What We Don't Talk About in "Spec Ops The Line"
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- Опубліковано 21 лис 2024
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Sources:
“Race, Gender, and Genre in Spec Ops: The Line” by Soraya Murray: online.ucpress...
“War Bytes: The Critique of Militainment in Spec Ops: The Line” by Matthew Thomas Payne: www.tandfonlin...
“The Use of White Phosphorus Munitions by U.S. Military Forces in Iraq” by David Fidler: www.asil.org/i...
U.S. Department of State on the use of White Phosphorus in Fallujah: web.archive.or...
“The Fight for Fallujah” in Field Artillery Magazine by Cobb, LaCour, and Hight: web.archive.or...
“Pentagon Reverses Position and Admits U.S. Troops Used White Phosphorus Against Iraqis in Fallujah” by Democracy Now (featuring quotes by Lt. Col. Venable and George Monbiot): www.democracyn...
“U.S. used white phosphorus in Iraq,” BBC: news.bbc.co.uk/...
Rain of Fire by Human Rights Watch (Documentary): • Rain of Fire: Israel's...
Rain of Fire: Israel’s Unlawful Use of White Phosphorus in Gaza by Human Rights Watch (Report): www.hrw.org/re...
The Human Cost of Incendiary Weapons and the Limits of International Law by Human Rights Watch: www.hrw.org/re...
Media shown: Spec Ops: The Line, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Apocalypse Now, stock footage from Getty Images and Reuters Archive
Music Used (Chronologically): The Looters, The Lost Battalion, The Pit, Burning Courtyard (all from Spec Ops: The Line), Multiplayer Menu (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2), Afterlife (Call of Duty: Infinite Warfare), Do I Look Okay To You, GP04, Human Cost (all from Spec Ops: The Line), Embassy (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019), The Lab (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2019), Burning Courtyard (Spec Ops: The Line), Max: NJ (Max Payne 3), Dead (Max Payne 3), Mellifera (They Dream By Day), The Caves of Mercury (Kilian Flowers)
Additional music and sound effects from Epidemic Sound
Additional footage from Getty Images and Reuters Archive
Thumbnail and Graphic Design by / hotcyder
Description credit: “Napalm” by Quan Barry
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Six days feels a lot more like war propaganda akin to CoD than another Spec Ops.
Promotional material shows a US soldier complain that he missed his son's birthday while he was out there committing war crimes.
@@thealgerian3285 That's a pretty big accusation. War crimes were committed by the US forces (such as the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas) but that doesn't mean that that man is a war criminal.
@@olsenarliawan2951 he's
@@yourmanjimbo He's being dramatic, obviously - whether the man is criminally liable for war crimes is not the point. It's about the narrative focusing on the "suffering" of the soldiers carrying out the invasion, instead of on the people suffering at the hands of the soldiers.
I played through Spec Ops at a friend’s house in a single sitting. To kind of lighten the mood, we played through the Vampire DLC of Infamous 2-Festival of Blood. The problem with Festival of Blood is that the climax involves using White Phosphorus to defeat the vampires once and for all.
It’s been about 12 years. I’ll never forget that night
Oof. Fate one-two punched you.
oh dear
Damn.
üps
Impressively rough decision making
"The video game about war crimes actually has something salient to say about war crimes" feels so obvious in retrospect, but you are right, it really got lost in all the discussion about what it had to say about the medium. I'm glad you made this essay.
i feel like every single person who knows about spec ops the line knows that it’s about war crimes
@@robertshmurda The thing is, when it came out everybody was hyper-fixated on it being about war crimes in other video games, and how we gleefully commit horrible acts of completely inhuman cruelty on polygon simulacra of people. When it is in fact about both of them: It's about the war crimes of the western world and how the media dresses them up as heroic actions.
I'm glad he suggested the Errant Signal video about it, it was one of the only contemporary pieces of criticism I saw that suggested that it was taking modern military shooters to task specifically as an expression of how the American Military launders war crimes through culture.
@@penttikoivuniemi2146 Whenever i see war footage, or see politicians talk about their war efforts, or even see War criminals on trial. The way Lugo says "There's always a choice" echoes in my head every time, i see a vet talk about Vietnam or a soldier talk about Afganistan. The media and many others currently in war, believe that the heinous acts they are commiting are "necessary", when in fact there is ALWAYS a choice.
it doesn't get "lost in the discussion", it's because it's painfully obvious to anyone with 2 braincells to rub together. War Crimes are bad! It's a boring thing to cover because everyone already gets it. The way the game uses the medium to question player agency and have you feel bad about doing actions in a video game, and have you questioning why it makes you feel bad is far more interesting of a topic than SHOCKER, the US military has done really bad things (i.e, the sky is blue)
20:52 "He will burn the city down before he accepts responsibility for his crimes". That line perfectly ties into what Konrad says at the end of the game, if you choose to still blame him. "Takes a strong man to deny what's right in front of him".
Just like the IDF
I feel like we've seen this so much in recent history. Governments would rather burn evidence and straight up kill whistleblowers, rather than own up to it and say "Yeah, we fucked up."
@@za4riajust like the Palestinians who voted Hamas into governance as well
@@kazumablackwing4270 hasbara doesn’t work here unfortunately
@@kazumablackwing4270 🌽🏀
Incidentally, all major armies in WW1 argued that flamethrowers were meant to destroy obstacles and not burn men. They were issued to combat engineer units in WW2 with the same reasoning. The men who saw them in action knew better, of course
Even a few men who didn't see them in action knew better. There's a fantastic interview of Don Graves, one of the last living marines who took Iwo Jima and the only flamethrower user who returned from the island, where he talks about how difficult it was to find men willing to be trained how to use a flamethrower, because a lot of them wanted nothing to do with it. It takes a certain kind of person to use such a weapon, he said, and they knew it.
Fun fact: flamethrowers were also used to spare lives (albeit when on tanks, where the flamethrower fuel was better protected).
They would get close to a bunker, spray the enemies with fuel, and then have them surrender cause there's no way anyone's going to risk anything at that point.
key word here is "meant". if taking out an obstacle included burning people in the process then that was just something they accepted.
but yeah they're not really primarily weapons. range is relatively short and they're actually high risk devices. shooting the tank risks engulfing the user in fire. not because of the fake Hollywood trope of "bullet make fuel tank go boom" but because the user is actively shooting fire so if the tank is shot, there is a real possibility that fuel splashing from that ignites by coming into contact with the fire being shot from the main nozzle area...so you might have the fuel in the now damaged tank all go up at once. this is known to have happened in ww2 to several unfortunate people.
and even barring that...just being shot and killed due to the fire making you a huge obvious target.
@imranmeco3393 this works in the opposite direction too. in fact it was the original use for Molotov Cocktails. causing a fire under a tank with a fuel bomb pretty much forces the crew to abandon the vehicle if they can't maneuver away in time. the fire itself can also disable parts of the treads and make it hard or impossible to move the tank.
so you bail out or die inside the tank from the heat and/or fumes. granted bailing out might mean you get shot anyway but at least you have the chance of surrender.
this doesn't work very well in modern times but in the 30s and 40s tanks were a lot more vulnerable to this. in modern times this tactic still works against lighter vehicles though. although IEDs trigger by movement or remote detonator have largely replaced the concept.
See also:
- Napalm
- Depleted Uranium
- Agent Orange
I was a QA tester on Spec Ops, and it's funny seeing how legendary the game has become. During most of its development, everyone on the QA team was certain the game would flop and be forgotten - while the white phosphorous scene was present, most of the resulting scenes were not yet completed, including the ending. So for a huge chunk of time it seemed like a really bland and basic military shooter. Didn't help that a fairly large chunk of development time was spent on the multiplayer, which also gave the impression it was a straight-forward shooter with no subversive qualities.
Edit: to add in my own "thing people don't talk about" for spec ops: several of the billboards seen throughout gameplay change! Sometimes they'll show some generic woman advertising a product or whatever, but sometimes they show Konrad - and change if you look away from them. I rarely see people talk about this, but is a great early hint that not everything is as it seems.
You guys got Psyops-ed by Jager, lmao
Honestly, I doubt the game would have had the same cultural impact if the subversive elements had been widely known about before release.
So may I ask you about a rumor of the production? That Ken Levine and Tarl Raney checked on the game and decided it should be more surreal, Levine suggesting the helicopter scene?
@@teslashark unfortunately the QA team I was on didn't have a lot of direct interaction with the developers themselves (we were quite low on the food chain) so I'm not sure. A lot of the more surreal elements (Lugo appearing in place of the heavy, the loading screens changing, the "wrong" game overs) were added quite late in development, and were missing for the majority of the game's development. Many of the scenes were also changed to put a much bigger focus on Walker's shaky mental state, when originally they were fairly straightforward. I recall the endings also being altered fairly late in the process, unfortunately I don't remember specifically how since it's been so long.
If I had to guess based on my experience, I'd say that they DID plan for the game to be subversive from the start, but weren't communicating that well for a large chunk of development. It shows the skill of the devs that they were able to recognize that and rework it into what it is today. During development, everyone on my team thought the biggest impact the game would have would be for the sand physics, the open-ended decisions, and the visual style of many of the areas.
Edit: while I'm busy writing, added in my own little fun fact I don't see people talk about often to my original post.
Well, it did flop.
17:39 "...In January of 2009" I know I'm stating the obvious but I love the deliberate withholding of the date that this is occurring
It made me laugh out of the sheer... absurdity of the statement. I knew the Israel stuff was coming. When I played the game today and saw white phosphorus in it, I knew half of what this video would entail, and I had been waiting for the mention of Israel as I've followed their terror on Gaza quite closely on twitter. Just silently waiting. And then it occurs, he mentions Israel bombing Gaza with white phosphorus. He says in January of, and I feel like the date is going to be 2024, maybe even 2023 or 2022 to show how long it has been, but nope... It's 2009. Because has been 2009. Or maybe even before 2009.
Just like how some fan-theories say Walker died in the helicopter crash and the rest of the game is his purgatory, we are stuck in a purgatory too.
One with no end in sight.
I don't get iT ?
@@oussamabekk1108Israel does this constantly, and has done so for decades, saying a specific date would understate how often this is done
@@oussamabekk1108 Because they're doing this right now.
@@FallenCharlie12 aaaaah , you talking about people who think History started in 7 of oct*b ?
Noble intentions do not make the blast radius of an air-to-surface missile any smaller.
The bigger the blast radius the bigger the noble intentions: rationalisation.
And that’s assuming the intentions are even noble, or that the perpetrators are being honest about said intentions (they almost never are)
Delusions and equivocations don’t make imperialist aims any more noble
That's a damn snappy quote.
@@CarelessFoolFallsFlat We bombed 60,000 French in the lead up to D-Day.
War is hell. But would you argue we shouldn’t have killed them and let the Nazis win? Is that moral?
HOLY SHIT dude. Core memory unlocked. I only played this game once when I was in highschool. I swore I hallucinated the Lugo heavy moment when I couldn't recreate it. I remember dying a couple times on purpose to try and see him again. When it didn't trigger I chalked it up to it being late at night and playing a much heavier game than I thought I was in for.
Hallucinating a guy hallucinating an event in a simulation of an imagined event based on reality.
Truly a world of mirrors.
Yeah, i remember i died in that segment, then when i respawned, Lugo was replaced by a normal Heavy. really trippy
The game definitely hit me over the head with its twist back then. I played through the entirety of it in one sitting and decended further and further into madness with walker, not fully understanding what was going on until he turned the chair. It's one of the games that left a lasting impression on me.
There's also another section in the mall when you first fight a heavy when the lights would start strobing throughout the fight (which also made that fight a lot harder). It's the first time in the game when things get outright trippy, and after the fight Walker starts questioning himself.
I had to stop playing the moment I used the white phosphorus, shit was crazy
"the war crimes game is about war crimes" is a surprisingly good take. I think so many ppl get caught up in the details that they miss what its saying directly into your ear. This was gratifying to watch.
I do definitely geet caught up in that cause in my mind, war crimes being bad is a given, but over time I had to realize that no it HAS to be said, it does not go without saying.
@@Laezar1 YES you're so right!
