Spoiler alert for the game Firewatch! 

I usually don’t play any TV or computer games except for occasionally The Sims, Mario Kart or Mario Party. And those games didn’t really sound fun to me to analyze, so I decided to try something new. Since I heard that the new game Firewatch got great reviews I of course also wanted to try it.

Firewatch is a narrative story where you, as the first person controller, are the new firewatcher Henry, all alone in the wilderness, and the only lifeline and guidance you have is the person on the other side of a handheld radio. That is Delilah, one of the other Firewatchers on the other side of the forest. When Henry leaves his look-out tower to explore and go on smaller “missions” in his part of the forest, he starts to notice that something strange is going on, and he might not be as alone as he thinks.

It’s a very beautifully developed and visually pleasing game, where you as the player make the choices of what dialog Henry will have with Delilah, which defines what type of relationship you will have with her. And this can affect what type of information she gives to you, and also how much of Henrys life you will reveal to her. You get the freedom to explore your land that you are in charge of, but there’s always a mission you have to fulfill at some point to get to the next part of the story. But first you can choose to really explore the beautifully developed game and all it’s different types of settings and even different weather conditions, which they’ve managed to portray excellently.

 

Game Moment
Instead of writing about a beautiful or amazing moment, I’m going to talk about the moment that stood out for me the most. For me it was a turning point, and changed the general feeling of the game.

In the beginning of the game the setting is kind of calm, and you feel like there’s really no pressure to do the mission they want you to do. The sounds in the game specifically helps with the calmer feeling and the feeling that you really are alone in the wilderness. The only sound you hear is enhanced environmental sounds, which adds to the juiciness of the game, and your own footstep. But as mysterious things start to develop, the more nervous or anxious feeling I got, and also the more background music there was in the game. Which for me, added to the nervous feeling. When the music started, you knew that something was to happen.

At this specific moment I wanted to analyze, Henry has just found out that someone has gone missing in your part of the forest, but him and Delilah didn’t seem to take it very seriously (yet). So the next day in the forest, Henry is asked to look for eventual bear traces along a river. This task itself was a bit nervwracking for me, but I had to look for the bear in order to move forward. Even if the bear would scare the shit out of me at some point.
Henry gets to the lake and instead of bear traces he finds a notepad that belongs to someone who’s been listening in on Henrys and Delilahs conversations, and keeping notes on what they’ve been doing. The way Henry and Delilah reacts to this adds to the seriousness of this moment. And the conversation between them is the only sound in the game at this point. They get freaked out and nervous for the first time in the game, and then Henry notices that something or someone else is out there. Besides the fact that Henry states it out loud, the player knows it as well when his radio (or something) makes a sound, kind of like an other machine is disturbing it, and then a stick breaks. Still no music. Which is great for the experience. He turns around to look for the person or animal. Which still could be a bear, preparing to eat Henry for dinner. Then he notices another radio just laying on the ground. He picks it up and then loud punching noises, a ringing sound (in Henrys ears) appears. As he falls to the ground everything goes black.
After this moment, Henry gets more “serious” missions to be able to find out what the hell is going on. It made the game more intense and made me want to keep playing, because I wanted to the end of the story to be able to find out what was happening.

Characters
You play this game with a first person controller, so you never really see how Henry looks like. Except for his hands and legs. And as a character he is mostly calm, and it feels a bit like he doesn’t really care what happens. It’s the dynamic with the other character Delilah that makes it more interesting. Without someone like her to talk to, the game would be boring. She gives me as a player feedback, and enhances the different types of feelings in the game. At one point for example, he just tells to just enjoy the view. Sometimes you don’t really know if you can trust her either. Because you don’t really know who she is, or how she looks. You only know the things that she tells you. That makes her a bit unrelatable, and kind of hard to trust sometimes and you get the feeling that maybe she has something to do with the mystery in the forest sometimes. 

Navigation helpers
This is a game where you cannot interact with every object, or go exactly where you want, even though it may look like you can. This is controlled by the game designers. You as a player has the freedom to go in any direction you’d like, but within your forest area. I as the not so experienced player, got lost in the forest a lot in the beginning. Until I started to actually look at the ground and see the (sometimes) very hidden paths that you were supposed to follow. And of there wasn’t a specific path the game designer used light in different ways to show the user where to go. Sometimes it was a ray of light between the trees or a light streaming into the cave I was currently in. These very sudden and visually beautiful hints could play a big part in the navigation. If you didn’t want to stare at the map at all times.