The Story Secrets of Spec Ops: The Line

Whether you’re sleep-deprived, schizophrenic, or taking illicit substances, hallucinations can seem as real as any normal day-to-day experience. You may even understand that what you’re seeing, hearing, or feeling isn’t actually happening, but it doesn’t make the illusion any less vivid.

As Captain Martin Walker, players of the superb Spec Ops: The Line experience multiple hallucinations. True to video game tradition, you’re meant to do as instructed and believe what you’re told. Most of Walker’s delusions are obvious indicators of the man’s descent into madness. Some are less apparent until revealed during the finale. Even fewer are undetectable as illusions -- you probably still don’t realize how thoroughly you’ve been duped.

Hallucination is the device with which Spec Ops subverts convention. In turn, 2K Games and Yager Development challenge and deceive players -- and with the help of writer Walt Williams, they do so with a purpose.

“In chapter one, Konrad's face appears on the billboard,” Williams explains. “In chapter five, Konrad's face appears on a very large billboard that changes when you go around a corner. Nobody noticed that change happening.” These effects are inconsequential when it comes to actually playing Spec Ops, but this subtle presentation reinforces Walker’s obsession with his missing former-commander. The man is consumed with Konrad from moment one. As first-time players we don’t recognize the face, and Walker doesn’t mention it. Regardless of anyone’s reaction, the images are there, looming at the back of Walker’s mind while staring him straight in the face.

“There are a lot of pictures of people with their eyes blacked out in the first half of the game,” says Williams.
“You'll notice that those eyes are only blacked out in situations where there's something truly horrible in the area. They are literally closing their eyes to the reality in front of them.” Later, Williams explains, “there's a tree covered in leaves that, after you pass, if you look back, the tree is now dead, the leaves have completely vanished.”

Is it a metaphor for Walker’s desperate hope to find life in Dubai, or is this a basic consequence of his insanity? It’s ultimately up to you. This is what makes Spec Ops’ special: It leaves each of its story beats open to interpretation, and they can be as meaningful or empty as you want them to be.

Williams and the rest of the development team want players to have emotional reaction based on what Spec Ops means to them. For those investing emotions into it, this opens up a ton of new questions about the characters and events of Spec Ops: The Line. Walker repeatedly envisions himself slaughtering his squadmates, he kills thousands of men, both CIA and American army, and he fabricates painful moral dilemmas. Are these visions of what Walker fears, or what he wants?

At the point you ask yourself this question, Spec Ops is speaking directly at you. It asks, “You find this fun? You enjoy this slaughter? You like watching awful things happen to good or innocent people?”

And you say, “yes I do.” Suddenly, Yager Development, 2K Games, and Walt Williams force you to ask yourself why, and to consider the kind of person you’ve become because of shooters. By telling you this specific, small-scale story about suffering, Spec Ops simultaneously comments on the triviality of war games and the people who play them.

“We wanted that sense that the game was physically opposing you,” says Williams. “Not simply as a simulation, but also as the game itself.” Williams refers to the loading screens, which eventually stop giving gameplay tips and start reminding you of the mistakes you’ve made and the damage they’ve caused. Death as well as progress rub salt in your wounds.

That’s a small touch, but it’s a means of emphasizing Spec Ops’ aggression toward players. For Williams, the infamous white phosphorous scene embodies exactly what he wanted for Spec Ops. Walker inadvertently murders civilians, soldiers, and families. At that point, Williams says, “we wanted the player to be in the same emotional position as Walker.” From there, Williams projects Walker onto the player. “We wanted the player to be where Walker was and be angry at us, the people who made them do this,” Williams explains.

Angering people was an active goal, particularly with this scene. Williams “didn’t care about crossing a line. We hoped we would piss people off. We wanted people to be angry because we felt like that was a real emotional response to that scene.”



During focus tests, in which 2K brought regular gamers in to play large chunks of Spec Ops and give the developers feedback, players paused the game and left the room to compose themselves. Williams didn’t expect such an intense reaction to the harrowing imagery of a mother and child burned alive.

“That's a moment where a human being, if you were actually a soldier in that situation, you would have to make that very conscious choice of trying to move on and accept what you had done,” he says. “We were hoping that that choice would be mirrored in the players. They would look at this game and go, wow, is this actually a game that I want to finish playing? And if I do, I have to accept what just happened and choose to keep playing this game.”

Creating imagery, story, and scenery engineered to upset emotions definitely comes with repercussions, and Williams met some serious resistance internally. “I'm finding this from a lot of gamers,” he says, “that as they're getting older and having children, they get a bit uncomfortable sometimes with how children are treated in certain games.”

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Look at all the people you killed just to be a savior.

Another 2K staff member was, as a father of “two absolutely adorable kids,” convinced that this kind of visual was unnecessary. It's a reasonable response to a controversial scene. “Ultimately it wasn't done entirely for shock value. It was meant to be organic with the story. He eventually agreed that yes, in that regard it does work,” Williams explains, “because it's not exploitative.” You’re not making a conscious effort to kill a child, and the death isn't for any greater good -- it’s a horrific consequence of a bad decision you can’t avoid making.

In military shooters, players are conditioned to trust the hero more than his superiors. Whatever Goodguy McHero says is your guiding force -- Spec Ops turns the tables by transforming him into a delusional liar and a despicable monster. When Walker shoulders the blame to someone else, the guilt should lift from your shoulders as well.

For a while, anyway -- it all comes back to haunt you in the end anyway.

By the end, Williams wants you to think about what their actions mean for Walker as a person as well as how that makes you feel. "You may think you're a savior and a hero, because at the end of the game you saved someone," Williams says, "but you're not, really, because look at all the people you killed just to get to that one point."

If he did his job right, you should hear Williams voice in the back of your mind asking, "What is it you were wanting to feel when you chose to sit down and play a military shooter? What did you think you were at the beginning of this game? Why did you think it was okay to keep going and to keep doing these things?"

In fact, you should probably wonder this far sooner than the reveal that Konrad is a deranged representation of Walker's imagination. You can perceive Spec Ops' story in any way, but for Walt Williams, Martin Walker was a dead man the moment his chopper crashed. His first experience after recovering, after all, is the most spectacular hallucination of them all: Dubai erupts in a bright red flame and visions of the dead start shambling toward Walker.

"For me, everything after the crash is Walker kind of reliving the hell of what he had just done," says Williams. "You can even interpret Konrad as being not necessarily a delusion inside his mind, but some kind of external projection of his guilt in this purgatory or hell or afterlife, or however you choose to view it."

That said, Williams notes one last, vital visual trick. "Any time the game is doing a normal transition, it'll fade to black. Any time Walker is hallucinating, or lying to himself, in a kind of delusional fashion, the game will fade to white," he says. "The entire epilogue sequence where Walker goes home, it fades to white. Even if you are not reading that Walker died in the chopper crash, it is meant to be understood that Walker is hallucinating going home."

Spec Ops spends much of its time trying to pull the wool over players' eyes using visual trickery. That it uses the same device to silently reinforce an agenda is nothing short of brilliant. Williams and Yager display an extraordinary level of coordination to support a story whose greatest strength is deception.
It makes you wonder what else Walt Williams' Spec Ops script lied to you about, doesn't it?

Source : feeds.ign.com