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    Firewatch

    Game » consists of 8 releases. Released Feb 09, 2016

    A first-person mystery set in the Wyoming wilderness developed by Campo Santo, where the protagonist's only lifeline, emotionally and physically speaking, is the person on the other end of a handheld radio.

    The most impactful bit almost went totally over my head (spoilers)

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    ShalashaskaUK666

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    So I've finished it, and I liked it quite a lot - even though it's definitely a case of enjoying the journey rather than the destination (that 'you're in your tower, right?' moment was some MGS 1 Liquid-is-Miller shizz).

    ANYWAY, was I the only one who didn't really catch onto the Goodwin stuff? When I first found the backpack, I brushed it off as environment detail. Then, further down the line, just before you go to the controlled burn camp, as Delilah starts talking about how worried she was about Brian, I was more like "Who the f**k is Brian?" as oppose to worrying or getting involved.

    Now this is all going to sound super ignorant on my part, but even when I stumbled into Brian's camp thing near the end, with the books and pillows etc., I still didn't think of it as something important. It never felt like an important part of the story - I was always focussed on the H/D stuff and the Wapiti stuff, not reading into the implications of what I was classing as side content. Maybe something to do with the lack of character models maybe? I don't know - it's weird haha, I know.

    Anyway, so we explore the cave and find Brian's body, but in my mind walking up to it I was just like "Oh, some dude died down here", so when the prompt to leave the cave came up, I really didn't want to - I wanted answers to all the conspiratorial stuff!

    THEN, when D is super bummed out, and is all "I could've saved them" kinda thing, I just thought "What? The guys from like, the beginning of the game?" - like I get it's obviously sad the kid died, but it felt like so much time had passed and the buildup to this 'reveal' was so obfuscated and meandered towards, the fact THAT is 'the thing' for this game, initially just didn't hit me whatsoever.

    How much did the big reveals of the game get to you, and what do you think was the bit that Alex said really got to him? For me, the intro stuff about Jules was the most impactful, if I'm honest!

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    stonyman65

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    #2  Edited By stonyman65

    Yeah I think they did a shitty job with that. Looking at what others have said about the game it seems like that is a common complaint. They had so many other plot threads going at one time that the Brian stuff got buried (I was too busy wondering about the missing girls and the surveillance stuff) that when it came around that it was all about Brian and Ned my thought was "Oh, the two people that were mentioned only like 3 times throughout the game". They just dropped everything else and starting focusing on that entirely. The last 30 minutes of that game was just kinda bad. Once you knew what was going on with Ned all of the tension and mystery just disappeared. The ending was super disappointing in my opinion.

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    youeightit

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    I agree with both of you.

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    DonutFever

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    Yeah. When I came across the camp it put so much emphasis on it that I realized Ned was the one responsible, but it needed to be more developed from finding the bad onwards.

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    ShalashaskaUK666

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    I tell you guys what I didn't realise either - at the very end, just after you get Ned's 'confession' tape, when you go up the rope to the top, there's a whole underground bunker where he used to live!

    I think this is probably REALLY obvious, but somehow I didn't catch it first time through. My gf is currently playing and noticed the prompt to lift the 'makeshift hatch', which I SWEAR when I played, wasn't there haha! Either way, there's some pretty crucial plot stuff down there with regards to making you care way more about Ned and Brian, alongside how crazy his operation to monitor you was.

    I'm torn between saying I think it would've benefitted with a LITTLE icon or something on the hatch, and then thinking 'no, we should find that stuff ourselves'. What do you guys think? There's a lot of really good plot stuff and character work here that you can completely miss out on - such as just zooming in and reading his diary entries each morning next to the typewriter!

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    Teddie

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    I think that's kind of the point. They bring up Ned and Brian constantly, but always when the focus is on something else, and then they quickly move on. You're not supposed to see the "twist" coming, but at the same time they don't want to blindside you with it coming from nowhere.

    Unfortunately, like @stonyman65 mentioned, when it comes time to drop all the other plot threads (rather unceremoniously, I might add), they end up focusing on something you're not invested in. There's zero emotional payoff to any of the plot threads in that scenario. There are some themes of paranoia and escapism, that make the overall experience okay in hindsight, but in the moment it just feels like the game ends with a wet fart.

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    NeverGameOver

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    #7  Edited By NeverGameOver

    @shalashaskauk666 said:

    So I've finished it, and I liked it quite a lot - even though it's definitely a case of enjoying the journey rather than the destination (that 'you're in your tower, right?' moment was some MGS 1 Liquid-is-Miller shizz).

    ANYWAY, was I the only one who didn't really catch onto the Goodwin stuff? When I first found the backpack, I brushed it off as environment detail. Then, further down the line, just before you go to the controlled burn camp, as Delilah starts talking about how worried she was about Brian, I was more like "Who the f**k is Brian?" as oppose to worrying or getting involved.

