Spec Ops: The Line (2012) is a third-person shooter created by Yager Development and published by 2k Games. It is a game that flew under the radar of many gamers following numerous poor releases in Spec Op’s past. Though it did pick up a bit of recognition post-release, I still feel that given its narrative it should be granted even more attention and serious reflection.
The game is set in modern Dubai following a series of devastating sandstorms that have destroyed the city and prompted the deployment of Colonel John Konrad’s 33rd Infantry Battalion, who have been sent in by the United States Army to restore order and provide relief within the city. As Dubai plunges into chaos, however, the 33rd struggle to maintain order and declare martial law, allowing for violent atrocities to be committed against the remaining citizens in order to regain control. After having been publicly disavowed by the United States Army, there are numerous failed coup d’etat attempts within the 33rd and local insurgent attacks supported by the CIA which have resulted in an incessant but hostile ceasefire, leaving Dubai a no-man’s-land. Eventually, the United States send in a three-man Delta Force team, consisting of Lieutenant Alphanso Adams, Sergeant John Lugo, and Captain Martin Walker, for reconnaissance. The player takes control of Captain Walker whose mission to find survivors, gather intelligence, and radio for extraction becomes offset once having witnessed multiple attacks on refugees and CIA agents by members of the 33rd Battalion. Walker elects to disobey his original orders and find Konrad. Throughout the game, your team is fought on multiple sides by local insurgents and the 33rd with Colonel Konrad taunting you via radio throughout the duration of your pursuit. With each ensuing firefight, Walker’s devotion to finding Konrad grows, and the stakes of his choices become even more dire as the city’s water supply dwindles, larger storms gain momentum, civilians are killed in crossfire, and Konrad grows increasingly deranged. In your pursuit for resolution, you are required to make ethical decisions that force you to question when violence is warranted for justice, how much evil can be justified for the sake of the greater good, and who is truly responsible for the deconstruction of Dubai and the deaths of its people.
Where most war shooters fail is in their lack of weight and depth. Typically, the player kills the bad guys, is a hero, and then the credits roll. Spec Ops: The Line suckers the player into believing they will be getting more or less the same experience here. At first, Spec Ops feels like a typical, violence-glorifying shooter. The mechanics and cover system are simple and satisfying. From the start of the game, you are turned into a masterful killer who, with the game’s prompting, can use the environment to take out large waves of enemies in a grand cinematic fashion. You are even paired with Sergeant Lugo, a stereotypical action sidekick prepped with quips for every time he pulls his rifle’s trigger. However, the game takes a turn around the halfway mark when you begin to make your own decisions on how to proceed at various set-pieces: who to save, which enemies to let escape, etc. Throughout which, your squad-mates question your every move with their conflicting ethics and moralities: “Why’d you let him go?”, “Our mission is to save people!”, etc. You begin to question how much your own actions are justified in the pursuit of Konrad just as your character does in-game, verbally questioning himself out loud with less and less certainty after each decision. The third-person perspective emphasizes the weight of your actions as well. The more lives you take, the more shootouts you endure, the more tattered your appearance becomes as you become covered in grime and blood with your face frozen over, shell-shocked, as you develop PTSD and begin to hallucinate. You falter ahead but by the end of the game, it becomes impossible to see the motivation or justification for anyone’s actions anymore. It seems with the increasingly destructive and carelessly fatal fights between the 33rd and Delta Force that relief and extraction are no longer on anyone’s minds- only violence. All sides are too far gone to quit with everyone driven mad by hatred, guilt, and desperation and it seems that only after the complete annihilation of the city will the last man standing be forced to take responsibility.
Spec Ops: The Line adds depth to a historically empty genre and forces typically carefree players to feel the weight of their actions and question the morality of war. While shooters typically glorify violence and make fun out of war, Spec Ops raises the bar for future developers by forcing the player to acknowledge the suffering and death of real people as a consequence of war and the resulting mental trauma of those lucky enough to make it out alive. Within real world politics, we often ask ourselves, “Who is responsible for conflict, was it justified, and was it not at all preventable?” This is especially true in the history of the United States with many of these same questions surfacing following our use of the atomic bomb on Japan and involvement in Vietnam and the conflicts in the Middle East. Spec Ops similarly forces you to ask who is responsible for the chaos in Dubai if it is not the player themselves. It seems in war, nobody believes they are the bad guys. Ironically, despite the chaotic end of Spec Ops, it becomes clear that all anyone wanted to do was help, but in war, there are no good guys. This is marked by the ultimate exchange between Walker and Konrad:
“I didn’t mean to hurt anybody”
“Nobody ever does.”
Spec Ops: The Line makes it clear that in war, violence can never be truly redeeming. Ironically, this installment, critically, would be a redeeming entry to the historically poor series and the shooter genre overall. To anyone reading who has not played it through, I truly recommend doing so as I believe you will be left with a more conscientious perspective on shooter video games and a truer grasp of the evils of war.
It's interesting that you call the gameplay mechanics "simple and satisfying" as, at the time, the game was panned for being mediocre and just serviceable in terms of shooter mechanics. I've always taken this to be a deliberate mechanical construction. By having paint by numbers stop and pop shooting, it keeps most players from having too much fun with the power fantasy of gunning down hundreds of heavily armed soldiers. It really plays into the question the game asks of "Are you having fun?"