You did have a choice. You could have stopped playing at any point and refused to go any further. But YOU chose to keep going. YOU kept going and committing atrocities despite hating yourself. Don't blame the game for making you do it, blame yourself for not stopping the game.

THAT is the point.

The game does give you a choice. The choice is not "how do you proceed", with a good and a bad option, but "do you proceed", where proceeding is the bad option. The design is meant to draw parallels between how Walker doesn't question whether what he does is worth eventually getting to Konrad and how the player doesn't question whether the morality of their actions justifies getting to the end of the game.

If you say that "not playing isn't an option", congratulations! You've empathised with Walker on a deeper level, because you share his obsession with getting to Konrad.

>Your whole reason for being there is to recon, "Find out what happened to Dubai". That is the main objective of the game, and the only way to achieve that is to finish it.
It's not. If you play through the opening of the game again, your mission is to enter Dubai (which you do), locate survivors (which you do), and leave to call in air support (which you **** up to the extreme). Konrad even reminds you of it at the end of the game, because Walker moves forward under the pretense of the mission when he's actually focused on finding Konrad due to his obsessions.

>Spec Ops plays out like any other game, so you treat it like every other game.
That's deliberate. If you didn't play it like every other game, it wouldn't throw you so many curveballs.

> There is no feedback for quitting the game that indicates it was the right choice, or even a viable one.
Because there are no "right" choices. It's the morally better choice, but the game doesn't reward you for it because you end up leaving Walker's story unfinished. The point of the segment isn't that you literally stop playing and feel better about yourself, it's that you're meant to understand the cost of progression. You never *have* to use the white phosphorus: nobody else forces you to press that button and make that decision. It's your own desire to advance that brings it about, and therefore, your alternative is not advancing.

Sort of piggybacking on your comment, I kinda have the same issues with the message that Spec Ops: The Line tried to convey. During that scene, you are given no other option to progress. Claims that you could just "stop playing" as a means to progress while preserving your morals opens a quagmire of more questions rather than solving it. Would it be just as valid a response to mod the game in such a way that there exists a more idealistic alternative? Many would say no, arguing that as we are not the developers, this approach would not be canon or the "true" approach. If so, then why blame the player for taking the WP route?

If anything, the real monster here shouldn't be the player, but rather the developer. Without providing suitable alternatives, the use of WP is ultimately the most justified option simply because the alternatives are invalid. To taunt players for making such a decision would be hypocrisy when the developers have offered unsuitable means of progression through any other means. Yes, leaving could be seen as a valid option, in that we would not need to see any end cutscene or reward to know that it is probably the most morally best approach. Great, no more blood on our hands. But that videogame can no longer be viewed in a vacuum; modding the game for a better alternative is just as valid an approach.

I understand that the purpose of Spec Ops: The Line is to provide players with morally conflicting set-pieces that may speak to the larger issues surrounding modern military shooters and the ethics surrounding actual military interventionist policies. But the way it does so by constraining moral options ultimately robs player of owning those actions and relating to its message.

If anyone reading this disagrees, please do not hesitate to respond. I genuinely want other thoughts on this as I have been thinking a lot about this game and its message lately.

You could mod the game, but all you'd be doing is rejecting the reality presented to you in favour of one that makes it seem as though you're making the morally correct choices. The value of your choice is nullified because it's no longer made in the difficult context put forward by the developers in the first place: you could mod in a better alternative, but you'd no longer be playing the original game and you still haven't confronted that specific moral choice. We can't warp reality to suit our needs in the real world, so doing so in the game is meaningless.

>To taunt players for making such a decision would be hypocrisy when the developers have offered unsuitable means of progression through any other means

It's not hypocrisy, it's exactly the point of the decision in the first place. The game doesn't throw you a bone for not completing it because it's a part of the game's design: Walker's story, and by extension that of the player, only resolves itself when he finds Konrad and faces his own choices. Unless that point is reached, both you and Walker are leaving it incomplete, and you're meant to feel like that, even if it annoys you. Giving up is the hardest choice, because it doesn't give you closure, just like it wouldn't give Walker closure. Welcome to the interactive artform.

The point the game is trying to make is that, as a player, you seem to progress for the sake of progressing. You're capable of making moral choices in the game without coming to a halt, but ultimately pushing to go forward has to have its own consequences. As a player, you perfectly match Walker's deluded mentality: you want to strive to the ultimate goal despite the cost, you feel frustration at the choices you are being "forced" to make, and you discard the idea of stopping as being valid.

Firstly, thank you for the thorough response. I wasn't trying to ruffle anyone's feathers with my comment and was hoping for a well-intended debate (hope you didn't see it that way, I come off as a douche sometimes).

Secondly, I agree that validation for choosing the morally right option is unnecessary. In this case, feeling "incomplete" would be a small price to pay for maintaining Walker's/the player's morals. Giving up would be the most sound choice. My suggestion of modding comes from my opinion on how leaving the game opens up other questions about player involvement. If leaving is valid, then it is safe to assume that the decision in the game to press on never happens if I leave. However, this outcome is the only one written in the game. Because of this, I feel that even if I left, those actions would still be committed even without my involvement.

But it wasn't the story or its message that I had issues with. I loved the story and was ecstatic when I heard that there existed a military shooter that deconstructed choices in other military shooters shooters. It was how they conveyed that messaged that I had issues with. The choice of leaving the game or pressing on and seeing the death of all thousands of innocents felt lacking. As a player, I felt that I could not own my actions if the choice was as made like that. I wanted the developers to make me feel awful, as if I really committed all those atrocities that Walker committed when I decided to press on. But I felt that because of the way the choice was represented, there was a rift between Walker's actions and my own, and that I was simply going along for the ride. When that happened, it became easy for me to rationalize my own involvement. Maybe that is the ultimate message of the developers: how easy it is for players to rationalise difficult choices and the problems with how players do so.

