Why Spec Ops: The Line Mattered

Hey, Mark here. So, this week, you may have seen the news that 2K has permanently removed the game Spec Ops: The Line from all digital storefronts… due to expiring licenses. And - if you’re not really aware of the game - you may have been surprised to see so much outcry for the removal of what seems to be a… pretty generic, brown-tinted, standard-issue military shooter… from the era of endless military shooters. But, well, that was always the magic of Spec Ops: The Line.

In this game you play as Captain Walker on a covert recon mission in Dubai - which has been largely buried under a catastrophic sand storm. And it starts out like your average shooter - with all the expected trappings of a modern military-themed game. You know: turret sections, a cover mechanic, collectible intel items, enemies yelling in a foreign language, and AI squad mates with snarky dialogue. But, pretty soon… things start to take a turn.

You end up fighting against American soldiers. An ally is killed. You’re presented with awful moral choices - where there’s usually no good outcome, no matter what you do. You witness how Walker begins to change - his generic combat barks go from professional to detached, to unhinged, and his appearance becomes tattered and ragged. And then, in chapter eight, we get the game’s most infamous scene. The player is led to believe that they’re firing mortars on an overwhelming enemy force - only for it to turn out that you’ve just dropped white phosphorus on an encampment of innocent civilians.

You’re then forced to walk among the dead and witness the true horror of your destruction. It’s a pretty harrowing scene that marks Walker’s true descent into madness and trauma - one that’s marked by visions and hallucinations. SOLDIER: "Walker! What are you doing?" Spec Ops: The Line is an uncompromising depiction of the psychological trauma of warfare. Lead designer Cory Davis says “by the time you get to the end we really wanted to express as strongly as possible what can happen to the psychological state of somebody who goes through these horrible events.”

So while it might start as a standard military shooter, towards the end of the campaign it feels more like a horror game. In fact - the unreliable narrator, the hallucinations, and the way you seem to always be descending deeper and deeper into the heart of Dubai… well this game often feels more like Silent Hill 2 than Call of Duty. But Call of Duty is exactly what developer Yager had in mind when making this game. Because Spec Ops was not really about war - it was about war games.

It was ultimately a response to all the military shooters that had cropped up in the wake of 9/11, and especially after the massive success of Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. Games like Call of Duty, Battlefield, and Medal of Honor were almost jingoistic propaganda pieces - showing American intervention as heroic and necessary. These games turned war into a spectacular rollercoaster of set piece explosions, and depicted soldiers as mythic one-man armies.

They featured startlingly realistic depictions of modern military hardware - and literally paid licenses to the companies that manufacture real-world guns. There might be some moments of reflection or horror in these games, but it could be argued that these are often simply there to rationalise the rest of the gameplay. In his book Playing War, Matthew Thomas Payne refers to these as a sleight of hand, saying they “underscore the need for exercising and maintaining military vigilance by personally visualising and experiencing horrors”.

And so before Spec Ops launched in 2012, that was basically all you saw in military games. Other mediums, like films and books, were always a lot more balanced. There are some films that show war as noble, important, and necessary - but they’re balanced out with films that depict war as an unmitigated nightmare. Stuff like Jacob’s Ladder, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Spec Ops’ most obvious influence, Apocalypse Now, depict things like war crimes, civilian casualties, and PTSD.

But video games didn’t really have that same balance. The vast, vast majority of games showed warfare in just one light. I mean, sure, there had been some games that were critical of war. Atari’s Missile Command was made to subtly suggest the sheer hopelessness of defending against a nuclear war. Amiga classic Cannon Fodder made a note of showing the graves and the names of those who had died in combat. And Metal Gear Solid has always been staunchly critical of the military industrial complex.

But Spec Ops felt different because it was a triple A game from a big publisher, and it looked exactly like all the other games being released around that time. Which was absolutely the point. Spec Ops was designed as a cheeky rug pull. The creators wanted Call of Duty fans to pick it up and play it because it seemed like yet another cool game about American soldiers killing foreign terrorists - only to be surprised and shocked by what happens in the narrative.

