Anti-War War Games
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- Опубликовано: 1 авг 2024
- What happens when video games dish out a harsh dose of reality or thoughtful introspection towards their most familiar theme?
Gotta plug This War of Mine again. Because war's never been so much fun: store.steampowered.com/app/282...
Check out ARMA 2/3 on Steam here: store.steampowered.com/agechec... and store.steampowered.com/agechec...
And then check out Dslyecxi's channel to glimpse the game's potential: / dslyecxi
Papers, Please: store.steampowered.com/app/239...
Train: bbrathwaite.wordpress.com/train/
Supplementary Materials:
Dev interview: www.gamasutra.com/view/news/21...
"One Year In Hell:" www.silverdoctors.com/one-year...
"War Play: Video Games and the Future of Armed Conflict:" www.amazon.com/War-Play-Video-...
1994 BBC Sarajevo Documentary: • Sarajevo: A Street Und... 
Игры
A post I saw on tumblr that I think was about Arma.
Player: I can't see anyone.
Spectator: Try turning on night vision.
Player: I still can't see them.
Spectator: Realistic, isn't it?
U1timate1nferno "let me try on these nightmare vision goggles"
"everything looks the same"
This quote comes from a Squad video, not Arma, but it pretty accurately sums up my thoughts the first time playing Arma:
"I swear the trees are shooting at me."
@@AustinJFerret
The problem is, that ArmA is shit. It wood be cool if it wasn't so buggy and the graphics didn't look like mud, the movement is unbearable and the hit detection is even worse, all of the "realistic" aspects in the game get drowned out by all of the crap aspects of it as a game. In real life I wouldn't forget the controls to lie down and shoot, if it played even remotely intuitively it may have been much better.
Sun Tzu Dude what are you talking about. 3 is fantastic and looks amazing . On top of That prone and crouch are 2 buttons and you can just hit them again to stand up. AND all of what you need to know is taught to you clearly in the tutorial. It’s not anywhere near as complicated as you are making it out to be. I’ve also never had any experience with bugs or bad hit reg. On any server I’ve played on. And I don’t see anything about that in discussion boards and reviews for it. 2 was pretty bad but it’s no longer supported and people don’t play anymore. It’s been that way a long time. 3 is MILES beyond 2 in quality. While keeping the spirit of the simulator ArmA is.
@@CompactCowboy
Having 2 separate buttons to change stance if already too many controls, Squad, WW3 and Escape from Tarkov both have realistic movement that is a lot more intuitive than ArmAs.
Gotta break out the game, Train, for fun dinner parties.
Ikr? Fun for the whole family.
I get the idea but it’s kinda extra ridiculous if you think about it. You were moving Holocaust victims the whole time. Oh no, am I supposed to never do anything if I don’t know the full rules just in case I’m murdering Jewish people??
@@MyYogfan I believe the idea behind the game is to show players how many nazi soldiers just followed orders and didn't think for themselves. They didn't question otherwise questionable orders, they just did what they were told.
Thomas Blass on Milgram's experiments on obedience (these were experients made with the goal of figuring out why people obeyed immoral orders in the Holocaust):
"My own view is that Milgram's approach does not provide a fully adequate explanation of the Holocaust. While it may well account for the dutiful destructiveness of the dispassionate bureaucrat who may have shipped Jews to Auschwitz with the same degree of routinization as potatoes to Bremerhaven, it falls short when one tries to apply it to the more zealous, inventive, and hate-driven atrocities that also characterized the Holocaust."
The results of Milgram's experiment was, in short, that people would obey authorities and follow orders that may result in another person getting hurt if the person executing the order didn't have any relation to the person they may hurt, and if the authority figure kept telling them that they *had* to follow orders.
Cecilie Jensen I understand the idea, and I honestly like the idea of the game. I was just explaining if you just take the game at face value, it’s kind of silly. That’s of course just looking at the game and playing it at face value. Not looking at the point or deeper meaning of it
even makes the community quiet!
So I'm an Iraqi who lived through the US invasion of 2003, at least for the first two years of it, and I can definitely support the sentiments the man/woman from Sarajevo expressed. During and after the war, people weren't scared of each other. They were scared of the soldiers and the aircrafts. During an air raid, my family would be sitting close together in the lowest floor waiting for the house to stop shaking and the noise to stop. But after it's over, everyone in the neighbourhood would gather up and check on everyone else. They'd go from house to house checking if anyone got injured or if anyone is running short on food. Not only that, but friends and distant family members in more stable places of the city (I was in Baghdad at the time) would get in contact and either try to send some supplies with someone or house people over till the heat wears off.
People got tired, though. After years of the same bullshit of random car bombs, assassinations and abductions for ransom, the general psyche became more hostile. Definitely not to the point of breaking into other people's homes, but some got greedy and envious. Whenever some family would catch a break, there would be a couple others murmuring about how lucky they got and try to either feed off that success by pretending friendship or spread rumours of bad conduct about them. Nowadays, people are cynical all the time. Families marrying their daughters at 16 to make sure they're safe and looked after. Sons going into militias and PMCs to get money for their families because jobs are scarce and only obtainable if you have familial links or good friends. Once people realise things aren't getting better in the next 20 years, things get dim. Those who are in the country curse their way through life, and those who made it out spend their years engineering their careers to stay out. Funny thing is that a lot of them still get home sick and go back to Iraq after a year or two. That comradery in the face of adversary is still the main theme between people.
+iDragonarion I can only sum your experience with one word brother: Irony.
Also, I wish to have your statements made public. Is there anyway for you to write all these on somewhere to show justifications as to why this war crap has persisted for the last 10 years?
Can't you read? It's a hellhole because we keep bombing it. We're killing a ton of innocent people and taking their resources. We're creating the very enemies we are fighting.
iDragonarion s
Why play Spec Ops the Line when you've got Modern Warfare 3 outside.
F
"War! Has never been so much fun! War! has never been so much fun! Go to your brother, kill him with your gun, leaving him lying in his uniform dying in the sun!"
Cannon Fodder was an interesting contradiction of a game
HI TOTAL BISCUIT I LOVE YOU
Fuck off RUclips Don't Want to use my real name.
Cool name.
Huh didn't expect to see TB around here. :D Proof of good taste. ^-^
Happy to see you here TB.. Turn on your damn comments you fool! :)
Oh and we demand more hearthstone!
Cool comment bro.
Spec Ops isn't an anti-war game.
Spec Ops is an anti-wargame.
Glad someone figured that out. It's still not good at that, but still. I don't feel bad when I kill 1's and 0's in a game I know aren't real. Playing GTA doesn't make me a psychopathic mass-murderer. When games give me a hard choice, and depict the consequences of that choice, yeah I feel invested enough to suspend my disbelief. But not when there is no choice (or all choices have the same result, so "choice" is just an illusion).
The game's goal flew right over his head. He was supposed to get sick of the game, and *stop playing* Spec Ops (and maybe COD too).
A massive part of Spec Ops is that it directly shows a player what people feel like when they are at the bottom of the totem pole in attrocities (like a train driver in Nazi Germany). "I didn't feel an ounce of guilt about that" is probably the strongest empathetic moment the game offers.
It doesn't want to make you feel bad that you just incinerated civilians, it wants you to deny your responsibility by blaming the force that was telling you to do it, until you decide to stop playing. Turning the game off is the only way to win.
@@onewhosaysgoose4831 I think you hit the nail on the head there
>The game's goal flew right over his head. He was supposed to get sick of the game, and stop playing Spec Ops (and maybe COD too).
No.
Spec Ops roundly fails to inform anyone of anything, unless you're already invested in the message that the developers offered (War Games Are Bad).
It's little better than the scripted violence porn found in the war games it pretends to deride, simultaneously trying to berate the players for a "choice" that isn't even possible in the context of playing the game itself. Saying "You should stop playing this War Video Game, and Others (If You Are Not A Bad Person)" might work for people with an axe to grind against the genre. It might work for people who have an axe to grind against those who *GASP* have fun playing war games.
For me, Spec Ops threw a cutscene at me and told me I was bad and should feel bad for playing a videogame. Ironically, it did a worse job of portraying war in a negative light than one game in the series it takes the most potshots at: Modern Warfare 1.
Modern Warfare 1, on the surface, is your traditional gung-ho action FPS. You have orders, and you follow them for the "greater good." But the difference between MW1 and Spec Ops, the thing that makes MW1 more effective, and meaningful, as a story about the cost and senseless violence of war, is that the consequences happen to the *player*, not stock NPCs designed to make the player feel bad. Not counting the hilariously batshit sequels, when MW1 ended, everyone was dead. Terrorist leader and brave soldier alike.
War in MW1 indiscriminate and merciless. Every stock enemy you shot, every fellow AI soldier that ran into danger alongside you, were all intended to be people trying their best to do what they believed needed to be done. The vast majority die without ever seeing who or what kills them. Whatever heroism you or they attempt to accomplish can be cut short in an instant, from things and people they never even see. It doesn't present the veneer of 'choice'. It doesn't say "Bad things by bad people happen to good people (SO STOP PLAYING OUR GAME)", it says "In war, things happen to people. It does not matter how good, or bad, or innocent they are. The cause or the objectives do not matter. Things happen. People die. There is no fairness to be had. The effects are far reaching, and beyond the control of any single action of any individual actually fighting or dying."
As a message regarding the nature of war, it's far more effective, and thought provoking, than a turret sequence that doesn't let you proceed until you do the obligatory bad thing (and if you don't do the bad thing directly on target, goddamnit we will script the explosion to do the bad thing we wanted you to do because I have a message to deliver to the player!)
