The History of Spec Ops: The Line

few video game genres is so power and satisfaction as easily as the shooter while players can't raise hell in titles like Call of Duty on the same scale as they can in games like civilization the immediacy of the former's gameplay has proven time and time again to be far more efficient of an endorphin rush decades after players were first able to do so in Wolfenstein unloading once clip into an unsuspecting enemy as still sublime like few other experiences in the medium but every now and then a shooter goes against the grain and attempts to subvert these very foundations upon which it is built spec ops the line was one such game released in 2012 on consoles and PC the line began in an unassuming fashion casting players as the leader of a three-man team tasked with investigating the fate of a rogue colonel in a sand swept version of Dubai those who kept with it however quickly discovered that underneath its modest premise laid a hellish Odyssey one that forced its protagonists into disturbing predicaments at every turn and repeatedly questioned the ethic allottee of how they chose to solve them like many subversive games before it the line received critical acclaim upon its release but disappointed at retail selling well below other contemporaneous first-person shooters almost everyone who was involved in its production however was seemingly relieved that it didn't end up becoming a massive hit for bringing it into being had been its own personal hell and nobody was ready to go for a second round this is the history of spec ops the line most uno of SpecOps today do so because of the line and the waves that it made across the industry following its release less well-known is that the SpecOps brand originally debuted in 1998 and that over a half dozen entries were released under its banner between said debut and 2002 the first of these entries SpecOps Rangers lead the way was developed by zombie studios and decently well received all of the expansions and sequels that followed Rangers however proved significantly less popular with most critics finding the final few SpecOps titles from this era no better than shovelware upon their releases after 2002 the spec tops license found itself under the ownership of take-two interactive which subsequently attempted to jumpstart a reboot with the help of Rockstar Vancouver the studio did its best to try and figure out where it could take the series next and even brought on Queens of the Stone Age singer Josh Homme e-2 helped compose its music but after a year and some change it became apparent that things just weren't coming together and the reboot was shelved the series thereafter remained in limbo until 2006 when take two decided to try and bring it back in subversive fashion the publisher was getting ready at the time to introduce cameras to the dark politically rich world of Bioshock and was becoming increasingly bullish on making shooters that would offer equally mature experiences it believed that the next SpecOps had a far better chance of succeeding if it followed suit and tried carving out its own unique niche within the market as opposed to directly competing with genre staples like Rainbow six once more it's within this context that Walt Williams proposed they based the game's story and tone on Joseph Conrad's heart of darkness writer who had assisted in the development of both Bioshock and Mafia 2 Williams had been impressed with how Bioshock director Ken Levine had used Diane rands literary works to bolster his sub aquatic epics narrative and believe that Conrad's seminal novella could similarly help elevate SpecOps not only was a somatic content begging to be explored in the military shooter setting but said theme had rarely if ever been explored by shooters in the past in a genre saturated with experiences inspired by Rambo and Saving Private Ryan there's had the opportunity to be the first and only analog to Apocalypse Now the only thing that was needed to make this analog a reality was an outfit willing to bear the burden of its creation before long however a candidate presented itself in German studio Jaeger development established in Berlin in 1999 Jaeger had spent the previous eight years working on a mixture of gaming and non gaming projects for a host of different industries it had only released a single title a flight simulator eponymously titled Jaeger but it's staff had designs to follow it up with a squad based shooter set in Dubai and they had approached take-two with the intent of making it a reality take two like their pitch even though it was technically within the ever-popular Middle East its exact setting had been seldom explored by other games in the past and could allow them to design levels with far greater verticality than was typical of other squad based shooters but the publisher believed that the pitch would be better off if Jaeger reworked it into the spec ops universe and took cues from heart of darkness as per Williams's proposal the studio wasn't utterly thrilled with the proposition at first but in the end it came around after take-two promised at almost no creative restrictions so long as the game bore the spec ops name and used Joseph Conrad's dark framework as the basis for much of its design