Eh its pretty bad but this time you could at least hear us.
I feel like we should have put a disclaimer that its also not funny...so let this serve as that

I liked the background noise of the diner, actually. It was very Tarantino. Dave and Gratz were cast as Jules and Marcellus in my brain.

We were gonna record inside, which probably would've been a little more bearable, but they sat us right next to a speaker and the music was really loud.

Is it not showing up in iTunes for anyone else? I just ended up downloading from the site.

We actually just recorded it on my iPhone, and didn't do any noise removal. Maybe your issue with cutlery is you just had too many people? There were only two of us, for most of it, barring the people behind us you couldn't really here and then the IDIOTS WHO SAT NEXT TO US HALFWAY THROUGH EVEN THOUGH THERE WERE OTHER EMPTY TABLES.

I see it on iTunes, but I've had enough reports of people missing various episodes in their feed to know something's wrong, just not enough to know what the problem actually is. :(

I just have to throw it onto my tablet and it loads fine. I don't even have to put everything in the same folder.

I really enjoyed the discussion on Heart of Darkness and Chinua Achebe. Also Dave, no bacon on your burger? I'm tempted to make a burger right now to make up for your folly.

[moved comment to proper thread]

Really enjoyed this episode. A friend of mine is interested in the game and recommended I check it out. Haven't done so yet because it looked like generic military shooter #437, which is probably why he's interested it. I'm surprised it offers some actual commentary and deconstruction of the genre.

It's still on sale at Amazon for PC download for $25. That is really worth it.

As the guy from the stream that argued that using civilians cheapened the effect of the white phosphorus bombing, I'd like to articulate my argument a tiny little bit here.

For reference, the bombing starts at around the 2:09:00 mark in the recording of the spec ops playthrough.

Let's start with a few of the minor issues I have with the use of civilians. First, the fact that this wasn't necessarily the first time you could have killed a civilian, so the act itself, brutality and quantity aside, wouldn't be too far out of the ordinary. This does serve to remind the player of the fact that civilians often do get caught in the crossfire, but is of relatively little importance, due to the entirety of its effect being based upon player choice, with the likely hood of a player having killed civilians before being inversely related to the effect the white phosphorus bombing would have on them. Simply put, killing civilians makes you a dick and dicks don't care about dead civilians. Second, the soldier that said they "were helping" just makes no sense. How were they helping exactly? Taking people as hostages at gunpoint doesn't exactly sound like helping, even if you didn't plan to kill them, the evacuation had failed already so there was no reason to take them. Third is the time frame. Gould supposedly staged an assault on the gate before the player arrived with the presumed intent of rescuing the civilians. It hadn't been that long since the civilians had been taken. So several possibilities present themselves: first, Gould rushed the assault because the civilians were to be executed; second, the presumed intent was incorrect and Gould had already had the assault planned; third, it's a video game and making a proper timeline is a pain in the ass; fourth, the civilians there were not exclusively from the hotel where the player had seen civilians being taken. Ultimately all of these issues aren't important and mainly just quips that I probably shouldn't even include here in an effort to avoid looking petty.

As far as the actual bombing goes, the setup and the carrying out of are done extremely well. You had seen the civilians being taken beforehand, and I, personally, had forgotten about them until the last bit of the mortar's camera. In that last bit of the mortars camera, you saw a bunch of people through a sort of thermal sight. Unlike the soldiers, the people weren't moving at all, when I saw this, I didn't think that they were soldiers, or at least they weren't armed soldiers, perhaps they were resting or breaking for mess. That proved to be a nice touch but fell into irrelevance once you started walking through the aftermath of the bombing. I completely forgot about what I'd seen through the mortar's camera because the aftermath of the bombing; charred bodies, choking soldiers, and newly made amputees proved to be somewhat more appalling than the possibility that something had been wrong during the bombing. And then they showed you civilians. Not only did they attempt to humanize them more than the soldiers by putting them in bright clothing and huddling together to show that they possessed notions of love and warmth, but they even went as far as to put a mother protecting her child alone in the middle of the room. This is what I meant when i called using civilians cheap.The effect that the bombing had was also stressed in the case of the civilians, even though out of all the things that had been bombed, they were furthest away from an actual site of detonation. Every civilian was missing a face, many had exposed brains, others had but charred skulls. It was all meant to illicit a reaction, and where as it succeeded for Dave and Graz, I held issue with it because it was so blatantly meant to illicit a reaction that it lessened the horror (THE HORROR, THE HORROR) of the effect the bombing had, read: charred bodies, missing limbs, etc.

