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Davis has a long history in the industry, including additional credits on Monolith’s F.E.A.R. No other game has tried anything like it, and as a result it’s one of the only cover shooters I’d recommend without question. Cory Davis, the creative director and designer of Spec Ops: The Line, is forming a new studio alongside Nine Inch Nails guitarist Robin Finck. It beats you down, tires you out, in an effort to make your own state of mind align with Walker’s. The carnage deliberately goes on for slightly too long in Spec Ops.
I think the first thing I played after finishing it was Sonic 2, just to cleanse my palate a bit, since it’s a little lighter on the dehumanising effects of war. I chose an ending where he simply walks away from the chaos, as close to a ‘good’ ending as this bleak finale allows. The ending offers choices that result in four possible outcomes, but it’s hard to believe there’s anything left of Walker, no matter which path you pick. The ending underlines that notion in a pointed, metaphorical way, explaining the horrific reality of what Walker has brought upon Dubai, and finally detaching him from the selfdelusional sense of heroism that’s powered him through to this final moment. With every reckless action, with every disobeyed order, with every instance you pull the trigger-even when the game doesn’t make you do it-you’re accelerating that transformation. You spend the game thinking you’re chasing the warlord of Dubai down, but you’re turning into him. “Do you feel like a hero yet?” Konrad asks in the game’s finale, after hours of wearying, increasingly violent firefights against the 33rd and everyone else in Dubai. What accidental good fortune, that the actor behind one of gaming’s most well-known icons plays someone who tries to be a hero, but comprehensively fails. Nolan North was a subversive casting choice-who better to portray a protagonist who kills as many people as a typical videogame hero, but exists in a context where those actions finally have consequences? This meta commentary was not deliberate: North worked on the game for four years, right from the pre-production stage, which may explain why Walker’s increasingly weathered rage and gradual disassociation with reality is so convincingly played. It was the noisy release of the PlayStation’s Uncharted 4 that got me thinking about Spec Ops again. No wonder this game seems to have generated more think pieces than copies sold. Stopping them is not your job, but Walker and his gung-ho pals decide it is, for the greater good. It’s soon apparent that the 33rd’s methods aren’t sound, and that at the very least they’re torturing CIA agents and firing on other soldiers. But under your control and against orders, Walker engages with the conflict-playing what he thinks is the role of the hero, despite never being fully aware of the facts. That’s all the mission is supposed to be: reconnaissance. Walker starts that game as an action hero too, sent into sandstorm-ravaged Dubai to find out what’s happened to former brother-in-arms John Konrad and his battalion, the Damned 33rd.