I wasn't frustrated, just a little disappointed in how it's message didn't resonate with me as well as I was hoping.

Thirdly, I admit that calling it hypocrisy was a heavy-handed comment on my part and I apologize for that. It's just that I felt that calling the player a monster made me wonder about the developer's role in creating these conditions. To me it felt like someone threatening to kill me if I did not kill another another person; of course I would feel awful about my actions, but I feel a larger part of the blame would fall onto the one whom made the threat. In the game, the 33rd were the first to fire upon Walker as they assumed that he was with the CIA operatives, if I remember correctly. It feels similar in this case, but if I am wrong, please let me know.

Lastly, the fact that Konrad was just a fabric of Walker's imagination lessened it's emotional impact as I was more inclined to believe that Walker had less of a choice than what I believed upon seeing that ending.

Once again, thank you for the response.

>OH YOU COULD JUST STOP PLAYING
But this is the idea. The designers said that it's a perfectly valid option to stop playing the game at any time. That happens to be one of Walker's choices: when you quit and never continue, Walker leaves Dubai and returns with the info he's gathered.
The choice to continue forward has its own consequences, and your obsession with it is ultimately Walker's, in that you want to see the whole thing through to the end. Walker doesn't want to give up on meeting Konrad and finding someone to blame, especially if it isn't himself. You, as the player, don't want to leave the narrative in a way that feels half-finished: you want closure as much as Walker does.

When you, as a player, demand to advance, and choose to do so despite the costs, you are acting exactly as Walker acts. You refuse to leave when you should know better, you abandon your original mission and commit an atrocity in the name of your personal motives, and you end up angry: you didn't have a choice, so how could you be punished? But the fact is that you did have a choice, and you didn't want to take that choice because it would have left you feeling incomplete, even if it was the right thing to do. This is what Walker's obsession with Konrad does in the exact same way: he feels that he couldn't have chosen differently, but the fact is that he could have chosen to leave it alone.

I think this is the most powerful part of Spec Ops as a player experience: every action Walker takes as a totally mentally deranged man is exactly the echo of the player in a video game who wants to complete a story, who wants to believe they're the good guy in a situation, and who wants to attribute faults to the world rather than their own failings. Walker is the video-game mentality in a realistic character, to the point where he can choose to shoot his rescuing force for the hell of it.

That's just because you want your choice to be validated, but the game doesn't tell you it's completed because Walker doesn't think it's completed.

>What your saying is that wasting $20 is a smart idea and a valid option.
It is a valid option. What "waste" means is entirely subjective: do you feel as though you are owed the game's ending simply because you already invested something into the experience? If you do, you're mimicking Walker's own emotional blindness throughout the game: he doesn't want to stop because of everything he's had to do so far to get there.

Ultimately, Spec Ops has no happy experiences. You don't get any extra value added from being able to skip past the WP scene, because the rest of the game is based off that decision. Your money's worth doesn't come from going home, because you'd still be missing out on content.

This is the crucial connection you form with Walker: you feel as though you are owed something, and will pay any price to get it, but you don't consider the alternative to be a valid option. Spec Ops plays on that feature of the medium, that you will literally be leaving something incomplete if you choose to not take Walker any further in his obsession with Konrad, and it makes you feel frustrated.

What part of the writing wasn't up to your standards?

Do you want a "Walker died on the way back to his home planet" popup when you decide to stop playing the game? I don't, since I feel it would have made every choice in the game less meaningful. The whole emotional impact of the WP scene would have disappeared if you were actually shown the choices available, instead of experiencing them from Walker's mindset and therefore discarding the choice to give up out of personal desire.

The game forces you to pick the WP scene or stop playing: if you feel this is bad design, you haven't understood the relationship between Walker's experience of that scene as part of the narrative and the player's experience of it as part of gameplay.

If you still feel this is bad design, then maybe Spec Ops simply isn't the game for you. This is something you risk with media: it isn't obligated to appeal to you.

>95% of the game is scripted
Sure, but that's all other characters.
From what I remember, the game does very little in forcing your decisions: Walker is always under your control, he's just put into difficult situations. If you can't handle the fact that a situation can force you to make choices you'd rather not make, Spec Ops might not be the game for you, because it's a game about making difficult choices in difficult situations.

You don't feel responsible for Walker's actions, you feel responsible for the decisions you make when you control him, and you're meant to empathise with him/feel disturbed by him whenever his obsession with Konrad pulls him into those difficult situations.

The game developers haven't scripted the game for you, they've just put you in a series of situations where they say "if you want to proceed, you will have to do x", and as a gamer you don't make the mental step of asking "do I want to proceed", you just do x. And whenever you do x and it turns out to be a bad thing, you feel what Walker feels, which is that you've been forced to do x, but you're ignoring the fact that you're not forced to progress: that's the choice the player makes on their own.

The game is not "here is a world, go make decisions in it", it is "here is the hard decision, how do you pick". If you don't feel responsible, it's because you're experiencing the same denial that Walker experiences: you think the goal is paramount, so the options in how you get there are the only important ones, rather than questioning whether the goal is worth the options.

Given that discussion on FJ is usually pseudo-autistic ******** , this was actually pretty interesting.

I guess when it comes down to it blurring the lines between gameplay mechanics and narrative devices (Such as Bioshock, playing off the linearity and blind following of objectives) is always going to break down if you think about it too much.
That being said, techniques such as that should be applauded as they are a lot more powerful in actually evoking an emotional response. The alternative being the simple picking from a few preset options seen in most modern games, which still feels very artificial.