Finally, there was a statement that either Lugo or Adams made that was just absurd. "He turned us into fucking killers." As opposed to what, exactly? Did they suddenly forget the hundreds of people they had already gunned down? Or were enemy combatants not considered alive? It's just absurd. They ascribe some sort of moral worth to the civilians, ignoring the fact that the civilians would, and later do, kill them should they be given the choice. And since that has now been brought up, what the hell was up with giving the player a choice to not shoot the civilians after Lugo had been cut down? The player had been painted as some sort of murderous monster only to turn around and pardon those who had actually wronged him. Though that's neither here nor there. I'd be perfectly fine if the wording in the statement had been something along the lines of murderers or monsters, but saying that they weren't killers before realizing that the civilians had been killed is stupid, especially after just having witnessed the after effects the bombing had on the 33rd.

Overall, the bombing was still handled well, but it could have been handled better. What I think should have happened is that the civilians ought to have just not been included in the bombing. The horror of the bombing could serve as a catalyst for the change that would take place in the player's character. It could set him off onto the path towards insanity, instead of having him instantly reach it. A civilian massacre could show up later as a result of an action taken, or not taken (the latter of which would be better, in my opinion) directly because of the psychological effect the bombing had on the main character. The lack of an action would allow for anger as a reaction from the delta squad instead of just horrified silence and would better explain the change in tone the squad faces following the bombing. This would also serve to further the loading screen quote, "Do you feel like a hero yet?" By killing civilians, it becomes blatantly obvious that the player character can't become a hero short of some miraculous atonement and really drops a lot of meaning from the question. By not saving civilians, the player character is simply flawed, as heroes can be, but would obviously shoulder the blame in his own mind, stressing the fact that he won't ever feel like a hero. I'm also surprised the game was so short, with the focus on the psychology of the campaign.

-Stalled (KICKKUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUU)

@Blank_Kold/Stalled - Good points all, and while I often react in the same way to things that I perceive as ill-fitting grabs where the only purpose is to illicit a reaction from me, this civilian-slaughter-device worked for me totally. I can see why it didnt work for you and I think you articulated why it failed for you really well, so no argument from me there, and sorry if I sounded dismissive.
One thing I would point out - and that kind of ties into why I think the civilian-slaughter-device worked for me - is the guy that yells "he turned us into killers". I think that statement is supposed to be jarring in this context precisely because the moment you see their charred bodies (maybe sooner for some of us) you start to question all your previous actions and all the other people you killed. Killing all these 'innocent' people is the smack in the mouth that really begins the process and ultimately drives it home. Its so over the top and so gruesome and so unambiguously awful that it inflects the rest of the game with a horrible weight. Without it, I dont think the game would have been as powerful. But I totally know the feeling of resisting something that I feel is a disingenuous emotion grab and the aftermath of it taking me out of whatever I am engaging with so completely that its irreparable. Ultimately I'm glad it worked for me because without that huge sin, I dont think the rest of the game would make much sense, because in video games you are constantly slaughtering legions of faceless badguys without a second thought. I mean he is a soldier and trying to do the same thing while only killing other armed enemies would be so much like your average gears clone that it would have been too subtle to accomplish what it set out to do. And its important to note that I dont think they were trying to accomplish some grand statement on the nature of violence and the death of innocents, but yeah...what I said a million times in the podcast...and god help me if I say the word 'interrogate' one more time I'm going to have to shoot myself because thats what happens when you edit a podcast with yourself in it and get really self conscious about the stuff that comes out of your face.
But yeah, I appreciate your perspective on it!