My Jacob is so freaking Gellered right now
She Jacob on my Geller until I Video Essay
Just a Jacobmaxxed Gelcel doing Essaycore
who up Gellering they Jacob rn
@@0uttaS1TEshe essay on my Jacob til I Geller?
Bro just Gellered his Jacob
Shit, *this* is how I find out that Spec Ops: The Line got delisted from digital stores this year?
And I was finally gonna buy it when I saw this video too :c
@@Cam_K9 same, like I think I'm finally in the right headspace to experience it and had been holding off but now I guess I can't without taking... Uh, *alternate* means.
@@fanboy50 yo ho ho.
@@fanboy50
Do it, it's what the music industry deserves.
@@Rad-Dude63andathird
*Deserves*
"he believes himself a good person, and thus, all of his decisions are what a good person would decide to do"
Exactly. I've been saying for _YEARS_ that the concept of defining yourself as a good person is the same as defining an ethical person as being a person most like yourself, and that doing so is extremely dangerous and is the primary reason why so many people are able to rationalize doing so many evil things. People always tell me its too heavy of a concept to internalize, but I really think that every human being has a moral responsibility to internalize it, and that choosing not to do so is fundamentally unethical.
Tautology, is the logic word for it. Something is tautological when it's a metonym, another name for the same thing. "2+2" as a formulation is tautological with "4" or "6-2." When you define yourself as "good person," your actions become tautological with "good things." It's why I always say that the greatest trick the nazis ever pulled was convincing the world they were monsters and not just normal fucking dudes who did the worst things history remembers.
Because now, people dismiss out of hand the notion that they could be as bad as the nazis, because "They were monsters, I'm a good person."
Exactly. A person cannot set himself as the standard of morality. Only god and bible can.
@@williampan29many people choose to do so, and billions of people do not.
You summed up OPs point succinctly with your anecdote
This is exactly what the original NieR is about.
The nastiness of white phosphorus can't be overstated.
It is pyrophoric, spontaneously igniting when exposed to the atmosphere. It burns around 1,500°F or 815°C. For reference the melting point of aluminum is 1,220°F or 660°C. The only way to stop the reaction is to remove the oxygen by smothering it. But this only creates another problem. As soon as it's uncovered it will spontaneously combust again. You just have to let it burn itself out.
It has the tendency to "spit" sending burning chunks flying out that will also stick to your skin and then burn through it. If it's on you it's already likely too late. You can only hope it was a small enough amount that it doesn't IMMEDIATELY kill you. But then the lethal dose in the body is 50-100 milligrams causing in sub lethal doses liver failure and "phossy jaw". Higher doses can quickly induce multiple organ failure.
Wikipedia: Those with phossy jaw would usually begin suffering painful toothaches and swelling of the gums. The pain was characterized as "persistent yet progressive ... spreading to neighboring teeth and jawbone". Over time, pus formation developed penetrating the oral mucosa with the formation of fistula, tooth loss, and recurrent abscesses. Further progression led to the formation of sequestrum (dead bone that has separated from living bone) after three months and necrosis of the jaw within six months. The distinguishing feature of this disease was the eventual separation of the sequestrum which was described as porous and light in weight. The lower jaw was more commonly affected than the upper jaw. Affected bones glowed a greenish-white colour in the dark. The condition also affected the brain, provoking seizures in some chronic cases.
Even if it doesn't kill you'll likely never stop feeling its effects
If you manage to avoid the massive billowing clouds of lethal fumes and piles of the stuff spread everywhere violently spitting lethal chunks of burning glue that sticks to you then have to contend with the rampant fires it will more than likely create. Conventional incendiary weapons are indefensible in their own right indecriminatly burning all in their path, with a fire front depending on weather conditions you are incapable of outrunning.
Everything is on fire. You can only run and hope you didn't breathe enough fumes to kill you. And the ones that rained that hellfire on you are lying in wait to blow you to pieces as you flee the hellscape that is a white phosphorus attack.
There's no defending using this. It's a sickeningly cruel and a horrific way to die.
Edit: Formatting.
There's definitely no defending it when you frame it in the most one sided way possible. It would help if you had any actual idea why white phosphorus is used, but you probably think these shells are being manufactured and issued for the explicit purpose of committing war crimes. The US military arguably even agrees that intentionally targetting combatants with white phosphorus is a war crime, that's the whole reason they tried to cover up it's unsanctioned use in Iraq. White Phosphorus is the best all-around choice for generating smoke screens in a military setting. It produces a mist that blocks visible light and infrared, it is (relatively) cheap and obtainable, it creates more mist, more quickly, and even it being pyrophoric is a bonus, because it virtually eliminates the chance of a failure to ignite. All of these things make it extremely effective for providing concealment on a battlefield. We are all against its misuse as an excessively cruel and unusual weapon, you are just blinded by visceral emotion.
@@XSpamDragonX “We are all against its misuse as an excessively cruel and unusual weapon” …the US agrees because they used it and then miserably failed in covering it up. How’s that boot taste buddy?
@@evanharley4180 You do understand soldiers and their officers make independent decisions and aren't a hive mind puppeteered by the general? They told them not to do something, they did it anyway, and the people in charge who have to take the blame at the end of the day tried to lie about what happened to escape the consequences. It's shameful but it's not a top down conspiracy.
@@XSpamDragonX your comment was embarassing to read tbh
@@evanharley4180 They lied about the actions of their subordinates in order to avoid responsibility, why would they bother to do that if they thought it was okay?
"The weapon makes its way into a game about killing civilians. That is a very fucking intentional choice." Is one of the hardest hitting things you've said.
that judicious usage of "fucking" was spot on
Could you explain why it impacted you so much?
@@Noah-lo9vb Geller hardly ever swears, definitely caught me off guard too
That's the hardest bar I've ever heard
@@Noah-lo9vb Brother never swears. Caught me off-guard too
I am obsessed with the mural in this game which depicts the female victim of the white phosphorus attack clutching her child. As somebody who was brought up in Catholic schools my whole life, I immediately saw the deliberate reference to the Virgin Mary and the child Jesus. Associating these symbols of utmost holiness and innocence and purity in western art with the victims of a horrific attack is a very effective way of levelling an accusation of evil at the ones responsible for their deaths. It reminds me of some art I saw during the black lives matter protests, which depicted an orthodox icon of the Virgin Mary holding, the child Jesus in her lap in the motif known as the throne of wisdom, but the Christ child was simply a black outline, like the image on a target at a firing range
@Gaawachanmay we see justice done, in our time and in our days.
I think calling Spec Ops a horror game would be pretty accurate. The game does use a structure similar to traditional horror. It tries to gradually unsettle the audience with an increasing sense of wrongness. The fact that Walker and co aren't supposed to be in Dubai. That American troops serve as the primary antagonists. The moral bankruptcy of the characters who do increasingly evil things in the name of long term good.
Then it reaches a tipping point (the white phosphorus scene) where the surreal, strange and horrific imagery ramps up more and more. Hallucinations of increasing intensity. More and more brutality, flippancy and anger. Characters fall deeper into despair and actively want to die.
To me, Spec Ops The Line is a military horror game.
I've always said, _Spec Ops: The Line_ is, as far as I'm aware, the best Western effort at making a sequel for _Silent Hill._
Bang on. As I will always say about the game: Spec Ops is a psychological horror pretending to be a military shooter.
@@TClaymore holy shit you are so right, I never thought about it like that
@@TClaymorebro.... mind blown, that is a spot-on observation
There is no greater horror than war, in particular modern industrialized war. White phosphorus is a chemical wmd because it's just pure phosphorus and it burns through almost everything. It was not in vietnam that it was widely used because it was already forbidden but in Germany during ww2. The strategic bombing of German cities by the British and the U.S used this incendiary weapon as its main munition, which led to an unprecedented murder of hundreds of thousands of civilians with a wmd, that was even bigger than the atomic bombs in Japan.
But who cares, they were all just "evil" nazis anyway, not human beings, according to the cliché propaganda, just like the Japanese and the Vietnamese. The God chosen "good" can't commit any crimes, only their enemies.
An aspect I feel goes oft undiscussed in Spec Ops The Line are the endings, outside of "color of fade in/out" discussions for "walker was dead all along" theorists. They're all equally noteworthy in some way, but it's a strange game that depicts suicide as a 'kind' option, surviving and escaping as a ruinous one, and my favorite, one where Walker becomes the antagonist he fought to a new group of arrivals. I think about that one a lot, because in a way, it feels like a strange kindness. He'll give these people the unrepentant bad guy he lacked, the goal that can easily be toppled and blamed on. The CIA will have their scapegoat. It absolves both the USA and his teammates, but in a way, isn't that horribly dishonest by itself?
Really appreciate mentioning the association between white phosphorus and Israel. I consider it almost the trademark weapon of the human rights violations that have occurred there over the years, and was brought back to it during a recent revisit.
I was thinking that last bit through the entire video until he mentioned it explicitly. It cannot be a coincidence he chose to talk about white phosphorus *now*, after the year we have all just witnessed/lived through.
When he says into the walkie talkie, "Gentlemen, welcome to Dubai...," it's honesty clouded in dishonesty (which is linked to your point); Walker is honest in him giving "these people" the welcome they'll expect when they send another batch of troops to "bring freedom and democracy" to this scorched wasteland, BUT is dishonest in the sense that he's showing himself up to be something that he (at first) never necessarily intended to be but soon CHOSE to be in the end...
That's a damned good take. Walker wasn't trying to be a villain of course (quite the contrary in his head), but by going off the rails completely at the end and attacking the US search and rescue team, he gives the US govt plausible deniability and someone they can put the blame on. The irony is, Walker really was responsible (to various arguable degrees) for the ultimate fall of Dubai and the 33rd, but the US high command would probably just shake their heads and say 'there's no way one man (3 if you count Adams and Lugo) can be responsible for destroying an entire Army battalion and damning the entire population of Dubai by destroying their water supply'.
The other irony is, if the US high command does accept that Martin was largely the one who did all this, they'd frantically be trying to recruit him into the CIA.
the point is that there are no protagonists in war
It's that very reasoning why I almost HAVE to consider the "Walker surrenders" ending to be the "canon" one. Someone has to get the word out there about what happened in Dubai; might as well be Walker, guy looked like the poster boy All-American Hero Man-type going in, and I think that'd make what he'd have to say all the more impactful. He owes it to all those people, even if he still becomes a scapegoat for the CIA in the process.
One of the things I remember most about Spec Ops was that the american weapons were just better than the kalashnikovs and such your enemies have, and checkpointy ammo replenishment boxes were few and far between. But in a very videogamey way for a "tactical shooter", executing a wounded combatant would refill your ammo, regardless of what the combatant was carrying. Intentionally wounding and then executing a wounded person (a war crime) became a gameplay necessity, and as the game goes on and the loading screens change, you can also notice a difference in those execution animations, they become less efficient and more brutal, less quick double taps and more bludgeoning some-one to death. Given the real world contemporary gist of this video, I think there is and was something there, that the idea that brutality and cruelty helps you win is insane and it's a hard insanity to walk away from.
"War is cruelty. There is no use trying to reform it. The crueler it is, the sooner it will be over." - William Tecumseh Sherman
@Hypogean7 reminds me of a line from a book i read can't remember which, to paraphrase from vague memory "I wouldn't want someone who hates war to become in charge in one, because he wont feel remorse to act cruelly to end it quickly."
@@Hypogean7 Most people whinging about war crimes here unironically support what Sherman did, his diaries and letters to his wife are a sickening read.
Even the combat barks change from the clear cut "clear" to swearing and guttural noises
Spec Ops The Line is not a tactical shooter.
Masterfully done. Wonderful essay. BTW there's a third death screen like that, if you die immediately after the WP scene you get a scene where Lugo screams at you "Stop, just f**king stop"
Isn't that the first haunted scene? The man in shadows I thought was Konrad...
A brilliant sign that Lugo was the only "good guy" in this game and the only truly consistent character when compared to the self-righteous (but thoroughly self-contradictory) Walker and the dogmatic (yet loyal) Adams; he still has enough of a conscience to at least TRY and tell you that all of this death, this slaughter, this madness, is all pointless and pathetic and that (sooner or later) it WILL need to stop, whether by your (Walker's) hands or someone else's.