The creators wanted players to think twice about the narratives, tropes, and genre expectations that they’ve been peddled in the other franchises. That American soldiers are always the good guys. That video game players always get to be the hero. That when you are presented with a choice, you should always be able to pick the option with the best outcome. That war can be entertaining and enjoyable. Lead writer Walt Williams says “I feel like with so many military shooters, we sit down and put ourselves in the shoes of someone going through combat, and we don't feel anything other than the exhilaration of being on a roller coaster.”

The creators even wanted players to think about the games they buy. Williams said “the feelings that we want you to feel, are directly about you as the gamer choosing to sit down and play this game. What does playing this game say about us, about the games that we choose to play?” Over time, the game becomes less and less subtle about this message. The loading screen tips change from helpful notes about weapon stats to fourth wall-breaking whispers in the player’s head.

Williams says “we wanted to take it to the next level, where the player themself kind of felt like they were under attack. Not as the character Walker, but as the person playing the game”. Of course, making a direct attack on the people playing your game was always going to raise their hackles - and so Spec Ops was definitely the subject of intense debate - and at times, harsh criticism. Some players were frustrated that Spec Ops essentially forced them to be complicit in reprehensible actions.

Ultimately the only way to progress is to kill the people in front of you. Even the white phosphorous scene is mandatory - so even if you do twig that you might be about to kill civilians, there’s no way to back out. SOLDIER: "There's always a choice." WALKER: "No, there's really not". And so players can feel brow beaten for taking terrible actions that they had no actual control over. Williams’ suggestion that players can just turn the game off didn’t always wash.

And it received criticism for arguing that perhaps killing shouldn’t be fun… in a video game where killing is quite good fun, actually. Spec Ops is a very competent shooter, with a fancy back-of-the-box set-piece feature where you can shoot out glass to bury your enemies in sand. This is a game where you can do glitzy execution animations, and unlock an Xbox Live achievement for killing 75 enemies with a shotgun. French filmmaker François Truffaut argued that there’s no such thing as an anti-war film, because every war film is ultimately made for entertainment.

That’s perhaps doubly true for video games. But Spec Ops was never intending to make some definitive statement about games and war. Williams says “we don't want them to feel a specific thing. It's not designed to make you feel bad. The goal that we had going in was that you would just feel something." It wanted players to wonder why they didn’t feel much of anything when mowing down hundreds of combatants in the latest Call of Duty or Battlefield game.

It wanted to start a conversation about the relationship between war and entertainment. And that conversation is loud and enduring. Despite the game’s low sales, it is one of the most discussed, debated, and deconstructed games in the medium. I’ve included links to loads of video essays about the game, in the description below. It’s also a conversation that has continued through the games released since Spec Ops: The Line.

This War of Mine depicts the abject horror of war - but doesn’t turn you into a solider or a military commander. Instead, you’re an ordinary citizen just trying to survive while your city is under siege. Papers, Please isn’t directly about war, but it’s an incredible game that uses its mechanics to show how good people can be lulled into making heinous choices. Darkest Dungeon puts a focus on the psychological stress faced by its cast of warriors.

Undertale gives you a choice in how you deal with every enemy and boss in the game - ruthless violence, or diplomacy? And The Last of Us: Part II looks at a conflict from both sides, and forces players to reevaluate their allegiance to certain characters. And right now, this question - of how games should depict war - feels more important than ever. It is, frankly, impossible to play the latest Call of Duty game without thinking about the images we see coming out of places like Ukraine and Palestine.

And it is essential that we question our reasonings for playing these games - is it wrong to turn war into entertainment? Or are video games perhaps a safe way to explore complicated feelings about warfare? These are questions that should and will continue - and Spec Ops is so important because it was the first big game to put these questions front and centre. In 2024 it might feel a little quaint - but in 2012 it was a revelation.

Put it in the context of the games being released around that time and you’ll see that it is a significant part of the video game canon. It is an essential play for anyone interested in video games, storytelling, and the relationship between war and entertainment. And so thats why its removal from Steam and the other online stores is so frustrating. It is not just yet another crushing disappointment for video game preservation.

But it marks the erasure of one of the medium’s most important entries. I hope you can still find a way to play it. For now - another thing that made Spec Ops special was the use of invisible choices - where players get to make critical moral decisions by using the normal verbs used elsewhere in the game. So watch this video to find out how this is used in Spec Ops, and other games.