This is bothering me more and more.

[A Disappointed Horse]

I really like this game, but it is increasingly annoying me the more I think about it, that the game tries to make you feel guilty about things it made you do. The white phosphrous scene is the typical example. Why the ♥♥♥♥ should I beat myself up about killing those people when there was no alternative? Even worse is when the game flat-out says in the loading screens 'this is all your fault'. Err, no Spec Ops, this isn't my fault, it was all your idea! And no, the whole 'you could of just stopped playing' argument doesn't count. That's like saying you could of just stopped watching 'Titanic' and the people on it would of survived, it doesn't work like that.
I think it would be better if they'd given you a choice in those sections. Where you didn't HAVE to use the white phosphrous, but it was the far easier option. That way, we could feel bad at ourselves of choosing the easier option, and killing the innocent people, rather than going through a much harder struggle but in the end saving them. That way, the player feels that they have personally done something wrong, rather than the game forcing them into a corner and then moaning at them for it. Because that's what it feels like to me, moaning.
You could say that this stuff is needed to force Walker's mental breakdown, but there was enough screwed up stuff around anyway to mess him up, we as players don't need the game to moan at us for simply playing it. As I said at the start, I really like this game and think it has some really good concepts in it, but I would rather they stopped forcing the player into making immoral decisions, and instead give them a more open situation. Because if the game MADE you do something, then you shouldn't feel bad for it, as there was no alternative. But if the game gave you a choice, and you chose the easier (and immoral) option, then YOU have made that decision, and YOU killed those people, not the developers. Anyway, this is getting pretty long now, so I'll cut it off. I hope I'm not the only one who feels like this.

[yusupov]

it was fc3 that argued "you couldve just stopped playing" & "you maybe need to examine yourself if you find yourself enjoying this" (paraphrasnig the pretentious ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ yohalem). spec ops is just turning CoD on its head; i see what you're saying & its been a long while since i played the campaign (maybe ill give it a run today), but i think the idea is simply that war IS awful and immoral and ugly. there are no 'good guys' in war. and there arent always 'good' choices. its a pacifistic wargame, essentially; its not critiquing the player, just the glorification of carnage in videogaming.

[A Disappointed Horse]

I do appreciate that from the game, but as I said, it does seem to push guilt on you with the whole 'this is all your fault' rubbish. The game can protest war and CoD and all that without being an ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ about it.

[badchad71]

Very early on I tried to play "the right way" even relaoding check points to see if I could do it differently. Once I understood there was no way to do this I just sped through the rest of the game playing like they wanted me to.

Their attempt to shock you and say, "look what you did!", "this is your fault!" fell absolutely flat to me. I had no compassion for the character I was controlling. My "choice" was simply watching a cut scene where he orders his men to press on and find the survivors.

Now if you were the person who played the game and made the same choices as the lead character or didn't think much about what you were doing then I think this game made a bigger impact on you. I can totally see that and think you had a more meaningful experience than I did.

[Miss Jackson]

The whole guilt thing didn't really strike me either. I actually tried to not use the WP for about an hour before I realized it was forcing me into the decision.
However, I don't see the game as moaning and attempting to guilt trip you. I see it more as trying to make you understand the choices--if there really are any--that people make. Further, it does nail the "War is Hell" spin you see in stuff like Full Metal Jacket.
But you mention the game forcing you to make immoral decisions...certianly the game forces you to make decisions...but who is to say how immoral or moral they are? It's a nice philosophical twist I think, and it makes you (or at least me) weigh the choices and debate if one really was better than the other.

I totally understand your position though. The game does get a little "YOU DID THIS TO ME" at some point. Plus the moral choices are few and kinda obvious--and the WP scene is really annoying. The seen is obviously used to push Walker's character and story along (demonstrated by the reflection in the computer), but somehow they try to shift all the moral decisions onto your shoulders. They're trying to have both freedom, though the freedom to choose either A or B, but also force you into contextual story-driving scenes and it really doesn't work. The same can be said for the chopper scene post-Radioman. I didn't want to do all of that, we could have just flown off. But, I had to...for some reason...and now I supposed to feel bad about it?

tl;dr
Game incorperates some fun philosophical stuff despite forcing you into decision-less story scenes every now and then and trying to make you feel bad about it.

