Spec Ops: The Line - first look

Colonel Conrad was dead. He and his entire battalion of loyal soldiers stayed put in Dubai when the sandstorms rolled in, smothering the city beneath a blanket of dust hundreds of feet deep. The winds shredded skyscrapers, tossed cars into the sea, and left the city almost uninhabitable… but from the ruin comes word that Conrad still lives and is anything but the hero who stayed behind to save the city.

Spec Ops: The Line walks a path already well trodden by Heart of Darkness. In 1902 Joseph Conrad told the story of an Englishman who journeys into darkest Africa to retrieve ivory trader Kurtz. Apocalypse Now retold the story as an assassination mission set against the insanity of the Vietnam War, while in the gaming world, Far Cry 2 re-imagined Heart of Darkness in its original setting – Africa, now torn apart by war and arms dealers in the 21st Century. The Line trades the jungle for an urban nightmare and makes its heart of darkness the world’s most ultramodern city.

Dubai is sheer spectacle - a global city and a centre for trade and tourism which stretches a hundred stories into the sky and out to sea on man-made coastlines unmatched anywhere else on Earth. “We needed the perfect setting, so we’ve set it in Dubai,” says Lead Designer Cory Davis. “Dubai is amazing. It’s fantastic. The architecture is a fantasyland to game designers like us.” In The Line’s world, it’s a city which has been largely abandoned and turned into Colonel Conrad’s own personal kingdom, policed by his forces. Those unable to escape the city before the storms sealed it off from the outside world now live in makeshift camps in the city’s opulent hotels and malls, surviving as best they can in constant fear of Conrad’s army.

“The setting has never been seen in any game before, and what we’ve done with it has never been done before,” says Matthias Wiese, Spec Ops’ Art Director and co-founder of the studio behind the game, Yager. “It’s not just a backdrop but a vital part of the game.” The setting is as much a key character as any of the game’s heroes, who are a three-man squad sent in to recover or kill Conrad at any cost.

When word of Conrad’s actions first escaped the ruins of Dubai City, a Special Ops team led by Captain Daniels entered the city to confirm the situation. Before the storms struck, Conrad was a hero and a legend: a former Delta Force operator and the only US Colonel to stay behind to lead Dubai’s inhabitants to safety. When Daniels goes missing, a second team led by Captain Walker is sent into the city with a mission to confirm Daniels’ whereabouts and to finish his mission. “We intend to make the most provocative shooter you’ve ever played,” says Davis. “Is that a bold statement? Hell yeah, it is.”

After Call of Duty’s ‘No Russian’ level, it’s especially bold, but Yager and Davis – a designer snatched from Monolith’s Condemned  and FEAR franchises – have a very different take on how to be provocative. “We’re following a very specific group of characters on their journey into the heart of darkness where the player will have to make decisions between what’s moral and what’s necessary. We try to treat these things tastefully and try not to put the player in a position where they’ll have to do anything that will be seen as wrong or evil.”

Those choices mark the difference between a Blood on the Sand-style murderfest and Spec Ops’ smarter take on combat. Take for instance one of Walker’s first key decisions – a group of civilians are to be executed in the fictional Dubai Mall. While Conrad’s men focus their attention on the innocents, Walker can keep quiet and secure a more advantageous position for himself and his men at the cost of the civilians, or immediately open fire to save their lives, placing his team at risk.

“Decisions will play a big part in what happens later in the game,” says Davis. “Spec Ops isn’t an RPG where you press one button to do one thing or press a button to do another; it’s much more integrated into the game using the actual game mechanics.” You’ll never be forced to choose between ‘save the baby’ and ‘eat the baby’, but lose/lose and win/win situations emerge throughout the game and your squad might soon disagree with your choices.