The violence and suffering in Spec Ops is little better than the violence and suffering depicted in violence porn media, like the anime Goblin Slayer, or the gruesome deaths found in movies like Cabin in the Woods. It does nothing to actually convey a message about war, or even war games. It's just a writer berating the player for having the income to spend on entertainment they enjoy. It's shit.
@@onewhosaysgoose4831 I suppose the point of SO:TL's message that the only "good" ending there is to physically stop playing the game as early as possible (either right after the first shootout of the first mission or to back out of the white phosphorus mission), is that game isn't going to give us a secret exit path or a multiple-choice decision or alternate endings to end the game right there early on and then reward us with a sequence where Walker's squad RTBs and then swarms of US and UAE troops roll into Dubai and probably Walker later expressing disappointment for missing the opportunity to be proactive in the situation (adding some degree of moral ambiguity with taking that route), all on a silver platter with a bowtie on it.
The game is "asking" us to *think outside the box* and *go beyond the game* if we are to do something positive in the game-either we become *personally* part and parcel of Walker's madness as pre-programmed in the game, or we can decide for ourselves and not letting the whole thing unfold by not proceeding any further in the game, symbolizing Walker inevitably sticking to his original mission. And that makes such decision more profound.
Arma is a good way to say how War isnt fun, its boring and terrifying, until your tank or apc glitches out or your squad dies due to a mesh
Bruh that depends what game mode you play. I play on a nice liberation RX game mode and as such I get to sling load a Gorgon with a mortar and static aa launcher to lay siege to a town or I just straight up buy a fifth generation fighter with atgms and shit and fly around Killin bitches. It's actually fun rather than walking to an objective for 15 minutes and then getting shot by an enemy you had no right to see.
The biggest killer in war is annoying glitches
Spec Ops: the line isn't an anti-war game, it's a deconstruction of the ''modern military shooter'' (excluding ArmA, of course).
The writer himself hates the game being called anti-war.
And i was surprised to see you had the idea to mix up ArmA with Spec Ops, i had the same idea a while ago!
That is an excellent point :) A lot of their creative decisions make more sense with this kind of reading.
Game james I didn't feel guilty (although i never did in any game ever) but i did feel sorry for Walker and his squad, as well as everyone else involved.
It's mindblowing how it subverts your expectations about military shooters.
Game james That was the point, to further make i look like a typical Military first person shooter.
Game james It wasn't a critical failure.
It garnered positive reviews on all consoles, and Zero Punctuation, know for being a review show that's very rough on games, gave it nothing but praise.
I don't really think that he's talking about Spec Ops being anti-war, only he was noting that its themes of self disgust could have been amplified with the sort of disconnected combat that Arma has. Don't forget that while Spec Ops isn't about war, the same attitude that it looks at it's subject with is paralleled by the games George mentioned.
DEFCON: hey guys sorry I'm late did I miss anything?
That game gives me chills playing it
@@imtoddhowardandimadeskyrim6553 Are you releasing Skyrim on PS5?
@@imtoddhowardandimadeskyrim6553 it’s supposed to
@@imtoddhowardandimadeskyrim6553 I found it entertaining
@@gamerito100 you must avoid nuclear missle at all cost cause you might launch it
Spec Ops the line wasn't really an anti-war game, it was about making a statement on how video games portray war. How we kill hundreds, if not thousands, because it's "fun." We want to be heroes, but we don't think about who has to die to make us a hero. They take choice away from you when it has the biggest impact on the local populace (like bombing them with white phosphorus and taking away all the drinking water), and only gives you options in little gameplay sections that don't matter. It's making the point that games with linear narratives and cutscenes are actually really terrbile at telling these stories, because they're woefully ineffective.
Bacon Lord I'm pretty sure that the choice to prevent bombing white phosphorus is to physically stop playing the game. The only way to get a good ending in the game is to not play.
U1timate1nferno That is literally what the devs have said (for example, in an interview with RPS).
+U1timate1nferno Well, from gameplay perspective, you can also try not to use WP and try to use your guns, but that only gets you killed when enemy overwhelms you.
"Overwhelms you"
Nope. I used a trainer to activate god mode and infinite ammo. When the game stops dicking around with "infinitely respawning" snipers, they send snipers that are invincible and do over 100% of your health in with each and every shot. I wish they could overwhelm the player. I wish there was a way to walk into the camp and blow away all the soldiers to avoid the phosphorus? Why's that, you may ask? Because the people, that were getting saved, would be understandably pissed. Then you could give the player a hard choice: Refuse to gun down the charging civilians that you just left without any guidance or protection, or die. The other choice would just be the phosphorus to make it easier on yourself. There were a million ways around the issue of non-choice. It felt less like commentary and more like laziness.
The game was about the glorification of violence, but in American pop-culture, not just in the realm of the average American shooting game. Dressed as a special ops soldier, you walk into a city filled with people that speak Afghani tongues, who you murder only a few minutes before you're told that they were refugees all along. Of course, the average gamer wouldn't care about wasting brown people because they've been doing it for about a decade beforehand. That's why they flipped the antagonists around and made the Damned 33rd the bad guys. Even the name suggests that America's unwarranted intervention has doomed the city, as if America's military was so destructive that it brought down the wrath of God upon the richest jewel of the Middle East.
The game was lazy and contrived, despite its polish and deeper message. It was a serious game that was hard to take seriously, especially when they keep dragging you along on a leash while saying "just stop being leashed." Turning off the console means I go play STALKER or CoD4 again. It means I leap back into the world of ultra-violent, hardcore, masochistic or sadistic shooters. The message is lost on everyone if you turn off the console, a message that is somehow lost on the developers.
Even CoD4 had moments in which war was bad, there was the nuke scene in which your helicopter goes down and they have quotes that talk about the price of war and quotes from historical figures in which they talk about war.
I played This War of Mine when it first came out. The first time I managed to get all of them to live, because of what they had done in the play through, they all either killed themselves, became drug addicts, or became really messed up and went to insane asylums.
TheNerdLord oh yeah that game is that dark. I always became the good guy in that game and wanted to show my people in my shelter that we got to have hope and to show them that no matter how harsh life is, we have to remain human and help those in need.
Rip Pavle
Man, I've played ARMA III for nearly 300 hours at this point, and I always knew that the combat was tense and there was always a certain sort of terror that came with it (that is maybe why I like it so much), but I never though of it as an anti-war game. I would say that after playing it, I would never want to go to war, just because if anything, ARMA shows (to an extent) the terror involved in a gunfight, the idea that one stray bullet can kill you, the scenarios where you know that you are completely fucked, but keep fighting anyway because what more is there to do. It's really something spectacular.
weird, cause ArmA actually makes me want to get in the military, in a way.
I guess Arma is just a good realistic war game, good enough to emerge very different emotions from people of even similar mentality.
Personally I never got in the game because I'm usually a solo guy, but I heard all sorts of stuff from other cooperatibe multiplayer guys, some saying it was boring and unfair, others finding it stressful, some thrilling and others found it as lots of fun.
@@cdgonepotatoes4219 For me, the emotions evoked by Arma are "long stretches of boredom and frustration, with brief moments of fun and excitement."
The interesting part is that the boring/frustrating parts and the fun/exciting parts aren't always what I expected them to be. The actual combat is usually pretty dull for me because of the extreme range and difficulty sighting and hitting your enemies(I've literally gone entire missions without firing a shot at times), while riding around in the back of a vehicle talking shit with my friends or just random people in an Invade and Annex server is heaps of fun.
And then there's the moments that actually manage to feel properly heroic, like having a helicopter LZ go bad, and one member of your squad is wounded, so you cover for another squadmate to pick him up and escort them half a kilometer through a warzone to get to the nearest medic to treat the wounded, or managing to get off an anti-tank missile to kill the APC that is pinning down your entire squad.
My ArmA 3 KDR is enough to get me to never think of joining the military.
Needs more gore
SPOILERS FOR THE ARMA 2 MAIN CAMPAIGN
If in the main campaign you have optional objectives to investigate War Crimes committed by the Rebels. If you don't complete EVERY SINGLE ONE FOR EVERY MISSION the last mission consists of driving North to meet with Chedaki resistance spy who informs you Russia is invading from the North. A few seconds later a nuclear bomb goes off killing everyone (I guess you could call this the bad ending).
If you manage to complete the optional objectives (some of which are quite difficult), revealing mass graves, executed civilians, looting, hostages, etc, you get a ""better"" ending (yay?). You end up back on the aircraft carrier with a warm welcome from your fellow soldiers and you're told you're getting a bunch of medals and never to speak of this again.
The reason a nuclear bomb doesn't go off in ""better"" ending is because you justify to the Russians the invasion by pointing out war crimes.
This is the best review I've seen of ARMA 2 by a popular reviewer. It's a shame that so many seem to ignore it because of the difficulty.
I haven't played the Arma 2 campaign, so I haven't read your comment. I just want to let you know the little effort you put into the spoiler warning is much appreciated.
Alabaster No problem :D
I didn't know the Arma games had singleplayer tbh
yeah i didn't know you could get a better ending maybe ill go play through it again but arma 2 without mods
is a kinda hell that i dont want to experience again
Such a shame that everybody got arma 2 because of dayz and they dont even know about the war that never was...
