"There is many a boy here today who looks on war as all glory, but, boys, it is all Hell." - William Sherman
I said in "The Future" that I would make a separate post expanding on why I put Spec Ops: The Line on my "Important Games" list. I lied. I'm actually going to make multiple posts. There's just too much to talk about to cram into one blog.
I picked this game in particular because it's the one that inspired my little manifesto in the side bar. I see it as the greatest example to date of using video games to their full rhetorical potential. Most people who have played it will probably already agree with me on most of this, but I'm writing this a) for the few of you out there who weren't convinced by the game alone, and b) because it's just a damn interesting game to write about!
I picked this game in particular because it's the one that inspired my little manifesto in the side bar. I see it as the greatest example to date of using video games to their full rhetorical potential. Most people who have played it will probably already agree with me on most of this, but I'm writing this a) for the few of you out there who weren't convinced by the game alone, and b) because it's just a damn interesting game to write about!
I'll spare you story and gameplay recap. If you've already played it, you'll know what I'm talking about. If you haven't, I highly recommend you do. Its strengths are in its effect on a first-time player. If you go into it knowing anything about the twists and turns the story takes, you won't have nearly the same experience. If you decide you absolutely can/will not play it, then you'll need to read up on it somewhere else. Watch some gameplay videos, read the plot summary on Wikipedia, whatever strikes your fancy. Point is, you're going to need to know about the game for any of this to make sense. Whatever you decide, know this: From here on out, it's going to be spoilers galore.
The opening sequence, straight out of the title screen with only a few seconds of cutscene, throws you into an on-rails shooter. This establishes that your one goal in the game is to shoot, kill, and have fun doing so. You don't have to think. An enemy chopper pulls up alongside you, your reticle turns red, and you squeeze the trigger until you're rewarded with a blossom of fire and a hoop and holler from Walker. Your character is obviously having fun, and so are you! As a dust storm approaches, Walker orders Lugo to fly into the teeth of it. "Are you nuts?" screams Lugo. Walker responds, "Guess we'll find out." This foreshadowing went completely over my head on my first playthrough. More on this sequence later. (Side note: I've heard arguments that the entire game after the crash is a dream sequence: Walker lying on the ground, bleeding out, coming to terms with everything he's done. I don't buy this theory at all. That might have to be another post.)
When the chopper crashes and the story flashes back to Delta's first steps into Dubai, it establishes a few important things right off the bat.
First: The characters. Captain Martin Walker, the player character, is a good-looking, strong leader that takes his job seriously. The ideal hero. Hell, he looks almost exactly like the default Commander Shepard from Mass Effect. Intentional I'm sure. Your squad consists of Staff Sgt. John Lugo, the wisecracking techie, and Lt. Alphonse Adams, the stone-faced explosives expert and token black guy. The typical action movie troupe.
Second: Some of the very first dialogue in the game tells you everything you need to know. "We have our orders. Locate survivors. Leave the city immediately. Radio command from outside the storm wall. They send in the cavalry, we go home." Right away, the player should be tipped off that the mission should be pretty quick. But that wouldn't make for a very fun game, would it? Clearly something is going to go awry and you'll be thrown into a crazy, heroic adventure, right?
Third: Something that continues throughout the game. You continually come across gameplay mechanics that prevent you from moving backwards. Rappelling, riding a zipline, or dropping into a hole. Spec Ops constantly pushes you forward. When you come across survivors in the first level, your mission has been completed. It's time to leave the city, radio command, and go home. But you can't get back up the rope.
There's more, but for the first few minutes, these are the most important aspects, and the ones most likely to go over the player's head. You don't realize yet that The Line knows exactly what you're thinking. You think you're about to experience a gritty, but possibly a little goofy, shoot-em-up. You think you have to keep playing. You think you don't have a choice. But Spec Ops is anything but a typical shooter. And you always have a choice.
I'll end part 1 here. I've barely scratched the surface so far, so there's much more to come.
It should be noted that the game's lead writer believes that the game post-crash is Walker in purgatory, but part of this game's strength as a work of art is the ability to be read in several ways.
ReplyDeleteOh, definitely worth noting that. I think it's true of any work of art that it's up to the observer, not the artist, to find meaning. The artist is an observer as well, of course, so he's entitled to his interpretation as well.
DeleteJim Benton, an artist famous on reddit, is known to never reveal his intentions with his comics. He welcomes any and all interpretations.
For The Line in particular, I can understand seeing the whole game as purgatory. You can definitely see the evidence throughout. That said, I think a metaphor grounded in reality is much more effective than a metaphor for the sake of metaphor. To me, there's definitely a purgatorial theme to the game, but the events that unfold really happened. "It was all a dream," rips me out of any story, so I choose to see it as Walker's actual path to insanity.