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Top Secret Researcher
Original Poster
#1 Old 25th Jul 2012 at 6:04 PM
Default Spec Ops: The Line ~ How Controversial is it?
I recently finished playing Spec Ops: The Line, and If you haven't played it yet, It is one of the most amazing games you will ever play (Aside from Uncharted and such, because you can't compare the two). The reason it is so amazing is because it isn't just senseless killing, as the story progresses there is a morality to the character, and you, as a player, are made to choose thorough many difficult decisions. You may expect a happy ending, as with most games, but trust me, there is none.

The fact that Yager has chosen to create a shooter that shows the brutality and senselessness of war, alongside disturbing images which further ingrain the concept into your head makes this one of the most outstanding and controversial games I have ever played.

Spoilers Ahead! (Note: it is a bit, or maybe a lot, disturbing)

There are extremely gruesome sequences that highlight the theme of the game, such as bloodied, burned, or mutilated corpses dead and standing in a line. Pictures along the walls in Dubai have black paint dripping from their eyes, as if to not see whats to come, and normally this does hint some sort of gruesome cutscene in the game. There are options to kill unarmed civilians to disperse them. There is a portion. And don't read the rest of this sentence if you are squeamish, but your character firebombs a rogue squad, and kills 47 civilians in the process, and the game places an image of a mother and child burned to death into your mind. This image also pops up at the end of the game, at which point your character believes the man he is hunting for is in a penthouse in ruined Dubai. You see the man painting the image I just described, and it ends up it was all just a hallucination and the man is a corpse on the deck, dead for a long time. In fact, most of the game, after the first half is essentially more and more hallucinations and the end is essentially almost entirely hallucinations, at which point you are show what you made up to cover for your actions, and believe it or not, most of it, you didn't even notice while playing.

The developer felt all of these options and scenes were essential in producing a game that showed the brutality of war. What do you think? Did Yager development go to far with this game? Or do you have to play it to fully know how it affects you?

Let me tell you from personal experience, that by the time you are at about the 3/4th point you do feel in the shoes of the character because what happened is because you wanted to believe in a hero. The actions in the game occur because you make them happen. The game does deliver its message thoroughly and believe me, its a message worth knowing. If you wanted to, you could go as far as describing it as the "All Quiet on The Western Front" of Modern Shooters, because it sends the same basic message "war is bad", and does it in brutal and descriptive detail.

Keep in mind this game is banned in UAE for its depiction of a sandstorm ruined Dubai.

If you do plan to buy it, I suggest you do, as it is a brilliant game, and anyone who can should play it, but be prepared for some shocking cutscenes and levels.

Why did I move here? I guess it was the weather.

GTA V
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Mad Poster
#2 Old 25th Jul 2012 at 6:30 PM
Quote: Originally posted by Riptide651
The actions in the game occur because you make them happen. The game does deliver its message thoroughly and believe me, its a message worth knowing. If you wanted to, you could go as far as describing it as the "All Quiet on The Western Front" of Modern Shooters, because it sends the same basic message "war is bad", and does it in brutal and descriptive detail.



Does it offer the option to not play the war game and instead offer a peaceful solution to the conflict?
Top Secret Researcher
Original Poster
#3 Old 25th Jul 2012 at 6:48 PM
The original mission is to search Dubai for survivors but, as the story progresses, the main characters goals become skewed, so in a way, not really.

Why did I move here? I guess it was the weather.

GTA V
Alchemist
#4 Old 26th Jul 2012 at 10:47 PM
id say the existence of this sort of video game, as well as other incredibly violent video games, are just the result of a sheltered people who have to make up violence to gawk at, because they are not shown any real violence, otherwise. we know it exists, but we dont see it...that makes it so much easier to make fictional displays out of.
think about it.
someone gets in a car accident...the report is always just showing the broken glass on the pavement, or the mangled cars. no shots of the people in the hospital who are missing half of their limbs, not even a speckle of blood on the floor. and so we take the actual news part of it much more lightly than we would have if we'd seen the damage. if nothing had been beautified or obscured.

i think it would be an important step toward not needing these types of games to exist, if people were shown more of the actual brutality of the real world. nobody would WANT to see gory, glorified storylines about morality and human suffering...because they would feel it in their gut, every time they watched someone on the news be pulled bleeding and screaming from the site of a gang war, or a traffic accident, or a battlefield far from home..that violence isnt beautiful. that blood and guts arent "fun". that even when its the enemy dying, its still death, and death has a way of washing away self-righteous, ego-inflated hatred of others.

maybe people would be more adamant about bringing troops home and stopping wars before they began, if they were actually shown the real goings-on of what happens overseas. what the soldiers see, and have to work through. it might even strengthen the respect we have for those individuals, who have had to make these psychological sacrifices so that we, the fluffy civilians, can go on with our trauma-free lives. and likewise, much less apathetic about helping others who reach out to them.

"The more you know, the sadder you get."~ Stephen Colbert
"I'm not going to censor myself to comfort your ignorance." ~ Jon Stewart
Versigtig, ek's nog steeds fokken giftig
Test Subject
#5 Old 28th Nov 2014 at 7:00 AM
Honestly, they are just uninformed, and I hate it when people say stuff like this. http://pass-4sure.me/ I heard the whole OCD joke thing a lot, and it gets me mad, and people get mad when I correct them.
 
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