Spec Ops: The Line

In my opinion, the objective of art shouldn't be to simply entertain. That should be part of it, certainly... but there's a huge opening in there for so much more. That's a dangerous road to go down, of course. I mean, when a game says 'hey listen to my awesome philosophy' , then people take out the words didactic and shoot you down though.

When it's done well, you get Spec Ops: The Line, a game whose story is so stunningly good that it beats the everloving shit out of its recipient seamlessly without once appearing to be disingenuous or preachy.  It is a brilliantly conceived and beautifully executed indictment of the last ten years of war glorification and faux-heroism that our society has collectively indulged in.It isn't a game that's fun in the traditional sense. It hits you hard, but you come out the better end feeling all the better for it.

The narrative is exquisitely put together. It starts out simply enough... you are a Delta Force Soldier sent in with your two buddies to try to find people who survived a huge sandstorm that swept Dubai (something that apparently can happen there). An American distress signal is called and you go looking for it and run into some armed locals. The first hour or two of gameplay are really quite conventional. But then things rapidly change and the story goes to a much different place.

Spoilers from here on. Needless to say, I highly recommend it.

There are three elements of this thing that I'd like to underline...

1) White Phosphorous

This is probably the most talked about scene in the game. Walker has to break through enemy lines and finds a remotely targeted White Phosphorous artillery piece to shell them with. You are transferred to a birds-eye view camera angle where the enemy are little white pips on the ground. You then proceed to let her rip. At first I picked my targets carefully, but after a while I realized that there was no limit on ammo canisters and so I fucking carpeted absolutely everything with the stuff.

Two things happen then.

First you are shifted back to the realistic non-gamey graphics and are forced to walk through the devastation that you have wrought. And it is devastation.

Men are crying and screaming in agony. The disconnect between the feeling of raining death from the sky on little white blips and that moment cannot be larger. These are human lives that have just been snuffed out by your little technological marvel and there's no way even the most uncompromising soldier can just write it off (especially since they're damn American soldiers to begin with).

There's no glory in that victory. No honour.

Then you get to the end and see the true magnitude of your crimes.

Collotaral damage is what they call this, I do believe. Turns out a cluster of the white blips that your computer weapon was firing at was a bunch of innocents. Walker had no way of knowing that would happen, but then again who that ever uses a weapon like that ever really does? You've got your designated military target and you let loose until it's gone. And thankfully, none of the Drone pilots in Nevada even have to give that a second thought, since they don't walk through the aftermath when all is said and done.

But what really made the scene for me was what Walker did afterward... he denied it all. He claimed it was the enemy's own fault that this happened. That they'd brought it on themselves and that his hand had been forced. It's an excuse that is as hollow in the game as it is in reality, but it's the best he can do.

Goddamn.

2) Walker

From White Phosphorous on, it's a downward spiral for Walker. He's going insane and his decisions begin to be coloured by his bloodlust, cruelty and heroic fantasies. Subtle changes start to occur inside of him. At the beginning of the game, when you shoot a hostile American soldier down Walker will cry out "Tango Down!" or some other variety of military lingo.

 Slowly that starts to be replaced by "He's dead" and "And stay down!" The joy in his voice at each death he inflicts is audible. 

But more than that, Walker steadily begins to break under pressure. His orders steadily begin to amount to little more than casual and vicious savagery. When the crew escapes from renegade American soldiers in a helicopter, Walker tells them to circle around so that he can unload the minigun on his former pursuers. There's no reason for him to do this. They can't harm him anymore and it's just unnecessary and wanton destruction.

But he does it anyway. And the why of it is left appropriately unexplored. In an era where the architects of massacres get 0 years in prison, this is something worth reflecting upon.

But the defining moment came when your squadmate Lugo is captured by some Dubai locals. You try to reach him in time, but are too late... they've already hung him by the neck. I really liked Lugo. He was the wisecracker and he had the more human reactions to everything that happened. Losing him felt like loosing a friend.

