[QUOTE=DEMONSKUL;50860282]CAN you be the hero in this game?[/QUOTE]
[sp]Once you find out the status of the 33rd, turn the game off and imagine you went back and reported your findings to your superiors[/sp]
I think the execution fell flat in a lot of areas but I liked it overall and had a very unique plot for a video game at least.
[QUOTE=Cliff2;50860315][sp]Once you find out the status of the 33rd, turn the game off and imagine you went back and reported your findings to your superiors[/sp][/QUOTE]
That's the one thing about Spec Ops that pisses me off, that the intended 'good end' is you not playing. It's stupid. They could have given an option, even if hidden and obscure, to actually abandon mission. Or at least for the sane teammates to put you down with a shot to the back of the head at some point as a proper 'good' end instead of their 'only winning move is not to play' bullshit.
Game was good, solid 8/10, but the bullshit "Don't play if you want good end" drags it down.
[QUOTE=Riller;50860539]That's the one thing about Spec Ops that pisses me off, that the intended 'good end' is you not playing. It's stupid. They could have given an option, even if hidden and obscure, to actually abandon mission. Or at least for the sane teammates to put you down with a shot to the back of the head at some point as a proper 'good' end instead of their 'only winning move is not to play' bullshit.
Game was good, solid 8/10, but the bullshit "Don't play if you want good end" drags it down.[/QUOTE]
Should had done it like Far Cry 4 with the [sp]waiting for 15 minutes at the beginning of the game for the antagonist Pagan Min to come back and just leads the protagonist Ajay to the place where he wants to store the ashes to.[/sp] Something that will still give the player an incentive to actually play through the rest of the game, but also a proper option that actually follows Walker's mission, which is to just do simple recon early on and end it there. It won't even defeat the meaning of what the devs were intending for the story and it'll be the close equivalent of stopping the game without it being unsatisfying.
[QUOTE=DEMONSKUL;50860282]CAN you be the hero in this game?[/QUOTE]
Nope. It pretty much railroads you into being horrible, and then insults you for taking the only option available. Every time you go "how bout I [I]don't[/I] do this easily avoidable war crime", you're stuck until you do.
[QUOTE=Riller;50860539]That's the one thing about Spec Ops that pisses me off, that the intended 'good end' is you not playing. It's stupid. They could have given an option, even if hidden and obscure, to actually abandon mission. Or at least for the sane teammates to put you down with a shot to the back of the head at some point as a proper 'good' end instead of their 'only winning move is not to play' bullshit.
Game was good, solid 8/10, but the bullshit "Don't play if you want good end" drags it down.[/QUOTE]
Eh, without the story it's a mediocre TPS at best. For a game that chastises you for enjoying imaginary violence, it does a good job at making said imaginary violence dull and repetitive. And the core message being "the only right move is not to play" makes me glad I only paid 3 bucks for it.
That said, it's pretty fun once you replace the soundtracks with Balkan war songs and [sp]Disco Inferno[/sp]
[QUOTE=jimhowl33t;50860713]
Eh, without the story it's a mediocre TPS at best. For a game that chastises you for enjoying imaginary violence, it does a good job at making said imaginary violence dull and repetitive. And the core message being "the only right move is not to play" makes me glad I only paid 3 bucks for it.[/QUOTE]
Well you wouldn't know that you really should end your mission less than a third of the way through the game unless you already played through to the end and realize how fucked up the game really is. One of the second-playthrough hindsight style choices.
[QUOTE=NachoPiggy;50860626]Should had done it like Far Cry 4 with the [sp]waiting for 15 minutes at the beginning of the game for the antagonist Pagan Min to come back and just leads the protagonist Ajay to the place where he wants to store the ashes to.[/sp] Something that will still give the player an incentive to actually play through the rest of the game, but also a proper option that actually follows Walker's mission, which is to just do simple recon early on and end it there. It won't even defeat the meaning of what the devs were intending for the story and it'll be the close equivalent of stopping the game without it being unsatisfying.[/QUOTE]
Honestly, I kind of wish they expanded on that "ending" for Far Cry 4.
[sp]Crushing extremist insurgents with Pagan Min, seeing another side of the story, it would have been a lot better imo. Especially since that only good ending is basically just an easter egg.[/sp]
I love the endings to this game and how ambiguous it is, I myself like to think that Walker died in the helicopter crash at the start of the game. As such everything that happens after that is just 'purgatory'. He lives that day over and over again up to the point of the crash which all happened, but everything after that is just a 'what if', even the 'good' end where he get's resuced. I think the good end is accepting that Walker is the bad guy so he can be at peace, everything else is denial that puts him back to the start of the day.
