Spec Ops: The Line, which takes players on a military operation inside Dubai after a post-apocalyptic sandstorm, will be available on store shelves tomorrow. We recently had a chance to talk with Walt Williams, the game’s very verbose Lead Writer.
During our interview, we got him to open up about what inspired the team at Yager Development and how moral choices play into the narrative, as well as Dubai’s status as a “city that shouldn’t be” and how that made it the perfect place to set a game.
Take a walk into the eye of the storm with us after the break.
John Scalzo, Warp Zoned Editor-In-Chief: The main bad guy is named Konrad and he’s holed up in hostile territory surrounded by “natives,” more or less. I don’t want to assume, but that sounds like an Apocalypse Now reference.
Walt Williams: A little bit, yeah. I mean, admittedly, Apocalypse Now was a big inspiration when we started making the game. In a lot of ways because we were looking to… basically, war video games had kinda stalled out at just being visual action spectaculars and we were taking a lot of inspirations from 70s and 80s war films the way they had kinda changed war from being John Wayne coming in and punching Nazis to Apocalypse Now, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket… where they were making war films more realistic, like war actually was.
We wanted to do that with the genre. So there is a lot, you’re going to see a lot of inspiration of that. That, I think, is the easiest one to see because of the name Konrad. Spelled with a “K” though, because everyone knows that K’s are cooler. But also the basic conceit of the story. I don’t actually think K’s are cooler, I promise.
But whereas Heart of Darkness and Apocalypse Now are very much the stories of Kurtz, and peeling the layers back on that character, Spec Ops was always meant to be the story of the soldiers. This is a personal story about Walker, Adams, and Lugo, the squad, and seeing what happens to these good men when you put them in an increasingly bad situation.
When you are able to play the full game and really get into it, it becomes a lot more apparent how quickly the full game is a very different story. But yes, obviously, you are correct in saying that that definitely was an inspiration on us, along with other things, such as Generation Kill from HBO was a very big inspiration for me in setting the dynamic of the squad. Jacob’s Ladder with Tim Robbins… so scary… and so many people have never heard of it!
There’s a lot of inspirations, from everywhere, which I think happens a lot now when you get into games that are trying to do something a bit more different.
WZ – John: When controlling the squad, players are able to perform pretty brutal “Executions.” Is this one of the ways we’re meant to grapple with what happens to good men when you put them in an increasingly bad situation?
Williams: Absolutely. The demo that you played was more focused on broader narrative moments. We didn’t want to spoil big things. That’s the problem when you’re doing a game like this. You usually would sell a game on the big moments, but the big moments here aren’t going to be big if you know it before you go into the game.
Nicole Kline, Warp Zoned Senior Editor: You don’t want to be like a crappy comedy movie where you only show the funniest parts of the movie in the trailer.
Williams: Exactly. I mean, when you’re writing a game like this it definitely helps working with design. I was also Level Director on about a third of the game as well. The characters need space to digest things sometimes. And you saw the execution moves in the earlier levels of the game. We have our characters really evolve, especially the squadmates, having them be on their own path and experience things differently from Walker. They react to Walker’s action, the player’s actions, and really, by the end, all three of them have splintered off and are only still in a squad unit because it’s their only way to survive. They’re extremely different characters by the end. And the execution moves, they may look brutal at the beginning, but they’re nothing compared to the end.
If you’ll notice, when you can see the full range of them, the stuff at the beginning is very fast. It’s actually an execution, and it’s brutal, but it’s quick and to the point. As they get more cruel, as they get more beat down, maybe they start adding things that they don’t need to. That are a bit more painful, unnecessary… because they have this anger that’s built up inside of them. They need to take it out.
WZ – John: It’s a good way to tell a story. To show it in the gameplay like that.
Williams: Honestly, I felt like God of War, years ago, did this so well. In just really allowing the animations of the character to express so much about Kratos, just through the gameplay. I mean you get this guy who just doesn’t give a ****. I’m sorry, I try not to cuss in interviews.
But yeah, when I was first getting into games, God of War had just come out and I was watching it and I was like, you can do so much. You can just tell so much about tone and make the player feel the character more through really adding small things in the animation and making them more visceral. Which is one of the great things about doing this in third-person instead of first-person. A lot of people think first-person’s more immersive because you get into the eyes of it. But with Walker especially, because we’ve written him in such a way where he’s vague enough, he keeps a lot of things internal because he’s the commander of a unit, he has to stay professional.
So the player can project themselves onto Walker in a way, but at the same time, through his physicality and the way he’s physically reacting… his body language, his tone of voice… he’s then projecting back on the player. So you have this excellent constant cycle and it’s turned out really well. We’ve had focus tests and people playing it have had some very strong reactions.
WZ – John: The game opens with a sandstorm destroying Dubai. Did you do any research into how possible that is?
Williams: It’s very possible. A year or two ago in Germany there was a massive, in Germany of all places, there was a massive sandstorm that caused a 78-car pileup on the highway. I think ten people died.
But when you think back to here in America… the dirty 30s and the entire Dust Bowl. These storms would get so bad that they’d just tear things apart and the middle of the country was in just a state of decay for a decade.
There’s no real reason in the game that’s presented for it. It’s not global warming or anything like that. We’re not trying to make a broader social message about anything in this game. We’re trying to make a personal message. It’s simply Dubai, and Dubai is prone to very large sandstorms. It’s in a location that there really shouldn’t have been a city. And that’s one of the things that’s interesting about it.
I mean, obviously, we’ve taken some liberties. When you’re trying to make a game like this you’re always going to have the ultimate hurdle, which is that the player is not the character. You have a physical barrier between you and what’s going on in the game. You have to make things more hyperreal… more extreme. If everything had been done totally realistic, it’s just going to be a little meh. Because we know what real life is like. We have to live it everyday.
