their hands > Players blame developer for forcing their hands.
The game was never about choice anyways, so to act mad that suddenly you don't have a choice made no sense to me.
Wish this game would get a remaster it was soo good
it would not even be hard, the game still looks great.
I hope they don't screw up his eyes lmao
Just cut out the multiplayer.
Still looks great and plays well on PC
@@FreshTillDeath56 seems recent Windows 11 PCs are getting issues to run (although mine works fine)
Also I wanna VR support tbh this must be so immersive
I remember saying something to this effect a long time ago similar to another video like this.
I think one of the biggest things that people ignore or maybe the game isn't implied enough through the story is: water. or the lack of water through out the game. I think it was another low-key trope that adds to the narrative. If a person goes a very long time without water they suffer dehydration which leads to other symptoms such as fainting, more prone to irritability, loss of motor skills and others.
Walker and his squad didn't drink any water throughout this entire game (if my memory is correct) and it's crazy to think something so menial can have an even greater impact on those involved.
What I love about Nolan North's voice acting in this is that it has three stages that it goes through as the game progresses. Stage 1 is at the beginning of the game, it's very professional and precise. Stage 2 is after the horrific stuff starts to pile on, where he gets a lot more aggressive, throws more curses into his lines, and even starts to yell at enemies. And then once everything falls apart, Walker just breaks down and is bloodthirsty, and it shows in his lines in stage 3. One part that really hit me when I played was after SPOILERS NECK ROPE GUY, and when I revive Adams, he yells "We have to fucking move now!!!" and his voice cracks. And there's no doubt in my mind the devs left that voice crack in there on purpose. Here's a video covering it, it's a fascinating watch. th-cam.com/video/RIFQzMgYS0I/w-d-xo.html