Edit: Thanks to the brilliant comments of people who've responded to me, I would say that even Lugo himself is not entirely free of sin and evil, as he was more of bystander to Walker and Adams' actions in-game.
@@SirBoggins It's so perfect that the closest thing to a good person among the protagonists is a man who only ever criticized his leader for committing war crimes. And never actually took any action to stop him, or get away from him. He could have put a bullet in Walker at any time, or split off to forge his own path.
It's hard to say why he didn't. Maybe he hoped Walker would eventually see sense. Maybe he was too afraid of the consequences of contradicting his superior. Whatever his reasons, he kept following Walker into damnation. If the Dubai of the game is truly Hell, then Lugo has earned his place there.
@@tbotalpha8133 He's the angel on Walker's shoulder who did bull when his superior committed sin after sin and (like Lucifer) became a fallen angel as a result; he may have been "a good man" at one point in his life, but by him doing nothing, he allowed the very evil he was clearly opposed to triumph in the end.
Besides what I have said, you saying Lugo being in hell makes quite a lot of sense as the former comment's statement about Lugo screaming, "Stop" could actually imply that Lugo is in hell with Walker but by seeing the current consequences of all their actions, is trying to get Walker to "repent" somehow as a last ditch attempt at "redemption."; on the other hand, it could easily be Lugo calling out from the "other side" (not necessarily "heaven," as he hasn't "earned" any real right to be there, but something akin to it, like how purgatory is in the Catholic faith) and is trying to stop his former commander from repeating this cycle of sin and evil so he can put it all to rest.
@@SirBoggins A "good guy" would not be a part of this three man delta force squad in the first place. The game is about a series of villains
The game has collectable pickups called intel. One of the pickups is the Interrogator's Confession. I'm just now realising this intel pickup is meant to add more weight to the white phosphorous scene. The pickup is early in the game, and talks about using fire as an interrogation/torture tactic. Here's most of the quote.
"Thought I'd make it the whole way without screaming. Hacked my way through the sandboarding. Even, bit my tongue when they brought out the knives. But the fire... dammit... I screamed like you wouldn't believe. I'm disappointed, but at least now I understand the breaking. Once my flesh started melting, I'd have thrown my own mother under a bus just to make it stop."
It's been discussed to death but I love the personalised Intel collectibles in Spec Ops, almost making fun of the generic enemy laptops/comlinks in other games by giving you insight in how the people you are shooting at are already half-broken.
There's a collectable I always remember that's just a pile of makeshift bullets. Walker dryly says its all the locals have left, and then says it's like the old horror stories of melting silver to kill werewolves. In the analogy, he is the werewolf, the monster here to ruin everyones life, which he does.
Dang, those intels provide much more terror
I was recommended your podcast a few days ago and learnt that you were talking about the game.
As a Spec Ops: The Line developer and knowing SO much about the stuff you were debating, I was shouting and laughing everytime you guys got something terribly wrong or incredibly right. I really wish I was there, because I enjoy so much seeing how this game is still subject of debate, even if 12 years has passed. Even if the game has been delisted. Even if 2KGames stopped believing in how relevant this game became for this industry. The game is still here, slowly becoming something to remember forever instead of something to quickly forget, which is what happened to the game when it was released sandwiched by Call of Duty Black Ops and Battlefield 3. Really unfortunate launch window for a new IP about war.
By the way, I was the Level Designer in charge of the White Phosphorus scene. Not the one who got the idea! But one of the ones who pulled it off. 😉
Anyways, thank you for those podcasts and this video. Love your channel! ❤
yall did remarkable work. in an industry where the US military holds a tight grip and the vast majority of war games fall into vile propaganda and a spectrum from excusing to glorification of american imperialism and war crimes, this game still shines as one of the few works brave enough to highlight not only these crimes, but the complicity of the wider game industry in regurgitating that propaganda.
It would be cool to hear how you thought about the level design, like whether it was intentionally structured to 'hide' the civilian aspect for the most part from the vista with the terminal, to control the reveal
@@saebelorn There are so many aspects of this whole scene that fell into place due to bad ideas being discarded or technical needs being absolutely necessary. The trench where the civilians were hidden was initially a streaming corridor to allow the game to load the next section and unload the previous one, but the tech artist said that this trench was not long enough. That forced us to think on a narrative moment so relevant that would stop the action... and that led to a COMPLETE shift in the narrative, which is crazy to be honest. In hindsight that was the correct decission, but it was pretty irresponsible in that stage of development. 😅
@@Baxayaun That's interesting. While I think this video is alright, it really misses any discussion of the game as something a group of people made, with all the quirks and decisions that went into the final product. It's cool to hear that side of things, which ironically has also not been discussed much.
@@saebelorn Jacob was brave enough to talk about the pink elephant in the room, which has always been the war crimes we witness in the game and how the game is telling something about real war in a way that is far from glorifying it. I've seen many videos discussing how it break the fourth wall, how it critiques the contemporary war genre, how it subverts player's expectations, how PTSD is rarely ever mentioned in any war game... but the key moment in this game is saying something about a real atrocity, in the same way that Apocalypse Now said something about the horrors a soldier and the population of a war zone have to face, so I'm actually fine if Jacob decided to cover this specific subject and not another.
I really still don't know how this game managed to avoid cancellation a couple of times and get the green light from an american publisher knowing the themes we were covering in its narrative, but the truth is that from the very beginning I was brought to this project knowing that it was going to be a war themed game with a very dark narrative. That, at least, was pretty clear from the very beginning, although the White Phosphorus scene as it ended being in the final product was not planned at all. White Phosphorus was actually a special deployable weapon, but that trivialized its usage in an absurd way and didn't make sense if you put it together with the rest of the story.
One moment in Spec Ops gave me one of the most visceral reactions a game has ever given me. There's a combat sequence fairly early on -- I think it's in a marketplace -- where somebody came charging at me through either a pair of curtains or a hanging rug (I forget which). Instinctively, I shot them. I immediately realized it was a civilian running panicked, but it was too late.
I actually felt sick to my stomach. It was a simple moment that I haven't really heard anyone else bring up, but it genuinely messed me up.
yeah and the messed up thing is, in the moment, shooting someone charging at you is justified because you can't know what will happen if you hesitate. regardless of the bigger picture, you're in a brief chain of events where not shooting can easily mean you die instead.
this is also how a lot of friendly fire incidents occur in wars. war forcefully molds the people involved to make instantaneous life or death decisions, you may only find out you made the wrong call after people are already dead.
Also want to say, I loved the game when I first played it, but I, too, found it surprising how much of the discourse around the game was about what it had to say about gamers and military shooters. People really seemed unprepared to talk about what the game was very clearly saying about the US military.
@@Mad_Possum Haunting
After the crowd hangs Lugo, there's a moment where they are throwing stones at you and you're forced to retaliate. The game WILL KILL YOU if you do nothing to the angry crowd.
The tensions are high, they've just executed a main character, and you have to shoot them to progress. So I did. Reading up about it later, the crowd will disperse if you shoot the ground or over their heads. That moment stuck with me because that just... didn't register as an option at the time. I had to, I wanted to.
@@nimbuIyou get the eponymic achievements for this moment, "a line, crossed" if you shoot at the civilians, and "a line, held" if you just scare them off.
"Merely incendiary" is chilling to read
dude, the audacity for them to say something like that. when he said that merely burns from the white phosphorous could cause organ failure I instantly paused and said "HOW is that not chemical???"
@@moemamadarasz4016 IKR!!!
It’s like saying that cigarettes basically the same as campfires. Just because something is an incendiary does not mean that’s it’s only purpose!!!
It is an incendiary because the primary use is smoke screens and ilumination (aka not used in an offensive manner) Jacob said "The US tried to argue" but that still the classification by international law. You can still use it as a chemical weapon tho, but is not a very effective one
@@DKdropeven un doesn't classify it as chemical weapons the
@@axel665 I think they should, but this is the kind of thing you can absolutely argue in circles about because the definition of "chemical weapon" is entirely arbitrary. After all, combustion is a chemical reaction. Definitions tend to focus on toxicity, but this fails to set out any parameters. After all, most incendiary weapons will release carbon monoxide, which is very toxic in high enough concentration or with long enough exposure. Many chemicals won't have noticeable effects until after prolonged exposure. Also, White Phosphorus is extremely toxic. All forms of elemental phosphorus are super toxic, actually.
It strikes me that this vagueness might be intentional. It leaves enough wiggle room for governments to avoid consequences for the atrocities they commit.
17:45 thank you for talking about the use of WP by the IDF-which makes this game so extremely relevant today
I'm glad you took the time to talk about Agent Riggs, who might not only be one of the worst people in a game filled to the brim with morally questionable and villainous people, but is also just an interesting character in his own right.
You can find an audio log where Riggs diagnoses Konrad as a delusional individual, with an increasingly calcified and unflexible sense of moral certainty. After completing the game, it's clear that that diagnosis doesn't fit Konrad nearly as well as it fits Walker, or Riggs himself.
"Jeremy, some day people are going to tell you about your father, and for that, I'm sorry."
Or somethin' real close to that, that letter and the reveal that the real Konrad was the complete opposite of Walker is one of the main reasons I personally hate the "dead all along" theory, especially because the opening chopper segment was literally a last-minute addition forced upon the game by the publisher, so even if the devs took advantage by chucking in a cheeky line, the rest of the game really doesn't work with that in mind to me. Especially when you consider Adams was meant to have his own DLC story after his disappearance (the script exists, I consider it canon), that theory was so clearly just hastily thrown together imo.
Could be Riggs was talking about Walker, considering Konrad was long dead and Walker was talking to himself all along. Mental sub-in going on
In some sense, the psych profile is also Riggs gassing up Konrad as a rival, a worthy and worthwhile opponent. His hard-man-doing-hard-things preventer ass might say that his plan was to protect US rep and so on, but then you look back at how much the psych profile tries to make a dragon out of Konrad? Nah. The real heart of it? Riggs wants an intellectual strategic spy duel with Konrad, the challenge of all challenges, against the man in the tower.
Except
Konrad's dead.
Konrad's been dead for a long time.
Rigg's masterpiece, the culmination of his life and career, his ultimate duel, is against a ghost.
And that is extremely funny.
@@Meckell
It's definitely a really awesome way to deconstruct a character like him. I don't really play CoD unless it's a friends' copy, but he always reminded me of a take on the fan favorite grizzled vet characters in that franchise like Soap, especially that bit when he drops two 33rd soldiers from behind while you're on the ground. I like how they took that and were like "yeah but... you're literally in the middle of a humanitarian aid crisis, not a warzone, what do you think this CIA goon is _really_ up to?"
I'm so glad you mentioned that specific loading screen, because it's such a haunting image. The choice of having the bodies (that in reality Walker had only seen from above) *looming* over you is so effective, I think. The fact that innocents died painfully at Walker's hands (including, most memorably, that mother and her child) remains an unerasable, unfixable reality; the bodies are still presumably just like you left them, where you left them, but they never left you. A perfect visualization of the lives you took so violently literally haunting you.
I personally don't give too much thought. As a Taiwanese that needs the US to protect us from China, women and children in bumpfxxk of no where is a worthy sacrifice if it means the US army can continue to exists and protect my family.
I was the prime target audience for this game when it came out. I was 8 years into my military service and played CoD with my buddies damn near every night.
When I got to the WP scene, I had no idea what was coming. I just had a flashback to how fun that MW2 mission was and just thought about how it was a decent take on the formula.
And I still remember the hitch in my lungs when I saw all those white figures huddle together so close. Excitement. Ooo, this is gonna be good.
And then I walk through the devastation, putting American soldiers out of their misery cause that’s what the heroes do in the movies.
And then the reveal. I’ve never felt horror like that playing a game before or since. And then it just keeps going, twisting me in on myself, rightfully castigating me for my actions.
Later that night when I had finally finished the game, the sun had gone down and I hadn’t turned the lights on yet. I turned off my XBox and just sat there in the dark for about 15-20 minutes.
Just thinking.
