Spec Ops Draws The Line At “Gore Porn”

It’s always tough to accurately portray a warzone. You don’t want to be insensitive but show too little and it may as well be Cold War propaganda but show too much and things very easily become ridiculous and that’s when you start to lose the player. The development team for Spec Ops: The Line has been constantly aware of this according to senior designer Shaun Frison when he recently spoke to RPS.

Frison says that the team has navigated the narrow line between “messed up” and “gore porn” in order to capture horrors of war as best they could although it’s very difficult to keep the scale from tipping to God of War levels of gratuitous violence.

“I think it’s a really fine line,” said Frison. “It’s something that we have really struggled a lot with while making the game. How do you show how messed up all of this is and then moving into gore porn or gun porn. I think there’s less risk of that 20 years ago because people hadn’t gotten so used to it, but it’s become such a huge part of gaming, that it’s fun to make somebody’s body explode.

“It’s difficult to say, ‘This is happening because this is what happens in war,’ rather than, ‘This is happening because it’s fucking awesome.’”

Spec Ops is set in the ruined remains of Dubai following a killer sandstorm and ever since the game resurfaced last year, it has been looking more like a survival horror with clear similarities to Apocalypse Now although Heart of Darkness has also been cited as a source of inspiration. In addition to managing the gore, it’s been tough to set just the right tone and atmosphere for the game.

“We have you joyfully bombing the hell out of people, which gives a sense of power, but then you have to go down and walk through the aftermath of what you actually did, so you get both sides. The fun side and then the regret of what you did. I think the fact that it felt fun makes the impact that much worse.”

Check out the interview up top. Unfortunately, as awesome as Spec Ops looks, it’s been pushed back from it’s April/May release to the first half of publisher Take Two’s fiscal 2013 so that’s any time between April and October effectively. It’ll eventually release on PC, PS3 and Xbox 360.

Here, have some screenshots if you really want to see more. Oh and those sacks next to Frison in the interview are filled with PoW’s (Potatoes of War).