Great video as always :-) Keep it up!
didn't expect to see a Suma comment in a 2014 Super Bunnyhop video
Weird times we live in
@@em__1 lol same
@@griffin7670 kinda same
Bruh didn't expect you here
Wow did not expect you here
I don't think Spec Ops: The line was as much Anti-war as much as it it was Anti- pro-war games. If that makes any sense.
I had this idea while I was addicted to Battlefield 2 about 10 years ago (give or take). Because it seemed stupid to me that you could rank up to be the Lord High Poobah and Commanding General of All of the Armies, yet still got points primarily by shooting the other team.
It was a game like Battlefield 2, except with a different point structure. Private ranks got points for everything, no matter what. Sergeant ranks only got points for successful missions. Lieutenant ranks got points for missions, minus penalties for friendly and civilian deaths. Commander ranks got a small percentage of what their Lieutenants earned. Generals gained or, importantly, lost, points every day based on their troops' total kill count, regardless of mission victory or collateral damage.
The idea was kind of a simulation of the fact that in RL, generals' careers are in the hands of congressmen who don't know shit about war apart from "our troops killed _x_ enemy this week". And how it would shit up tactical/commander view with useless missions with high death counts rather than winning objectives. Then I realized nobody would want to play this game.
I would buy it to support the sentiment of something that is its own thing instead of yet another overly glorified brainless shooter war game...
Sounds like WWII Online
What would be interesting, is that the commanders (to keep their job) would be sending soldiers on missions for high kill counts, but the lower ranks would want to go for missions of success. Commanders would shoulder the responsibility of the morale of their troops, but also the pressure from the politicians.
I Will Definitely Buy That Game Sounds Aweonsome and A Different Take on what we are used in FPS
I would
I feel Spec Ops is less an anti-war game and more a commentary on modern military shooters. If the game gave you the option to circumvent stuff like the white phosphorus scene, the whole point of the game would crumble.
andyhoov You're not entirely right there. Since MMS glorify war, it's both.
Vanalos That's actually a really good point.
But the point of the game is violence is fun, it's set to Hard Rock, and you unlock more fatalities by killing more people. Other Spec Ops games were tactical, the Line is basically Mass Effect / Gears of War fun with Brutal Doom finishers. We need more games like it, or Postal 2 or Carmageddon, they make me relax.
I have no idea how anyone could be surprised by Train. It's a painfully obvious twist that I saw coming a mile away.
He said that it was part of a tour, and that the features in a article for mechanics for impact(sorry forgot the name already), so it could that the the tour isn't focused on war, maybe a lot brighter material.
(and realise that we came for a video on antiwar games)
And Burn It Shall still, the imagery of people being packed into freight trains really only has one connotation to my mind at least
+Stealthwilde Really it just sounds hilarious. "Modern Art" is a joke.
Well good for you. Wanna cookie?
+Stealthwilde Yeah, I saw it from the beginning too. God I can't believe how much smarter I am than everyone else.
I had a "baptism of fire" or more accurately a literal "baptism between fires" during the Lebanese civil war. Obviously, I don't remember what happened but I have inherited a hatred for the Syrians and Israelis (and other Lebanese) that essentially tried to kill me (and everyone I love) during the conflict. Before he died, my uncle told me about how while they sought shelter from the shelling, how they just let - nay dragged - anyone in. Despite being a Christian, he hid and prayed with Muslims for daylight so he could get home - at the same time as my other uncle was killing Muslims in a different part of the country.
my father (English protestant) told me how angry he was at our "allies" who had shelled our family's home, setting fire to the building. Even now he hates Syrians for that. There's a pause in his voice when he describes fleeing lebanon by boat to Cyprus with his wife and two children (they had two "tickets" - my brother and I were smuggled out as contraband) as I compared us to Syrian refugees now (the comparison was not a welcome one).
During the 2006 war I briefly saw what it was like for them for 20+ years.
I learned something strange. this "lions led by donkeys" image we get from ww1 hagiography is warped. the boys at the front aren't waiting for the end of the war like Christmas truce of 1914 would have us believe. Soldiers are the truest believers in their country's cause because they have bled more than most for it. it's difficult to see your friend Sam bleeding out in the sand and conclude it was for nothing. humans reach a point where we fight for no other reason than "f*** that guy"
the best way to keep a war going is to have people with no skin in the game supporting those who benefit from war. - there war more ultra-zionist Christians in the US alone than there are Jews (let alone Israeli Jews who oppose peace). there are more funders and recruiters for islamist terrorism who aren't even Arab/Palestinian than there are Palestinians.
There's a theory that says if we all had to send our sons to war there would be no new war. If only it were that simple - we would be done by 2016
The ones who benefit from war are the left over nobility from the middle ages (kings, queens, dukes, earls, pope, ... ). With the world being so global I don't understand how countries still fight each other (the few rotten apples in the basket make the world militant) I don't see borders, I merely see seas and mountains making it harder to travel and enter, humans have made borders and guns to sicken life on this planet for people born from a peace-gene.
I hope you know that people are people no matter where and that they didn't mean to kill in their spirit, as soldier in these proxy-wars, it's a job to follow orders without questioning in the army... The president or king gives the order to kill and their minions do it and end up traumatised while the initial order-giver sits safe and mentally not capable of shoving himself in such situation... We pay taxes to the king and fight for him if he declares war... We lost our minds and the rulers profit from the hypnosis we all live under...
+Amazing 0's and 1's tell me about it i went throw fighting iraq so much deth my entire sqod was gund down i dont know how i lived now im in the swiz army
Amazing 0's and 1's What you said is sad as the death of a loved one,true as reality,yet,reality can be "altered" in a better one and we can make death knock on the door later,it only depends on us......
ConradW Great insightful comment man. My only gripe is: the reason we hear so much about soldiers longing for an end to the war, or eventually a quick death, is because World War 1 was the first war fought in that brutish manor, soldiers were fighting people they probably would have never seen, or known about if they hadnt been drafted/enlisted. There wasnt really any underlining thing they were fighting for, the war started due to imperial ideals, and faulty treaties. Men saw their squad mates, friends, and family get blown to pieces, gutted, all for nothing (at least in the average soldiers perspective).
Bora Tosyah you see that line of thinking, is what makes wars in the first place, there are no "Syrians" there are leaders that fed off of insecurities of people, insecurities that they themselves fabricate or build up, it's fabricating an "other" so that you, in duty for your country, must hate. Weather it's north americans, mexicans, muslism, christians, western world, east, etc. Every place on the planet has power and money hungry people at the top political positions telling us how much we should de-humanize this other sub group of humans.
there is no them, there never was, borders are arbitrary, they weren't the same 1000 years ago and they will not be the same in a 1000 more, because for each person you see as a them, they do the same to us, and with that way of thinking we will all end up blind, hold your values against on how much actual damage someone wants to do to you, how much the leaders of a group of people in a country want to do and against those in support of genocidal views.
I was always of the mindset that if you truly wanted to make a piece of anti-war media/art, then the best way to go about it was to just show war as it really is. Both the good and the bad, no political slant or spin to get a certain message across, just war.
@@TheBelovedRose. You just misunderstood and replied to a 5 year old comment congrats zoomer
"The good" LMAOOOOO
@@diegoseba12 I'm talking about the brotherhood of soldiers, or helping someone like Charlie Sheen did in Platoon with that girl. Good in a relative sense. Don't be a douche.
@@diegoseba12 I mean, there is some benefits to the winners, that's the whole point...
@@TheBelovedRose. I mean, it depends on the war, really...
"It is well that war is so terrible, or we should grow too fond of it."
--Robert E. Lee
(Yeah, I know, I actually got that from Civ 5)
i think it was in one of the first CoD games too
Jimmy That’s an incredibly gross stereotype
@Jimmy Politicians who dont go to war love war...
@@joshuacolt2630 if it makes them profit they are all for it. I sometimes feel like they'd burn people for fuel if they could get away with it.
- he who must not be named
I think the reason why Spec Ops: The Line has a weak anti-war message is simply because that's never its point. It's not anti-war, it's anti-spunkgargleweewee.
CynicalReviews
well, that would be an appropriate comment if CoD never released on PC. lol
CynicalReviews
i know, but it's still random. Don't use references unless what you are saying works without it being a reference.
+CynicalReviews And I think you dont get, that PC master race was an insult.
+Will Ferrous Yeah, the whole Military Adventurism thing is more of an abstraction of the central point about questioning why gamers enjoy playing violent war games; The absurdity of expecting a positive outcome when the only way of meaningfully interacting with the world is through violence.
I think the fetishization of player agency does a disservice to games that can tell interesting stories both through narrative and mechanics. Spec Ops The Line uses the 'bog-standard' mechanics of games it mocks to show the consequences of the video game mentality of confidently murdering everyone between point a and point b because hey, I'm the hero right? This is what I'm supposed to be doing isn't it?
Man that sounds so condescending and pretentious. "Oh you like fictional violence, well your just a murdering psychopath." And it's hard to feel any guilt towards killing them as the whole thing was scripted and the enemy is nothing more than coding whose entire purpose is just act as an obstacle. It's just like expecting an actor to feel guilty over fictionally killing a character. And why do presume that people necessarily want to be the hero? There are many games where players can take up a villainous role and commit all sorts of horrendous acts like running over countless civilians in a fast car.
This was weird to watch in the army computer room. No wars around here as of now thankfully.
Great video.
this comment aged well
Yup, Arma2 is the best game to relay the real fucked up nature of modern war, I never feel more scared in any game ever than in arma on one life servers, its the scariest thing out there, what a real war might actually feel like for the untrained.
