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| Where you spend the night in Firewatch |
| Quick Info | |
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| Reviewed by: | Mark Goninon |
| Developer: | Campo Santo |
| Publisher: | Panic/Campo Santo |
| Release Date: | 10 Feb 2016 |
| Time played: | 4.2 hours |
My Relationship with Walking Sims
Firewatch has been sitting on my wishlist for some time. It's a game that has sold over 2.5 million copies and holds a Metascore of 81 as well as a "Very Positive" rating on Steam based on 89% of 71,342 user reviews rating the game positive. It's won several awards and was even named Polygon's Game of the Year for 2016. And while I did eventually wishlist the game and ended up purchasing it last year, there was a time I wouldn't even touch a game like Firewatch.
I never really liked my first experience with "walking simulators" and I wasn't alone in this regard. In fact, they go by the term "exploration games" nowadays, perhaps to shake off the negative connotations associated with the original term which was often used in a pejorative manner. You'd often find oldschool adventure game players being the most vocal about this since they'd be wondering where is the exposition? Where are the characters you can talk to? Where are the puzzles? The games seemed light on gameplay when compared to the likes of Lucasarts and Sierra adventures from the golden era of adventure games.
However, a couple of things changed. Walking simulators started maturing as a genre, stories started becoming more about the characters, the games started to become more interactive and sometimes they did interesting things like inverting gaming tropes. They became seamless, immersive experiences, not a game trying to tell a story with some puzzles plonked in there for the sake of gameplay.
Now don't get me wrong, I still love a good ol' point 'n' click adventure, but the second thing that changed was I started to warm to the genre. I realised there were some good walking sims out there and sometimes you didn't want to be frustrated by weird moon logic and just wanted to enjoy a story, a bit like reading a book before you went to bed. People like me started accepting the genre for what it is: it had cons but it had things to offer too, especially for time-poor adults.
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| Henry talks about his wife |
Convincing Characters, Themes and Setting
So, Firewatch. Critically acclaimed, commercially successful walking simulator. What is it all about? The year is 1989 and you play the role of a man named Henry, who has an Australian wife called Julia that sadly develops early onset dementia. During a bad patch in his marriage Henry takes a job as a fire lookout in Shoshone National Park in Wyoming. While it's mostly a lonely existence, he's able to keep in radio contact with a fellow lookout in another watch tower several miles away. As you play the role of Henry, over the following months, you'll encounter issues you have to resolve which usually involve preventing forest fires and reporting any potential ones. While your tasks seem rather mundane at first and things are uneventful, as you explore the park you'll realise things aren't what they seem and that many secrets are hidden waiting to be uncovered.
While there is only one person you really get to converse with for the majority of the game (that being fellow lookout Delilah) the interactions between your character, Henry, and Delilah feel authentic, a testament to the excellent scriptwriting by Campo Santo and voice acting by Rich Sommer and Cissy Jones. There are times it's genuinely entertaining as you talk to Delilah on the radio.
Also, the touching story of how a fairy tale life full of promise heads downhill especially when your wife develops early onset dementia is a story grounded in reality which is rarely seen in classic video games. Life is messed up sometimes, relationships are complicated and fallible characters finding their own ways to deal with guilt and regret makes this game feel real.
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| You even get to learn a bit about indigenous culture while playing Firewatch |
Even the ending is somewhat anti-climactic, melancholic and probably not what you're going to expect. But in a way, it works: it feels more realistic and it keeps with the theme of the entire game.
There are also a lot of nods to important people and historical events that helps you feel like you're living in the 1980s again (for those of us old enough to remember, of course). It's just yet another way the developers have created a convincing world for you to explore.
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| Henry consults his map and compass |
Itching to Explore
For those that love exploring the wilderness with nothing more than a compass and map, you're going to enjoy hiking around the national park in this game. In reality, you're quite limited to where you can go due to valleys being separated by cliffs that serve as entryways/doors between areas, but it's a clever illusion.
The game's intriguing story will also motivate you to finish this game; you're always wondering what each day will bring especially as you approach the mid-game where things start to get interesting. I was hooked and kept wanting to learn more about Henry's predicament.
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8
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Firewatch is an example of a good walking simulator: a game that motivates you to explore Shoshone National Park in the 1980s and discover the secrets hidden underneath. The wilderness isn't the only thing you'll explore as you'll also experience complex relationships between characters, which is rarely done convincingly in computer games: Firewatch manages to pull this off and this is what elevates it above its peers. |
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