Firewatch: review. Alone not at home

In this article, we will discuss a bit about the plot of Firewatch and its ending.

It's actually really sad that after building up such a close bond between Delilah and Henry, the two characters never meet at the end of the game. Hell, we can't even see their faces! It can be assumed that such an intriguing ending will delight us with the continuation of the game, but the story seems to be over. You can put a bold point, and this is a fact.

The story begins with the protagonist named Henry finding two teenage girls skinny-dipping in a lake and setting off fireworks. Soon their tent is torn apart, things are lying around. There are no girls, where could they have gone? A strange signal is heard on the shore of the lake. Following the sound, Henry finds a walkie-talkie, when he suddenly receives a serious blow to the head and faints.

Soon, Henry stumbles upon a small camp of scientists, where all the actions of Delilah and our hero are described in stages. Was someone following them? Have they been experimented on? Leaving this place, literally 300 meters away, we see that someone is setting it on fire. Someone reports that he has a tape of the conversation between Delilah and Henry, edited so that they wanted to hide the girls' story. They are being blackmailed.

In the end (SPOILER ATTENTION!!!) we learn that this was all done by a distraught father who accidentally killed his child and then decided to simply disappear into the woods of Wyoming. Out of nowhere, teenage girls appeared who just left the place. Further, Delilah and Henry are evacuated from here by helicopter. By the way, if you read our article about the endings of the game, you may know that Henry may even stay in the burning forest.

At the end of the game, we get a short and awkward farewell of the characters to each other over the walkie-talkie. And it's all???

On the other hand, the story of the game actually turned out to be intriguing. She kept me personally in suspense until the very end. But when it turned out that Ned caused the death of his son, all dreams were shattered. Everything began to look somehow cheap in my eyes. The whole final act of the game does not create a feeling of some kind of winning. You can’t jump out of a chair (from an armchair) and exclaim something like: “Hurrah! I won!". This is the ending (and both), which leaves a huge number of questions after itself, rather than giving definite answers. Something small and disappointing.

As I moved towards the extraction point, I was convinced that at least something else was bound to happen. Something that will throw a new light on the events taking place here, turn history around - but it never came to that.

Do not misunderstand me. I enjoyed my time playing Firewatch. But in my opinion, the writers were able to create this huge intriguing story, and then just ruined everything with a sharp and too straightforward ending. What do you think, did the story turn out to deserve a 10/10 rating?

Introduction

When the unknown indie company Campo Santo unveiled its Firewatch quest at PAX 2014 last year, few people attached any importance to this announcement. Yes, beautiful landscapes were shown in the trailer, but after The Vanishing of Ethan Carter it is difficult to surprise the audience with graphics.

In the American company, it seems, they also understood this and decided to take not only the beautifully executed visual part, but also the gameplay itself. And the plot. And soundtrack. Yes, and in general to everyone.

If this is not ideal, then something very close to it.

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"You see Julia..."

It is with these words that the grand adventure called Firewatch begins. From the very beginning, the creation of Campo Studio positions itself as something special, something that the gaming industry has not yet seen.

Indeed, in what other modern game of the “quest” genre can you now see elements of a text quest? That's right - in any other than Firewatch.

Moreover, the ten-minute "text" segment here is not made for beauty at all, and the decisions made at the beginning will be reflected in the content of the dialogues in the future.

Naked text in front of us draw pictures of the difficult life of an ordinary guy from Colorado named Henry. Having pretty much given up in a bar back in 1975, he falls in love with a certain Julia, after which they seemed to have a long and happy life - they live together, get a dog, think about children ...

But fate puts everything in its place - soon her beloved Henry is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, after which she goes to the care of her parents in Australia. Left alone, Henry decides to run away from the worldly bustle with grief and gets a job as an observer on one of the fire towers in the Shoshone National Forest, in Wyoming. Well, what, the work is not dusty - know yourself to sit on your tower, read books, but think about the frailty of life.

However, he still fails to completely avoid human society - on the spot, his new acquaintance and part-time colleague, Delilah, begins to communicate with him on the radio. It is she who will become the player's best friend for the entire duration of the passage and will be the second protagonist of this story along with Henry. Even despite the amazing fact that we never get to see her.

