#spec ops the line

[where-is-tom-scott-today]

I am here in a personal hell of my own creation

#submission #spec ops the line

[poolboyatthegiovannimansion]

I love it when the protags get slapped across the face with the fact that they're committing horrific acts upon the undeserving and gotta take a step back to gauge whether or not their goals and their means are actually worth it or not.

#gotta be one of my favorite genders #nier #nier gestalt #nier replicant #vinland saga #metal gear revengeance #metal gear series #metal gear rising #metal gear #attack on titan #shingeki no kyojin #aot #snk #snk spoilers #spec ops the line #spec ops #do you feel like a hero

[multitrackdrifting]

My latest video is about how shame can be an effective narrative device for exploring certain themes & and ideas within a story. Spec Ops: The Line is the main reason this discussion exists. It's a generic military shooter that often gets mistaken as a critique on war or violence, but it's not actually a critique of either. It just has the appropriate aesthetics to work as one. The game is mostly a meta-commentary on gaming influenced by the medium in the early 2010s, interrogating game & narrative design.

To dispel the idea that agency is required to make shame a meaningful narrative device, I thoroughly explain why the lack of choice is essential to the setting of Spec Ops, before it contrasting with Baldur's Gate 3 which gives you plenty of choices, but vocal fans will still criticise the game for disengaging them by presenting them with confronting dialogues & outcomes.

Shame often grounds meaningful consequences, and some people despise that no matter what form that takes.

#video essay #spec ops the line #baldurs gate 3 #gaming essay #heed the content warning before watching thanks #Youtube

[ross-hollander]

#signalis #elster #silent hill #james sunderland #spec ops the line #martin walker #video games #inescapable nightmare of surreal torment gang

[arsuf]

🎮 Video Games played in 2022 (Part 1)

#gamingedit #indie games #video games #sable #stardew valley #toem #submerged game #the stanley parable #spec ops the line #otheredits

[mister-lucky-bunny]

My Roman Empire is the fact that no game studio will ever be ballsy enough of make another FPS like Spec Ops: The Line because it exposes too much of the evil and horrendous war crimes that go into the American military complex and how it turns regular people into cruel murder tools for the government due to a sense of false patriotic heroism

#dylan speaks words #iunno #spec ops #spec ops the line #video games #fps #god that game is so well written but so incredibly depressing and dark

[lodgeofthecat]

Good Morning! :D

#fyp #silent hill #undertale #spec ops the line #devotion #red candle games #team silent #toby fox #hideo kojima #pt

[orangememesicle]

i’ve been looking at spec ops the line criticism because i hate myself and like. damn. gamers give ya/squeecore sff readers a run for their money when it comes to “piece of art makes me feel bad or uncomfortable = bad art”. like, not every story told in the medium has to be about Choice and being able to insert yourself into a story, and if you make the Right decisions you get a happy ending. it’s ok to have video games that are linear and character driven if that’s what serves the story.

#video games #spec ops the line #gamers seeing a piece of media critique american jingoism and imperialism and the way propaganda warps your idea of the Enemy: #they just wrote this to be pretentious and make me upset #original post #even hotter take: this applies to like 75% of criticisms of tlou2

[asmoteeth]

Doomed tragic yuri

#spec ops the line #spec ops #sotl #I'm never finishing this sketch #martin walker #john lugo #“What is wrong with you” Touch grass 🧚🌷❤️

[giveamadeuschohisownmovie]

#tumblr polls #alphonso mackenzie #alphonso hargreeves #Alphonso adams #Alphonso knoxx #trofin snezhevich #agents of shield #the umbrella academy #spec ops the line #borderlands #genshin impact #mcu #umbrella academy #spec ops #general knoxx #genshin impact poll #marvel #tua #the line #borderlands meme #alphonso Genshin impact

[comicsansstein]

There are some rumors going around saying that Spec Ops: The Line is being delisted from steam and other stores. I don't know what they're about, the game is clearly still available.

#spec ops the line #vidya

[2amtechnicolor]

Milgram Project and Spec Ops: The Line - The Only Way to Win is Not to Play

"They are guilty. But what is justice? And how would you see it dealt?" - Konrad, Spec Ops: The Line (2012)

[TW: mentions of murder, violence, various war crimes, and the American military]

So Fuuta's second MV and voice drama premiered last night...and it's a lot. This is our first time hearing directly from a "Guilty" prisoner and honestly, probably one of the best example of how a vote can change personalities in Milgram next to Haruka's second VD.

(I will be pulling Milgram ENG translations from @onigiriico)

So we all know the basic premise of Milgram, the music videos. We watch a prisoner sing about their "murder", we listen to their talks with the warden, Es, and then we voice them "innocent/justified" or "guilty/unjustified" accordingly.

In season one, us, as the audience, had a sense of naivete. We had no idea what a "guilty" or "innocent" vote would do to the prisoners. There was no real explanation for what the consequences of our actions would be. Now, the curtain has been pulled back. Sure, we heard the story from Jackalope, but listening to a second-hand account and a first-hand account are two different things. One is clinical observation, the other is emotional.

One person's death is a tragedy, but a million deaths is a statistic.

When just given the factual events (Kotoko attacked Amane, Mikoto, Mahiru, and Fuuta before being subdued by Kazui), it's easy to digest. Person A moves to Persona B and commits Action C.