There's alot of hints that suggest this, walker himself saying he's done this before on the helicopter, every time you died prior to the crash you'd be given a black screen but after that point it'd be white. There's a few other nuances here and there. The story was really bloody good for a rather bland game.
I played this game sort of knowing what I was getting into and not a fan of the modern war genre as a whole. It was a very interesting experience, though it's something you should only try once or twice. Not a game to play over and over again if you're not totally enamored with the plot. What was really fun, however, was having my CoD-playing nephew play it while I chastised him further when making all the wrong 'decisions', acting all mysterious and coy about plot details and setting him up for falls. Like showing someone 2 girls 1 cup but with moral disgust rather than scat.
[QUOTE=Riller;50860539]That's the one thing about Spec Ops that pisses me off, that the intended 'good end' is you not playing. It's stupid. They could have given an option, even if hidden and obscure, to actually abandon mission. Or at least for the sane teammates to put you down with a shot to the back of the head at some point as a proper 'good' end instead of their 'only winning move is not to play' bullshit.
Game was good, solid 8/10, but the bullshit "Don't play if you want good end" drags it down.[/QUOTE]
IMO it completely fits for a game that's all about breaking the fourth wall and players turning their brains off and following down MMS campaigns without questions. Even as Walker lost his mind, his squad mates followed the path he laid out before them. And so did the player.
I can see how people may feel grumpy about getting guilt-tripped just because they weren't on the same "level of meta" as the game would be in the end, but IMO that's just taking the game too personal, and maybe players being too intent on "winning" the game. After all, Spec Ops was designed and marketed to trick its players into thinking it's just another MMS, and then catch them off guard. And IMO it's quite valuable that it still manages to trick players that know they're heading into a genre criticism and will from the very start look for alternative ways out. Compare that with Undertale for example, another fourth-wall-breaking title that criticizes players blindly following the murderous genre routine. From its very tagline it's clear that you don't need to kill anyone, so even if you're just a bit informed about the game, it's really easy to get the happy ending and barely brush with its genre criticism. Which I'd works in Undertale's case because it has more going for it than just genre criticism, but since Spec Ops was completely focused on it, I don't think making a "Good Ending" more easily possible would have been worth the risk (or resources).
I mean, what would anyone really have gotten out of Spec Ops if they had been able to quit early with a little "Good Ending" cinematic akin to the other endings - other than complaining about the game being so short and easy? Just to prove a point that they're smarter than the game (but not so smart they wouldn't have thought of simply quitting the game otherwise)? IMO Spec Ops is more about the journey than its destination. The "MMS campaigns are actually kinda messed up" point it ultimately makes wasn't THAT new or interesting at its time, but the way it tricks you and the way Walker and the world around him sinks into madness were what made it fun IMO.
[QUOTE=LTJGPliskin;50860825]Honestly, I kind of wish they expanded on that "ending" for Far Cry 4.
[sp]Crushing extremist insurgents with Pagan Min, seeing another side of the story, it would have been a lot better imo. Especially since that only good ending is basically just an easter egg.[/sp][/QUOTE]
Definitely would have loved that too, [sp]especially since Pagan Min is pretty much the best character in the game, and is arguably more sympathetic than the rebels. Actually wish they expanded upon further on that with DLC even.[/sp]
Though the way how it was done for Far Cry 4 would be perfect for Spec Ops: The Line's case.
Honestly, the game's deconstruction attempts were neat and the story had its merits in an attempt to show just how destructive and harmful the average shooter game would be to all the people you're trying to protect, but the whole "you're a horrible person for trying to play this violent game for cheap entertainment and making everything worse with your violence" concept falls apart when the game flatout tells you in the ending and in a loading screen tip that the only way to of not fucked everything up is to not of played the game in the first place. It just doesn't really work considering the average person plays games like this to wind down their stress after work or other things, and spending a moderate amount of money on the game at launch only to get metaphorically slapped and told you're a horrible person with things like "YOU HAVE A CHOICE" just to be forced to [sp]bomb civilians with white phosphorous[/sp] is kind of a really bad approach.