I wasn't in any sort of military when I played the game, and I'd had "the white phosphorus scene" spoiled for me. Was still a horribly confronting experience.
The thing that I will always remember about Spec Ops the Line has nothing to do with anything in it, but does involve it's White Phospohrus.
In a forum I was at, people were discussing the idea of the character perpetuating war crimes, if it's effective when the player is 'forced' to do them to finish the game, whatever.
But one single person had a different stance. The only thing they cared about, claiming to be a person who had fought in the War on Terror, was that White Phosporus was not a chemical weapon.
Post after post, over and over, 'the game is wrong on how White Phosporus works. It doesn't work like that. It's only for illumination and smoke screens."
But they never called it White Phosporus. They only ever called it 'Wiley Pete'. Always WP, 'Wiley Pete', etc. Cutesy nicknames always. They defended it as not that bad, that it literally couldn't burn anything, that 'Wiley Pete is harmless'
I think about it a lot. I think about the refusal to use the real name, to always refer to it by a nickname, like it's a friend or a drinking buddy, a lot. I'll never forget the name used for it by that person. Even when I see it being used over and over for war crimes, used as a weapon of torture and destruction, I'm constantly reminded of that person not even using the name of the chemical.
'It's not dangerous, it's your buddy you use to defeat the terrorists.'
@@flare6255 the last bit reminds me of the Carlin bit about language the army uses to spin narratives. To paraphrase:
"Middle Eastern freedom fighters are all terrorists, but American and Israeli terrorists are all just 'commandos'..."
Another thing about this is that it perfectly mirrors the inability of the main character of Spec Ops to take responsibility for his actions. He's rationalizing the use of a chemical weapon away to preserve his own peace of mind.
I wonder how that person feels about his actions nowadays. Is he still living in denial, has he begun self-reflecting, is he even alive? I can only assume, but I think no matter how deep you try to bury those memories they will always stay with you forever.
great example of how the ideas that language communicates can easily fly over the head of the speaker, but are clearly evident if you listen hard enough
It’s a perpetual pattern throughout human history. Our fear and nature to kill, and trying to justify the slaughter or lessen its severity. So I wonder what happens when Willie Pete, your buddy you used against the wicked terrorists, is unleashed upon you or those you care about. Will you still recognize him as Willie Pete, or call him by his real name?
Reminds me of the baby that died to a white phosphorus smoke grenade during a police raid of the *neighbour* of a suspected drug trafficker (whom they had no idea if they even spoke together or if said drug trafficker was even still living there)
I recognize the story and unless I'm mistaken, this wasn't a WP, it was a flashbang. Flashbangs are still explosives, and so the fact that it went off inside the baby's crib was close enough to cause fatal burns.
amazing game - as a veteran it spoke to me. I was in situation there I got the choice - follow orders and live with it for life or insubordination charges, I chose second and 4 innocent lives were spared.
Damn would it be something you'd want to talk more about?
thanks for choosing the right choice
@@chriss780 Sure Bruv. What you wish to know?
@@sergeedelstein3463what happened?
I'd be curious to know as well. What I'd like to know is what exactly happened, or as much as you're willing / able to share.
14:07 About this statement: you can use, mr. military man, flare ammunition that's available for mortars. It's more effective for lighting purposes since the light is just more bright and lasts for longer, besides the fact that It's far far safer to use without "accidentally" commiting war crimes (It's even cheaper too). That's like saying "oh we needed to throw molotovs so we could illuminate our operations, we didn't want to burn the living hell out of everything" instead of using the extremely obvious and better alternative called flares that virtually every military has in stock and uses when It actually requires better lighting.
Pretty sure the only reasonable use for white phosphorus in a military context is to create massive smokescreens to cover large formations. Then again, its still dangerous to do so.
And the thing is, they couldn't rebut this obvious logic by saying, "There weren't any suitable flares within the vicinity of the incident," because that would imply the priorities of military lie with utilizing highly lethal chemical weapons over providing their soldiers with relatively basic combat equipment, indirectly condemning themselves for their own inadequacy. It's a Catch-22 that they try to rationalize themselves out of anyhow: either they used white phosphorus, fully aware of what it does for the purpose we all know it was used for, or because they didn't have adequate flare ammunition available for their troops. Not a good look either way, and they sure as hell aren't going to admit they were in the wrong.
Mr. military PR man gets that, but I doubt coming out and saying the obvious reality that it's used in many, if not most, cases as a chemical weapon against human targets for psychological warfare would go down so well, legality and publicity wise.
The whole lying on TV thing works because most Americans are sheltered from the realities of war. They have no idea flares can be fired from mortars to achieve a better illumination effect than White Phosphorous. The military PR guy's job is to lie to an uninformed public; to take candy from a baby, to assert that the sky is purple to people who live in bunkers and have never seen a sunrise. It's ridiculous, but it works anyway, and informing people about horrible and inexcusable things that their ignorance makes them complicit in is extremely difficult. It usually goes over like a fart in church.
There's an even worse layer to that loading screen with this context to me. The song the woman is humming is "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star"...
"'No' they say, 'we weren't using this substance to turn people into glue'"
Max Payne 3 may be over as part of a video essay, but it won't let go as a part of Geller's verbal expressions.
He even used Max Payne 3's ost,crazy how well it went with Spec ops topic lol.
I will never fail to notice his extensive use of the OST and as someone who feels like it isn't talked about enough despite how good it is compared to other soundtracks (i.e the last of us, God of War, etc) it will never fail to put a smile on my face
@@ps2516 They're two games that go very close together in my heart - colorful, early 2010s TPSs with pretty average gameplay but everything around that being fantastic.
Not-so-fun fact: on top of having it as a killstreak in its multiplayer, Modern Warfare 2019 has its own White Phosphorus scene in its very first mission and needless to say it is the polar opposite to Spec Ops. The Marine Raiders you're with crack jokes and nonchalantly justified the brutality with "They have radios and guns" and they deserve it anyways for storing chemical weapons. The irony, I know. The scene is never bought up again.
God, I remember seeing the second secret game over screen when I played Spec Ops and being legit scared by it, and then looking online and finding basically no one talking about it. I did get a detail wrong though: I thought it was the needle tower you hallucinate as burning on 4:24, which would probably make the figure Konrad. Looking at it again and realizing it's The Gate makes the screen more impactful.
I also like the Eye of Sauron silhouette they give the flame. It's as though Walker's psyche is writhing under this glaring eye of Divine Judgement; the once-sunlit gap in the inferno now become a serpentine pupil, narrowed in acute malice and deep with hunger.
Holy shit. You might be right about that yeah… that’s the Gate.
Seven years and I still find new details I’ve missed in this game.
It always felt weird that the discussion towards SOTL was much more about the 4th wall breaks and the player agency in videogame violence, and less about the critique it does on modern warfare and the western military. And much like you, I also got heavily impacted by the heavy dude kill screen, it was also the only one of the 3 screens I've seen during my gameplay.
"No sir, this White phosphorus is used for illumination" feels like "no man, this mustard gas is for making the meat more spicy"
Chemotherapy.
It's a dumb lie, but only because magnesium flares are for illumination. White phosphorus is for smoke.
"his head didn't explode, he just had a skull issue"
@Flesh_Wizard "This isn't an invasion, it's a three day special military operation" Said by the current bald Soviet Egg
White phosphorus has no better alternative for masking troop movements, and the smoke bombs made with it are not the lethal burn-and-kill everything types of bombs. Illumination is usually magnesium or something not white phosphorus at all.
I think that it’s also important to note that White Phosphorus kind of strikes a balance between being very well understood by scientists and not being very well-known by the general public. Anyone who orders it be used in combat knows exactly what they’re doing (and if they don’t, they’re just willfully ignorant), but the average person doesn’t. It’s another smokescreen on which the military can rely to prevent too much public scrutiny.
Hell, the only reason I knew enough about it to recognize that it’s bad news is because of some chemistry jokes about how unstable it is.
This has been talked to death already of course but a real and intentional feature of US and Israeli weapons use policy is that the more horrifying and gruesome the carnage becomes, the more squeemish becomes the press and the public. They'll publish the aftermath of a gunfight or a shelling. The photos that WP produce are stomach churning. The story of what it does to human beings, to hospitals, to the soil and the water, they're too much for the average person to bear. Good to ponder where this tactic found its proving ground in the wars of the past, Vietnam being only an elder child.
Hey I know that it's completely tonally dissonant but can I hear the jokes? I'm curious
This is one of the best pieces on Spec Ops imo. Not to discredit other people's work but its always irked me how discussions veered towards analysis of player choice rather than the very loud criticism of the U.S. (and by extension Israeli) military, and the effects on civilians.
Him being Jewish and well researched of Jewish historical literature means quite a lot, Willy Pete isn't the Golem
I've never played specops but I've definitely seen a video essay about it or two. And I definitely got kind of annoyed when essayists inevitably said "the game says we're bad people for playing it 😮"
So thanks for making this about the reality that this stuff isn't just in a game! It's in real life
The final point of "it should have always been about them" seems obvious until we look at the language used in the US around military shooters and actual war crimes. The tendency to orient the conversation around "I am horrified", "I can't believe it", "it made me sick" orients the focus around everyone but the victims. It makes the problem not about the people who have suffered, but about how it makes us feel. And when the focus is on stopping our own pain, the answer tends to be to bury the source.
Edit: wrote this quickly during lunch break, and now want to clarify that when bystanders center ourselves in conversations about violence... our empathetic pain becomes what must be resolved, rather than the ongoing atrocities triggering that empathy.
The difference in motivation, while seemingly benign, is between "these people should not suffer" and "these people's suffering hurts me". And often, the 2 solutions are diametrically opposed. If we want, in any way, to genuinely help others we must do things that discomfort, upset, and inconvenience us. We must bear witness, and listen to the people being affected, even when our stomachs churn.
But if we mostly want ourselves to stop hurting, all we have to do is stop paying attention, stop caring, just slowly let the cries die out. It's terrible, and it's easy. Empathy on its own is not action.
Anyways, ik my comment is about decentering the observer and I just used so many "we"s and "I"s, but I think self-analysis is essential to decentering, bc it is pivotal in beginning to unravel the bystander self from the actual injustice.
The sympathizer thoroughly dissects this point as well in regards to the purpoted "anti war" nature of vietnam war movies. I honestly was kinda suprised Jacob didn't mention it as it dovetails perfectly with the apocalpyse now influences, and just seems like a show/book that would be right up Jacob's alley.
Idk, people starting to acknowledge amongst each other "that's awful, how horrifying" is the first step in making a change happen. The issue is when, like you said, people don't go further than that. I don't think the general responses are wrong so much as the lack of action taken thereafter. Rather than challenging the language people are using to express their empathy, I feel like the more helpful route would be to make sure that those conversations are more proactively including talk of what people can do to help work towards a solution in these situations.
It’s not about you. It’s about them. It should have always been about them.” Thank you.
I remember being in line and getting this game on release with my cousin. We played the campaign all night long on my tiny 11 inch TV the 360 sat next to, trading off after deaths. We were just in high school and were stoked for a new 3rd person shooter but then bit by bit it broke down. We finished it that night/morning and just sat on the couch in silence after it all, unbothered by the threat my parents coming down and finding us still gaming posed.
We were both raised very conservative and pro-American intervention, and I think that night changed both of us. Whether it was intervention, war crimes, or the medium of games, this game rattled me something mean. The Lugo heavy moment felt like a dream until I saw it in other videos, the death screens talking to us in the wee hours of the morning, my obsession with Heart of Darkness after that play-through. We were a financially precarious family after the financial collapse, and this game that I chose to save up for to pour hours into and distract myself with probably did more for my development and shaping my world view today than any other. I still think about it and see others discovering and dissecting it today, and I'm so glad it had the impact it did. What a strange thing to be thankful for to exist.
I am still very pissed off that this game was removed from digital storefronts because a music license ran out. Could you imagine if quite literally _any_ other medium, any other artform operated on the same "lifespan equal to its royalties" standard?
They do as well
I think movies sometimes are affected by that too.
