Final Year Project

How Video Games Reinterpret and Reimagine Classic Literature:

An Examination of Bloodborne and Spec Ops: The Line

By Caoimhe Brown

15177904

Degree: Bachelor of Arts in New Media and English

Supervisor: Carrie Griffin

External Examiner: Dr Cliona O’Gallchoir

 Abstract

This present study is a comprehensive analysis of Bloodborne and Spec Ops: The Line

and how they use their literary influences to create their own unique gameplay experience.

Throughout this essay I will be exploring the stories of both the games and the literature they

are inspired by as well as studying how the games use the typical mechanics expected within

their genre to subvert expectation and player control. The literature I will be looking at are the

various works of H.P. Lovecraft and Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad in relation to the

respective games they inspired. The study of Bloodborne and H.P. Lovecraft will focus

primarily on game design in a mechanic, thematic, and artist sense. Spec Ops: The Line will

have an in-depth analysis of how it subverts player expectation through mechanics and

storytelling techniques. Lastly, I will explore the importance of the medium in which these

stories are presented and how videogames provide a unique opportunity for the player by

subverting their expectation as well as the preconceptions of their given agency.

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 Table of Contents

Author’s Declaration…………………………………………………………………….3

Introduction……………………………………………………………………………..4

Chapter 1: Bloodborne and H.P. Lovecraft……………………………………………..5

Chapter 2: Spec Ops: The Line and Heart of Darkness………………………………..20

Chapter 3: Medium Awareness………………………………………………………...34

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………..41

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 Authors Declaration

I hereby declare that this project is entirely my own work, in my own words, and that all

sources used in researching it are fully acknowledged and all quotations properly identified.

It has not been submitted, in whole or in part, by me or another person, for the purpose of

obtaining any other credit / grade. I understand the ethical implications of my research, and

this work meets the requirements of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

Research Ethics Committee.

Signed: CAOIMHE BROWN

___________________________________

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 Introduction

In the essay “When Video Games Tell Stories: A Model for Video Game Narrative

Architectures” Marcello Arnaldo Picucci posits: “Observing the growth and expansion of

stories in video games reveals a shared interest among designers in seeing the medium as an

innovative platform for telling stories.” (Picucci, 10) Video games have the opportunity to

present a new kind of interactive experience that is distinct from its other multimedia

counterparts. The reactive and interactive nature of video games means the player is

responsible for the outcome of the story and thus, feel immersion in a different way to, say, a

movie or a book. In these types of media, it is possible to be fully immersed in what is

happening, but the reader/watcher is still a passive observer. The story they are witnessing has

a set journey and destination, and though that is a valid and entertaining experience in its own

right, video games offer room for the participant to become deeply emotionally connected to

the characters and the world in a way that is only really achievable in video games.

So, what does this mean for video games that are adapting or inspired by classic

literature? In this essay I will be exploring the way that video games use the tools and

methods unique to the medium, and how they incorporate classic literature and update it for

this new type of entertainment. I will primarily be focusing on the ties between Bloodborne

and the works of H.P. Lovecraft, as well as the connection between Spec Ops: The Line and

Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. This essay will feature an in-depth analysis of the plots

of these games and how they incorporate thematic and atmospheric elements from their

respective novels. This essay will also feature a discussion of how these two video games use

the game mechanic of choice to subvert player expectation and create a space for

introspection as well as exemplify the themes and tone that were inspired by the novels they

are referencing/re-creating.

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 Bloodborne and H.P. Lovecraft

Video Games have often had difficultly adapting the works of Lovecraft. Traditional

mechanics in videogames are always quite direct and aggressive which in a sense, dampens

the tension. Being able to kill these cosmic monstrosities with a gun is completely antithetical

to the helpless nature of Lovecraft’s protagonists. Meanwhile taking away the ability to fight

makes the player character feel more like a passive observer than an actual participant in the

story. Bloodborne however, strikes that balance masterfully by having both difficult and

engaging combat that makes the player feel powerful, while also containing themes, lore, and

imagery that lend to a feeling of insignificance in the unforgiving world the player has been

thrust into.

Bloodborne is an action/horror, role-playing game (RPG) released in March of 2015. It

was developed by From Software and published by Sony Computer Entertainment as its

flagship PlayStation 4 exclusive. Directed by Hidetaka Miyazaki, it was a critical success

receiving a multitude of awards including British Academy Games Award for Game Design

and Game of the Year from multiple publications including Eurogamer and Edge. The game

follows the Hunter, who is sent on a quest by a man named Gehrman, to kill beasts that are

roaming the streets of a town named Yharnam. The quest then takes us deeper and deeper into

the history of Yharnam until eventually we kill an old eldritch creature the game names Great

Ones. Through our journey through Yharnam we discover the secrets of the Healing Church

whose use of blood sourced from a Great One named Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos, to

heal any ailment. However, this eventually led to the people of Yharnam turning into the

beasts we have been hunting. This is only a very short and oversimplified version of the story,

as the game has a rich and deep lore that necessitates over 70 hours’ worth of gameplay just to

have a surface level comprehension of the plot as a whole. However, the main focus of this

chapter is less on the story, rather, its ties to prolific horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft.

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 H.P. Lovecraft was born in 1890 in Providence, Rhode Island and seemed to have a

turbulent life. Both his father and mother were institutionalised due to mental illness when he

was still young, and his grandparents stepped in to raise him. He too suffered from mental

illness and was prone to nervous breakdowns and plagues with vivid and disturbing

nightmares which only increased following the death of his grandfather. He was later

described as “the most miserable of mortals” and he admitted that he never had friends or

classmates in his youth. (Collins, 6). His adulthood was no better as he lived his life on the

verge of destitution even during his marriage to businesswoman Sonia Greene, who also

unfortunately suffered from severe mental illness. They were only married for two years

before eventually living separately from one another. Howard Philips Lovecraft never

received fame or success from his stories, which only picked up popularity due to a cult

following in the 1960s, long after his death (Collins, 9). To describe his life as miserable

would be an understatement. However, despite this his stories are now known as timeless

classics and staples of the horror genre. Lovecraft’s crippling fear of everything he does not

understand is a timeless concept. In a video essay by a youtuber who goes under the

pseudonym Red, she describes why Lovecraft’s troubled life is so important to his works:

The thing about Lovecraftian Horror and the thing that’s kept it popular is

this overwhelming fear of the unknown, a concept that easily translates even as

the “unknown” changes with social and scientific developments… if you don’t

fully understand something, you can interpolate existential horror, and turn every

mystery into a nightmare of things man was not meant to know. (Red)

His creativity and his prose have led to many recreations and reinterpretations,

including Bloodborne, whose inspiration from Lovecraft is unambiguously present in its

world design. Everything from the monster design to the story are brimming with

Lovecraftian horror, which I will be exploring in this section.

