They could have killed him in the movie length pilot, it woulda be fantastic, but noooo - fucking lib power fantasies "I went to school so obviously I'd be the best at crimes if I weren't so good"
I slightly bristle at all the "we could [insert hypothetical fascist culture con] so easy!" comments many, including myself, sometimes make as well, it's detritus from being converted liberals. We all were, handful of possible exceptions available, it's nothing to be ashamed of but it is something to notice and potentially change. That said it's probably more true than the true lib examples.
yea its like criticizing red dead redemption because you can't play entirely nonlethally. the point of the fiction is to analyze the topics via the player character. its not an RPG (it has like 2 or 3 'decisions' you can make in cutscene/QTE scenarios that lead to 2 or 3 slightly different endings that are all kinda depressing) its a linear 3rd person cover shooter. COD: Black Ops 2 is more of a choice based RPG than this. the whole point is that the war crimes feel the same as the normal gameplay, because normal military shooter gameplay is already making horrible things like war and murder feel 'rewarding' and 'compelling' and 'satisfying'. how many times have you executed a wounded or 'downed' enemy in video games? perhaps even with a fancy animated 'execution'... its a war crime.
Spec Ops The Line is a fantastic game that just so happens to be a thorough deconstruction of the generic power fantasy military shooter so naturally gamers hate it for making them question why they enjoy playing games like Call of Duty or Battlefield.
When are pounding down cross-promoting snacks and beverages while killing otherfied "terrorists" in Cawadoody and mildly grumble about predatory monetization but blame the wokes for it
How dare a piece of media, I product I bought, challenge me by pointing out that the standard media of this type depicts horrific acts. Clearly it wants me to feel ashamed for playing, and not to reflect on why it's so uncomfortable when highlighted, but so banal it goes unacknowledged when not?
Could I use this moment to grow? To ask how we got here and whether we should stay here? Certainly not, because games are masturbatory toys of indulgence and nothing more. Unless of course I'm defending how I spend my time, then they're art.
Can you imagine the backlash though? From chuds and boomers alike.
I spend too much of my life in games (board, social, or video I play them all!) and I really do wish more people who enjoy them were interested in critical analysis of them. Outside of gamedev circles and weird youtube channels asking "why is this being presented the way it is?" is a technique for speedrunning slur%. Especially if a game is non, or non traditional, narrative. Like I dare you to try analyse the themes of slay the spire or whatever on the subreddit haha.
Shout out to the time SUPERHOT tried the "Stop playing the game! I mean it! You'll be responsible for the consequences!" thing and I just ended up shutting it off and never playing it again
I actually agree. Giving the player no option then scolding them generally isn't effective. Give them two horrible options? Sure. Make them make a choice. If they didn't make a decision it generally doesn't land.
People continue to defend their design choice even though "uh aktually you could prevent bad thing from happening by not continuing" has never worked for other media. Imagine people saying this shit for a novel. If it's not a real choice, then whatever you do to continue the game is functionally the same as turning the pages of a novel. It's whatever set of mechanical motion that is needed to advance progress in consuming the media.
any other propaganda military shooters doesn't give you a choice neither. yeah i agree it's bad as a morality to system to just say "well if you wanna be good just quit" but spec ops isn't some rpg it has all the mechanics of its genre including the lack of choice but it's opposing their dominant narrative. if you had the option not to murder the civilians i think the impact of the game would be lost.
And they're not trying to make any statement or impact to undercut the dominant narrative. They don't want players to question, they're reinforcing what the player already believes.
The game doesn't need to give you a way out. But for the moment to be impactful you do have to manipulate the player in to believing that they made a decision and are thus culpable for their actions. Players have to feel ownership of what they did to feel shame, remorse, and horror. If they had no choice except "press x to do warcrimes" or turning off the game they'll press x and grumble about being railroaded by the story.
I actually agree. Giving the player no option then scolding them generally isn't effective. Give them two horrible options? Sure. Make them make a choice. If they didn't make a decision it generally doesn't land.
For similar reasons, CDPR storytelling generally doesn't land for me.
"Do you want to be a selfish asshole, or at least a pragmatic asshole... or do you want to care about those pitiful NPCs over there?"
"I want to improve society somewhat."
"HAH! GOT YOU! Actually those pitiful NPCs were extra evil murderfuckers and you just allowed them to murderfuck. Get with the program and start being morally grey already!"