_glances at HBO Max_
…yes 😔
I'm aware movies and TV exists, so yes
is that the actual reason tho? Could be, but I've never heard of a game being removed because of a music license
Being a regular listener of Something Rotten makes me feel like I get a behind the scenes look with the writing process of these videos, since they basically cover so many of your initial thoughts on a given game, it's really cool to go from you and Blake and Guest talking about your feelings on it right after finishing playing a game to then a fully realized 30 minute video exploring those thoughts in-depth.
Same here, it’s fascinating to watch this video after listening to the podcast
Exactly, I enjoyed the podcast over some chores earlier this week and completely didn't expect a full vid, very epic haha
thought of the old saying "the purpose of a system is what it does" coined by stafford beer during the video. the intentions nor stated purpose of an action matter in the slightest; any provided rationale for the usage of these chemical weapons are complete irrelevant when their impact and toll are clearly evident and understood.
It's a good statement.
It's also worth considering how little "intentions" seem to matter in civilian courts.
You're not going to get out of charges of vehicular manslaughter and DUI because you didn't "intend" to crash into that minivan full of children.
If you light a fire in your backyard & that fire spreads out of control and burns your neighbours to death, the court WILL NOT CARE that you lit the thing "for illumination."
Thanks for putting voice to the final point. I always found the "It's trying to make us feel bad for playing violent video games" angle annoyingly self-absorbed. Like the form of media overshadowed what the actual plot was about, a classic not being able to see the forest for the trees.
"We only shot the phosphorus into the air."
What goes up must come down.
"Once the rockets go up,
who cares where they come down?
That's not my department,"
Says Wernher von Braun.
Well if it combusts itself entirely before it hits the ground, then no, it can not come down. But there’s hardly a guarantee of that is there
@@lazydroidproductions1087 From what I can tell, the main concerning byproducts of WP combustion are phosphorous oxides, which are denser than air. So while they'll gently float down rather than falling, they'll still make their way to the ground. Arguably this is worse, since that means that the particles can spread over a wider area, though there is the chance that they'll be diluted to harmlessness before hitting the ground. I don't think that risk is worth it.
@@DKdrop neither do I, but once again it’s a fuel source mid combustion, it’s not guaranteed to come down, but you can’t guarantee that it *wont* come down before it burns out
IM 14 AND THIS IS DEEP 🐺
God, hearing what you said about bombing schools in Gaza was horrifying enough without hearing the following date, because honestly I’m woefully uninformed, and finding out this isn’t even new this past year, this has been happening since 2009, is devastating
I remember discovering Spec ops: The Line when I was writing a history dissertation on the use of Napalm and Agent Orange during the Vietnam War.
You know what I wondered?
I wondered "Wait... why is it called "the Line?"
And the point was that using White Phosphorous was about crossing the Line while pretending you hadn't, which was so different to Agent Orange o Napalm, where people were IMMEDIATELY saying "you've gone too far" and the military had the lamest defences for being so barbaric.
The Line was about the Plausible Deniability of using something as utterly horrific as White Phosphorous while claiming you're the "Good Guys.".
The scum LEARNED from Vietnam. But they learned all the wrong things.
There's a moment late in the game after Lugo is killed where a crowd of angry civilians are about to mob you and there's achievements based on your actions "A Line, Crossed" is given to you if you shoot the civilians, "A Line, Held" if you scare them away without killing them
love the pseudo intellectual bs bro keep it up ❤️
@@cardboard_shaft you when you see more than 10 words: erm, intellectual try-hard much?
@@cardboard_shaft u sound fragile
@@cardboard_shaftIt's unfortunate that your parents didn't teach you enough reading comprehension skills but it's not really their fault. They tried as hard as they could but eventually they came to the conclusion that some kids are just dumb and incapable of learning. It was a tough lesson for them to learn.
The ending of this video to me, perfectly summarizes why i think a lot of anti war films in particular tend to fail; and that's because they- like the fourth wall breaks and the abysmally potent tongue placed firmly in cheek, are almost always about you, or rather, putting yourself behind the eyes and into the body of a soldier.
It is never about them.
They tend to, but there are some quality war films out there.
I don't think anyone can successfully claim Apocalypse Now is glorifying of war
Grave of the Fireflies puts you in the perspective of the civilian side and is one of the most gut-punching movies ever made, brutal but brilliant
@@cinemachronicI agree, but I think where apocalypse now, full metal jacket, and platoon (all of which are superb movies) fall short as anti-war films is that their main thesis is "The Vietnam war was bad because it made our soldiers go insane." Vietnamese civilians and combatants in those movies are mainly props to show the descent into madness of the protagonists. It's somewhat understandable because these are American movies made for American audiences, but I think it blunts the anti-war critique to not more deeply examine the effect of the conflict on its victims.
Honestly, I think the idea that anti-war stories in films and games and other mediums can only be portrayed effectively through the perspective of a soldier sheds light onto two flaws with those kinds of narratives: that the focus should be to portray how horrible it is to go to war, and that "war" exists as something wholly separate from "peace".
The problem with the first is that it's about the toll the burden of doing horrific actions of great violence has on those committing them, focusing on some kind of degradation of the honorable soldier through "having to" do these things, rather than the impact such horrific violence actually has on the victims of war, the mass deaths supposedly negating the possibility that their stories might be told and humanity be recognized beyond acting as statistics for the history books, despite the obvious necessity of doing so. It's tragic to GO to war, but we never really talk about what it is to BE at war. It's always about "us," because we're the ones doing these awful things, and we'll always prefer to see ourselves as tragic figures than as monsters, because then we'd have to admit it was all unequivocally wrong.
The second is intertwined with the first, and is related to the idea that the "war" and "peace" are two entirely separate areas of being, focusing on the struggle soldiers have of being from "peace" and taking part in "war" and subsequently struggling to fit in with "peace" again. It's a pessimistic Hero's Journey: the protagonist returns back to the world of the familiar from the world of the unfamiliar, yet remains the master of neither. Yet this ignores that to say "war" is separate from "peace" implies a privilege of the soldiers participating in a conflict, that "war" does not threaten to bring about serious political instability to their own homes & communities, the tragedy being to mourn the loss of their ability to fully enjoy that privilege, and never really on contemplating those that never get to experience the tranquility of "peace" and the sheer wrongness & abnormality of its absence, especially the factors that led to such.
@@thirdcoinedge Very well put. While deconstructing the "heroic soldier" archetype that is perpetuated in society, culture and media is indeed important, I do see how they fall short in comparison to stories focused around the victims. We tend to empathise with the protagonist, with the narrator, with the character we play as. And it can take away the focus from what's really important. I remeber watching another video about Specs ops The Line focused mainly on the "Walker is dead" interpretation and while the video itself was fine, it made me reflect on how I felt in comparison how Jacob's video made me feel. I felt bad for Walker. I felt bad for the war criminal more than i felt bad for the unnamed civilians in that moment. It's just easier to empathise with someone who you spent hours playing as or just minutes watching a video about. Because he wasn't a "bad guy" he "meant well" and in the end he is a tragic character. And those statements could be true but ultimately it doesn't matter, the harm was done, innocent people killed and someone's personal tradegy does not outweigh it. This sentiment just gets lost or muddled. So all this yapping just to say that I agree with your comment lmao.
I was holding my breath waiting for the Gaza mention and then at 17:32 it knocked me tf out. Never has there been a better time to talk about spec ops the line
same here
Was so prepared to write the essay/comment if he didn't mention it
Really proud of him bringing it up
אתם המערביים לעולם לא תבינו
Hey fellow humans, so glad to see some rounf here. He specifically mentiones gaza 2009. Ok it's something but it is also happening today, and we have today seen even more horrifying images from Lebanon than those of the games. People burning alive under rumble, still perfused and connected to the medical equipment of their médicalisés bed.
Israel's exactions happening right now need to be called out and with all due respect, I am a little bit bitter about Jacob's silence, I must admit it.
I just wanna say how grateful I am that you tied it back to 2009 Gaza and not just the current day Gaza. It's incredibly important to shine a light on how long this has been going on.
Amazing analysis! Thank you!
Exactly! I’m so glad we’re talking about this situation as a thing that’s been going on for years rather than something that just started a year ago.
Same. You can immediately tell when someone's spouting deliberate obfuscation when they refuse to acknowledge anything from before oct 7. They're trying so hard to make it their ultimate justification for things they were already doing before they tried to justify them. It's sickening.
This video is great at bringing home to The Gamers that we shouldn't be so self-orientated in how we think and there is a world we partake in that we should be cognisant of. But honestly, on this point, it should have also been made clear that this is ongoing and not just confined to 2009 - 2009 is just an example of where the IDFs standard counter claims were able to be very thoroughly debunked
@@radroatchall of their claims keep getting debunked but they face no consequences.
Never have I wanted to destroy a person as badly as I wanna destroy beni yahoo aka Hitler's left nut.
I noticed that too. A masterful choice to highlight just how long that brutality has been going on.
Absolutely brutal topic, and Spec Ops had the decency to depict white phosphorus as horrific.
Meanwhile, Homefront (2011) literally had it as an unlockable killstreak in multiplayer. Think there was a mission with it, but didn't nearly touch the nerve in the same way.
Considering current world events, I'm glad it tried to do that.
call of duty mw19 also had it as a killstreak, made your screen blurry, character cough white smoke, yellow tinted vision and constant damage until death. If you touched the actual dropped fire of the streak your character would burn up much quicker. That streak would drop fps by like 40% there was so much going on
@Comicbroe405 It's weirdly ironic that Spec Ops The Line was delisted not long after said events. Like the game devs or 2K threw their hands up upon seeing people treating warcrimes as justifiable yet again.
@@0uttaS1TE It's music licensing.
@@0uttaS1TE
The shooters that The Line critiqued didn't learn anything whatsoever since then (they just pretend to), the timing is literally just because of the music licensing.
This is a fascinating essay to me not just because I haven't played this game myself, but because I know it best from a friend I met in university who had been deeply affected by it. They were from a nation in the global south, and they had unwavering focus when discussing this game on the war crimes and what it had to say about the American military. I had never even heard of the fourth wall breaks- I knew it purely through that secondhand knowledge of how it funneled players through atrocity disguised as a cover shooter and still sent my friend spiraling into despair with the broad swathes of the audience who refused to get the point.
Sounds like your friend put too many hopes on a videogame.
@@Hypogean7 My friend didn't have hopes for a video game- my friend had hopes that the audience had the bare minimum critical thought needed to grasp what was put directly in front of them. I never got the impression that my friend believed this game would change the world, just that there were reactions to the game which somehow disappointed a lack of expectation despite that.
One of the things about Spec Ops: The Line that I never see talked about, besides the things in this video, is the fact that it's not set in a "war" or any sort of "conflict". It's supposedly a humanitarian mission to help the victims of a natural disaster, and the United States sends in its military to do this, just like how the United States sends armed police officers to respond to mental health crisis 911 calls. It's an explicit damnation of the use of our organized tools of state violence for any supposedly kind purpose that we claim they have to whitewash the cruelty and suffering that is the actual point of their existence.
The US military is the worlds best logistics organization. Not like they're sending Apaches and F35s to victims of a Hurricane or earthquake. It's pallets of clean water, food, and clothing on a C130 cargo aircraft.
@@ravenwing199 you're imagining the UN Peacekeepers, but you need to think of your people as the Good Guys despite their awful record on actions in disaster areas. Both the ones they create and the ones they are deployed into.
@@TheEvilCheesecake I haven't heard much about this awful record. I'll go look into it.
@@TheEvilCheesecake I guarantee you can't provide sources for an "awful record on actions in disaster areas" and that you're just talking about of your ass.
It feels like you just threw the word whitewash in there for no reason, what does it even mean in this context? Whitewash cruelty? What???
Walker was definitely a "they were hiding behind human shields so we had to kill the shields" kinda guy
@@EpicBeard815 but is he the kind of guy to do so while hiding behind a PoW human shield?
What does it say about the men taking human shields though?
Walker the kinda guy to shoot someone and then say they were being used as a human shield.
@@Hypogean7 I mean generally its a nonsense line used by the IOF to shift blame to the victim when they kill civilians
so who really cares about some nonsense hypothetical used exclusively to justify war crimes and genocide?
