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The final video is hosted on Dailymotion because Youtube put out a copyright strike on my account for the song that plays over the credits, muting the whole video in the process. Just figured I'd let you know/warn you.  Spec Ops: The Line is a third-person cover shooter developed by Yager Development and published by 2K Games. It was released worldwide in June 2012 for PC, PS3, and 360, except in the United Arab Emirates, where it was banned for its depiction of Dubai. Spec Ops: The Line follows the story of Captain Martin Walker and his 2-man Delta Force squad, sent on a reconnaissance mission into the sand-destroyed ruins of Dubai. Their goal is to look for survivors, find the colonel leading Dubai's American military outpost, and exfiltrate. Soon, however, things take a turn for the more dramatic, and Walker and his buddies are thrust into a mission to save their fellow Americans before they are killed by radical insurgents. This game is what happens when you give a competent group of developers a whole bunch of money and tell them, "make whatever you want". Originally, Spec Ops was a series of "meh"-worthy shooters on the PS1, widely known for being batshit hard and particularly primitive in nature. The games got middling reviews and the series was canned shortly after the launch of the PS2, when the team behind the franchise realized that the first person shooter genre was pretty much covered by the big swingers of the era and thus there was no longer any money in it. There was one game in development, picked up very briefly by Rockstar Vancouver, but it was lost to time ages ago. The beta game and the Spec Ops franchise were passed around from hand to hand all throughout the early 2000s and eventually landed in the lap of Yager Development and publisher 2K Games. Yager rewrote the franchise to the point where the game has nothing to do with and barely even resembles its past counterparts; it is a Spec Ops game in first-title only. They presented their ideas to 2K after being released from previous publisher/developer Take-Two Interactive and only restriction the team was given by 2K was: Make the game military-based. So they did. But they did more than that, much more. As you will see.  Spec Ops: The Line is a fantastic game. Many people have trashed the gameplay but I think it's very fun and pulse-pounding. They make it feel very dangerous, as if you are in Walker's shoes and you too are on the brink of death at any moment. The story is absolutely fantastic, something that many video games try and fail repeatedly at. There are choices that, while they do not affect the gameplay, are cause for debate and genuine thought that I hope the thread toils over alongside me. Overall I love this game and I hope you see it through with me to the bitter, bitter end, because even if you know how it ends already, the journey matters just as much as the destination. Doesn't it?  No. Do not talk about things we haven't seen yet, even in spoiler tags.             Warning: Beyond here there be only demons... and massive spoilers. This is a live stream of Spec Ops: The Line on the hardest difficulty. I am joined by a bunch of friends of mine. I die, a lot, but it's a lot of fun and a good chance to talk about and analyze the game.          
CJacobs fucked around with this message at 10:29 on Oct 5, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 12:07
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 This is an ongoing list of any bonus features I make for the LP. Bonus videos, story explanations, info dumps, fan art, and the soundtrack will be posted here.  Intel is an important part of Spec Ops: The Line. As the sole collectible, intel documents and items provide extra world building and lore that do not fit anywhere in the gameplay. They provide an insight into what happened in Dubai before Walker and co. arrived. Please watch these only after you've seen the relevant videos so as to not spoil anything for yourself.    This game contains a lot of awesome licensed music. All of it is listed here in order of appearance with the episode it appears in noted in the banner. All links are via polsy to avoid Youtube recommendations or comments spoiling everything, so these are safe to click even if you have not reached the relevant episode in the LP yet.           
CJacobs fucked around with this message at 20:17 on Jul 12, 2015 |
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Jun 4, 2015 12:07
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 Status: Chafed. You may notice during the opening cutscene that my audio is not cut out because I forgot to do so and rendering and uploading these videos in high quality takes a long time so I said gently caress it and just left it. It's not really that distracting anyway, although I guess it does immediately invalidate the thing I said about not talking over the cutscenes, technically. I, uh, went to get something to drink. Ah well. Future videos will not have such unfortunate mistakes.
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Jun 4, 2015 12:08
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The game audio clips pretty hard in the helicopter segment (despite me turning the audio volume down to like 5 lol), so I guess when I ran the auto duck on it with my commentary audacity freaked the hell out. I'll do what I did for Dead Space 3 and run a compressor on the Spec Ops audio before I do the auto ducking to equalize it a bit, so that it doesn't freak out and make everything super quiet because of one super loud part. Hopefully that'll fix the game being quiet. See, I tired doing a straight-up auto duck with no volume modifications, but the game's general volume is just so loud that you couldn't hear my commentary without me boosting it a bajillion db, so I went the opposite way to avoid the clipping and lowered the game's volume instead. I'll try it the other way for the next vid.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:19
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Speaking of FUBAR, yes I will be doing a run through of it. Maybe once the LP is over. Maybe live! We'll see how my school schedule works out.
