Board 8 > Rate the VG Story Day 75: Spec Ops: The Line

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Todays game is Spec Ops: The Line. How would you rate the story on a scale from 1-10?

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Previous Results:
Planescape: Torment - 9.83 (12 votes)
Omori - 9.67 (6 votes)
Outer Wilds - 9.6 (21 votes)
Nier Automata - 9.25 (31 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Trials and Tribulations - 9.18 (33 votes)
The House in Fata Morgana - 9.14 (7 votes)
13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim - 9.1 (14 votes)
Red Dead Redemption 2 - 9 (8 votes)
Return of the Obra Dinn - 8.85 (10 votes)
Umineko When They Cry - 8.82 (11 votes)
Xenogears - 8.71 (23 votes)
Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty 8.67 (31 votes)
Metal Gear Solid - 8.67 (27 votes)
Final Fantasy Tactics - 8.65 (23 votes)
The Legend of Zelda: Majoras Mask - 8.56 (27 votes)
Disco Elysium - 8.56 (16 votes)
Undertale - 8.44 (41 votes)
What Remains of Edith Finch - 8.41 (19 votes)
Yakuza: Like a Dragon - 8.4 (5 votes)
Final Fantasy X - 8.38 (54 votes)
Mass Effect 2 - 8.38 (28 votes)
Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective 8.35 (18 votes)
Final Fantasy VII - 8.26 (36 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - 8.13 (39 votes)
The Last of Us - 8.13 (35 votes)
The Walking Dead Season 1 - 8.13 (20 votes)
Horizon: Zero Dawn - 8.06 (18 votes)
Xenoblade Chronicles - 7.94 (27 votes)
Bloodborne - 7.88 (20 votes)
Life is Strange - 7.85 (31 votes)
Doki Doki Literature Club - 7.81 (25 votes)
Bioshock - 7.64 (23 votes)
Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors - 7.62 (29 votes)
Celeste - 7.62 (25 votes)
Skies of Arcadia - 7.62 (13 votes)
Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - 7.46 (28 votes)
Mortal Kombat (2011) - 7.46 (13 votes)
Mass Effect - 7.35 (28 votes)
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves - 7.26 (29 votes)
Hotel Dusk: Room 215 - 7.25 (12 votes)
Tales of the Abyss - 7.24 (28 votes)
Red Dead Redemption - 7.23 (11 votes)
Danganronpa V3: Killing Harmony - 7.17 (23 votes)
Mass Effect 3 - 7.16 (21 votes)
To the Moon - 7.07 (7 votes)
The Vanishing of Ethan Carter - 7 (5 votes)
Super Paper Mario - 7 (21 votes)
Hollow Knight - 6.98 (21 votes)
INSIDE - 6.93 (15 votes)
Gone Home - 6.91 (17 votes)
Death Stranding - 6.73 (13 votes)
Chrono Cross - 6.69 (16 votes)
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Justice For All - 6.66 (30 votes)
Firewatch - 6.65 (10 votes)
Dark Souls - 6.62 (20 votes)
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - 6.6 (27 votes)
Valkyria Chronicles - 6.5 (16 votes)
Xenoblade Chronicles 2 - 6.5 (13 votes)
The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time - 6.31 (35 votes)
DOOM (2016) - 6.15 (13 votes)
Professor Layton and the Curious Village - 6.1 (13 votes)
Star Fox 64 - 5.79 (24 votes)
Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - 5.72 (9 votes)
Final Fantasy IV - 5.72 (29 votes)
Uncharted: Drakes Fortune - 5.26 (28 votes)
Final Fantasy XIII - 4.82 (28 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright - 4.83 (12 votes)
Fallout 3 - 4.76 (17 votes)
Starcraft II: Wings of Liberty - 4.72 (9 votes)
Fallout 4 - 4.43 (15 votes)
Final Fantasy - 4.14 (18 votes)
Resident Evil 6 - 3.74 (17 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest - 3.46 (15 votes)
Starcraft II (overall) - 3.4 (5 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates (overall) - 3.32 (11 votes)
Starcraft II: Legacy of the Void - 2.83 (6 votes)
Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) - 2.77 (15 votes)
Starcraft II: Heart of the Swarm - 2.57 (7 votes)
Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation - 2.33 (9 votes)
Tales of Zestiria - 2.14 (7 votes)

You can still rate previous days games if you missed them, just write <game name><rating>. If you want to change your rating you can just specify that you are changing your rating. Nominations for future days are also welcome, nominate as many games as you like and I will get to all of them.

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9.1
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I'm not sure it was perfect, but more games should try to be something like this.

10

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Ridiculously pretentious.

3

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Actually bump it down to a 9.

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Nominate The Conduit 2

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This should be a good one. Hmmmm sure 9 sounds good.

I get the criticisms some have with it, but I was super impressed at how they managed to pull this game off. It's still sadly really unique to have a war game take an explicitly anti-interventionist stance, and I think it continues to age well with how the AAA scene has in the past decade somehow jumped even further into being pure sickening propaganda for the US military.

I knew about some kind of twist going into it, and I really liked how it was done. The narrative still works without any kind of surprise factor. I often see people criticise Spec Ops for being pretentious, or for presenting a false-choice narrative, or accusing it of pointing fingers at the player in an attempt at a 'gotcha' moment, but I never saw it that way at all. I think it's a well-done story and presents a take that we really need more of in FPS games.

