Triggered cucks think the game is about guilttripping you from start to finish

It would be more accurate to say that it tries to make you feel bad.

Trips of truth.

Deconstruction? More like "here play this game where you are forced to do what we told you to do while we insult you for doing exactly what we told you to do."

Those are themes games like Iji, Papers, Please and Undertale nailed more subtly by letting you make choices through gameplay rather than obvious dialog prompts shoved in your face, where you have to deal with the 'logical outcome of your actions' if you play those games like you normally would play the games in those genres while offering you alternative story routes and consequences depending on what you do during gameplay, whereas Spec Ops: The Line forces you along a certain path while being able to make some choices which are more superficial than anything. Of course everyone would go for the 'good' route, it's only at the point where people realize that they have a choice in the first place that they start to reconsider their actions.

The developers of SOTL didn't fully comprehend the possibilities a video game can offer through interactivity, which is incredibly ironic considering they set out to criticize that narrow linear way of designing games while offering no options for craftier players who do not intend to play by the rules, forcing both kind of players down one single story route while giving no example of how to do things better. It's almost nihilistic in that regard.

The problem is I get annoyed when video games tell me to do dumb things and I cant progress further until I do the dumb thing they want me to do.

And when I realize I have no option but to do the dumb thing they chastise me for it.

I understand this is in parallel with things like rules of engagement. Where we send out our soldiers with retarded orders about not firing back until you are fired upon. But in spec ops they took it the other way. Away from reality.

Sounds about right.

but turning off the game is the best ending!

RTS where you are managing Dubai as it goes to shit.

Did the MC made jokes about the shit gameplay and fps and wished it was a movie?

...

Its because they cant into videogames and just wanted to feel smart with the story, kind of like anno and mecha, he hated the mecha genre and instead of making it better he just made a copy of it with small critiques in the dialog

Congratulations, you have no fucking idea what you're talking about.

jeez, talk about a case of "STOP READING HERE"

bill corbet?

But they mean two different things.

There's that word again.
Having a stupid self aware joke doesn't make it a deconstruction.

Crippling the entertainment quality of your creative work for the sake of your artistic statement is a poor and lazy design. Simply mimicking something bad does not show you understand why its bad and doesn't show any good design. It's the artistic equivalent of saying "I was just pretending to be retarded." It makes it worse entertainment without really making it much better as art.

You can reflect on, deconstruct, or criticize things without completely compromising the entertainment value of a work. It shows far more understanding of the medium than simply making something shit for the sake criticizing something else that's shit - all you end up doing with the latter is filling the world with even more shit, just this one is self-aware of its shittiness.

>Undertale nailed more subtly

TF2 is a commentary on how microtransactions have gone out of hand in the current industry.

How can no one appreciate it?

Players are mad for the same reason your two squad mates are mad at Walker, for the same reason the officers were mad at Konrad, for the same reason the CIA agents blamed Gould.

In a meta everyone is blaming someone else for what happens. Walkers blames Konrad, his teammates blame Walker, the player blames the developer. That's where the genius of the game lies.

And for anyone getting buttflustered, any game, and especially a generic third person shooter, that can generate so much discussion and difference in opinion years after the meager and underwhelming release must have done something right.

And that's ignoring all the subtle visual tricks and foreshadowing the game employs

Because the Nuance is what you tell yourself to make yourself feel better about a game with poor pacing and bad linear design, and honestly gives me the impression that you probably are a "games analyst" and you don't actually play the games you commentate on the design philosophy and mechanical illustration of the medium which is quite funny because you as a subtractive of the medium of interactive entertainment provided in videogames, puts you on the same level as poopy joe and tumblrite hipsters when it comes to undertale as to spec ops the line and you where in order to discuss and extrapolate the tools for you to spread your memetics in particular you overlook the most obvious aspects of a game caked in your own interpretation and self imposed nuance that you ironically enough alienate everyone who actually has played the game with vapid hipster idealisms. You Homosexual.

You're just mad the developers played you like a fiddle. They wanted you mad at that scene, either because of the morally repugnant action or because "muh choices". The whole idiocy of people whining they weren't given a choice in a linear third person shooter is breathtaking.

Do you know what the only choices with any real impact in the game are to be found? At the end. That's when the game allows you to actually sit in judgement of Walker and decide his fate.

