I'm a huge fan of story-driven, atmospheric experiences and this is a game I really, really wanted to like.
I was immediately intrigued by the prologue, which seems a simple enough choose-your-own-adventure type portion, but does very well to invest you in your player character, Henry. After doing some research I discovered this game was made by the same people responsible for The Walking Dead Season 1, which I adored and consider one of the best written games I've played. Walking Dead Season 1 had characters that you ended up growing incredibly attached to, and the same ended up being true of Firewatch. Unfortunately, that did just enough to get me to finish the game, because I was disappointed with pretty much every other aspect of Firewatch, including the story's resolution.
Firewatch looks really good for an indie, but it didn't run so great on my system (i7 4790, gtx 1080, 16gb RAM). I would experience pretty regular frame drops through my nearly 6 hours of play. And while the game looks very good, I never felt much drive to explore after the first couple of hours simply because there just isn't much to find. Aside from some notes in caches, I never found anything more interesting than a slightly larger tree or a nice viewpoint, and soon I began avoiding any exploration altogether because the characters and the dialogue had grabbed me so much. Any actual "gameplay" (ie. "walk here and then click the radio for a dialogue option") became a chore, a barrier behind which the game would reward me with some more bits of dialogue from these two characters that I had really grown attached to. There was a specific moment about 2-3 hours into the game where I was informed that I had to cross the entire map in order to find somebody to help me through a fence, and I came very close to just quitting because I almost didn't feel driven enough to take the next step. That's how dry and unfulfilling I felt the actual gameplay was in Firewatch. But I ended up doing it anyway just to hear more of Henry's and Delilah's story. I was fully invested in these two characters.
And that's really saying something considering how short this game is. The ability of these writers and the voice cast to grab me so quickly is pretty impressive now. The big problem I had with this game is simply that nothing else even came close to being as compelling as the relationship between Henry and Delilah. There's an overarching mystery that drives the plot forward, but once you actually begin to uncover what's going on it just felt too hokey, too clumsy, and just not believable enough despite being pretty grounded in reality. One of my issues with this mystery was that I simply wasn't feeling the isolated paranoia that my avatar within the game, Henry, seemed to be feeling. His actor seemed close to completely losing it, whereas I was just making my way to the next task and hoping for some interesting Delilah dialogue. The game failed to impart any sort of anxiety due to the setting and the isolation, possibly because it was so short, or that it had to skip days in order to keep things interesting due to a lack of any real gameplay systems outside of walking to an area indicated to you and pushing a button, or reporting back to Delilah via your radio.
Firewatch reminds me a lot of Gone Home. Both games offer an interesting setting and premise with some well-written characters, both try to impart a feeling of creepiness which succeeds at first but both ultimately fails to amount to anything substantial and becomes overly hokey after just a couple of hours. Additionally, the resolution of both games' mysteries are wholly unsatisfying, and the endings in general are not very good. Firewatch, in particular, really dropped the ball and left me feeling unfulfilled; like I had wasted my time despite really enjoying the characters and dialogue. It's the type of experience that will you have you saying, "Really? That's it!?" as the credits roll. If the ending had been a fulfilling conclusion for these two characters then I believe I'd have recommended this game just on that strength alone. But squandering the story of two compelling characters left a sour taste in my mouth, and for that reason I can't recommend it to others until it begins selling at a sub-$5 price point.
Firewatch looks really good for an indie, but it didn't run so great on my system (i7 4790, gtx 1080, 16gb RAM). I would experience pretty regular frame drops through my nearly 6 hours of play. And while the game looks very good, I never felt much drive to explore after the first couple of hours simply because there just isn't much to find. Aside from some notes in caches, I never found anything more interesting than a slightly larger tree or a nice viewpoint, and soon I began avoiding any exploration altogether because the characters and the dialogue had grabbed me so much. Any actual "gameplay" (ie. "walk here and then click the radio for a dialogue option") became a chore, a barrier behind which the game would reward me with some more bits of dialogue from these two characters that I had really grown attached to. There was a specific moment about 2-3 hours into the game where I was informed that I had to cross the entire map in order to find somebody to help me through a fence, and I came very close to just quitting because I almost didn't feel driven enough to take the next step. That's how dry and unfulfilling I felt the actual gameplay was in Firewatch. But I ended up doing it anyway just to hear more of Henry's and Delilah's story. I was fully invested in these two characters.
Firewatch reminds me a lot of Gone Home. Both games offer an interesting setting and premise with some well-written characters, both try to impart a feeling of creepiness which succeeds at first but both ultimately fails to amount to anything substantial and becomes overly hokey after just a couple of hours. Additionally, the resolution of both games' mysteries are wholly unsatisfying, and the endings in general are not very good. Firewatch, in particular, really dropped the ball and left me feeling unfulfilled; like I had wasted my time despite really enjoying the characters and dialogue. It's the type of experience that will you have you saying, "Really? That's it!?" as the credits roll. If the ending had been a fulfilling conclusion for these two characters then I believe I'd have recommended this game just on that strength alone. But squandering the story of two compelling characters left a sour taste in my mouth, and for that reason I can't recommend it to others until it begins selling at a sub-$5 price point.
⭐⭐
Playtime: 6 hours