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 The Source of the Dream

Though Bloodborne borrows much of its design from Lovecraft in terms of its

monsters, it also borrows more obscure and abstract concepts to use in its story. The primary

example that I would like to focus on is the use of dreams as a narrative device. In

Bloodborne the player is regularly traveling from dream to dream (e.g. Hunters Dream,

Nightmare of Mensis, Nightmare Frontier, Hunter’s Nightmare.). Dreams in Bloodborne are

not the literal idea of a dream but rather, a pocket dimension created by the Great Ones. Some

of the dreams have a clear purpose, like the Hunter’s Dream and the Hunter’s Nightmare. The

Hunter’s dream was created by a Great One named The Moon Presence as a hub for said

hunters as a place to rest, upgrade weapons, and teleport to various places throughout

Yharnam via supernatural lanterns and headstones. It is mentioned through in game dialogue

that Gehrman was the one who initially beckoned the Moon Presence (A Great One) in the

hopes of receiving help in quelling the rising beast-hood in Yharnam. The Hunter’s Dream is

modelled after the real-world Hunter’s Workshop which can be found in Cathedral Ward. The

Hunter’s Nightmare was created by Kos, a Great One from the ocean as a way to punish

hunters for their insatiable curiosity. The hunters committed horrible atrocities which I will

explain in more detail later in this essay. The other dreamscapes that the player traverses are

the Nightmare Frontier and the Nightmare of Mensis. The existence of the Nightmare Frontier

is never fully explained, and its purpose is still a mystery. The Nightmare of Mensis was

created when a scholar named Micolash “made contact” with a Great One. This contact

caused the collective consciousness of the college of Mensis to be dragged into a dream from

which they’ve never woken, as their petrified corpses can be found in the waking world.

There are even some theories in online communities that Yharnam itself is a pocket

dimension, separate from the rest of the world, i.e. another dream, however that it just a

theory and has not been confirmed by the developers or writers.

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 The primary influence for this aspect is likely The Dreams in the Witch House. First

published in 1933 it is part of the Cthulhu Mythos and tells the story of Walter Gilman, who

rents a room in the “Witch House” which is rumoured to be cursed because it was once owned

by Keziah Mason, who was accused of being a witch. She disappeared under mysterious

circumstances from a jail in 1692. Not long after Walter moves into the room, he starts having

vivid and bizarre dreams. The dreams involve him floating through an inhuman space with

otherworldly colours, shapes and geometry: “curves and spirals of some ethereal vortex which

obeyed lawns unknow to the physics and mathematics of any conceivable cosmos.”

(Lovecraft, 55). In these dreams he often sees Keziah and Brown Jenkin, her familiar who has

the body of a rat and the face of a human man (He seems to have also inspired a character in

Bloodborne of Patches the Spider who has a human-like face and a spider’s body). In one

dream he is brought to the city of the “Elder Things” and takes a statue of an Elder Thing with

him to prove he was actually there. The dreams begin to escalate as, in one of them, he signs

The Book of Azathoth, under the directions of Keziah, Brown Jenkin and the “Black Man”

(the Black Man seems to have inspired the Shadows of Yharnam who are three men shrouded

with black robes whose faces cannot be seen). He’s later brought to the Azathoth’s Throne at

the centre of Chaos, “… he has read in the Necronomicon about the mindless entity Azathoth,

which rules all time and space from a curiously environed black throne at the centre of

Chaos.” (Lovecraft, 55) He is then forced to be an accomplice to the kidnapping of a young

child and when he wakes his feet and pyjamas are covered in mud. Things finally come to a

crescendo on Walpurgis-Night when Walter dreams of Keziah and Brown Jenkin

ritualistically sacrificing the kidnapped child. He attempts to thwart them by strangling

Keziah but Brown Jenkin bites through the child’s arm and completes the ritual. When Walter

wakes, he hears an immensely loud unnatural sound that deafens him completely. He tells his

neighbour Frank Elwood about the events in his dream, but the next night he is found dead,

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his chest having been eaten through by Brown Jenkin. Years later, when a workman is sent to

raze the house, he finds the bones of Keziah, Brown Jenkin, and the missing children. They

also find the knife and sacrificial bowl used in the ritual as well as the statue of the Elder

Thing. The house is left to demolished, left to rot, and no-one dares to go anywhere near it

ever again.

The way Walter interacts with the dreams that he experiences is quite a unique concept.

The dreams that Walter has leave a demonstrably real impact on his mind, body, and the

world around him. When he gets bitten by Brown Jenkin in one of his dreams the result is

visible in the waking world. He has dried blood on his arm and marks where the bites were.

Similarly, after being at the centre of Chaos and eventually becoming an accomplice in the

kidnapping of a child, his feet and pants are caked in mud despite there being no signs that he

ever left the room. His fellow tenants are able to hear him moving around at night and see a

violet light coming from the room but there’s never signs of his movement upon him waking

up. The remnants of bone and the statue being within the walls of the Witch House is one of

the more unsettling examples which contributes to the idea that these dreams are more

connected to reality than Walter would have initially thought. Lovecraft regards the way that

the Keziah travels in these dreams as a way for her to move between dimensions,

The hidden cult which these witches belonged often guarded and handed

down surprising secrets from elder, forgotten aeons; and it was by no means

impossible that Keziah had actually mastered the act of passing through

dimensional gates. (Lovecraft, 64)

From this it is easy to extrapolate that Dreams in the Witch House is where Bloodborne

was inspired in their use of dreams in their own story. In both texts the word “dream” is not

used with its literal meaning, rather it is used as shorthand for the surreal concept of travelling

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between dimensions while you sleep. It has already been established that the dreams in

Bloodborne are pocket dimensions created by Great Ones, and Lovecraftian mythos treats

dreams in the same way. The dreams in Lovecraft novels are often used as ways for the Great

Old Ones to communicate with humans, as seen in Call of Cthulhu. The people of Arkham are

subjected to vivid dreams of the sunken city of R’lyeh where many of the Great Old Ones

reside, including Cthulhu himself. “Upon retiring, he had had an unprecedented dream of

great Cyclopean cities of Titan blocks and sky-flung monoliths, all dripping with green ooze

and sinister with latent horror.” (Lovecraft, 102) It seems that Dreams in the Witch House is a

further exploration of how dreams manifest in the Lovecraft mythos. The information it

reveals gives an insight into the purpose of the dreams and how they manifest in the waking

world. Anything experienced in the dreams of both Dreams in the Witch House and

Bloodborne have the ability to create physical results in the waking world, and sometimes in

other dreams. With this new information the Dreams in the Witch House provides it can be

further connected to how Bloodborne also treats its dreams worlds. If, in Bloodborne, you kill

the infant Great One Mergo and his wet nurse in the Nightmare of Mensis when you return to

the Hunter’s Dream it has been set ablaze, as if to signify that its purpose has been fulfilled.

