Spec Ops: The Line

If you're just joining us, you should go back and read Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 first.

And now, the last reminder:

Followed by the last recap:

Last time on Spec Ops: The Line, we met the head of the CIA, Riggs. The boys of Delta helped him seize control of water tankers from the 33rd. We thought we were helping him regain control of Dubai, but instead he doomed everyone to a very thirsty grave by plowing the tankers into a building.

I shot him after he became pinned under one of those tankers.

After killing Riggs, we made contact with Adams.

“And Riggs?” he asks.

“No, not good. He fucked us. Fucked everybody.”

A lengthy shootout ensues with the 33rd, but in the end we reunite with Adams and Lugo.

Walker devises a plan for evacuation. All game we’ve been harassed by a man in charge of a radio tower loyal to Konrad. Walker plans to seize the radio tower by force and use it to organize the citizens for evacuation. Its the simplest move we’ve devised so far, and perhaps more importantly, its actually one of ours. We are no longer chasing CIA agents and insurgents, or following orders from long-dead ghosts in Dubai. The goal is now clear and immediate. Get survivors, get the hell out.

Man. Maybe we should’ve started with this plan.

As we approach the tower, I’m struck by something that’s been bothering me all game. Its a sensation that has struck me multiple times, usually as I descend a zip line or drop down into a pit. Now the game draws my attention to it as clearly as it can, as it lets me pause to look over the cityscape of Dubai.

As we look off into the distance at the radio tower, the right question finally hits me.

How am I reaching higher and higher points of Dubai?

I spend almost no time ascending in this game. The occasional staircase perhaps... but it hardly compares to the amount of time I spend descending. I drop down holes, rappel down buildings, fall down buildings- but never climb them.

I don’t believe there are any accidents in game design here. Themes of descent are taking over the logic of spatial relationships. In a game like Spec Ops where words like “logic” or “reason” start to become less important with every passing minute, its a genius way to subconsciously prod at a player and create the feeling something is wrong.

And its working on me. Quite well.

An earlier loading screen suggests a better way to phrase what I’m feeling.

Speaking of loading screens, the hints I’ve become accustomed to seeing at the bottom of the screen are starting to become very... strange. And less like hints every time I die. The space that usually informed me how to take cover now asks me how many americans I’ve killed today. There’s a tension bubbling every minute I’m playing now, and the game is taking extra leaps and bounds to ensure I never feel comfortable. My squad screams obscenities during every encounter, execution moves are eerie in their brutality, and the loading screens after I die harrass me.

I go down a zipline towards the radio tower.

When I land, Adams is pointing a gun at me. Its an impossible situation. Adams was behind me on the zipline.

Walker begins to violently hammer Adams’ face in with the butt of his gun, leaving a bloody mess all over the floor.

A white flash. A moment later and the Adams I pummeled into a bloody pulp is replaced with one of the damned 33rd.

The actual Adams, head still intact, lands on the zip line behind me. “Walker, what the hell!?”

“He surprised me!”

Everyone is falling apart at the seams. I even find myself feeling jittery and uncomfortable.

The Radio Man is very aware of our approach, but if he’s nervous or afraid, he doesn’t show it. All game he’s carried the same nonchalance to everything that’s happened. Even as we threaten his life, he maintains a zen-like calm. His attitude becomes especially noteworthy now, as it becomes a juxtaposition to my team and how they seem ready to fall apart every second.

As we reach the end, a firefight across two buildings breaks out. The Radio Man begins calling out with every downed 33rd.

“That guy? You shot that guy? I liked that guy.”

“Awww, he only had 2 more days ‘til retirement!”

“Awww, He had a Dog! Maybe? I didn’t really know that guy.”

As we finally enter his room, he says something in passing. No one on Delta speaks of it, but I don’t think its a line said for them. I think its meant for me.

“Like that’s... like that’s a real gun. I mean, come on.”

I start to wonder if the Radio Man can see right through my computer screen. I wonder if he looks at Walker, Lugo and Adams, and just sees a bundle of 0’s and 1’s walk in.