[Dinerenblanc]

Both this game and a popular movie called Apocalypse Now is based on a novel named "Heart of Darkness". Unlike the mastery of the movie and the novel, the game's narrative is forceful and overbearing. I frankly don't think it's written too well or deserving the praise it gets from its fans. There's quite a bit of disconnect between what's the player does in the game and the story its trying to tell. For example, you spend much of the game looking for information about the original group of soldiers stationed there, but instead of interrogating wounded enemy troopers, you are constantly executing them for extra ammunition. It's a game mechanic that's constantly at odds with the narrative. The dialogue itself is also incredibly hammy and cheesy, making it even harder to immerse yourself into the story. These are just two of many other problems within the game.

[ScaredOfGhosts]

Same here. I spent about 15 minutes trying to avoid using the mortar - even tried to shoot from the roof. But since I found it's not up to me to decide about it, i started not to give a damn about consequences...
It's fine game, but it could be one of the best shooters ever, if only player's decisions was really his own in some way. And I mean no decisions like (mini-spoiler alert) leaving dying person to die(/spoiler alert), but decisions like this with phosphrous.

[A Disappointed Horse]

Originally posted by Psych:

Both this game and a popular movie called Apocalypse Now is based on a novel named "Heart of Darkness". Unlike the mastery of the movie and the novel, the game's narrative is forceful and overbearing. I frankly don't think it's written too well or deserving the praise it gets from its fans. There's quite a bit of disconnect between what's the player does in the game and the story its trying to tell. For example, you spend much of the game looking for information about the original group of soldiers stationed there, but instead of interrogating wounded enemy troopers, you are constantly executing them for extra ammunition. It's a game mechanic that's constantly at odds with the narrative. The dialogue itself is also incredibly hammy and cheesy, making it even harder to immerse yourself into the story. These are just two of many other problems within the game.

I haven't read Heart of Darkness (although I have it), Apocalypse Now definitely gets the overall message over better than Spec Ops does.

[A Disappointed Horse]

Originally posted by LT Netjak:

Honestly, the fact that you guys decided to start shooting instead of use white phosphorous is telling in and of itself. You guys just fell into a big trap of thinking. "Killing these guys with bullets is OK, killing them with grenades is OK, if I had a flamethrower, that would also be OK, but somehow white phosphorous is bad." If it wasn't for Lugo saying white phosphorous is a bad and horrible thing, I doubt anyone would have even looked for an alternative. You immediately just assumed that all those soldiers down in the plaza were deserving of death, yet you were the one that fired the first shot back at the downed plane by attacking the 33rd soldiers without ever questioning why you were shooting at them or why you knew enough to get involved in a fight (not to mention silently back-stabbing a guy on the ledge) and the half-dead soldier you burned in the trench said, "We were helping them". Even the "kidnapping" scene was only "kidnapping" because Walker just declared it as such. Looking back on that scene, it hardly looked like anyone was fearful of the soldiers, they were trying to get them away from a trio of unstable Delta operatives that decided to start shooting up the place.

You just dehumanized the people down below and only felt bad about the white phosphorous because of the civilians. The soldiers didn't deserve to die any more than the civilians did, but your entire thought process was "let's just shoot them instead" only on the vague notion that the game hinted that burning to death from white phosphorous was somehow worse than having your legs blown off by a frag grenade and slowly bleeding to death.

You fired the first shot on the 33rd. You assumed the CIA was the protaganist and tried to help them out. This wasn't the defining choice in the game. The defining choice of the game that was not given to us was after finding the wounded US soldier after the ambush by looters. Here was a possibility of the option to turn back and complete your mission as ordered - find survivers, report back for a full rescue operation. Instead, you completely forgot about this bit and forged right on because the game, via Walker, told you to.