I agree. Reminds me of when I airsofted for the first time. I was having tons of fun, but it really put into perspective how awful real war is. There are no beers after the game, no respawns, no friends around you *and those who are might be gone forever in an instant
I agree, but there is one major feature that ArmA barely includes but really should: non-combatant AI. These types of characters exist for brief moments in the campaigns, but don't really interact systemically with the game at all. What would this game even be like if every town you were fighting in wasn't necessarily evacuated first? You burst into a room and find someone huddling in the corner. How does that change how you play?
I'd be very interest to see this.
That does sound pretty interesting. Just like in real life, you'd have to be careful with who you shoot and maybe not even know who you're shooting at all at times.
It would be pretty interesting, but the game might then become a lot more grim, if it starts to depict the suffering of civilians by your hands
Game james I don't think you do grasp what arma is. I guess you should stick to BF/CoD if you want more action, ArmA isn't about action. Most of the times it's about gathering intel, saving your and your teammates butts and focusing on your objective. Some missions can last for hours and will be decided within a firefight that lasts mere seconds. If you can't appreciate that, ArmA isn't a game for you. In most shooters the most important goal is to kill as many enemies as possible. That is a valid strategy for ArmA aswell most of the times, but it's neither the most effective, nor the most intelligent one. Your own death matters, either by taking you out of the mission or by having you respawn kilometers/miles away from your target. You dying weakens your team distinctly.
***** While technically, civilian NPCs do exist, they don't serve any of the functions that civilians do in the real world (except perhaps making FOF identification hard when a battle breaks out); remember I said they were "barely" there, not that they were completely absent. I want to see them and their role fleshed out significantly.
You should be able to try to talk to them; give them instructions to clear the battlefield while you're clearing houses, ask them for information about enemy movement, ask them about the area you're about to march through, etc. There should also be a lot more of them, everywhere in ArmA is such a ghost town currently. There's no sense of life in the towns -- no one to interact with except by the barrel of your rifle.
I understand the technical challenge this represents in terms of AI, voice, and procedural information gathering, but I think it should be manageable if we let the npcs with dynamic information use text to convey the specific information, and only have audio barks to introduce that they are conveying information. ex:
Soldier: "Have you seen any opfor combattants?"
NPC: "I saw soldiers over there" (marks your map or maybe points that way)
Soldier: "Please clear the area" (point in the direction NPC should go)
or
Soldier: "Identify yourself."
NPC: "I don't want any trouble" (text lists his name, occupation, age, hometown)
Soldier: "Get inside that house" (point at house)
This could work like a simplified version of what already exists for squad commands.
Obviously you wouldn't use this in large-scale warfare stuff, but for breach and clear, street-to-street gameplay, I think it would add a lot of interaction to your gameplay.
The point of Spec Ops is that, as you keep playing and killing, you feel the attrition of it. Early in the game you hear (American) soldiers conversing and talking a lot, obviously in most American players' native language and accent even, and you can hear them realistically call things out to each other in firefights too, which makes fighting them really, really hard for someone like me who is also an American, never having had to fight some of my own in a game. But by the end, you've just stopped caring, you've murdered scores and scores of them, you've stopped listening because they just keep coming. And that was the point the game was making. You're dehumanizing them even though they're literally from your own country. I disagree with your assessment of the game's message, it hit home for a lot of people.
SPOILERS
Agreed. I was playing it mindlessly. I just did the white prosperous scene without realizing that they weren't soldiers. I did it as quick as possible and never at all paused and looked at who I was shooting.
I didn't see the civilian deaths coming. I just mindlessly clicked the mouse key and murdered them all. I felt crushed when I saw the cutscene since I felt responsibility for it because I never tried to resist.
Sangth
I on the other hand had realized that these were civilians and was really pissed that that situation was unavoidable.
You had a better experience, I think
Sangth Pretty sure that whole speaking English with American accent thing isn't intentional they were just the only voice actors they can find, 70% of voice actors for non American soldiers in American video games are still voiced by Americans any way, Spec Ops was great for other reasons though, I like apocalypse Now so it was top tier for me
They were specifically American soldiers for a reason, it's integral for the plot. It's incredibly easy to find voice actors to do fake accents or rattle off other languages that aren't native to them, that had nothing to do with it.
Arma 2: *indirectly sending a message about how dehumanizing war is*
Arma 3: "ready up, we're gonna commit some war crimes"
Don't forget them alien tentacles in Arma 3!
@@tacticalseadog9120 and that. I love that arma is meant to be "the most realistic combat simulator" and yet it became one of the most unrealistic combat arcade game
@RANDOM user I know
@@avery1647 to be fair bohemia made an entire dlc, the best out of them all, just to showcase how bad war can be by showing you what happens in the areas most affected by it, showing that you too could be collateral damage by putting you unarmed in the middle of a warzone, forcing you to defuse all the mines you placed in the campaign, which was really well made.
The whole plot of Arma 3 from the prequel DLC to the very last one tell you that while CSAT is essentially testing WMDs and funding terrorism in small countries with impunity, western governments would rather just let them or even help them along so they can steal their secret tech rather than stopping any of it.
Spoilers: NATO CTRG orchestrated the cluster bombing of villages to prolong the civil war in Altis, they also staged the attack on task force Aegis as a false flag then destroyed the radar system so they could have more time to locate the Eastwind device, and then they intentionally sabotaged the humanitarian efforts in Tanoa so they could monitor CSAT deploying their biological weapon. There's literally no good guys in any of the games except for the civilians and cannon fodder caught in the middle of it.
I think Spec Ops had more to say about games depicting war more than about war itself.
try playing MGSV in a different way. try playing with nothing but lethal weapons but still try to pass it without taking any lives. the reasoning behind it is, i found it ridiculous you have this whole arsenal of non lethal weaponry to achieve a pacifist run when in reality you wouldnt in a real combat mission. after playing like this i found the whole message of how horrible war is more intense like this, for if a soldier spots you and reflex mode is activated your faced with the split second decision to take the persons life, instead of just taking out a tranq gun and resetting your mistake. the mechanic of achieving pacifism when your armed with lethaly really shows things that people who are put in those positions have to go threw kinda made me think of the whole nuremberg trials question of just taking orders or maybe at that time, faced with the situation they were in and with what they were given(weapons) the soldiers just did what seems right? in awar setting the line between self preservation and morality becomes blurry almost to the point were they become the same.
miguel Weird, for once the RUclips comments are all really high quality. That's an interesting thought. SWAT4 is a bit similar I think. In that if you play with all the nonlethal stuff (pepperspray paintball guns and bean bag guns) the game looses some of its emotional weight. You do feel like you've failed when you have to shoot a suspect.
I didn't use most of the less lethal stuff, or most of the stuff in general... that price.
a video game is nothing like real life never confuse the 2 it will make u stupid. an AI life and a real human are very different u can test it f5 ur friend 4 times then do it on wwe2k u'll feel a difference trust me. what im saying is as nice as it is that people try an be mindfull of the horrors of war its a pointless its worse then u can imagine.
Well, the game sorta discourages you from relying on lethal weapons, because at some point most enemies will have riot suits and helmets that can't be shot off (unless you have the anti-materiel rifle). The countermeasures system in that game is made with the idead to make you think on your feet, because if you rely too much on one way of playing, the enemies will wise up and brutalize you.
@@ridanann ok, let's make NATO and brics go to war just for the experience. You stupid fucking idiot. This is as close as we're gonna get without actually killing anyone.
Ace Combat has a favorite theme in the games near the end that can be boiled down to roughly: "No matter how clean war may be fought at first, it will descend into hell. No matter how popular a war may seem, everyone will eventually pay their price." (Most wars in the game are between nations with land based borders)
13:22 The situation that This War of Mine depicts, where society degenerates into wanton chaotic violence, backstabbing, and looting where everybody is suspicious of each other rather than having stronger cohesion with each other, seems to be an American conception and it's a very popular one in horror movies like Stephen King's The Mist, where a bunch of ordinary people get trapped in a store while being besieged by monsters and they're at each others' throats throughout the whole film.
I think a lot of the problems people have with Spec Ops stems from thinking solely about what options the game mechanics give you. They feel like the game is saying "You should feel terrible about that thing we made you do." In reality I think the message is more "We are making you do terrible things. You know this. But despite everything, you are still going to go along with everything we say and kill as many people as we tell you to because you won't 'win' otherwise." The fact is you're _choosing_ to keep playing as this mad man because you won't feel like you've accomplished something otherwise. I imagine that most people who were unmoved by Spec Ops were likely told in advance that it was this grim deconstruction of modern shooters. That is about the worst spoiler you could give to someone about to play spec ops, because it takes away the shock of having the standard shooter mentality result in something awful.
Scawking True, MW2 made you do some serious shit, but the problem with that is that they never made anything of it. I can't remember a single consequence that came about from the protagonist doing something morally questionable of their own free will (granted, I can't remember much of anything about MW2, but I think I'd remember something like that). That's the biggest thing that sets spec ops aside from other shooters. It acknowledges that what you're doing is fucked up and you shouldn't be proud of it.
Nicholas Knudson People 'choose' to continue to play the game because they want to get their $60 worth.
Nicholas Knudson
"The fact is you're choosing to keep playing as this mad man because you won't feel like you've accomplished something otherwise."
My problem with Spec Ops is that I payed money for it. If I could choose to NOT play the game but get my money back, then it would make sense. So I just played it because I want to make the money I spent worth it. Don't get me wrong, I really like Spec Ops, I think even if the "You should feel terrible about that thing we made you do." doesn't work, it tells a really good story.
