Can somebody explain to me the ending of this?

The game-play reminded me of Mass Effect 2 more then anything else.

So what other games tried to capture the Heart of Darkness or Apocalypses now feel? From those game, which one's did it right?

I think Far Cry 2 had some allusions to Heart of Darkness but I'm not going to spoil anything.

Walker's radio was broken, his men were just following orders and sticking together. The Radioman was the last person with any real command over the 33rd, as far as anyone else knew Konrad went in the tower and never came out.

The game really did a great job with character design, from all of the little bits of gear and the multiple different enemy designs to "Life's a Beach" on Lugo's baseball cap.

tfw the bad ending when you open up on the rescue team and say "gentlemen, welcome to dubai" into the radio

From what I hear it was dead on arrival and the devs were glad for it because it was a publisher requirement that took time away from developing the SP.

Yeah, it really gives you the feeling that Walker is a ball of burning hot rage that tears through everything living in his way. Especially when you consider just how many troops they throw at you at the end sections.

All they had to do was walk back to the storm wall and radio it in.

For all the flak it gets for the delivery of the messages and whatnot, I still had a good time playing it. It was a nice change of pace. The voice actors did a really nice job, too.

The cool little bits are the things you notice when trying to go out of your way (or do a second run). For example:
>The billboards at the starting areas of the game notice their contents closely
>Shortly after helping the soldier (Gould IIRC) there's a long staircase going up. There's a tree at the base of it, if you go all the way up and then go back down, you'll see that the tree is actually withered and has no leaves left at all

Oh, and special mention goes to the increasingly varied character command quips (there's even lines that specify certain elements of the environment, such as a rooftop, corner or some object) as you make progress and start getting tired, with your clothes and skin noticeably damaged.
Early game:
Lugo, take out the sniper on the rooftops
Target neutralized
Later on:
THAT GUY. I WANT HIM DEAD
KILL FUCKING CONFIRMED

When the dev was given the Spec Ops license they had two stipulations from the publisher. It had to be military themed and it had to have multiplayer.

Multiplayer was outsourced and you can notice it has a very different feeling compared to the singleplayer. To the point where the best ending in the singleplayer is the one where Walker finally puts the gun down and stops killing. Whereas by comparison in the multiplayer all you do is kill people.

The "Gentlemen, welcome to Dubai" line is even more interesting when you consider that it's one of the lines Walker says to his team when they enter the city. And Konrad later says it after Walker picks up the radio. It's literally a line Walker came up with.

No he wasn't.

This was something the devs actually spent some time working on. You can notice all three of the main characters have very pleasant conversation among each other, and their communication tends to be pretty by the book at the start of the game.

As the game goes on the player's execution animations get way more gruesome. You get ones where Walker bashes peoples heads in and so forth. It showcases how unhinged he has become as the events of the game have unfolded.

As has pointed out with
KILL FUCKING CONFIRMED[/spoiler]

Are the other spec ops games any good?

Not really. There hadn't been one for like 10 years before The Line. Think Medal of Honor in the late 90s stuff. They haven't really aged all that well. The Line has no actual connection with the previous Spec Ops games.

how do you explain the billboards at the start

Did anyone else mow down the civies after Lugo got lynched

I did and it felt so cathartic

Ishot over their heads and they ran off

>start up the chopper turret section again that was from the very beginning of the game
"Wait, wait this isn't right!"
"What do you mean?!"
No, no I mean we did this already!"

>another good mind fuck was right after Walker's fucked up dream seeing that eye of sauron looking thing
>get a checkpoint and drop down to shoot guys around a yacht
>fuck up and die
>instead of going to a loading screen, screen fades to white then back to the last checkpoint
>Walker holding his head swaying a bit
>"What the fuck?"

Sure the gameplay itself was pretty bland (though I would say I did enjoy how easily you ran out of ammo, forcing you to scavenge for guns during combat), but there was some really good moments.

I shot into the sky

That's what I loved about it, there were so much memorable moments. What it lacked in substance it more than made up for with style.

Yaeger are hacks who added some Heart of Darkness references and 2deep4u bullshit onto their mediocre TPS at the last minute so journalists and redditors would lose their shit.
(spoiler alert)

Honestly, if the combat was way better, I think the payoffs would have been far more crazy. You end up paying more attention to the gameplay rather than what's going on around you.