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Jun 4, 2015 19:46
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I most likely will be doing an analysis video when it's all over (since I feel like it'd be kind of insulting to do an anime music video finale wrap up for this game), but if anyone wants to do an infodump or whathaveyou in media res then I definitely wouldn't object.
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Jun 5, 2015 01:54
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Putty posted:i'm already a monster OP, where does that leave us? We are accustomed to look upon the shackled form of a conquered monster, but here - here you could look at a thing monstrous and free.
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Jun 5, 2015 02:07
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Uh, that's a quote from Heart of Darkness. I guess what I'm saying is that this is a safe zone for monsters. I dunno Joseph Conrad was kinda off his rocker. Safe Ops: The Thread
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Jun 5, 2015 02:07
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Speedball posted:So here's an important Episode 1 question. You can't see anyone, I don't think, but you can hear a murmuring just barely audible over the distress signal before Lugo asks if anyone heard anything. I was talking at the time and the game's volume was a bit low anyway so you probably can't hear it on the final video, but I did hear it when I was recording.
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Jun 5, 2015 21:07
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Inferior posted:[MASSIVE SPOILERS FOR EVERYTHING at that link btw.] Linking that just after the first episode was an incredibly bad idea!
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Jun 5, 2015 21:34
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nine-gear crow posted:Yeah, Stross looks directly at you, the player, pretty much at the point where he becomes undeniably dangerously crazy instead of ineffectually crazy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5BTet7iuwQ Happens at 5:40 for those curious. And for the record, there is precedent for me being a part of the game already and it's only been one video! That "Special Guest - Doomish" opening credit in the intro wasn't added by me in post (Doomish is my steam name)!
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Jun 9, 2015 05:02
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 Time to find out what the hell is going on in Dubai. And hey, who's ready for another episode of "CJacobs calls a gun the wrong name for an entire episode and then corrects himself later when he realizes he's a dumbass"?? I know I am! The music featured in this episode is 'Hush' by Deep Purple: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W1PNvopXjbg
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Jun 9, 2015 18:21
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For the record, by "bullet type" I meant "type of gun", like how walking over a machine gun in most games gives you ammo for whatever machine gun you have, shotguns give you generic shotgun ammo, etc. In Spec Ops they only give you ammo for the type of gun you currently have in your hand, everything else just gives a switch prompt.
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Jun 10, 2015 05:55
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pkfan2004 posted:Oh man I forgot about the graffiti of the hollow-eyed children. I did remember the hotel's beautiful purple color scheme though. Yeah, the graffiti in this game is creepy and a good contrast to the super beautiful graphics/color grading! Speaking of the graphics, future videos will be in 1080p because I worked out a system where I can render at night and post videos in the morning. Usually rendering out a 720p 60fps video takes about an hour and a half on my computer, so I usually do it while I'm physically present because that's not too long to be without videogames or whatever; but rendering 1080p 60fps can take up to 4 or 5 depending on the bitrate and so I've kind of been discouraged from doing it because I can't just render out a video on the fly whenever I want. But because of this revolutionary new system of "just render out the videos while I'm asleep" that I'm sure nobody has thought of, I will be able to bring you Spec Ops: The Line in stunning 1080p! Fun fact, I actually record ALL of my LPs in 1080p, even Max Payne 3 was, mostly to make it so that the UI elements and subtitles don't take up a bunch of screen space to better highlight the games in question's graphics. It also allows me to downsample in editing and on the final video, which adds a little bit of smoothness to the video without costing me any real noticeable extra render time. So look forward to that! I'm also going to make a block in the OP below the Table of Contents for the game's soundtrack complete with polsy links, because every loving link to the licensed music in Spec Ops is full of Spec Ops spoilers because these Youtube comment fuckers just cannot help themselves. I will be posting these pieces of music as they show up in the videos.
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Jun 10, 2015 06:36
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I plan on editing out my deaths to make the gameplay a bit smoother, but I'll probably still find a way to show them off somehow because they are pretty cool.
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Jun 11, 2015 03:28
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TomViolence posted:Unless I'm misremembering, Spec Ops: The Line's gonna show you where its bullets come from too. It was actually in an Intel piece in the second episode that I had to skip because the cutscene introducing Agent Castavin happened before I could grab it.  I was gonna wait till the first Intel vid to post it but because it's just come up in conversation, here it is:  The bullets are made out of old jewelry and valuables just like the doll we found, because now money means nothing! 
