Link to photos I took during my playthrough [contains spoilers]: https://firewatch.camera/RedBurrAbyss/
Content Warning: Themes of familial struggles, death, loss of loved ones, immense guilt, and existentialism
Looking through the options for critical play this week, one game caught my eye. I had been looking to play this game for a while, and I avoided watching playthroughs to have a pure experience. Firewatch, developed by Campo Santo and released in 2016, was one of the most critically acclaimed walking simulators of the past decade. Available on console and pc, I played the Steam version with an Xbox controller. With themes of family issues, relational boundaries, and guilt, it targets an emotionally mature audience who can handle the twists and turns of the game. Firewatch combines the menial task of walking with dialogue between its two main characters and the exploration of Shoshone National Park to uncover one of the most compelling, open-to-player interpretation stories of any game. Specifically, Firewatch NEVER tells the players the answers, leaving everything a mystery for the player to discover, yet it shows every decision is impactful.
With a short playtime of 4 hours, the depth of Firewatch’s story is impressive. You play as Henry, a middle-aged man at a crossroads in his life. After a happy marriage and early career success, Henry’s life fell apart due to circumstances out of his control. Lost, Henry took a job as a firewatch with the national forestry service as a chance to escape and reflect. From the start, walking is a means of progress. Henry’s backstory is told through text weaved with gameplay sections of Henry’s hike up to his new post at Two Forks tower, reflecting on the life he paused. Players feel the weight of their choices as they build Henry’s backstory. After Henry’s wife, Julia, is diagnosed with early on-set dementia, players choose whether to care for Julia or send her to a nursing home. Immediately after, the game shows the consequences through the perception of friends and family. In my playthrough, I put Julia in a facility and the game responded with the wives of Henry’s friends telling their husbands, “If you do that to me, you’re dead to me.” I felt the irreversibility of that decision, and it was only one of the mechanics that built the tense atmosphere.
The area Henry is stationed at, Two Forks, is a wildlife cove filled with nooks and crannies easy to get lost in, requiring the use of landmarks, maps, and Henry’s compass to navigate. Unlike other games with minimaps or on-screen markers, Firewatch makes the player feel lost, exploiting the main type of fun: discovery. Anytime I wanted to know where I was, I had to bring up my map, losing my ability to walk briskly. Exploring Two Forks mirrored Henry’s current life situation. I only knew the next steps by taking time to reflect, pull out my map and compass, and observe the environment. Delilah, a fellow firewatch stationed about 7 miles north at Thorofare lookout, communicated with Henry through park-service radios. Henry’s interactions with Delilah drive the story but are also the least reliable facet of storytelling.
Although Delilah gives Henry tasks and proposes explanations for scenarios, she never provides explicit answers. Instead, the player builds their understanding of Firewatch’s mysteries through clues from Delilah and Shoshone park. This highlights Firewatch’s in-depth, multi-layered level design. [SPOILER] For example, after gaining entry to Cave 452, a locked cave Henry finds on his first day, he finds the body of Brian Goodwin, the son of the previous Two Forks firewatch Ned Goodwin. With her previous adversarial relationship with Ned, Delilah blames Ned for Brian’s death, claiming he killed Brian and left his body there. However, after hearing Ned’s recording, I believed that Ned loved his son and that the cave incident was a tragic accident. This tug-of-war of relatedness between Ned, Delilah, and Henry was a major aspect of self-determination in the game, although Henry’s illusory autonomy through his actions, exploration, and dialogue with Delilah also played a role in how I navigated Shoshone park and understood the story. For instance, one of the most difficult decisions for me was deciding if I should take a photo of Brian’s body.
True to the themes of the game, Firewatch provides no closure for any mysteries or problems. There is no “objective truth” in Firewatch. The only “truth” is what the player interprets. By the end, I understood it was a “good” ending, but I felt dissatisfied. Firewatch used walking, the key mechanism of the game, to emphasize that sometimes, we need to slow down. Stop pushing through thick brush and climbing steep rock faces, and instead take time to look at the scenery. Take a couple of photos with a disposable camera cause you’ll never know if it is the last chance you get.