How did they cripple it? Because they didn't suck your metaphorical dick and allow you to be the hero? You do realize you're doing the exact same thing Lugo and Adams did with Walker, right?

I don't think I recall saying a single thing about "muh choices" as you put it. I'm also not sure why you think I care about the message the game trying to portray when I already said that their way of getting it across was flawed to begin with.
They made a mediocre third-person shooter because they thought that was how they should criticize other mediocre third-person shooters. You don't need to make a bad game to show how bad other games, and the developers just thought that having a self-aware bad game makes it somehow better than those other bad games they are criticizing.

I have about as much respect for Spec Ops as I do for The Fountain - a piece of "art" that was meant to criticize how any piece of trash could be accepted by art galleries by doing just the same. It's a shallow message portrayed lazily, not through any mastery of the medium.

But they weren't criticizing third person shooters you dumb shit, they were making a point about games with stories about military exploits, otherwise why do you think the game gets compared to Call of Duty so much, despite it being an FPS?

Go be a tryhard retard someplace else.

Yes they did. They had a better grasp than a lot of people and it shows many times in the game.

It presents its choices a lot more subtly than most, the highlight example being when Lugo is killed by a mob of civilians and that same mob turns on you. It feels so natural to just mow the crowd down, and nothing signposts that you can disperse them by shooting into the air.

The other big one is the ending and epilogue, which scream so hard that it's not about being mad at the player, it's about being mad at how this sort of standard for games is tolerated.
The player expy and Developer expy face off. The player decides who to blame. Is the dev right about the player and Walker deserves to die? Or is the dev wrong and the player would have played Walker as a good person had the game ever let them? If the latter, the epilogue is the player's chance to prove it and pick the peaceful option instead of murdering the soldiers there to rescue him.

These moments of choices are sparse, almost torturingly so which fits with the PTSD theme.

Adams and Lugo are both surrogates for two different kinds of players. Adams is the player who questions the narrative of a linear game, tracking the plot holes and trying to change the tracks; Lugo is the player who'd rather roll with it and trust where it leads. By the end they're both broken. Lugo starts imitating the worst aspects of the plot and giving it the same flawed justification he was told; Adams becomes bitter and is just begging for it to all be over soon.

I also like how the game subtly cons the player into a specific frame of mind. Before the phosphorous scene you're given, IIRC, two setpieces where you get to make a meaningless "choice", the one with the CIA agent and the civilians and the one with the two guys that stole water.

No matter what choice the player takes there is no happy resolution, someone is going to get fucked either way.

Then you come to the phosphorous scene and Lugo starts telling Walker there always can be a choice and Walker unequivocally tells him that sometimes there is no choice at all.

I still honestly can't understand why people get so assmad at this scene, the game even outright tells you there is no choice but to do what the game wants you to do, which is pretty much the fucking point of it all. Afterward Lugo and Adams start getting mad at Walker, but still keep following him because they ultimately find it more comfortable to shift the responsibility on his shoulders than face whatever consequences walking away would mean, and the player is mad at the developer for forcing them to do what they did and mocking them afterwards, but are still playing the game.

If nothing else the developers knew how to manipulate the emotions of the player, since they're meant to be mad and stay mad.

Wow you sure showed everyone with those hot arguments

It's a failed 3rd person fps with pretentious writing, and when people pointed out the sub-part gameplay, the devs just told everyone it was totally intented.

Also, a valid ending, according to the writer, is to just stop playing, just think about for a moment, inbetween sniffing your own farts.

I meant 3rd person shooter dammit

It's like you don't know how to remove responsibility from yourself.

I think it's pretty neat how normal scene transitions fade to black, but if it's a hallucination it will fade to white

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The white phosphorous scene had little impact of me - if I'd had a choice, I wouldn't have done it. Easy. It's everything else that got me pissed.

Destroying the water supply and condemning all of Dubai to death was the most horrifying part for me, fuck WP.

Which tells me that it's a good game that worked well in its limitations.

If I'd started with a long-ass post about why I'm right rather than just presenting a premise to start discussion, would you have replied? I prefer to let the thread start and then make the argument rather than stuffing it all in the OP

You know, a shitload of games are boring but pretend they're not. This is the only game that actually pointed that fact out, and of all "boring" games to call shit, people chose the one that shows the fact that modern vidya is boring instead of using it as an argument to show retards that they're gobbling up shit and that publishers need to stop making their developers make shit games.

