25th January 2017, 10:30 PM
(This post was last modified: 6th February 2017, 3:41 PM by Dark Jaguar.)
Spec Ops: The Line should have just been called "The Line" (as in, crossing the line). Let me put it this way SJ: the first level plays out like your standard modern military shooter... right up until the part where you are forced to walk by all the bodies of the people you just killed and realize some of them are Americans. It's at that point you realize this is going to be something a lot different.
From what I've read about the development, it originally WAS going to be just another military shooter. However, a bunch of crazy management decisions later, they realized the ONLY way they could make anything coherent out of the game's story would have to involve a surreal psychological nightmare. ABF is right, it's Heart of Darkness. So is Apocalypse Now to be honest. It's surprising just how well they managed it. I made the Silent Hill 5 comparison because both games attempt to use psychological horror to analyze a soldier, but SH5 ends up failing at this where The Line succeeds. Metal Gear also tries to play up the horrors of war, but it ends up more tongue in cheek a lot of the time just due to how ridiculous the series can get (intentionally). The serious parts work, but it's hard to really absorb the message as well when you're hearing it from a bisexual vampire powered by nanomachines (the vampirism is powered by it I mean, not the bisexuality).
Your reaction is pretty standard. When I tell my friends "you should play this" they always say "eh, I hate dumb military shooters" and then I say "it's a psychological war horror story analyzing what today's operations can do to a soldier's mind" and their reaction is a hilarious "wait, you're not kidding?" sort of thing. I'm not about to claim that The Line is as well written as Apocalypse Now or Beast of No Nation or something like that, but it's a refreshing and effectively told story amid a sea of monotony. Also, maybe the name isn't so bad, because there's countless people online who LOVE modern military shooters who were in for one hell of a shock when The Line challenged them, and many are clamoring for more.
From what I've read about the development, it originally WAS going to be just another military shooter. However, a bunch of crazy management decisions later, they realized the ONLY way they could make anything coherent out of the game's story would have to involve a surreal psychological nightmare. ABF is right, it's Heart of Darkness. So is Apocalypse Now to be honest. It's surprising just how well they managed it. I made the Silent Hill 5 comparison because both games attempt to use psychological horror to analyze a soldier, but SH5 ends up failing at this where The Line succeeds. Metal Gear also tries to play up the horrors of war, but it ends up more tongue in cheek a lot of the time just due to how ridiculous the series can get (intentionally). The serious parts work, but it's hard to really absorb the message as well when you're hearing it from a bisexual vampire powered by nanomachines (the vampirism is powered by it I mean, not the bisexuality).
Your reaction is pretty standard. When I tell my friends "you should play this" they always say "eh, I hate dumb military shooters" and then I say "it's a psychological war horror story analyzing what today's operations can do to a soldier's mind" and their reaction is a hilarious "wait, you're not kidding?" sort of thing. I'm not about to claim that The Line is as well written as Apocalypse Now or Beast of No Nation or something like that, but it's a refreshing and effectively told story amid a sea of monotony. Also, maybe the name isn't so bad, because there's countless people online who LOVE modern military shooters who were in for one hell of a shock when The Line challenged them, and many are clamoring for more.
"On two occasions, I have been asked [by members of Parliament], 'Pray, Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right answers come out?' I am not able to rightly apprehend the kind of confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question." ~ Charles Babbage (1791-1871)