Spec-Ops developer to show off new ip at E3

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Yager, developer of acclaimed third person shooter Spec Ops: The Line will be debuting their new game at E3, it announced today on Twitter.

So far, Yager are keeping quiet about the content of their new game, but some digging earlier in the year by Only Singleplayer did find a job listing suggesting both a new AAA game based in CryEngine, as well as a second title with F2P mechanics.

Currently it’s not clear which of those two projects will be unveiled at E3.

After the Spec Ops the Line, I do not care or want to play a game from them. They need to do a great among great games to make up for for how bad Spec Ops The Line is.

I purchased a 3 pack over the weekend for $19.99 at Walmart that included Borderlands 2, Mafia 2 & Spec Ops.

Did you play the same game i did? Because Spec Ops was superb! As an ex soldier they totally got it right

was excited for this because i loved Spec Ops, then i read F2P

I think you should read it again. :P

SO: The Line was a great surprise and one of my favorite games in recent years. I'm looking forward to their next game and here's hoping that they'll keep the same standard.

The Spec Ops:The Line is still on my list of games I need to buy and play. I have heard great things about it, so it's going to be interesting to see what the developers have to offer.

It is rumored that there is a second title that will have F2P elements. They still making that AAA single player cryengine game. So still something to be excited about :P

What part of it is superb? It's average at best game play? It's plain and forgettable characters? It's force and sloppy "feel this way" story telling? It's clear and demeaning this is intellectual traps it has?

I know what is superb about it...the way it pulls off the con by have moments so people will think that the story is deeper that it is. It is nothing more than one or two scenes they duck tape together. It is worse that a bad story or a generic story.

All of the yearly Call of Duty games have a better story.

Skip it. It is a intellectual trap and a clear one at that. I say watch a lets play and you will be fine while having had a better time.

There is a part of the game that traps you until you are forced to do mass murder but they try to hid that you have no choice.

Actually the story is pretty deep, with its allusions to Heart of Darkness, Childe Roland To The Dark Tower Came and Fight Club, among many other works. Not to mention the environmental storytelling, deliberately overblown level design/encounters and commentary on the absurdity of military games in general

I hate stories that try to manipulate me and Spec Ops The Line is such a story. All I got as a intellectual trap with poorly made padding. It is set pieces and paint by color fill in the blank. It is what I call a painted pool. It is shallow but they try to make it look deeper.

The Call of Duty does a better job about showing me the price of war while Spec Ops the Line show me their is a buck in people suffering .

The F2P title is confirmed. It was announced months ago which pissed me off cause I really enjoyed Spec Ops. Glad to hear they are also making a AAA game. They kept it under wraps though because when the F2P game was announced the company made it sound like that was the direction they were going.

Did they announce what their F2P game was going to be? Or did they say what type of game it was going to be?

To anyone who reads this topic, IF you go with this game Spec Ops the Line, You will never go wrong, its one of the best games in twisting your ideals, in the game's decisions. There is no right or wrong, only morale choices by you.

This game is really worth playing, no matter what I say or anyone else say, this game is worth playing, and to those who hate/complain about its story, it just mean that they aren't on par with the Deep Story, and their thinking is limited.

Also telling the toll that War has on the mind, and some can't cope.

No it does not. To show the toll you need to show it affecting someone. There are no real characters in that story. I can say the main character was crazy before the story start and there is nothing to disprove it. Please do not try to bring the players into this because you are just going to get into a subjective part and can not prove anything.

What moral choices this game force you to take every dark path they can. It is a story that want people with limited thinking to latch onto the "deep" parts and overlook most of the story. I am not one how just limit my vision to part of a story but I look at the story as a whole on a number of levels and Spec Ops the Line is not good on any level.

It's going to be a military first person MP game. That combined with F2P is a big hell no to me. I haven't played a F2P game that wasn't buried in unnecessary microtransactions and we have enough military MP games so... While I enjoyed the gameplay and setpieces more than most people the story is what Spec Ops unqiue. This type of game doesn't even allow for an interesting story to be told.

