Firewatch is a surprisingly grounded semi-linear exploration game with a fairly mature story (at least in the context of video games). It tells a story about a set of fire lookouts in a national park in Wyoming who have fled from their responsibilities in different ways, and how their lives sort of intersect through their common summer jobs. The player character, Henry (voiced by RIch Sommer (who honestly sounds too much like his character from Mad Men in this game)), is to spend the summer working at a fire lookout. His only reliable contact with another person is a radio line to his supervisor at another lookout, Delilah (Cissy Jones), who gives him tasks for his job whenever the need arises. The story is told fairly linearly, but there are dialogue choices that can somewhat colour the experience. There are also things in the environment you can point out and get some quips from, as is the norm in point-and-click or interactive fiction adventure games. The conversations are witty and entertaining for the most parts, but they're usually the kind of "two people ribbing on each other at the workplace" humour that can be a little divisive.
The world is open to explore with Metroidvania-esque roadblocks that get unlocked as the story progresses. There is not many challenges like puzzle-solving other than simple navigation, although such things would probably distract from the experience anyway, and the hiking itself is actually pretty enjoyable. You get the sense of learning the environment as you progress through the game, and there is enough discoveries (of new areas and shortcuts) along the way to keep things from being repetitive. Not to mention the beautiful sights that you get to see at every moment in this game. The game is also paced so that whenever there is a repeated, long hike, there is usually more plot progression or character development and such to be delivered along the way. Or, at the very least, very nice music by Chris Remo (of Gone Home, and this video) would start playing.
Honestly, Firewatch is the kind of thing I would expect to see played on late-night TV foreign indie drama movie time slots (like on SBS or something). It is not much more than what it is, but it is something moderately thought-provoking presented in a novel, beautiful way. Extending the movie comparison further, there is a surprising amount of cinematic techniques used in this game. Things like hard cuts between scenes are reminiscent of experimental first-person cinematic games like Thirty Flights of Loving. It is nice to see that Firewatch is able to use these techniques in a relatively long format to great effect, and they fit in so well with the beautifully rendered environments and evocative sound design. And for a game with only two main speaking characters (with faces you never see,) voice actors Rich Sommer and Cissy Jones do a great job carrying conversations that are expressive and more interesting to listen to than even the dialogues in a lot of major blockbuster movies nowadays.
There is excitement and suspense in the middle part of this game, and it is almost unnecessarily misleading. This game is later revealed as something that is less fantastical than it kind of sets itself to be at first. I can understand that there needed to be a uniquely dangerous and escalating situation the characters need to be put in, but it is almost a distraction to the core relationship between the main characters. The story is almost like a Seinfeld episode, because everyone's a bad person and practically nothing happens by the end of the story. This comparison might be a bit of a stretch, but the escalating troubles in Seinfeld episodes work because the antics that arise from them are amusing, while it rings somewhat hollow in a more tragic scenario. At least the characters do end up learning something by the end of this game. I'm describing this to make it clear that this isn't exactly light entertainment with predictable satisfactions, so expectations should not be set that way. (That said, it is a pretty easy game to get through, and it's not very long either.)
There are things about the story that I appreciate, but I sadly did not find myself connecting to it as much as I expected to. I am going to go into MAJOR SPOILER territory here, so I can discuss the story in more detail. Don't read any further if you have not reached the ending of this game (though there is nothing I can do to stop you anyway, I guess). In case you are reading this review – written by an internet stranger – to decide whether or not you should buy this video game for some reason, I will state it clearly: if you find the things I have described so far interesting, then go for it. It's worth the money and time etc. Then maybe you can come back to read the rest of the review, if you want to.
.
.
SP
OI
LE
RS
.
.
I will recap the story first. In the middle part of the game, things get weird for Henry and Delilah. Some vaguely strange things happened earlier on in the game, but the plot obviously thickens as he finds a clipboard on the lakeside with his past conversations with Delilah written on it. He then finds another radio in the bushes, and is then knocked unconscious from behind. The clipboard and radio are gone when Henry wakes up, but he remembers the words "Wapiti Station" written on those things. Delilah has never heard of a "Wapiti Station", deepening the mystery. It escalates until the whole thing ended with a big forest fire that forces the lookouts to evacuate from the area. This seems like an obvious set up for a grand conspiracy because, well, it's a video game, but the mystery turns out to be a lot simpler than that. Every strange thing that happened in this game is perpetrated by a single person. There is no grand conspiracy, only a missing lookout that Delilah has talked about before, Ned Goodwin. It turns out that he has accidentally killed his son Brian in a climbing accident a long time ago, and decided to hide in the forest instead of coming clean.
