Why I think Spec Ops: The Line is an important game

I finished the campaign in Spec Ops: The Line over the weekend. If you're not familiar with the game, it's a third-person shooter set in Dubai after apocalyptic sandstorms have ruined the city and decimated its population.You play as Captain Walker, who along with two Delta Force squad mates has been ordered to find out what the hell happened to the Army battalion that was supposed to have evacuated the residents of Dubai months ago. The game play is standard military shooter stuff, with a range of assault rifles, shotguns, and pistols, plus plenty of turret sections and even some on-rails vehicle moments. There is absolutely nothing new or especially engaging about the combat, the regenerating health, the rudimentary squad commands, etc.

And yet, this is a game that demands to be played. On second thought, perhaps "experienced" would be a better verb.

It's difficult to write about why I think Spec Ops is an important game to experience without getting into spoilers, but I'll try for at least one paragraph. What the developers at Yager and lead writer Walt Williams have managed to do is give us the anti-Call of Duty, a military shooter that focuses on story, emotion, and an understanding of the effects of war rather than a fun, thrilling power fantasy. I can count on one hand the number of games I've played over the last ten years that have produced an honest emotional reaction in me; Spec Ops is one of them.

Anyone who's played the game should listen to the Gamespot Spoilercast featuring an interview with Williams in which he discusses at length his and the other developers' goals for the game. He also dives into the details of the game's narrative and offers some explanations and interpretations for the events you experience while playing the campaign. He both reinforced many of the feelings I had while playing and also opened my eyes to a few things I hadn't considered. One aspect of the game that they didn't talk much about is something that's been on my mind since finishing it, though... and here's where spoilers are impossible to avoid, so beware.

MILD SPOILERS AHOY

So while the strength of the game is its narrative, and the impressive way that it uses standard, generic shooter mechanics to do interesting and novel things with the story and characters, I feel like possibly its greatest contribution to pop culture is as an examination of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. This is because it doesn't go out of its way to depict someone dealing with PTSD (although one of the possible epilogues certainly shows Captain Walker displaying some of the hallmarks of the disorder), but rather walks the player through a series of incredibly traumatic events in a visceral, emotionally engaging way. I would never go so far as to call the game a simulation of the effects of war; that would be both ludicrous and an insult to anyone who's served in combat or lived through those sorts of events. But as a piece of art, I think Spec Ops does an incredible job of offering one perspective on the horrors of warfare, of impossible choices, of feeling like the only way forward is to do things that make you hate yourself. It's not just that we get to see Captain Walker's mind fracture and disintegrate as he gets closer to and eventually confronts Konrad; it's that by having us play as Walker, even in a third-person perspective, we are forced to perform the horrible, disturbing, often necessary actions that ultimately drive him mad.

I'm not saying that playing this game allows someone to truly understand the consequences of serving in combat, nor to grasp the severity of the mental toll warfare takes on those who live through it. However, like all good art, I believe it does promote some small sense of awareness or conceptual understanding. To me, that's what makes Spec Ops: The Line a game worth playing.