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10.

Brilliant adaptation of Heart of Darkness for the modern age.

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andylt posted...

the AAA scene has in the past decade somehow jumped even further into being pure sickening propaganda for the US military.

Isn't Call of Duty literally funded in part by the military?

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9.5

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KamikazePotato posted...

Isn't Call of Duty literally funded in part by the military?

Lol yeah, the lines are... well, they're not even blurred at this point, they're part of the same system. The military straight up uses CoD as a recruitment method to reach teens. Activision hired GW Bush's Homeland Security Adviser to a top position just a few months ago. CoD took a war crime the US committed and fictionalised it so that Russia committed the crime and the US were the heroes. It's incredibly unashamed and in your face, and it shows no sign of changing any time soon! Argh.

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5.5

I actually like the core arc about Walker's mental degeneration, but the game's meta-commentary on military shooters is so preachy and poorly implemented. In comparison to something like Undertale, its criticisms are actually more warranted, but it crucially doesn't allow the player to make any choices except the ones it then lambasts him for. In Undertale's bad routes, the game's judgement of the player actually has some meaning because moral options were open to him. I feel like Spec Ops just fails to understand and make use of the medium it's in.

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Not rating this one cause I never got around to it but I find it interesting how player agency always comes up around stuff like this and certain other games I have played (*coughtloucough*) because IMO forcing a player to be an unwilling participant in a predefined narrative is also a very powerful interactive tool.

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10/10

My 3rd favorite video game story of all time. Its shooter framework disengages and disarms the player used to these type of games. Hell, even I fell into it. I went into this game completely blind, and came out the other side more aware of my actions then ever before. I am and always have been a huge fan of Call of Duty and other similar military war campaigns; now, I don't think COD gets enough credit for also subverting some pretty interesting pre-conceptions, but it has never been to length of how Spec Ops: The Line portrayed it. Spec Ops: The Line takes its narrative inspiration from Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, but I think it's a lot closer to something like Dante's Inferno, its themes are imbued with a more noticeable psychological horror influence, if not exactly Silent Hill, then Eternal Darkness, the films of Roman Polanski, Dario Argento, Stanley Kubrick, and David Lynch, The Twilight Zone, the surrealist artworks of Dali or Magritte, or even something darkly comical like a Commedia dell'arte. To say it's just a descent into madness is too simple for Spec Ops: The Line; by the end of the game, Spec Ops crumbles any notions of sanity or order you once had, Captain Martin Walker, his misguided sidekicks and you the player are cast as the fools in this hostile land they don't belong in, as Dubai itself twists and forms around these helpless souls, just as the player's own heroic fantasy is mangled from its opening in media res bait and switch, the scorching desert sands forcing your feet forward as brutal and blood-soaked sandstorms blind your eyes to the real intentions of Spec Ops's cruel and disgusting narrative misdirections. It isn't just madness that descends, it's Dubai's symbols of wealth and power now obscured with the environment it was built on, it's the menu screen becoming more and more distorted as the game goes on, it's your very appearance becoming more and more ravaged as your mental state deteriorates. The game employs psychological tricks to keep you right in the midst of the emotion along with Walker, and I've never seen a game embody you as main character as much Spec Ops does. Spec Ops makes it so the simple act of playing it feels like a crime in and of itself, savagely offering critique on the notions of "just following orders", killing for entertainment even in a video game, disparaging you just as much as Walker for helping participate in this endless loop of destructive, non-productive violence against a situation you don't have any business being in. There's so much more the game does wonderfully well, like Silent Hills 2 & 3 every design decision in this game loops back into the narrative, even the licensed music choices. I could go on and on, but the game makes enough of a statement on its own. War isn't fun, it isn't pretty, and being the hero isn't what it's cracked up to be, and no game makes that more plainly clear and terrifying than in Spec Ops: The Line.

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Mm, 4. I can appreciate what it tries to do but it's never landed for me. The game directly pushing the player to feel bad about what happens just makes me think they weren't confident in the characters to accomplish that naturally.

MGS and various other games have done this much better, in my opinion.

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andylt posted...

Lol yeah, the lines are... well, they're not even blurred at this point, they're part of the same system. The military straight up uses CoD as a recruitment method to reach teens. Activision hired GW Bush's Homeland Security Adviser to a top position just a few months ago. CoD took a war crime the US committed and fictionalised it so that Russia committed the crime and the US were the heroes. It's incredibly unashamed and in your face, and it shows no sign of changing any time soon! Argh.

Wow I need to play more CoD!

6.2

ChainLTTP posted...

Wow I need to play more CoD!

The opposite is fine too :p
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8/10

Solid mix of military fiction and psychological horror.


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Nom Hades

9

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9

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8

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10
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8

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7

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andylt posted...

Lol yeah, the lines are... well, they're not even blurred at this point, they're part of the same system. The military straight up uses CoD as a recruitment method to reach teens. Activision hired GW Bush's Homeland Security Adviser to a top position just a few months ago. CoD took a war crime the US committed and fictionalised it so that Russia committed the crime and the US were the heroes. It's incredibly unashamed and in your face, and it shows no sign of changing any time soon! Argh.

lol what was the war crime i didnt hear of this nor do i pay any attention to CoD news

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pezzicle posted...

lol what was the war crime i didnt hear of this nor do i pay any attention to CoD news

It was the "Highway of Death".

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