At no point did any of you question what you were doing until the game promped you by saying, "Hey, this might not be a good idea" to your face and the continued to do to you what you were already doing - dragging you along by the nose and pointing you at what was billed as the enemy. You were already fooled. You were already led along. By the time the white phosphorous event came to play, the game thought it a good time to remind you of what you've been doing all along up to this point- dutifully killing avatars ahead of you because you were told to by the all power designer.

The poignant choice would have been to offer us the ability to just turn around and report in and doing so in a way that the game never bothered to prompt us into it being an option. No vocal que, no achievement for it, no quest marker pointing you that way. That was a missed opportunity. But the developers did do a wonderful job of outing how hypocritical we've all become playing these games when we're complaining about a lack of choice in one point when much earlier choices that led us to that point were never given to us and only complain because the game prompts us to.

The fact you're complaining about a lack of choice at this point in the game is just you doing exactly what the developer wants you do to. You're still just being led around by someone else and your desire for an alternative you don't have is really Yaeger telling you that you should have an alternative they intentionally didn't give you. You've been tricked into thinking you have developed a sense of free will in games but should take a more critical look at yourself and realize that you don't.

That's a fair point.

[KonstantRebel]

Originally posted by LT Netjak:

Honestly, the fact that you guys decided to start shooting instead of use white phosphorous is telling in and of itself. You guys just fell into a big trap of thinking. "Killing these guys with bullets is OK, killing them with grenades is OK, if I had a flamethrower, that would also be OK, but somehow white phosphorous is bad." If it wasn't for Lugo saying white phosphorous is a bad and horrible thing, I doubt anyone would have even looked for an alternative. You immediately just assumed that all those soldiers down in the plaza were deserving of death, yet you were the one that fired the first shot back at the downed plane by attacking the 33rd soldiers without ever questioning why you were shooting at them or why you knew enough to get involved in a fight (not to mention silently back-stabbing a guy on the ledge) and the half-dead soldier you burned in the trench said, "We were helping them". Even the "kidnapping" scene was only "kidnapping" because Walker just declared it as such. Looking back on that scene, it hardly looked like anyone was fearful of the soldiers, they were trying to get them away from a trio of unstable Delta operatives that decided to start shooting up the place. Hell, the fact that you probably never thought of the dozens, if not hundreds, of choices you never were given the opportunity to make is telling.

The only choices you remember are likely the white phosphorous, whether to save the CIA guy or civilians, the two people strung up by the bridge, shoot or not shoot the angry mob that strung up Lugo and what to do at the end. But the only reason you even recall those choices was becasue there were characters blurting out that choices were or were not available. Without Adams and Lugo arguing over whether or not the CIA guy or the civilians were more important, no one would have gone to save the civilians and everyone would have saved the CIA agent and no one would have complained if those civilians just disappeared into the ether because, simply, the game never explicitly told you they were important.

You just dehumanized the people down below and only felt bad about the white phosphorous because of the civilians. The soldiers didn't deserve to die any more than the civilians did, but your entire thought process was "let's just shoot them instead" only on the vague notion that the game hinted that burning to death from white phosphorous was somehow worse than having your legs blown off by a frag grenade and slowly bleeding to death.

You fired the first shot on the 33rd. You assumed the CIA was the protaganist and tried to help them out. This wasn't the defining choice in the game. The defining choice of the game that was not given to us was after finding the wounded US soldier after the ambush by looters. Here was a possibility of the option to turn back and complete your mission as ordered - find survivers, report back for a full rescue operation. Instead, you completely forgot about this bit and forged right on because the game, via Walker, told you to.

At no point did any of you question what you were doing until the game promped you by saying, "Hey, this might not be a good idea" to your face and the continued to do to you what you were already doing - dragging you along by the nose and pointing you at what was billed as the enemy. You were already fooled. You were already led along. By the time the white phosphorous event came to play, the game thought it a good time to remind you of what you've been doing all along up to this point- dutifully killing avatars ahead of you because you were told to by the all power designer.