Another similarity between both works is the architectural structure of the dreams. The

Nightmare Frontier and the Nightmare of Mensis are strong examples that come to mind. The

geometry and architecture in these areas are illogical and convoluted. They are filled with

stone monoliths that have no solid structure, walls seemingly made with human and inhuman

skeletons, bridges with mysterious glyphs and most importantly, Cyclopean masonry which is

a staple of R’lyeh. One area has a large circular structure with a building in the centre that

houses the only Amygdala (A Great One) that you can kill, albeit only because it’s a younger

and weaker version. In the Nightmare of Mensis there is a massive building resembling the

college Micolash and his students resided in. However, the buildings architecture in

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convoluted, filled with winding staircases that lead nowhere, mirrors that can be used to

teleport and holes that lead to an abyss. The Hunter’s Dream is the only place whose

geometry is sound and familiar as it is modelled perfectly after the Hunter Workshop in the

waking world, though the uncanny aspect is the fact that it seems to be floating in a seemingly

endless void, surrounded by elder trees that stretch until they are no longer visible to the

human eye. The Hunter’s Nightmare is also modelled after Yharnam; however, it is filled

with Cyclopean structures similar to Mensis and the Nightmare Frontier. I would even go as

far to say that unlike the Hunter’s Dream, this nightmare version of Yharnam can be

described as poorly remembered, given that it manifests from the damaged psyches of its

residents, who are taken there because of their insatiable bloodlust. It could be posited that the

Cyclopean structures in The Hunter’s Nightmare are placed wherever an area was not unique

or important enough to remember.

Another major aspect that seems to be lifted from Dreams in the Witch House is how

the dreams interact with each other. Though they are pocket dimensions, the dreams still see

some overlap with each other and the waking world. In Bloodborne the dreams appear to be

stacked on top of each other, for example in the Fishing Hamlet found in the Hunter’s

Nightmare, below the water the player is able to see ship masts. These same ship masts were

seen earlier in the game in The Nightmare Frontier. When the player is traversing through the

nightmare version of Yharnam, a snail woman hybrid falls from the sky. These snail women

can be found once again in the Fishing Hamlet. Though this way of the dreams interacting

with each other seems unique to Bloodborne, it is likely inspired by how the dreams of the

Lovecraftian Mythos seem to be either above or below the real world. In both Call of Cthulhu

and The Shadow over Innsmouth humans dream of the sunken city of R’lyeh deep beneath the

ocean. These dreams, as previously established, are ways for Old Great Ones to communicate

with humanity. In Dreams in the Witch House Walter dreams of either a warped version of

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the waking world, or the cosmos themselves. Though not as literal as Bloodborne, dreams in

Lovecraftian mythos also seem to be stacked atop each other albeit in a less complex and

nonsensical manner.

This use of dreams as a narrative device also represents the original intention of

Lovecraft’s work, fear of the unknown and the dangers of unchecked curiosity. These dreams

symbolise the desperate search for higher consciousness. They are ways of communing with

Great Ones, but this communication is more harmful than good, as shown in the way this

knowledge effects the characters of the game as well as Lovecraft’s protagonists. It drives

them mad and/or turns them into beasts. The Healing Church and the college of Mensis

committed horrible atrocities in the name of progress. They tested on children to try and

create new Great Ones and gain a heightened perception. This is solidified in all three

possible endings of the game. In the first ending, when your mission is over you can choose to

let Gehrman kill you which then leads you to wake up in the real world having forgotten

everything you experienced while passing through the dream, “Good Hunter, you've done

well, the night is near its end. Now I will show you mercy. You will die, forget the dream, and

awake under the morning sun. You will be freed from this terrible Hunter's Dream.” In the

second ending, you fight for your life and defeat Gehrman, who upon being killed says this:

The night, and the dream, were long...” showing that he’s been trapped there for decades,

especially since he treats waking up as freedom as seen in his previous quote. His death seems

to beckon the Moon Presence who then absorbs the hunter, thus making them the new host of

the dream. In the third and “true” ending, the hunter has gained enough insight to be strong

enough to reject the Moon Presence. This leads to the hunter being reborn as a Great One

themselves.

None of these endings are “good”. They only serve to highlight how all along, the

hunter has only been a pawn of the Moon Presence who seemingly used them to kill another

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Great One. That is the purpose of the Hunter’s Dream after all, it’s a way for the Moon

Presence to use humanity to its tactical advantage. The first and second ending show this

bleak reality by either fulfilling your purpose and forgetting everything or remaining trapped

in the dream as Gehrman did, to be the Moon Presence’s pawn forever. Even the true ending

where you become a Great One has the grim implication that even after everything the player

went through, now that the hunter has ascended, they will now, and forever be ambivalent to

humanity as the other Great Ones are. By keeping these endings and their connection to the

dream bleak and hopeless, Bloodborne perfectly recaptured what makes Lovecraft’s works so

resonant even today. These endings remind the player how small and insignificant they were

all along as the cycle of hunters continues. Wild and insatiable curiosity can lead to

devastating results for humanity. Throughout Bloodborne we regularly hear the phrase “Fear

the Old Blood”, which in the context of the game very simply means, fear what you don’t

understand. But the Healing Church let their curiosity override their caution and it led to the

Yharnam being irrevocably changed for the worse, just as Lovecraft would have predicted,

“Success, Gilman added, might lead to dangerous and unthinkable situations; for who could

foretell the conditions pervading an adjacent but normally inaccessible dimension?”

(Lovecraft, 64)

Artistic Similarities

It’s common knowledge for fans of Hidetaka Miyazaki that he draws heavily from

exterior influences when writing his games. Dark Souls, the game he is most renowned for is

heavily inspired by the dark fantasy manga (Japanese comic) Berserk (1989-present) by

Kentaro Miura. These influences are quite overt from mimicking poses for official artwork,

recreating monsters that appear in the manga and even modelling a weapon after the main

characters great sword the “The Dragonslayer”.

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 A staple of Lovecraft’s work is his pantheon of cosmic entities known as the Great Old

Ones, god-like beings who reside on earth, to create his own monsters. The Great Old One’s

that are most represented in Bloodborne are:

• Cthulhu (Call of Cthulhu)

• Yog-Sothoth/Yog Whateley (The Dunwich Horror)

• Shoggoths (At The Mountains of Madness)

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 There are numerous more, but these are the most relevant to Bloodborne. Similarly, to

his borrowing of visual references from Berserk, Miyazaki recreated these Lovecraftian

monsters that show up later in the game. As the game strays from its more gothic beginnings

the monsters start to become less beast-like and more closely resemble The Great Old Ones of

Lovecraft.

Amygdala

The most iconic and obvious example is that of the previously Amygdala, a large

spider-like Great One that resides in Yharnam, unseen to the citizens bellow, but are one of

the most commonly worshipped. There are many statues modelled after the amygdala

scattered throughout Cathedral Ward and Yahar'gul, Unseen Village (previous residence to

the students of Mensis), which is also where the Amygdala are found later in the game. It

makes sense for the statues and the Amygdala to reside in those areas, as that is where the

research into ascension through blood ministration occurred. As the members of the healing

church gained more knowledge it seems they were able to commune with these beings. The

player can only see them once they’ve reached a certain level of “insight”, the games

shorthand for madness. Though there is not one direct comparison, Amygdala represents the

aesthetic and theme of Lovecraft’s work.

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 Brain of Mensis/Mother Brain

A perfect visual representation of Lovecraft’s design is the Mensis Brain/Mother Brain

which, as the name suggests, is an enemy that resembles a brain with various beast like limbs

and multiple large eyes. The Great Old One this is most often compared to is the Shaggoth

due to its amorphous body covered in eyes, but I believe that it also closely resembles Yog

Whateley. Yog Whateley is described as: “it was an octopus, centipede, spider kind o’ thing,

but they was a half-shaped man’s face on top of it.” (200) There is no doubt that it was also

mechanically inspired by The Dunwich Horror as, when you first enter the Nightmare of

Mensis, the Brain cannot be seen but it is still able to hurt the player. Yog Whateley was an

invisible Old Great One that only showed its true appearance due to a ritual. When the player

finally reaches where the Brain is trapped, you release it into an abyss where you can confront

it face and kill it if you choose.