@@Hypogean7 the point is that there were no human shields. It’s an after the fact justification for the deaths of civilians because, like Jacob points out, people committing heinous acts seek any reason to justify them, even to the point of further & worse actions to pin the blame on others.
At this point, Spec Ops has more essays than units solds.
Great video! I haven't read too much about this game, but when I revisit it once every few years, I always think that there is something about the euphemism of 'self-defense' that comes to my mind, especially as an American. Walker does all this killing, but he always frames it as defense in some way. Despite always moving towards combatants and even firing first multiple times (even in the first scene, the game tries to get you to shoot first), Walker talks about saving/helping/defending people. There's such a huge space between his words and his actions that is very easy to ignore if you've already bought in to other ways we justify violent actions in this country. Except for out-and-out serial killers, it's hard to even think of who kills without those justifications. American life is filled with news about killings, beatings, and kidnappings being talked about as "self-defense", "protection and service", or "defending the country" when we can see the violence directly on the screen. It makes it easier for the game to trick its audience when they are used to framing violence as thoughtlessly heroic or necessary in their daily lives.
Honestly to me the line isn't even the phosphorus. It's that the second someone picked up a gun against the protagonist they immediately lost all humanity in his eyes and were fine to shoot
@@nadeen3157honestly, i wonder about this. When you’re in war, knowing that the person across from you will also have that mindset, that anyone with a gun will shoot mercilessly, how do you escape that trapping? Is it even possible? I suppose it would be better to act hopeful and naive rather than perpetuate that system yourself, but is it not also essentially throwing your life away? How do you resist perpetuating violence without then falling victim to it?
@@SuperFroakie82 Many vets have gotten themselves deliberately discharged, shuffled from the frontline into menial positions or just desert or become pows. You need to save your hide first no matter what, any antiwar activities can be done after that.
Ideally the grunts could take over command and sue for peace with the other side. But this is a pipedream more often than not when many time people were fed existential fear of the other side.
I’m very surprised you didn’t talk about modern warfare 2019 where they effectively try to reclaim white phosphorus. It’s basically the very first thing the player sees in the campaign, and it can be used in multiplayer.
I guess it's because the conclusion of the essay is that "It finally isn't about you... it's about them. It should have always been about them". One of the main points is about how our discussion can be limited to the realm of gamers and videogames instead of the real world. The second half of the video where he's talking about white phosphorus in the real world is very heavy and it would have been a step down from that and against his own argument to go from a discussion of real life warcrimes to a section about their depiction in call of duty. I think it's an interesting thing to note and maybe could have been mentioned somewhere early on but if the inclusion of a section like that is kinda just there to say "btw fuck you call of duty" then I think it makes sense to cut it to better focus the discussion.
CoD is and always has been propaganda. You think they would have depicted it negatively?
Its not bad by itself as long as you dont use it to target(burn) combatants, its has common use in every army in the world for smoke screens and ilumination
Remember when they tried marketing that game as a dark and realistic shooter showing the dirty side of the military and war only for it to be another generic COD where the US army saves the day by killing those evil evil brown insurgents?
15:15 For this issue, back then, I would always refer to my dad's personal anecdote. *_"War Crimes are like Age of Consent laws. The moment you start to vehemently argue about them with passion, you already lost."_*
Was that supposed to mean?
Passionate victims with strong emotions about the crime they endured are invalid?
What a silly statement
@@monseurwanksalotte3477 people trying to argue very obvious war crimes aren't war crimes are immediately invalid. I thought that was pretty clear, my mistake, I guess...
@@X-SPONGED
war is a direct implementation of organised violence just because one way is more painful than the another doesnt make it inherently less or more moral
your quote generalizes people who have better understanding of these acts as being inherently immoral which is dumb and hypocratic because it also disqualifies the victim's opinions about said atrocity
you made a bad generalizaion and the quote is rather silly
reflect on these words friend
@@monseurwanksalotte3477 "doesn't make it inherently less or more moral"
I apologize. I didn't realize euthanasia and gas chambers are the same exact thing morally speaking. I guess I should slow cook my chickens alive when I want to eat them, huh? Or maybe I should just amputate certain bodyparts to eat while keeping the rest of the chicken alive until I want to eat it again (mmm fresh meat). I'm no more immoral than the butcher across the street or the guy buying frozen dinner at the store, right?
War is evil. War is also inevitable because our leaders are fucking horrible. The Geneva convention was made not to end wars but to make sure the amount of suffering caused is the least possible.
Granted. Not everybody follows those rules which then makes them war criminals. That makes them subject to take back what they dish out with the addition of being trialed (and probably executed) if they lose.
Your quoted belief already tells me, you're either completely devoid of empathy or you've been lurking on 4Chan too much.
What a stupid oversimplification of incredibly nuanced problems. I guess it's a useful rule to live by in a brainrotted society that cares more about the optics of a position than the actual basis for said position.
As a 90's kid growing up in the middle east, these two events at the turn of the century (Palestine & Iraq) shaped my perception of White Phosphorus. I immediately and internally understood why The Line specifically used WP; Seeing it being used on unarmed civilians who look like me and how news reports don't pull any punches in showing the indiscriminate horrors being committed. The desensitized term "shake and bake" makes me sick.
Playing that game as an Arab who lived through these events is indescribable.
It reacts with the water in your body, so it doesn't really run out of fuel if enough gets on a person. It's a horrific weapon.
is it not generally stored under water? i thought it reacts with oxygen. horrific fucking chemical
What a thought. You are the fuel, a weapon designed to burn a person like a candle.
No, white phosphorus reacts with oxygen. It combusts once it contacts oxygen, hence the burning in air. The way the munitions are made is why it sticks to everything. The white phosphorus is loaded onto paraffin wax disc, packed in an air burst shell. The shell opens the wax disc's fly out and start burning and melting immediately because of the WP the combo of the wax and WP makes the dense smoke, the WP is what will kill you
You are pedantically correct, and much more knowledgeable than I am about the design of the weapon. Well done?🤷♂️
Most of the oxygen it burns in your body is going to come from the water in your cells. It will burn the oxygen in your lungs, or in your blood, or wherever; but the reason it propagates through your body until every molecule has reacted, is because your cells have a significant amount of water, which is made up of one third oxygen. That's the "O" in H2O, otherwise known as "water".
@@human498 it doesn't react with water though? i dont know much about the weapon but it is stored under water for lab use. from what i have read one of the difficulties in treating it is that as you try to remove it from wounds it often reignites as it is re-exposed to the air. the WHO website reccommends wounds are irrigated with cold water or saline solution.
Another thing I appreciate about the use of white phosphorus in this game is that you’re forced to walk through the area you just shelled. Really puts the event into perspective when at one point, you were untouchable, shooting at glowing white targets representing humans; then you walk through the battlefield seeing those same “targets” suffering. I know the second mission of Call of Duty World at War did something similar. You would order an artillery strike and then walk through that area, seeing dead and dying enemies as you go.
“This scene where you kill civilians in horrifying ways is actually just about civilians being killed in horrifying ways” this is the kind of brilliant commentary that keeps me coming back to this channel, bravo Mr. Geller you’ve done it again
(I actually really did like this video, please don’t take the wrong message from this lol)
Edit: Wow, didn't expect this to blow up like it did! - Captain Walker after detonating white phosphorus bombs on a bunker full of innocent refugees
Edit #2: All right, joke's over, play Mouthwashing on Steam you freaks (/pos)
@damsen978you sound like someone who’d go on a failing social media website and post that one family guy clip that goes “it insists upon itself” and pop off bc you got angry somebody told ppl to think more.
@damsen978 Personally, I liked that simple 'Captain Obvious' statement because, as Jacob Geller seemed to be saying, none of the video essays seem to talk about it.
A "missing the forest for the trees" situation, where most people talk about the deeper meaning despite the equally important message on its surface.
@damsen978 yes, and somehow virtually every other essay written about the game indeed tries to make it about the player instead of the actual people who've actually been tortured to death with this weapon
@damsen978 what is little hurt party wrecking bro even yapping about? The wp scene was chosen as the quintessential "player agency" scene since it came out. Pointing out that it actually is about war crimes is completely valid and hardly over analysis
least reddit comment
Gotta be real i wasn't quite sure where the thesis of this piece was heading, but it really paid off with "it's about them, it should have always been about them".
That's a very interesting way of revitalizing discussion regarding this game, and actually serves as an interesting criticism of the game; by highlighting the one moment it actually centers the victims of the game's overarching antagonist i.e. imperialism, you retroactively position the game to be in many ways somewhat pretentious, as it functions as a criticism of imperialism only insofar as a reflection of our discomfort with participation *in it*.
This elevates the analysis to not simply be about how X game discusses American imperican imperialism, but instead it becomes a meta commentary about how very rarely is the concept of imperialism understood through a victim-centered framing, opted instead for one of the moral character of the colonialist powers. Our opposition must be done in solidarity, not self actualization.
Thanks for putting it into words like this. I grew up under western bombs and in a destroyed country, drained of color in so many ways. And I have to say, I was still much, much luckier than people from other countries that faced similar events. These kinds of media and discussions always put me off. "I guess that was kind of crаppy of me :// Anyways we're all good now, right?"
First time I watched "Come and see", it didn't affect me much since very similar things happened to my family as well, but I didn't think I would go back to it again. Nowadays I find the movie comforting, knowing that someone truly cares. And I mostly reserve conversations about such things with other people with such experiences.
I do think the game was developed with an assumed audience of privileged (white, upper-middle-class, Christian, male, etc) USAmericans in mind, and developed by a studio made up of much the same demographics, and that definitely had a lot to do with what the game had to say and how it said it. And I do agree that we need, desperately need, more messaging about and for those oppressed by imperialism and bigotry.
But I would argue that media like Spec Ops has its place, too, the equivalent of white people telling other white people to quit being racist. Because the thing is that privileged people are far more likely to listen to and agree with other privileged people over the voices of the marginalized, even if the marginalized are right, even if they're saying the same thing as the privileged are. And those truly, genuinely dedicated to antitacist activism are willing to subsume their white identities, to really consider the world from the point of view of people of color and let go of their own white and privileged perspective, but most white people just aren't there yet. Especially the kinds of people who would've been playing a modern military shooter in 2010, heh. And I think this kind of media can act as a stepping stone on the way there, a way of first fostering sympathy with the oppressed before empathy can be achieved.
It is frustrating, though, that navel-gazing media such as this, media made by and for privileged people, about marginalized people, ends up being so much more common, popular and widespread than media made by and for marginalized people. I think one answer to that is to uplift more voices of the marginalized, support the work of those with different perspectives. But at the end of the day, it's a far more complex problem than can be solved only by that. The systems we live within cannot be changed or dismantled by individual action alone, of course. I don't know if there is an answer.
@@Strelo that all makes perfect sense, and in many ways by abstracting stories like yours until they're nothing but trolley problems for white people, that only further
serves the desire to ignore what complicitness in imperialism means i.e. it doesn't just mean "moral sacrifice" it means human consequences, which we rarely focus on
Somehow this moved on to imperialism, blaming white people, and decrying this media is not about marginalized and nothing but navel gazing.
@@thewolfofthestars1847 Your critque is the media is not the media you want it to be and does not to to be what you want it to be. Thats pretty shallow bad faith analyst. But good job calling white people racist, clearly nothing racist generalizing "white people"TM.
As a non-american, the most impressive thing about this game is that it helped me learn how shocked Americans and some others can be about this game. Learning about the real life happenings as a child and not having a good impression about the US military in the first place probably contributed to the "That's it? This is the famous shocking game?" feeling after I completed it.
Weirdly accurate description of how I felt playing it as a Latin American who already did not like the military
I very much respect and appreciate the way this game portrays the horros of military conflict (and the great storytelling techniques used to do so) but I also cannot help but slightly mourn the fact that so much of its impact was seemingly lost on me
@@Yakal001 glad to see that there are others who felt this way too.
@@InfiniteEel It's quite telling when the people who had the most visceral reaction to playing this game were US soldiers.
@@almighty_pusha indeed
The ending stinger hit real hard on this one.
