Eh, I feel the message of Spec Ops was really sabotaged by the poor in-game systems.
There’s a mission where you have to defend a point, and you get the option to drop white phosphorus. But that mission is really easy, and you can easily play it for hours and hours, killing an infinite number of enemies. It doesn’t progress without pushing the button.
And then it berates you, the player, for pushing the button.
This feels really weird to me. I can see the point in the distance, but it really doesn’t work for me, since you can obviously just murder people till eternity as well.
And the game has several hidden “better ways”, like shooting the rope at the hanging, where it will reward you for doing it better. But it doesn’t have that option elsewhere, like the white phosphorus option.
Honestly, there’s a big disconnect between some of the scenes, and the heavyhanded message.
Contrast it with “no Russian”, which is a map that’s offered with zero commentary, letting you shoot unarmed civilians, but not punishing you at all if you don’t. And no matter what you do, the end result is the same. That’s a system that fits with everything in the game, it doesn’t have to swing a message in your face, and it doesn’t have to break with normal gameplay to insert elements required for the message.
See, I always thought this comparison falls flat, because No Russian and Spec Ops both give you the same amount of choice - either you complete the mission or not - and both give you no alternative way to proceed and no way to prevent it other than close the game. That Spec Ops makes you push buttons for the bad thing to happen rather than allow you to chicken out and be a passive rather than active participant is a point in it’s favour.
Eh, I feel the message of Spec Ops was really sabotaged by the poor in-game systems.
There’s a mission where you have to defend a point, and you get the option to drop white phosphorus. But that mission is really easy, and you can easily play it for hours and hours, killing an infinite number of enemies. It doesn’t progress without pushing the button.
And then it berates you, the player, for pushing the button.
This feels really weird to me. I can see the point in the distance, but it really doesn’t work for me, since you can obviously just murder people till eternity as well.
And the game has several hidden “better ways”, like shooting the rope at the hanging, where it will reward you for doing it better. But it doesn’t have that option elsewhere, like the white phosphorus option.
Honestly, there’s a big disconnect between some of the scenes, and the heavyhanded message.
Contrast it with “no Russian”, which is a map that’s offered with zero commentary, letting you shoot unarmed civilians, but not punishing you at all if you don’t. And no matter what you do, the end result is the same. That’s a system that fits with everything in the game, it doesn’t have to swing a message in your face, and it doesn’t have to break with normal gameplay to insert elements required for the message.
See, I always thought this comparison falls flat, because No Russian and Spec Ops both give you the same amount of choice - either you complete the mission or not - and both give you no alternative way to proceed and no way to prevent it other than close the game. That Spec Ops makes you push buttons for the bad thing to happen rather than allow you to chicken out and be a passive rather than active participant is a point in it’s favour.