My thoughts on Firewatch
I started playing Firewatch back in 2016 with absolutely no expectation, was
completely new to the narrative driven walking sim genre as a whole and
only picked it up because I thought it looked pretty. What I didn’t
expect was an excellently written layered story about escapism
that would change my perspective on games as a story telling medium.
I’ll be talking of my experience of the game, so will be SPOILING both the story on the surface and what it’s actually about. Also I will not be talking about the gameplay or get into the debate into whether walking sims are games or not. In my humble opinion games are a versatile form of art and can be of any type.
The game starts with a text based introduction to your character Henry with slight freedom in player choice which tells us how a life full of hope slowly but surely crumbled away leaving him hopeless. Short bits of gameplay through the lush forest in between the texts serves to present the dichotomy of adventure that supposedly awaits Henry and troublesome life that he’s leaving behind. Henry isn't going on a grand adventure but putting a pause on a sad chapter of your life. Connecting to this feeling of Henry is crucial to understanding the story of Firewatch.
On reaching your watch tower, you are greeted with the lovely voice of Delilah, the 2nd main character of story. Delilah comes in the form of a witty flirtatious persona to keep Henry company and acts as Henry’s supervisor. This blooming friendship gives Henry a way out of his old life and immerse himself in the forest and the mystery they encounter. But it’s only after the apparent crazy occurrences that cracks begin to appear in Delilah’s otherwise funny, composed personality. Just like Henry, she is also running away from a life she used to have, and have just been doing it for longer.
Now for the mystery story that Firewatch baits the player with. Starting off innocently enough with some unruly teenage girls and some unknown mysterious guy that wrecks Henry’s fire lookout, these small annoyances slowly changes as the teens go missing and Henry catches more odd occurrences in the forest. Both the main characters start feeling that someone is watching them and Delilah gets more and more paranoid. This paranoia slowly but surely sends Henry into an wild goose chase for some conspiracy. They were being watched and kept track of by some unknown organization, this was the narrative in their heads supported by various data and tracking apparatus Henry found. This was also the time Delilah talked about a previous lookout much like Henry who she had contact with called Ned. Ned stayed with his son and something happened after the last time fire broke out then she had no contact with them.
All this speculation and paranoia came to a climax when Henry in a quite melancholic scene found Ned’s son Brian’s dead body in a cave. Now those that have played the game might disagree on that this is the climax of the story cause all the revelations happens after this but I call this the climax cause this where the mystery part of the story ends. The revelation and the ending of the game is meant to make you realize what the game is actually about, that it’s not about the mystery at all. This is where a disconnect with majority of the players happened.
Before I state my thoughts on the ending, I will say almost all questions you have about the mystery part of the story can be explained by just exploring. Now that exploration might take a long time and interfere with the flow of the story, but realistically you can’t expect the main character to find everything either. I have a few problems with the story but they are minor enough to not mention.
Ned was an overly strict father to his son Brian who quite obviously didn’t like intense physical activity much, let’s face it, climbing and trekking through a somewhat steep mountainous trail is no easy activity. During one of these quite tough climbs, Brian fell and died. Ned might have been tough but he was trying to do what he felt was best for his son, and now his own son’s death was a result of his actions. In the eyes of the law, he might not be found guilty of murder but in his mind he was entirely responsible. Now he had 2 options, either go back to civilization and deal with the consequences of his son’s death or continue living in the forest. As we find out, he chose the later, he chose to escape into his fake life in the forest and shirk all responsibility. This is how he coped with loss.
While living in the forest, Ned found that Henry had contact with Delilah. In order to see what both of them knew about the fate of him and his son, he kept tabs on them through some surveillance equipment found in a wildlife survey location. Through Ned’s notes, we get a rough idea that Delilah was running away from a relationship, also probably from other issues. After getting to know about Ned and his son’s fate along with the impending forest fire, she had to make a quick decision. She decided that that the best way to cope with her problems in life, she had to face them head on lest she end up like Ned. And since Henry was part of her escapism and she wanted to leave all of that part of her life behind, she decided to not meet him there. If they were ever gonna meet, it was gonna happen in the “real world”. A fresh start.
And now we finally come to Henry. Henry just like Delilah and Ned, was living fantasy in the forest. His wife was already critically ill from amnesia when he left home, and he probably would have no future with her after he returns. But on the other hand, the fantasy that he and Delilah and created together had came crashing after Ned’s revelation. There was no grand conspiracy, no fantastic mystery. Just a tragic story about coping with loss, a very human story of escapism.
The game gives the player a choice, the obvious choice
of following in Delilah’s footsteps and leaving to real life or the
secret ending of choosing Ned’s life of living in his own fantasy world.