After it's clear that he's dead, the mob closes around Walker. None of these guys have guns or anything. They're just people who are understandably upset about you shooting up their damn city  like a fucking maniac. I didn't want to hurt any of them. I just wanted to get the hell out of there.

But then someone threw a bottle or rock or something at me and set off the damage alarm. And so I immediately opened fire.

I emphasize the word 'I' there. That was my choice and my own self-preservation instincts. That's what's special about the game. Walker is a fucking insane murderer. But when push came to shove, I acted in just the same way that that cold and despicable mind did. I was Walker in that one moment, callously killing those that would kill me. An animal that exists only to preserve its own pathetic existence.

Goddamn.

3) War.

I can see why the game's writer chose to make the enemy in this game other Americans. Over the last ten years, shooters have gotten realistic in terms of graphics and gameplay, while still keeping the player neatly insulated from the actual feeling of taking another human being's life. Nothing like that in Spec Ops: The Line. Your enemies are basically guys just like Walker.

Have fun killing them!

But there's a definite political undertone here and I want to address it directly.

I protested the Iraq war back when the majority of people thought it was a good idea and to this day I don't think people truly realize why that misguided and vulgar conflict gave rise to so much tragedy. It happened because the Americans were not needed or wanted in that area of the world. It happened because of the eight scariest words in the whole world... "The American Army is coming to save you."

Walker is the embodiment of the Iraqi and Afghan War. He goes into Dubai for a combination of personal and humanitarian purposes and then stays there after things go wrong because he simply cannot stop. He cannot look at himself and say 'I've failed and have done far more harm than good', because then what is the meaning of any of it? Why did he kill all these people if not for some greater purpose? Surely one needs to get to an end that justifies at least some of these means.

But he never gets there and every fucking step he takes forward leads to more death and more misery. If he would just stop where he is and leave everyone alone, everything would be better. But he doesn't. A twisted sense of honour and martial pride lead him onwards, against any coherent reason.

For the last ten years, the world has stayed the course. We've beaten our heads against conflicts that have done far more harm than any good, while inventing new and creative ways to glorify soldiers while dehumanizing the enemy. And that is why Spec Ops: The Line is such an important piece of art. It is a rebuttal against all the fucking ugliness, self-delusion and lies of the last ten years. There is no glory here, no bad guy that you can put down to save the day. There's only the next pointless death, the next pathetic act of self-preservation and the next meaningless conflict.

Walker is us over the last ten years. And we do not look good.

Goddamn. 

Conclusion:

This is a necessary story that will hit just the right audience in just the right place. Glancing through the internet, one of the first comments I read about this game was that it was treasonous. I can think of no better endorsement of this game than that... because right now what the world needs is a little treason.

Treason against the man who killed 24 people in Haditha and walked free...
Treason against the helicopter pilot who gunned down 18 people in Baghdad...
Treason against the Siege of Fallujah...
Treason against the Drones...
Treason against the guy that shot 16 people, including 9 fucking kids, in Afghanistan...
Treason against the last ten years.

Yeah... sign me up for some treason. There's more ...

Redshirts

So John Scalzi is probably the biggest name in science fiction literature nowadays, which as far as I'm concerned is kind of depressing.

On the Fantasy side you've got Patrick Rothfuss who, for all his faults, has the best writing technique and craft of our generation. There's also JK Rowling (who may admittedly have abandoned fantasy in favour of bullshit now) and solid fighters like Scott Lynch and Stephen Deas bringing up the rear. The last decade of fantasy has been extremely good and while most of the above authors aren't perfect they are nevertheless artists and they do produce quality work.

In the meanwhile, the best thing the science fiction scene has been able to produce is John Scalzi, a nerdy hipster capitalist who quite frankly seems to be willing to write just about anything that he thinks might make him a quick buck. A charlatan whose cold and empty stories reflect the cold emptiness of his soul.

So with my cards now thrown down on the table, let's talk about Redshirts.