    Now this is all going to sound super ignorant on my part, but even when I stumbled into Brian's camp thing near the end, with the books and pillows etc., I still didn't think of it as something important. It never felt like an important part of the story - I was always focussed on the H/D stuff and the Wapiti stuff, not reading into the implications of what I was classing as side content. Maybe something to do with the lack of character models maybe? I don't know - it's weird haha, I know.

    Anyway, so we explore the cave and find Brian's body, but in my mind walking up to it I was just like "Oh, some dude died down here", so when the prompt to leave the cave came up, I really didn't want to - I wanted answers to all the conspiratorial stuff!

    THEN, when D is super bummed out, and is all "I could've saved them" kinda thing, I just thought "What? The guys from like, the beginning of the game?" - like I get it's obviously sad the kid died, but it felt like so much time had passed and the buildup to this 'reveal' was so obfuscated and meandered towards, the fact THAT is 'the thing' for this game, initially just didn't hit me whatsoever.

    How much did the big reveals of the game get to you, and what do you think was the bit that Alex said really got to him? For me, the intro stuff about Jules was the most impactful, if I'm honest!

    Guys, the game isn't about the dumb mystery Ned/Brian plot. It's about the relationship between Max and Dehlilia and the mystery is only there to drive that along.

    My post on it from the other thread:

    I just finished it. Played more or less the entire game in one sitting, with the exception of the text-based intro, which I played last night. I really enjoyed most of it but I can see why others did not. For me, it comes down to what part of the game you focus on. If you are focused on the mystery plot, then yes, it's mediocre at best. But for me, the mystery stalker thing is just window dressing on the primary focus of the game. This game isn't a mystery. It's a story about relationships and companionship. The mystery is just there to move the relationship along. And I think that they absolutely knocked the relationship aspects out of the park-- from the intro, which shows the development of a gaping hole in Henry's heart and his need to escape to figure out all the shit going down in his life, to the relationship with Dehlilia, which develops organically and realistically out of a mutual need for companionship; to the end, where she leaves because she knows that the relationship is doomed because it's a mirage (they never even met!), and that it's ultimately the right thing to do; to (and this may just be how I role-played it) Henry's similar realization that she needed to leave and his need to go back and face the music (this played out so perfectly for me that I even had him put his wedding ring on for the first time as he was leaving the his tower permanently), as well as his renewed commitment to helping his wife, despite there being very little hope that she'll ever be completely back to herself. I think that both Henry and Dehlila are complicated characters and the game portrays a complicated relationship in a way that few games do. It's easy to criticize him the same way people shit on widows who find new companions too soon, but the reality is that you really don't know what that's like until you've been through it. I can totally understand why someone in that situation would feel vulnerable and conflicted and feel an intense need to find support elsewhere. It's realistic and deep in a way that I don't often see in this medium and as a result, I feel wholly satisfied by the game, despite the weak points in the mystery plot.

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    FrostyRyan

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    Honestly it kinda seems like you weren't paying attention?

    Anyway this game's first couple hours were a masterpiece and then it became a convoluted mess with no conclusions to either of its goals. There's the forest mysteries and then there's the character relationship. NEITHER of them delivered or felt like they intersected enough. Disappointing.

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    dourin

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    Maybe it's because I played through the entire game in one sitting, but I didn't feel like that at all. The conspiracy stuff IS tied up, as Ned was the one tapping into your radios and listening the whole time, he was the one that basically broke into the research area and planted the "observation of H/D" documents to make it look like H/D were being spied on, etc. I believe it was even stated (I don't remember if Ned told you outright, or if it was in a note somewhere) that Ned was doing all of it to basically scare H/D away from the area so he wouldn't be discovered to be living in the forest. I guess I could see how it allcould be confusing if you didn't find the hatch, but it was all definitely there and explained. I feel like maybe a lot of it is missed, though, if you do play the game in multiple sessions, since, then, the mentions of Brian and Ned are further in the past for you, the player.

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    audioBusting

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    Maybe it depends on the dialogue choices? I don't quite remember how, but Delilah talked a lot about Brian being the only other friend she ever made after becoming a lookout in my game. Part of that was also me pointing stuff out the second time after knowing about Brian, like the fantasy map in the drawer.

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    poobumbutt

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    #11  Edited By poobumbutt

    This is sort of how I reacted to everything in this game, but for some reason, it made all the moments much more impactful. It actually makes me think that it was designed with the intention that the player would brush off or even ignore parts of the Goodwin plot. It took the perception of what I thought was going on (some weird social experiment by the government) and flipped it on its head in pretty much one single moment. It was a really impactful part for me and I think it actually would have been HURT if I had been focusing too hard on the Goodwin storyline. To continue your analogy, I think it's a lot like the MGS1 "memory shape alloy" sequence. All of your preconceptions about why decisions are being made and actions are being taken are suddenly scattered in a "here's what's REALLY going on" moment.

