For a piece of media to count as a “video game,” it seems that it must do something with the essential “gamey-ness” of the medium. That is to say, it must use interactivity in a meaningful way. Here’s where many walking simulators, often all too content to present an experience that has more in common with film than games, tend to fall woefully short. Sure, plenty of walking simulators tell captivating stories full of compelling characters and interesting settings, but it’s rare that these stories couldn’t be replicated — if not improved upon — in another medium.

This is my primary issue with Firewatch. It’s a riveting experience, beautifully presented and highly polished, but one that sadly underutilizes it’s medium to explore its ideas. Yes, it features some excellent writing and industry-leading voice acting (the stirring prologue and distinctly human quality of the dialogue deserve special recognition), but like a movie, here the player can do little else but sit back and enjoy the show. You aren’t given agency to steer conversations in a meaningful way. You occasionally get some say in the finer details, but never the big picture. Similarly, the game world is visually stunning, but contains little depth beneath the surface. Players aren’t rewarded for exploring off the beaten path; there’s little to find that the the game’s linear narrative isn’t already driving you toward. Environmental interactivity is next to non-existent, save for a few scripted moments at pre-determined times and locations. So while it’s undoubtedly nice to get to know Shoshone National Forest well enough that you can get around without a map, ultimately the whole gamespace ends up feeling like little more than a set. A gorgeous set, but a set all the same.

And so I’m left feeling conflicted about Firewatch; as a walking simulator, it’s as good as it gets. But ultimately, I’m left feeling a little unfulfilled that this is all it is. A top shelf walking simulator, but not quite a top shelf game.

This was one of my first forays into the "walking simulator" style of games. I think I saw this advertised in Game Informer and the story & setting of a national park sort of intrigued me.

As mentioned, it's a walking simulator, so the most you do gameplay wise is walk around and use the interact button to climb a rock face or push through some brush. The other interaction you have is a dialogue system that comes into play when communicating with your supervisor over the radio. You can radio in about any little thing you see and get her 2 cents. Like any game with branching dialogue, I don't know how much what you say affects the outcome of the game.

I really like the art style of this game. It's simplisitc with a sort of watercolor, vintage, blocky, 50s poster look to everything. Lots of solid, bright colors bathed in sunshine. The music is minimalistic, most of the game soundtrack is ambient noises of the woods with little acoustic guitar riffs coming in during the extra long treks across the map or at pivotal moments. As a lover of music, I would've preferred a more present soundtrack.

There's a lot of little neat places to explore on the map that aren't related to the main story beats that flesh the world out more. Cabins with ghost stories, crashed snow sleds, and notes left in supply boxes that tell a story.

Now, on to the story, which means on to the spoilers. The narrative doesn't overstay it's welcome, really I wouldn't have mind if it stayed a little longer. You can tell this is an indie game right from the start. The whole game begins with a short interactive novel that sets up your character, Henry, and they don't waste time on the tragic backstory. Henry's wife has early on-set dementia and he doesn't know how to cope with it, which leads him to get away from the world for the summer, working as a fire watchman. Though this plot point serves more as character building for Henry that occasionally comes up.

Upon replaying this, I did notice a weird fluctuation in tone. One moment, Henry and his supervisor, Delilah, are diving into their personal issues and within two lines of dialogue they are back to cracking wise at each other. Again, Henry is out here to escape the issues with his wife, but that's an afterthought most the time. The main story starts off a little slow, which is fine as it helps get you into this world & the mystery. You scare off some teen girls your first day only to find out the next day they cut the communication lines out of the park, and you run across a shadowy figure near your tower. Over the next few days, a mystery starts to develop as it seems someone is spying on Hank and Delilah for an unknown reason and there's some odd things in the park; abandoned backpacks, Area 51 style fences, and a locked cave. Delilah & Henry start becoming paranoid and break into the supposed government listening site to find a bunch of strange machines & reports on the two firewatchers. During this time you also learn about the previous fire watchman, Ned, and his son and you're tracking your own forest fire that's sprung up. Well, that fire gets out of control and as you evacuate all the mystery is revealed. The conclusion is one of those things a college English major would love to dissect and over analyze because some of the story & the overall themes are left to interpretation. Here's my thought.

