if i cant take the gameplay seriously, i wont take the story seriously. Its really that simple. I took the original Ghost recon terrorist storylines more seriously, just because the gameplay was intense and had tons of hardcore tactical options, that made the STORY more interesting to follow. Whereas Spec ops, if you realyl think about it, you are just turkey shootng, I  take Left 4 dead 2 on low health and quite a way to get to the safehouse on EXPERT difficulty MORE seriously.  because its a REAL live or die situation. Spec Ops wasnt interesting enough. I mean at least in Brother in arms it MADE you give a sht, because the gameplay was really tactical AND the storyline was from a real source.

I need more than what Spec Ops gave me to care.

this game was absolutely fantastic.  Combat was shoddy, but story...peerless

Amazing game! I didn't feel ANYTHING when mowing down the airport civilians in COD, but I literally got goosebumps 3 or 4 times in this game.

I would really like to see more of these types of discussions (spoiler casts) because I had absolutely ZERO interest in this game even after listening to Jeff talking about it for hours on the Bombcast but after hearing this, I absolutely want to experience this narrative.

Great job, all.

I believe you can subscribe to Gameplay through iTunes, please see this http://bitly.com/bundles/o_44d8jfljne/e

Listening to this podcast just made me angry about the whole thing really. I'm tempted to say it's pretentiousness, but it might just be naiveté or ignorance. There's just way too many conceits when playing a game that breaks immersion from the get-go which makes it impossible to tell this kind of personal story. I played through the entire game without any qualms as I was constantly reminded I was playing a game.

I mean we've heard the argument about how videogames supposedly are worse than movies and books because of the supposed immersion that makes people struggle with seperating reality and fiction a thousand times, yet I've always found this medium to be the one that's very admantly reminding you that you're doing something real and tactile with it's fail states and gameplay mechanics. I just can't imagine how anyone is able to immerse themselves so much in the game that they feel uncomfortable unless they're purposefully trying to be "clever" about it or just plainly ignorant.

The game has a good story, for a video game. But there's nothing beyond that. The medium just isn't able to convey that kind coherent story experience, as every 2 minutes of story-telling is seperated by 10 minutes of gameplay.

The executions toward the end of the game are truly heinous. I made a point to do it steadily through the game to see it evolve, and by the final levels, particularly after getting the full-auto shotgun, it was almost too much to handle. On top of which, North's performance as a full-on homicidal lunatic who now WANTS to feed each of these men a bullet.

A good example of not being desensitized by video games, I think. I have chainsawed me some locust in my day, but watching these NPCs with actual human soldier faces summarily lose their faces as I chose to let Walker become the monster still made me queasy.

Tom always seems very combative, but I like the positions he puts the interviewee in because he always seems to coax very interesting responses out of them.  Overall, this was a great episode.  I just finished the game and I'd like to say I enjoyed it, but that's not the right word.  It was an enlightening experience.  

The odd thing I came out of this was the similarities between Spec Ops and Final Fantasy (from possible sequels following thematic similarities to the mechanic they talked about of characters saying specific lines when you do something but have it change as the game goes on which Final Fantasy X actually does with some abilities the player does at the start giving specific lines while at the end with the vastly different place the characters are in leads to some similar abilities and actions producing vastly different lines of dialogue mid-battle. And that's not to mention the common Trope on Final Fantasy games where they begin quite generically and without much attention to the story the games can usually be thought of in their entirety as being generic JRPG's but if you pay attention there is usually at least one moment that flips the preceding story on its head and completely changes the place and significance of the actions of the main characters and the player).

I wasn't expecting that.

I don't think shooters having messages are nearly enough to help them regarding story telling ability.  There are messages in games everywhere, but most of the time they're never made out to be more important than what they appear to be.  It's not like making a spectacle out of things we've heard before or experienced in any other medium will make it better because it's in a game.  That and unless the experience of the game itself is good, "important" messages can come off as filler.  It takes an entire game's experience usually for messages to be anywhere close to successful.  But even then, it's not the messages that are remembered; it's the story and experience of the game.  The only recent exception I can think of is Deus Ex: HR; but then again, it's not just an FPS. 