When I was in middle school--so, before the invention of electricity--I had the incredible experience of meeting a U.S. Veteran who had been a victim of a white phosphorus attack in Viet Nam. He was an outspoken advocate both for WP being entirely abolished as well as disability access, rights, and representation. I couldn't have known as I sat there listening to him that fifteen years later I myself would become permanently disabled, or that another five years after that I would also be a disability activist and advocate; but my couple of hours with him informed my life in many ways. I've thought of him on a regular basis--at least once a month if not more--my entire life.
His description of the phosphorus burning him was haunting, and you are the only person I have ever heard, Jacob, who has remotely done justice to what he shared. The reality of this evil crap is so *horrific* (and I use that word in its original meaning, not its colloquial one) that most people shy away. But he spoke of his world turning into blazing white agony, accidentally ripping off his nose, scalp, and other chunks of skin as he grabbed at the burning goo enveloping him, and blindly running toward a body of water he was near and jumping into it in an attempt to put out the flames--only to realize he was going to drown while burning to death because burning phosphorus doesn't need air. In fact, it can continue to burn underwater. Ultimately he lived, but lost multiple fingers and a thumb, an ear, most of his scalp and his nose, whole muscles had to be removed from his arms and his back. It took him almost a decade of constant surgeries and treatment to heal to the point he was at when I met him in the early 90s. (1890s, of course)
That the U.S. makes its own rules with regard to even International Law is no surprise really--I'd say it's fairly on brand. But I cannot fathom the lack of soul that must exist in the decision-makers and powers-that-be who have decided this substance is something we want to utilize. I don't understand how someone makes the decision that this is what their company is going to make. I mean I do--welcome to capitalism you crippled bitch, there's a cardboard box and a kick in the ass waiting for you in the back. People make these decisions for the same reasons they ALWAYS have: in some way it bestows upon them money and or power. If you have enough of one, you'll always get the other.
But even knowing that, I can't understand how anyone can be okay with 《this》--maybe thats my soft, lefty, flower-in-a-gun-barrel leanings from my hippie musician dad. But having read the horrors of mustard gas from WWI, I fail to see how WP is all that much less evil in its interactions with human meat.
I feel like since early 2016 I have been repeating one refrain ad nauseum, "we really haven't learned anything from even our most recent atrocities gone by."
You want to know an ugly truth? We didn't ban chemical weapons like mustard gas because they were "immoral".
We banned chemical weapons because they didn't work. They are far less effective at killing targets, per weight, than conventional munitions. Any country with a decent-sized industrial base can manufacture enough safety equipment to protect their entire army (and much of their civilian populace - see the preparations made by Britain in WW2). And they do not fit into Western modern warfare doctrine, which favours rapid mobility. Countries made a big show of banning chemical weapons because it was an easy PR move. They were going to get rid of them anyway.
Meanwhile, there's been a push in recent years to ban cluster munitions. Many countries agreed to the ban... but not America. And many of the countries that originally agreed to the ban are allies of America, and so can always access American cluster munitions if they want them. Because cluster munitions *actually work.* And no matter how moral we might think ourselves, our militaries are not about to discard an effective weapon system on moral grounds.
Unfortunately, white phosphorus is effective at the purpose that militaries use it for. So expect to see this hypocrisy continue, for the foreseeable future.
Every country makes up their own rules rather than following international law, it’s not a US exclusive.
@@lazydroidproductions1087 of all the things they had to say, this is what you're focused on?
@@LauraLovesHugs yeah it is, it’s the most obvious thing that needs commentary on, rest’s pretty good, I’d say it’s important to understand every damn country does this. US, UK, Russia, Ukraine, Israel, Gaza, Syria, Lebanon, China, Japan, America isn’t somehow unique in blatantly flaunting international law when it suits it and edging along if not breaking the Geneva convention in conflict.
@@lazydroidproductions1087 The us is absolutely unique in the scale of its brutality. Who else has hundreds of military bases all across the planet. Spends more on the military than the next nine countries combined.
China last went to war in the 80s aginst vietnam, us has been in 3 dozen wars sense then.
they are not remotely comparable in terms of international aggression against other countries, not even close.
You are straight up just fucking lying.
And trying to draw some false equivalency between Gaza and the US and Isreal is just morally disgusting.
I am so glad someone is actually talking about this aspect of Spec Ops rather than complaining about the lack of "player agency" ad nauseam
"Most games have not been talked about as much as Spec Ops The Line"
...and yet its writer never got another writing job in the gaming industry for the ensuing decade, until Spiderman 2, which isn't exactly fertile ground for high concept stuff.
How we waste our best talent.
Nah, the writers for the game were a bunch of hacks.
@@ttpbroadcastingcompany.4460 Is that why it's the most talked about game of all time?
Yeah considering the huge role the pentagon plays in the entertainment industry and hollywood, getting massive say and script approval usually on anything remotely military related, its no surprise.
Wait, both writers on this game went on to write on multiple AAA titles. Walt, who now works at Insomniac, also did Battlefront II & Squadrons…
@@OopsAllFrench Star wars, like spiderman, isn't exactly high concept stuff. Battlefront 2 had a surprisingly decent story, but Squadrons was narratively just sad.
This is not what you want to see the author of The Line to be doing.
This made me reflect on how few people talk about "Spec Ops: The Line" in the context of it critiquing real military decisions rather than things like player choice or war more broadly. I remember it was one of the things that made me reflect more on the US military's history and actions, and ultimately drop out of NROTC. I think it's so important people recognise that these horrific actions aren't just hypothetical, and as moving as it is to interrogate players about their choice to end digital lives the real lives ended aren't a thought experiment on agency.
The tone of this was definitely a little undercut by the Pinocchio clips at the end. Not in any detrimental way, but I wasn't expecting to raise an eyebrow and chuckle after watching a video this intense.
*The Pinocchio video is hysterical, get Nebula and watch it.
Glad to see it actually made someone change their mind, and for the RIGHT reasons. If i have to hear another person talk about how they regret their time in the military "because the pay was bad" or "they didn't give us benefits" I'm going to scream.
I gotta say, seeing how works of art like this have real, tangible effects on people's lives is pretty great. I hope the devs know they really did achieve something meaningful with this game.
@@nadeen3157 let me guess, you hate the US supplying ukraine and Israel aid.
Ironically in the Navy you'd have the least worry about making any choices like the White Phosphorus.
@@AL-lh2ht look here's someone with irrelevant and unwarranted deflections because someone implied their big overlord wasn't perfect
The reason chemical weapons are banned under the Geneva convention, is because of their uncontrollable nature and high potential for collateral damage , and for their inhumane and cruel nature in killing targets( not instantaneous) . WP might not be a chemical weapon in the classical sense , but it checks the boxes on these things
If you use WP as anti personnel then you are committing a war crime, but the intended use is not to target combatants, thats why its not classified as such even by the CWC
@@JjJj-kv7wu "intended use." If there is such a history of it doing so much more than these stated intentions, in every conflict it has seen extensive use, what do those intentions matter?
@@gwensmosh5532 Intentionality (Mens Rea) is the standard for proving that a war crime has been committed (recklessness being also a war crime). Idk if i would say that there has been extensive use of WP as a CW from a democratic coutry's military, at least not since the US case Jacob mentioned in the video, if it was it would have been proof in the form of a high amount of dead bodys w chemical burns
At least where I live in Australia, there's laws regarding burn-offs and bonfires. Even a well controlled bonfire has a risk of rapidly spreading and causing catastrophic damage; in a dry season it only takes some embers blown by the wind onto dry grass.
Fire spreads. This has been known for THOUSANDS of years. As a "civilian" in the suburbs, there's no excuse if you start a bonfire and then "accidentally" allow it to spread & burn your neighbours to death.
@JjJj-kv7wu my dude, you intentionally ignoring the idf use shown in this video? Lol
"Moooom, Jacob is getting deeply existential about a military shooter again!!"
So happy for a new upload heck yeah
“Deeply existential” these are real deaths we’re talking about man
@@danf8172 Thankyou for your grandstanding on a harmless joke.
@@nathanmitchell7961 it's a pretty lame joke. it implies he's taking it too seriously which is obnoxious given the content matter
@@me-bf1re Its just not that deep my man.
Watched this on Nebula, came here to comment. This video resurrected some memories. I thought i didn’t know this game, until you started talking about the white phosphorous scene, and then i realized i had seen it before. I remembered a few select scenes, because i watched my brother play it when i was somewhere in the ten to twelve range. I remember that cutscene. I don’t remember anything about the day i saw it, or my brother’s reaction, or anything about the plot besides that, but i remembered that cutscene.
I guess it had that power, to be memorable for 12 years, even past everything else in my life. Even if i was never the one playing it.
Jacob called out the IDF
Respect
The only people that don’t are propagandized NPCs or jews
Bro Jacob is Jewish get your antisemitism out of here @@unr34L-
If I ever say “Not technically a war crime”, kill me.
No I think it’s important to recognize that an act can be not a war crime while still being horrific. Why?
Because war is hell.
Drone strikes and missiles are used so we don’t have to send our own men into that hell as much. Because no matter how “clean” a war is, it will still be hell.
It's terrible that there are indeed people in this comment section going "well actually" about people dying horrifically.
@@Zythryl Fr. Don’t get me wrong, I can appreciate the necessity of nuance, particularly with something so vile as a war crime, but the way we talk about it so far removed from it’s ugly reality that we might be missing the forest for the tress alot of the time.
It's only a war crime because civilians got targeted. And even then it might be fully legal if you're shooting at legitimate targets and you accidentally hit civilians.
@@MandolinMagi “It’s only a crime because of the criminal nature of the act”, that’s what you sound like.
I really hope the devs understand that they made something genuinely special, despite the lackluster reviews and sales.
The reviews were good though. Almost all of the criticism was direct at the tacked-on, publisher-mandated multiplayer.
This might be my new favourite JG essay, surpassing Who's afraid of Red, Yellow and Blue.
It doesn't feel like the game's intention: "do you feel like a hero yet" does point to the commodification of war crimes for entertainment, but whether on purpose or not, it's absolutely true that this game speaks about war crimes as a whole.
They happen. They're ordered. They're being done to humans. And as you say: a lot of analysis of this game focuses on the player being forced, or even happy to, push the button... there's shockingly little thought as to why the button is there in the first place.
Still think the most haunting ending of a game is "...Gentlemen, Welcome to Dubai..."
Personally I'm a big fan of;
"How'd you survive in there?"
"...Who's to say I did?"
Always loved that line, reminded me of how veterans talk about "how bad things are over there". As if Dubai is just inherently a warzone, and Walker's involvement was incidental.
"Survivors: one too many."
One of the most interesting critical examinations of Spec Ops I've seen is in a video on the UA-cam channel Game Assist, in which an Arabic essayist makes some really pointed and insightful critiques of how the game centers a western perspective and the pain and trauma of western men while the deaths of Middle Eastern civilians are rendered as set dressing, tragic victims but fundamentally anonymous and othered. They address games critics talking about how the game made them confront the fact that the generic Arab soldiers they kill in every other modern war shooter are actually people, and point out how that comes off when you're the person that white games journalist previously failed to recognize as human. It's a really incisive and thought-provoking piece that's colored how I think about the game ever since.
Thanks for the video rec, i assume it's the neocololianism video that talks about it?
@@nadeen3157 yeah, that's the one
Awesome recc, thanks
how shocking a media made in and for a perspective is in that perspective.
Then make a game about Arabian soldiers.
It is interesting to read some of these comments about the WP sequence and the inability to avoid the choice to use it. Some accept it as a story necessity. Some internalize it. And some reject it, saying that it pulled them out and made them feel like it was Walker's choice and not their own. All interpretations are interesting in understanding the charaxter and game
But the latter is interesting in that one could see that break in immersion as part of the meta fiction. That is, as Walker's consciousness, you are disassociating from the moment - you (walker) didn't do it, walker (a construct, someone else) did it. That something else made you do it. Therefore, it wasnt your fault... even though you still pressed the button. That you didnt want to become part of the themes and narratives - the ways in which we try to grapple with the horrors of war.
The point about the assumption of being the good one is what I always meditate on during rememberances. That all the bad guys thought they were the good guys, and that assuming you're the good guy blinds you to the process of becoming a bad guy.