The Radio Man is surprisingly compliant. He and Lugo actually share a bonding moment over radio technology. Lugo comments on his impressive set up.

“How far does it reach?”

“To infinity and beyond! Or, uh, to the storm wall. Same difference.”

I rather like the Radio Man. After several hours that included screaming, murder, and the elimination of any hope the people of Dubai had to survive, his humor comes at a much needed time.

Walker takes the microphone.

“I am the commander of an american evacuation force. We’re here to rescue you.”

Everything’s good so far.

“But before that, the men of the 33rd will pay for their crimes.”

Wait a minute. I don’t remember this being part of the plan.

Lugo and Radio Man share some friendly chatter.

Then Lugo pulls out his gun and shoots him in the head.

For a moment, I feel like I’ve been left out of the loop. Like the boys of Delta had a plan worked out during a loading screen I didn’t get let in on.

Adams reaction a second later tells me Lugo caught everyone by surprise. Lugo screams about how he needed to die.

Konrad’s elite team is moving in now. Our only hope is a helicopter on the roof. Lugo offers to stay behind and snipe to guard our escape. Once we’ve cleared a way, he’ll make a run for it.

Tensions are still high. Adams doesn’t trust Lugo to guard anyone in his fragile state, but Lugo tells him this is the only way.

I feel like this will finally be it; we won’t make it to the helicopter. Or we will, and Lugo won’t.

Neither occurs. Everyone makes it to the copter.

“We’ll bury them here!” yells Walker, and now I know everything is off the rails.

I keep doing what the game demands of me, but nothing strikes me as productive about my current objective, which is “Destroy the Radio Tower.”

I do exactly that.

With it goes any hope of organizing an evacuation. There is no way of communicating across Dubai anymore.

If I had any illusions we were heroes, or Walker still cared about helping the people of Dubai, they were shattered in this instant. It became far more important to send a message to Konrad then it was to do what we came here to do.

There’s no heroism in this anymore. We’ve doomed the people of Dubai yet again,a feat I didn’t think repeatable.

After a loading screen, I’m struck by a familiar scene. I’m in a helicopter, shooting at other helicopters.

It’s the opening. I’ve reached the Mise en scene moment that started everything.

or at least I think so, but then Walker shouts out “Wait, wait. This isn’t right! we’ve done this before!”

but the game didn’t start with a helicopter crash... did it?

No, it didn’t.

I remember. We just walked in to Dubai. On foot.

We haven’t done this before.

but I’m struck by a different interpretation of his words.

Walker, Adams, and Lugo haven’t done this together before.

Walker and I have.

The Helicopter crashes, just like the opening.

For a moment, I suspect everything is over. This is how it ends. When the screen comes back, I’ll be greeted to a dying walker, crawling across the desert with broken bones.

The next scene that takes place makes me think it did all end, but in a very different way. I’m greeted by a giant pillar with a burning top, like Sauron himself. A sandstorm blows against us. Konrads voice shouts down as Walker stumbles forward.

“I thought my duty was to protect people from the storm. I was wrong. I had to protect it from you.”

Riggs and Gould walk by us with haunting visages, bodies made of sand, pieces of them blowing into the wind.

Hands reach out and grasp at us.

The tower retreats into the foreground. The Camera pans out, and I’m back in Dubai. Judging from the boats and yachts, I suspect we’ve crashed in a dried up lake.

A fitting location, considering what we’ve done.

As usual Adams is first to check in. Everyone appears to have survived the crash, though after the scene I just witnessed, I am starting to think Walker did not.

The game progresses with shootouts and gunfire as the 33rd hunts us through the barren lake. Adams and I meet up, and begin making our way to Lugo. I start to reconsider my darker theory as everything remains down to earth.

Lugo calls in. He’s in a refugee camp somewhere. He’s starting to feel uncomfortable. He’s getting harassed by the locals.

At one point, Adams stops me. He scolds me, and blames me for Lugo’s increasingly fragile state.

“He’ll be alright. It’s just a broken arm.”

“That’s not what I’m talkin’ about and you know it!”

