Okay, I don't know how much room Facebook would have given me so I decided to just use a blog... Also, spoiler alert for "Spec Ops: The Line" are coming. Normally, this isn't a thing for me - I'm not a critic or reviewer or anything of the sort, but... Well, you'll see why this is the exception to the rule as you read.
Spec Ops is one of those gems that comes out once in a generation that defies everything you've thought about video games. In a generation where Call of Duty and Battlefield 3 set the standard for what "good gaming is", it's sort of expected that there's going to be a lot of knock-off games, and on the surface, that's what Spec Ops is - a poor man's Call of Duty.
Here's the basic setting going into Spec Ops: The Line (ripped shamelessly from Wikipedia).
"Six months prior to the game, the worst series of dust storms in recorded history began across Dubai in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Dubai's politicians and wealthy elite downplayed the situation before evacuating in secret, leaving countless Emiratis and foreign migrant workers behind. Lieutenant Colonel John Konrad (Bruce Boxleitner), the decorated but post-traumatic stress disorder-troubled commander of the fictional "Damned 33rd" Infantry Battalion of the United States Army, was returning home with his unit from Afghanistan when the storms struck. Konrad volunteered the Damned 33rd to help the relief efforts, then deserted with the entire unit when ordered to abandon the city and its refugees. As the storms intensified, a massive storm wall engulfed Dubai for miles, disrupting surveillance and communication, air travel, and all but the strongest radio broadcasts. The 33rd declared martial law, and struggled to maintain order amid 80 mph winds, riots, and dwindling resources. The last communication from Dubai stated that the 33rd was attempting to lead a caravan out of the city. The caravan never arrived, and soon afterwards the UAE declared Dubai a no-man's-land. All travel to the city was barred, the 33rd was publicly disavowed for treason, and no further news left the city.
Two weeks before the beginning of the game, a looped radio signal penetrated the wall. Its message was brief; “This is Colonel John Konrad, United States Army. Attempted evacuation of Dubai ended in complete failure. Death toll: too many.” The United States military decides to covertly send in a three-man Delta Force team to carry out reconnaissance. The team, consisting of Captain Martin Walker (Nolan North), Lieutenant Alphonse Adams (Christopher Reid), and Staff Sergeant John Lugo (Omid Abtahi), are told to confirm the statuses of Konrad and any survivors, then radio for extraction."
Okay, cool. Gonna go in there and help some civilians and stop some riots and y'know, be a good little soldier, right?
No.
You start playing and it seems that Konrad's gone off the deep end and is trying to, you know, completely take control over Dubai, so against orders and cut off from outside help, you decide to go take him down because his men, once the initial attempt at evacuation failed, followed his orders and were turning into war criminals "to keep the peace." On top of that, Konrad's got his own rebels that don't think he should be so heavy handed. You venture into the city and find the 33rd has holed up and naturally is opposed to being stopped so, given a lack of options, you begin to do whatever it takes to stop Konrad including, at one point, using white phosphorus mortar rounds against your opponents (who, mind you, are STILL American soldiers) in order to get closer to your objective.
Then you find out that you killed some of the 33rd that OPPOSED Konrad. Well, that motherfucker. If he didn't do the shit he wasn't supposed to do, you wouldn't have mistakenly napalmed innocent civilians to get to him. Now he's GOTTA die, right? Sure. Further into the city you go.
In the process, you meet a guy named Riggs that works with the CIA. His plan is to kill Konrad by destroying the water, essentially killing the 33rd and dooming the population at the same time. Well, it's better than letting them run amok, right? Sure, I guess. Riggs steals some water trucks and, without an option, destroys them so not only will the 33rd die but you and your men and the survivors of the sandstorms.
Meanwhile, you do have two guys that go with you (Lugo and Adams) and both of them are beginning to question your decisions and the decisions of everyone else. Did the 33rd seriously have to declare martial law to keep the peace (which would have pissed another Middle Eastern country off and likely instigated war that could have escalated to the nuclear level)? Was allowing Riggs to destroy the water and doom the entire city really worth keeping the atrocities of the 33rd under wraps worth it? Was the white phosphorus really necessary to get to Konrad?
