Game title: Firewatch
Target Audience: Mature audiences between the ages of 16 and 25 that are fans of narrative-driven games
Creator: Campo Santo
Platform: PC, Playstation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, etc.
Introduction
Firewatch is a narrative adventure game that I personally had never played or heard of before this week. In the game, you play as Henry, who is a fire lookout stationed in the Wyoming wilderness. I started the game from the beginning, where it starts out slow and gradually builds. After the initial story was set, Henry begins his job, hikes out to investigate people launching fireworks, talks to his supervisor named Delilah over the radio, and returns to the watchtower. After that, it started to get more interesting and things in the environment felt off. I played for about an hour before I had to stop playing, but I was thoroughly enjoying the game when I stopped.
Everything in Firewatch happens while you walk, which is a huge part of the game. Walking in this game shapes not only how the story unfolds, but also how players emotionally experience it. Walking ties physical distance to emotional distance and the game turns movement into a metaphor for avoidance and vulnerability.
Narrative Through Movement
At the heart of Firewatch is the story of the main character, Henry, running from the problems in his life. In the opening scenes of the game, text sequences are displayed and we learn that Henry’s wife, Julia, develops dementia. It becomes extremely difficult for him and he isn’t sure how to cope with it, so he escapes into the wilderness after accepting his job as the fire lookout. The hikes he goes on through forests and rocky trails mirror the emotional space that he is trying to create between himself and his recent past.
Unlike many games where the player travels to unlock new powers or advance missions (which is the type of game I usually enjoy more of), Firewatch does a great job of engaging the player into the story and uses walking to deepen emotional impact. I am typically a person who plays games with clear objectives, missions, and competitions, but the slow pace of Firewatch gives pace significance to movement, and it is a nice break from playing other types of games.
Atmosphere and Player Emotion
One of the strongest examples of this design choice comes early on after I (as Henry) confronted two teenage girls lighting fireworks by the lake. Depending on how the scene was handled, the walk back to the tower could feel either triumphant or sort of depressing. I didn’t handle the situation in the best way, and that feeling was intensified when I returned to the watchtower and found that a window was broken. There wasn’t any dramatic music or anything like that, but the quiet environment in the wilderness built an eerie feeling. Thinking about mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics, Firewatch succeeds by keeping its mechanics very simple: walk, talk, and examine. At the same time, its dynamics produce an intimate and isolated aesthetic experience through quiet exploration and dialogue.
Comparisons
Compared to some other walking simulation games, Firewatch stands apart in how it ties storytelling to physical presence. In Gone Home, players piece together a family’s history through objects and notes. In What Remains of Edith Finch, the narrative is divided into a series of short, self-contained experiences that each reflect a different family member’s story. However, in Firewatch, the story has some background from the past, but the rest of it is happening now. The story unfolds each moment and is driven by where you choose to go and how you interact with Delilah (Henry’s supervisor). I think this helps make the game feel more personalized and tailored to your experience.
One area for improvement in Firewatch is the limited ability to impact the story. From Henry Jenkins’s narrative architectures, I consider Firewatch to be an enacted story. Jenkins mentions in his paper that enacted stories are structured sort of like sets for a dramatic performance, where the player acts out a role within a guided narrative. While Firewatch does this well, I think that the performance feels limited at some moments. There’s lots of engagement through dialogue choices and walking, but those choices you make often influence the tone of the game rather than the actual substance. As a result, I think that this makes the game feel a little bit less participatory over time. Even small shifts in Henry’s relationships with others or changes in the ending as a result of player actions could be a good addition.
Conclusion
I didn’t think I would, but I really enjoyed playing Firewatch due to the storytelling. The game shows that it isn’t necessary to have intense mechanics or dramatic twists in order to be emotionally effective. The game uses space, silence, and walking to tell a great story. Walking isn’t just how you move in Firewatch, it’s how you process and unfold the story within the game.
Ethics
In the game I played during section (I forget the name), violence was built directly into the mechanics – players reacted to imagined or described aggressive actions, and those decisions shaped the progression of the game. It was definitely fun and interesting, and even though there was some violence that resulted in some players “doing worse” (there weren’t really any losers in this game), violence is just a part of the game and it makes it fun regardless of how “well” you’re doing. It is based on trying not to let anything bad happen to those around you, but inevitably that happened.
Firewatch didn’t use any violence, at least not in the hour that I played. This is because that game tells a different kind of story that is focused more on a quiet and emotional experience. The most intense moments in Firewatch come not from physical confrontations or harming someone, but from the fear of what might happen next or from the weight of past emotional stress on Henry. This is quite the opposite of the game from section. The violent nature of the section game helps make it so conflict shapes the narrative, whereas in Firewatch, the story is told through silence and emotional distance without the use of violence.