Makes it worse imo

Welcome to Dubai. Population: Moonman

I don't give a fuck about real muzzies why would I feel conflicted about killing fake ones
(jk I didn't even play the game)

While we're at it, let's have an argument here. How is the writing pretentious? How is the gameplay sub-par? Are you sure the devs weren't just saying that THQ told them they had to make a linear shooter and they just made the best of it?

t. triggered cuck

I only somewhat felt bad for my teammates, pretty decent game were it not for bulletsponge enemies on higher difficulty

I think every 'artist' in the world needs to have this beaten into them.

When you tell your audience to "shut da game off 4 best ending xd" to ward iff criticism then your game is pretentious shit made by pretentious untalented faggots whose work is praised by illiterate artless pretentious faggots like you.

You sound mad user.

I'm mad I can't drag uncultured relativist illiterate faggots like you out in the street and beat you with a shovel for being your artless lazy idea of writing into video games. You've ruined other artistic mediums from shielding your shit work from criticism by saying you're DECONSTRUCTING or MAKING STATEMENT and in turn making yourselves into geniuses in the eyes of other lazy untalented pretentious faggots who can't meet objective standards when it comes to writing and storytelling.

Get off my board and go back to playing Gone Home while writing your dissertation on the meaning of life from playing Depression Quest in between breaks of smelling your own farts.

Thanks, user.

Can you think of a reason not to be upset that a bunch of people who didn't give a shit about our hobby is trying to tell a "story" at the expense of said hobby? OP confirmed for under the age of 20.

Bu he does

Because being "Self-Aware" doesn't mean a thing if you just proceed to do the exact same shit everyone else does.

I know Holla Forums is mostly retarded, but this takes it to a whole new level.

Not an argument. :^)

Sounds like you're putting words into their mouths and refusing to consider what else their intent could have been. Or, as put it, mad.

I don't think Spec Ops is a deconstruction, I think it's a condemnation. You can't deconstruct what you play straight. The game plays the structure almost completely straightforward, but its only difference is in how it constantly changes the context. First it's straightforward, then it's means-to-an-end, then it conveys a disaster. It's not pretentious and it's not withour purpose; the way you're denying that just makes you look mad.

Well, if overcuck threads are allowed then why not? It's not like self moderation was ever actually used here.

It would've been a better condemnation if it hadn't been a rote description of what it was condeming.

He's accusing Gunbuster's writer and director of hating the mecha genre just because he went broke and got depressed halfway through making a mecha/superhero tokusatsu hybrid. NGE isn't that great as a mecha show but it is a solid, well-directed anime with good fight scenes.

This isn't even an Undertale thread, calm down.
Missed you.

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It's a losing battle m8.

Wow, you really are a faggot.

T: Yager employee. You faggots must be desperate to be shilling this game on a dying board, but i guess only making 4 games in 17 years because nobody wants to work with you will do that.

Did that game have even have feminism or anything "progressive" other than the gay romance between that unlikable dinosaur and that dikeish fish bitch?

MEMEGAME

In b4 you are banned for spamming.
Not like anyone could not see it coming. Learn some tact for fuck's sake.

Please, never leave us again.
You fill the void ass autist left when he left. We really do need someone like you here to stay sane.

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Please post a MEGA link with all of your images

>implying they won't

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MAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARK

Come on, you can do better than that.

The best goyim.

It also has a Boss Fight where the "peaceful solution" is basically Matchmaking the two enemies you fight so they go on a date instead of fighting you.

Both of said enemies are male and it involves removing armor and rubbing the muscles of one of em.

The vast vast majority of the "Progressiveness" is "Fans" seeing shit that ain't there and claiming their fiction for fact like tha x-Gender shit, Skeletons being niggers and Asgard being a cuck(Toriel and Sans both like Puns and Toriel left Asgard, but it is never really stated that anything more then friendshit is involved IIRC) and the like.

It is also shit, spews shit memes and even fucking FNAF is more deserving of its praise and hype.

And it is fucking NOTHING like Mother/Earthbound.

It's more internet memebound than actual Pop Culture Beatles/Rolling Stones Bound, honestly.

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Fuck it, gonna make an earthbound thread

Postan some neat fanart

fug i missed the fuck off tumblrtale faggot

>not knowing about genesis

Same.

yeah

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reported for being a pleb

same

Kill yourself. Your forced memes aren't even funny.