+Tim Hall And why do people choose to be soldiers?
+Diamond Games They aren't tellling you that you should feel terrible. They are asking you to reflect and then from there it is an easy extrapolation. See how you are using "I only did this because I paid money for it" is being used as justification? You are literally modelling "I only did this because I was told to." I never felt bad at all for playing the game aside from a few moments/decision but at the end of the day I'm not sure if they wanted you to feel guilty in the first place.
Okay, you're entirely wrong about Spec Ops.
The game needs to represent itself as a typical current day shooter- it's entire opening sequence is very typical of any shooter on the market. Spec Ops doesn't need to use mechanics to tell a narrative- it needs a narrative to recontextualize mechanics. Do you really feel bad when you shoot someone in another game? Spec Ops makes you chase down the wounded and execute them while looking them in the eye. The games mechanics and how the player uses them become increasingly strange as the game progresses, events become more surreal and the nature of who, what or why you're shooting becomes really alien and flaccid. This is why a lot of people who play the game think it's bad- because they felt bad.
Spec Ops is a game about other video games.
Jared Prymont Judging by what you say: Damn it, Spec Ops looks bloody brilliant
AlbertoBC7 quite honestly its the game that will haunt me forever, its the reason why i dont play call of duty anymore
Tbh Spec Ops could have been more legendary if it had a much more tactical gameplay where the player put so much effort into getting passed a obstacle and question what it was all for. Mediocre gameplay doesn't not make a good game, but this game is still a experience
+Denzel Romero Yeah, absolutely, specially considering that you'd make so much effort to think about the strategy that you wouldn't stop and thinking about what you are actually doing.
However, that would make it stand out from generic shooters, which is the point. I think the better option would be to used of the sand gimmick, as shown in earlier builds. In fact I got the game thinking that it still made it in the game(didn't look for anything, just heard the story was different).
+Jared Prymont The bad game mechanics were meant to be that bad to go along with the story and weaves directly with the games plot and main theme: Walker's Sanity. Everything is off to a degree, the story seems off, dialog seems off, events seem illogical. It was a wonderful experience for me and the message it got across was loud and clear. I didnt have much time to fiddle with "this war of mine" but it made me feel super depressed and i feel its a excellent foreshadowing and warning message of a hypothetical american city in dire straights. Law, order, and morals take a back seat to survival.
12:00 "imagine playing spec ops in arma 2"
That just gave me chills.
That's not a bad idea for a mod...
I remember operation flashpoint scaring the hell out of me as a kid. Even feeling guilty for my cowardice when my team reported injuries and losses when I was holding back
That game was legendary, I thought the same thing. I'd find myself rushing into enemy gun fire to help a guy just to get myself and the surviving team mates killed.
The one thing i hate about anti war games and a lot of anti war media in general is that they tend to go out of it's way to make war seem as awful and bleak as possible to the point of it being unrealistic. like how many Vietnam movies portray the Vietcong as being an ultra elite guerrilla fighting force that easily picked off the Americans one by one. rather then the reality of them being a bunch of poorly trained farmers that routinely got curbstomped. or how the anti war message is usually paired with a political message that demonizes one side of the conflict but not the other.
"If you don't gas these innocent people, time and reality will completely stop and be frozen in place until you do... so literally everyone will cease to exist VS these innocent people die."
Easy choice.
The "Spec Ops" games on PS1 had permanent deaths for your soldiers. Is it perhaps ironic that one might consider those games give more of an anti-war message than the most recent Spec Ops game? After all, the old Spec Ops games had a lot of that "recruitment" imagery that you talked about. This fits your idea about ARMA.
Ooh. Covert Assault. That was classic.
Yes they were hardcore tactical games and one of very few PS1 games with co-op multiplayer.
"All I can say of you is that it takes a strong man to deny what’s right in front of him. No matter what happens next, don’t blame yourself - you’re still at home."
I hear some people saying it’s unfair they didn’t have any choices available as to how to deal with the army below them. This is how Martin Walker feels.
I hear some people saying that turning off the game and walking away is a cheap, unfair ending that doesn’t leave you with any sense of closure. This is also how Martin Walker feels (replace “turning off the game” with “leaving Dubai and calling for evac”).
I hear people claim that this was NOT their fault - the game forced them into a horrendous act that they weren’t REALLY complicit in; the people designing that area practically WANTED to set an emotional trap for you and bait you with guilt.
THIS. IS ALL. HOW MARTIN. FEELS.
And what’s more this is how war often is. War has civilian casualties. War has friendly fire. Soldiers go mad because of the uncertainty of everything they’re doing. Congratulations; you’re a “soldier” now.
i live in korea. we are still in war technically...
when i am serving in military, our ship got bombed and main land are get struck.
many young kids are dead....
after end my duty, out side ppl don't care much about loss or ignorant about it....
that kinda scared me.....
and by the way actually shooting ppl with gun are really hard.
we trained with not 'aim and shoot' but just spreading shot, or shot first find cover and shoot some more.
I'm sorry to hear about what you experienced. That's terrible.
Thank you for sharing
Had that arma moment you mentioned in red orchestra. No war game ever made me more convinced that I would never want to be in a war.
Its unbelievable how good your show is. Thank you so much for all the hard work you put into it.
I think the Spec Ops problem comes from the game having a "fail state". Meaning: If youre not good at it, which translates to killing people en masse, its game over - start over.
There is no alternative to the bombing scene, since the narrative has to go though its predertermined motions.
So, the "you have to be good at shooting" and the "hate being good at shooting" parts clash eventually.
Your point with Arma was pretty good. If people discover the tragedies of war themselfes instead of being fed via cutscenes has much much more impact.
And the connection to the gameplay ? Let your player do kill confirmation duty. Look around for bodies that were shot and count up your targets, from enemies to "colleteral damage"
And i have a strong feeling, that if a player has to confirm "10 people shot, 2 civilian casulties", they will think twice about going on a wild shooting spree again.
I think MGS did a pretty good job at making it clear that flat out violence is the very last option you should consider.
Not only is it a much much better feeling to trick guards, sneak past them or finding the perfect safe spot for hiding, a firefight more often than not gets you killed right away simply because youre drastically outnumbered.
And even IF you should be able to take a squadron out, they throw everything at you that theyve got, one squad after another until youre taken down, no matter the cost.
At the end of the firefight, all thats left is a pile of bodies, an empty inventory and a heavy penalty at the end of the game.
Just think of it: The codename "Big Boss" is only awarded for those who dont get seen and dont kill. And "Big Boss" is the so called "Legendary super soldier"
So, to be labeled as such....dont be a legendary super soldier.
Be a ghost, a phantom.
Maybe a legendary super soldier should be a phantom in that right. Maybe a legendary super soldier should be one that is a perfect mix of precision and knockout, not a perfect mix of kills to deaths.
Scawking actually i really hated killing people in that game towards the end. the way the camera would zoom in on a head shot was satisfying at first but made my stomach churn towards the end. i felt spec ops did a really good job at being an anti war game. i didn't even want to think about play shooters for a few months afterward. i just never knew what i was doing in the game, why i was fighting or what my enemies were doing wrong. the narrative was so vague and disjointed i felt really confused. i felt the fact that the game play was really bland helped, it through so many people at me, in so many predictive ways to be cannon fodder that i really just wanted it to end.
They talk about the "just following orders" thats how i felt playing spec ops. but that doesn't mean i didn't feel like shit when it was done. in the drone scene i couldn't tell that the mass of people were civilians, i don't think it was as obvious as the video made it sound. so yeah that hit me pretty hard.
I think the message of Spec ops was just to reevaluate what your doing when you play war games. it draws a lot of parallels from the insane main character to the person holding the controller. its more of a "is this what you really want?!" kinda thing.
***** oh yeah. the cover mechanic fucking sucked so goddamned hard!
Some people interpret Spec Ops in a way that says that finishing the game is the fail state. the only way to win is to stop playing.
The points about finishing Spec Ops being the real fail state are pretty good.
Especially if you consider, that the game is trying to grip you via its gameplay, since these shooters were (and are) pretty popular at the time.
Maybe the real challenge is, to set priorities:
Do i finish the game, because its gameplay is fun and get "rewarded" by being shown what insane stuff i did, or do i quit the game, leave it behind and say "thats it, i dont take part in it"
I highly doubt that this was the intended message though, as it would lead people to abandon a game, the devs need to sell to stay fed.
Whatever might be the case, its interesting to see, that so many people actually had so many different experiences and interpretations about it.
The question is: Has it really changed minds ? Did people really start to question these games ? Sadly, i can not tell, since i generally stay far away from war shooters in general. And IF i play one, its mostly Sci Fi fictional war stuff (Killzone for instance)
Oh, btw: Thanks everybody for a really great convo here :) It happens so rarely on YT and i really appreciate it.
Videogames aren't pessimistic about war in particular, they're pessimistic about human nature. Even more generally speaking, a lot of modern authors really seem to be sold on the idea that people are selfish, that they will do anything to survive. When they do write Characters with moral standards, they're usually goodnatured idiots who don't know any better, while intelligent people are portrayed as being willing to do outrageous things when they are pressed by their circumstances.
I guess the reason for this might be, that with the rising popularity of that which can be 'objectively' measured, the concept of morality has become unfashionable.
Well, the major religions preach for people to be "good natured idiots" and clearly you can see that this was an effective means of survival for the people who followed those religions, as they all survived, reproduced and continued to spread said religion everywhere.
