Hallucinations In The Crucible

The main character’s mental health deteriorates rapidly, experiencing hallucinations and loss of reality. In one scene, there is a consistent strobe light on as he shoots and there are also mannequins where we shot the soldiers. In another, someone surprises Walker and he jumps on him and beats him to death with his gun. Walker has a hallucination that there are burning victims running towards him when he is in the middle of a later battle, and Adams calls out to Walker to get him out of it. He also has a dream that is like the hallucinations he experiences where a victim says “There was always a choice. You just fucked it up.” and “I thought my job was to protect this city from the storm, but I was wrong. I have to protect this city from you”.

At the end of the game, I see Konrad painting dead people with the woman holding her child at the center of it. He says 47 innocent people were killed because of his actions and that reports of his survival were “greatly exaggerated. My player has flashbacks about the worst experiences he experienced. My soldiers saw me react to outlandish hallucinations that attempted to make me be the “hero” and realign myself morally. Understanding that this game was fueled by my hallucinations was very upsetting. It made me question whether Spec Ops could be considered a game or art, since my enjoyment decreased. I came to the conclusion that it should be considered a game and art because there were high levels of creativity in the gameplay, storyline, and characters. Each development was well-thought out and the player had an integral role in the

Tavinor’s article argues that video games should be categorized as art. He outlines competition as one of the reasons that people to object to including games as an art form. However, competing does not take away from the aesthetic value of the game, and like Tavenor stated, if someone were to submit a poem into a contest no one would think twice about considering that art. When does competition start? If someone makes a painting with an intent to make something prettier than their brother has, would that be considered art? I think that competition is not a factor. There are marvelous aesthetics in Spec Ops that I doubt anyone can not call art if they have seen the game. Art has a long history of breaking through molds and forcing people to see concepts differently. Spec Ops broke the mold of what I assumed war video games could be and made me see the complexity of war differently. It made me asks questions I never thought to produce before, which I think is one of the most valuable aspects of art. As The New Art of Video Games states, these works engage with their audiences differently by using a narrative and letting their decisions change the outcomes. It may be a unique form of art because of its roots in technology, but that is no reason to reject it. One question did stick with me as a result of playing this game. At the end, a soldier asked how we survived