For this week’s critical play, I played Firewatch by Campo Santo on the Steam Deck. Available on Switch, PS4, MacOS, Steam, and the App Store, Firewatch tells the story of newly-hired fire lookout Henry who takes the job as an escape from his life and hardships. The game engages in creating an immersive narrative through the player enacting Henry’s story, where the player takes on and acts out his job as a fire lookout. But Firewatch doesn’t just roleplay a job; from the very beginning, players quickly come to realize that their dialogue and character’s perspective embody Henry’s experience, not theirs. For example, players answer dialogue when learning Henry’s backstory–but choices aren’t really the player’s choices. Dialogue answers are limited to what Henry as a character would say. At one point, the player as Henry can either ask Julia–Henry’s girlfriend–to turn down an incredible job offer that would require relocation, or commute back Colorado to visit him.
Even though I as the player felt empathy for Julia, I did not have the option to explore other compromises/options like visiting Julia myself or moving with her, because Henry as a character would not do so. This design of allowing the player choices, but only through the lens of Henry’s character, creates a structured embedded narrative that forces the player to really live as Henry’s character and seems to persist in this style throughout the game.
There weren’t too many violent elements within the events of the first couple hours of gameplay. The player engages mainly in dialogue, for example conversing with his supervisor Delilah, and carrying out tasks that she assigns. However, at the end of the first day, the player returns to the fire watch tower to find that someone has broken into the place, resulting in broken windows and even missing bedsheets.
As a walking sim, the game immerses the player through dialogue, movement, and interacting with a limited range of items like supply caches, flashlights, new map segments, and of course Henry’s walkie-talkie. This stays true even after the introduction of the spooky return to a ransacked fire watch tower; the player is able to pick things up, drop things, and turn on/off lights, but that’s about it. The decision against explicit violent actions, such as being home when the intrusion occurs and fighting off someone, I feel further immerses the player in the game. The player’s attention and mental capacity remains focused on observation and embodiment of the character. Instead of creating a scene that prompted player action, instead I was launched further into the story and Henry’s experience of the break-in. What was taken? What was broken? What can Delilah do about this?
Limiting the player’s ability, choices, and creating intentional observatory scenes rather than actionable sequences all tie back into creating a story and narrative with the player as an experiencer, rather than an instigator. Another scene that comes to mind when considering violent elements–or rather the lack of–is when the player must interrupt people illegally setting off fireworks in the forest during the current dry season. Henry is sent off to investigate and put a stop to the fire risk and finds traces of the culprits, who turn out to be two drunk underage girls who are skinny dipping in the lake.
No nudity is actually shown as the background sun in this area casts the girls into shadowy figures, and they escape across the lake to the other side. There was an explicit exclusion of violence in this scene; no ticketing, no lecturing, no chasing or apprehending. The most Henry can do is radio Delilah, and walk up to the edge of the lake before the girls flee. This intentional choice of story and scene structure puts the player in an observatory role, experiencing scenes and current events without directly engaging with it.
I was very intrigued and invested in the story by the end of my playtesting, and hope to play and experience more of this story. Overall, Firewatch utilized strategic and intentional facets of narrative architecture to tie together gameplay and storytelling by enacting Henry’s story, embedding narratives into the surrounding environment, and structuring mechanics and scenes to cement the player’s role primarily as an observer.