@wiouds: You can't say it's badly written when proffesionals have high regards for it. That's your subjective view...

@The_Last_Ride: The "depth" of this story is the only thing people talk about while discarded most of the story. Even then that "Depth" is sloppy and heavy handed.

There are no real characters. The plot is as basic as it can be.

There is a game call inversion that I think is better and has a better story.

@wiouds

If you aren't able to appreciate the game's subtleties and rely on exposition it's your problem; those comparisons with Call of Duty and Inversion are laughable at best. The characters are parodies of one-dimensional shooter characters as well as being tragic protagonists inspired by the works I listed above. The plot is basic because it's a deconstruction of ridiculous tropes throughout the genre; going to Burj Khalifa is literally Walker's dark tower for which he sacrifices everything, John Conrad is his subconscious alter ego etc. Characterization is irrelevant for a story like this.

That is one of the biggest laughable comparisons i have ever seen. Call of Duty has never had anything close to this. The closest thing i played storywise was Medal of Honor in 2010 which actually depicted a true story

What if the game is have no subtlety? How can I appreciate something that is not there? Spec Ops the Line has not subtlety. That is one reason I hate that story. It could not get more heavy handed with the "depth." I have seen The Call of Duty games have more subtleties than Spec OPs the Line. If the characterization is irrelevant for the story then the toll on the characters is irrelevant.

Parodies do not get a free pass from me. Parodies in comedies are not autofunny. Many times they are the worse type of comedy. One other reason is that it rely lazy want what the person brings. The same is true for "deep" stories.

Even worse is when they attack required downside of something or obvious thing. For example attacking a toy company for make a cartoon to encourage the sells of toys. That includes attacking a shooter for have a large number of enemies that you must shoot your way through or other parts that come up from the game being a shooter. I would even go as far as to say it is a trollist thing to do.

So tell me what it is: a heavy handed, unsubtle story trying to be deep, or a troll style of story?

There are plenty of subtleties, allusions and allegories, the problem is you failed to grasp them or they slipped by you, these are just some that are on the top of my head:

1. The Dark Tower arc

2. The zen garden in the final room

3. Hint of purgatory/personal hell starting to play out

The characters, again, are deconstructions of poorly written modern military shooter heroes; the point being there is no black & white in war, they only became violent murderers with their spirits in shambles.

The story isn't "heavy-handed", it is masterfully written and paced throughout the game, debunking cliches in similar games at every turn; I already stated what makes the story great before, I'm wont go in circles. if you're going to ignore everything written and compare it to Call of Duty of all things, it's your call

"AAA F2P", now there's a contradiction in terms.

Anyway, I have very much liked both games Yager has made so far, so I am interested in the other title.

@SovietsUnited said:

@wiouds said:

So tell me what it is: a heavy handed, unsubtle story trying to be deep, or a troll style of story?

There are plenty of subtleties, allusions and allegories, the problem is you failed to grasp them or they slipped by you, these are just some that are on the top of my head:

1. The Dark Tower arc

2. The zen garden in the final room

3. Hint of purgatory/personal hell starting to play out

The characters, again, are deconstructions of poorly written modern military shooter heroes; the point being there is no black & white in war, they only became violent murderers with their spirits in shambles.

The story isn't "heavy-handed", it is masterfully written and paced throughout the game, debunking cliches in similar games at every turn; I already stated what makes the story great before, I'm wont go in circles. if you're going to ignore everything written and compare it to Call of Duty of all things, it's your call

Sorry, I do not look for that type of stuff. In fact I do not care about that stuff. To me they are no different from Pop culture reference in a comedy by using other people work to get the reaction. Second I do not link thing from outside the story and let each story stand or fall on their own.