Cutting hands off, enslaving foreign workers and stoning women to death for moving outside the house without male supervision would then be measures to improve the population's happiness?

i forced my dick inside your mom lol

No, because the plot would be that you're a US general who comes into Dubai to protect the remaining citizens so they aren't without order and destroy other.

Konrad didn't mean to hurt anybody. But no one ever does.

But it would be islamophobe and politically incorrect to not allow muslism to cut off hands, enslaving foreign workers and stoning women to death! Stop being such a Nazi rightwing trumpsupporter!

All I know is, the game was shit for trying to pull guilt on shit the game forced you to do or else it won't let you progress.

Konrad also didn't mean to help anyone. The psych profile clearly says that this was a publicity stunt by him and that's about as close to the truth as we're ever going to get concerning his motivations.

It's neither the first game nor the last that tried to "guilt" the player into doing anything, yet autists like you seem fixated on it to an unhealthy degree. Next you'll saying Bioshock was an evil, manipulative game because of the whole "Would you kindly…" shenanigans.

Did you guys shoot the sand people after they hanged your guy?

I'm talking about guilting you for stuff you couldn't not do. Not guilting you into doing something.
Shit like the white phosphorus on the big gang of people in the trench. It was pretty fucking obvious to me that they weren't hostile, so I didn't bother with them until everything was clear and I was stuck on the mortar.
Didn't know what to do to progress, so I started lobbing things randomly, and what do you know, that let me get off the thing. Then they acted like I was Hitler for continuing the game.

No, bioshock was just plain garbage.

Mediocre gameplay with a story that tries to guilt-trip you. Pretty good attention to details on the characters as you go through the game though.

It's the only thing that makes the game stand out since the gameplay is nothing special.

Or the shit that comes slightly after where Radio man somehow hangs up two people and feeds you bullshit about how ebul they are or whatever, then commands you to kill one. There's a couple of snipers stationed up above that are very easy to see and very possible to kill, but even if you get them all at the same time, the game pulls an invisible sniper out of it's ass and then kills both of them, with the game acting as if you killed them, and will berate you based on which one the sniper kills first.

You're misinterpreting the purpose here. Like I said earlier in the thread, the player blames the developers for the happenings in the game the same way every character in the game lays the blame on their superior. Lugo and Adams blame Walker, Walker blame Konrad, the officers of the 33rd blamed Konrad too, the people in the city blame the 33rd, the CIA agents blame Gould. It's a recurring tame, the shifting of responsibility to who you/they perceive is in charge.

Lugo and Adams did the same with Walker, even though that was the only way for them to keep at their "mission" (and the same applies to the player and progressing through the game), yet they stuck with Walker and you finished the game.

That's the point the game was trying to make, it wasn't trying to make you feel guilty, it even lets you stand in judgement of Walker at the end.

So in other words, it was a shitty game, with shitty writing, after some pretentious nonsense.
Got it.

That whole scene was Walker hallucinating his balls off. Both of the men were corpses, there were no snipers, it was all in Walker's head, like every other choice other than the one in the end, it's all Walker trying to justify his choice to use the mortar by thinking up scenarios where there is no possibility of a positive outcome.

Great rebuttal there buddy. Thank you for proving once again that the detractors of the game's story are just butthurt idiots that think the game was being mean to them.

So what did I miss?

The usual Spec Ops thread we have every couple of months.

T:Yager development shill.

Just tell the leftists that you're playing as the villain and you're meant to hate him. That makes it all okay.

That wasn't because Konrad was vain, that's because Konrad had PTSD from Kabul. That's hinted at both in the first tape you find and in the ending where Walker gets gunned down. He felt he needed to do good for himself - exactly like Walker.

I'm not so sure about their supposed nobility. Both Walker and Konrad seem to want to be the hero and look for opportunities to display their valiant character. Hell, Konrad kills himself when he realizes that he had doomed his men to a miserable death to satisfy his ego.

Walker is repeatedly told and shown that his involvement only makes things worse for everyone, yet he keeps going forward because he desperately wants to be the hero, to the point he constructs a fictional Konrad in his mind to be the antagonist for his heroic tale.

Don't know why right-wing people get mad about this game when they are also isolationists.

Nigger Black Ops 2 has multiple endings and Advance Warfare added New game+
Even if setpiece shooters aren't your cup of tea, every installment has a zombie mode which is a game in of itself.