Yeager had cart launch to do whatever it wanted SpecOps the line was born the first few years of the lines development were filled with triumphs and struggles aided by Williams on a number of other transplants from take twos American offices Jaeger was able on one hand to come up with most of the main characters that would make up its dark epic and start figuring out how to best use them together extremely early on the game central antagonist and analog for heart of darkness as Kurtz was to be Colonel John Conrad a decorated commander who shored himself up in Dubai alongside a private battalion the games player character was to be Martin Walker a Delta Force operator accompanied by his subordinates first lieutenant Alfonso Adams and Staff Sergeant John Lugo Yaeger also had the revelation during this early period to cover their version of Dubai in sand after the studio's art director Matias Weesa drew an illustration of the city half buried beneath the desert Weesa had originally only drawn the illustration because he thought it looked cool but upon presenting it to the room it was immediately apparent that its narrative and gameplay applications were many sand could help liven up otherwise mundane environments and allow for a brief moment of beauty or come pouring into an underground chamber and complicate firefights however it also became apparent during this period that figuring out exactly what journey they would send the game's protagonist on sand or no sand was going to take some time more than just wanting to adapt part of Darkness narrative for a new generation the game's writers wanted to use the game as an outlet to comment on the way that violence is depicted in games of SpecOps as nature in an effort to try and shake it out of stagnation at the 2013 Game Developers Conference Williams would explain how we felt that killing had become dangerously mundane in shooters that most developers were using a cheap lead and without considering the lasting effects of doing so with the line he hoped to remind people of just how traumatizing warfare actually is and forced them to meditate on whether the way that their commodifying at for video games is respectful of this reality creating a story that would other lis satisfy this while also delivering an engaging squad based shooter experience couldn't be rushed and as Jaeger entered into the middle years of the lines development it found its patience truly tested despite still having the full backing of take-two behind them the team began to feel increasingly uncertain about the project's direction its release date seemed to keep getting pushed back further and further story and gameplay ideas that it seemed fresh at the start of development were starting to fill mundane and early focused tests of what they had built up until this point were repeatedly failing to impress in a retrospective published on polygons shortly after the lines released lead designer Corey Davis would detail how for a lengthy part of 2010 the team became deeply concerned that their game might never actually see the light of day at all or worse still that nobody was going to be interested in playing it [Music] eventually the final few years of SpecOps as development rolled around had proved the project's most rewarding yet difficult period after a seemingly endless number of rewrites the games authors finally managed to bring the game's story together and fulfill most of the narrative ambitions they have set out to achieve at the project's onset but outside of Yeager's walls most gamers were hard-pressed to understand why they needed to care about the project in the first place while some were intrigued by a setting many felt that what was shown of its gameplay and story looked exceedingly generic if they were going to be convinced of the lines greatness their proof would need to be in the pudding as a result when the line finally arrived on store shelves in June of 2012 many who picked it up were shocked to discover how profound of an experience Yeager's finished product was it's movement mechanics were clunky and if gunplay was unexceptional with most binding its firefights easy to beat if one popped methodically in and out of cover but everything that took place in and around these firefights was riveting like few other games before it its characters were deeply nuanced with each experiencing drastic yet believable arcs that left them utterly transformed by the end of the game its setting was hauntingly beautiful offering a sublime mixture of picturesque vistas and gnarly graffiti Laden ruins that perfectly captured its protagonists inner turmoil and its story the centerpiece around which everything had had to offer rotate it was the slick as it was unflinching in its criticisms of at genres inherent violence and its player basis complacency towards this violence it's just keeping it was a powerful demonstration of how a video game could use bombastic moments of shock and on to comment on its own problems without sad moments of shock and awe being so ostentatious that they distracted from what was trying to be sad despite all this however spec top sales would nevertheless come in well below expectations and contribute to a net loss of over 110 million dollars for take twos first