"Are we the baddies?"
man this video should of ended at 25:00 that was a cold ass line with a spectacular build up. your writing is epic!
I mean.... that IS the end of the video essay itself. The rest of the video is an ad for his Nebula channel and Nebula itself.
Hence the fade to black and heavy shift in writing tone?
@@treefingers6572 yeah, they're saying the ad was shit, and the video should have ended before it
It feels so obvious and yet! Spec Ops often just gets marked off as "criticism of military shooters and the way war games are treated as entertainment" and while that's also true I absolutely agree that the angle presented in this video isn't talked about nearly enough. It's not anti military shooter games, it's anti military.
At the end of the day it just goes to prove how good this game is, being able to spark discussion several intertwined topics at once haha
00:22 Millions must cover spec ops the line
Dubai has fallen 😔.
Chud Ops: The Line
FINALLY someone talks about those game over screens. Even knowing what I was getting into, I got the second one and it kinda messed me up.
There is a fire that for me doesn't get talked about enough and that is the fire in Walker's head. I'm a psychotherapist so this kind of thing is immediately where I go to. The impact of stress on a brain is something like a forest fire. The brain burns red hot until it is fried, the fire does not stay contained to any one area but it is so hot that other parts of the forest spontaneously combust. The hallucinations in the game of extreme and dramatised but they are not far off what can really happen to the brain when it is under extreme stress. It doesn't need to be about PTSD or a specific mental disorder, it can just be stress. And this is such an important concept in asking why would a nation or people think it reasonable to put a person in a position like Walker. In lab conditions, with time to weigh decisions he likely would make sensible decisions that minimise harm, but under extreme stress (and likely for Walker with a pre existing mental disorder triggered in part of not fully from previous combat) decision making becomes so impaired to the extent of being incapable of making any such decision. This is part of the reason why evidence cannot be obtained and trusted from situations of extreme duress (including but not exclusive to torture) and how innocent people can end up believing they committed acts such as murder. So yes his decisions are terrible but how much is he responsible when he has been already so incapacitated?
it really sucks that back then what most people got from the message of this game was "you are bad cause you play military shooters" and not the poignant message of "war sucks doesn't it, feeling like a hero yet?"
Sotl: hey, do you maybe want to think about your enjoyment of military shooters in the context of the actions committed in them?
Idiots: wtf you made me kill the civilians and now you're trying to tell me I'm bad for doing it
I believe this varies, people see thing in game, they would want thing in real life, so this overlaps, a military shooter guy might want to be a real life soldier and think that war is just quick scopes and fame, the movie jarhead gives a lot in this context, men who lost themselves for a new kind of war, without a ideological enemy, only lies
I think both meanings are right
I don't really agree? War sucking balls has been the message of many fiction already.
Meanwhile, criticizing 'violence as entertainment' in an industry that thrives off of the concept is much more memorable.
@@PitLord777 But it also comes across as condescending and is overall far less relevant
24:21 I didn’t really realise how rarely you say fuck until this sentence landed this hard.
The phenomenon of swearing being more impactful from someone who rarely swears is apparent.
Reminds me of the "only one fuck per season" rule the Bojack Horseman writers gave themselves
This + the barely contained rage when talking about Israel's war crimes-- it really hit me that I don't think I've ever heard him *angry* before.
The fact that the NPC civilians you encounter were speaking Farsi (and sometimes I swear I heard Urdu), meanwhile certain collectible bits of lore state the native gulf arabs were the first to leave, adds an extra layer of tragedy to the victims of the CIA, the US Army and Walker. A decadent death trap in which the people who built it were slaughtered and buried by foreign imperialism
Huh this makes a lot of sense. I just assumed that developers didn't know/care that Farsi and Arabic are vastly different languages.
Brb I need go listen to NPC dialogue of that, now, bec. WOW. So many layers...
Just listened to the Something Rotten episodes on The Line and I wanted to proffer a couple details that weren't mentioned (one pertaining to the "jacob's ladder interpretation").
1. The first time you see the intro the enemies have muted color keffiyehs and other head coverings and aren't identifiable as 33rd troops. When you return to that sequence and Walker comments on it being "wrong" they have the american flag keffiyehs and other post-storm accoutrements the 33rd donned throughout the game.
2. You can actually walk away in the very beginning of the game, as your squad says they were advised to do if they ran into any trouble at all, and get another ending acknowledging that this was literally the only thing you were ostensibly there to do.
3. Many of the murals in the game change when you view them a second time (sometimes this is as simple as just turning away, or completing a firefight and then returning when doing so means explicitly not advancing for some time). An early example is an image of Conrad that turns into a skeleton if you look away.
I appreciate your nuanced coverage of WP as a weapon.
The issue isn't really its classification as incendiary and conventional vs. chemical but that the various effects on living beings are well known and understood.
It's like torturing prisoners for information being acceptable because the law allowed it.
Having very limited experience with WP I can confirm that the smoke is very bad to breathe. Like breathing HCL fumes but with more sour taste. Yes, it literally feels and tastes like acid fumes.
The problem with getting it on your skin is that it burns quite hot and melts into droplets that are gooey and sticky and keep reigniting even after you put it out with water. Trying to snuff out the flames is really dangerous because of the molten P that will stick to both sides and reignite as soon as there's enough air.
The toxicity is somewhat exaggerated. Getting P into your body in sufficient quantities requires massive exposure. Your lungs would start liquifying before you inhaled enough and burning droplets on skin are not as toxic as you might think even though LD50 is something like 0.25g for an adult. If you get enough WP on you to fatally poison you you would probably burn to death before experiencing symptoms of the poisoning.
There are ways to treat WP burns and decontaminate exposed skin but good luck finding help while getting shelled.
Every person using WP on their opponent should be considered a sadist and sociopath, war crime or not.
It is true that acute exposure to white phosphorus is a *really* effective way to die burning before you die of the horrific toxic effects.
However, *chronic* exposure to white phosphorus causes an ailment formally called phosphorus necrosis of the jaw, but more colloquially called phossy jaw among matchstick makers in the 19th century. It starts with tooth- and jaw-ache, then the jaw bones start dying and rotting, and glow in the dark. Seizures can come next, but unless the affected bones are surgically removed, patients eventually die of organ failure. It's reasonably easy to find some pretty nasty-looking pictures online.
So, yeah. I would agree that phosphorus toxicity isn't typically going to be a concern in the immediate, "oh fuck they're using white phosphorus against us" situation, but soldiers, and civilians in areas experiencing conflict involving the ongoing use of white phosphorus, *are* at risk.
Willy Pete: The gift that keeps on giving.
"Do you feel like a hero yet?" Was just completely brutal
Always glad to have a conversation about Spec Ops: The Line, and its criticism of military shooters.
The first thing I want to get out of the way is incendiary weapons (be they napalm, flamethrowers or incendiary ammo in shotguns) are a war crime if used against or in civilian populations or to set fire to shrub or forestry to destroy enemy cover. So even if the US was defending the use of white phosphorous/WP (or 'Willy Pete' in GI terms), it's still admitting to a war crime. Another thing is WP can't be extinguished. It burns underwater, you can pour sand or other fire extinguishing material over it and it'll just gradually burn through it until its fuel source runs out. It's literally a chemical fire. If you read Warhammer 40k or The Horus Heresy, phosphex is essentially the same thing as WP. To claim it's used for illumination is like throwing a flashbang at civilians 'to light up the place'.
Now onto The Line proper. One of the most common, and to me most frustrating criticism of the game is how the game never actually gives you a choice to not use WP in that scene. You're railroaded to using it if you want to progress the game, and so the developers forced you to become the villain. It's a valid criticism, but it also misses the point. If you're feeling uncomfortable after playing the scene, and hate the notion that maybe you're the real villain of the game, then the developers did manage to get their point across into your psyche, even if it's not overt.
In Call of Duty: Black Ops, you actively burn enemies with a flamethrower or incendiary rounds, pretend to be a civilian to stage a coup, execute enemy soldiers who were trying to surrender, slit enemy soldiers' throats while they're sleeping (and therefore not an active combatant), steal an enemy chopper to bomb several villages housing enemy supplies and munitions without being given explicit orders (essentially going rogue), and conduct outright torture on a possible information source. You're required to do all of these things in order to progress the game, but very few people has ever complained Black Ops forced them into it because the game makes these sections cool and heroic, or at least justifiable. Whenever I bring these topics up, people's responses were all roughly 'it's just a game dude, let people have their fun!'' or 'this is the reality of war man, you gotta do what you must'. Or 'you could always stop and not play the game if it offends you. It's a valid response,'
But ironically with The Line, everyone gets mad at the exact same excuses. Martin used the WP because it's the only viable way he had to get past (the reality of war). You as the player know it's just a game and can put it down any time. Even the developers themselves suggested the idea. 'How dare the game make me do this atrocity, then question, judge and blame me for it?!" and not see that Martin was spending the entire game trying to put the blame on an already dead man and figment of his imagination. People criticize Walker for being an unrealistic video game protagonist who can't possibly be a Delta Force Captain because he's clearly a psychopath, when the game shows his gradual decline as hunger, thirst, fatigue, lack of sleep, and combat injuries slowly erode his physical and mental wellbeing even before you get to the WP section. He starts off in good spirits and becomes increasingly irritable and paranoid upon being forced to open fire, first on the insurgents, then on the 33rd without knowing why they're being hostile. He works with the CIA because Riggs is the only person who isn't outright hostile to him, but isn't mentally sound enough to really consider why the CIA was there in the first place.
Yes, you can argue that the game's choices were all illusions that ultimately resulted in degrees of bad to worse, and the game was heavy handed in its narrative, especially the WP section, because at least in Modern Warfare 2's:'No Russian' you can finish the mission by not shooting a single civilian. Or that Martin was clearly a psychopath by repeatedly ignoring his mission parameters to just recon and radio for reinforcements once he's made contact with the 33rd. Spec Ops: The Line is simply making you see through a different lens than COD's and see the skewed narratives behind them, where your every action is heroic and patriotic, so any harm you do is either just entertainment or justified. If a COD protagonist is a psychopath, it's because it's such men are necessary. when in The Line (and reality), such a person would be standing trial in a military tribunal.
Wonderfully written. A good foundation for an essay.
The only thing that saddens me is that almost all the talks about war crimes are extremely one-sided.
We should also mention the war crimes committed by the other side of the conflict. We should acknowledge the reality of the situation and the possible alternatives.
Then we can talk about morality without prejudice. And all those discussions suddenly become much more controversial and complex.
@@alexm9104 Shhhh we can't do that America bad nobody cares if everyone else is arguably worse.
@@ronmastrio2798America does it more proportionately and funds other people committing war crimes
@@BungleJoogie68 thank you. The game has generated a lot of discourse, and I'm very glad to be a part of it. It's truly a shame it's been delisted, because The Line has only become more relevant in these 12 years since its release.
Warcrimes commited by countries that never get punished for it mentioned? Banger video once again.
No violence or resistance from oppression from other countries in the world will ever be justified... but no violence or oppression from the United States and its allies will ever *NOT* be justified.
Always the same song-and-dance. Country does war crimes, goes through the deny/shift blame/internal investigation cycle, we all have to move on because we have to keep supporting country for geopolitical reasons. Which I'm sure is a great comfort to the victims of those war crimes.
Yeah, every damn country in every damn conflict since Geneva was written up
That "in 2009" was so powerful
I feel like that ending fits very well with this line from House of Leaves. "This is not for you." but to follow it up with "This is for them."
Eyyyyyyy fellow House of Leaves fan, let's go.
After I played the game for the first time I was confused when seeing video essays and articles criticizing the white phosphorus scene by "not giving the player any other mechanic choice and forcing him to feel bad", because the first thing I felt when I saw that scene was "holy sh*t US soldiers really use that thing" or something along those lines. It was a clear that the critic was aimed at the US interventions in the middle-east, but I never could come up with the right words to disagree with those essays. Watching your video really struck the right nail. Love your channel and your work man, much love from Brazil 💛💚
Brasil mencionado
@@ProducoesBatata tamo junto meu bom, brasil caraleo
17:39 the pause before “in january of 2009.” good lord.