"Gentlemen, welcome to Dubai."
Spec Ops: The Line has been praised by critics and casual gamers alike for setting a different tone within the modern military shooter genre, a genre previously saturated with military hardware pornography and the wholesale destruction of any nation not speaking English. This game was a unique experience to me with respect to the previous military twitch-shooters I've played and one that defiantly rose up to take its place within the genre.
Enter an alternate timeline, one where Dubai, the glimmering diamond of the Middle East, has been ravaged by monstrous sandstorms large enough to engulf skyscrapers with winds hurling sand fast enough to strip paint off cars and flesh off bones. The 33rd Infantry Battalion of the United States Army, commanded by Colonel John Konrad (an homage to Joseph Conrad), volunteered to detour from returning home to aid in an evacuation effort of the city. The 33rd never returned. Players will take on the role of Captain Martin Walker, commander of a squad of Delta Force operatives tasked with investigating a radio broadcast that originates from Dubai six months after the city was declared a desert catacomb devoid of life.
"If you were a better person, you wouldn't be here"
In essence, Spec Ops: The Line can be considered to be an adaptation of Conrad's Heart of Darkness; the themes of the book are presented in a modern-military setting, much like the film Apocalypse Now. If you're familiar with either the book or the 1979 Coppola film, you may have a working sense of the plot and the imagery you'll witness as you play the game. A majority of the game's spirit comes from Walker's descent into madness and cognitive dissonance having witnessed the terror and suffering within the storm-wracked Dubai. What was supposed to be a simple reconnaissance mission suddenly spirals into a desperate attempt by Walker to seek answers in the hopes of vindicating what they have witnessed and done.
Having found a war zone within a supposedly dead city, squad mates Lugo and Adams try to convince Walker to call for evacuation and report their findings. As Walker becomes more and more obsessed with finding Colonel Konrad and finding out just what is going on, Lugo and Adams become ever more worried and doubtful of his leadership. Nightmarish images of mass executions, gruesome torture, and Hell-on-Earth use of white phosphorus take their toll on the squad: vigilant players will notice the squad member's speech patterns becoming more crude, execution finishers becoming more violent, and even loading screen messages turning from gameplay tips to more personal and attacking messages directed at the player as the game progresses. Talk between squad members transitions from light-hearted banter to hostile blame for the consequences of their action or inaction in a scenario. Walker becomes flooded with guilt and delusions as hallucination and other symptoms of trauma become apparent during gameplay.
"Do you feel like a hero yet?"
Gameplay elements in Spec Ops: The Line satirize modern-military shooters and their over-the-top action sequences. Shots to the head with any kind of weapon will cause the enemy's head to explode in a shower of gibs (even slowing down time for a brief moment for you to gawk at your marksmanship) and the proverbial turret sections present players the opportunity to mow down countless combatants in a way that would make Rambo proud, all set to tunes popular during the Vietnam War. The gameplay itself isn't anything spectacular for a third-person shooter and the game is aware of it: the shooter cliches are a disconcerting reminder that, in the end, it's just another video game. One of the loading messages in the game points to this in a frank manner, stating "to kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless." Additionally, the Radioman, an antagonist in the game, taunts Walker as the Delta Force assaults his holdings, asking "Where's all this violence coming from? Is it the video games? I bet it's the video games," referencing Walker and his men's learned brutality. The game seemingly asks players what their response might be, just how much of that response is guided by the fact that the events are unfolding in a world of fiction, and just how much that changes things, if at all.
"The US military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants. But this isn't real, so why should you care?"
Spec Ops: The Line places players in high pressure situations where the stakes are immeasurable and the consequences are devastating no matter the action taken. So what is the game about, then? One of the key aspects of any medium is the audience's ability to take away however much they want; the audience can choose to make the experience as meaningful or as a thoughtless as they want. Spec Ops: The Line acknowledges this by showing two facets: yet another military shooter with little questions asked or a view into the savagery of man. Conrad, in Heart of Darkness, depicted how there is no difference between the uncivilized and the civilized and here in Spec Ops: The Line, the player can view Walker and the men of the 33rd as just faceless soldiers in a fictional conflict or a representation of what desperation can bring out of humanity.
But ya' know, it's just a video game, too. Right?