Especially since it does it in the most stupidly game-y way they could've done it by suddenly swarming you with instant-kill snipers that are invulnerable - because they were saying that to the character but the player was never supposed to let them have that choice. Like if you took the occasional Portal gags of destroying or killing an obstacle or object because Glados told you to (due to being the only way to progress) only to be called a horrible person for it, and then suddenly presented them dead seriously via mass murder and collateral destruction by your hand with no humor and they really do mean it. Repeatedly, almost all game long. It's the kind of gameplay-story dichotomy that sounds neat on paper but in actual execution comes off as captivating yet monotonous on the first playthrough and then [i]really[/i] fucking annoying revisited. Especially if you approach it with any other mindset than 'average shooter player not expecting the twist'.
[QUOTE=Riller;50860757]Well you wouldn't know that you really should end your mission less than a third of the way through the game unless you already played through to the end and realize how fucked up the game really is. One of the second-playthrough hindsight style choices.[/QUOTE]
Opinions schmopinions. From a gameplay perspective it utterly failed to captivate me, making the whole "you're bad for enjoying all this violence" fall on deaf ears. I was not enjoying it in the slightest, I just wanted to see the amazing plot twists everyone was talking about.
Oh boy, were they a disappointment. Besides [sp]shooting in the air to disperse that crowd[/sp], the rest were "murder everything or get stuck here forever". The game then has the gall to say "you did this, you're baaaaad!" No fucking shit I did, there were no alternatives whatsoever. Even when you see the [sp]obvious refugees huddled together[/sp] you just [I]have[/I] to fire that last round even if every hostile soldier is long dead.
The idea of marketing the game as an action-packed fun romp and then slap the player in the face with psychological terror? That was [I]amazing[/I] and I wish more games would try to do the same. The execution? I'm going to give it a "meh".
The defense is usually that the gameplay was purposefully designed to be a mediocre third person shooter because you aren't "supposed to enjoy it" due to the "ludo-narrative dissonance" that actually enjoying the game would cause.
Back in my day we would just say buy it for the story on sale but v:v:v
[QUOTE=Raidyr;50861202]The defense is usually that the gameplay was purposefully designed to be a mediocre third person shooter because you aren't "supposed to enjoy it" due to the "ludo-narrative dissonance" that actually enjoying the game would cause. [/QUOTE]
Yeah nah. When the narrative part is "you're enjoying all this violence and that's bad" and the ludic part is freaking dull, now [I]that[/I] is dissonant.
Now don't get me wrong, I think the game's story should be negative overall no matter what, but if the player could actually make decisions and have consequences befitting of them instead of being railroaded, it may've turned out less hamfisted. In the end the only decision that matters is, well, the ending, which influences which of the endings you get - and is the only real clever implementation of player choice in the game. But the developers didn't really bother, and most of the choices are either one-sided or don't matter whichever way you go about it.
And no, a 'solve all' good ending wouldn't fit Spec Ops The Line, but at the very least they didn't need to pull the player by the hand while bitching at them all the while.
[QUOTE=jimhowl33t;50860713]Nope. It pretty much railroads you into being horrible, and then insults you for taking the only option available. Every time you go "how bout I [I]don't[/I] do this easily avoidable war crime", you're stuck until you do.[/QUOTE]
I never really read it as the game insulting you, the player, but rather a jab at military shooter protagonists and the experience you get playing as them, being rewarded and feeling good for being this badass cowboy-soldier war hero.
It could've had a good ending, or one where you do things like an actual soldier would do, but i don't think that would work with the story the game's trying to tell.
[QUOTE=Blazedol;50861437]I never really read it as the game insulting you, the player, but rather a jab at military shooter protagonists and the experience you get playing as them, being rewarded and feeling good for being this badass cowboy-soldier war hero.
It could've had a good ending, or one where you do things like an actual soldier would do, but i don't think that would work with the story the game's trying to tell.[/QUOTE]
I don't feel rewarded for killing the bad guy in Call of Duty, I feel rewarded because it's a fun, engrossing experience :v:
Tons of games have gotten me to feel bad without Spec Ops hamfisted "We are going to keep spawning enemies out of monster closets until you get on that mortar oh shit turns out you killed a ton of civilians wwooooaooah".
[editline]10th August 2016[/editline]
On the other hand, your character gradually becoming more and more savage with regards to takedowns and hallucinations was cool. I'd definitely recommend people check it out now that you can typically find it for $5 or $10 on sale but I do think it gets too much credit.
[QUOTE=Riller;50860539]That's the one thing about Spec Ops that pisses me off, that the intended 'good end' is you not playing. It's stupid. They could have given an option, even if hidden and obscure, to actually abandon mission. Or at least for the sane teammates to put you down with a shot to the back of the head at some point as a proper 'good' end instead of their 'only winning move is not to play' bullshit.
