I could not have jumped into Firewatch with higher expectations.
The just-released mystery/drama/adventure game is the very first release from Campo Santo, a new studio founded by Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman, both longtime Telltale Games staffers and co-project leads on Telltale’s most celebrated release thus far, and one of my favourite games of all time, The Walking Dead (the studio was also founded by Mark of the Ninja lead designer Nels Anderson and artist Olly Moss).
The studio officially debuted the game back at PAX in 2014, and it would have been impossible not to instantly fall in love with the presentation of the sometimes humorous, sometimes stressful dialogue, the heavy mystery, and obviously the incredible Olly Moss-designed, cel-shaded visual style.
Coming from former Telltale Games writers and leads, I was certainly expecting a gripping, unforgettable tale, but I don’t know that I could have fully prepared myself for the heavy emotion I’d endure on my short trip back to 1989’s Wyoming.
In fact, tears were welling in my eyes within the first few moments of Firewatch, and I can’t think of a single other video game in my 25 years that’s had such an affect on me so quickly.
You’re Henry (voiced by Rich Sommer AKA Mad Men‘s Harry Crane), an emotionally-drained individual who chooses to spend the Summer as a fire lookout in Wyoming’s Shoshone National Forest in order to escape/ignore/avoid the crumbling of your life back home. You’ll spend the duration of Firewatch isolated, confined to your watchtower and its surrounding area on a particularly hot Summer, essentially waiting for an inevitable forest fire to begin so that it can be reported and reacted to as soon as possible. Your only contact is Delilah (voiced by Cissy Jones, or The Walking Dead‘s Katjaa), a disembodied, attractive voice who pipes in exclusively through radio transmissions, quickly becomes your friend and confidant, and who you eventually begin spilling your emotional guts to.
At this point, that description almost sounds like the opening of a quirky, indie romantic comedy, but naturally it’s not too long before things get weird (and I’m not necessarily talking about your Bioshock Atlas-esque relationship with Delilah, though that can easily go off the rails as well); you’ll soon be questioning everything from life itself, the type of person you are (as Henry and as yourself), what exactly is happening in this serene, yet spooky forest, and much, much more. The plot is gripping from its opening moment, and really, all that you want at its conclusion is more.
Visually, Firewatch is absolutely spectacular. The game’s development actually began with a single painting from celebrated, insanely talented artist Olly Moss, and there’s nary a frame throughout that doesn’t look as though it could be a painting as well. Every moment, tense or otherwise is simply stunning to take in; this may be the first game I’ve ever played where I would actually traverse to each and every cliff that I could or corner of the map that was available to me, just to experience more of the tranquil ambiance. It’s also breathtaking to see just how that beauty changes over the course of the Summer (or even the course of a day). You enter the forest with blue skies above and green grass and shrubbery below, and as days and weeks and months go by, clarity disappears, the skies morph into a haunting, endless orange, and unflustered creeks and lakes become white with ash. As a British Columbia resident, this slow transformation seriously had me reminiscing about this past Summer, when gargantuan forest fires throughout the province turned our skies a deep orange and had me wiping thick ash from my car before driving to work. It was a sight I’d never seen before, and the team at Campo Santo (including former Double Fine environmental artist Jane Ng) took a weird, uncomfortable phenomenon and made it far more beautiful than I ever could have imagined.
The parallels between the tumultuous transformation of the forest and the progression of the plot itself is one that will resonate with me for some time, and didn’t actually dawn on me for hours after I’d finished the campaign. As the occurrences around you and your actions and reactions themselves become contentious, your eventual resolution as well as the physical path in front of you becomes less and less clear.
Aside from the breathtaking visuals, the world of Firewatch is simply a joy to explore. Objects are detailed to the point where you can read the synopsis on the back of a book. Locked supply caches around the map help to broaden this domain by introducing lookouts from year’s past through notes written back and forth to each-other. This exposition helps you feel slightly less isolated and as though this universe existed far before you ever came into it. After awhile, you’ll actually find yourself seeking out caches, caring about these sub-characters that you never see nor hear, and you truly wonder what came of them, their relationships, and their time in the forest.
Delilah will do a great job filling you in as you find notes, caches, and new areas of the map, and really, as beautiful as Firewatch‘s Wyoming wilderness is, it’s the budding relationship between the two of you that is the highlight of the game. Conversation starts out rather stunted; you’re uncomfortable, you don’t know what you’re doing (and possibly even regret taking this job), and you have no idea who this woman is. Time progresses, and whether it’s true interest, isolation, or simply human need, the two of you open up to each other. These moments are when Firewatch truly shines, as what you choose to say (yep, just like in Telltale games, you’ll have full control over Henry’s dialogue) will make Delilah laugh, or flirt, or expand her thoughts and feelings, tell you a story, or make her so angry that she turns the radio off. Every line of the game is memorable, and countless times throughout the title’s duration I found myself laughing out loud or swearing under my breath.