WZ – Nicole: What made you choose Dubai as a location?
Williams: Like I just said, it’s a place that really shouldn’t exist. It’s almost like a real world video game level. There’s so much you can do with it. On a narrative level though, it’s a place where there shouldn’t be a city. And men with power and money said, “**** it. I don’t care. I’m gonna build whatever I want. I don’t care if it’s practical. I don’t care if it’s occupied. I’m gonna do what I want and you can’t stop me.”
And in our game, Dubai has been destroyed. Nature has come back and said, “No, you don’t get to do that.” And this is the basic theme of the game. You go down to Konrad who said, “There’s people here. They need my help. I can help them. I’m going to do this.” And had everything just turn around in his face. When he’s stuck in the city he’s like, “I can still save these people. I can bring order to the chaos.” And it just made matters worse.
Then you go down to the player, to Walker. Coming down to this area, he was just supposed to see if there were survivors and leave. But he says, “No, these people need our help. We can find Konrad and The 33rd. We can help them. We can do this.” But everything up to that point had already proven that your expectations versus your reality are very different. And that’s really the larger theme of the game. And all the larger theme that we want players to get out of it. Who do we see ourselves as when we sit down to play a video game? And who are we really? Why do we make the certain choices that we do? Why do we play the games that we choose to play? And with Spec Ops, it’s a shooter. It’s a military shooter. We have a very different view of war in the real world than we do in games. And I don’t know why we got so comfortable with that disconnect. We wanted to make people think about when you pull a trigger on your controller, you’re pulling a trigger in the game world, and you’re killing someone. Whether they’re real or not, why did we let that become a very broad form of easy entertainment without thinking about it.
WZ – John: That’s really the big question then. Are you expecting controversy because of that?
Williams: You could expect controversy with anything these days, to be honest. We tried really hard, for anything that was in the game, that we ran it through a gamut of questions. If it didn’t feel organic to the narrative. If it didn’t feel necessary to the story and the experience. if it was just there to shock. We threw it out.
Because when you’re trying to tell a story like this, you make one misstep and the whole thing just becomes Grindhouse, becomes exploitation. Your viewer or your player can’t take you seriously anymore. With that in mind, and I think we’ve succeeded, it’s still a very grueling narrative. But I believe there’s nothing in there just for shock value. I feel that if there is any controversy, anyone will at least play it.
We’re not trying to cause people to feel one specific thing. If you play through the whole game, hell, I’m even willing to say if you play through half the game and you’re like, “no, you did something wrong,” then you’ve at least made an opinion based off experiencing it. I think that becomes a valid opinion for you personally. That’s the thing, we’ve tried to make something that can be more than the surface. When you do get down to it, you can see whether or not you agree with it. You can why it is the way it is. People will feel how they will, as long they feel something. I think that’s a success.
WZ – Nicole: I actually got a “rescue mission from Medal of Honor” vibe from the part I played.
Williams: At the beginning of the game, we wanted it to feel very familiar. We wanted you to feel, “I know this game. I know this story and these characters.” Because once you get comfortable, then I can turn everything on you.
WZ – Nicole: Once you trick us into getting comfortable, then you can turn it on its head.
Williams: Exactly. And I’m smiling right now because I know the truth of what this story is and you guys are thinking exactly what I want you to think before you play the whole game.
Anthony Amato, Warp Zoned Contributor: What I’m wondering is, will you run into civilians. If you’re there to save people, do you run into civilians?
Williams: Absolutely. Civilians are definitely a factor. Civilians are in the world. Civilians are in combat. Civilians are never a “game over” thing. You’re going to find moments where this is where it gets interesting. I consider anything with a civilian a moral choice, whether or not it’s set up as a moral choice.
WZ – Anthony: Do you leave it to the players or do you control it in the narrative?
Williams: We leave it to the players. Sometimes it is controlled by the narrative. That’s the thing, you have many tools to tell the story in a game. Some moments are more scripted than others. Ultimately, the narrative fits together. It ends up being a cohesive experience. I know there’s one moment in particular that gets me every time.
There’s a point in the game where you’re in a combat scene and there are civilians and they’re not running from soldiers, you’re not there to rescue them, just this fight breaks out in an area where there are civilians. And you get separated from your squad and you’re coming around a corner where you’ve been fighting a bunch of soldiers and a woman just comes running out trying to get away. And every time I end up shooting her. I know she’s in there, because I always remember shooting her, but I forget where she is, and I get her every time. And the thing is, no one sees you do it. Squad doesn’t see it, they can’t comment. You and that woman were the only people there. She’s dead. You have to keep going. The game doesn’t dock you, doesn’t say anything about it.
WZ – Anthony: There’s no moral meter or a cut scene?
Williams: Exactly. It’s simply… that’s life. That happens. And I’m hoping people see that and get that. It may come across as controversial, but I hope that people won’t think real-life scenarios are controversial. But you never know. I still feel like a horrible person for killing her as many times as I have.
WZ – Anthony: Do we go to other locations outside of Dubai?
Williams: No, it’s entirely in Dubai. It’s all about what’s happening to these people in this city at this point in time. You can safely assume that the world outside Dubai in our game is the world you know right now.
WZ – Nicole: Did you guys get to go to Dubai?
Williams: The art team did and some of the designers did. I actually asked not to be sent to Dubai because I really hate long plane rides to be honest. I know… that’s the weakest answer ever.
WZ – Nicole: Not at all. Thanks very much for talking to us!
Williams: Thank you very much. And thanks for coming down.