    I feel like I'm the only one who thinks not only was the "paranoia" story better than the H/D stuff, the eventual twist it results in was the best part. I didn't feel blindsided when they "dropped" the other plotlines, because that's how a twist works: by coming out of nowhere. Finding Brian's camp was the moment when I realized that their story was more significant (though, I've had equally stupid brain farts where I fail to see the significance of a scene, like you did).

    I'm not sure what some people mean by the game focusing on something you didn't care about or weren't invested in. I didn't find it that hard to keep just three subplots in my brain, so when N/B became the prime, it was easy to get invested in that directly. I mean, did people really not like the idea of a father/son who may or may not have gone missing or even died in the creep-ass woods? I thought that was great.

    However, I agree that the second half of the ending - pretty much everything after finding the bunker - was lackluster. I just felt like it didn't add anything significant to H/D's development. "Okay, she's creeped out by this ordeal and now Henry is a reminder of that and she doesn't want to hang out anymore. Did we really need thirty odd minutes to cover that?" Maybe they could have found a way for the credits to roll after finding the tape/bunker. Then the H/D finale could have been a during-the-credits thing...? But then that would kind of put what is supposed to be the main focus of this game into the backseat. I dunno. I agree the second part of the ending is meh, but that first part hit me real good.

    P.S. For further context into why the N/B stuff worked so well for me when it seems to have fallen flat for others: in Brian's camp, when you find the note asking you to send his hiking anchors home to him, I copied his whole address down because I figured there'd be an end-game moment where Henry would be shipping his stuff off and go "what was his street name again?" or something and I'd have to input the answer. So, yeah. Worked SUPER well for me. I understand why it wouldn't for others, though.

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    kubqo

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    Yeah, i just finished it like 10 minutes ago and immidiately had to jump on the internet why was i supposed to care. "Wet fart" as someone has stated already, is kinda the right word for that ending (by which i mean the last 30-40 minutes). Whether it was me playing in multiple sessions or not picking good dialogue options, i didn't get any emotional payoff at all. I'm still not clear why that dead kid was so important. When that reveal was made and Henry and Delilah were focusing on it so hard, i was like wtf? I always conceived them as 2 out of several people that got lost and thats it. That said i liked the game, i was hoping that it would expand on the D/H relationship and there wasnt any emotional payoff there neither. I'm torn, i want more games like this, i think it was actually very smartly designed and looked great, but the story stuff could (should) have been handled better. Right now i just feel a bad aftertaste.

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    NTM

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    I understood it, and didn't brush it off (I can't really see how you could, unless expectations were set elsewhere), but I also feel like the game didn't do a good job of making me care that much for it. That whole part of the story is really lacking. The only thing that was a mystery to me, was how that part of the story intersected with the Henry and Delilah story, so when things went crazy for them, it made me wonder whether the stress or what have you had gotten to Henry, otherwise both were kind of lacking, one more than the other.

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    ZolRoyce

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    #14  Edited By ZolRoyce

    It's always interesting to me to hear about what people noticed or didn't notice in games like this.

    I had an idea pretty early on myself the Goodwins were going to be involved somehow, if you look up from where you find Brians bag, you see a bunch of dangling rope from the top of a cliff, so my mind immediately went into "That's fishy" mode. So the Goodwins were now locked into my mind whenever something weird happened.

    Until about the midway point of the game though I just thought they were involved in that whoever is stalking you had kidnapped or murdered them kind of a way.

    But in my conversation trees at least anyways, D mentions that Ned had PTSD and that combined with a few more environmental clues about Brian made me go. "Oh, okay, yeah, I see what's going on here."

    Now to be fair, my 'seeing what's going on.' Was more thinking that Ned outright killed him and less it was an accident until you find out for sure either way.

    Also on the subject of the ending, I guess I'm in the minority, at least on those forums, but I thought it wrapped up nicely. Due to thinking it was the Goodwins, that resolved for me, and the relationship between D and Henry felt like it hit it's logical conclusion as well. You were both there to escape something, and her seeing Henry would just instill in her all of the guilt of Brians death, which obviously if her coping mechanism for other of lifes problems is to flee to the middle of nowhere, wouldn't deal well with that at all.

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    SilverGlyph

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    I kept mention of the Goodwins in the back of my mind, but I didn't see enough about them to start getting invested and admittedly I kind of forgot about them.

    @nevergameover Even the relationship with Delilah, which was what I was looking forward to when I started the game (but I eventually became more interested in the mystery), ended disappointingly. It seems to me that the writers skipped an essential part of story structure. They had the intro and the buildup down pat, but they skipped the climax and went immediately to the resolution in ALL of their plot threads, except for the ones they just left hanging. Whether it's a mystery or a relationship exploration, it is first and foremost a story, and if you can't craft it correctly it's not going to be satisfying to a great many people.

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    NeverGameOver

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    @silverglyph: The climax of the relationship story is when you are rushing to her safehouse to meet her at the end of the game.

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    SilverGlyph

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    @nevergameover: I would hardly call that a climax, but I guess it worked for some people. That's cool.

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