All you need to really know about Redshirts' story is right there in the title. It's about the dudes on an Enterprise-like ship that die when they go on away missions or have their consoles explode when the ship is under attack and all that. The big twist is that they start to catch on to this phenomenon and start avoiding away missions and all sorts of wacky hijinks ensue.

So let's divide my discussion between what I think were Scalzi's goals in writing this

1) Humour

I actually went to see Scalzi read the first chapter of the book at a library. It's quite funny and self-referential and has an amusing meta-narrative going in there. If this had been a short story consisting only of the first chapter, I would probably have sent it around to friends and recommended it. Unfortunately however, there's an entire book that comes after that.

Redshirts essentially only has one real joke. That joke is: "Ha ha, Star Trek did some pretty cliche things." That joke is funny once, maybe twice. But an entire book that does not make. The other attempts at humour that the book attempts range from stupid cracks about blowjobs and stealing someone's pants. It's honestly quite pathetic. Clearly, whatever edge Scalzi had that made the Andorid's Dream as funny as it was has apparently completely drowned in a sea of internet memes.

When I went to see Scalzi's talk, he said at the time that this book was 'low-hanging fruit' and that no one had ever done this before. But the thing is that someone already had. And it's right here.

And that 23 second one-off scene easily has more humour value than Scalzi's entire book.

2) Parody

So this is a Star Trek parody, except that it's sort of not. The line in the book is that the ship is based on a fictional bad knock-off of Star Trek that was apparently really awful but still good enough to have six seasons (so it was at least better than Enterprise I guess). So basically what Scalzi does is construct a strawman and then makes a parody of that.

When I finished the book, I tried to think of instances where an ensign was killed in Star Trek by some random space animal (which is the most frequent cause of death for the red shirts). I remember when Garak murdered a good five ensigns cause of a drug. I remember when Sisko destroyed a planet. I remember when Picard and the alien captain fought a weird translucent alien on Tanagra, but there weren't any ensigns down there with him. Ensigns die in Star Trek of course, but I think you'd need to go back to the original to find deaths by random animals.

So why didn't he try to make an actual Star Trek parody? I see two possibilities. Number one is that Scalzi wanted to avoid being to referential and Trekkie (which opens the other question of why this book is called 'Redshirts'). Number two is that Scalzi doesn't really like Star Trek that much and didn't want to bother to do his research. And then I guess the third option is he thinks having people killed by random animals is somehow funny.

In either case, his decision to make a parody aimed at a fictional strawman is cowardly. He's having a go at Star Trek, but it's not really Star Trek so who can fault him? That's the kind of stance that shields him from someone going and pointing out that this scene from TNG is more sophisticated and well-crafted than everything Scalzi has produced in his entire career (a scene that hinges on the use of a minor ensign character incidentally).

3) Metanarrative

Being self-referential isn't a bad thing. Atonement proved that. But the problem is that this is done in such a snarky and self-congratulatory way that I wanted to find Scalzi and punch him in the head for being such a goddamn tosser. A large chunk of the book is just a 'bad writer' in the book writing a blog and realizing that plotting and character arcs are important. This is basically just John Scalzi standing on his soapbox and preach his shallow bullshit about writing. It's a complete drain to read and I literally started to skip pages when it kept going on and on.

But the main function of meta is to serve as an excuse. Everything about the way the plotline works out is melodramatic bullshit, but it's supposed to be like that because the author is trying to make it bad and is actually just highlighting the relationship between author and reader and all that nonsense. But look, that worked in Atonement because the basic story in Atonement is really good and the revelation that it's all just a puppet show for our foolish indulgence thus hits hard. In Redshirts the only reaction is 'Yeah, we know you're in on the joke, you've been making that abundantly clear for the entire book.'

And quite frankly the "It's supposed to be bad" excuse only goes so far.

The last 100 or so pages of the book are dedicated to Scalzi essentially trying to write Atonement. He wants to make a legit-seeming dramatic story so that he can pull a 'and it's all JUST A STORY' twist at the end. But the problem is that Scalzi just isn't capable of writing something like that. He can be passably humourous at times, but in not one of his stories in all 5 of the books of his that I've read now have I ever cared about even one of his characters. All the last 100 pages do is serve to highlight the fact that Scalzi is not an artist.