And I do too. Lugo is the most affected by our actions, as evident by his sudden assassination of the radio man..

Lugo calls in again. The locals are closing in. We hear gunfire on the other end.

“Lugo! Lugo!”

We turn a corner to find Lugo strung up by neck, hanged by the refugees.

Walker and Adams run in to save him. Adams starts trying to revive him while Walker keeps the crowd at bay. When he fails to respond, they trade places.

Walker does what he can, which mostly involves slamming on Lugo’s chest.

Adams threatens to shoot the crowd to keep them away.

Its no use.

Lugo is dead.

The game asks me to make a choice; fire on the crowd, or don’t.

Adams, who is usually my voice of reason, begs for the order to shoot.

It wasn’t the 33rd we should’ve been looking out for after all. When the tankers crashed and I was left without a sidearm, I feared an incident with the locals around me.

Those fears were now confirmed, but it wasn’t myself and walker who faced them.

I can’t do it. I know I’m being tempted. I recognize it. But I like to believe some part of humanity remains with us. I fire into the air to try and scare off the crowd.

It works. The crowd disperses. No one dies, and Adams does not interpret my actions as a sign to kill.

We march on towards a tower in the distance, where Walker believes Konrad will be waiting.

“Do you even remember why you came here?” The loading screen asks me.

I do. We came to find Konrad and bring him to justice.

We press on towards Konrad, and the loss of Lugo weighs heavily on Delta. Adams is harsh and indifferent, and reminds Walker it is his fault Lugo is dead at every turn.

At one point we are assaulted by a heavily armored soldier. After a flash of light, his face becomes Lugos. He cries out to Walker, demanding an answer for his death.

This all happens in the middle of the firefight. it is so jarring and distracting that I die from hesitation as it occurs.

As we get closer to Konrads tower, we’re greeted once more by our old friend Willy Pete. It explodes around us, burning everything. Another flash of white.

“Welcome to hell, Walker.”

Suddenly my original theory that we died in the helicopter crash is alive and well. The world is a burning hellscape. Charred husks of human flesh charge me and reach out.

Another flash of white. I’m back in Dubai.

We are eventually cornered by the 33rd. Adams throws me over a wall and tells me to go get Konrad.

The game does not show me his fate, but I am confident he is dead.

I walk into the tower. I’m greeted to a final loading screen that asks once more, “Do you remember why you came here?”

I’m greeted by the 33rd within. They do not bradish firearms this time.

They salute me instead. I enter the elevator.

Konrad awaits me on the balcony of this penthouse. He’s working on a painting, one that looks eerily familiar.

“I never could escape the memory of what happened here.”

Its the charred faces I remember well.

Konrad disappears behind the painting. A chair overlooking Dubai awaits.

I spin it around to reveal the dead, decomposed body of Konrad.

The world behind Walker turns black. The Konrad I spoke to moments before, alive and well, joins us.

“It seems the rumors of my survival were greatly exaggerated.” Says Konrad.

“I don’t understand.” Says Walker. And I don’t either.

“Do you remember why you came here?”

There’s that question again. I remember. We came to find Konrad.

But we didn’t.

A scene plays to remind me.

“We find evidence of survivors, then radio from outside the storm wall.”

Konrad was never part of our mission.

Another scene plays.

The memory of the burned mother and child.

“he turned us into fucking killers!” Screams Lugo.

The Radio we picked up has no batteries. Walker picks it up and speaks into it, answering a Konrad who never existed.

“I get it. We’re meant to choose,” says Walker, looking at the prisoners. A flash of white later, and the two prisoners are hung, decaying corpses. There was no soldier and thief. No choice.

Walker is talking to no one but himself.

Walker is Konrad.

Konrad is nothing more the manifestation of something to pin blame on, because Walker could not reconcile his desire to be a hero with the atrocities we committed.

Konrad is Walker’s response to his own cognitive dissonance.

As Walker protests, insisting he came to help, Konrad continues to point out the truth.

“No, your talents lie elsewhere.”

Scenes play, showing how we destroyed the radio tower. How we doomed Dubai to death by assisting Riggs.

