I distinctly remember them claiming that you had the choice to spare the dogs, but they would viciously attack you and blow your cover every chance you got so you literally didn’t have any other choice than to kill them sometimes. Then there were the plot related actions where the story took your choices away from you and forced you to kill a dog and torture a woman to death as Ellie.
And the ironic thing was that they claimed they wanted you to feel bad for killing people in the game and had the npcs yelling out the names of the people you killed, but I literally felt nothing.
Meanwhile when I played the first game and got to the hospital scene, I was so fucking devastated because I didnt want to kill the fireflies. Up until that point you had mostly killed zombies and deranged people who were directly putting you and ellie in danger. But the fireflies felt different. I was so devastated making my way to Ellie. The game did a fantastic job showing how Joel was crossing a line in his humanity in order to protect the one person in the world that gave his life meaning. It was at once a very beautiful and very tragic climax to a story about humanity in dire circumstances. So beautifully made.
Ain’t gonna sit there and cry over some random dog or some dumb npc named Jason when I’m forced to plow down hundreds of them while rarely if ever getting to attack zombies becuase they’re barely present in the game by comparison.
If you want to treat human lives as precious in your game, don’t make your player kill them by the hundreds the whole time. Fuck man. I sometimes wonder if Druckmann really wrote the first game at all or if he just took credit for some underling’s work because I struggle to believe that the same writer who wrote this emotionally complex game is also the same writer who pooped out its sequel.
Sorry for long rant. I just really hate that stupid game.
I played and liked the first game, but when I read the reviews of part II it reminded me of the torture mission in GTA5, which I absolutely hated. So I skipped it, and I’m glad I did.
Glad you did as well. It was painfully unpleasant and dull to get through. My friend and I genuinely didn’t enjoy ourselves once except for maybe when a heavily pregnant character decided to do parkour and be in active combat for a good part of the game. My friend and I are both women and we kept joking about how this game was clearly written by a man who doesn’t know any mothers in his personal life. It was so dumb.
There are really guys like that out there. One of the things I like about the character is even though he’s a psychotic murderer, he’s also loyal and will do anything for people he perceives as his friends (even if they’d rather he not come near them). There’s a good person in there somewhere, but he was either born with the mental problems or made that way through a traumatic childhood. Or both.
That quote reminded me heavily of Dishonored. As much as I love the game, they punish you with a bad ending for killing people and using all the cool powers provided to you (most of which are lethal), which I can concede that it is kinda dumb.
Ohh i do hate that. I don’t remember if 1 did it but they will change the hostility of people toward other NPC when you’re in high chaos in 2. Like in low chaos the npc would be nice to each other and talk about getting out of karnaca, but in high chaos the dialog changed and they straight up murder their friend. It’s unsettling that the dev basically blame you for the change of their action.
DOTO fixed this for me. I can chose whether to kill or not to based on my situation, not the ending and invisible system.
I feed these bugs tasty stuff that makes them grow big and strong and how do they thank me!? They break the machines that make them the stuff.
So what if I burned their forests to the ground, built autoturrets right outside their homes, ran them over with tanks and rained hellfire down on them just to test my fancy new artillery?
Spec Ops the Line is art. You don’t have a “choice” to not use the white phosphorus if you are going to play - but just like Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now - no one needs to be there/participating to begin with.
One of my favorite aspects is the way the ludonarrative/gameplay ties with the story.
spoiler
The enemies start showing up in unrealistic numbers, one of your dead squad mates shows up as some kind of mutated monster - it feels like the classic escalation in difficulty because you are playing a video game. But this is happening because your character is delusional and perceives it that way.
I’ve always wanted to teach a high school/community college elective where we read Heart of Darkness, watched Apocalypse Now and played Spec Ops - to see how the same narratives in themes are used in entirely different settings and with different methods of storytelling, but how ultimately they all reach towards the same message about humanity and war and cruelty.
The older Call of Duty’s (maybe the newer ones, haven’t played since Black Ops one) often had messages/quotes that were pretty anti war when you died, but were ultimately sabotaged by the story. Spec Ops is probably the best game at understanding how to use the FPS mechanics as part of its storytelling.
Sooooort of. I read ‘heart of darkness’ when i was way too young, but ‘apocalypse now’ and ‘spec ops: the line’, while similar, are clearly biting at different targets.
Where the central theme of ‘apocalypse now’ might read as ‘there is no civilized war, it is only ever madness, and to believe otherwise is not only madness, but incompetence. You play as children at heroism, and it is a lie. There are no heroes here. Not on your side, at least.’
‘Spec ops: the line’ could be read as ‘what the fuck is erong with you people? Why do you even do this? What the fuck is even in it for you?’ With literally the first scene being the implicit ‘you’ve heard this story before, we both know you have, no part of this is new to you. so why the fuck are you so god damn stubborn about not fucking getting it?’ Scolding less the pissed off 19 year olds who do the atrocities, and more the entire society that keeps allowing them to be so staggeringly violently stupid.
“You should feel bad for utilizing these gameplay mechanics we designed the game around. You monster!”
I distinctly remember them claiming that you had the choice to spare the dogs, but they would viciously attack you and blow your cover every chance you got so you literally didn’t have any other choice than to kill them sometimes. Then there were the plot related actions where the story took your choices away from you and forced you to kill a dog and torture a woman to death as Ellie.
