Spec Ops: The Line

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About the Game

Spec Ops: The Line is the 9th Game of the Spec Ops series that first debut in 1998. Apart from the game title and the genre, a third-person military shooter Game, it has almost nothing in common with earlier releases of the series. All of the other games, released in the Spec Ops series, were released between 1998 and 2002 but none of them were as popular as the most recent release: Spec Ops: The Line. It was developed by the German video game development team „Yager Development“ and was published by 2K Games in June 2012 on Playstation 3, Xbox 360 and Windows. Versions for OS X and Linux were published a few years later. They set their focus more on storytelling and narrative, instead of gameplay, and were inspired by the movie setting for „Apocalypse Now“ which is based on the novel „Heart of Darkness“. Both took a critical view on modern warfare and brutal, inhuman strategies. A multiplayer mode was requested by the publisher 2K Games, which was later developed by the US American Studio „Darkside Game Studios“, since Yager Development wanted to concentrate completely on the single-player campaign.

Spec Ops: The Line tries to separate itself from the classical third person military shooter genre. Most outstanding is the introduction of decision making within the game and using storytelling to show war brutality and the psychological damages caused by being involved in war. In order to create situations in which the player must question his own morality, the game uses dilemma situations with limited time for the player to think them over, which often are a matter of life and death, highlighting the brutality of war.

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The Story

Six months before the playable story, Dubai got caught by a series of heavy sandstorms. The situation was kept secret by politicians and the media, while the upper class left the city, leaving behind many people in Dubai. A Battalion, called the „damned 33rd“ from the US Army was on its way back from a Mission in Afghanistan when the sandstorms started and their commander, Colonel Konrad decided to help evacuate the city of Dubai. The Battalion, under his command, took full control over the trapped civilians but could not manage the situation properly. After riots, caused by the lack of resources, like food and water, Konrad started to sacrifice some civilians to save others. This made some members of the 33rd turn against Konrad and his cruel leadership. Many tried to stop him from being in charge and but of them were caught and executed as traitors. A secret squad was sent to Dubai by the CIA and organised the local civilians to stand up against the 33rd. After heavy fights in Dubai between Konrads 33rd and the local people, lead by the CIA, Konrad announced their retreat, and they lead a caravan out of Dubai. But as time passed and the caravan was never seen, the US Army received a brief radio message from Konrad, saying the evacuation failed. The US Army decided to send in a Delta Force Team lead by Captain Martin Walker together with First Lieutenant Alphonso Adams and Staff Sergeant John Lugo. Their mission was to investigate about the situation, to find survivors and a way to evacuate the civilians out of Dubai. The playable story begins with the Delta Force Team arriving in Dubai.

Plot (Spoiler)

After about the first half of the game, things begin to take a turn. Walker starts to slowly loose his sanity, and his visual hallucinations start to appear more and more frequently: Soldiers appearing out of nowhere, landscapes changing when walking past them, flashbacks to past events and dreams of being trapped in an unescapable, hell-like maze. At one point Walker relives the opening scene, realising he’s been going through this before. In the last chapter, when he is finally confronted with Konrad, he discovers that Konrad has been dead for a long time, while he’s talking to him in his imagination, seeing him as a ghost. He also realises he’s been talking to himself throughout the whole game, which explains some of the nonsensical answers he received from Lugo and Adams. Many events turn out to be only products of his imagination and never actually happened in real life.

According to theories and interpretations, popular voices say he already died in the opening scene and everything after that is him being punished for all the crimes and sins he committed in his life, and now he has to suffer in his afterlife to reach purification. What really happened, if any of it happened at all, depends on different points of view and can ultimately only be decided by the player itself.

Research-Relevant Topics of the Game

Core Game Mechanics

Controls

In Spec Ops: The Line, the Player takes control of the main character: „Captain Martin Walker“. The basic controls are mostly similar to a classical third person shooter, with the camera looking above the shoulder of the character and other elements such as taking cover behind obstacles, picking up enemy’s weapons and managing resources like ammunition and grenades. You can also make orders to the other members of the Team, Adams and Lugo. You can tell them to concentrate their fire on specific enemies, use flash grenades to blind groups of enemies or push towards a specific direction. In its core, it is played like any other military shooter game. Furthermore, apart from some collectable items that tell a short story about past events, there is not much to explore in the mostly linear levels. The game is split in into total of 15 Chapters, with an average playtime of six to seven hours.

Decision making

The way in which Spec.Ops differs mostly from other games within the third person shooter genre is how the player must decide his own destiny within the story, as oppose to it being pre-determined. All of the multiple decisions that have to be made within a play-through stay inside the basic game mechanics. Decisions are not made by simply selecting one or the other option, by clicking at a certain point or pushing a certain button, but by choosing to perform between two specific actions or not acting at all. In praxis, you are confronted with situations where you have to act in a specific way to make a choice, like shooting a soldier or waiting to let him get away. Or perhaps opening fire or staying quiet so to not loose stealth. These specific decisions can affect the fate of the team as well as the life of the civilians. They also have an impact on the relationship between Walker and his teammates, causing them to react differently. Walker suffers psychologically after a negative outcome and he begins to go insane, which gradually worsens as the game progresses He starts to see visual hallucinations and his behaviour becomes more violent and out of control.

Further Content of the Game

Intradiegetic information the Game uses.

Related Research Approaches

For example Gender Performance in [ ... insert Game here...] following the Research Approach of Judith Butler`s Gender Performance .

Further Information/ External Links

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