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Firewatch had potential. But, maybe because I actually wanted to play a fire lookout game, I didn’t find it enjoyable. It just doesn’t truly succeed at anything it tries. Story wise, you are a man in his late 30s trying to escape life by taking a job as a fire lookout in Wyoming. You start talking with the supervisor of the fire watch posts, Delilah, and develop a rapport. There are hints of a conspiracy and a love triangle, and the dialogue is quite well written.
Spoilers past the break!
What measures can we use to judge Firewatch as a game? As a game, there are no challenges. As a walking simulator, there are few grand vistas or mysterious nooks and crannies. As a mystery novel, the reveal is somewhat disappointing and uninteresting (which, admittedly, is the point). As a slice of life story, there’s too many distractions and not enough downtime. As a video game version of Up in the Air, there’s not enough George Clooney (or, more seriously, enough dialogue).
But let’s take Up in the Air as our reference: Firewatch is trying to provide just a simple story of two people avoiding their lives – a slightly different story, but certainly there are thematic connections and the ending is similar. The A plot in Firewatch seems to be a conspiracy forming around disappearances and a possible murder. The B plot is the relationship between the player character and his supervisor. In the end, the conspiracy is shown to be nothing but a PTSD-beleaguered soldier trying to cover up the accidental death of his son. A touching plot, but hardly the grand conspiracy of surveillance and intrigue that is implied. If they had been telling that story (rather than hinting at a conspiracy and trying to induce paranoia in the player), maybe it would have been enjoyable. It seems the B plot was the real story all along – so why did the developers try to distract from it?
As the antithesis of Firewatch’s A plot, let’s take Up in the Air’s B plot: a corporate downsizer finds out that his company may no longer be sending him on airplane trips across the globe – opting instead for videoconferencing. This is always in the back of your mind during the film, but the focus is on George Clooney’s relationships (and lack thereof). All the while, George Clooney and his trainee are doing their job – downsizing. In Firewatch, I did not once spot a fire. I never used the Osborne Fire Finder they spent three minutes explaining. I spent more time looking at a poster about trees. I never actually did the job (minus once tracking down some people lighting fireworks) – it’s all relegated to the background in favor of a mystery that goes nowhere.
I am dissatisfied because there was real potential here. The relationship between Henry and Delilah was interesting and well-written until the third act, where paranoia takes over Delilah’s dialogue – ending in her abandonment of Henry, telling him to go back to his wife. I have no problem with the ending itself – Up in the Air does this well. The trouble is that there is almost no mention of Henry’s wife until that moment, and the separation wasn’t his choice. Further, Delilah’s backstory as a 10-year fire lookout veteran doesn’t mesh well with her sudden paranoia, lack of knowledge of the area, and her suggestion to start a fire.
All told, it took less than three hours to complete Firewatch (for once, at least, the running speed is reasonable). I think this would have worked far better as a much longer game by adding an actual fire watching mechanic, expanding the territory, and eating up the watching/travel time with more banal, slice-of-life dialogue (as opposed to paranoid conspiracy). It’s still not a bad game – though perhaps not worth the standard asking price – so it can still find a place in Tier Two.