10 Best "The Marketing Was A Lie" Video Game Reveals

Until The Line, the Spec Ops brand was a forgettable series of third-person military shooters. Initially a realistic, tactical combat sim, the series became tailored more towards the mainstream as it changed publishing hands and platforms.

Migrating from the PC to the PlayStation, the series became a much more generic shooter. When Call Of Duty came along with its level of polish and accessibility, it was pretty much over for the Spec Ops games. Ten years passed by until The Line was announced, and its marketing intentionally reminded us that there was nothing special about Spec Ops.

This strategy was a gambit. By selling the game as another generic shooter set in the Middle East (A sandstorm-ravaged Dubai, specifically), they set themselves up to subvert expectations. Nobody expected to find themselves playing a psychological thriller adapted from Joseph Conrad's Heart Of Darkness and Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

Other than a base-level "war is hell" story, the real story of the game was a meta-narrative about our relationship with violent media, especially video games. No one would have ever expected a Spec Ops game to inspire countless think pieces and even a book of critical analysis and deconstruction.