Thousands of fools squeal about an excellent plot, without understanding the subject of discussion, while only a few say the opposite, without condemning the first, hoping that they simply did not play this product, and pass on someone else’s ridiculous idea to each other by word of mouth.
The superficial gaze of fools clings to the general picture, and they, following the method of deduction, form their opinion about particular elements only from the general. The reluctance to go in the opposite direction, that is, using the inductive method, dismantling individual parts, analyzing them and forming a critical opinion, gives rise to such an absurd thesis:
SPEC OPS THE LINE HAS A GREAT STORY
It’s not true and you know it. Can you feel it. This is what your subconscious is telling you. Unlike you, it analyzed everything, compared it with other examples from your memory, synthesized and concluded a conclusion called a verdict.
Listen to your subconscious and just accept.
Come to terms with it in the end.
Excellent can only be unlike anything else or superior.
The plot of “Spec Ops: The Line” is not famous for either one or the other.
Start asking questions. Right now. Leave your business.
What a great story should be? What should he have?
What is the main idea of the game?? What is the idea behind the plot??
Isn’t it common for fools to think “war is bad”?? Why then, does the main character kill the local population who took up arms, without much reflection, denial, or pity?? Why then does he kill his own American soldiers?? Why then do the 33rd battalion or the rebels not suffer about the war?? And if stupid military men cannot show war as something bad, because this is their job (and for some, the meaning of life), then why are ordinary civilians not exposed??
Okay, let the main idea be different – “evil lurks deep within us,” maybe? Then why, again, the conflict between the 33rd, the CIA and the rebels has not been resolved?? Why are the main characters, at the beginning, already butchers, who by the time with white phosphorus had already killed 500 people?? Is their cruelty somewhere deep down?? She does not come out under the influence of Dubai, she is present with them from the very beginning, she is on the surface. The murder of a DJ is not the result of the release of evil, the murder of two American soldiers who talk about chewing gum and inner peace is primordial evil.
Another theme could be “madness”, which only takes up half the game time, but this madness is pretentious, unreasonable and extends only to one character in the story. Remember the film by Francis Coppola, madness reigned in every action and in every character, every minute something unnatural and wrong happened on the screen, you wanted to shout “Horror”!", in "Spec Ops: The Line" there is no such thing.
Does the game really have no central idea?? Or this idea “all people are idiots”?
But there are quite a lot of games with a certain idea, I will give an example of the game “Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons”, in which the message about mortality, the obligatory death of everything vital, was clearly visible in many moments.
What should be the events in the game?? And how should they be connected?
In a “supposedly” realistic game, https://tropica-casino.uk/bonus/ should there be ordinary situations of military conflicts: arrival at a point, first contact, rescuing a hostage, capturing an enemy stronghold, using white phosphorus, flying a helicopter, etc? Do they have logical transitions between each other?? Do these events relate to the main idea of the project??
If there is no main idea, then is it possible to use everything that comes along the way?? Stealing water, blowing up a broadcast tower, storming an enemy base, shooting in a store and much, much more?
These events flow smoothly into each other, of course. The logic is preserved, they entertain the player, the game always shows something new. Events were made precisely for this purpose, without any pretension.
Remember “Bulletstorm”, when you got drunk on your ship, then fell to the ground, saved your best friend, drove away from a huge wheel, made your way into the local Godzilla’s cave, ran away from it. These were all cool events connected in a common sequence of actions. Designed to entertain the player between the beginning of the story and its end. In “Spec Ops: The Line” everything is the same, the chain of events is at the level of other shooters.
Should the beginning of a work and its end be connected??
If a character says "Welcome to Dubai" at the beginning, should he say it at the end?? What connotation do these phrases have?? What is the meaning behind them?? Is it clear that the hero went through a certain path between them that made him change??
And if the hero first stays in the city, should he leave it?? Why does it have to be this way?
Should a hero go through a journey and endure changes??
Let the hero at the very beginning be an insatiable killer who slaughters entire squads of both strangers and his own, should he remain himself at the end of the story?? That is, a madman who simply wants to enjoy the bloody harvest.
At the very beginning of the story, the hero appears as a confident soldier who does not care about orders, he does what he considers necessary. He doesn’t even try to change himself, try to take a peaceful path, retreat or think about what is happening. When he burns civilians alive, he continues to believe that he is right. More murders, more "disobedience". And when he is offered to steal water with a fight, to cause harm, the hero happily agrees, without thinking at all and without asking anything. It only suits him. And so, in the end, being absolutely confident that he was right, he kills the subconscious Conrod and the American detachment that arrived with the rescue operation.
You feel like a butcher from the very beginning, ceases to be a butcher by the end of the game? And I don’t feel.
But, for example, in the game “Life is Strange” the growth of the heroine is clearly visible. From an insecure quiet girl, she becomes a determined girl who is ready to take action. On the one hand, she is just a child and easy to change, but on the other hand, she is a soldier who has fallen into hell. Why doesn’t it break?? Why doesn’t it change??