This choice becomes meaningless if the player doesn’t connect with
Henry enough or if the player doesn’t understand what actually game
meant by the ending.
What the game gives is not an answer to the question but rather asks the player what he believes in, whether the real world is worth getting back to or is a fantasy good enough.
I’ll be talking of my experience of the game, so will be SPOILING both the story on the surface and what it’s actually about. Also I will not be talking about the gameplay or get into the debate into whether walking sims are games or not. In my humble opinion games are a versatile form of art and can be of any type.
The game starts with a text based introduction to your character Henry with slight freedom in player choice which tells us how a life full of hope slowly but surely crumbled away leaving him hopeless. Short bits of gameplay through the lush forest in between the texts serves to present the dichotomy of adventure that supposedly awaits Henry and troublesome life that he’s leaving behind. Henry isn't going on a grand adventure but putting a pause on a sad chapter of your life. Connecting to this feeling of Henry is crucial to understanding the story of Firewatch.
On reaching your watch tower, you are greeted with the lovely voice of Delilah, the 2nd main character of story. Delilah comes in the form of a witty flirtatious persona to keep Henry company and acts as Henry’s supervisor. This blooming friendship gives Henry a way out of his old life and immerse himself in the forest and the mystery they encounter. But it’s only after the apparent crazy occurrences that cracks begin to appear in Delilah’s otherwise funny, composed personality. Just like Henry, she is also running away from a life she used to have, and have just been doing it for longer.
Now for the mystery story that Firewatch baits the player with. Starting off innocently enough with some unruly teenage girls and some unknown mysterious guy that wrecks Henry’s fire lookout, these small annoyances slowly changes as the teens go missing and Henry catches more odd occurrences in the forest. Both the main characters start feeling that someone is watching them and Delilah gets more and more paranoid. This paranoia slowly but surely sends Henry into an wild goose chase for some conspiracy. They were being watched and kept track of by some unknown organization, this was the narrative in their heads supported by various data and tracking apparatus Henry found. This was also the time Delilah talked about a previous lookout much like Henry who she had contact with called Ned. Ned stayed with his son and something happened after the last time fire broke out then she had no contact with them.
All this speculation and paranoia came to a climax when Henry in a quite melancholic scene found Ned’s son Brian’s dead body in a cave. Now those that have played the game might disagree on that this is the climax of the story cause all the revelations happens after this but I call this the climax cause this where the mystery part of the story ends. The revelation and the ending of the game is meant to make you realize what the game is actually about, that it’s not about the mystery at all. This is where a disconnect with majority of the players happened.
Before I state my thoughts on the ending, I will say almost all questions you have about the mystery part of the story can be explained by just exploring. Now that exploration might take a long time and interfere with the flow of the story, but realistically you can’t expect the main character to find everything either. I have a few problems with the story but they are minor enough to not mention.
Ned was an overly strict father to his son Brian who quite obviously didn’t like intense physical activity much, let’s face it, climbing and trekking through a somewhat steep mountainous trail is no easy activity. During one of these quite tough climbs, Brian fell and died. Ned might have been tough but he was trying to do what he felt was best for his son, and now his own son’s death was a result of his actions. In the eyes of the law, he might not be found guilty of murder but in his mind he was entirely responsible. Now he had 2 options, either go back to civilization and deal with the consequences of his son’s death or continue living in the forest. As we find out, he chose the later, he chose to escape into his fake life in the forest and shirk all responsibility. This is how he coped with loss.
While living in the forest, Ned found that Henry had contact with Delilah. In order to see what both of them knew about the fate of him and his son, he kept tabs on them through some surveillance equipment found in a wildlife survey location. Through Ned’s notes, we get a rough idea that Delilah was running away from a relationship, also probably from other issues. After getting to know about Ned and his son’s fate along with the impending forest fire, she had to make a quick decision. She decided that that the best way to cope with her problems in life, she had to face them head on lest she end up like Ned. And since Henry was part of her escapism and she wanted to leave all of that part of her life behind, she decided to not meet him there. If they were ever gonna meet, it was gonna happen in the “real world”. A fresh start.
And now we finally come to Henry. Henry just like Delilah and Ned, was living fantasy in the forest. His wife was already critically ill from amnesia when he left home, and he probably would have no future with her after he returns. But on the other hand, the fantasy that he and Delilah and created together had came crashing after Ned’s revelation. There was no grand conspiracy, no fantastic mystery. Just a tragic story about coping with loss, a very human story of escapism.
What the game gives is not an answer to the question but rather asks the player what he believes in, whether the real world is worth getting back to or is a fantasy good enough.
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