In Firewatch you play as a man named Henry who has retreated from his messy life to work as a fire lookout in the Wyoming wilderness. Perched high atop a mountain, it’s your job to look for smoke and keep the wilderness safe. An especially hot and dry summer has everyone on edge.
Your supervisor, a woman named Delilah, is available to you at all times over a small, handheld radio — and is your only contact with the world you've left behind. But when something strange draws you out of your lookout tower and into the world, you’ll explore a wild and unknown environment, facing questions and making interpersonal choices that can build or destroy the only meaningful relationship you have.
But no more than slightly. Firewatch is strong enough in virtually every respect that it can afford to fall a little short of perfection here and there. That may be annoying to anyone who demands absolute perfection, but for everyone else, it means that this is an absolute must-buy.
Firewatch manages to keep you on the edge of the seat from the beginning to the end, even when you're performing mundane tasks as a ranger. It is thanks to the amazing and intriguing conversations with beautiful landscapes that this game gets the player on the hook.
Firewatch is at its best when it allows you just explore is captivating landscapes and spend some time on your own thinking about everything and nothing all at once.
Firewatch has a funny, surprisingly intelligent narrative all captured within a spectacular and grand setting that worth a picture or two. Even though there were some obvious performance issues with the PS4 version of the game, Firewatch is still more than worth playing, multiple times.
While some players will probably enjoy Firewatch, others will find it very boring. Campo Santo's production will divide the audience, that's for sure. But we have to admit the game is below our expectations. With slightly stronger writing and some real choices with important consequences, Firewatch would have been something exceptional.
Firewatch doesn't provide the same emotional heights or satisfying conclusion you'd expect from such a story-heavy game, but Campo Santo definitely shows promise with their debut project. Even if it won't have you reaching for the tissues by the end, this woodland walking simulator still provides a pretty great way to burn through an otherwise unoccupied afternoon.
Firewatch probably should have been a short movie. Or a short story. Or a radio play. It should have been something other than a minimally interactive multi-hour first-person perspective videogame. It’s too modest an undertaking, too divorced from any meaningful player involvement. It is not the stuff of videogames. It doesn’t work.
April 23, 2018
Valve announces the acquisition of Campo Santo, Firewatch’s creators. Read more