More people live if you work together and cooperate on a grand scale. If you sacrifice individuality and work more collectively, more people end up surviving than if everyone decided to be selfish.
The only place where the looting and scavenging would make sense would be in some place like America, where everyone really truly is selfish. *And morality is unfashionable here.*
@@Butterkin Debatable, the media portrays little things on a grand scale, it's their specialty. Three or four shootings happen in the past year and suddenly it's like shootings happened 100x over and people speak about it non-stop. Death is tragic, yet it is unavoidable and necessary as is war and its grotesque outcomes. Even god in the bible understood this, as he sent David to war, he did not say war was a sin in the bible. God had commanded armies and gave "violent punishments" in the bible. In america morals are 50/50 or atleast I'd like to think 60/40 in favor of good morals based on the silent majority.
@@Butterkin Also, working collectively doesn't necessarily sacrifice individuality, as living together with your family and helping to survive does not make you a mindless zombie.
@Undefined Logic Wrong
@Undefined Logic All of the worlds problems started with Britain, way before America even came to be. They were the ones with the largest empire, domination most countries and using them in their wars so they didn't have to. The only reason these countries were freed was an agreement between America and Britain, where America forced Britain to give up its empire in exchange for help.
For me, it was the opposite. This War of Mine did push some buttons, but it didn't horrify me like Spec Ops did.
Pazuzu4All but that horrific shit you see there, you might be terrified.
DEFCON terrified the shit out of me the first time I played it.
I think you're unfair to Spec Ops. It was intended specifically as an answer to Brown Modern Military Shooters that were so popular at the time of it's release. You can't take a work out of it's historical context.
Entire point of it is that it perfectly follows structure of those games - shooting segment, then you're rewarded with a setpiece or a cutscene.
Also you're completely ignoring moral choices in Spec Ops, which were probably some of the best done "moral choices" i've seen in my life (e.g. the scene where civilians swarm you, and most people think you need to kill them - but you can fire in the air and they will disperse). Sure, there weren't that many - but I think it has potential.
If a Spec Ops sequel took those concepts and ran with them, this could be an interesting game.
yes..so much yes
Good games are meant to be timeless. A game that is pretty much just an artsy "response" to games of its time without being a GOOD GAME itself is not worthy of praise.
Jet DreamTim I guess Don Quixote is now a piece of hot garbage, because it was created directly as a parody/pastice of chivalric romance books! Nice.
Like. When Castlevania 2: Simon's Quest was released, it was a really innovative game.
Sure, Zelda 2 paved the way for a metroidvania-action RPG before it, but Simon's Quest added a whole bunch of features to the mix - variable equipment, being also probably one of the first RPG games where equipped items like e.g. shields affected your character's appearance, day and night cycle, complete integration of dungeons and overworld into a single sidescrolling map just like in Metroid (unlike Zelda 2 which used a top-down overworld), tough adventure puzzles not unlike the ones seen in adventure games at the time, and a dark color palette composed primarily of black, white, grey and dark color shades, as compared to bright blue/orange color scheme that was the norm at the time (and prevalent e.g in first Castlevania). Despite lack of polish that came with experimentation in the new territory, it was still a well received game at the time.
Except, you know. Since then, we came to expect our metroidvania platformers to be more varied and have maps, our RPGs to don't need grinding, and puzzles in our adventure games got a lot less "how-the-hell-was-I-supposed-to-know-that?!"-ish.
So even though it was an impressive combination of its elements at the time, in a modern age it feels extremely lackluster, as every single of its components aged badly.
The more complex a thing is, the more likely is that at least some of its parts won't age well as the audience changes, so trying to create a 'timeless' work of art that isn't almost barebones simple - any art - is a Sisyphean task - or perhaps, more like a Pythian one, as it requires knowledge of the future, something we can't have.
shinobody The only difference being, Don Quixote was a book which was actually GOOD. Parody or not, it stood on its own as an excellent book. Spec Ops is not a good game, not by a longshot. Don't try to make a snarky remark when you can't comprehend a sentence.
And Castlevania 2 is garbage. Metroidvania's became a respectable genre with Symphony of the Night, which, guess what, STILL holds up. Much like Super Metroid. Are you gonna compare a shortsighted game such as Spec Ops to games that have stood the test of time?
You can have timeless art that is complex and deep. Look at Jules Verne's books. Look at The Clockwork Orange. Look at Metal Gear Solid 3, Half-Life 2, Devil May Cry 3, Super Metroid etc. when it comes to single player games.
Jet DreamTim This is a whole bunch of your personal opinions which you seem to be stating as an absolute truth, for some reason. Like, chill.
LOL i'll buy that train game for the kids, perfect christmas feeling right there
Hope you've got plenty to spend for it, because there's only one in existence.
Nicholas Knudson
it wouldnt exactly be hard to make a replica, considering its only some model trains, index cards, glass panes and meeples
Calm down Satan.
Yh tbh sounds like party time
"Anti-War War Games" * sees Paz from Metal Gear Solid: Peacewalker *
I like this video.
yeah I was expecting her and was clickbaited :(
Same
The but MGS 3 ends with you being forced to kill the Boss.
Which it kinda did hit me in thinking.
You're an excellent voice deliverer, George.
I still think that Metal Gear Solid 3 is the best anti-war game of all time, personally.
It's about making hard decisions, and the knowledge that every one of them has a consequence. You're actively trying to stop a war from happening in the first place.
SPOILERS AHEAD!
The Boss gave everything, EVERYTHING for her country, in order to protect people she'd never meet. She gave up her love, her child, her womb, her freedom, and her life, all for people who would revile her as a war criminal... The boss gave her life, so others wouldn't have to, so they would never have to be soldiers like her.
I think she was hoping her son would never have to see the darker side of humanity, and I find it sad that he became steeped in conflict, wound up in the story of The Patriots.
END OF SPOILERS!
Metal Gear Solid 4 did a good job too with The Beauties, and with the way "War Has Changed", but I'm not so sure it was as powerful as 3 when it came to that message.
I personally tried to save the Beauties. It would feel wrong to kill them after everything they must have gone through. The exposition after each fight with a Beauty made me feel kinda nice. I saved these people and they no longer have to live such terrible lives.
Then again, I didn't hesitate to mow down every enemy in sight that wasn't a Beauty, which makes me kind of a Hypocrite.
actually the villans of mgs4 maked world peace
Taking damage in Insurgency is up there with ARMA in terms of fear-inducing experiences.
+Maxwell Pettit All the comments that the characters and announcers make just adds to it.
You know its already too late when you hear: "OH SHIT RPG!"
Arma 3 is one of the best, most realistic war games I’ve ever played. It’s so scary to the point that you might actually get an adrenaline rush as you get shot at, or get chills as a bullet passes over your head. That doesn’t happen in other games. I don’t flinch when I get shot in Call of Duty.
my father grew up in the war of sarajevo and often tells me about growing up during it and the civil war that followed. I have visited bosnia a few times aswell, the damage of the wars are still present today, things like bullet holes in walls, etc. I cant imagine the Hell he went trough and im gratefull for him still being here.
Spec Ops had several messages, but I wouldn't call it an anti-war game. All that happened in the story was because Konrad and Walker disobeyed their respective orders (not because they followed them) just to try to save people; but it backfired on them in the worst way possible. The truth is that they ended up like that because they wanted to be something that they weren't: heroes.
The comment at 13:13 really touched me.
It's completely different from the mentality of The Walking Dead for instance, where the constant "homo homini lupus" (man is wolf to man) theme is truly depressing.
Spec ops isn't criticizing war. Its criticizing you, the player.
That’s the thing about zombie movies, shows and games. In the long run, the people that help each other are those who survive catastrophes in real events but the fictional approach usually tries to make a hollow point that other people are the real monsters.
I got an add for a game called dawn of war or something like that, and before I cold skip it a character said "kill every orc that crosses this threshold" I find this irony funny
The entire purpose of orcs to have an unarguably evil enemy you won't feel the least bit bad about killing.
War is equally apalling and glorious, but it's not pretty, sobering or empowering. Anti-War games either need to have peaceful mechanics or show war as realistically as possible. No scores, no close ups of the enemies, just high tension shooting and tactics like bombing.
Not nearly enough focus on MGS, which is surprising from you, Bunnyhop. But I guess that's because it's so evident and wide-known.
Tranquilizing enemies in MGS2 instead of killing them was an unforgettable experience. Especially since the game invites you to do so, with strong incentives and a certain touch of glory to it (same in all other MGS to date).
Yet I remember, in 2002, a friend of mine saying, when asked to describe MGS2: "it's a game about killing people". So much for the incentives, the glory and Kojima's message. :) So it really all is in the eye of the beholder, whether or not a game is an anti-war game.
How many people took the time to reflect on ArmA as you did...? Or even Spec Ops for that matter.
Flying Fox That's what separates video games from other media- Human interactivity and control over the course of the narrative. MGS2 is only a game about killing people if you decide that it is from a gameplay standpoint, and the story is ambiguous so that you can interpret the story into being about it too. Or it could be a game about killing people in the sense that it criticizes and deconstructs doing so. Words are a tricky thing to pin down.
Spec Ops isn't an Anti-war game. It's an anti-wargame game.
Arma 3 has a DLC called "Laws of War" - it adds a campaign where the player plays as Red Cross (IDAP ingame) after the war in the main campaign (part of the profit made from sells is donated to the Red Cross). I know, it came out in 2017 and this video is from 2014
“Since most viewers on here will never be to a museum, I’ll explain it to you”
5:20 the entire point of the White Phosphorous scene is that you do it to finish the game. Because that's all a game is, isn't it? A trip to the ending. A means to an end. A journey toward a goal. And you'll do something absolutely horrific and awful and then feel indignant at the game for "forcing" you to do something to reach your precious goal.