Ebrietas, Daughter of the Cosmos

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 Ebrietas is the left behind great one who seems to be modelled after Lovecraft’s

most iconic Great Old One, Cthulhu. Many of her features are identical to those

described in Call of Cthulhu.

A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head

whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws

on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind. (Lovecraft, 108)

The Fishing Hamlet

There are a few more examples that do not have as distinct visuals such as the college of

Byrgenwerth being modelled after Lovecraft’s own Miskatonic University or a great one

known as Formless Oedon who resembles Azathoth who is also a formless Great Old One. I

would now like to focus closely on the final and most elaborate example: The Fishing Hamlet

and its connection to The Shadow Over Innsmouth. The Fishing Hamlet resides in the

previously mentioned Hunter’s Nightmare and serves as a reminder of the horrible atrocities

committed by the Healing Church Hunters for the sake of discovery. The old hunters

discovered the Fishing Hamlet, whose residents seemed to be in communication with a Great

One named Kos. In an attempt to gain more insight and move closer to ascension, the Healing

Church Hunters committed brutal experiments of the residents of the Fishing Hamlet which

transformed them into fish-human hybrids. These fish people and the layout of the village as a

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whole bear a striking resemblance to The Shadow Over Innsmouth. What are known as The

Deep Ones are fish-human creatures that come to Innsmouth yearly to mate with the humans

so that their children will once day be able to live in the sunken city of R’lyeh. They are

described as such:

I think their predominant colour was a greyish green, though they had white

bellies. They were mostly shiny and slippery, but the ridges of their backs were

scaly. Their forms vaguely suggested the anthropoid, while their heads were the

heads of fish, with prodigious bulging eyes that never closed. At the side of their

necks were palpitating gills, and their long paws were webbed. They hopped

irregularly, sometimes on two legs, sometimes on four. (Lovecraft, 87-88)

The fish people in Bloodborne are unambiguously inspired by The Deep Ones from the

greyish green skin to the fish like head. Some of them even walk on four legs as Lovecraft

described:

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 From this there is no doubt of Lovecraft’s influence on the monster design of

Bloodborne. It manages to convey both the themes and aesthetic of the Lovecraftian mythos

through its design of its monsters and its use of uniquely Lovecraftian concept such as its use

of dreams, as discussed earlier. It is one of the most transformative recreations of Lovecraft’s

work that manages to maintain its own identity, and through this, creates a new and individual

type of horror that is much more palatable to a modern gaming audience.

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 Spec Ops: The Line and Heart of Darkness

Introduction

In an interview for the video game website Kill Screen entitled “Are Military Shooters

Finally Getting Their Apocalypse Now?” Lead Designer Cory Davis had this to say about the

comparison of Heart of Darkness and Spec Ops: The Line:

I wouldn’t say we’re an exact rendition of Heart of Darkness in a modern

setting. I think what the heart of darkness is, is an exploration of self. Part of this

is the battle that man goes through as he explores his inner workings, and the

things he does to survive as a human being.

Multimedia adaptations of classic literature more often than not boil down to an exact

retelling of the original story (Dracula, Carmilla, Sense and Sensibility, Memoirs of a Geisha,

Pride and Prejudice etc.), which is not necessarily a negative. Exact retellings have their

purpose and, using filmmaking techniques, have the ability to carry across the original tone of

these classic works with ease. But media that truly shines is media that can adapt the themes

and tone of those original work while applying them to the anxieties of more modern times,

recontextualising the original until it is an entirely new sand untold story. The major example

that comes to mind is Francis Ford Coppola’s Apocalypse Now. Released in 1979 it has since

been lauded as the pivotal retelling of Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness. It has been praised

for masterfully reworking the themes of the original novel into a completely new and unique

story. It is hard to compete with and any other media with a similar idea that comes after it

has a huge undertaking.

German studio Yager Development had been known in the past for making standard

Military Shooters over the years, but after running into financial troubles, they decided to

make one final game. What could be considered the companies passion project, they created

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Spec Ops: The Line as a critique of the Military Shooters of the time (Call of Duty and Medal

of Honour). The game criticises the ambivalence that these shooters display in relation to their

subject matter. There is often a dissonance between the settings of these games and their tone.

Most military shooters almost exclusively take place in war-torn Islamic countries and

involve killed droves of racial minorities, paying no heed to the real-life atrocities that these

games are based on. Spec Ops: The Line does not just draw attention to this cognitive

dissonance, it forces the player to question the ways they justify their own decision. In this

section I want to explore how Spec Ops: The Line takes the themes of Heart of Darkness and

creates a narrative that explores both how all humans have the capacity to become cold

blooded killers in extreme circumstance, while also creating a commentary on the military

shooter genre that, as a whole, romanticises war.

“The Horror! The Horror!”

First, it is important to establish what exactly the concept of the Heart of Darkness

means. Simply put, when are put in extreme circumstances, humans are not only capable, but

willing to commit atrocities in order to survive. Not only that, but humans will do anything in

their power to justify their own actions, even if it means putting the blame on someone else.

In his essay “The Moral Conditions for Genocide in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness”

Michael Lackey posits:

For Conrad, the problem is not defining true morality; rather, the problem is

that morality is an empty signifier, a semiotic vacuity that dominant political

powers can strategically manipulate in order to justify crimes against humanity.

Put differently, Conrad rejects morality, not because it is an essential concept that

leads necessarily to social injustice, but because it is such an amorphous concept

21
 that political powers can so easily exploit in order to justify some of the most

heinous crimes against humanity, specifically genocide. (Lackey, 21-22)

In essence, when a person is put into a life or death situation, they have the capability of

shunning their morality in order to survive by any means necessary, even if it means the

killing of other human beings. The vehicle for exploring this concept is based in close studies

of one specific character. In Heart of Darkness Kurtz is the character we see transformed by

his heart of darkness when faced with the “primitive” natives he discovers in the Congo.

Marlow spends much of his time pondering about Kurtz, hearing about him, talking about

him. Marlow acts as a stand in for the reader, acting as a horrified onlooker to the breaking

down of Kurtz’ character, His transformation from a charismatic and seemingly virtuous man

to a monster, “Men looked up to him – his goodness shone in every act.” (Conrad, 71). The

narrative continuously raises the expectation of the reader and sets up Kurtz as an ideal human

being only to pull the rug out from under you. The reveal of Kurtz being a key example of the

concept of the Heart of Darkness that lies within all humans is devastating for both Marlow

and the reader.