Also, I focus on the characters, the actions that take, the over all plot, and what else the story bring. The moment that the story bring are heavy handed. Force you to use the mortar on a part that is clearly something is wrong and then the ending. If you want to show how this violet will affect someone then you should need someone to show it with. I think FarCry 3 does it better at showing what violet can do to a person and it did it in one short scene with just hands. Call of Duty make me see the suffering and burden that violent takes on people more that Spec Ops the Line does.

I think the main character is a crazy mass killer at the start. I can not find anything prove otherwise in the story. In other words I think he is that way from the start.

@wiouds

The images I posted are not references; they are integral parts of the narrative. The Dark Tower represents sacrificing everything to achieve reach the tower, the goal; Walker reaches the Burj Khalifa after losing everything. The zen garden is self-examination, spiritual refinement: it's not by accident in the room where Walker gets enlightened on the endeavors he took.

Those forced choices are supposed to be what they are: the moment when you have to get your hands dirty. You don't have a choice. It's not like some kitsch where you get sudden air support and all is well in the end.

The reason you can't tell if the main character are murderers, for the third time, is because they are archetypes; modern military shooter, first person arcade super-human stereotypes, completely debunked, and like Ride said, getting affected by the toll of war. They acted on their own volition ignoring orders to stay put, and wanted to act righteous in a wild place clearly devoid of it. And thus became the same murderers they despised at the beginning. Literally, Heart of Darkness in video-game form

Spec Ops: The Line was the best deconstruction of the military shooter genre I've ever seen. It shows exactly what would happen to a soldier if he committed horrors he can't come back from. It shows how ridiculous shooter design and mechanics are in a real setting. It's not supposed to be "fun" but engaging. I was wonderfully surprised by this game.

Yup, exactly how i felt during my run through it

I can't wait to see what this new IP is. If the writing is as strong as Spec Ops: The Line, I'm all in.

In other words it is an attack on a part of a shooter that the shooter must have. It is like attacking a person for being in a wheelchair and the reason the person is in the wheelchair is because he/she can not move his/her legs.

Then it just a complex but lazy written and poorly made game with low standers. Who theme that can only be answered by:

Yeah ditto.

@wiouds: It's not an attack at all. It just shows that the shooting mechanics found in most military shooters are too far removed from what real combat is like. They even showed the game to a Delta Force operative to play, and even he pointed out that the combat and gun-feel was nothing like how it is in real life. No war is ever fought the way it is in Call of Duty or Battlefield. Those games are fun and are meant to be fun. Spec Ops: The Line is trying the show the true side of war. It makes you feel uncomfortable with the gameplay and killing all of those enemies, even though it's a game and that's what you're supposed to be doing. Not all shooters are made equal, and this game wasn't trying to compete with Call of Duty or Battlefield to win over gamers - how could it? In fact, I believe it surpassed both of them in the narrative department by a landslide.

The story was not lazily written either. It was inspired by Heart of Darkness, the same novel that inspired the film Apocalypse Now, and all 3 share very similar features while not necessarily being the same thing. This game shows the grim brutality of war through its story in a brazen way for a reason. It's in your face because it needs to be. The subtleties of this game's themes are many, from how a soldier might suffer from PTSD for example. I actually know a former Delta Force captain who still has recurring nightmares from the things he's seen, and this game comes pretty close to visualizing and letting you partake in that hell.

I'm sorry you don't understand what this game was trying to accomplish. It wasn't supposed to be fun at all. It was supposed to be a drama about real war and not about some jingoistic American ideals coming together to defeat enemies of democracy like in Call of Duty. No, this game is about the horrors of war and the toll it takes on the mind, body, and spirit, all juxtaposed with shooter mechanics we're used to in order to prove the point that the types of shooters we're playing are absolutely nothing like the real deal.

@wiouds: Give it a rest dude, you don't like it, fine...

Nice. I'll be watching with anticipation for more details.

Everyone knows that is true for every game out there. It is too obvious to be worth talking about. It is like stating airplanes need air to fly. It says nothing deep by pointing that out. I felt this from a number of shooters before this one came.

