Firewatch

This one's been on my radar for a while - another 2016 indie darling - and last night I got around to purchasing and playing it. It takes around three or four hours and there really isn't much in the way of additional content. I'm hard-pressed to imagine anyone could take more than five hours to beat this thing without really trying to "stop and smell the roses."

The game takes place in an isolated portion of a national forest or park or something in the middle of the Colorado Rocky Mountains. It's been a really dry summer and you're part of a seasonal firewatch crew, tasked with sitting in an outpost tower (seen above) and just calling in any fires you see. Your name is Henry, and you're spending your summer out in the middle of nowhere for... reasons. Your only contact is your boss, Delilah, who converses with you via walkie-talkie from her outpost miles away. 

What unfolds is mostly an interactive narrative. Sooner or later - no shocker - something weird starts going on in the park, and Henry and Delilah task themselves with getting to the bottom of things. But is there really anything "going on" or are Henry and Delilah just bored out of their minds and falling prey to their own conspiracy theories? Is Henry simply hallucinating after weeks and months without any human contact? Are they overestimating the danger they're in? Or perhaps underestimating it?

As a story, Firewatch was pretty good. It doesn't leave a lot open to postgame analysis and interpretation, which is kind of refreshing after playing titles like Inside and The Witness earlier this year, but that also makes it slightly less memorable. As I said, I beat it last night, and aside from an interesting character motivation theory I read about Delilah, I haven't really thought about Firewatch since then at all. Its also still running a twenty dollar pricetag, which is sort of high considering its brevity. If anything  makes me want to replay it, it's the idea of multiple dialogue options; I spent most of the game being friendly with Delilah and a little guarded about Henry's history, which I think aligns with my own personality pretty well. But I imagine the game would play very differently if I was, say, a total asshole to Delilah. Or is I ignored her radio calls entirely, which I think is something you can do for the most part. Still - Oxenfree is more enticing on a "different dialogue creates a different replay experience" regard.

Ultimately, I'm just not sure Firewatch stands out. It's a very pretty game, for sure, but not really any prettier than The Witness, which had much more going on and lasted significantly longer. And I just brought up how it pales in comparison to Oxenfree from a dialogue-driven perspective for me. Actually, for my money, Firewatch is at its best in the very beginning, when it outlines Henry's circumstances with effective text-based narration. In fact if anything I think the game gradually loses steam as it becomes less about exploring the wilderness around you and more about unraveling a conspiracy.

This is certainly worth three or four hours of your time, but maybe it's best to hold off until some sort of sale knocks its price down by about half.