Similarly, Spec Ops: The Line uses the narrative technique of a single close character

study; however, it executes it in a vastly different way. Video games are often described as

both interactive and reactive. The onus is put on the player to move the story forward, which

instils a sort of personal responsibility and sense of being in control of the narrative. Games

like Mass Effect and Fable have used choice as key mechanic in their games, changing the

outcomes of the story and how characters interact with the player. However, more often than

not this mechanic is quite surface level and does not leave room for introspection, or in some

cases does not affect the outcome of the game which has a set ending regardless of player

choice (Fable 2 and Life is Strange are key examples that come to mind). This is not an

22
inherently negative trait of these games, rather, they can be used as examples to compare to

the choices of Spec Ops: The Line.

In Spec Ops: The Line, the player controls a character named Walker as he travels

through Dubai which has been ravaged by freak storms. His main objective was

reconnaissance. Him, and his two companions Lugo and Adams simply had to find out if

there were any survivors and leave. However, Walker chooses to continue into Dubai to find

out what happened to the 33rd, a rouge group of American Soldiers that went MIA before the

events of the game. And so too does the player, because it is a video game and by video game

logic, you must continue to find out the story. Eventually the game becomes what seems to be

a wild goose chase for a man named Konrad, captain of the 33rd (who is a reimagining of the

character of Kurtz) who Walker believes to be responsible for the kidnapping of innocent

civilians. Choices like this continue to ramp up and become more consequential as the game

progresses. The extreme circumstances the game faces you with forces you to explore not

only Walker’s Heart of Darkness, but also your own as it plays upon the idea of player

agency, which shall be explored later in this section.

“To dream the nightmare out to the end.”

Spec Ops: The Line initially opens with a sequence where Walker and his companions

are in a helicopter, trying to shoot down other helicopters that are perusing them. At the end

of this scene an out of control helicopter crashing into them. It fades to black before showing

a screen with the text Earlier. This shows that everything we are about to experience is a

prelude to the helicopter scene. Later in the game when we finally get back to the said scene

the player is caught off guard by the following dialogue exchanged between Walker and his

companions:

Walker: Wait... wait, this isn't right!

23
 Lugo: Well, it's too late now!

Walker: Nah, no, I mean, we did this already!

Adams: What do you mean?

Walker: Ah, fuck it! It's nothing! Just shake these fuckin' guys!

In an interview with Ars Technica lead writer Walt Williams goes into detail about the

meaning of this scene and how it recontextualises all of the evens that happen before it:

When you get to it the second time, Walker directly calls out that you've

done this before," Williams said. "It's specifically designed so you would maybe

read it as the prologue is the only part of the game where you're really alive, and

you die in that chopper crash, and everything after that is Walker kind of working

through his guilt and forcing him to go through with what he has done and face up

to it. This is his own personal hell he is creating for himself.

He then goes on to explain the significance of transitions in the story: “Every time the

game is doing a normal transition, it fades to black. Whenever Walker is hallucinating, it

fades to white.” This is immensely significant given that the first transition in the entire game

is a fade to white right before you first control walker. This is confirmation that every event

before the helicopter scene is a recollection of previous events from Walker’s unstable and

guilty mind.

As stated before, Heart of Darkness’ narrative is communicated entirely from a position

of retrospect. The choice to have Marlow recounting the what transpired in the Congo gives

him the opportunity to reflect on his actions, his perceptions, and his biases. What Spec Ops:

The Line does is take that introspective narrator and seems pervert it in a way, by leaving the

majority of the introspection in the hands of the player, rather than with Walker himself.

24
Instead of following something more traditional, like Walker telling us the story from a

position of safety, he is forced to relive the horrific events that transpired as they warp and

become more surreal to reflect his inner struggle with his actions. The player must not only

bare witness to these events, but must actively take part in them, therefore stripping away any

depersonalisation that may come with hearing someone else tell a story.

Even without the explicit confirmation from Walt Williams that everything before the

helicopter scene is a hallucination, the game hints at it multiple times. The environment the

game places you in seems very unreal. For example, almost every chapter begins with Walker

descending in some way, regardless of how low-down Walker seems to be. This is usually

seen as a parallel for Walkers descent into his own personal struggle with guilt and PTSD. In

a video called “Spec Ops: The Line - Story Explanation and Analysis” video essayist Max

Derrat succinctly outlines many of the ways the game uses surreal imagery to hint at the

player that something is not quite right. One significant example is when passing through a

stairway there is a tree planted right in the centre that is sprouting leaves and generally seems

in good health. However, if the player walks up the stairs and turns back around the tree in the

centre has lost all of its leaves and appears to be dying. In this section of the video Derrat

muses about how this could signify Walker attempting to idealise his memories in order to

hide his shame, but that the real world always finds a way of seeping back in, “Maybe this is

Walker trying to project ideals into this hellish reality he finds himself in.” (Derrat) The game

also hints that this is all in Walker’s head is in chapter 9 of the game we come across a

memorial for fallen soldiers where Lugo and Adam’s names can be setting written down

despite them being right behind Walker. This suggests that they both died in the helicopter

seen and everything we are witnessing now is not real.

A smaller example is a character known as the Radioman who speaks to Walker while

he is gunning down soldiers from the 33rd. He seems to be omnipotent and he ruthlessly

25
mocks both Walker and the player for being complicit in the murder of dozens of people. In

some cases, it seems like he is directly addressing the player, which once again reminds them

that they are, in part, responsible for what is happening by choosing to engage with the game.

“Reports are pouring into the studio that everyone's favorite D-bags are down at the

mall. Rumor has it, they're trying to "rescue" even more people. You gotta love these guys.

They're just gonna keep on trying, even if it kills every last one of ya. Be sure to stop by and

tell 'em thanks...”

“I don't know what it feels like to execute people you swore to protect. But Konrad sure

does... And he's not talking to anyone at the moment.”

“Aw, jeez... where's all this violence coming from, man? Is it the video games? I bet it's

the video games.”

The first two quotes are clearly directed towards Walker, but the last quote seems to be

pointedly addressing the player themselves, reminding them that they are playing a video

game while simultaneously making them question their actions. In chapter 11 the player is

given a choice to shoot a man named Rigs or let him burn to death under a destroyed water

truck. Depending on the choice the player makes the environment changes to reflect that

decision. If the player decides to shoot Rigs, a pair of golden statues can be seen later on

where one statue is pointing a gun at the other. Derrat notes that “If the player acknowledges

the statues, the screen fades to white and the statues resume their original position.” (Derrat)

Similarly, if the player decides to let Rigs burn to death, the statues are seen to be made of

molten rock.

Later again, in chapter 11 there is a famous sequence where, while you are in a

darkened room inside a shopping centre fighting off “enemy” soldiers, they can be seen

turning into mannequins while the pre-existing mannequins move around the room. Derrat

26
once again posits that “This is obviously a commentary on the player’s mindless killing of

potential innocents.” (Derrat) This interpretation of the mannequin sequence is quite pertinent

in the discussion of what the concept of the Heart of Darkness means, as it puts the player into

a small room and, without thinking, the player continues with the killing out of desperation.

The flashing lights and illusions created in this scene instil fear into the player which causes

them to try and finish this section quickly. This involves the “mindless killing” that Derrat

mentions. Whether it be enemy soldiers or mannequins, the player will shoot whatever is in

front of them. This narrative structure seems to be a skewed and almost perverted version of

Heart of Darkness’. Marlow could already be considered an unreliable narrator, and Spec

Ops: The Line amplifies and transforms this concept to adapt to the storytelling medium of

video games by turning the lens back on the player.

