Firewatch Review
Have you ever just wanted to disappear? Drop everything and move out to the wilderness to clear your mind? Or possibly you have some strange Smoky the Bear fetish. If you answered yes to any of those, then Firewatch is the game for you.
Firewatch is the newest game in the genre of walking simulators. You play a new fire lookout named Henry who takes a job in a national park for the summer to escape a hardship he faces at home. Over the course of the roughly five-hour campaign, you will get to know Henry rather well. You determine his mindset through dialog choices over a walkie-talkie with the only other character in the game, Delilah. Delilah is a seasoned fire lookout and Henry’s boss for the summer. Through these dialog choices you establish a relationship with Delilah and can completely change her demeanor. The dialog in Firewatch is amazing; it is easily the most natural sounding dialog I have ever heard in a video game. The conversations flow naturally and I found myself reporting everything I possibly could, just to start another conversation with Delilah.
The story itself is laid out over a period of five days. This is where Firewatch begins to make some strange decisions. For some reason the developer decided to jump the story forward from day 1 to day 2, then all the way to day 76. I understand the need to jump forward in a sense to save time, but it caused some strange changes in the development of the characters. All of a sudden Delilah and Henry were having conversations that alluded to much more than coworkers or even friends. This bothered me as I feel like I should have been the one to make that decision, not the game. While you can later downplay these conversations, they felt slightly out of place.
My second gripe with the story is that of the overall plot. The game, unfortunately bait and switches you when it could have been so much more. The story quickly unveils a government conspiracy that keeps you interested until its unsatisfying ending. I ended up feeling like I was playing a Scooby-Doo game all the way through game’s, “Jinkies! It’s old man Jenkins” mask reveal. I wasn’t disappointed in the game overall; I just wish the story kept to the path it set out on.
Gameplay-wise you will be doing a lot of walking. Thankfully the game gives you the option to run, as you find yourself treading down paths you’ve already gone down. You eventually get new items, but they only allow you to shortcut trails on the map. You do have the option to search for lockboxes that contain various items, yet these items don’t add much to the overall game. They mostly consist of objects to report or notes between previous lookouts of the park. Never the less I found myself tracking down every lockbox to have a new conversation with Delilah.
Overall I feel mixed emotions towards Firewatch. The dialog was great and I enjoyed being able to control minor aspects of the story through my conversation decisions. That being said the story as a whole brought down the experience quite a bit and I found myself asking “that’s it?” when it was all said and done. Do I think it is a game worth playing? Yes. Do I think you need to open up the Playstation Store and purchase it this instant? No. Wait until the game is on sale and pick it up then. It is a good indie game with some great characters and great humor. Remember kids, only you can prevent forest fires.