I hope that science fiction gets away from Scalzi soon, but my fear is that since Scalzi is the kingpin of science fiction literature nowadays, the genre is going to be defined more and more by the people who enjoy him, while the people that love Asimov, Adams, Simmons (before he went crazy), Westerfeld (before he sold out) and Banks (sometimes) are going to be pushed out. This will leave us with a small market that only craves the latest stupid metanarrative with Joss Whedonesque hipster characters (Note to authors: Those guys only work with actors, not on paper). And that is a damn grim future indeed. There's more ...

Mass Effect 3 - "So slow. So clumsy. Pathetic!"

I know that I never update this place anymore, but I figured I may as well revive it to talk about Mass Effect 3.

My review of the first Mass Effect was actually the first real post I ever made on this blog. Looking back at it, I was pretty unimpressed and to this day I stand by everything I wrote in there. Mass Effect's premise is completely derivative piece of science fiction with not a single decent original idea under its name. That was true then and it's still true now.

The question then becomes why I played two other entries in the series when I thought the first one was trash. The answer to that is two fold. For one, the gameplay got a major facelift in part 2. I could take cover behind blocks that no amount of futuristic weaponry could pierce and then shoot things. But the story also shifted in focus from rip-off world building to something more character based and thrived as a result.



Sure the world was still a rip off of various pieces of fiction, particularly 40k of all damn things. Like oh no, the colonists are being mind controlled and carted off into the scary bio-vessels. That's almost as bad as when the Genestealers did it. But even if the story wasn't super fantastic, at least I was enjoying it with characters I actually could like and I could at least feel as though my decisions as the Shep was affecting the outcome. I didn't like it so much that I played through it twice the way other people did, but it was still good.

And so it was that I found myself getting genuinely excited when the third one started to roll around. I would get to hang around Garrus, Tali and Mordin again and cart around the ridiculous Mary Sue known as Commander Sheperd so that I could save the galaxy from the Necrons.


And so it was that I could set out to save Earth again, smiling indulgently as the game melodramatically focused in on some little white boy getting killed and then told me to start building the Ultimate Macguffin. I got to imitate Picard as I saved a barbaric race from extinction and I got to rehash that one episode of TNG when I declared that robots have souls. I fought against an assassin who was Asian and therefore decided that using a sword in a science fiction setting centered mainly around guns was the way to go.

And you know, it was good. Sure the world around me and the story that was unfolding was still this ridiculous hack melodrama, but I could at least kick back and hear Garrus deliver lines about how I'm the damn best soldier ever or have Tali tell me she loved me as I went to kill a Reaper with a laser pointer. And I liked being able to pick dialogue options and watch Shep say and do cool things, because it let me believe that I was actually that eloquent and heroic.

The story was ultimately just a mishmash of other things, but even if I'd seen it all before it was all in such a nice and pretty package of top-notch voice acting, strong characters and fun run-and-gun gameplay. And so I enjoyed it. Hell, I frickin' loved it.

But then at the end of the game, I think Bioware made the biggest mistake that it could ever make: They had an original idea.

A series so heavily rooted in cliche like Mass Effect needed a cliche ending. You know what I'm talking about... the kiss followed by the walk off into the sunset. Or even a 'you become Emperor of the Universe' type deal. Anything of that nature. But Bioware, so inflated with their fan's praise, somehow decided that they were artists here. That they weren't just people that put stuff that other, better, authors and artists have done into a shiny package.

And so, at the last minute, they took a stab at originality.

The result was a pseudo-philosophical abomination that has soured the entire franchise like nothing else ever could. An ending so rancid that it has provoked spontaneous charity drives to protest it and shook the very internet to its core.

I don't think I need to talk about it at length. Lord knows that you can find commentary aplenty on it elsewhere. If Bioware has committed one sin, it's this:

Hubris. There's more ...