That's exactly the mentality that the game was criticizing.
Well that and the idolization of the armed forces and those who serve it, the united states' obsession with military interventionism and the dehumanization of foreign nations and peoples with regards to armed conflict, player and public entitlement, the "it's not MY problem" mentality of the general public and our inability to acknowledge how much control we actually have over current events, the sheer unreality of cultural ideals about military personnel and combat veterans and just what a huge problem PTSD can be for those afflicted and everyone else as well, the lack of responsibility in cultural media both in terms of the creators of said media and the public that consume it and how it helps to reinforce and shape social ideas...
At its core, of course, Spec Ops: The Line primarily viciously deconstructs the standard 'superhero power fantasy' of most modern military shooters by presenting players with just such a scenario and then constantly undermining it. The game puts words in your mouth every time the protagonist stretches to justify their actions and those justifications become flimsier and flimsier until the game itself stops and forces you to acknowledge that they're really just excuses.
I suppose, ultimately, if you can't really empathize with the sort of mindset that the game is trying to criticize, it's not really going to have the same impact on you?
+PoppySquidJr For one thing, plenty of other people have found an emotional connection to this game, so you can't really assume that your personal refusal to do so reflects objectively on the game itself.
Secondly, this game doesn't give a crap about making sales. This game wasn't made by people who wanted to make money. This game doesn't care if you don't want to play it. The entire point of this game was to criticize american culture. The whole purpose of this game is to point at the gaping lack of moral and emotional weight that we put, not just on other modern war shooters, but on the depiction of war and the military in general pop culture. This game was created to tell everyone who buys that kind of game that YOU are part of the problem by promoting, encouraging, and repeating a mentality that the american military is some kind of superhero squad with the god-given right to stomp around the planet "fixing" other people's "problems."
Thirdly, the whole point of forcing the player to do something and then saying "yeah if you don't like it, stop playing" is to confront the mentality of fantasy-entitlement that this kind of gameplay, this kind of fiction in general, is based around. It's challenging you, the player, to accept that either you can face the _reality_ of war getting shoved in your face for once, or you can grow up and let go of your pathetic power fantasy. You're not entitled to a happy ending. You're not entitled to _any_ ending because you haven't _earned_ any kind of emotional catharsis. You just *expect* to have it given to you.
Does that make it a bit clearer?
+PoppySquidJr "a game about space marines shooting lasers out their dick while singing Tiny Tim" I would preorder the fuck out of this game, and also the season pass!
Fuzzballfox Onionring sorry, no. That may be what the plot director made. But not the company. The company did it to make money.
The reason this company made the plot as such was because of the lacking budget and quality control, which allowed them to take risks that higher budget developers could not.
And no, the reason you empathize with it is because it agrees with your politically predeterminations about war.
Fuzzballfox Onionring
Couldn't agree more.
@@fuzzballfoxonionring6729 The message is great and all, but if you're paying money for it then the message shouldn't detract from the gameplay and fun. If you pay 60 dollars for a meatball sub and get told 'if you don't like, stop eating' when you're given a grilled cheese that's worth 15 dollars, then it still wont be worth 60 dollars even if was a meatball sub. It doesn't matter if the point of it was to criticize you for blindly eating meatball subs. you're still entitled to your 60 dollars of sandwich.
Finally someone who, like me, refuses to feel guilt for a story point I had no control over!
I remember the first time i played This War of Mine, I was still getting used to the mechanics of the game when one of my characters was gunned down by an NPC, annoyed that I had lost a character and a lot of good equipment I decided to send in another survivor, carrying only a knife, to reap my revenge, about ninety seconds later I had killed everybody in the building Darth Vader Corridor scene style, I had that gamer moment of feeling like a badass, until my friend pointed out the people I had murdered weren't malicious, they'd just been trying to protect themselves from me.
I love how you used Cannon fodder music in the beginning.
Seeing the thumbnial, I was hoping you mention MGS Peace Walker.
Not a masterpiece, very ficticious, but the metaphor of finding the most peaceful human side of a legendary war hero through the data of a souless robot... that hits hard when you think about it.
ArmA is one hell of a game. The absolute tension you feel as you lie in an open field as thousands of bullets fly over your head knowing at any moment one could hit you and it’s all over. The feeling you get as you stalk through a random forest, not knowing what’s around every corner, knowing each moment could be your last. It shows the randomness, the abruptness, and the indifferent nature of warfare. Nothing is certain, and half the time your deaths are close to unpreventable. I don’t think anything has made me want to enlist less than Arma
Man your videos are always so interesting, It's really refreshing to watch someone cover a topic related to video games rather than a specific game
This war of mine got me depressed for quite some time and made me drop it. Later this year I came back to it and finally found myself a suitable gameplay style that was more enjoyable: killing and trading, not surviving.
This video was uploaded 11 minutes ago, already 3 dislike over a 14 minute video. So logic. But I liked the video before watching it, so I guess I'm not better.
It's been 8 years until I noticed the peace sign in the thumbnail
that train game's breaking the window was the night of broken glass and im stupid for just realizing that
I really liked this video but I have to disagree on some points you made about Spec Ops: The Line. Yes, the white phosphorus scene is by far the most talked about and famous, but it's far from the most effective or intresting part of the game. Mabey it's so talked about because it's so visual, or mabey because it's one of the first and few moments in a AAA game intended for the mass market that directly punished the player for obeying the games rules (in this case the olny rule is to actually play the game as it is designed to be played, which is the point). I didn't feel any guilt either after that scene, it was not MY fault it happened, but that is not what the game is aiming at.
The point the game is trying to make there is to make you feel like you know you "should" feel guilty, but not feeling guilty because you were "forced to do it" or "had no choice". And this is were I disagree with you, the game pushes this message home WITH the mechanics, to restrict your option to a point where your only choice is to kill the civilians or stop playing creates some kind of cognitive dissonance where you know you should feel something you don't.
This is also reflected in the narrative, the main protagonist justify his actions with the same logic that the player do. He and you are both "forced" to do what you do, he by the narrative circumstances, you by the games mechanics, and you both and together blame an outside force for the actions YOU choose to partake in.
There is no separation between gameplay and narrative in Spec Ops: The Line in that sense, the gameplay is an important part in driving home the games points and message (not it's story). Spec Ops: The Line would have a much harder time to actually MAKE these points if it were not a "games game" that play like a mashup of CoD and gears of war. Spec Ops the line fucking hates what type of game it is and it hates you if you play it, and thats why it's a fucking masterpiece.
So it's not a war game, then, it's a "following the rules that don't exist" game. A game about societal pressure or cultural pressure. It can apply to war but it just uses war because it's convienent and easy for it to.
My logic is it is a game, I am killing A.l. bots to trigger flags in the game to progress the story since the game made my suspension of disbelief come crashing down. I feel more regret when I accidentally friendly fire on A.I. bots since at least it was my fault and wasn't suppose to happen.
Srew the Shadow No, it has a lot of points about war. I take it that you have not played Spec Ops: The Line.
It heard the "Breaking the 4th wall"-theory before and there actually is a scene in the game, that pretty much supports it. There is an NPC telling you stuff, that fits for the protagonist and the player as well. For example:
- You came here to help? You can't help anybody! You have other qualities. (Which means that the protagonist is a soldier. His only quality is killing people. On the other hand the player bought this game, knowing that it is a shooter, so of course he came to shoot people and not to save them).
- You could have stopped all of this, but you just pushed on (Refering to many situations in which your team mates told you to leave Dubai or to call reinforcements, but the protagonist just wanted to go on. This could apply to the player being able to quit the game at any time, but still going on, because he wants to know, what is going to happen).
I can see, where ideas like that come from, but I think they don't make too much sense for a few reasons:
1. The message is kind of cryptic and most people probably won't even get it. If they really tried to go for that message, there would probably have been better ways to do so.
2. The logic of this message is kind of stupid. The game is basically telling you, that you shouldn't have played the game by a conversation that pretty much happens after 95% of the game. After many hours of juts shooting soldiers and being totally fine with it, the game all of the sudeen says "We broke the 4th wall. Ain't that clever? Now feel bad!!!".
3. The game is trying to make you feel bad for playing shooter games. But still the developer sold the game, made money with it and it actually got good reviews. So first of all: The developers developed a game for millions of dollars and thought "If nobody buys this game, we did a good job"? Very unlikely. Second: The people actually gave good reviews to the game, which basically means, that nobody got the message. Third: The next two projects, that the developer of this game is going to make are "Dead Island 2" and "Dreadnought", which both pretty much look like games about killing dozens of people. So the company says "War games are bad! We will develop more of them!". It's hard to take a message serious, if the person who originally made it, doesn't even is serious about that. It's just one of those messages, that people heard, thought "Man, that's clever" and still didn't change anything, because why should they?
4. You obviously have to finish most games to get what they are all about. There might be some clever message within them, that you don't see immediatly. So Spec Ops message of "It's a shooter. Don't play it. They are bad!" is pretty much a generalization, that wouldn't apply to all shooters.
GrayFalcony Well I think you are wrong on a number of points and maybe half-right on a couple. Spec ops the line does a lot more than saying "shooters are bad, don't play them" and the point that the games makes at the very end is built up throughout the entire game. It would not have worked if the game told you what it was trying to say in the beginning because it needs to make an argument for it's own points for them to have value. The argument IS the game and it's gameplay, the message would have been worthless if the game just told you what it want's to say right away.
