A team of gamers has calculated exactly how many deaths take place in Spec Ops: The Line, and the final count is a staggering number for such a short campaign. The critically acclaimed game was originally released in 2012 and was worked on by Yager Development, a studio that is now part of Tencent's growing gaming portfolio.
Spec Ops: The Line was not a commercial success when it first launched but has developed a cult following in the years since, with many praising its morally ambiguous story and the tough choices that it forces players to make. Taking inspiration from the likes of Apocalypse Now, it also tried to critique the idea of war being a form of entertainment in games. The critical success of Spec Ops: The Line led to Yager Development working on Dead Island 2, although publisher Deep Silver later pulled the studio from the project.
A group of fans has discovered the minimum number of kills needed to beat Spec Ops: The Line, revealing 1,168 must die during the course of the campaign. The massive death toll, which was posted to Reddit by SexPositiveGamer, means the game has a death rate of one kill every 15 seconds or so. The video embedded below counts every single death, including the 111 that die due to the game's controversial portrayal of a white phosphorus attack. According to SexPositiveGamer, around 16% of the figure is made up of civilians and refugees, with the vast majority of victims being American soldiers. The group also explained it avoided killing innocents as much as possible and didn't kill enemies continuously during the infinite respawn sections, meaning the death count could have been far higher.
Despite the fact it was released almost a decade ago, Spec Ops: The Line has been in the news recently, as it has been compared to the controversial Six Days in Fallujah reboot under development at Highwire Games. This studio is made up of former Bungie devs who worked on the likes of Halo and Destiny. The game has been criticized for portraying a real-world event rather than a fictional conflict like that of Spec Ops: The Line. That being said, Spec Ops: The Line isn't immune to criticism, and outlining this high of a death count certainly makes an argument for the game being indulgent in its portrayal of human loss.
Spec Ops: The Line has remained an important game over the last 9 years, in large parts thanks to a narrative that subverted what players had come to expect from modern shooters. While players were likely aware of the type of violence in the game, even ardent fans were probably unaware of the full extent of the death and destruction it includes.