Dubai would’ve been better off had I never played.

“None of this would’ve happened if you just stopped.”

When Konrad says this, I no longer think he’s speaking to Walker. He’s talking to me, asking me why I didn’t just put down the controller. It became obvious to me Walker was unhinged, dangerous, and actively self-destructing his own mission. So why did I keep going?

Konrad answers for me.

“You’re here because you want to feel like something you’re not.”

A hero.

We’re somewhere else now. Walker stares into a mirror. Konrad stares back on the other side, pointing a gun at him.

“I’m going to count to five, then I’m pulling the trigger.” Konrad begins counting down.

“This...this is all in my head.” Walker says to himself.

“Are you sure? Maybe it’s in mine. One.”

“This...this is all your fault!” Shouts Walker. I know it isn’t true anymore. I think Walker does too.

At three, Walker raises his own gun.

I somehow know two things without being explicitly told.

I know I am in control. I can press in on the right trigger and fire first.

And I somehow know what happens if I don’t.

I’m being asked to kill myself.

And its happening in a way I’ve never confronted. If I feel Walker deserves his fate, I need to do nothing active on my part. It is the path of least resistance.

I’ve killed myself many times in games. I’ve thrown myself off bridges to see what happens, fired rocket launchers at my feet to try and launch myself skyward, and I’ve even failed quick time events just to see the gruesome result.

But I’ve never been asked to kill myself as part of the narrative.

What disturbs me more is I’ve never had a game made me feel that I ought to die for my actions, that I ought to let the main character die for the countless virtual lives I’ve taken.

And if I agree, I merely need to do nothing.

My time is running out.

After all we’ve done, and all the people we’ve killed, I do not feel we deserve another chance. I surrender to the count, and let Konrad reach five without resistance.

“Are you sure this is what you want Walker?”

I’m sure. Walker doesn’t deserve to leave Dubai.

And neither do I.

We deserve to be buried here with our allies.

I surrender us to fate. Konrad pulls the trigger.

The screen goes black.

The message that brought us here in the first place plays as the camera pans across the veranda.

Walker is dead. A gun lies in his hand. A bullet hole in his head.

The camera pans up to a burning Dubai in the night.

The game ends.

I’m returned to the title screen after the credits roll.

I didn’t do anything for awhile at this point. Instead I sat there, staring at the screen, trying to piece together every detail. What does it mean about everything I witnessed if Konrad never existed? If Walker acted alone?

I eventually reload my last save to see the other alternatives, but I won’t address them here. None of what I see carries the same impact as the choice I made, unprompted, to let us die in Dubai.

I suspect Yager expected me to approach their game as a typical shooter. Spec Ops asked me if I wanted to be the hero, then turned me into a villain by the end. It did it so subtly, so carefully, that I didn’t notice until it was too late. Even after committing perhaps the largest atrocity in the game, it managed to convince me I could somehow correct my error, and make up for my egregious decimation of innocents.

I strongly believe the power of any medium, be it games, books, or film, is that it allows us to bridge the gaps of human understanding. I recognized something special in games as an interactive medium, but until Spec Ops the line, I could not pinpoint the exact element. It existed somewhere outside my understanding, like a vaguely human-shaped figure on the horizon.

The answer, I realized, is in the very nature of interactivity. I can read about how Captain Ahab doomed his crew with his pursuit of Moby Dick. A game can instead make me choose to doom my crew, and condemn them to a watery grave through my actions.

I did not “beat” Spec Ops: The Line, nor did I “win” it. I merely finished it. The usual sense of accomplishment I accompany with the completion of a game was absent.

It was instead replaced by a heightened sense of self-awareness. Of why I play games, and what I hope to accomplish within them.

I hereby award Spec Ops: The Line a score of 10 out of 10... months in therapy.

I know its intimidating, but don’t be afraid; its a wonderfully productive therapy. The ten months are rough and full of terrors, haunting visions, and twisted visages. In the end you’ll emerge on the other side stronger than you ever were before.

I feel enlightened, wiser, and more aware of the reasons I play games at all because I finished Spec Ops: The Line.

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