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Jun 11, 2015 07:58
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chitoryu12 posted:....so where do the primers and gunpowder come from? I'm fairly certain there's a log further down The Line (  ) that answers this question too!Night10194 posted:Spite, tears, and man's inhumanity to man. Although this answer is the one I'll accept as truth till we get to that point. 
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Jun 11, 2015 08:06
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I've added an Extras section to the second post. Glad I reserved it! Any bonus videos, story explanations, info dumps, fan art, and the soundtrack will be posted there. For now, here are the licensed tracks that have appeared in the game so far. They are linked via polsy so you don't have to worry about any dumb Youtube fuckers spoiling the game because the wittiest thing they could possibly think to do is quote spoilers from Spec Ops on every video related to it.
CJacobs fucked around with this message at 10:23 on Jun 11, 2015 |
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Jun 11, 2015 10:15
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I've figured out a way to do it without them being too super intrusive. When I die in Spec Ops there's about 2 minutes of dead air between Walker dying, the loading screen happening, the game fading back in, and making my way back to the place where I died depending on where the last checkpoint is. So far in editing I've gotten around that by doing this (sneak preview of a few videos from now, I guess): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2TSdPg5Ua5M Which I think is a pretty cool effect that doesn't disrupt the video because it kinda fits with the style I'm editing it with (you'll see what I mean in said future video). I talked to Crow about this and what we came up with is that I'll do the static-thing into the loading screen for just a second or two, maybe have it 'ch-chunk' in like it's on a projector, and then static back to wherever I want to pick back up from. I die a whole drat lot at the end so sometimes I'll just do the quick static like what you see in that video, but occasionally I'll throw a loading screen from the relevant part of the game in just so the player can see them. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 22:48 on Jun 11, 2015 |
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Jun 11, 2015 22:43
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 Delta continues their search for the kidnapped soldier. Now in stunning 1080p! Some new, particularly excellent music in this chapter too.
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Jun 12, 2015 11:51
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Night10194 posted:One thing I really like: Look at Walker's face during these gunfights. He's absolutely covered in sweat and he looks goddamn horrified. Check him out when I get like super low health, his expression changes to a look of fear like straight-up  territory. The facial animations in this game really are awesome and detailed.
CJacobs fucked around with this message at 21:58 on Jun 12, 2015 |
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Jun 12, 2015 21:42
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I think part of the reason it seems like you're killing so drat many people is because Walker and his buddies are just three regular dudes fighting an entire squad of other regular dudes. Like, they're not superhuman, they're not magical sorta-human creatures, they aren't wearing power armor, they don't have any special supernatural abilities, they're just a trio of normal military vets. In Gears of War, for example, you tear through fauna of all different kinds at about the same rate but in that game you've got power armor and high powered future rifles and orange transparent chainsaws. People in the Gears universe are harder to kill than a plain ol human being would be. They are still just humans, but they're humans with an advantage. The enemy poses much smaller of a threat, so the fights seem like they have less impact even though they're the same length. Even with Walker's magical regenerating third person shooter health, other than that he's just a normal person with normal tech. Wiggy Marie posted:It'd be interesting to keep a kill count, because while there seems to be an infinite amount of dudes I remember that OatmealRaisin spent 8 hours doing the FUBAR mode and by the end had 170 kills or so, so I wonder if the number just seems inflated because of how fast the game moves into each new battle? This is probably also a big part of it. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 22:01 on Jun 16, 2015 |
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Jun 16, 2015 21:45
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Gantolandon posted:The building with pianos must be loving high, given that we went down and still fight on the rooftops.  It is, you can see on the chapter select screen that it's much higher up than some of the surrounding buildings. It's the one closest to the camera. The hill on the far side of the building is an approximation of the one Delta exits through on their way to the gorge, after saving the civilians from the 33rd. It might have been built on a hill or something, hence the bigger pile-up of sand around it. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 04:32 on Jun 17, 2015 |
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Jun 17, 2015 04:23
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 Konrad is MIA and the Damned 33rd has gone rogue. To find Konrad, Delta must connect with Grey Fox, a team of CIA Agents operating in Dubai- one of whom has been taken captive by the 33rd. Delta descends into the gorge to find "Camp Truth" and rescue him. Today you are going to have to make a choice. Let me know what you think Walker should do.