As you can probably guess, I was a sucker for the game’s dialogue. As such, one element of the dialogue system that’s notable and that I truly appreciated is that during all conversations, once I’d selected a response, the game would actually wait for Delilah to finish speaking before allowing Henry say a word. Too many games seem to perform in the opposite manner, and have your character speak the instant that you choose a dialogue option. It’s actually one of the things that I noticed while thinking back on last month’s Oxenfree (funnily enough, also a conversation-based adventure title crafted by a studio of former Telltale Games’ developers), and in comparison I truly enjoyed being able to witness each and every complete thought in Firewatch, while the constant interruptions in Oxenfree often left me wondering what was left to be heard. That said, you could look at these differences from the perspective of adults speaking vs. teenagers speaking, or the fact that in Firewatch you converse using radios, and that only one of you would be able to speak at a time anyways (because that’s simply how radios work).
The game sounds almost as good as it looks, and I’d definitely advise you to play Firewatch using a headset if at all possible. Sure, things sounded just fine through my soundbar, but it wasn’t until I donned my surround headset that I truly entered this calm, peaceful (well, and sometimes spooky) soundscape. Close your eyes with one of these headsets on, and it legitimately sounds like you’re in the middle of the forest, or by a lake, or by a fire, or by… well, you get the idea. The sound team at Campo Santo did a stellar job with the ambient audio in the game, and paired with Cissy Jones’ and Rich Sommer’s phenomenal voicework, the overall presentation of Firewatch is simply marvelous.
That is, aside from the performance issues. Unforunately, with all of the game’s fantastic elements put aside, Campo Santo borrowed some of the technical problems that have plagued Telltale Games titles for as long as I can remember. I played through the Playstation 4 version of the game, and as such can’t speak technically for the desktop edition, but I was met with constant stuttering throughout my time with Firewatch, to the point where in one instance the console even locked up and needed to be restarted. I’m not talking about a lost frame here and a blip there, either; it seemed more like the title was struggling to run on this hardware at all. Sure, it’s one of (if not the) most breathtaking games on the PS4, but it’s also possibly the most inconsistent title performance-wise that I’ve played on the console thus far.
I’m a fan of short games (I’ve expressed it numerous times on the Geekscape Games podcast) as I don’t typically have a ton of gaming time each week month. That said, Firewatch felt simply too short, even for my liking. Yes, I was enamored with this world, and I was absolutely invested in these characters (and could have spent hours upon hours longer learning more about them, where they came from, and where they’re going), but I was actually pretty shocked to find myself at the game’s conclusion so quickly. As every day of a fire lookout’s life can’t be all that interesting (and, well, is probably pretty boring the majority of the time), you’ll actually jump ahead in time on numerous occurences through the duration of Firewatch. While I appreciated this in game (and obviously visually based on my thoughts above), once things concluded I felt as though I would have actually enjoyed some of those boring, lazy fire lookout days. The added exposition of continued conversations with Delilah would have deepened my attachment to these two characters, and the added duration, whether or not it held major importance in the overarching story, would have certainly been valued at the game’s conclusion. Yes, I loved almost everything that Firewatch presented me, but once it was all over it was hard not to wish that it didn’t present me with more.
Now, I’m writing this before the game’s release, and as such haven’t read a single other opinion, review, or analysis on the title. That said, I believe that, as with many adventure, mystery, and narrative games before it, the ending of Firewatch is going to be divisive as hell. It’s really impossible to dig into without giving away major spoilers (which I’m not willing to do here), but at the time that I reached the game’s conclusion, I wasn’t a big fan of how things turned out. It wasn’t until hours later, until I found time to think about everything that Henry, Delilah and I had gone through, and time to determine what facets of Firewatch resonated with me most that the ending began to grow on me. Now, days later I think that I actually prefer everything that transpired to whatever expectations I had in my head.
In any case, I’m looking forward to reading other’s thoughts on the title, as even though the game is rather short, there is plenty to talk about.
Firewatch is freaking beautiful. Its world feels deep and expansive and whole, and its characters are two of the most memorable video game beings that I’ve had the pleasure of experiencing in recent memory. The game marks a phenomenal first outing for Campo Santo, and its stunning visual style is completely unforgettable. It’s not perfect; the game feels short and I wish Firewatch was launching on the PS4 without the frequent performance issues mentioned above, but I’m beyond ecstatic that I was able to spend any amount of time in this original world.
Sadly, we’ll probably never see a continuation of this tale, as Campo Santo’s Sean Vanaman notes that “this story is done.” Irregardless, this is a team to watch out for, and I can’t wait to be enveloped in whatever they come up with next.
Firewatch scores a too-hot-to-handle 4/5.
tl;dr
+Absolutely breathtaking visuals (and stellar audio to boot)
+Some of the most memorable video game dialogue in recent memory
+Impossible not to fall in love with its characters
+Conversation system lets you listen to every word
+Just look at it
-Too short
-Constant performance issues on Playstation 4
Firewatch is available for PS4, Windows, OS X, and Linux.