It turns out the former firewatcher's son died rappelling a cave, I believe it was an accident from a father trying to make his son like the same things he does & not realizing his fault, something I can relate to, but there's a debate he purposefully killed his son. Ned then became a wilderness hermit and scares off anyone who nears the cave. The whole idea of the government conspiracy is just a red herring created by Ned to mess with Henry's head. The site you broke into was just a university soil research site.

Now, there's some obvious themes embedded in this story, but I'm not an expert analyzer. Besides the silhouette of Ned at the beginning, you never meet any other person face to face, Delilah is only heard over the radio. This may be because Campo Santo didn't have the time or money to animate characters or they chose to have no characters to reinforce the isolationism, I think it was a mix of both. The main theme to this story seems to be running from tragedy & how we handle grief. Delilah ran away from her life with a good man and covers up her feelings with humor and sarcasm, though she starts to fall apart at the end after she learns of Ned's son's death. Ned runs from his problems and becomes an angry survivalist. How Hank deals with it probably depends on how you play him, but for me, he is sort of a sad sap who is conflicted on whether what he did to his wife is right & what he should do with his life.

All in all, this game could've been a few hours longer because the story seems to start to rush at the end with all the mystery threads coming to a head. Still I enjoyed this game, and the short length lends itself to replayabliity. The writing is well done, Hank & Delilah feel like relatable characters you sympathize with. I'm willing to buy Campo Santo's next game to see what they offer.

NOT MY YOUTUBE VIDEO -- It just summarizes my thoughts perfectly (and they deserve all the fans they can find).

I played through this game a couple days ago and I haven't had anyone to talk about it. The discussion here pretty much reconciled all of the feelings I have had about it.

I see a bunch of numbers all over the place throwing 8-9.5 around for this game, and I just didn't feel it. I liked it, but I didn't know why or how much. I'd say I'm sitting somewhere between Colin and the other three. I appreciate the feelings it made it feel, but I was really put off by how much it just didn't matter. I haven't played many of the other "emotional" games floating around the last couple years, so this was a new experience for me. I let myself get carried away and I was invested. I was freaking out and on edge at the 2/3rds point where everything seems to be getting out of control and I was so excited to see how the rest of the story panned out. I had to stop playing right about that point and came back to it the next day. I was amped, but quickly as the rest of the game wound down, it felt like "Nope, nevermind. That part of the story literally doesn't matter anymore." "Yep, this part too." "Oh, and now it's over and nothing mattered".

I can get on-board with the thoughts explaining that that's part of the point. Stuff like that just happens in life. Not everything means something and you don't always have clear answers. That's fine. I guess it felt like this game just rode the line too close to the middle between "Here's a bunch of stuff that you should pay attention to because it's going to matter" and "Life is life, deal with it.". Like Colin said: Go in with tempered expectations. I, like Greg, let myself get caught up in the seeming hype, though really had no idea what I was getting in to.

I let the game take me on the ride, and it just wasn't as satisfying as I expected. Not because it didn't do exactly what I wanted to in the end. That's fine, let it be a lose/lose. Not everything is happy. But don't take me on this ride and invest me with all of the world-building and choice to leave me with "Meh, doesn't matter". If you wanted to make a movie, make a movie. If you wanted to tell a story through a game (a la Gone Home, Rapture, etc), do that. But don't string me along with this idea that I matter to the game if I don't.

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A friend had first told me to play Firewatch almost a decade ago. They suggested I play it with my wife all in one sitting. This particular friend is very careful with what single player games he gives his time to. I made the mental note and yet the years went one.

I next thought of the game when I heard the developer of the game had entered a partnership with valve to publish their next game. In typical valve fashion, members of the team joined valve, their promising looking game was put on indefinite hiatus, the members of that previous company presumably sucked into the collective.