The Famous White Phosphorous Scene

Throughout this chapter I have been alluding to atrocities that Walker commits, and

there are any number of them but there is one that stands out above the rest. Even people who

are only marginally aware of this game know about the infamous white phosphorous scene,

which is a testament to both its cultural significance as well and its emotional impact. Clips of

this scene have been captured from the game and reuploaded onto YouTube, the most popular

one is currently sitting at 1.1 million views at the time of writing this. There are countless

videos of people reacting to this scene in real time which have garnered hundreds of

thousands of views. The impact of this scene on the gaming world cannot be understated as

every news article and essay and discussion about this game can be seen exploring the

meaning of this scene in great detail; it has left a lasting impression in the gaming world.

The scene begins with Walker, Adams and Lugo positioned at a lookout looking down

at approximately 47 people in the previously mentioned 33 rd. Walker spots a mortar atop the

27
looking out and decides that they need to use it in order to get past the 33 rd. Lugo and Adams

immediately protest due to the cruel and horrific nature of what is inside it: white phosphorus.

Lugo: You're fucking kidding, right? That's white phosphorous.

Walker: Yeah, I know what it is.

Lugo: You've seen what this shit does. You know we can't use it.

Adams: Might not have a choice, Lugo.

Lugo: There's always a choice.

CPT Walker: No, there's really not.

White phosphorous is a pyrophoric compound (ignite when in contact with air) and has

been used in chemical warfare in the past. When in contact with skin white phosphorous

causes severe burns, which are often fatal, and can sometimes burn through clothing. The

thick smoke from this substance can also cause asphyxiation. The teammates reluctantly load

the mortar as Walker (i.e. the player) aims and launches the bombs of white phosphorous onto

the 33rd. Walkers hollow reflection can be seen in the screen of the computer used to aim the

mortar. Soon the yelling of the 33rd become screaming before all falls silent.

Once the team have descended from the lookout into the battlefield Adams says, “This

was too much.” Immediately regretting Walker’s decision. As you continue to walk through

the carnage, dying soldiers who are still burning and suffocating from the effects of the white

phosphorous can be seen crying in pain and even crawling and reaching towards Walker,

begging for help. Despite Lugo’s requests to stop and help them Walker continues onwards

insisting “There’s nothing we can do.” The scene comes to a climax when, at the end of the

camp you come across a severely burnt and dying man who asks why Walker did this. Walker

responds saying, “You brought this on yourself.” The man points off screen and says, “We

28
were helping.” Before he finally collapses and passes away due to his injuries. Walker turns to

see what the man was pointing at: dozens of innocent civilians, completely disfigured and

burned to death. These were the civilians that Walker and his team set out to save. As they

walk through the rows of dead bodies the realisation finally sets in what they did. The camera

then closes in on the site of a woman cradling her child to her chest, both completely charred

and petrified from the white phosphorous. In the background and Adams and Lugo can be

heard breaking down from the guilt.

Lugo: (pointing at Walker) This is your fault, goddammit!

Adams: Stop right there, Lugo.

Lugo: He wouldn't listen!

Adams: We didn't have a choice!

Lugo: He turned us into FUCKING KILLERS!

All this time Walker, and by extension, the player, have been gunning down members

of the 33rd who they believed were rounding up civilians to execute them when the reality is,

they were innocent from the start. There are hints of this throughout the game such as a sign

saying “Free Water” early on, which implies the 33rd are trying to help the civilians of Dubai.

But the player continues with the ceaseless murdering. This scene exemplifies the theme of

Heart Of Darkness. When put in extreme circumstances, humans can become brutal and

sadistic killers. Because of video game conventions, the player is compelled to kill these

people because they are trained to believe that they are in the right. Walker’s the good guy,

right? But he is not. Walker is not a hero, he never was. He’s a cold-blooded killer with no

regard for human life. And the player has been pulling the string the entire time, pushing him

forward, killing innocent people, fellow Americans. The game has received criticism for

shaming the player for something they did not have a choice in. But you always had a choice

29
to simply turn the game off and walk away. Walt Williams himself has stated in interviews

that the only true ending is the one where the player does what Walker was always meant to

do: once the original objective was complete, leave, turn off the game, and walk away. But

they did not because of that morbid curiosity and the cognitive dissonance that comes with

any sort of military shooters. Gamers generally want to see video games through to the end

for different reasons, be it completionism or the monetary value of games. Therefore, the

player really did have a choice, it is just not the fun one. In his essay “We Put Our Hand on

the Trigger with Him”: Guilt and Perpetration in Spec Ops: The Line” by Tobi Smethurst, he

very succinctly summaries why this scene is so effect from both a mechanical and storytelling

standpoint.

Just as our ethical triggers are activated, the player-subject disappears, and

we begin to assess our actions through our extra ludic morality, so Walker’s mask

slips: we see that the civilians’ deaths have affected him deeply, and he struggles

to rationalize and contextualize his actions. When he convinces himself to go on,

the player must go with him in order to see the story through to the end.

(Smethurst, 212)

This scene is the perfect example of humanities Heart of Darkness as it reflects every

person’s ability to commit atrocious and sadistic crimes when put in a circumstance where

they feel like they do not have a choice.

“We penetrated deeper and deeper into the heart of darkness”

By the end of the game it is very clear from the surreal imagery that Walker is in his

own personal hell. After the helicopter crash, he is surrounded by literal hellfire, alone. His

teammates presumably died in the Helicopter crash, as explained earlier. For the first time in

the game Walker finds himself moving upwards to finally meet Konrad. However, when he

30
finally reaches the top of his penthouse, he discovers Konrad’s dead body on the balcony. He

has been dead for months. The voice that he is been hearing over the radio was his projection

of his expectations for Konrad. This perfectly mimics the progression of Marlow’s perception

of Kurtz. He began the game idealising and admiring Konrad and gradually begins to hate

him in order to justify his actions. He shifts the blame for killing 47 innocent civilians onto

Konrad in order to cope with the guilt and trauma. But it was a farce. At this point we begin to

question is the player actually controlling Walker, or do we represent the last vestige of

Walker’s sanity in his increasingly damaged psyche? Our distrust and fear of him begins to

grow in parallel to his teammates as he tries to justify his actions to them and us until were

equally as disconnected from his as he is from reality. But we continue to follow him through

to the end. His idealisation of Konrad and eventual hatred it of him mimics the transformation

of Kurtz closely. Though not a literal recreation, finding Konrad as a literal empty husk

symbolises what Kurtz meant to Marlow by the end of the novel.

At this point in the game Walker begins to hallucinate Konrad taunting him from

beyond the grave for all the horrible thing he is done, and the player is given a choice. You

can either choose to make Walker kill himself, after which the game ends. Or you can choose

to kill Konrad, which triggers an ending where you can be “rescued” from Dubai. The

following dialogue occurs:

Falcon 1: You know, Captain, we drove through this whole city to find you. We... we

saw things. If you don't mind me asking, what was it like? How did you survive all this?

Walker: ...Who said I did?