Anyway, I think your logic is strange but quite symptomatic for how many (most?) people talk about games as a cultural medium or how messages and statements are delivered with games. There are a lot of litterature about litterature, film about film, etc, but in gaming we are not used to have a meta-discussion about our medium WITHIN our medium. We play games and then we talk about them, but for many people there is obviously a disconnect when games is used AS games to create a discussion about games. That is (in part) what spec ops is doing.
Somebody should make a mod for COD or Battlefield that makes the dead bodies stay there, rather than disappear. Not saying games like those two shouldn't exist or be fun, but it would be good to have the option. I remember playing Operation Flashpoint and during or after the large battles, seeing how many bodies there were strewn about was pretty sobering. Kind of like in Hotline Miami where you would have to walk through the building past all the dismembered bodies of the people you killed after completing a level.
“The game begins by smashing a complementary windowpane.” Subtle
arma 3 has a dlc called laws of war, it has a really great campeign about the effects of war on civilians and the soldiers, plus the strange way two sides of a war actually interact with eachother outside of battle
At first I thought Train was a joke, like a parody of tryhard art games. Hilarious.
Ever notice that the old Brothers In Arms games have both the realistic game engine along with the anti war message of MGS and Spec Ops? Kinda like a combination of MGS3 with Rainbow Six.
Great video again! I love the research you put into these analytical videos. Keep up the good work!
One of the games I've dreamed of making is playing as a child refugee in Belarus during WW2 trying to escape with your younger sister while the Einsatzgruppen are going around and massacring anyone and anything that moves in the most unspeakable ways (seriously, the Einsatzgruppen make ISIS or Khmer Rouge look like amateurs). Game wouldn't really be a shooter, but done as a very creepy, very real survival horror.
Another thing I want: An actual FPS war game with civilians running around, hiding, crying, reacting to the war and deaths around them. It's disingenuous for modern military FPS to just show the fighting without showing the human toll at all.
I hope you get to make your game some day, sounds very interesting in a horrific sort of way.
Yeah, that's a good point. Even in RTS games, civilians never show up, just empty houses ready to have a MG nest set up in a window.
That would make an interesting feature(maybe): send in a squad of troopers into a house, but they discover a family hiding in one of the rooms. Do you leave the house alone, giving up a key checkpoint? Kick them out on their asses and hope they make it out alive? Ignore them and risk them getting in the way? Send an escort to bring them to safety?
Also, your game idea is amazing. Potentially one of the best horror games of all time.
That does sound pretty brilliant-- a war game as survival horror as opposed to action shooter. What do you do now? Do you make games?
KironVB That definitely reminds me of the movie Idi i Smotri. Pretty brilliant depiction of the Einsatzgruppen and "Security Divisions" in Belarus.
Broreale Idi i Smotri was translated to "Come and See" in english FYI
Give war a chance! - Sundowner
I love games which subvert the trope by showing how much fun and hilarity there is in being an utterly loathsome, sociopathic scumbag. Games like Rimworld, for example, where you can turn your colonists into homicidal cannibals, force them to kill and butcher their own spouse, and then eat them raw... then watch them spend their days wandering around in a daze, psychotic with guilt and horror. Or Fallout 3, where you get gently chided by Liam-Dad for blowing up an entire town with a nuclear bomb so a rich man's view from his balcony isn't obscured.
I think rubbing people's noses in awfulness while making them laugh uncomfortably is a far better way to hammer in the message than preaching.
just stumbled across this channel randomly and subscribed. Nothing better than an in depth analysis of the contextual themes of videogames.
All aboard the hollacoster
"Have you ever killed anyone?" From 8:13 onward... Imagine how difficult a question that is for our deployed service mebers
No mention of DEFCON? Great game, and also terrifying to think about.
When I realized that the weeps in the background were supposed to be people in NORAD/Wherever crying about losing millions of people I broke down.
Atavism what game is that
i like how the thumbnail is on a character from Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker but u have not talked about the game in the video or i just missed that part
I always love coming back to this video
spec-ops the line "didnt hit you hard"? dude that game was brilliant i felt terrible when i finished it. "do you feel like a hero yet?" nope!
I sure did.
As soon as I saw the title, I smiled, because I know George loves him some Metal Gear and takes every chance to fanboy over it. It's just pleasant.
I think this might be your best video to date. It combines almost all the themes you have presented in just about every review and retrospective you have created, while progressing your ideas of game mechanics and storytelling that you like and criticize. This video comes off almost like a master thesis of game mechanics and storytelling that I feel really adds to the discussion of video games. In short, I'm saying awesome work and I hope you keep at it!
the papers please music coming in during the spec ops scene made me feel nice, good video
mgs is anti-war
MGS is as pro-war as an IP can get, but the creators don't realize it.
Splinter Cell sometimes is more pro-war, but the Big boss games are even pro-war, i think MGS4 knows that, when snake's destroys world peace by starting WW3.
@@josealejandromontilla1106 I kinda find anti-war games often to be pretentious.
Frankly the best kind of anti-war game is “This War of Mine”, no ideological or political or moral message, no views on how the world and war is like today, just people simply trying to survive and sometimes when unlucky, they’re forced to do ugly things.
Spec Ops more of focuses on the main character, since you're basically experiencing everything from his perspective. You're told everything from the perspective of an unreliable narrator, that is hiding things from you because he fails to see them himself. There's never a choice because he sees no choice, there are only hints about Walker's group not seeing things the same way you do because you only hear the lines that hint of it and the rest of them are being covered by the character's delusions. Delusions that are trying to help him and at the same time want to ruin him. Cognitive dissonance appears all over the game's narrative, in both the story and gameplay, and these two end up clashing against one another constantly. The game doesn't define this psychological phenomenon for nothing.
Only at the end the game stops forcing you into situations where you have no choice, and allows you to finally do decisions that have consiquences, because the main character's delusions have finally decided to stop. He isn't protecting himself from the reality anymore.
So yeah, it's not really about war in general. It's a satire/deconstruction of the modern military genre, with a focus on character study of the generic main protagonist.
Let war stays in videogames
~Metal Slug Atack
the makers of the arma series and the original operation flashpoints saw the effects of the cold war first hand, its what inspired them to make a game that depicts war realistically, kinda ironic that it ended up becoming an actual training tool for real soldiers
Raycevick brought me here. Great video.
I think the fact that you don't have a choice in Spec Ops: The Line is it's greatest STRENGTH, NOT a weakness as you claim.
For one simple reason: If you didn't have to do it... you wouldn't.
Oh you might, just to see the result, but then you'd reload your save and choose the "right" option.
In Spec Ops, you don't GET that luxury. That's the brilliance of it.
When you're in a war, you're FORCED to do horrific things. You have NO control over it. There's no getting out of it, no escaping it, no option that's going to make everyone happy with sugar and rainbows. When you decide to go to war, you're fucking over everyone in the process, yourself included, just like when you turn your console or PC on to play Spec Ops, you're committed to playing it, and how when Walker decides to take actions into his own hands and escalate the situation, he's not being a hero, he's causing chaos and destruction that ends many innocent lives.
One thing I hear too much of lately in games is player choice this, and player choice that. Well, Spec Ops isn't about choice, it's about the RESULTS of choice, and how horrific those results are. In war, there are no good choices, and most games don't bother to portray that.
We only end up where we are because Walker CHOSE to disobey orders and play hero. All Walker was supposed to do was do reconnaissance and get out. If Yager instead let the player choose whether or not we simply follow orders or otherwise then the person the can blame for any discomfort beyond is themselves.
Results of choice do not have as much effect if there wasn't a choice in the first place. Then it isn't exactly your fault, is it? It was a lazy way to try and push guilt, which clearly did not work out as well as having bad things happen when you fail or make poor decisions.
A lack of player choice is perhaps the least thing I would call a "strength" in these sort of video games. You may as well be watching a video in story-driven games without player choice.
Maybe instead... there is no "right" option, but perhaps if you refuse to do it there are awful consequences for your character making you want to do it anyway to progress the game. That way you can still choose to do the morally correct thing, but then you lose the mission or you die or whatever the consequence would be. That would offer a far better means of getting the player to do it in order to progress, while still making them feel some responsibility for the result of their choices. Because again, in order for one to feel guilt for what they do they have to actually be the one to give the go to do it. You would not feel nearly as guilty if someone physically grabbed your arm, put a gun in your hand, and forced you to shoot someone with their strength. You would feel much more about what you did if you had to shoot someone because you had to in order to protect yourself. In either situation you have to do it, but you hold actual responsibility for the action in the second scenario.
@@Wildeye13 plus in papers please it is more than a simple choice. There are no choices that are sunshine and rainbows. Either you let down your family, or you let down the people in desperate situations caused by your evil government. You can either help the evil government or risk your loved ones. You still feel responsible for what happens to them, though, because you have an actual choice. And your skill effects how well you can help anybody at all.
I hope you sumbled upon Arma 3's DLC "Laws of War". Looking 5 years back, I can say it changed my perspective on all of this.
in this war of mine you feel something when you rob the elderly couple. even i felt something even though i didnt do it myself. thats a good anti war game design. but if you are forced to kill people and are shown gruesome scenes which means you didnt have the choice it just become fun to kill them because thats the point of the game. shooter games abide by "one death is a tragedy, multiple deaths are a statistic"