>objective complete: descend further

It was very cool that he was calm and collected when behind cover with full health and all panicky and wide-eyed when almost about to die

I'm pretty sure I've never actually noticed that. Neat.

>shopping mall area
>some headshot soldiers switch to mannequins

You forgot Lugo kicking down the door with an AA12 and a bad case of mad for you causing his death

Can't remember, doesn't that happen before he dies?
Doesn't it also not happen again if you fuck it up and die?

It happens after he dies, near the end of the game.

After you kill him again it turns out Walker was hallucinating as you kill a heavy soldier instead.

Aw man, why you spoil it for everyone on the board?!

You see, user, this is why god doesn't talk to you anymore.

Oh shit I forgot

I hope I didn't spoil it for anyone who just started it or wanted to pick it up

Spoilers can't span a linebreak. If you want to spoiler two consecutive lines just separately spoiler them.

At least it's all fake.

The real spoiler is that konrad is your son and he's evil and you have to choose between killing him or nuking dubai.

Also, reznov saves you at the end and kylo is ben's son.

YOU FOOL!

>the white phosphorus scene
>even just before you see Adams knife kill some poor guard, hilarious that he was just talking about the random knife wielding enemy you killed in the previous fight saying "That dude's crazy, he'd fuck you up"
>use that bird's eye view camera to aim your targets
>the closer to the end of the sequence you get, the more screams you hear
>reflection of your soulless face appears at the end on the screen

I love stuff like vid related and the posters having the general on them

Did you guys shoot the civilians? After I shot I got the trophy "the line" and felt bad

It does have turret section. Hell the game BEGINS with one.

I got this game for $22, then traded it in for $25, never actually walked away with more than I paid.

The guy was never there and everything was a delusion after the chemical attack only thing that fits.

To me that's either foreshadowing or an easter egg

I will never not love The Line for these two reasons:

That's the tree I was mentioning earlier. Nice touch.

I shot up to the air. I readied my weapon at first, thinking that merely aiming a guy would scare them off, but it didn't work. I hesitated and shot up - then they ran.

I did and felt good doing it.

HURR DURR GRITTY ATMOSPHERE
MC - "I don't like sand. It's coarse and rough and irritating and it gets everywhere."
Oh wow a prominently featured American flag, I wonder if the Yanks are gonna be the bad guys????????????????
white phosphorous is bad aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

The game is shit and you should work to improve yourself if you were actually 'moved' by this pretentious poppycock

I think people are taking this game way too seriously (even if the faggot dev wanted it that way) just fucking shoot some murrikans and sandniggers, listen to the good soundtrack and the game has some nice scenery like the expensive hotels and being on skyscrapers during a standstorm

I actually liked spec ops the line. I went in with the expectation of playing one of the most pretentious pieces of shit ever written, but I didn't feel like the game was trying to blame me for anything.

I didn't feel like I was responsible for Walkers actions. It just felt like I was watching a story of a soldier who wants to be a hero and just FUCKS up everything he does. Everything Walker does just goes to shit. It felt like I was watching one man's decent into madness. At no time did I feel like I was Walker or it was my fault that these events were happening.

I don't get why people shit on it for being so pretentious meta shit because it didn't feel that way at all to me.

But yeah the ending was kinda dumb, it didn't make much sense that neither of his comrades stopped him. They could've easily fixed it by having Walker only talking to the guy when he was alone, then the others wouldn't know he was just talking to himself.

war is bad you should feel bad did we mention war is bad and you should feel like a bad person for shooting people we explicitly made you shoot and war is really bad, no I mean it, it's really bad and you're a bad person for playing our super subversive game guys but not for buying t because WAR IS BAD WAR IS BAD WAR IS BAD

I really fucking hate people who think Spec Ops the line is fucking high brow.

Something about WAAAAAAAAR IS BAAAAAAAAAAAAADDDDDDDD. That strikes me as pretentious hippie cum sucking.

Gameplay was 3rd person shooter. So as to be expected, it was obviously an afterthought.

I know Neofag jerks off to it, and I could see why.