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Originally this wasn't the case. This game went through a 5 year development hell by a group of devs who had no prior experience in AAA releases and was salvaged to be a generic satire of the shooter genre.

You can tell that the devs had plans for the game to have more specific themes due to the amounts of loose ends the plot has and aren't really touched on, US spooks operating without public knowledge, Arabic oil sheikhs/politicians/business tycoons with the media they own and run (as evidenced by the tapes showing collaboration between the Dubai media and the upper class to play down the impending natural disaster, and general ineptitude of the US military when it comes to occupying other countries.

Somewhere along the line, the project couldn't keep up with all of the themes they wanted to include and still be able to make a respectably good looking game so at some point they decided what they had for a story was good enough. And it honestly is a completely average game with a decent story, but it's nowhere near the levels of Heart of Darkness in terms of narrative despite it being meme'd as that.

what surprises me it that people still talk about this forgetable crap

Fitting punishment for stealing, do you pity thrives?
Nobody forced them to come to SA, also western workers are thereated good in SA, only the pajeets are threated like they are suppered to be threated
Cunts had it coming

More like I think the game is shit because it forces me into positions where the only way to continue is to do their bullshit, regardless of sense, logic, or any basic thought.
You can claim sone shitty deeper meaning, but at the end of the day, it's just developer incompetence when it comes to making a decent story.

I don't object to the making the player feel like they did something wrong. Many games do that, and right. Hell, I ran into it myself, in the game, when I accidentally shot some woman running by in that one shack town.
Problem is when you get latched down with garbage that you literally can do nothing about. That is shit

Why not make them do hard and unpleasant labor to pay off what they stole?

They're looked down upon by literal subhuman. Sandniggers should be taught their place, because if you ever saw an Arab in the wild you'd know how arrogant and full of themselves the inbred filth are.

I agree, can't summon much pity for IRL women these days.

You mean like the vast majority of games out there?

You can try assaulting the troops without using the mortar though.

I see you're also mad the game bullied you.

I agree and disagree. There's two themes the game works on - the theme of PTSD, and the meta angle that refers to the player and devs. i.e "Do you feel like a hero yet?" You can argue they're both true and you're probably right, but I just feel it more natural to consider the PTSD their primary motivator.

Honestly, most of the examples that piss me off about the game design Spec Ops condemns aren't shooters nowadays.

Those always nagged at me, but it makes a lot of sense. It woulda been interesting to play the game they envisioned, but I did know how its turn into a condemnation was basically salvaging the project. I'm cool with it because they had the skill to pull that off, but I wouldn't exaggerate the game's worth. I just thought what it did was really cool and I'm glad it exists.

You should have died in Dubai, Carlos.

I remember I had a pretty clever idea for bypassing the white phosphorous thing.

What I did was bomb everyone in the front and then leave the tank and stuff like that in the back alone, but the game wouldn't let me continue until I finished the whole thing. Eventually I was killed slowly while staring at the screen for no reason even though I had killed anyone close enough to actually shoot at me.

I don't mind the parts of the game that blame the protagonist for his actions, but the "meta" commentary on video game violence or whatever seemed like it should have just been skipped. It really wasn't necessary for the story and reduced my immersion.

Game would have been amazing if instead of forcing you to do disagreeable things, you actually had a choice, but that would not be one you would take because there would appear to be no choice at all.

And no, stopping the game is not a choice. It's retarded, don't bring it up. It has to be a choice within the game.

BUT IT WAS SUPPOSED TO BE SHIT: The Game

What would be the point then?
All players would chose "good" option then

The point is that the "good" choice would not be apparent. In fact, the game would psychologically railroad you into thinking you are playing a linear game, but there would be concealed choices here and there. It's the kind of thing most would only know about in a new playthrough after reading about it online (or maybe, on a second playthrough, some small new bantz between the soldiers would give hints about the other possibilities).

How to pull that off is obviously difficult, but it's possible.

