Blood in the Sand in Spec Ops: The Line
Walk a line in the sand that's painted in blood... and worse.
Spec Ops: The Line is an escape from the usual dirt and brick of modern warfare to a post-apocalyptic fantasy kingdom of tarnished gold and sand-battered chrome. It's called Dubai, and hell on earth has never been more opulent. Towers that once proudly scratched the sky are now buried and bridged by immense dunes in the wake of a deadly sandstorm. Survivors huddle in boutiques and malls built to entertain oil barons and princes; the wealth around them meaning exactly nothing compared to the value of basic water. The ones who die of thirst... in some cases, they can count themselves lucky.
And that's in the *nice* part of town.
In case it's not obvious, The Line isn't your average shooter. Where most draw inspiration from epic war movies and heroic soldiers saving the world, Spec Ops drags it kicking and screaming from Apocalypse Now and Heart of Darkness. It's bleak, it's dark, and it wants you to think about much more than which guns you like best.
Take an early moral choice - one of many. You turn the corner to find yourself staring at two men hanging from a bridge, alive, put in your path by a soldier called Konrad - Spec Ops' not particularly subtly named Kurtz-analogue. One, you're told, is a water thief. The other is a soldier who, in apprehending him, ended up killing his whole family. Konrad demands you execute one of them - but which one most deserves to die? Do either of them? What if you execute both of them, or come up with a fourth option, like shooting the ropes? These are all possibilities, and of course, all have implications.
What makes these decisions more interesting is that developer Yager is focusing on shades of grey over right and wrong, and the further down The Line you get, the less likely you are to even find a 'best' amongst the bad options. You'll also be seeing the impact of both your decisions and the gruelling nature of them on a constant basis, not just in the world, but in your squad, as their professionalism crumbles in the face of betrayal, corruption and phosphorus-burned flesh.
One of the subtle ways Spec Ops conveys this is with the slow change of their personalities - affected, of course, by their respect for you and your decisions. Your left-hand man Lugo for instance, the team's newcomer, starts out with a quip for every situation. He's cocky. He's ready to take on the world. When you point him to a target that needs his sniping skills, you can expect a cheery "Watch and learn."
A few missions later though, after coming face to face with horrors like a line-up of charred bodies left to rot on a stage in a disturbingly spacious auditorium, he's out of jokes to tell. Maybe he's even lost all respect for you after watching you make a decision that led to an atrocity. Either way, when you give that order now, you'll hear a much colder "Copy. I'll take him out" from a man who just wants to live long enough to get home and get started with the therapy. His odds? Not great.
Even your own character doesn't escape this. As much as Walker is the commanding officer, with no choice but to hold the squad together, he's still human - and under immense pressure. You'll see him at the start as a father to his men, pulling fallen comrades to their feet with a stern but reassuring "Get up, you'll be fine!" By the end, expect a tormented, broken soldier reduced to roars of "GET UP!"
It's great to see a military shooter embrace narrative to this extent, and treat it as a core part of the experience instead of a mere way to connect intro and credits. It's not all about the dialogue though, with the setting itself playing a massive part in the story - Dubai offering endless scope for contrast and mirroring the story's emotional beats, as well as constantly keeping you off-balance as you fight. One minute you're fighting on what you think is a sandy platform. Next, you're tumbling through the floor into an abandoned hotel palace full of everything from exquisite columns to giant ornamental peacocks.
All this makes for an unusual style - and one it can be hard to remember is actually based on a real place rather than some Rapture style utopia. One particular double-take moment, just before sitting down with this preview code, was when I caught sight of a piece of concept art showing Walker's second squadmate, grenade-toting veteran Adam, standing bloody and bruised... staring out over a swarm of bright pink flamingos in the middle of the desert?
It looks silly, but no. It's Dubai. Dubai really has flamingos.
As an actual shooter, the action itself is - for the most part - very familiar, from the third-person gunplay to the main character being yet another hero with the voice of Nolan North. Levels are linear paths politely littered with lots of rocks, walls and other convenient waist-high stuff to duck behind. Turrets and vehicles break up the action every now and again. For all the individual psyche-breaking horrors of war, nobody seems to break much of a sweat at killing fifty guys by shooting them in the balls with an assault rifle instead of taking a Moral Decision to deploy white phosphorous. It's a scripted cover shooter. You know how scripted cover shooters work.
There are a few twists though, mostly based on sand. It's everywhere, obviously, both clogging up paths and creating convenient new ones, and mostly just sits there. With a little care though, you often get to turn it your advantage. When enemies are silly enough to take cover under glass piled high with the stuff, a few bullets can often end the fight instantly - or surprise you by bringing a Jeep crashing down into the impromptu sandpit. You'll also see its effect in smaller ways, from the enemy-choking clouds kicked up by a grenade to a demonstration of a torture method called "sandboarding".
The most dramatic moments though are saved for sandstorms. Glance back over your shoulder at any point during the game and you'll see the devastating, indescribably large one that prevents you looking at the next pile of corpses, deciding "Sod this for a lark" and heading off for a less morally-ambiguous warzone. Smaller ones show up on a regular basis though, and have an equally big impact.
You'll see these coming before all hell breaks loose, as the wind gets up and begins knocking details like background signs around. Soon enough though, you're in the middle of a swirling, chaotic maelstrom - and while sitting comfortably on your sofa spares you the full effect of their real-world power (an experience memorably described by Spec Ops' military advisor as 'like blasting a hairdryer down your throat'), there's no doubt that the rules of combat have changed.
First of all, your visibility drops - not by simply pulling a cheap fog effect in close to block your eyes, but by shifting light and colour and turning enemies into silhouettes that melt into the scenery. Depending on the strength of the storm, sneaking and stealth can now become viable options, countered by the way that the reflection and refraction of light through sand automatically turn a simple gunshot into nothing short of a flare punching through the murk.
All of this is on based how sand actually behaves in combat. You won't throw a grenade only to have it blow back in your face for instance, because that doesn't happen in reality. You will however have to chuck it without the benefit of the usual targeting cursor - an attempt to reduce their accuracy without turning Walker and friends into cack-handed buffoons.
At first glance –even through most of its opening levels – Spec Ops looks like just another military shooter to add to the ever-growing pile. In design though, it's trying something new - and on a narrative level, it's exciting. Forget the fact that technically there have been eight previous games in the series that nobody remembers - The Line is a brand new start, and a brave attempt to break new ground. Can it beat Heart of Darkness though? We'll find out on June 26th.
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