“We want [this game] to be the most provocative shooter you’ve ever played,” boasts Cory Davis, lead designer on the recently announced Spec Ops: The Line. Without elaborating too much on this ballsy declaration, he goes on to offer some background on this promising new shooter before letting the game do most of the talking.

Like a Roland Emmerich (2012) blockbuster hopped up on Red Bull, The Line’s premise sees a modern metropolis torn a new one by a natural disaster. The surreal city of Dubai is Mother Nature’s target as she unleashes a city-swallowing sandstorm, leaving the entire population either dead or missing. In the devastation’s wake, the storybook-like metropolis’ once sky-reaching spires barely poke through massive dunes, and the lush, marble-and-gold-decorated lobbies of its swanky resorts serve as giant sandboxes. Following the catastrophic event, protagonist Walker leads a three-man Delta Force squad into ground zero to rescue Conrad, a revered Colonel who stayed behind during the storm to supposedly help with the evacuation, and who doubles as the story’s main villain.

Hinting at Davis’ bold claim, our demo of The Line opens with the squad arriving upon a grisly scene: next to an upside-down American flag — a U.S. military distress signal — they discover a dead Delta Force member hanging from his feet, head in the sand. But before they can comprehend the meaning behind this gruesome site, enemy fire begins raining down on them. As unidentified baddies snipe from behind the twisted metal and fragmented concrete of a destroyed skyscraper, Walker’s team scurries behind cover, and The Line delivers its first glimpse of its biggest feature.

You see, the sand not only serves as an eye-pleasing backdrop to the action — it often is the action. The material is deeply woven into the gameplay through cinematic set-pieces, scripted events, and dynamic player-driven moments, and publisher 2K is hoping The Line will do for sand what BioShock did for water. During this particular scene, the huddled heroes fall victim to Spec Ops’ impressive tech, as their seemingly safe cover spot turns out to be anything but: the ground disappears beneath their boots, and it’s revealed they’re actually occupying the surface of a building’s buried glass ceiling. As their fragile support gives way, the three are dropped into the interior of the structure, where they’re afforded temporary refuge from the trigger-happy foes outside. Things go FUBAR quick, though, as their unintentional escape route is soon discovered, and the bad guys decide to drop bricks of C4 through the shattered roof.

Not long after Walker and his men outrun the ensuing explosion’s heel-nipping ball of fire, they arrive at a balcony overlooking a lobby teeming with more gun-toting goons. Making things worse, a new team of snipers have stationed themselves atop a sand dune pressed against the building’s glass exterior. Walker doesn’t immediately spot this new threat due to the darkness created by the sunlight-eclipsing sand. But after spying a few rays peeking through, he yells — as iconic Die Hard villain Hans Gruber once did — “Shoot the glass!” And with that, we were treated to another dose of sand-spilling action, as the grainy bits poured through the gaping opening, effectively burying the lobby-dwelling baddies. Rubbing salt into his enemies’ wounds, Walker and his men then use the avalanche as a makeshift staircase out of the building.

The demo concludes with the squad walking back toward the hanging soldier while wind whips sand in their faces, perhaps hinting at another storm on the horizon. As they approach the morbid scene for a second time, Conrad cryptically crackles over a radio transmission, “Welcome to Dubai, gentlemen.”

While this complex villain’s still-secret motives promise a story packed with potentially controversial double-crosses and moral ambiguities, we were compelled to come back to Davis’ “most provocative” claim. And though he never took a direct shot at Modern Warfare 2’s airport level, his elaborate response begged for some between-the-lines reading: “There are a number of ways to be provocative, and what we want to provoke is emotions from the player centered around our characters as they go on this journey into the heart of darkness. To do that, we place the player in situations where he has to decide between what’s moral and what he came into this situation feeling was the right thing to do. And then we put a twist on those situations that makes them much more complex. Those situations and decisions impact the way the game plays out and allow the player to see the consequences of his actions. So, instead of being provocative by, for example — and without referring to other games — going into a shopping mall and killing people, we feel it’s much more provocative when you have a relationship with the characters in the game that are having to be in these situations and make those decisions.” Oh snap? Has Activision just been served? Well, maybe.

The promise of this potentially potent narrative combined with the awesome ability to create sand-valanches, engage in frantic firefights, and control a squad has us looking forward to playing in the sand when Spec Ops: The Line rocks the fall with all the force of a city-destroying natural disaster.