That's not at all accurate, to the point that I'm struggling to even place what you're referring to. I think it's about how if you help guerilla insurgents in the first Witcher game smuggle weapons they later assassinate someone? That was a big "wait, you're telling me the rebels fighting a war use violence to accomplish their goals and aren't just heckin wholesome peaceful YA novel protagonists who win by being ontologically good and having plot armor like in every other game, movie, and book that gets mainstream attention in the US?" shock moment for western gamers whose consumption of hollywood treats left them without a framework for understanding that sometimes the materially and morally correct side in a conflict can still be doing brutal and underhanded things as a matter of material necessity.
I never got into the second game, but by the third one the overall moral tone is pretty clearly on the side of mercy and conservation, with sparing and helping magical creatures that are intelligent non-human persons that are just trying to survive being the clearly correct choice to the point that later on when you get put on trial by a werewolf for being a monster hunter a bunch of them show up as character witnesses to your defense. That's also the game where the narrator all but says "the real monsters are cruel and intolerant men" over and over, every aristocrat you encounter is some flavor of monstrous or dangerously detached from reality, and most of the plot ultimately revolves around trying to stop an extradimensional settler colonialist invasion.
CDPR are still libs, but they overall have a much more materialist understanding of how things fit together instead of the sort of mishmash of hollywood tropes American lib writers throw together based on vibes.
You actually do have an option IIRC, it just never tells you. It's supposed to highlight why the military is systemically bad and appears to remove all choice, even if individual soldiers could disobey orders.
You should have an explicit option to refuse war crimes, but then it should turn into something like a Hugh Thompson simulator.
CW war crimes
When news of the massacre publicly broke, Thompson repeated his account to then-Colonel William Wilson[6]: 222–235 and then-Lieutenant General William Peers during their official Pentagon investigations.[15] In late-1969, Thompson was summoned to Washington, DC to appear before a special closed hearing of the House Armed Services Committee. There, he was sharply criticized by congressmen, in particular Chairman Mendel Rivers (D-S.C.), who were anxious to play down allegations of a massacre by American troops.[6]: 290–291 Rivers publicly stated that he felt Thompson was the only soldier at Mỹ Lai who should be punished (for turning his weapons on fellow American troops) and unsuccessfully attempted to have him court-martialed.[5]
Thompson was vilified by many Americans for his testimony against United States Army personnel. He recounted in a CBS 60 Minutes television program in 2004, "I'd received death threats over the phone...Dead animals on your porch, mutilated animals on your porch some mornings when you get up."[16][7]
No one forced you to pick up a copy of Bland Early 2010s Modern Military Shooter: Pentagon Propaganda Boogaloo . You picked it up (ostensibly) knowing what it is and what it was going to include
Why use that image of edgeworth to make your point? That’s edgeworth standing on the right side of the courtroom, where he’s always wrong.
The whole point of the ace attorney games is if you are on the left, you are good and correct. If you are on the right, you are evil and wrong. And if you are in the center, you are either a hopelessly confused idiot, or evil.
No one forced them to tell their story in a way that robbed the moment of it's impact and made the player feel annoyed and hoodwinked instead of horrified.
The player could always make the choice to stop playing and turn the game off, and it even says as much during one of the loading screens so it’s 100% intentional. Often times the correct choice is one that is outside the narrow range of choices that are given, and I believe that was the point the developer was trying to make.
EDIT: It’s worth checking out the loading screen messages in the game, since these often give away what the devs intended, sometimes in an ironic way. Some examples:
To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless.
Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two conflicting ideas simultaneously.
You are still a good person.
The US military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants. But this isn't real, so why should you care?
Do you feel like a hero yet?
If you were a better person, you wouldn't be here.
Kill a man, and you are a murderer. Kill everyone, and you are a god.
The game works if you realize that there is no “bad apples” when they work for the empire, only “good apples,” and even then 9/10 times, they will volunteer to be a rotten apple for self preservation. Therefore, the only choices you have are to kill, kill, and kill.
But i don’t think Americans are introspective to be making media like that. I believe it really was just a dumb gotcha ‘mmmm hypocrite much?? ” game
Least enjoyable game I'm glad I played. Actual art. Hamfisted, leaned too much on using the term "Cognitive dissonance" as a magic spell to contain and explain, but well done.
Spec Ops: The Line, beyond being a pretty good game with a lot to say about the average gamer's enjoyment of military shooter power fantasies, also introduced me to my favorite band, the Black Angels, and I'll be forever grateful to it for that.