Sorry , posted in wrong podcast. meant for gameplay ep 2.

was lava lamp reference at the beginning  to the hiroko 8-4 play podcast joke ?

but my money's on that i'm wathcing too many podcasts :)

I truly appreciate that Spec Ops The Line set out to have the gamers experience something more profound than the run-of-the-programming FPS's saturating the market but the lack of authenticity in such a war game at some point made me feel like all those exotic set pieces and environment to set up the storyline were all a big fluff to masquerade its self-important, lofty messages about how "real-life" war sucks. For example, (spoilers) the US somehow abandons an entire decorated battalion and declares it renegade, which leads to the little dictatorship in Dubai and all hell breaks loose. This simply wouldn't happen, and same goes for a small group of three mere operatives not even big enough to form a basic squad going in and wiping the crap out of everything that moves just so the game can tell you how much of a vicious and immoral bastard you are through out the whole thing. Spec Ops still makes the mistake of trying to satisfy shooter needs by having the action shooter cliches of one single guy or squad being in an impossible situation and still kicking all the baddies' asses all because of incompetence from the higher-ups. And the result for me at least, is you don't feel too much like a vulnerable soldier in a battlefield of grey choices and difficult dilemmas like Apocalypse Now, but only something of that nature superimposed upon an average third person shooter

yeah, bring more Cross-Podcast

GiantBomb + GameSpot = GiantSpot

tell'em like it is nate!!!!!

Probably the biggest reason for most war games lacking a message is the general American mentality. "We're always the good guys, so whoever we fight MUST BE EVIL. We must prove our moral and physical superiority!" If you challenge it in the slightest you risk commercial failure. Let's face it: the bulk of war game enthusiasts are judeo-christian, hetero, white males.

The fact that the CIA has had guys like Saddam, Noreaga and OBL on their payrolls spits right in the face of that idea. The fact that most of these puppet governments the US likes to prop up tend to subjegate their peasantry into sweatshops for American based big businesses is another fact that most flag wavers refuse to face. Then there's the fact that China, a country which CAN defend itself, regularly punks the Pentagon's shit. If you were to put those realities into a war game it'd be more "realistic"...but also a massive commercial failure. The primary demographic simply will not tolerate that level of candor.

Then, there's the realities of military life. As I've stated in previous posts: it's boring and miserable. Even when you're not in a combat zone, it's miserable. If you factored THAT into a war game, you'd have $60 drink coasters everywhere.

Really appreciated hearing this. I was a little worried the Walt Williams wouldn't be able to back up making a game like Spec Ops, but it's obvious he's insanely intelligent. Spec Ops is the best military shooter of all time.

GASP! ITS GERSTMANN!

Very insightful conversation. To answer the question about why more games do not take this direction, I think the main reason is that it conflicts with our collective identity (in the U.S.) as a force of good vs evil. This is true in films as well. Certainly films like Full Metal Jacket and Apocalypse Now exist, but most films reinforce this collective mindset about U.S. interventionism and war more generally. In other words, its much easier to go with the flow than challenge people and some of their most deeply held beliefs. In the commercial sphere, that could mean failure. Even worse, there could be charges that you're "Anti-American" or a terrorist sympathizer. And when critical views are not encouraged and even criticized, society as a whole begins to degrade.

I also feel the review score for this game was a bit unfair. Certainly the gameplay was not innovative, but the narrative alone made it a better game than your average Call of Duty game. Games that challenge us and takes creative/ideological risks deserve to be rewarded.

Another important point that was brought up during the conversation, which incidentally Tom had brought up at E3, was that games don't necessarily have to be fun. If we are to take the medium seriously as an art form, there must be room for a range of experiences, including ones that make us feel uncomfortable. If someone wanted to, they could make a game that rivals and film experience due to the nature of interactivity. I'm still waiting for a game based on Full Metal Jacket.