The message is fairly obvious: here is a group of people, who have obviously made bad decisions in their lives, and have decided to run away from their responsibilities into the wilderness when it is obviously not the right thing to do. Henry has regrets over his marriage with his sick wife, and is unable to make amends with her. Delilah is non-committal in her past relationships, and lies and drowns herself in alcohol in the face of trouble. Ned wants to be a good father to Brian, but he puts his son in dangerous situations and cannot deal with the risks when it came down to it. Because of their inability to cope with their lives, these three characters decide to occupy themselves with the things they do in the forest, until it gets out of control like a forest fire (quite literally). There are clear parallels in their actions. At one point, Delilah and Henry decides to scare the annoying teens away from the forest, which Ned tries to do to them by threatening to frame them with his incriminating (edited) radio recordings. Delilah and Ned even gets the same idea of burning things to somehow solve their problems at certain points, despite the whole point of them being there in the first place is to prevent fires.
Being in my early adulthood, I am no stranger to that desire to run away from my responsibilities, but this story does not resonate with me. The main message is clear, but not really in need of pointing out. Of course people should not run away from their responsibilities, that's kind of by definition. In the story, Henry and Delilah decides to go back to their separate lives and not run away to this job anymore, despite the hints throughout the game that shows Henry wanting to go back there the next summer. Through the uncontrolled fire and the reveal of what happened with Ned, they face the extreme conclusion of what happens when you keep behaving irresponsibly and running away from the consequences. It's understandable that it affects Delilah, since she befriended Brian and was partly responsible for allowing him to stay with his clearly irresponsible father in a remote, dangerous location. It's also understandable that it affects Henry, who has become close to Delilah. The problem with this conclusion is that there is no effect on me, as an outside observer. I feel like I was the only person around who has not learnt a lesson by the end of the game.
What matters to me most as a player is Henry and his relationship with Delilah, and there is definitely more space to explore in that front. In the last scene of the game, Henry reaches Delilah's lookout after she has left on an evacuation helicopter. It is an expected conclusion of his relationship with Delilah, and it is interesting to see her living space in contrast to Henry's. You can take a look at the different books she reads, the alcohol that she talked about drinking, the sketch of Henry she was drawing. The timing felt strange to me, as this scene follows right after the big reveal of Ned as the true perpetrator of mysteries, and the (optional?) exploration of his hideout above a cliff. I felt little closure from Delilah's watch tower, as if it was not earned at that point yet. The suspense/thriller nonsense overshadows the kind of things they like to talk about previously at that point. Is it weird that I very much prefer to hear them talk about general life stuff rather than the grand conspiracy of the Wapiti Station or whatever? The dynamic between Henry and Delilah may need some extra breathing room, but too much of the room present in this game is unfortunately occupied by the story of Ned Goodwin, the one person I honestly don't really care about.
I am not saying that the ending itself is "bad", as I have heard many people say. The ending is an unexpected, but realistic way to end the story that Campo Santo has set out to tell. Instead of deflecting any of their problems to an actual conspiracy, the characters are left with the same regrets to resolve. Delilah is still on the hook for lying about numerous things she was responsible for as a veteran lookout (with a fire and a dead body to deal with as the consequences), and Henry still needs to go back and answer to his wife, family and friends. This ending is probably as perfect as it could be, given the situation.
Despite that issue that I have with it, Firewatch is a well-realised story about adulthood; something we do not see very often in relatively-mainstream commercial video games. It is a little sad to still feel surprised by the little touches of realism they put in the story. One example of this is the possible romantic subplot between Henry and Delilah, which does not end up happening no matter what. I may be conflating this game a little too much, but it gives me more hope for video games as a popular storytelling medium.
P.S. here is a link to the photos I took during my playthrough =)