Running from The Fire
I played a game a few days ago, one that I just expected would be another weird ‘indie’ game about a specific idea or thought that bubbles in our head at random times, that we quickly scribble on a sticky note to collect dust until a revelation, but is near impossible to convey in any essay or book. When going into these kinds of games there’s an assumption unintentionally made by the player, that we are meant to feel ‘something’. It’s odd, and weirdly self-reflecting, when we find ourselves truly moved by what we just played. We never expect our eyes to tear-up or to smile at a scene that comes from a video game. We never expect our mind to mull days on end about what we just witnessed and how to respond.
Firewatch is a videogame about a man named ‘Henry’ who takes a summer job as a forest tower keeper, in other words, a member of the Firewatch. His main job: watch for fires and report them to the rangers. Henry, and in tandem the player them self, expects a summer of going about in the deep woods of the Shoshone and being with nature as close as any human can. To escape from whatever lies back with humanity and the life we want a break from. For the player, it could be school, a job, the normal week grind, or just complications in life in general. For Henry, it’s actually a surprise that rocked me to my very core.
The game initially opens up with a simple text selection ‘game’. It presents a scene and the player responds by picking one of the options provided as a response. The first scene and option is “You see Julia”, Julia being a woman that would make Henry’s life the most complex and crazy existence….and it’s the best thing that’s happened to him. I chuckled, selected the choice, and watched as scenes conveyed by text went by, option by option, until the small grin I had vanished and my heart clenched. Julia had early onset dementia that is initially hinted at by ‘episodes’ she had at the university she worked at as a professor. As years go by, conveyed by text, Julia’s condition becomes worse from yelling at colleagues for taking notes on her research, that she had happily loaned to them two days prior, to no longer recognizing Henry as her own husband during times of intimacy and love between them. She became a stranger some nights, and Henry’s best friend the other. Her condition worsens bringing her family from Melbourne to come and take her back with them. Henry, emotionally drained from years of watching his best friend dwindle away mentally, remains in Boulder, Colorado, not knowing how to respond to the pain he feels. This section ends with an ad in the paper for a job. Henry, and the player, take the job as a member of the forest service at Two Forks station.
For the next 3 months of summer Henry runs from the pain and problems of a wife that no longer recognizes him. His only connection with another human being is another woman Delilah, who similarly ran away from a mother and family that no longer loved her or trusted her to do the right thing, and instead turned towards the bottle and solitude in the woods. What transpires is a summer of mystery and paranoia when these two are essentially stalked by an unknown ambiguous force who similarly ran away from their own pain. If you want to know what Firewatch really is, its pain: pain of the unknown, pain of dejection, and pain of making a mistake. True human pain conveyed in the most human story I have ever experienced in a game of this scale. I connected with every single one of these characters, wanting to know if the pain was worth running away from, if the escape was worth it, if leaving these problems would change anything. The ending reveals all and then some, and with it an emotionally drained JD.
Firewatch is something else, it’s not perfect nor does it claim to be so, especially with the PS4 version. It’s a human game, telling a human story, in the best written dialogue video games have to offer. The game itself is as human as the story it tells, one that will make you laugh, make you gasp, make you scared, and make you lean back and think about the things that we turn towards when we do run…and if they tell us to turn back and face the problems that struck us so low. At the end of the day, Firewatch is as difficult to explain as are the very subjects it deals with, humans.