And the ironic thing was that they claimed they wanted you to feel bad for killing people in the game and had the npcs yelling out the names of the people you killed, but I literally felt nothing.
Meanwhile when I played the first game and got to the hospital scene, I was so fucking devastated because I didnt want to kill the fireflies. Up until that point you had mostly killed zombies and deranged people who were directly putting you and ellie in danger. But the fireflies felt different. I was so devastated making my way to Ellie. The game did a fantastic job showing how Joel was crossing a line in his humanity in order to protect the one person in the world that gave his life meaning. It was at once a very beautiful and very tragic climax to a story about humanity in dire circumstances. So beautifully made.
Ain’t gonna sit there and cry over some random dog or some dumb npc named Jason when I’m forced to plow down hundreds of them while rarely if ever getting to attack zombies becuase they’re barely present in the game by comparison.
If you want to treat human lives as precious in your game, don’t make your player kill them by the hundreds the whole time. Fuck man. I sometimes wonder if Druckmann really wrote the first game at all or if he just took credit for some underling’s work because I struggle to believe that the same writer who wrote this emotionally complex game is also the same writer who pooped out its sequel.
Sorry for long rant. I just really hate that stupid game.
I played and liked the first game, but when I read the reviews of part II it reminded me of the torture mission in GTA5, which I absolutely hated. So I skipped it, and I’m glad I did.
Glad you did as well. It was painfully unpleasant and dull to get through. My friend and I genuinely didn’t enjoy ourselves once except for maybe when a heavily pregnant character decided to do parkour and be in active combat for a good part of the game. My friend and I are both women and we kept joking about how this game was clearly written by a man who doesn’t know any mothers in his personal life. It was so dumb.
Trevor scares me. He feel so real.
There are really guys like that out there. One of the things I like about the character is even though he’s a psychotic murderer, he’s also loyal and will do anything for people he perceives as his friends (even if they’d rather he not come near them). There’s a good person in there somewhere, but he was either born with the mental problems or made that way through a traumatic childhood. Or both.
That quote reminded me heavily of Dishonored. As much as I love the game, they punish you with a bad ending for killing people and using all the cool powers provided to you (most of which are lethal), which I can concede that it is kinda dumb.
Ohh i do hate that. I don’t remember if 1 did it but they will change the hostility of people toward other NPC when you’re in high chaos in 2. Like in low chaos the npc would be nice to each other and talk about getting out of karnaca, but in high chaos the dialog changed and they straight up murder their friend. It’s unsettling that the dev basically blame you for the change of their action.
DOTO fixed this for me. I can chose whether to kill or not to based on my situation, not the ending and invisible system.
There is a good version of that.
Claims moral superiority for never buying the game and instead buying Factorio
I feed these bugs tasty stuff that makes them grow big and strong and how do they thank me!? They break the machines that make them the stuff.
So what if I burned their forests to the ground, built autoturrets right outside their homes, ran them over with tanks and rained hellfire down on them just to test my fancy new artillery?
They’re the real monsters here
If they’re r strategists, that was just good neitzschean nurturing.
Wow! I was the good guy all along!*
*Except on Nauvis
Spec Ops the Line is art. You don’t have a “choice” to not use the white phosphorus if you are going to play - but just like Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now - no one needs to be there/participating to begin with.
As much a commentary on the complicity if the general culture and specific medium it comes from as the military type guy you’re playing.
One of my favorite aspects is the way the ludonarrative/gameplay ties with the story.
spoiler
The enemies start showing up in unrealistic numbers, one of your dead squad mates shows up as some kind of mutated monster - it feels like the classic escalation in difficulty because you are playing a video game. But this is happening because your character is delusional and perceives it that way.
I’ve always wanted to teach a high school/community college elective where we read Heart of Darkness, watched Apocalypse Now and played Spec Ops - to see how the same narratives in themes are used in entirely different settings and with different methods of storytelling, but how ultimately they all reach towards the same message about humanity and war and cruelty.
The older Call of Duty’s (maybe the newer ones, haven’t played since Black Ops one) often had messages/quotes that were pretty anti war when you died, but were ultimately sabotaged by the story. Spec Ops is probably the best game at understanding how to use the FPS mechanics as part of its storytelling.
Sooooort of. I read ‘heart of darkness’ when i was way too young, but ‘apocalypse now’ and ‘spec ops: the line’, while similar, are clearly biting at different targets.
Where the central theme of ‘apocalypse now’ might read as ‘there is no civilized war, it is only ever madness, and to believe otherwise is not only madness, but incompetence. You play as children at heroism, and it is a lie. There are no heroes here. Not on your side, at least.’
‘Spec ops: the line’ could be read as ‘what the fuck is erong with you people? Why do you even do this? What the fuck is even in it for you?’ With literally the first scene being the implicit ‘you’ve heard this story before, we both know you have, no part of this is new to you. so why the fuck are you so god damn stubborn about not fucking getting it?’ Scolding less the pissed off 19 year olds who do the atrocities, and more the entire society that keeps allowing them to be so staggeringly violently stupid.
“You’re still a good person.”
I feel like the questions you have about my loading screen text are all answered by my loading screen text.