Firewatch
PlayStation 4
Nostalgia Factor:
I have known of Firewatch for a long, long time. This game came out in 2016, which is two years before I even got my PS4. I have read the rave reviews of the game, and it is always something I have wanted to check out. The only problem is that the game has never been on sale. I'm not paying 20 or 30 bucks for a walking simulator, no matter how good it is supposed to be.
The other day I was perusing the PlayStation Store, as there was a New Year's sale going on. None of the games on sale caught my eye, and I was about to exit out and resume playing Final Fantasy XII: The Zodiac Age. I decided to do a quick search for Firewatch, just on the off chance it was on sale. And it was! After nearly 5 years of waiting for it to show up at a discounted price, I finally got my wish. I paid the 5 bucks or whatever it was, and began downloading the game immediately.
Would it be worth the long wait? That's what we are here to find out.
Story:
The entire game revolves around its story, so this will probably be my longest section of the review.
You play as Henry. When the game begins, you are briefly introduced to his backstory. He meets this woman in a bar. They fall in love and get married. She starts to develop early onset dementia. Her parents take her back home to Australia to take care of her. Henry, suffering from depression, takes a job as as a fire lookout at Shoshone National Park. It's a remote job, where he is isolated by himself. His only company is a woman named Delilah, who is stationed at another lookout point, who he communicates with via walkie talkie.
Right away, things start to get weird. Someone starts shooting off illegal fireworks in the area. Henry goes to investigate and finds two teen girls shooting them off. He chases them away. He goes on a walk. When he comes back, he finds his watchtower has been vandalized, presumably by the angry girls.
The next day, he finds their abandoned tent, which has been ripped to shreds. There is an angry note addressed to him from the girls. Apparently they thought Henry was stalking them? Things are further complicated when Henry spots a man with a flashlight watching him in the dark.
As Henry continues to get to know Delilah over walkie talkie, he learns that a previous watchman lived in the park illegally with his son, but Delilah didn't report it because she liked the kid. The watchman and the kid abruptly went missing, never to be seen again. This seems like background information at first, but it comes into major play later.
Odd things continue to happen. He discovers a strange fence in the middle of the park that should not be there. He learns that the teen girls he scared off have been reported missing. He finds transcripts of his conversations with Delilah. He finds an unreported and abandoned laboratory in the middle of the park. It seems like he is being monitored by an unknown party. This belief is further compounded when someone sneaks up behind him as he's walking in the woods and knocks him unconscious.
As things get stranger and stranger, Henry and Delilah begin to believe that there is a major conspiracy happening that they've been pulled into. A government experiment? Aliens? Are they getting set up because of the missing girls? The whole game has a very Lost-esque vibe that I was enjoying. You also begin to wonder if this is all in Henry's head. He's gone through a major traumatic event back at home. He could be hallucinating or going insane. He's never actually met Delilah, after all. Is she even real?
I'm going to spoil the ending here, so be warned: there is no conspiracy. In fact, the answer as to what is going on turns out to be quite simple. The previous watchman, who I mentioned earlier, is still living secretly in the park. His son, who wasn't supposed to be there, died in a hiking accident. Stricken by grief, his father decided to stay living in the park in complete isolation. Fearing Henry is "onto him" and what happened to his son, he tries to scare him away. The missing girls? They make it home safely. The secret laboratory? Just regular scientists studying plant growth. All's well that ends well, sort of.
A major fire starts to sweep through the park. Henry is forced to evacuate. He finds out that Delilah, who he's been crushing on since day one, has a boyfriend and doesn't want to meet up with him afterwards. As Henry leaves the park in a helicopter, the game ends.
At first I had mixed feelings about the ending. I was kind of hoping it was a conspiracy or some kind of experiment they were involved with. Or I was hoping it would all be in Henry's head. But there is a much more grounded and realistic explanation behind everything. It kinds of takes your expectations and tosses them aside. Not only with the events in the park, but with Delilah too. Not everyone gets a happy ending.
Gameplay:
As I mentioned before, Firewatch is what is known as a "walking simulator." This isn't a game where you battle enemies, solve puzzles, or jump from ledge to ledge. You just kinda walk around and let the story play out around you.
The controls are very basic. Left analog stick makes you walk. Right stick has you look around. Click L3 to run. You also have a button to pick things up or to examine them. Mainly what you'll be doing is using your walkie-talkie. You take it out using the L2 button. Doing so brings a list of conversation choices on the screen. Simply make your selection to keep the conversation with Delilah rolling. Henry talks to Delilah about freaking everything. You find a beer can on the ground, call Delilah. See a tree with bear marks on it, call Delilah. Encounter a small pond? Call Delilah.
The conversation choices you make do affect the story, although I am not sure how drastically it changes things. There were a few conversation choices I made that were mentioned later on in the game, but I'm pretty sure the game takes you to the same place in the end regardless. I'll have to play this again someday and make some new choices to see if it changes anything.
There isn't much to do other than walk around and talk to Delilah. You are occasionally tasked with finding things, like cache boxes. Other times you'll have to check out special areas marked on your map. Navigation is a little annoying in this game. You have to manually pull out a map or a compass to orient your location. There is no onscreen map or HUD. Trails and walking areas are not always obvious visually, so I found myself pulling out the map quite frequently. You can't run with the map out, which is a pain in the behind. My biggest complaint in the game is definitely the navigation system. Could have been done a lot better.
Graphics:
I've never seen a game that is more of a mixed bag graphically than this. When it first started, I was a bit put off by how ugly things were. I remember coming down from the watchtower for the first time and seeing the messy green grass and the jagged pixels. Definitely looked like a low rent PS3 game.
The more I played, the more I began to change my mind. The forest setting is vast and impressive, if you can ignore the occasional technical glitch or limitation. Despite the fact that I enjoy being at home and playing video games, I'm a big nature person. I love the woods. I love camping and hiking outdoors. This game definitely brought me to a place of comfort and escapism, as I am in Wisconsin in the middle of January with a snowstorm going on outside right now.
I loved looking at the scenery, with the lake and the beautiful sunsets. The interior of the watchtower looks like a real location. Overall, my impression of the graphics are favorable. You kind of have to take the good with the bad in this game.
Sound:
This game would not work at all if it did not have good voice acting. Thankfully, it does. Henry and Delilah feel like real, fleshed out people. Delilah has this charming and magnetic quality to her voice. Henry falls for her quickly, and we as players can't help but feel a kinship too.
I loved the ambient sound effects as I walked around the woods. Birds chirping, wind blowing, branches falling, the occasional snapping sound. This whole game has a very tense and paranoid atmosphere to it. I can't tell you how many times I heard a noise behind me and I whirled around, only to find nothing there. Good stuff.
Overall:
While I've never been a huge fan of walking simulators as a whole, I have to say that Firewatch is probably the best of the genre that I have played. The story alone makes it worth it. It is very entertaining. If this was a movie or a miniseries, I would have really enjoyed it. As a video game, the gameplay is mediocre. But as an experience, it is very engaging and enjoyable. The story, the atmosphere, the tension, the exploration: all of it makes you want to keep pushing forward and forward until you find out what is going on.
Even two days after finishing it, I still can't get the game out of my head. Normally I don't come back and play a game two times, but I might do it this time. Maybe make some different choices this time around to see how much it changes the experience.
This game is definitely worth checking out. I'm not going to go too crazy and give this game anything in the A range. I don't think it is quite at that level. But it's close.
THE GRADE:
B+
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