How Spec Ops: The Line Subverts The Military Shooter Genre

How Spec Ops: The Line Subverts The Military Shooter Genre

Abstract

Modern military shooters, such as the Call of Duty and Medal of Honour franchises, are often criticised for romanticised, jingoistic depictions of the modern battlefield. This representation through what has been referred to as the “military-entertainment complex” is subverted by Yager’s Spec Ops: The Line. While initially presented as a generic tactical military shooter, the tone is quickly changed to one which subverts its own genre, more specifically the mechanics, aesthetics and other conventions, while also subverting the portrayal of Western powers as ethically and technologically superior commonly found in and perpetuated by generic military shooters.

Introduction

The concept that a culture’s media is influenced by imperial interests is by no means new. It can be seen in exaggerated paintings, staged photographs and hyperbolic poetry and literature all designed to dehumanise and distance one side of a conflict while glorifying their own. While presenting a new media for this message, the typical modern shooter has remains at best an overly patriotic reduction of war, reducing the complex conflicts that take place in the real world to binary conflicts between a clearly ‘good’ Western (typically US), ethically and technologically superior power and a faceless, clearly ‘bad’ Eastern (typically communist or Islamic) power, and at worst a recruitment portal for a military, such as America’s Army (United States Army, 2002), a demonstration of what James Der Derian has referred to as the “Military-Industrial-Media-Entertainment Network (MIME-NET). This false binary is subverted in Yager’s Spec Ops:The Line, through the subversion of the player’s expectations of a military shooter, as well as mimicking well known scenes in popular military shooters, more specifically the game’s eighth chapter (“The Gate”) closely mimicking the controversial “Death From Above” scene in Infinity Ward’s Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (2007). In Yager’s Spec Ops: The Line, the playable character (hereafter referred to as PC) is Captain Martin Walker of Delta Force, who, accompanied by Lieutenant Adams and Sergeant Lugo, enters a sandstorm wracked Dubai with the order to “Locate survivors…Leave the city immediately”, orders which Walker abandons to find Colonel Konrad, the apparent antagonist, who appears to have set up a military dictatorship in the remains of Dubai. As Walker and his squad heads further into Dubai, reality seems to warp, and civilian and friendly casualties begin to stack up, leading to the reveal that Konrad is in fact a figment of Walker’s imagination. The subversion of the player’s expectations is achieved through the use of conventional mechanics, even using a conventional voice actor: Nolan North. The result is that The Line feels generic to the player, allowing the player to act as they would in any other shooter. However, the context of the player’s actions is changed. This seemingly minor difference is what separates The Line from franchises like Medal of Honor, creating a darker, ethically ambiguous atmosphere, and depicting more gruesome violence. This atmosphere is directly contradictory to the typical atmosphere of shooters, such as the generic Full Spectrum Warrior (2004), developed between the US Army and Pandemic Studios, as Dyer-Witheford and de Peuter note, commenting that “The miracle of Zekistan [Full Spectrum Warrior’s fictional setting] is that its streets are deserted and houses empty apart from the ubiquitous Tangos (who all die instantaneously when hit). Air and artillery strikes do not hit wedding parties. There is no collateral damage. War is peace” (2009, 113). It is this lie (among others) that The Line challenges.

One of the most striking moments in the game, the eighth chapter of The Line features a scene in which Walker (and the player) orders his squad to attack a large group of rogue American soldiers. This group appears to be too large to fight using conventional weapons, and so Walker gives the order to use a nearby mortar loaded with morally and legally dubious white phosphorous rounds (International Humanitarian Law Research Initiative2009) to clear the enemy position.  This attack is carried out through a screen that bears a resemblance to the black and white screen used in the controversial “Death From Above” scene in Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, in which the player controls an AC-130U gunship gunner (see figure 1). This scene itself bears a worryingly uncanny similarity to the reality as revealed by a video of a 2007 engagement in Iraq (see figure 2), released by Wikileaks in 2010, in which US apache helicopters gun down civilians alongside two Reuters Journalists. Wikileak’s editor-in chief, Julian Assange commented upon the pilots’ behaviour, commenting that “the behaviour of the pilots is like they’re playing a video game.” (Pergram, 2010). While the behaviour of the virtual gunners appears disturbingly similar to their real world counterparts, they differ in their implications; the virtual gunners implying that technology such as AC-130U gunships are precise and reliable, whereas the real apache pilots suggest that such technology is capable of indiscriminate devastation through the dehumanisation of their targets and the distance they create from the consequences of such devastation. ‘The Gate’ mimics this through the computer screen Walker selects his targets, the black and white targets resembling those of the apache helicopters and AC-130U gunship. However, as the player fires more white phosphorous, Walker’s face begins to be reflected in the screen, removing the distance from the player’s actions mid-act. This removal of distance is compounded by the screams the player hears while using the mortar. Walker later defends the actions he, and by extension the player, have taken by claiming that “This isn’t my fault”, perhaps suggesting that blame should instead lie with the developers. However, this response is made invalid, as the Konrad points out that at each moment, the player prioritised their own entertainment, just as Walker prioritised his own fantasy, and kept moving forward.  

This is followed up by a removal of distance from the consequences of the player’s actions, as the Walker’s usual jog is slowed to a walk as the player passes through the battlefield, forcing the player to observe the burned corpses of their victims. However, the true horror comes when the player encounters what they originally believed to be a large group of enemies, which is revealed to be a large group of civilians in the custody of the soldiers. The effect of this is that the player is directly confronted with the consequences of their decision. The player is again forced to confront the consequences of their actions when Sergeant Lugo, their squadmate, is lynched by an angry mob of civilians. Although they cannot save Lugo, they are offered the opportunity to fire on the mob. However, they also have the opportunity to fire in the air to scare them off, but are unable to advance without dispersing the mob. Despite the moral implications, the player is encouraged by their remaining squadmate, Lieutenant Adams, to fire on the civilians. However, the true horror appears to come from discovering how other players reacted to these moments. Most don’t hesitate to gun down civilians. One article goes so far as to comment that one must “Kill those civilians as quickly and totally as you can. Even if you've played Spec Ops before and know what's coming, don't pussyfoot: As soon as they appear on your screen, bomb them, bomb them and bomb them again. This scene is fucking horrible so it won't be easy, but if we want The Line's script to really pay off, you need to be a monster”, suggesting that, in the pursuit of that “pay off”, there is no price too high; as one of the game’s loading screens notes, “To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for entertainment is harmless”, perhaps suggesting that despite the player’s attitude that their actions are harmless, they are still making the decision to kill characters designed to appear human for no reason other than to occupy them for a few hours. This is demonstrated by the game creating an atmosphere in which the player feels safe enough to act as they would in any other shooter through the distance between the PC and the target, before removing this distance, and shattering the player’s heroic image.