The poignant choice would have been to offer us the ability to just turn around and report in and doing so in a way that the game never bothered to prompt us into it being an option. No vocal que, no achievement for it, no quest marker pointing you that way. That was a missed opportunity. But the developers did do a wonderful job of outing how hypocritical we've all become playing these games when we're complaining about a lack of choice in one point when much earlier choices that led us to that point were never given to us and only complain because the game prompts us to.

The fact you're complaining about a lack of choice at this point in the game is just you doing exactly what the developer wants you do to. You're still just being led around by someone else and your desire for an alternative you don't have is really Yaeger telling you that you should have an alternative they intentionally didn't give you. You've been tricked into thinking you have developed a sense of free will in games but should take a more critical look at yourself and realize that you don't.

Good point, i remember the WP and i hesitated at first to use it on the Army guys, but after a couple seconds opened up on them thinking that its me (walker) against them. When it prompted me to fire at the (what looked like) civies, i was confused at first since they didn't look hostile, but i opened up anyways thinking if the game says they hostile, they probably are. And then it hit me, when it played the cutsceen with the mother holding her child. What have i done!? But then i realized, i would of done the same damn thing IRL. Them feels....

[Dinerenblanc]

Originally posted by LT Netjak:

Honestly, the fact that you guys decided to start shooting instead of use white phosphorous is telling in and of itself. You guys just fell into a big trap of thinking. "Killing these guys with bullets is OK, killing them with grenades is OK, if I had a flamethrower, that would also be OK, but somehow white phosphorous is bad." If it wasn't for Lugo saying white phosphorous is a bad and horrible thing, I doubt anyone would have even looked for an alternative. You immediately just assumed that all those soldiers down in the plaza were deserving of death, yet you were the one that fired the first shot back at the downed plane by attacking the 33rd soldiers without ever questioning why you were shooting at them or why you knew enough to get involved in a fight (not to mention silently back-stabbing a guy on the ledge) and the half-dead soldier you burned in the trench said, "We were helping them". Even the "kidnapping" scene was only "kidnapping" because Walker just declared it as such. Looking back on that scene, it hardly looked like anyone was fearful of the soldiers, they were trying to get them away from a trio of unstable Delta operatives that decided to start shooting up the place. Hell, the fact that you probably never thought of the dozens, if not hundreds, of choices you never were given the opportunity to make is telling.

The only choices you remember are likely the white phosphorous, whether to save the CIA guy or civilians, the two people strung up by the bridge, shoot or not shoot the angry mob that strung up Lugo and what to do at the end. But the only reason you even recall those choices was becasue there were characters blurting out that choices were or were not available. Without Adams and Lugo arguing over whether or not the CIA guy or the civilians were more important, no one would have gone to save the civilians and everyone would have saved the CIA agent and no one would have complained if those civilians just disappeared into the ether because, simply, the game never explicitly told you they were important.

You just dehumanized the people down below and only felt bad about the white phosphorous because of the civilians. The soldiers didn't deserve to die any more than the civilians did, but your entire thought process was "let's just shoot them instead" only on the vague notion that the game hinted that burning to death from white phosphorous was somehow worse than having your legs blown off by a frag grenade and slowly bleeding to death.

You fired the first shot on the 33rd. You assumed the CIA was the protaganist and tried to help them out. This wasn't the defining choice in the game. The defining choice of the game that was not given to us was after finding the wounded US soldier after the ambush by looters. Here was a possibility of the option to turn back and complete your mission as ordered - find survivers, report back for a full rescue operation. Instead, you completely forgot about this bit and forged right on because the game, via Walker, told you to.

At no point did any of you question what you were doing until the game promped you by saying, "Hey, this might not be a good idea" to your face and the continued to do to you what you were already doing - dragging you along by the nose and pointing you at what was billed as the enemy. You were already fooled. You were already led along. By the time the white phosphorous event came to play, the game thought it a good time to remind you of what you've been doing all along up to this point- dutifully killing avatars ahead of you because you were told to by the all power designer.