This story does not show the toll because the characters have nothing to it. They did not create any base line to judge the character off of. They showed the body getting torn up but that is it. If I say that the character was crazy at the start there is nothing to counter that. You can not show toll if you can not show what it did. If you give me a piece of metal and say it it broke be cause of a strain then all I can say is alright. I do not know what the metal was like before you started to applied the strain to the metal so I can not may any call or infer anything about what the strain did to the metal. Now if you show me the metal before then that would be different. I could see that the metal is thinner where the metal piece broke. Here is the main character "arc" nothing, nothing, nothing, nothing, crazy, crazy, crazy.

Worse if you try to state that the main character is the stand in for all other shooter characters. You can not have a place holder to represent a group and then have that place holder go through deep character drama.

You guys are arguing with a guy who can barely string a sentence together and you're surprised that the subtler aspects of Spec Ops' narrative was lost on him?

-Byshop

@Byshop: this is true. And his arguments make no sense. You can have a character stereotype go through character development. That's just called good writing.

If a an-ex soldier telling him the story is legit, then i don't think anything can convince the guy

I'm curious if you foresaw any of the reveals at the end of the game. What I mean is, did you realize what the game was trying to accomplish before it laid it out for you at the end? I thought something was odd when you had to shoot one of the two guys hanging by the bridge, but didn't predict most of what ended up happening.

@firefox59: I realized soon after the "incident" that something was wrong. It happened when I noticed him going from shouting orders like a normal soldier to screaming out vengeful commands. Not to mention his executions got more brutal in nature.

I realized when you pretty much destroyed the building for no reason in my mind

@firefox59: There was nothing the invested me into the story. The reason why he lead his men into the first fight left me questioning him. At that point I did not care what happens to him and the game never gave me a reason to. It is bad when before I start to play that you make me feel uneasy about the main character. Come on game maker try to make me feel something about the character. I am nice when feeling for the character.

Then comes the part when you are looking through the infrared scope at the humvee pulling back on the bridge. You know the part that just does not look right with all the heat signature not acting like soldiers. I refused to fight. I pressed every button but the fire and the game did nothing. I knew you can not win a fire fight since I tried it before and the same for sneaking around. I played through the part again and then tried every button but for the fire button...again.

After I pressed the fire button and was force to walk through the remains, I knew what the story was. It is one of those message "story" that uses heavy handed tactics and symbolism to tell a "deep story" it wanted while not caring about good story telling. Good story telling can make one death feel like a thousand deaths. Spec Ops the Line, not only did it force you to do it but it also force you to walk through their remains. Even the Call of Duty games treat digital death with more respect. Spec Ops the Line does not do depth in a way the respect way. I can find depth done in a respectful way in many stories including Farcry 3, FFXIII, Inverted, and many more.

As for the part where you need to pick on of the two hanging people, I shot the snipers. By the way they can kill you and your teammate will attack and kill them.

The part that I start to have red flags is the part where you need to choose between letting the two men be executed or wait. I tried both way and both ended with a screw you. The problem I had was there was no real strong story telling up to the point and then they try to add that to the story with the creative angles and the like. Before that part, the story telling was on par with Quantum Theory's story telling. (Yes, I played and beat that game. If you want some spoiler then ask my about Inverted and I will tell you a good trick it pulled that left me shock and change the way I look at that story.) With only trying to put effort into some parts of the story, it was clear the game maker only wanted to do something with the story. That made me care less about the story.

@wiouds: Give it a rest bro. You didn't like it, they did. It's fine. Let's discuss this new game instead of spec ops the line. FYI I agree with everything you said about Spec Ops. Its sucked.

So what is this new IP? Apparently Yager is doing the new Dead Island game, which totally took my by surprise. Is Dead Island 2 what they were referring to here? What a shift to go from the Line to a zombie game set in Venice Beach. The one guy just said "we're tired of sand."

I actually enjoyed both the Line and the original Dead Island, so when I heard yager was working on the DI sequel my interest in it shot up.