Should there be good characters in a great plot??
Just look at the trio of heroes: the main character, whom Conrod once saved, a black man who is serious and another white man who makes “funny” jokes. This is all. There is nothing more inherent in the characters, they don’t talk about anything everyday, they don’t strive for anything, they don’t desire anything, they have no memory.
The main character is a fucking killer who just goes ahead without thinking about anything at all. This vision of the character begins to pulsate from the very beginning of the game. Instead of negotiations, shooting in the legs, stunning, capturing, retreating and other multiple options, the main character solves everything with one single method – murder.
His party members only obediently obey. “Subordination” you say?! “The order was to reconnoiter and leave Dubai,” I answer.
Does a good story need heroes who will be remembered and loved to this day?? Remember funny scenes with them and quote them. Do you remember how Tali drank alcohol through a straw?? And who owns the phrase “I’ve been sitting in this bar for about three hours – well, or about five years, depending on how you look at it”?
Should there be several parallel lines in history??
If the events in the present tense are too primitive (they killed there, killed here, deprived people of water, burned people alive) and do not have complex dialogues, reflections or even dry facts, is it worth making a second line of the story?? Is it worth paralleling the real event with a story about how Dubai reached such a critical state, with the intersection of important moments of both lines at the same points?? A single climax and a breakdown at the same moment.
Remember, for example, “The Talos Principle”, where, in parallel with the real events in which the player participated, the last days of the world were revealed. Calm misunderstanding at the beginning, confusion and uncertainty in the middle, longing for a future full of hope at the end were present in both lines. Both lines ran parallel, helping each other and creating the right emotional response. Or remember “Firewatch”, in which, during the revelation of the truth about the boy, there was pressure on both the problem of the main character and the problem of the main character, and all this was correlated with a huge fire that inexorably overtook the heroes.
In "Spec Ops: The Line" there is no parallel line, there are only a dozen pieces of information that tell separate unrelated stories, these are parts of the setting, but not the plot.
Does a surprise twist make a game’s plot great??
In general, plots consist of many parts: exposition, beginning, main part with many events, climax, denouement and epilogue. The plot can take 6 hours or much more. Does ten seconds of surprise make the other six hours great?? Let’s say you found out that a butcher, who killed people without any pity, suddenly became crazy. He began to hear voices and see illusions, after which he continued to kill people. What changed the realization that the hero had become crazy?? Raised some kind of philosophical problem? Turned the world upside down? And if there was no “this is a turn”? What would change? The hero would turn out to be a good-natured guy who screwed his guts onto the butt of a machine gun the entire game?
And even good twists don’t "make" the plot. Remember "The Old Republic" or "Bioshock", the twists in them were really good, shocking. But besides them, there were characters, a setting, a lot of text, dialogues and strong events – all this “built” the story, and not a moment of breaking the covers.
Should there be a clever idea in the plot??
Is it worth taking quotes from great thinkers for the game that would relate to the theme?? Is it worth investing in something more than a sequence of shootings in different places?? Is it worth coming up with a phrase yourself, based on the game??
Just imagine, the main character is a blockhead butcher who doesn’t care about orders and is trying to shift the blame onto someone else, either a DJ or Conrod. Would it be logical to introduce into the plot such an idiotic phrase as “only the strong can deny the obvious”? Definitely makes sense… for so-and-so’s character, but it’s fundamentally flawed, stupid, and sounds like crap.
Good quotes in video games are a dime a dozen. Even light action films like Far Cry 3 or Tomb Raider 2013 have them, but Spec Ops: The Line does not.
Should a good story evoke emotions??
Much has already been said above, the main character is a murderer, and when he kills someone again, it does not cause any emotions. When he burns forty-seven civilians alive (and judging by the cutscene at forty-five he doesn’t care at all), this should not affect the player in any way, because there are still five hundred killed behind him. Or do you only feel sorry for the mother and daughter?? Don’t you feel sorry for the soldiers? Their families? I don’t feel sorry for the civilian population who took up arms against the Americans? Don’t you sense a certain hypocrisy in all this??
I will, of course, contrast it with “The Last of Us,” in which attachment to Ellie made it possible to make the ending as emotional as possible. The developers do not try to evoke emotions from scratch, they smoothly lead to the climax, connect all the logical lines, the causes and consequences of actions, the aspirations of the heroes and their desires.
So in the end?
The plot of "Spec Ops: The Line" is a straight sequence of events with no idea, no interesting characters, no wise thoughts, no proper emotional charge, no parallel narrative and no character development throughout the plot. Only the beginning and end of the story are related. The rest is either emptiness or an average summer action movie.
Yes, exactly! It’s not a great plot, it’s an average plot. And as an average plot, it’s quite entertaining.
So, laugh or curse, ignore or scream at the top of your lungs.
But the next time you say or write “Spec Ops: The Line has a great story,” please be sure to add “… could have been."