financial quarter of that year while unfortunate the games developers would admit to not being too surprised by how their game performed with Williams later stating that in retrospect it was apparent their game was going to be a hard sell to anyone who didn't know about what made its latter chapters so unique Conrad deserves to die you know that and what do we deserve I think we both know the answer to that three booths I'm joined by Bernd Deemer he's the game director on Dead Island 2 a distinctly different take on the popular franchise so welcome sir thanks Amy so you guys first of all I think left a few after SpecOps release Jaeger was recruited by publisher Deep Silver to develop Dead Island 2 many within the industry were curious to see how the German studio would make the zombie series its own and use the lessons that had learned crafting the line to elevate its narrative yet no sooner had Yeager's involvement in the sequel been made public then Deep Silver decided to drop the studio from the project due to creative differences losing Dead Island 2 was devastating for Jaeger but in the end the studio was able to lick its wounds and carve out a new identity for itself with a space combat simulator called dreadnought and a competitive shooter called the cycle while both games are rich in mechanics and depth both are also far more lighthearted in tone than what Jaeger attempted with the line and the studio remains unashamed of this in an interview with the German web site game star in 2014 managing director Timo Ullman stated that while they were all immensely proud of what they had managed to accomplish with the spec ops license bringing Walker's journey to life forced their souls through the wringer and left them wanting to work on something more upbeat he felt it unlikely that they would ever embrace the darkness they touched during the shooters development again and that even if they suddenly found themselves wanting to do so once more the poorness of the lines financial performance all but guarantees they'll never be assigned a sequel Walt Williams would echo these sentiments himself in the years that would follow repeatedly professing that he found the game's development especially brutal and that everyone who worked on it would rather eat glass before making another entry nevertheless before production on the line wrapped Williams was tasked by take-two with coming up with ideas of where they could take the license next in the event that the game proves successful one idea that Williams came up with involved pairing up Walker with a nun performing relief in a third world country and through doing them on a cooperative adventure not unlike ninja theories enslaved another involved pivoting the series away from being solely about the horrors of war and more towards telling self-contained stories about all manner of people dealing with extreme situations and psychosis Williams also helped conceptualize a piece of story base DLC for the line that would have offered an alternative yet no less grisly conclusion to the Delta Force teams Odyssey titled long way home the DLC would have seen Adams attempt to escape to buy with the help of a bright-eyed soldier named poza all the while trying to come to peace with the atrocities he taken part in during the events of the main game unlike Williams as other sequel ideas a full script of long way home was produced but ultimately ended up never being used just check these [ __ ] guys whether or not any of these concepts would have panned out well is unknown what is known is that Williams believes the line ended exactly where it should have and was never especially fond of any of the ideas that even he himself came up with of how it could keep Billina from his perspective Walker Adams and Lugo were better off dead than being shipped off to some other city struck by a cataclysmic disaster there may very well never be another SpecOps the line but so long as its legacy continues to hang over the industry there will continue to be developers that will heat its insights when designing games of their own and these games in turn will slowly allow the medium to mature further and be able to provide a broader palette of violent experiences than what it currently has to offer but the line itself will likely remain an anomaly for a very long time to come a rare instance of a high-profile big-budget shooter that dared to be deeply critical of itself and the kind of players that typically enjoy this is Captain Martin Walker question 18 evacuation of Dubai [Music] survivors one too many thank you for watching our video our documentaries are crowdfunded and made possible by your continued support for us we'd like to thank by name the generous patrons who have pledged to our highest rewards here Caleb cheese kovitch daddy top secrets on mu movies.com jefferson dos Santos Oliveira Maktoum Saeed Al Maktoum Tamura - this bake-off if you enjoy our content please consider subscribing to our Channel and joining us on patreon thank you

Channel: GVMERS

Views: 182,999

Keywords: Yager, Spec Ops The Line, Spec Ops, Spec Ops The Line 2, Ending, DLC, Documentary, 4K, Sequel, Making of, Dubai

Id: dDBSlk1E-XE

Length: 18min 47sec (1127 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 29 2020