Yeah, it wasn't really in-theme for the podcast so we didn't even talk about the parts where he's like "women are so blissful in their ignorant world, we should do our best to keep there where they can remain stupid and happy."

It's a tough position to be in. If they're going for verisimilitude, then they have to make it look like every other war shooter at first. Of course, they did that and I spent at least the first hour being like "Sooooooooo... this is the game everyone said was really good?

And frankly, conisdering the general level of artistic integrity in the majority of video games, and especially in this particular genre, and ESPECIALLY the particular audience of this particular genre who they have been targeting with their marketing, you kinda have to hammer your points with a sledgeheammer. It may be blunt, but it's a step in the right direction on the whole, and I really hope we see more of it. Can't wait to pick this up when I get my paycheck; this is the sort of game I've been wanting the video game industry to make for some time now, and I honestly was beginning to think we'd never see it, at least not in the military shooter genre. It strikes me that video games are in a position utterly unique in all forms of media to examine our relationship with violence, and its nice to finally see a game start to take advantage of that.

Here's an interview with the writer:

http://penny-arcade.com/report/editorial-article/spec-ops-is-critical-of-war-and-players-of-war-games-an-interview-with-the

He does mention a lot of the stuff that was discussed in terms of marketing, manipulating the player, and the White Phosphorus scene, as well as eliminating "good" choices that allow the player's conscience a way out, no matter the level of hopelessness in the game's narrative.

THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE IS THE WHOLE POINT. THAT IS THE POINT OF THE GAME. IF YOU DON'T LIKE THAT, FINE, BUT DON'T ACT LIKE IT WAS A FUCK UP.

The Article said:

in fact that the game presents you with unkillable enemies if you try to engage the encampment with small arms. It’s no decision at all.

He says he listened to the Gamespot podcast with the writer of the game. Did he not listen to the part where the dude pretty much said "video games cater to the player with this total subservience, and in the real world you often have choices where your actual ability to affect things is extremely limited"?

It's my estimation that Spec Ops is both an indictment of FPS military shooter games AND of the way we expect choices/decisions to work out in games. He mentions Bioshock. Doesn't he see the irony in that, considering Bioshock's save/harvest system is one of the most visible fake-ass, no consequence choices in all of video games?

It's hard to tell exactly what he's talking about with Bioshock, because he's not very specific, but I think he's talking about the ultimate plot twist of Bioshock and the "you could've stopped playing this" idea, where I'm talking about how dealing with the Little Sisters is worse than irrelevant, because it acts like it's a choice of self-denial when in actually choosing the nice choice is 100% more rewarding. So it's saying "this choice of self-sacrifice is gonna be real hard!" then when you choose the morally good one it gives you a present and says "you are very nice, good job!" Which is the exact subservience to the player that the dude who wrote Spec Ops was talking about.

Dave said:

THE ILLUSION OF CHOICE IS THE WHOLE POINT. THAT IS THE POINT OF THE GAME. IF YOU DON'T LIKE THAT, FINE, BUT DON'T ACT LIKE IT WAS A FUCK UP.

This line made me very happy. It reminded me of Spankminister's rant a while ago about how if you thought that RE5 not letting you move and shoot at the same time was due to the game developers being incompetent, you were trying to play the wrong game.

I don't get the impression that this game is trying to change the way games are made any more than the people who made "Network" expected to change how TV news was presented.

But the whole thing that makes a game different from a movie *is* the fact that you can choose; or, at least, bring about an agreeable ending. If the llayer's choices and actions are meaningless then why bother playing?

I haven't actually read this but its about Spec Ops: The Line

I haven't played the game but I did watch the "white phosphorous" scene and I thought it was interesting that the guy in that Sadistic Design article was like "What the fuck? I have to use the phosphorous mortar?!" Then in the video when one of Walker's teammates is like "Bro, there's a choice" he's like "No, not really."