So, whose fault is it?
That's the big question at the heat of Spec Ops. Who is the villain? Games usually have end bosses, right? You play your way through to the end of the game, you fight all the low level scrubs, move up to heavies, smack them around, and then each level ends with a boss, with a big boss at the end. A big boss at the end and then a cutscene where you get cake from princess Peach. That's how it's supposed to go, right?
Well, in Spec Ops, that breaks down, it falls apart. By the time you get to the end of the story, you find yourself dealing with the final boss of the game being dead for the whole game. There was no Konrad, not for the entire time. All the things that happened, all the bloodshed that occupies the game, we blame that on Konrad, saying that it must be his fault that we did any of this. It begins with you shooting refugees, the people whom you were sent to save.
And this is the biggest unscripted surprise of Spec Ops, that all the other human beings in the game have agency, are following orders, and as bizzare as it may seem, believe sincerely that they're doing the right thing. And in many cases, they're right, and you're wrong. Sgt. Lugo, one of your Delta Force team comments on the bloodshed at the beginning of the game by saying 'aren't these the people we're supposed to be saving?' Yes. And you end up killing them.
When the game turns, when it tips its hand and reveals to you the length and depth that it is willing to go to, it is as perfect of a presentation of original sin as I can think of, and of the concept of Law, in the Christian sense. The way things work in the Christian perspective is that people need, desperately need to be reminded of their own sin, entirely because everyone, in their own mind, is Captain Walker, the star of their own sitcom, the player character of their own game. And just like Captain Walker, you have a feeling, for a long time, that because you're the central character, because you're the most important one in any shot, that you can do no wrong. Nothing you do is that bad or that wrong, and all that bodies that hit the floor, well, they shouldn't have been trying to kill you. But Walker's big epiphany comes at the Gate.
Notice that Walker says that it's the 33rd who are going to have to pay for what they've done. Even though Walker has just blasted civilians with white phosphorus, he's still seeking to lay the blame elsewhere. How does this work? It works through cognitive dissonance, holding two conflicting viewpoints at the same time.
The loading screens in Spec Ops are perhaps the most clever partof the game. They start off by giving you tips on gameplay, but they ramp up significantly in later stages. And by the end, they start to say things like 'do you even remember why you're here?' 'Cognitive dissonance is the condition of holding two conflicting viewpoints at the same time,' 'This is all your fault.' and my favourite ' You are still a good person.' The game is subtly reminding you that you still believe that you are doing the right thing, because you're the protagonist. That's how the story goes, because that's how all stories go. The Hero does the right thing, beats the villains, and retuns home with full honors, or dies in a blaze of glory. That's it.
But in Spec Ops, you make bad decisions, and then continue by making worse decisions. You make bad decisions the whole way through. But the hero can't make bad decisions, or he wouldn't be the hero, so who is to blame for all the bad decisions?
Walker blames Konrad. Walker makes Konrad into the final boss, because that's how the story is supposed to go. He, as the hero, has to move through the levels, killing the bad guys, until he faces down with the final boss, his old mentor, and brings him to justice. And as his squad continues to voice disagreement with his decisions, Walker says :
"This isn't about finding Konrad. It's about doing what's right."
What we forget about in the real world is that in everyone's view, they are the protagonist in their own games, in their own stories. And if you're a protagonist in a story, you will do what Walker does, which is to fight through the odds, and come out victorious. The Hero makes good decisions, and his decisions must be right because he is the Hero. And we live in this world in which we are the main characters in our own stories. We are conditioned to look outside ourselves for the reasons behind anything that ever goes wrong. Why do our relationships fall apart? Because our ex-husbands are inconsiderate jerks. Why do we get disciplined at work? Because our bosses have it out for us for some reason. Why do we end up fighting with each other? Because the other person refuses to listen. Why did we get stopped while driving? Because the cops have a quota to meet. If the truth is undeniable, you make your own.
The thing is, this is what sin is all about. It's all about us looking at ourselves, and being honest with what is happening. It's all about us looking at our sin, and repenting of it, and seeking to amend, whether we do or not. And the more of our blame that gets foisted off on other people, the less likely we are to amend things. We need someone to blame, but we usually can't abide it being us, so we make up someone of we have to. Think of Captain Walker. If he would have just admited what he had done at the gate,if he would have said that he had done some things he should not have done, then he could have walked away, and moved on. He did not. Someone else must have been to blame, and therefore, the body count continues. None of this would have happened if Walker had just stopped, but he marched on.
The last surprise that the game has is that the person that you thought was going to be the final boss had been dead for the whole game. You, as Walker, had made him up. He wasn't real. And as a construct, you realize at the end that the decisions you'd made all game, you weren't forced into them by Konrad. The walkie-talkie was broken. The final boss was a corpse all along. So who is the final boss? the final boss is Walker himself, and what he chooses to do with his legacy. He can kill himself, or he can kill 'Konrad,' and choose to put and end to the difference between the two. And so far, this is the only game I've ever played where the final boss is the Old Adam. The only game in which the last boss is you yourself, the part of you that did the stuff you knew was wrong. And that's us. The final boss of your life is your sinful nature. The final boss of your existence, the only real enemy you've ever had to face is yourself, and the things you do. It's really hard to admit that, as hard as it was for Captain walker, but it takes a strong man to deny what's right in front of him. In most cases, you are the one who has been causing problems in your life, you are the one who has been causing the majority of the problems, and it's this that Christianity, with its focus on sin and repentance, aims to deal with. Working through this is and always will be complicated. It's a tough look in the mirror, it's a hard, difficult thing to do, to look into that mirror, and to see the Konrad that you were fighting against. And that's what Walker worked out, was that the only way to beat Konrad was to beat himself.
When Konrad talks in the closing cutscene, he says that someone has to pay for all of this, and that's true. The wages of sin is death, and Walker has a lot to atone for. So much, that he'll never pay it off. And this is where our Christian understanding of Grace comes into it. We are people who, if we take seriously our beliefs, we end up knowing that our sin will require punishment, some kind of redress. The great gift of our faith is that this doesn't rest on us, but rests on Christ. When faced with a similar conversation, when faced with the possibility that we might have to atone for our many and various crimes, we don't have to take the dichotomy proposed to us by Konrad, that either we pay for it, or that we have to enter into dissonance and invent someone to take the fall for us. Christ's whole work was to take that dissonance away, to understand that sin needs to be payed for, but that we can't possibly manage it on our own. In all the things we have invented and created in our lives to ensure that we won't take any blame for our sins, in all our dissonance, the thing we need to know is that Christ offers to take that away, to not live in denial, nor to hide from our sins, but to confess them and have done with them. And knowing those sins is the first step in that process.
The best line in the whole game comes right at the end, when Walker says "I didn't mean to hurt anyone," and Konrad answers "No-one ever does." All the body count that you racked up in Spec Ops is comprised of people just like you, people who want to do the right thing, who want to help, and yet it keeps on going wrong. Yes, you never meant to hurt anyone, but you did. Both as Walker, and as you yourself. The only question is who pays for it? Walker, Konrad, or Christ?
Next week, new game. Not sure which one yet, but probably not paper mario. Maybe Paper Mario.