I finally came to play the game because I grew tired of its thumbnail mocking me from the stuffed to the brim 'Backlog' category in Steam and I'm glad I finally did. I was brought to tears within the first few minutes and again at a pivotal story point - I can't say that about many games or similar experiences.

After that initial text based introduction that had me tearing up, running to go hug my wife, I was first struck by the art style and quality of the animations - imagine something Pixar-esque that has a real bounce and air in motion. Next, the relationship between 'Hank' and 'D' that starts to blossom as they settle into their summer gets blown open with a thrilling injection of mystery and from that point on I had to know how the game ended.

I hope you don't wait as long as I did to play this game after reading this review borne recommendation.

One of the best narrative driven "Walking Simulator" type games. In particular the voice acting and writing are top notch, especially between Henry, the main character, and Delilah, his boss, who you only ever hear on the radio. The game hits you with emotional and very realistic human story-lines from the very beginning.

The main gameplay is navigating your watch area and completing objectives Delilah gives you (example, go tell off some teenagers setting off fireworks in the park). You use your compass and map so its a bit more interactive. What's really unique is the main mechanic where you use your walkie talkie to point out everything and talk to Delilah. I found myself making sure to comment on most everything I saw to Delilah. I just wanted to know more about her, or hear what genuinely funny joke she would make about something, or just share what I was seeing with her. The magic of the game really is that relationship where you don't really know Delilah but that is the only person you speak to for the whole game. I'm a sucker for those types of stories, where you bond with an unknown person over an unusual situation (and some beautiful scenery).

The game builds up mystery for you to uncover, and many found the ending disappointing. I found the ending actually great, and its clever how the game builds on the player's sense of imagination and suspense, which is always more wild than anything the game comes up with. Ultimately, to me, the game's story is about 2 damaged humans who are imperfect, navigating difficult lives.

Worth note, I had several glitches where Henry got stuck on shrubs and I could not move the character so I had to reload the game. I never really lost more than a few minutes of progress due to it saving often though.

You have all summer to be the best firewatcher you can be (aka not great), in a forest where mysterious events keep coming up, while your only anchor to reality is the talks you have with your firewatcher boss via talkie walkie.

A great place to lose your mind would you say ? Yes, but I would have loved a stronger build of that intensity, and a use of the unreliable narrator.

I appreciated the soundtrack, the walks in the forest and beautifuls landscapes, and how the mystery is presented at first. The voice over is nice (special mention for the sweet voice of Delilah, hi there), but the writing of the dialogue could have used some work to pull us in. Also why make choice based dialogue if there is no point in choosing anything and when the point of view of the player seems forced? So I was drawn to the "worst" reply everytime I could, or to not to answer at all, which was kind of fun.

Another thing I disliked was how the days ended not by choice but when the storyline of the day was over, no matter where we were on the map. It made the times when we had to walk across the map to get anything kind of fake. Especialy because there was no surprises here and there, and if there was something to discover the character would start having a conversation about it before I even saw it myself.

Overall, I kept playing mostly because it was meditative, with nice voice acting and soundtrack with a lot of silence and forest noises, and to know what was the mystery, but I was quite disapointed with that last part.

I would have really enjoyed for the game to have more of everything. More dialogues, more drama, more mystery, more small tasks (there is almost none), the all summer to be played day by day, with big events or daily little things, and with the player having to come home to start a new day.

TW of the game : strong theme of alcoholism throughout the game. Also the weird storyline about the teenagers at the beginning of the game. We are playing an alcoholic old white cis dude (why would you want to play that dude by the way ?) who at some point spotted two teenage girls skinny bathing in the lake. And your boss advises you to do anything that comes to mind to scare them away because they aren't respecting the place's rules. It doesn't get creepier than that, thankfully, but seriously ? WTF guys.