Game was good, solid 8/10, but the bullshit "Don't play if you want good end" drags it down.[/QUOTE]
[sp]They should have had it where once you discover the status of the 33rd you can just walk back the way you came for a 'good' ending. It's funny that Far Cry 4 actually managed to do this better by just following through on what would happen if you listened to what you were told and didn't try to snoop around or be a hero.[/sp]
[editline]11th August 2016[/editline]
[QUOTE=jimhowl33t;50861124]Opinions schmopinions. From a gameplay perspective it utterly failed to captivate me, making the whole [B]"you're bad for enjoying all this violence"[/B] fall on deaf ears. I was not enjoying it in the slightest, I just wanted to see the amazing plot twists everyone was talking about.
Oh boy, were they a disappointment. Besides [sp]shooting in the air to disperse that crowd[/sp], the rest were "murder everything or get stuck here forever". The game then has the gall to say "you did this, you're baaaaad!" No fucking shit I did, there were no alternatives whatsoever. Even when you see the [sp]obvious refugees huddled together[/sp] you just [I]have[/I] to fire that last round even if every hostile soldier is long dead.
The idea of marketing the game as an action-packed fun romp and then slap the player in the face with psychological terror? That was [I]amazing[/I] and I wish more games would try to do the same. The execution? I'm going to give it a "meh".[/QUOTE]
[sp]That's not what the game was saying at all. It was saying that your actions can be justified if you have a skewed view. That people will actively justify the terrible things they do by displacing responsibility. Walker did this by blaming Conrad, the player does this by blaming the game itself.
One of the loading screen tips later in the game literally says "You are not a bad person." The game doesn't want you to feel bad for doing horrible shit and enjoying it, it wants you to put a lens to your own actions and it does this by having you play a character most people would find to be morally reprehensible by the end.
People love to point out the white phosphorus scene because Walker says "We have a choice" before immediately using the WP to fuck up a camp and kill a load of civilians. They say "The game is bullshit, it says I have a choice but I don't", but that's the thing it was never your choice, it was Walker's choice. From that point on Walker becomes increasingly unhinged but unlike Walker's past delusions the player isn't expected to share Walker's point of view. Before the WP scene we see 'moral choices' presented by Conrad the same as Walker, after that scene Walker's delusions become much more obvious to the player. Such as the heavy trooper who teleports around when the lights go out, or when Walker think he kills Lugo.[/sp]
I don't think the game is perfect, but it really annoys me when people complain that it lies to you about having choice and calls you a bad person, when that is not at all what it is doing.
All i'll say on the WP scene like i said at the time, it needed to present a situation that'd make the player want to use it. The one they presented was simply not enough, a dozen guys and some humvee's? already killed 200 guys getting there so they wasnt anything menacing at all.
I suggested putting the player into that scene as a playable firefight, without no cutscene intorduction for the mortar, then gradually build up the enemy forces to conincide with ammunition running low and cover getting destroyed. Only then should the mortar be made apparant to the player without the in your face 'this is bad' dialogue, at which point any avid player would go to use it by choice. It should have underplayed the whole scene and then show the aftermath of your actions, that would have worked better.
It even railroads you as part of the tutorial for finishing downed enemies: the last of the insurgent whatever guys you fight gets knocked down by a door and takes ages to stand back up, and falls back down alive if you melee him when he's up. Instead of interrogating him you have to stomp him on the neck and not figure out what's going on for another half hour.
So wait, when a game is linear and forces you to be the hero even if you had no choice in the matter it's fine, but when a game forces you to be a dick it's bad writing?
[QUOTE=SGTNAPALM;50865499]So wait, when a game is linear and forces you to be the hero even if you had no choice in the matter it's fine, but when a game forces you to be a dick it's bad writing?[/QUOTE]
It's because the games where you're a hero never has a focus of having you reflect on your actions. When Spec Ops does so, the whole reflection part seems kind of cheap when you had barely any choice to begin with.
[editline]11th August 2016[/editline]
Like said it'll have been much more powerful if the game encouraged you to solve your problems via the horrible methods than force them down your throat.
[QUOTE=Novangel;50865853]Like said it'll have been much more powerful if the game encouraged you to solve your problems via the horrible methods than force them down your throat.[/QUOTE]
Which it also does at several points through the story, like when you're given the task of executing one of two people after having their 'crimes' explained. You can chose to do neither and just shoot the shit out of the guys making you take that awful choice, thereby being a 'less shitty' person. But it doesn't explain or encourage you to do that, you have to make that third choice on your own as a player. Game needed more of that, I feel.