I also want to say that while the narrative of this game stands on its own, I still feel the Heart of Darkness is a much more penetrating look at Western Civilization.  It's not about the madness of war per se, but how we delude ourselves into thinking that by intervening in the rest of the world we are helping people, but instead we end up brutalizing and exploiting them.  Once Ghandi was asked what he thought of Western Civilization, to which he replied "It sounds like a good idea." 

Wish Chris Water was there to defend his review.

This was really great. I really enjoyed what Walt had to say to some of the opinions on the games direction, and narrative choices they made (especially the huge eye opener there... I never even considered that but I knew something crazy was going on due to certain things I noticed playing a second time... man that's nuts).

*Maybe Spoiler* One thing I wanted to say, at least my take on the phosphorous scene, and the disconnect some feel. I am an army veteran. In war sometimes you may feel there must be a second option, but in reality there is no other option in a moment and you take the immediate choice in front of you in the hopes of doing something that can lead to being something good. Even if your the one giving that command, it's not really a choice, in so much as it's what you have to do because you're there. I felt that scene, while (justifiably) can be said to be a bit "forced" by some, or should have been more binary, it ultimately succeeded because (again for me) it showed what it's really like for a soldier to have to make a choice like that. It is a choice, maybe not the one you wanted to make, but in that moment it was the choice you HAD to make. That is my take away from it, and I felt (as you guys said) the moment was important, anyway, to drive this story to where they wanted to go. Maybe could have been done better, but I got what they were going for with it and from my own experiences it felt "real" as a choice. If that makes sense.

Anyway, I really hope more games take a look at this one and at least consider the ideas it puts forward. I appreciate that most of what they were going for shines through and I felt, for me anyway, the game is a huge success at advancing how we even look at narrative in more genres of video game (which is largely not experimented with- possibly due to constraints of the medium- I really don't know).

So ya, this got me thinking about this story again and shed some more light on a few things and was all around a great listen.

Thanks.

Cool to hear Jeff back in Gamespot content.

I heard the story was very good in several review before getting the game. I though maybe developers making shooters are putting thought into there games. 20 min into game, And I realized... Well I was gonna say much more, but just one little thing. makers of this game didn`t even bother to check simple facts which is common knowledge for many of us. Since when in a completely Arab city which is located in a country call "United Arab Emirates" every single local and survivor speak plain Farsi (Persian).

Holy crap? An hour long? Umm.... maybe later?

man it always amazes me how questioning during a gaming interview is so subjective and it really doesn't do the game being reviewed any justice AT ALL. I DIDNT think this game was BORING, and yet your question was reflecting YOUR opinion about the game "...I thought it was boring...". Not fair, the same thing happen to MOh 2010 and that game was put under the wrong light because of you clowns in the media. 

Awesome podcast! It is really nice to hear developers explain the ideas behind their decisions. Better yet it provides a good counter to game-journalists often over criticized view on games and the heavy nitpicking. Not that I want reviews to change drastically but these kinds of interviews would serve as a great supplement.

SPOILER!

SPOILER!

So he dies in the beginning...everything else after is just his own imagination torturing him?  

SPOILER!

SPOILER!

I loved this podcast/spoilercast/interview thing - could you do these spoilercasts with the people that made the game more often?

 @fieryermine The game can last a good 10 hours if you play on the hard difficulty, and for me it has replay value, finding the intell items, goin thru all the endings and all that.

The Line looked really cool. I was really intrigued by the storyline, but I didn't want to buy a game with only ~5 hours of single player content, so I didn't. I dig all this cool writing and all, but it still has to be attached to a game worth buying. 

SPOILERS. For the record, I told Tom that because of the helicopter scene, I believed the game was Walker's personal hell that he had to relive for all eternity, which he ever-so-simplistically described here as "a Groundhog Day thing" and "kinda close."