The poignant choice would have been to offer us the ability to just turn around and report in and doing so in a way that the game never bothered to prompt us into it being an option. No vocal que, no achievement for it, no quest marker pointing you that way. That was a missed opportunity. But the developers did do a wonderful job of outing how hypocritical we've all become playing these games when we're complaining about a lack of choice in one point when much earlier choices that led us to that point were never given to us and only complain because the game prompts us to.

The fact you're complaining about a lack of choice at this point in the game is just you doing exactly what the developer wants you do to. You're still just being led around by someone else and your desire for an alternative you don't have is really Yaeger telling you that you should have an alternative they intentionally didn't give you. You've been tricked into thinking you have developed a sense of free will in games but should take a more critical look at yourself and realize that you don't.

I for one am not complaining about the lack of choice. At no point did I feel like I was forced to do anything. There's never such a thing as free will in video games. Everything you do is limited to the confines of the game, which is one of the reasons why I don't care for multiple endings or paths, cause that usually dilutes the overall message. Approaching the game with this in mind, I couldn't say that much of the narrative was very effective. In fact, it felt contrived. Perhaps it's because I've seen Apocalypse Now, a movie that tackled similar themes, but had a much better delivery. What Spec Ops needed most was a touch of subtlety. The plot was completely spelled out to the player. The end scene was almost entirely exposition. What you said about turning back anytime and pushing onward was lifted directly from the game's last cutscene. There's simply too much hand-holding. There's something to be said for narratives that are able to convey a message with a bit of ambiguity. Spec Ops did the opposite, hence what we we're left with is an overbearing tale with a sentimental ending that feels unearned.

[Miss Jackson]

Originally posted by Psych:

I for one am not complaining about the lack of choice. At no point did I feel like I was forced to do anything. There's never such a thing as free will in video games. Everything you do is limited to the confines of the game, which is one of the reasons why I don't care for multiple endings or paths, cause that usually dilutes the overall message. Approaching the game with this in mind, I couldn't say that much of the narrative was very effective. In fact, it felt contrived. Perhaps it's because I've seen Apocalypse Now, a movie that tackled similar themes, but had a much better delivery. What Spec Ops needed most was a touch of subtlety. The plot was completely spelled out to the player. The end scene was almost entirely exposition. What you said about turning back anytime and pushing onward was lifted directly from the game's last cutscene. There's simply too much hand-holding. There's something to be said for narratives that are able to convey a message with a bit of ambiguity. Spec Ops did the opposite, hence what we we're left with is an overbearing tale with a sentimental ending that feels unearned.

Not adding anything to the conversation, but your referencing of Apocalypse Now is quite relevent. I've yet to see the film, but both Apocalypse Now and Spec Ops: The Line are based on the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad (also where Yager concocted the name for the Spec Ops character John Konrad).

[A Disappointed Horse]

Originally posted by Psych:

Originally posted by LT Netjak:

Honestly, the fact that you guys decided to start shooting instead of use white phosphorous is telling in and of itself. You guys just fell into a big trap of thinking. "Killing these guys with bullets is OK, killing them with grenades is OK, if I had a flamethrower, that would also be OK, but somehow white phosphorous is bad." If it wasn't for Lugo saying white phosphorous is a bad and horrible thing, I doubt anyone would have even looked for an alternative. You immediately just assumed that all those soldiers down in the plaza were deserving of death, yet you were the one that fired the first shot back at the downed plane by attacking the 33rd soldiers without ever questioning why you were shooting at them or why you knew enough to get involved in a fight (not to mention silently back-stabbing a guy on the ledge) and the half-dead soldier you burned in the trench said, "We were helping them". Even the "kidnapping" scene was only "kidnapping" because Walker just declared it as such. Looking back on that scene, it hardly looked like anyone was fearful of the soldiers, they were trying to get them away from a trio of unstable Delta operatives that decided to start shooting up the place. Hell, the fact that you probably never thought of the dozens, if not hundreds, of choices you never were given the opportunity to make is telling.