I don't consider it "high brow". I think the game actually loses something if you go into it thinking that it is since part of the game feels like it was intentionally marketed as a typical action game and subverts that expectation after the first few levels gradually.

It is ultimately a shooter where you mostly just shoot people but it at least tried to do something different compared to the vast majority that come out every year and are forgotten months after they drop.

If it wasn't for the fact that one of the developer answered with, "LOL WHY DID YOU KEEP PLAYING THE GAME IF YOU WANTED TO STOP!" I wouldn't think it was so pretentious, but really the fact the dev answered like that only affirms the message the game was trying to be against, since nothing matters, since its all a video game.

"Why didn't you stop?" because I wanted to see the ending, some fucking black screen. This is why you should never know anything about a creator and their works.

Reminder that even though it's blatantly obvious in the white phosphorus part, which is easily the most bullshit part of the whole game, that you're shooting at civilians in the end and it feels like the game forces you to do it, the focus testers of the game had no idea about it.

Reminder that focus testers are literal garbage and ruin games on a daily basis.

The changing main menu screen was also a nice touch.

This game was never intended to be about player choice, it's a fairly linear shooter, not an RPG. Why do people with autism confuse it with Alpha Protocol?

Maybe instead of being a faggot you should try making a post that isn't a cornucopia of buzzwords.

Yes, it's good and fun game design to force you do something and then shit on you for it. Totes awesome xDDDD citizen kane of video games omg.

Take it this way - the devs counted on player agency rather than player choice, and targeted their game to the COD audience, who expect nothing from their games other than whack-a-mole simulator. If you gave them C&C, they'd shit themselves - so we got a game that stayed in the mold and used it to the best of its ability.

...

Red Dead Redemption captured the Apocalypse Now feel well, specially in the West Elizabeth part.

Not really. There was only something like 5 or so missions in West Elizabeth and then the game ended. I remember I didn't even really know anything about the guy you were sent to kill other than John didn't want to do it.

I really thought the game was paced very oddly because you spend a huge amount of time chasing two people across New Austin and Mexico but West Elizabeth was like an hour long and then the game ended.

Wasn't that on purpose? I guess they were trying to make the player feel like the game wasn't over when Dutch dies so easily..

What I don't really get is the people saying that the game has multiple choices.
You're forced to use the white phosphorus in that sequence, right? How is that a choice?

Why didn't Walker stop? Why couldn't he just switch off the hero instinct and walk back to the storm wall and radio it in? Why couldn't you turn off the autism and leave the game unfinished?

There never was a choice. That's not to say that the devs are saying "hurr durr you're a horrible person for playing this game." Rather, these "choices" are Walker's delusions that he's still the "good guy," that this was the best choice he could make. He's so desperate to be seen as the hero that he ends up doing really horrible shit in the process and throws it aside to say "it was the only choice I could make in this bad situation."

This isn't a slight on the person playing the game, this was to simply show that, sometimes, some characters try to be "good" but end up becoming the most horrible, evil sonofabitch in the process. Think of Walker as Darth Vader type of character: he originally has noble intentions, but the path he goes down leads to some horrible things occuring, even though he still did think his way was the only option available, the "best choice" out of the other options.

There are a couple portions of the game where you get to make choices. I would encourage you to actually play it to see what the fuss is about and judge for yourself

Because they're "intellectuals" who think illusion of choice is something new.

Yeah, that's what I thought.
I remember asking this in another forum a long time ago and people were saying "there's a choice during that sequence: stop playing the game". It makes no sense.

I have the game but never finished it. I was bored by the gunfights.

This game is pretentious as fuck but there's some really neat parts, like how dying too much starts bringing up rather poignant or creepy lines in and the whole mannequin fight is awesome.
Too bad it's even more cringeworthy than "NUKES R BAD" t. Kojimbo, at least they should have let you slide right past the white phosphorous scene, like for a game that prides itself on allowing some outside-the-box solution it seems really unfitting to have such an important decision be forced upon you.

Do you feel like a hero yet?

You are really dumb for not getting it. Jewtube can help.

As deep as Bioshock Infinite.