This further supports the theory that this is Walkers’ own personal Hell and he will be

forced to relive the events that transpired throughout the game, over and over again. There is

also a much bleaker ending where the player chooses to not be rescued, but instead gun down

31
the soldiers trying to apprehend Walker. If the player succeeds in killing all of the soldiers,

Walker speaks into a walkie talkie stating, “Gentlemen, welcome to Dubai.” These are the

exact words spoken by Konrad to Walker at the beginning of the game and by the player

choosing to kill the soldiers they continue the cycle of endless killing.

As I mentioned earlier, this game is not just its own story, but also a commentary on the

flippant nature of military shooters, and a critique of how players interact with games. In the

final three chapters, if you die, the loading screen begins to mock you:

“Do you feel like a hero yet?”

“The US military does not condone the killing of unarmed combatants. But this isn't

real, so why should you care?”

“Collateral damage can be justified, if the gain outweighs the cost. How much do you

think Adams and Lugo are worth?”

“Cognitive dissonance is an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding two conflicting

ideas simultaneously.”

“To kill for yourself is murder. To kill for your government is heroic. To kill for

entertainment is harmless.”

Through these quotes the game is asking the player to consider their actions to this

point. Its mention of cognitive dissonance alongside statistics about real life war challenge the

player to consider their perception of video games as an entertainment medium. It asks the

player to consider the effect that it may have on their psyche as well as what they may be

ignorant or ambivalent to when it comes to the real-world consequences of what they are

simulating: war. Spec Ops: The line does share narrative parallels with Heart of Darkness in

the characters of Walker and Konrad. But it is not just a story about them. The function of this

32
game is to turn the lens around and onto the player, to make them consider the actions they

took throughout the game. The atrocities Walker committed would not be possible without the

input of the player. You chose to keep going, you chose to kill American soldiers, you chose

to kill 47 innocent people. The glorification of war should never go unchecked and Spec Ops:

The Line acts as a vehicle for introspection among game developers and players alike.

Walker, and by proxy, the player is put into an extreme circumstance, and in turn they enact

extreme and sadistic violence. The player is forced to explore their inner workings, their

moral compass, their Heart of Darkness.

33
 Medium Awareness

Video games provide a unique experience for the player as it makes them an active

participant in the action rather than a passive observer. When a person is reading a book or

watching a movie, they have no control in what happens to the characters or the story. And

with video games there is often a choice between performing actions for good or for evil.

More often than not player choses to be good for initial playthrough so they can see the

official and “cannon” endings before then taking the evil route out of morbid curiosity. This

kind of choice-based experience can only be provided by video games; thus, it invests the

player more deeply in the world they are exploring. Bloodborne and Spec Ops: The Line are

acutely aware of this concept and they play with narrative structures in order to subvert player

expectation. Both games take the idea of moral choice in video game narratives and flip it on

its head by making it so that every choice the player makes in an attempt to be good only lead

to worse outcomes for both the player character (PC) and non-player characters (NPC).

Hidetaka Miyazaki has always had an interesting perspective on player choice based on

how he treats the NPCs in his games. For example, in the Dark Souls series, when you

encounter an NPC the player is compelled to complete their “questline”, which basically

means seeing their stories to the end. In Dark Souls this usually manifests in the form of

killing enemies to help the NPCs stay alive or solving some sort of puzzle that leads to self-

realisation for said NPCs. However, in both the Dark Souls series and Bloodborne this very

rarely leads to a positive outcome. More often than not, interacting with NPCs and

progressing their questline leaves them worse for wear than if you had never spoken to them

at all. In Bloodborne there’s a specific quest that involves sending the residents of Yharnam to

Oedon Chapel, a safe hub for the characters in the game. However, though it is safe from the

beasts outside, this does not prevent the character’s suffering. In fact, this quest makes you

wonder if it would have been better if you had simply left them alone in their homes. In

34
Oedon Chapel the characters either go crazy or worse. In the case of Arianna, the prostitute,

her presence in the chapel garners the attention of the formless Great Once Oedon who then

impregnates her with a surrogate child. Though she doesn’t initially feel the pregnancy, once

the blood moon rises, she can be found in the chapel writhing in pain. Later in the game we

find her below, within the basement of the chapel after giving birth to an abomination, and

infant Great One. This incident is so traumatic that it drives her mad, leaving her a mess who

alternates between crying and laughing hysterically.

One of the more brutal examples is from an NPC named Alfred who, throughout the

game, gives the player insight into the history of Yharnam and is generally a pleasant person.

He seems to be a very helpful and kind hunter, however, if you help him with his questline

you find out that he is far from it. At one point in the game the player travels to Forsaken

Castle Cainhurst, where the Vilebloods (a race of vampiric-like people live. Cainhurst is a

clear nod to Bram Stoker’s Dracula). It is a mysterious place that is disconnected from the rest

of the world. You find out that a raid on the castle was performed by a group of hunters

known as Executioners, who massacred the residents of the castle, believing them to be

abominations and dangerous to humanity. The castle is filled with the ghosts of the murder

victims who are heard crying and defend themselves with daggers. We find out that Alfred is

a member of this faction of the hunters from the following dialogue:

In his time, Master Logarius led his executioners into Cainhurst Castle to

cleanse it of the Vilebloods. But all did not go well and Master Logarius became a

blessed anchor, guarding us from evil...Tragic, tragic times...that Master Logarius

should be abandoned in the accursed domain of the Vilebloods. I must free him,

so that he may be properly honoured in martyrdom.

35
 Once the player defeats Martyr Logarius, we meet the immortal Vileblood Queen.

Beside her is a table where an unopened invitation sits, which we give to Alfred so that he

may travel to Cainhurst as well. When we return to Cainhurst we find the Vileblood Queen

completely pulverised. She sits on her throne, completely reduced to a puddle of blood and

viscera. Alfred, in a maddened and unaware of the players presence says to himself:

Master, look! I've done it, I've done it! I smashed and pounded and

grounded this rotten siren into fleshy pink pulp! There, you filthy monstrosity!

What good's your immortality now! Try stirring up trouble in this sorry state! All

mangled and twisted, with every inside on the outside, for all the world to see! He

heh hah hah Hah! He heh heh ha ha ha ha!

Probably the most tragic example is that of a little girl we meet inside a window in

Yharnam. She asks us to find her father who went out to join the hunt. Her mother has gone to

look for him, but she too has not returned. She gives us a music box and tells us that it “It

plays one of daddy's favourite songs. And when daddy forgets us, we play it for him, so he

remembers.” Already hinting that the father is in a mentally compromised state. And sure

enough when we find him he’s gone completely mad and transforms into a beast. One a

rooftop nearby we also find the body of the girls’ mother. When we return to her, we have to

option to tell her to go to a safe space, Oedon Chapel. She decides to travel through the sewer

thinking it’s safe, however, she encounters a man-eating boar and is subsequently killed. We

find this information by killing the boar upon which it drops a bloody ribbon. When we return

to the window, the story only becomes more tragic as we find out that she has a sister, who

upon hearing about her sister’s death goes mad. We can hear her muttering to herself after we

return her sister’s ribbon: "What a perfect ribbon, and now it's mine. I can't wait to try it on.