The only choices you remember are likely the white phosphorous, whether to save the CIA guy or civilians, the two people strung up by the bridge, shoot or not shoot the angry mob that strung up Lugo and what to do at the end. But the only reason you even recall those choices was becasue there were characters blurting out that choices were or were not available. Without Adams and Lugo arguing over whether or not the CIA guy or the civilians were more important, no one would have gone to save the civilians and everyone would have saved the CIA agent and no one would have complained if those civilians just disappeared into the ether because, simply, the game never explicitly told you they were important.

You just dehumanized the people down below and only felt bad about the white phosphorous because of the civilians. The soldiers didn't deserve to die any more than the civilians did, but your entire thought process was "let's just shoot them instead" only on the vague notion that the game hinted that burning to death from white phosphorous was somehow worse than having your legs blown off by a frag grenade and slowly bleeding to death.

You fired the first shot on the 33rd. You assumed the CIA was the protaganist and tried to help them out. This wasn't the defining choice in the game. The defining choice of the game that was not given to us was after finding the wounded US soldier after the ambush by looters. Here was a possibility of the option to turn back and complete your mission as ordered - find survivers, report back for a full rescue operation. Instead, you completely forgot about this bit and forged right on because the game, via Walker, told you to.

At no point did any of you question what you were doing until the game promped you by saying, "Hey, this might not be a good idea" to your face and the continued to do to you what you were already doing - dragging you along by the nose and pointing you at what was billed as the enemy. You were already fooled. You were already led along. By the time the white phosphorous event came to play, the game thought it a good time to remind you of what you've been doing all along up to this point- dutifully killing avatars ahead of you because you were told to by the all power designer.

The poignant choice would have been to offer us the ability to just turn around and report in and doing so in a way that the game never bothered to prompt us into it being an option. No vocal que, no achievement for it, no quest marker pointing you that way. That was a missed opportunity. But the developers did do a wonderful job of outing how hypocritical we've all become playing these games when we're complaining about a lack of choice in one point when much earlier choices that led us to that point were never given to us and only complain because the game prompts us to.

The fact you're complaining about a lack of choice at this point in the game is just you doing exactly what the developer wants you do to. You're still just being led around by someone else and your desire for an alternative you don't have is really Yaeger telling you that you should have an alternative they intentionally didn't give you. You've been tricked into thinking you have developed a sense of free will in games but should take a more critical look at yourself and realize that you don't.

I for one am not complaining about the lack of choice. At no point did I feel like I was forced to do anything. There's never such a thing as free will in video games. Everything you do is limited to the confines of the game, which is one of the reasons why I don't care for multiple endings or paths, cause that usually dilutes the overall message. Approaching the game with this in mind, I couldn't say that much of the narrative was very effective. In fact, it felt contrived. Perhaps it's because I've seen Apocalypse Now, a movie that tackled similar themes, but had a much better delivery. What Spec Ops needed most was a touch of subtlety. The plot was completely spelled out to the player. The end scene was almost entirely exposition. What you said about turning back anytime and pushing onward was lifted directly from the game's last cutscene. There's simply too much hand-holding. There's something to be said for narratives that are able to convey a message with a bit of ambiguity. Spec Ops did the opposite, hence what we we're left with is an overbearing tale with a sentimental ending that feels unearned.

I hadn't really thought about that but you're right, what it needed was some subtlety.

[Skyrnir]

This game is what the industry needed. It shows that war isn't fun but horric. While many are saying that apocalypse now is better thats irrelevent. Apocalypse Now is actually better but this game is more likely to be played by gamers who are actually in need of the games message.

[Jonboy]

I didnt feel bad at all. If that jerk off colonel hadn't been trying to kill me and my team. none of it would have happend.

[A Disappointed Horse]

Originally posted by {Triari} Jonboy:

I didnt feel bad at all. If that jerk off colonel hadn't been trying to kill me and my team. none of it would have happend.

Err... The colonel was dead the whole time. Didn't you see the ending? It was all a guilt-induced hallucination.