The reason the white phosphorous scene is forced onto you is because as Walker states, he was forced into doing it. Or at least he thinks so. It's why he blames Konrad ultimately because Konrad forced him to use the white phosphorous to defend his team and not his shitty decision.

In this instance it's moreso a reflection of the protagonist's own personal flaws and why he did it. If they just let you sidestep that scene I don't think Walker's incompetence for command would have been showcased as heavily.

It's also that literally the rest of the game hinges on that scene occurring. Konrad talking to the player and Walker's own insanity throughout the rest of the game requires that scene to play out the way it did

isnt that guy a huge gamergate shitter and support the like of anita and the devs of sunset? I like his older videos though

I don't care what he is. His points are valid.

i dont disagree with you there

And then the lead producer (I think) left and some lackey who thought he was all that took over and tried to do the same thing
Only he changed it to Alice in Wonderland (baby's first literary allusion) because he's an idiot. But it sold like hotcakes because people are dumb and apparently really hated having to do a mission to get malaria pills every six hours.

And I, as the player, should care about it? Like why give some semblance of choice earlier and then get him killed by the same weaksauce mooks you kill in droves prior to that moment? They couldn't even think of I don't know, putting a bigass minefield or any obstacle that was obviously impossible to trek through? It's just shit writing, I'm telling you.

Yeah, nah.

There was an APC there, you know.

That's the thing.

The choice isn't actually that.

Walker task is to go see what's broadcasting into the storm.

You find it, first minutes of the game.

Walker decide to go after the wounded US soldier (I mean fair enough they're just right there).

Then instead of radioing back, report that there are insurgent, possibly deserters and US soldiers still fighting and alive in Dubai using the transmitter of the first level (which is his actual job) and wait for instructions, he decide to mount up a rescue mission of 3 people VS X amount of enemy, in hostile territory with no idea of what is going on (despite realizing that some of the insurgent are also US soldiers).

And he keeps doing it, the CIA guy, then end up fighting with the US soldiers (all he has to do is stop and explain), until the proper mental breakdown of slaughtering civilians he's trying "to help".

But he's never trying to help, from the start all he wants is being a hero, and charge at windmills.

You don't get a choice in all of those you as a player, but Walker as a character does.

It doesn't matter that the player is railroaded into using the mortars, it's not a RPG, but the character does get the choice.

There is no reason to kill US soldiers in the first place.

Stop self inserting, user.

That would be like if you could solve the fight against the Cyberdemon in Doom diplomatically instead of shooting him. It doesn't fit with the rest of the narrative or anything else really. Doom is a game about shooting demons. The Line is a game about good intentions getting warped and bad decisions being made. If the game let you sidestep that then wouldn't it just be like any other dudebro shooter?

Gentlemen, welcome to Dubai

Because there's hardly any mainline "deconstruction" games out there that aren't indie hipster shit. So when one comes along, the average normalfag is going to go "revolutionary!" when it's a style that's been done better in other mediums and can easily be done better in gaming without pulling the "why didn't you stop playing, man?!"

A shame because the best we got was this and it's essentially the third iteration of the Heart of Darkness story, the second being the movie Apocalypse Now.

Infinite just gave up at the end and tried too hard to one-up the twist from BioShock 1. Spec Ops was pretty consistent start to finish.

Come on Walker, why couldn't you just get shot already?

because you learn nothing otherwise.

It really pisses me off that has been a constant "2deep4u" theme in so many fucking games.

Its basically like saying.
"Why did you keep watching the movie if bad things where happening to the people on the screen?"

Its not a real ending in both cases. So its stupid to suggest that.

Because the stoy was intriguing until the very end when all the holes in it are revealed . But i genuinly enjoyed the way there, which is more than i can say for most single player shooters.

Well, gaming us a more interactive medium, so the message is a bit more impactful than it would a be on a movie.

A better example would go more like: "If you didn't like what you saw, why did you continue to watch?" Or something to do with the bystander effect or somesuch.

Well, reconsidering what I wrote, his last few point about "american military ventures" are kind of retarded. Not Full retard, but still slightly.

I figured you could melee one of them to show you mean business and they'd run off.
It did work.

Maybe instead of being a faggot Yager should try making a game that isn't a cornucopia of overhyped 'feels > reels' propaganda