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Jun 19, 2015 14:02
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Speedball posted:I believe there are occasionally contextual commands for everything in this game. At one point, I'm not sure if it's this chapter or not, you can have Walker say, "Take out the guys by the T-Rex!". I believe it happens in this video around 13:00 or so. I remember something about a t-rex anyway. Fire Storm posted:Save Gould. Save 2 civvies or potentially save them all? Easy call. It's on the LP archive. I'm trying to avoid linking it in the thread to avoid spoilers. For the people who want to save Gould, why? Do you think the civilians are less important? It's not like they asked for any of this. Gould helped Walker and co. but the CIA's goal was to cover up what happened in Dubai. If Gould wasn't currently under the 33rd's heel, who's to say he wouldn't be out in the killing fields doing the exact same thing?
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Jun 20, 2015 00:25
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That's what I feel the game is kinda trying to say by having you fight the 33rd, and simultaneously something that's important to keep in mind. There AREN'T any non-American soldiers in Dubai. There never were. The insurgents aren't soldiers, they're citizens! They're just people, like the American soldiers are, except Walker can't be put in jail for life for killing them. edit: The immediate question the game asks, even if it doesn't say so out loud, is "is it okay that the law values your life above the people that fall under different laws than yours, instead of both of you equally? What happens if the opposing force is from the same party?" Since Walker can't quite be taken to court because he's kind of busy at the moment, we don't have an answer for that from the game. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 17:33 on Jun 20, 2015 |
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Jun 20, 2015 17:30
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Heads up, I'm a dumbass and miscalculated the number of episodes in my own Let's Play so I have to re-do the table of contents. If anything changes, don't worry about it, it's just me fixing my mistakes.  The first intel video should be coming tomorrow, it might give you some insight to sway your decision to save Gould or not one way or the other. I won't be posting them in the main table of contents, they'll have their own sub-header in the second post. I don't want them to disrupt the flow of the main videos, so they'll be marked with which episodes they contain the intel from and be linked via polsy just to avoid spoilers.
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Jun 21, 2015 05:40
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 Here is the first Intelligence Database video. Intel is an important part of Spec Ops: The Line. As the sole collectible, intel documents and items provide extra world building and lore that do not fit anywhere in the gameplay. They provide an insight into what happened in Dubai before Walker and co. arrived. Please watch these only after you've seen the relevant videos so as to not spoil anything for yourself. Note that these videos contain no extra frills or anything, or really any sound at all outside of the game's narration of the intel items. There was really no point in putting in a big intense editing job, although I did streamline it so that you don't see the main list (because obviously it spoils future chapters which kinda sucks).
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Jun 21, 2015 14:04
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Also, the new OP is finished. Check it out! It looks virtually no different form the old one but functionally it's much better! I'll give you a couple more days to toil over what Walker should do about Gould. After all, it's not like time passes in the game when you're not playing it since it's not real and all that.
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Jun 21, 2015 14:07
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 In this episode, Delta obtains Gould's op plan. They must carry on his mission.
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Jun 23, 2015 14:19
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TomViolence posted:The perceived lack of choice is a bit false, though. There is always the choice to stop playing and walk away, a theme the game constantly beats you over the head with. I would like to pre-emptively say that I disagree with this. I can't explain why I disagree in great detail right now but in the coming videos I'll elaborate more on it. Basically, I don't think the game ever tells you, the player, to stop playing. It makes me a bit sad that the developers put their foot in their mouths in interviews by saying that it was a choice the game presents to you because it really isn't.
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Jun 23, 2015 17:19
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Night10194 posted:Also note Walker's face. You can see the exact moment he snaps in that scene, right after Lugo blames him, and decides it's gotta be someone else it couldn't have been his fault. I love that he screws up his face and tries to close his eyes as if that'll make the gross melted-flesh corpses around him go away, like they won't be there or just won't be mortifying anymore when he opens his eyes again. When he does and they're still there, with Lugo in the background shouting about how he's responsible for killing all these people, his thousand-yard-  expression is definitely understandable.
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Jun 23, 2015 21:22
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The CIA, the people there to hose down Dubai and cover up the truth, are the only people that HAVEN'T tried to kill Walker and co. so far! Agent Castavin sicced the insurgents on them in the underground hotel but it's because he thought they were 33rd. The 33rd know that Delta are not CIA thanks to the Radioman telling them so, but he (and thus the 33rd) still think that they are there to kill everyone to cover up the truth. So though they are not CIA, they have the same motivations as the CIA, ergo they are the enemy. Walker tried to explain to the Radioman that they were there to save the civilians very briefly, but his poor phrasing led the Radioman to make a witty quip instead of understanding what he meant. So yeah, you are missing things, but I don't really blame you. The story is intentionally twisty and turny and confusing. edit: There was another paragraph here but it turns out I'm actually remembering incorrectly! Whoops! CJacobs fucked around with this message at 22:30 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 22:02
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edit: This post had a pretty key factual error in it so I am getting rid of it! I will explain it better the second time.
