Time really has destroyed the thematic material of Spec Ops: The Line. The biggest issue with the game's defining moment (the white phosphorus scene) is a simple one: you have literally no choice but to make this decision. There is nothing around the usage of white phosphorus - you either commit this terrible war crime, or you don't play the game. And yet, this railroading decision undermines the weight of the game's overall message about accountability. How am I supposed to take accountability for making a terrible decision I actually had no choice but to make? Sure, I could have just "not played the game", but how is that a viable alternative when I literally paid money to actually play this game in the first place? This reminds me strongly of The Last Of Us 2, which tried to be a critical thinkpiece on violence and brutality and yet the only way to progress the story was by slaughtering dozens of random people. But at least TLOU2 didn't necessarily call out the player themselves for indulging in virtual violence. Spec Ops: The Line does - it is blatantly obvious that the criticisms thrown at Captain Walker are thinly-disguised meta-criticisms being levied at the player, criticisms that feel unearned given that the player has no choice but to partake in war crimes. Why does the game hate me for doing what it literally wants me to do? Why does it think I could have avoided this at any time when the only alternative is "don't play this game you paid money to play"? It's so genuinely confusing, like the game's biting the hand that fed it in the first place and chastising you for just playing a linear narrative.

Spec Ops: The Line probably could have benefitted from having moral choices if it was going to be a metanarrative about player choice and accountability, but if it absolutely had to be a linear game that way you could directly experience the more psychological setpieces the game has in store for you, then I think the game should have dived further into its anti-war messaging & commentary than its 'subversive' shattering of the fourth wall. Because I think the choice to loosely adapt Heart of Darkness into a modern military setting actually has a lot of merit to it. The story that the game sets up for its main antagonist, Konrad, is a surprisingly thorough and fleshed-out examination of corrupt military practices, and the late-game twist that Konrad actually committed suicide out of guilt for what he'd done and out of horror in regards to the brutality of the military and the CIA's handling of Dubai and its people? That's some great stuff! A lot more could have been done with that. Konrad's suicide is a poignant idea, because you spend the entire game looking for this guy, and discovering he's been dead for a while now renders all of the war crimes you'd done up until that point totally meaningless, and that could have been used to illustrate the hollow, mindless brutality of war crimes and interventionism in a way that directly challenges not only the military-shooter genre, but military practices and politics as a whole.

Perhaps Walker and his squad should have instead been painted as a bunch of gung-ho psychopaths that indiscriminately slaughter in the name of the American Dream and only fall further into an abyss of violence & death as the game goes on. Or, at the very least, make Walker's squad a bunch of psychopaths and have Walker slowly realize they're fucking crazy, that way you could still have an audience surrogate and still have Walker undergo his psychological character arc. You know, like Haze. Except Haze's theming is consistent and latches onto some interesting ideas about war profiteering, propaganda, and experimentation whereas Spec Ops doesn't even latch onto the most interesting thing about its narrative, instead honing in on a more visually-interesting but narratively dead-eyed 'psychological' story, much to its detriment.

There are some strong plot beats, but Spec Ops ultimately has nothing to say because instead of looking inward, it lashes outward and thrusts its anger onto a wholly undeserving player, calling them a monster when the player was just trying to finish the damn game. If this had been a more salient criticism of military shooters, using its own linearity as an inside-out examination of how linear shooters use war crimes to violently progress their plots, then Spec Ops' railroad-y narrative could have actually worked. There's a lot of ways this game could have clicked and said something profound, and pretty much all of it has to do with the anti-war stuff this game initially seems interested in covering. But somewhere along the line, Spec Ops decides it's much more interested in treating the player like the devil than it is in criticizing the actual devil in the room: military shooters themselves, a subgenre of video games that are nothing more than Pentagon propaganda made to indoctrinate teens into wanting to join the US military and commit war crimes for the Stars and Stripes. The fact that it's attached to a bland third-person shooter with underdeveloped sand mechanics is just the cherry on top, really.