Spec Ops, The Line
In Spec Ops: The Line, you play as a U.S. soldier sent to a drought wrought dystopian Dubai. Brings up a lot of questions about war and whether it is justifiable.
One of my favorite things about Spops is that it was marketed as “just another shooter” in order to catch people by surprise when they actually played it.
SPOILERS
The white phosphorus scene touches with something I just read about intuitionism, where people snap make that decision, thinking it’s what they need to do to progress, but then are shown the consequences of said intuitionism
The message of Spops, at a surface level, is: “holy shit you’ve done such horrible things you monster!”. This rings a bit hollow when the game kinda forces you to do these things to progress. (though hey, you could always just put down the game)
But Flick argues that the message of Spops isn’t complicity with in-game actions, but complicity with neo-imperialism, military propaganda, and perpetual warfare in the real world.
