Firewatch

Firewatch is a game which sets out to do just a very few relatively simple things. On a conceptual level, it sounds fairly unambitious and even limited. This is a game where the story is the draw and, while it is far more interactive than other games where that is the case, it is entirely devoid of what you might call "challenge" or "achievement", at least in the mechanical senses.

There is no explicit fail state in Firewatch. Failing is a temporary condition which lasts only as long as it takes you to figure out what you are doing wrong. There is no loss of progress or a message onscreen saying "Mission Failed". You are simply in the process of getting something done until it is. Similarly, the game offers little explicit sense of achievement. There are no numbers popping up or constant messages qualifying your performance as "Bad, Good, Excellent, OUTRAGEOUS".

Success, such as it is, is simply...Progress. The game advances time as you get things done.

None of this is a bad thing. While challenge and achievement are nice, they are not the be all and end all of video games. If those are all you are interested in, Firewatch is not for you. If you are interested in an experience though, Firewatch is a unique one in the world of games.

I don't want to say too much about the story so as not to spoil things, so I will be as general and nonspecific as possible. Firewatch's story is an adult story about adults and their adult experiences. I'm using the world adult a lot because this game, despite the slightly exaggerated (even cartoonish) presentation, is not for kids. Not because of depictions of drugs, alcohol, violence and sex peppered with coarse language - the presence of which is often superficially held up as being "adult" even when they are handled with adolescent immaturity. Firewatch is for adults because it touches on some grounded, real world problems and issues which would be pretty heavy for children to deal with. Yes, the characters also swear and drink and talk about sex. But they only do so the way real people do.

Particularly refreshing is just how much the backstory is grounded in reality. It lands hard because there's a relatable truthfulness to it which is absent in even the most well-crafted of fantasy storylines. Its characters are instantly relatable, flawed humans. You can see and understand how they came to do the things they did, right or wrong.

You get to experience a novel and inventive interactive exposition of one part of this backstory in the game's opening. This sets up just how Henry, the game's far-from-silent protagonist wind sup out in the Wyoming wilderness as a National Forest Service (A fictionalised stand in for the real world USFS) Fire Lookout.

Once the main story kicks into action, things take a turn for the mysterious. Something strange is going out in the wilderness. What's interesting is the setting itself plays spectacularly into this sense of mystery. Throughout human history, it is evident that people have always believed there's something out there in the woods. The sheer immensity of forests and the vast numbers of places things can be but remain unseen introduces a constant and unsettling element of the unknown. The only way it can be worse is to be out there alone.

And as Henry, you are. Constantly. The only companionship Henry is guaranteed is his two-way radio. And one end, you - Henry. At the other end, Delilah. These two characters are essentially the whole experience of the game. Their relationship is as core to the experience as the setting. Throughout the game you can have Henry report things to Delilah, respond to her own messages and so on. It's a fantastic way to present a character study in video game for and it is worth playing the game for that experience alone.

And yet, for all the persistence of Delilah's radio chatter...Henry is still alone. Delilah is miles and miles away in another tower. He catches only glimpses of other people. There are times when you become dully aware you are executing dangerous hiking activities with nobody around for probably dozens of miles. As you take on certain tasks, often while questioning the motivation behind them, you find yourself also thinking about how in the event of something going wrong...They'd probably never find your body. When you know Henry's story, that becomes even more sobering a thought. What's more, it only serves to further strengthen the instinctive paranoia your isolation inspires:

Why am I doing this? Who is really in charge? What do they want? How would anyone find out if something bad were to happen? What could I possibly do to set things right?

You might notice I'm talking a lot about the experience of the game in terms of reaction and how it makes you think about what's going on. That's because the core of this experience is the emotional and mental reaction it provokes. The gameplay out in the wilderness presents you with a sandbox in which you can explore, take pictures, hike, chat with Delilah. It's not the most expansive or interactive sandbox, but it's there to be enjoyed as you wish. But in the context of the game overall, it's merely a tool of the narrative. And that narrative is a story well worth the price of admission.

At the same time, Firewatch is much more of a game than some of the so-called "walking simulators" it is frequently compared to. While - as noted above - it lacks any fail states or explicit sense of achievement, this is not a game where you simply wander around the environment from point to point triggering non or minimally interactive snippets of story. You have agency within an environment which has a genuine sense of place and feels like a real location out in the wilderness. You have input into the narrative and you actively participate in it.

Still, Firewatch is never going to be a mainstream blockbuster. But then, it doesn't pretend to be. What it is is an arthouse character study. If you like that sort of thing, this is an exceptional example.