Hours played : 4.6 hours (finished)

Firewatch was a pleasant surprise for me that charmed me the more I played. The environments and the dialogue between Henry and Delilah were done so well that it brought me very deeply invested in the story. Which is actually what caused me to feel disappointed by its ending. I felt that there was so many intertwining stories that I thought were going to be relevant and then they were not. And so the ending at first had me feeling like “well is that it?” But after a little while I started to appreciate the cleverness of its simple ending. Throughout the game we are introduced to elements that cause us to fabricate our own ideas of what the story is - I began to question characters as well think that perhaps there truly was something far more sinister occurring behind the scenes. But I realise now that the game was trying to mimic a descent into madness - we are alone in the forest and we, the players in our living room, find ourselves becoming mad in the aloneness of the woods. This was quite genius.

However.

I did not think it was enough for me to feel satisfied by the ending. I have no doubt many others felt different, but to me I couldn’t help but feel a little discontent and hopeful of what this game could’ve been like if the mystery was a little more expansive.

Overall, Firewatch is definitely worth a play - but don’t let your mind descend into the chaos of woods.

This game is pretty good! I loved the intro sequence, loved exploring the forest and opening all the cache boxes and finding random things, loved getting every possible dialogue. The writing is great, the dialogue feels really natural, and is always interesting. The voice acting is very well done.

The game does a really good job making you care about all the events that happen, It's astounding how much I HATE those teenage girls... and when the plot starts building up, it is super intense and they really nail the atmosphere, again helped especially by the voice acting, particularly Delilah's.

Unfortunately, the climax is a bit of a letdown. The build up is great becuase you go from "is something happening here?" to "are we crazy and imagining it, and it's just nothing?" to "no, something is definitely happening", but then in the end... nothing is really happening? It's just some guy who was messing with you because he was bored and then, uh, you saw his shadow in the woods one day so he decided he had to mess with you more by pretending you were the subject of a secret government experiment, because... that was the best way for him to... I don't really know? It's like this weird mix between "nothing was happening" and "something was happening", because things were actually happening but they didn't really mean anything. Of course, the guy also leaves you a long monologue explaining all his actions, as villains in media are wont to do. Not a fan of that trope!

The climactic moments do play well for Delilah's character arc as she feels bad about inadvertently covering up the kid's death by breaking the rules. This game has a pretty clear "no human beings shown on-screen" rule so we can't get a real ending between the two, but the final radio call is sweet.

Ultimately an enjoyable experience. I might have liked it more if we just kept doing routine day-to-day things while talking about random stuff.

It should be said that if you're looking to play this game thinking that you'll be putting out forest fires or controlling the watch tower then this game isn't for you.

My experience of the game was that of pure relaxation. The story, in my opinion, is quite engrocing and I found myself caring quite a bit for the relationship that blooms between the playable character and the mystery person. I say mystery person because the whole game revolves around you and your walkie-talky, you start chatting to a person over your radio and over time you get to know them, you decide how your character responds, and for the most part, the narrative is focused on this aspect - the relationship. Some beautiful and touching pieces of dialogue take place between the characters and although they're so distant in terms of proximity to one another, the bond between them becomes addictive. It's lovely to see a game that takes a step back and says 'hey, a game can provoke emotion and be meaningful based on dialogue and relationships alone'.

Certain events take place within the playthrough, this game is not an open world simulator by any means. The story is of course heavily scripted but all events that take place involve you thinking "well how? why? what's happening here?". The game does well to keep your intrigue levels up. Aside from that, there is not much else that can be said for the story without spoiling it. You traverse various locations that are all around your watch tower in the forrest, and you interact with objects and find notes etc which help you understand the events that are taking place.

The art style and atmospheric music/touches are what made this game special for me. The style really allows you to lose yourself in this persons life, the wind and rain pit-a-pattering on the window, the sense of believability that you are a fire watch officer, all the mechanics and environments to me felt familiar in a strange yet welcoming way and just generally felt nice to play.

As you can probably tell, the game is hard to describe to people who have not played it, but I would reccomend picking this up if it's at a price that you're comfortable paying for. It's not a game that you should break the bank for, but it definitely breaks the mould in terms of generic games and it's something that every gamer in need of something a bit slower, a bit different, should pick up.

p.s yes you will be doing a lot of walking, but that's not always a bad thing.