A 17-year-old boy strangles a 10-year-old girl.

An 18-year-old girl aborts her child.

A 20-year-old man harasses a middle schooler online until her death.

At face value, any one of these could easily be voted "guilty" from one sentence according to your own values. It's when you get into the specifics, when we see their point of view for ourselves, when we hear it from their mouths, that it becomes more complicated.

Why is Muu, a girl who stabbed a classmate, more forgivable than Fuuta, who never laid his hands on anyone?

Why is Mahiru, a woman whose boyfriend committed suicide, less forgivable than an organ harvester?

Does internet harassment justify losing an eye? Does a toxic relationship justify being on the brink of death? If you had known the outcome, would you even have chosen differently?

Fuuta: "You and I are exactly the same breed!...Like I’d let someone like this judge whether I should be forgiven or not!"

This brings me to Spec Ops: The Line.

For all of you who don't know what SO:TL is, it's a military shooter game in the Spec Ops series, released in 2012, near the height of the military shooter genre's popularity (Gears of War, Halo, Call of Duty, etc.) However, SO:TL isn't a video game--it's an art piece.

You play as Captain Martin Walker, a special ops soldier in the US Army, searching Dubai and the surrounding area for an missing army comrade of his: Lieutenant Colonel John Konrad, the 33rd Infantry's commander. Konrad had defied orders in an attempt to bring order back to Dubai after the worst of sandstorms in its recorded history hit.

I won't go into detail on the whole plot, but while the player searches for Konrad and the rest of the 33rd you also:

use white phosphorus against opposing forces, killing 47 civilians who were evacuated for shelter in the process

execute either a Emirati civilian who stole water from the desert city or a member of the 33rd who was sent to apprehend him, killing the civilian's whole family in the process. Choosing to not choose kills them both.

assist in decimating the water supply of Dubai, dooming the city's inhabitants to dehydration

and many, many more atrocities.

In the end, when you finally find Konrad, the man who has been taunting you over the radio the whole game...he's dead. He's been dead for a while. You, the player, as Captain Walker, did all this, killed all those innocent people, justifying that it would all be worth it in the end, to find a man that was already dead.

Konrad: "There were 5,000 people alive in Dubai the day before you arrived. How many are alive today I wonder?"

There is no way out of these missions but through. You have to use chemical weapons, you have to murder civilians in cold blood. You have no choice.

But...There's always a choice.

In the words of the game itself: "If you were a better person, you wouldn't be here."

You don't have to play this game.

Turning your console off and never touching the disc again is a valid choice.

You don't have to be a war criminal. You have the choice to walk away.

You don't have to vote in Milgram.

You, the audience, are Captain Walker. By playing SO:TL, you are responsible for the destruction of Dubai.

We, the audience, are Warden Es. By voting in Milgram, we are responsible for Kotoko's vigilante justice. We are responsible for Fuuta losing an eye. We are responsible for Mahiru's near-death experience, and Amane's broken mental state.

But we don't have to be.

...

However, There's one major difference between SO:TL and Milgram, and I'm not just talking about genre.

Spec Ops: The Line is a singleplayer video game.

Milgram is decided by majority vote.

If you choose to opt out of Spec Ops: The Line, no one has to die.

If you choose to opt out of voting in Milgram...you can't necessarily stop everyone else.

So if a "guilty" or "innocent" outcome is inevitable, which is the most moral decision?

Not voting?

Or voting with your conscience without knowing the results of your outcome?

Are you setting a shattered bone, or breaking it in another place?

...

I can't answer that for you.

Es: "It’s alright. If you and I really are the same kind of person like you say, I’ll end up like that sooner or later anyway."

#milgram #milgram project #milgram es #kajiyama fuuta #shiina mahiru #sakurai haruka #kashiki yuno #yuzuriha kotoko #spec ops #spec ops the line #martin walker #john konrad #meta #essay #long post #lux talks

[tokiko220]

Noone ever does, Walker.

#spec ops the line #spec ops #walker #martin walker #work #fake anime screenshot #anime illustration #fanart #game fanart

[ross-hollander]

nightmare blunt rotation

#avatar #apocalypse now #metal gear rising #spec ops the line #colonel quaritch #khamsin #martin walker

[wahbegan]

It is a weird feeling, playing Spec Ops the first time i just felt it a little after taking a break from it for so long but especially the first time you got the fucking title screen with the American Flag and Jimi Hendrix's Star-Spangled Banner and yeah the flag's upside-down but it's a war game and then it's straight into the AAAAAWWWRRGGHHH MINIGUN RATATATATATATAT SHOOTING DOWN HELICOPTERS BIG EXPLOSIONS intro and the super masturbatory JOHN KONRAD IS THE GREATEST MAN I EVER SERVED WITH I LOVE AMERICA AND I LOVE THE MILITARY opening cutscene and the quippy buddy-buddy dialogue with the three leads

And then you see Dubai for the first time.

Huge, desolate, empty, shot of the city with a dolly zoom. And the only thing in the foreground is this weird, out-of-place STOP sign right in your face. And it's just vaguely unsettling but it's so good

#Spec Ops the Line

[poplopovich]

Some of my favorite games on steam if anyone is curious.

#road 96 #norco #palworld #system shock #star wars #jedi knight #halo #halo mcc #spec ops the line #black mesa #half life #doom #project zomboid #cyber hook #cult of the lamb