[QUOTE=Riller;50860539]That's the one thing about Spec Ops that pisses me off, that the intended 'good end' is you not playing. It's stupid. They could have given an option, even if hidden and obscure, to actually abandon mission. Or at least for the sane teammates to put you down with a shot to the back of the head at some point as a proper 'good' end instead of their 'only winning move is not to play' bullshit.
Game was good, solid 8/10, but the bullshit "Don't play if you want good end" drags it down.[/QUOTE]
I feel it's less that the intended good end is "not to play" and more that the intention is for there to be no good end. To me at least, I saw it as a meta commentary on how people are happy to be rewarded for doing "good" things in other games, despite not actually having a choice. The inversion of this in Spec Ops the line obviously comes across as pretty jarring, despite being effectively the same from a narrative choice standpoint.
I have never played Spec Ops but what's wrong with a game removing player choice if it's to tell the story? In LA Noire, I hated that Phelps cheated on his wife because it's not something I would have done especially with her but looking back on it, I am not Phelps. Phelps was his own man, not a self insert for the character, as the player, all I did was help him do his job but when he was off the clock, he was doing his own thing and it was often kept secret from the player. It was almost as if to show that the Cole Phelps, the man and the cop, are two different people.
Dragon Age Origins, a game all about player choice, removes player choice in one of the endings if you romance Alistair and [sp]choose to sacrifice yourself instead of letting him bang Morrigan. In that ending, he sacrifices himself for you so you can live[/sp]
[QUOTE=Dr.C;50866964]I have never played Spec Ops but what's wrong with a game removing player choice if it's to tell the story? In LA Noire, I hated that Phelps cheated on his wife because it's not something I would have done especially with her but looking back on it, I am not Phelps. Phelps was his own man, not a self insert for the character, as the player, all I did was help him do his job but when he was off the clock, he was doing his own thing and it was often kept secret from the player. It was almost as if to show that the Cole Phelps, the man and the cop, are two different people.
Dragon Age Origins, a game all about player choice, removes player choice in one of the endings if you romance Alistair and [sp]choose to sacrifice yourself instead of letting him bang Morrigan. In that ending, he sacrifices himself for you so you can live[/sp][/QUOTE]
It's not the choice, it's the situation in which the 'choice' was presented. There's only a handfull of enemies on screen and you are told there is no other way through them and you have to use the mortar, despite the fact you had litterally gunned down 200 enemies prior to that point without too much trouble, the second the game told me I had to use the mortar, i knew something bad was gonna happen, then when it got to the final target, I knew exactly who i was aiming at. I shouldnt have known.
It needed to present an obsticle to the player that was beyond their capabilites thus having the desired effect of the player wanting to use the mortar without second guessing it or them thinking something about this whole set up is off, they needed to fire that final shell without any hesitation. I liked the idea, i just felt the execution was lacking.
[QUOTE=Fr3ddi3;50867408]It's not the choice, it's the situation in which the 'choice' was presented. There's only a handfull of enemies on screen and you are told there is no other way through them and you have to use the mortar, despite the fact you had litterally gunned down 200 enemies prior to that point without too much trouble, the second the game told me I had to use the mortar, i knew something bad was gonna happen, then when it got to the final target, I knew exactly who i was aiming at. I shouldnt have known.
It needed to present an obsticle to the player that was beyond their capabilites thus having the desired effect of the player wanting to use the mortar without second guessing it or them thinking something about this whole set up is off, they needed to fire that final shell without any hesitation. I liked the idea, i just felt the execution was lacking.[/QUOTE]
That's not the point of the scene though. It's not supposed to be a choice, it's not even something you're supposed to think is reasonable. There's reason both your team mates call Walker out on it, both before and after. That is the point in the game where [i]Walker makes a choice[/i] and the player has no input, you're supposed to dislike Walker for making the choice. That's why the game forces you to stare into Walker's face the entire time through the reflection on the screen.
People keep saying the game should have put you in a position where you felt you had to do it, but the entire point is that Walker does something which is unjustifiable and that it was a deliberate choice. Most games try to make the player feel a connection to the character they play, to try to blend the player and the character into one entity, Spec Ops: The Line doesn't want that. It wants you to dislike, or even hate, Walker. The issue is people are SO used to identifying as the character they control that they get angry at the game for making them use the WP, instead of getting angry at Walker for doing something reprehensible.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.