this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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I always hear people talk about the white phosphorus part of the game, but the game doesn't give you a choice there. I much prefer the parts where you are actually given a choice. The one that I remember the best is the civilians, you don't have to kill them and I just fired a warning shot and they quickly dispersed. Apparently some people will gun them down.
You hear people talk about it, because it's so bad and jarring and forced. People keep bringing up specops as some great writing inversion of a shooter trope, when it really just doesn't get what agency is.
If you don't give a player agency, you can't then berate them for doing something wrong, because they didn't actually do a thing. The phosphorous part of the game is a thing you don't get a say in, but the game blames you as a player.
It's like me blaming you for reading the word phosphorus, when you had basically no choice in that.
If you don't give agency, you can only ever blame the character. And the writer made the characters, not the player.
Maybe that's kind of the point? Both the player and the character chose to be there in the first place and civilian casualties are accepted as an inevitable during war.