![]() You’re either heading in the wrong direction or looking for some kind of entrance or pathway that’s no longer accessible. And when we say that, we mean it literally. All the same, it’s hard to imagine anyone getting stuck playing Firewatch bar the odd moment where the way forward seems unclear. ![]() You can make things slightly harder for yourself, not relying on the excellent in-game map and compass, turning off objective banners and location tracking. ![]() Really, is that all you’re going to ask me to do? You’ll spend a lot of time in Firewatch simply going where you’re told and just discovering something, and when something approaching an old-school graphic adventure puzzle comes in, your first reaction will be a mild shock followed by an equally mild sense of disappointment. Like Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Dear Esther, Gone Home and Oxenfree, it wants to explore gaming’s potential for new kinds of storytelling, but isn’t quite sure how to work that in with agency and interaction. It falters most in the areas where its close kin falter. For a small game from a small team, Firewatch is a mightily impressive piece of work. We’ll do our best to ignore the artificial limitations of the scenery, where this highlighted rock face or bank can be climbed, but that one not, and pretend we haven’t seen the odd pauses on the PS4 version when the landscape streaming system struggles. Much like The Witness, Firewatch hasn’t got the most detailed or photorealistic landscapes, but they’re rich and expressive, using shape, light and colour to build a convincing wilderness that changes tone to match Henry’s moods and the beats of the story.įirewatch is ripe with moments of sheer beauty, yet areas that seem benign in the spring sunshine become oppressive or threatening in other lights, or promote panic and confusion as the tale nears its end. Kudos to the writing team, the actors – Rich Sommer and Cissy Jones – and the composer, Chris Remo of Thirty Flights of Loving and Gone Home fame Firewatch works on all sorts of emotional levels.Īll credit to the artists and coders too. Firewatch can be bleak, warm, funny, chilling, nerve-wracking, exciting and melancholic, sometimes within a single hour. There’s a real sense of identifying with Henry, and of your choices altering both the character and the role.Īnd as you play, the game subtly shifts in tone, promising a love story, threatening a thriller, surprising you with sudden revelations that might turn everything on its head. The questions your ask and the replies you give begin to steer your relationship with Delilah in new directions, and this in turn pushes the story along new paths. And all the time you’ll have Delilah on the other end of the radio, as you squeeze the controller’s trigger and use the stick to select answers in a clever simulacrum of Henry with his handset. You’ll seek out caches and supply drops, search for vandals and watch out for signs of grizzly bear. In a way, we’re looking at a classic two-hander, but one that stretches out over several square miles of Wyoming wilderness as Henry investigates fireworks, reports on downed lines and explores the park’s forests, canyons, lakes and creeks. You’ll tell her what you’ll see, you’ll ask her for advice, and she’ll help you out with where you need to go and what you need to do. Reached via handheld radio, Delilah is Henry’s only point of contact for most of the game. You may also know that it’s a free-roaming adventure game set in the Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming, and that it focuses on two characters – a temporary fire lookout, Henry, and his supervisor, Delilah. If you know anything about the game, you’ll know that it’s the debut work of Campo Santo, a small studio founded by two of the leads behind Telltale’s The Walking Dead series, the designer of Mark of the Ninja and Brit artist, Olly Moss. Everything you do, every choice you make, makes up a part of Henry’s journey. You can call it a first-person-wilderness adventure game, an interactive drama, a psychological thriller or even a walking simulator if you want, but what it reminds me of most is a character study where you define the character. You know your name is Henry and that you have a wife with a serious condition, but what kind of man is Henry? What’s his story? How are you going to play this part? And, in a way, Firewatch never stops asking these questions. Available on PS4, PC (both versions tested)įirewatch begins with a barrage of questions.
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