Oh, it's wonderful..." If we return to the window one more time, we find it has gone dark and

below her house we can see she jumped to her death.

36
 I bring these up as examples of the characters being worse off than if we had left them

alone to emphasise the hopeless nature of Bloodborne. The little girl would have never died if

we didn’t interact with her. Her sister would have returned home, and they would have lived

through the night. But instead we send the little girl to her death which subsequently drives

her sister to commit suicide. If we had left Arianna in her house, she would have likely lived,

but instead she is driven mad by the horror of giving birth to an eldritch monstrosity. Alfred

would have simply stayed in his spot and not begin his search for vengeance. He was not even

one of the Executioners initially involved in the massacre at Cainhurst. He was simply an

admirer of Martyr Logarius. By us sending him there, we drive him into a spiral of rage. And

eventually, because his purpose is complete, he too, kills himself. This relates back to

Lovecraft and the general tone and theme that pervades his work: hopelessness. Lovecraft’s

stories serve to show how small and insignificant his protagonists are. They are always faced

with incredible and surreal situations but in the end they either die or go insane from the

unearthly knowledge they have been made privy to; this hopelessness can be seen the very

first few lines of Call of Cthulhu:

The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human

mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the

midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little;

but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such

terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either

go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety

of a new dark age. (Lovecraft 97-98)

Spec Ops: The Line has a similar approach to player choice only having negative

consequences. By choosing to go into the streets of Dubai and live out the horrors contained

37
within Walker’s mind, we are complicit in what he has done. And by continuing deeper into

Dubai the choices become less and less your own. The genius of the white phosphorous scene

is that up until this point you have had some form of choice, like choosing to save men that

are hung from their wrists. In the end those choices were meaningless as everything we see

has already played out in reality. It’s completely in Walker’s head and by choosing to

continue you are forcing him to relive the horrible things he’s done. And when the white

phosphorous scene comes around, it’s the only time where the game very literally forces the

players hand. Some may see this as a cheap way to guilt-trip the player, but this design is

meant to make players consider the collateral damage that comes with war. Walt Williams

himself stated in the previously mentioned interview that not allowing the player to choose in

this scenario is intentional:

These things happen in war, collateral damage, innocent lives are taken all

the time. Yeah, it'd be great if the soldier could reload the checkpoint and do it

differently now that he knows something's happening, but he can't. That's what I

think makes the story of Spec Ops so effective, walking into a game that's not

going to embrace you and completely bend to your will. It's a game that is in fact

going to be opposed to your will, and it's going to walk you through an experience

that is tailored for you not to like it.

The concept of player choice and the subsequent subversion of it is something that can

only be pulled off in a video game. Other forms of media do not function in the same way as

video games. When you are reading a book or watching a movie, if you stop halfway through,

the story is not finished. The audience is headed toward a set conclusion and even if the

person doesn’t finish it, the ending remains constant. But in the case of Bloodborne and Spec

Ops: The Line, the only good ending is the ending where the player walks away. In the case of

Bloodborne the choice is either, selfishly leave the dream and put the responsibility on some

38
other poor soul, become part of the problem and continue the cycle of the hunters, or ascend

to become a Great One which, in turn, means that everything that once meant something to

the hunter is now considered insignificant and moot. The reason they came to Yharnam is lost

with their motivation; nothing really matters any more. The only good ending is where the

player puts down the controller, which simply means that the PC is just another hunter, lost to

the hunt. No one is hurt. It is the same in the case of Spec Ops: The Line, the best scenario

possible is where you walk away like Walker was meant to do in the first place. If you simply

do what the game told you to do in the first place and left when you were meant to, no one

would have been hurt. Walker would not have to keep reliving his guilt over and over again.

He would have been allowed to rest in peace. But by the player continuing forward, they only

exacerbate the problem. Outside of this the best ending you can get is to let Walker kill

himself. If not, he is simply doomed to either relive his pain, or continue the cycle of murder

and become the monster he hated so much. By playing the game to its conclusion the player

subjects themselves to witness the manifestation Walker’s heart of darkness. Marlow made

the choice to seek out Kurtz and through this bore witness to horrible things, but Spec Ops:

The Line uses the tools it has been given to make the player not only bare witness to it, but to

also be an active participant.

This notion of “gameplay” calls for a meaning of play that is based in the

portrayal of a defined character and role, and an immersive, yet somewhat

improvisational, performance, as opposed to a set of ludic meanings that connect

the second half of the word to casual amusement and leisure (Zalot, 295)

In simple terms this means that character and immersion are key in order for narrative

based games to hold any significance to the player. A game must use the tools that it has been

given in order to create a uniquely video game-like experience that distinguishes itself from

other forms of media. And in the case of these games they take advantage of the medium they

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choose to tell their stories. They are as aware of the medium they are working with as they are

about player expectation and what it means to be immersed in a game. They have taken

gaming conventions and clichés and flipped them on their head in order to provide an

experience that can exclusively be achieved in video games. It is what make these games

stand out in their respective genres as well as in the context of literary recreations.

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 Conclusion

In this essay I have explored the way Bloodborne adapts the tone of Lovecraft’s body of

work and incorporats it into its own story. The narrative and mechanic methods Bloodborne

uses are unique to the medium of video games and help in exemplifying the themes that

pervade Lovecraft’s body of work. Through the use of choice-based mechanics Bloodborne

highlights the hopeless nature of its world and of its characters. Bloodborne incorporated the

concept of dreams, inspired by The Dreams in the Witch House and the horrible implications

that arise from dreams being a method of communing with eldritch horrors man should not

know. I also showed how Hidetaka Miyazaki’s artistic vision was able to re-create

Lovecraft’s iconic Great Old Ones while still retaining its own identity.

In this essay I also explored the way in which Spec Ops: The Line perfectly represented

the capability for evil contained within humanity from Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness.

Spec Ops: The Line used the thematic elements of Heart of Darkness to create a compelling

story as well as a critique of the attitudes towards war in military shooters at the time.

Through choice-based mechanics and its subsequent subversion of them, it forces moments of

introspection onto the player. It makes the player think about their role in the story and just

how much of what they did was preventable by simply walking away. It provided an

emotional and personal experience that can only really be done in the medium of video

games.

Lastly, I discussed the importance of the subversion of player expectation in these

games. The developers of these games have a distinct and interesting attitude towards player

choice. They flip the traditional model for choice-driven narratives by making the player

exclusively responsible for all of the horror they experience. It violates the safe space that

players are used to and confronts them with the grim reality of what they are experiencing.

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They provide no solace or reprieve for the player, reminding them that sometimes inaction is

much less harmful than action in the case of their stories, which goes against everything

gamers are taught. Video games offer something that traditional media cannot, personal

responsibility for the outcome of the story as well of offering the player a new choice. Is it

better to see a game through to its end and be accountable for the worst-case scenario? Or is it

better to walk away and do no harm? Is seeing the “true” ending of the game worth all of the

actions needed to take in order to get there? How applicable are these philosophies to real

life? These games do not hold the players hand in this situation. It allows the player to

extrapolate their own meaning from their experience and answer the question for themselves,

which is something only a video game can do.

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