The central theme of the game simply doesn't work. You can't criticize a player's role in a story they no influence over, the only path available is the one it gives you and the game condemns you for taking this route. A great example of this is the white phosphorous scene where the player is automatically killed if he tries to not use it against a much larger force. It could have just as easily been two sequences; one where you point and shoot, eliminating the enemy with ease but killing the civilians, or a long, challenging combat sequence where you don't even see the civilians and thus don't even get the gratification of unintentionally saving them. If you present only one path you can't criticize the player for taking it, the game yells at you for something it forced you to do. The problem is that the game will call you a monster for merely playing the only option given to you, you can only fight your way to the center of the city to confront the commander, you can't fight your way out to inform your superiors of whats going on inside of it (the job you were sent to do). The game goes so far as to imply the best ending to it is to simply stop playing, which is unacceptable considering that the game was sold for $60.

Pretentious or not, the game's story simply doesn't work without the player being able to make any significant decisions. The game can't call you out for trying to be a hero and becoming a monster because it offers no alternatives save the asinine idea that you should just stop playing something you paid for.

Most games are not so blatant about it. They don't tend to force you to murder civilians in order to progress. ' Least not without "you will die if you don't" believable hostile action.

Maybe so (though to my knowledge you can't win if you do that. The game will not let you), but if you do choose to use it, you should have the option to get off when you want, rather than be forced to bomb the clearly non combatant bunch.

What the fuck is the source for the top half of that image and, less urgently, the bottom half

There's a movie on dune coon intrigue?

but user, you are just mad, yager can literally do no wrong

WALKER. The game calls WALKER a monster for going his own path, doing whatever the fuck he wants and justifying it by blaming it on someone else. NOT YOU.
FOR FUCKS SAKE Not everything you do in games is supposed to be reflective on what the player would do. When I played Spec Ops not once did I ever think that I was being criticized by the game, for playing the game.

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...

You assume the game is entirely about criticising the player's role in the story.

So why does it make you go go through all that? Two reasons. First, to set up the tension; the player is one half, the developer the other. Second, to build into the game's second major theme, PTSD, where soldiers get thrown into shit situations that leave them feeling hollowed. Even if you aren't at fault for something, you feel like you did.

Most gamers are happy with a linear narrative that meets their expectations. If it's a violent game and the player character is meant to be heroic, then the narrative is expected to justify their violence. When the narrative fails to justify the gameplay, i.e the game's core, then there's a case of cognitive dissonance. Spec Ops sees this mistake, takes it, and makes it a core part of its narrative shift. As the narrative stops justifying the characters, everything becomes more and more deranged.

That's where the criticism of a linear game goes in. Walker berates constantly about not being given a choice. In the game's world, he's wrong, but in the meta sense he is completely right. You aren't given an option, and in that sense the player relates to Walker whether he wants to or not.

Iunno, fam, sorry.

vietnam is a setting that this kind of game flat-out belongs in but it'll never happen, mainly because that studio has long since been gutted of actual talented people, not to mention the fact that it basically already was apocalypse now

fuck, where'd the rest of my post go?

Meant to add: it's not. The game's narrative bashes the player and the developer equally - perhaps the dev moreso. The developers, and their surrogates in the plot, are the ones who made Dubai a linear hellhole you can't play through the way you want to. Most linear games build the game around a way that will meet the expectations of most players who pay attention - Yager instead deliberately did the opposite. This isn't making a game shit on purpose, it's making a game compelling while being uncomfortable. Respect the difference.

"no"

Just like how Bioshock was supposed to be? At least, it isn't as bad as Bioshock but that is a shitty excuse.

ok

I don't mind deranged, I don't mind feeling bad for what I've done. What I mind is bring forced into it by gameplay means. Being forced into something I shouldn't be.

Basically, I want the world around me to force my actions. Not being unable to exit the chair when the job is done.

Exactly, Anno didn't hate mecha (fuck, when Gainax execs were unsure to have NGE be in SRW, Anno forced them too saying that he would love to have his creations fighting alongside the classics and there's the story where he called up the SRW series producer in 2 in the morning just so he can ask them to add in Gurren Lagann) but you know what Anno hates? Moe.

And the writers failed to do what they originally intended which lead it to being a generic and hollow shooter. I already explained
that it was missing important components to actually make it the Apocalypse Now of video games. It failed to fully tell the complete story so instead it's just an average video game.

Not really hard, you just have to not present options in a dialogue choice or menu. Let the player look at their environment, consider their tools, consider their situation, and let the problem play out. Even have not doing anything be a viable and best solution to certain situations. Never force the player, but let their instincts guide them, because most will just take violent immediate action because it's a video game, and they're so used to being told what to do, you can play in their pre-conceived notions easily.