Needless to say, shit is looking pretty fucking grim. You get to a radio tower to call for the evacuation and Lugo flat out shoots the guy working the radio. Adams calls him on it and Walker says they'll deal with it later. They call for an evacuation and grab a helicopter that reinforcements working for Walker kindly brought them... and on the way out, Walker decides he wants to see what a chain-gun can do so mows down a bunch of the 33rd (instead of, you know, leaving, which is another step towards "malicious war criminal" at the very least). A rocket and a sandstorm later, Lugo's separated from Walker and Adams.
It gets worse when Lugo gets lynched by civilians and Walker is almost constantly have hallucinations because of how far beyond fucked the situation is. You've got the option of shooting the civilians as retribution or firing into the air above them to scare them off after Lugo's lynched but either way, Walker tries to revive Lugo but he fails. Shortly after, Adams flips his shit and pretty much tries to take on the remains of the 33rd because he's pretty much lost it and knows Walker isn't going to give up (not to mention arguing with Walker because by now, he's pretty much constantly hallucinating and ultimately alright with becoming a war criminal) and still believes in the evacuation and killing Konrad.
Walker flees but ends up unconscious. The last thing he hears is, apparently, Adams dying. Keep in mind their original mission was nothing but recon.
Walker is saluted by the remnants of the 33rd, who surrender to him because of their low numbers. Walker demands to know where Konrad is, and is directed to Konrad's penthouse. At first, Konrad appears to be the paranoid, charismatic force behind the atrocities Walker was hoping for, until Walker finds his decaying corpse on the penthouse deck. Walker has been suffering from a disassociative disorder to rationalize the actions he has witnessed and carried out. The real Konrad had committed suicide before the game had begun. The Konrad that Walker has been in contact with during the game is actually a traumatic hallucination that none of his team saw or heard, appearing only in his mind. This mental projection of Konrad appears to Walker, explaining that Walker knew he had the choice of leaving Dubai numerous times, but pushed ahead out of a desire to be a hero (which Konrad says he never was) . To maintain his 'sanity' after the white phosphorus strike, many subsequent events in the game were distorted by Walker's mind to make Konrad look like the villain. With his fantasy coming to an end now that the truth is in front of him, 'Konrad' points a gun at Walker’s head and begins counting to five.
Wait, what? Seriously? This shit's grim. Had you followed your orders (of course, you couldn't and if you did, it'd have been a seriously short game), none of this would have happened. You wouldn't have lost your two buddies, you wouldn't have killed 47 innocent civilians ("Konrad" counted for you) and you wouldn't have generally doomed every single survivor of the original sandstorms AND the atrocities of the Damned 33rd. This game completely deconstructs the "WOO, 'MURICA!" style of first-person shooters and seriously makes you stop and examine the morals of games, gamers and, to a degree, society. Every action you took by PLAYING THE GAME is held against you - all the shit you did (which, I have to and will completely admit, was fun and visually impressive) by playing the game is shoved back in your face.
Remember when video games were meant to be fun?
One of the characters actually asks "Where's all this violence coming from, man?! Is it the video games? I bet it's the video games."
So you've got the option of killing the Walker hallucination and taking responsibility for your war crimes (and reclaiming your sanity) or letting him kill you (which is essentially succumbing to the delusion and killing yourself, just like Konrad did)... I took the former option.
You call for the evacuation to rescue the survivors of both the Damned 33rd and the original sandstorm that fucked Dubai royally to begin with. The credits roll. Then there's the epilogue. You have one last choice as the evacuation shows up and none of them are particularly happy endings. I mean, you're still a fucking war criminal.
Do you try to kill the evacuation? Do you feign the attempt and let them kill you? Do you accept the fact that by being a "hero" and doing everything you'd done up to this point that you're a war criminal?
The best "moral choice" the game gives you is, when your character starts following orders, to turn off the game and pretend you followed orders, or accept the fact that from that moment on, you weren't "the big damn hero" and you committed many, many crimes. Crimes against people. The very people you were supposed to save. The only way to "win" is to not play.
What the fuck, Spec Ops: The Line? The only way to not become a war criminal is to not play your game?
... I approve of your shenanigans.
(I suggest checking out the Wikipedia page for Spec Ops: The Line as well as the TV Tropes entry for more perspective, and if you haven't, pick up a copy somewhere.)
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