CJacobs fucked around with this message at 22:32 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 22:15
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Wa11y posted:I've never been in an active war zone, constantly under siege from all sides and betrayed by another agency of my own government, but I'd like to think that if I were completely cut off from support, and a new faction showed up and claimed to be on my side, I'd at least be curious enough to ask some questions, and pass the details up the chain of command, and let them deal with it. He did ask some questions! When Walker says they found the other 33rd guys at the plane, Jensen asks where they are, to which Walker basically just shrugs and goes "uhh he's dead lol" because obviously he has no proof that the guy was killed by insurgents. Jensen immediately assumes that Walker's poor answer means he killed them. Walker doesn't elaborate and say that he was killed by insurgents and they were trying to help. This misunderstanding is what turns the 33rd against Delta, but there really was no time to clarify as Jensen made his exit immediately after. Also, they both put their guns down at the same time. The game forces you to keep your weapon trained on Jensen (and you CAN shoot him if you want!) until he lowers his gun, then you can put yours down. CJacobs fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 22:34
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I will say that you're right, having it be based almost totally on a misunderstanding at first is kinda forced. I get the feeling that the writers had Delta rescue Adam Jensen from Castavin without any real idea how they would then turn the 33rd against Delta, so they came up with the easy solution of having Jensen be mistaken about their purpose in Dubai. However, like I said in that post I have now removed because I got something pretty important wrong, they correct this forced-ness pretty fast by having the Radioman chime in and associate the CIA with Delta, giving the 33rd a concrete reason to be against them. edit: quote is not edit hurr durr CJacobs fucked around with this message at 22:49 on Jun 23, 2015 |
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Jun 23, 2015 22:45
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biosterous posted:Every chapter so far, Walker ends of physically lower than before. Symbolism, yo. This is something that I absolutely cannot get enough of. Note that we didn't ever actually come out of the ravine in the chapter after Walker fell down into it at the end of Episode 3. You kinda sorta go back up a couple flights of stairs once you reach the far end of the gorge, but the view you get at the start makes it pretty drat clear:  And if that wasn't enough, the chapter select screen solidifies it:  The gorge has a beginning and an end and is disconnected from the rest of the city completely, but somehow we managed to start at the top of it, fall down into it, and then continue above ground even though we never went upward a single time. After the team reaches the far end of the gorge they enter the museum, where they find the trap set for Gould. Then they get buried in rubble by the ensuing helicopter chase, and when they emerge from the wreckage they are no longer in the gorge (Walker even jumps down a flight of stairs in the cutscene where they're navigating the rubble!). You can even see on the chapter select screen that the gate (on the far left) and the top of the gorge are geographically on the same level. It's amazing. And intentional! CJacobs fucked around with this message at 04:13 on Jun 24, 2015 |
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Jun 24, 2015 04:07
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Beach posted:I seem to remember the loading screen messages breaking the fourth wall as well with things like "these are war crimes, but it's just a game, right?" and "you could stop playing at anytime, but you dont want to do you?". I've got a list of all the loading screens ripped right from the game files and the latter is nowhere on it. The former is close to one though! Coincidentally it shows up if you die in the very next combat segment in the next episode: quote:The US military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants. But this isn't real, so why should you care? In the case of this one though, I don't think it's saying "It's a video game so you shouldn't care about what happens in it", but more "Spec Ops: The Line is not real but this does happen in real life, so you SHOULD care, about when it happens in real life". CJacobs fucked around with this message at 20:00 on Jun 24, 2015 |
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Jun 24, 2015 19:57
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Alternatively: *knock at the texture artist's door* "Hey, Johnson, we're getting prepped to put in the textures for the white phosphorus scene. Have you been looking at the reference pics?" (no response) *knocks again* "Uh... hello? Johnson? Bob?" "Oh, there you are, Bob." *shouts down the hall* "Yeah, I found him, he's under the desk in the fetal position again!"
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Jun 25, 2015 08:45
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Fun fact, there's actually a loading screen tip that says what White Phosphorus is that they have some fun with. I didn't die enough times in Episode 4/5 to put these both in but if you die during the first white phosphorus attack (the one with the heavy) you get this:quote:White phosphorus is a common allotrope used in many types of munitions. It can set fire to cloth, fuel, ammunition, and flesh. If you die again in the fight that happens just after the end of the current video, it changes to this: quote:White phosphorus is a common allotrope used in your slaughter at The Gate. It can set fire to soldiers and the innocent civilians they are trying to help.
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Jun 25, 2015 17:57
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