![\"\"](\"http:\/\/blog.daft-ideas.co.uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/2012-10-12_00006.jpg\" "\\"Gordon:")
<\/a>Hop in! It’ll take you to a fun place filled with lightning!<\/p><\/div>\n
A bad example is Mass Effect 2, where you don\u2019t ever get the option to tell Cerberus to go stick their idiocy where it hurts, but instead you bumble along following the orders of a guy who you have every reason to distrust and hate.<\/p>\n
<\/a>You can’t change anything. Whatever you choose will lead to the next fight scene or set piece. Mass Effect has the worst kind of railroading, because it offers you some choices about who lives, or who you shag, but you can’t make any choice about how your character behaves in-story. Image stolen from 3 panel Soul<\/p><\/div>\n
Spec Ops: The Line works differently. As already mentioned, most games do their best to present you with the illusion of choice, the try to disguise the rails. Spec Ops instead gives\u00a0 you the illusion of having no choice, and disguises your choices. The player thinks they are on a rail, but there are many places where this can be ignored.<\/p>\n
The one that stood out for me was the point in the game that Lugo was hanged by angry locals (angry\u00a0doesn’t\u00a0really do their state of mind justice – the only remaining drinking water in Dubai has been destroyed, and it is all your fault).<\/p>\n
<\/a>Lugo is down, and Walker does his best to revive him. Useless. He\u2019s dead. Adams is surrounded by the mob, who are shouting threats, throwing rocks, getting closer and closer. Adams wants vengeance. There\u2019s no justice; he wants to open fire and gun down the civilians. He\u2019s begging you to make a decision and I start to worry that he\u2019ll just start shooting if I don\u2019t do something.<\/p><\/div>\n
At this point I was not thinking in terms of \u201cShooting civilians might be a fail state\u201d, I\u00a0wasn’t\u00a0worrying about the game\u00a0any more. The only thing going through my head was I WILL NOT DO THIS AGAIN.<\/strong> I fired in the air, hoping to drive them away. It worked, and Adams and Walker could continue.<\/p>\n I\u00a0didn’t\u00a0think anything of it until I spoke to a friend who finished the game after me. This works heavily in the game\u2019s favour. By disguising the fact that you ever had a choice at all, you can do what feels natural, without ever having to break immersion.<\/p>\n Another example of this is how you deal with the \u201ctest\u201d that Konrad sets up. This one more obviously had a choice involved, but even here you can go off the rails – (Konrad\u2019s rails, anyway. Konrad is the GM at this point, in a game-within a game).<\/p>\n Konrad asks you to choose between two prisoners.<\/p>\n The man on the right is a civilian, who stole water. A capital offence, as Konrad remarks. The man on the left is one of Konrad\u2019s own men, who was sent to bring in the civilian for punishment (we all know that soldiers are extremely good<\/em> at civilian crowd control). During the arrest he killed five more people: the man\u2019s family.<\/p>\n I shot the Later I found out that there were ways around this – you could have attacked the snipers instead, or shot the ropes (triggering an attack by the snipers).<\/p>\n When I first got to this bit, I assumed that it was just the start of a long line of \u201ctests\u201d that Konrad would dream up, to try and persuade you that he was right, and it was the only way to ensure the survival of as many people as possible. I was\u00a0surprised\u00a0 then to find that this was it, really, Konrad\u00a0didn’t\u00a0have any more moralising to do (well, sort of. I\u2019ll get to that in a\u00a0separate\u00a0post).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Warning: This post contains spoilers for Spec Ops: The Line In most games,\u00a0 the designers have done all they can to try to disguise the rails. Rails in this case being a metaphor for linear storytelling. Linear storytelling is not inherently bad, but often seems that way when \u201cyou\u201d, or… Continue reading
\nHe said that he\u2019d had to put the game down at this point, he found it too depressing that the game forced you to gun down yet more civilians.<\/p>\n<\/a><\/p>\nsheriff<\/del> soldier (but I did not shoot the deputy)<\/del><\/p>\n