The best phrase that characterizes Firewatch is pleasant loneliness. For the entire duration of the passage, the main character will not meet a single living soul and will communicate only with his girlfriend Delilah. Nevertheless, despite the small number of characters, the story is perceived surprisingly well, and you do not get tired of following it right up to the very last point.

But making a non-trivial plot is only half the battle, because you need to fasten a working and (preferably) interesting game mechanics to it. And the American indie studio coped with its task.

Firewatch, without exaggeration, gives a new unique experience in interaction with the surrounding game world. The fact is that Henry can have conversations with his new colleague literally on any occasion, just hover over an object with a walkie-talkie icon and press the “Shift” button.

Starting from a heartfelt discussion of the beauties of American nature…

... and ending with the condemnation of negligent youth, throwing beer cans everywhere.

After all, how is the interaction with the outside world in the average quest? The main character, under the control of the player, carefully studies the location, objects and sometimes makes some brilliant conclusions, thereby moving further along the plot. In Firewatch, things are a little different - everything interesting that Henry sees, he can discuss with Delilah on the radio.

Moreover, these will not be dialogues pre-written by the developers, here the player is free, as in some RPG, to choose the answers they like. The only thing is that it’s upsetting that the decisions made and the phrases spoken will only affect your conversations with Delilah in the future, but you can’t count on more - there is only one ending in the game (not counting the secret one) and you won’t be able to influence it in any way.

The Shoshone National Forest is full of sights and interesting places, which, however, are easy to miss on the first pass. So in order to get the most out of the game, it is better to go through it at least two, and preferably all three times.

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And here I want to compare Firewatch with the recent Life is Strange. These games are very similar in both plot construction and visual accompaniment (more on that below). “A Strange Life” also caught on with a cool plot in the initial episode and kept you in suspense until the very end, after which it eventually turned out that the scriptwriters were not able to surprise with anything.

And about the same thing happened with Firewatch: if at the beginning the story of forester Henry begins quite ordinary (although not without a twist), then gradually it unwinds to such incredible proportions that even the writers of The X-Files never dreamed of. I don’t want to break away from the game even for a second, and Fox Mulder’s quote keeps spinning in my head: “The truth is somewhere nearby.” Yes, she is really close (the game takes about five hours, no more) and, unfortunately, it turns out to be nowhere easier.

Paradoxically, despite the weak ending, Firewatch's plot is stronger than recent years five were not in computer games. Here there was a place for mysticism, and conspiracy theories, and detective, and drama, and even comedy.

But, as in the case of Life is Strange, the unfortunate ending is not able to spoil the impression of the game. Firewach is first and foremost an interactive book (or movie, if you will) that raises the bar of quality to a new level.

From the point of view of gameplay, we have a typical quest with small (almost minimal) interspersed with pixel hunting: here you can read notes, climb and explore the location for all sorts of interesting things, while talking with Delilah on the radio, but all this in no way interrupts narration. The two elements go hand in hand and do not interfere with each other - for the first time in the entire thirty-year history of the genre.

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If you want to get a rough idea of ​​what the game looks like live, then imagine a mixture of Life is Strange and The Witness - cartoon style is combined here with incredible landscapes, and in such a way that by the end of the playthrough the folder with screenshots bloats to an incredible size.

And at the same time, you don’t need a heavy-duty PC to provide such a picture: for a comfortable game at 60 FPS, you only need an Intel Core i3 2.00 GHz processor, 6 GB of RAM and an Nvidia GeForce 450-level video card. Yes, another flagship is not required to render natural beauties.

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Conclusion

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The only piece that is missing from this puzzle is a happy ending, but compared to the rest of the pieces of the big picture, it looks so small and insignificant that its absence can be easily forgiven by the developers.

There is such game studio- Telltale Games. Perhaps its name will not tell you anything, but also, most likely, you have at least vaguely heard about games Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and The Wolf Among Us. It was these projects that made Telltale Games a famous studio, brought her popularity and money. The games themselves, all three projects, are made in approximately the same genre and style - these are the so-called graphic novels, where several game mechanics are combined, and all together they create an adventure game where the plot and story dominate. In fact, Telltale Games created and then popularized the genre of game-series, where most of the time the player follows the development of the plot, slowly clicking and performing some actions, occasionally joining the game at the most important moments of the story.

One of the main developers of the first game in this series, The Walking Dead, Jack Rodkin and Sean Vanaman, left Telltale Games in 2013-2014 and created their own studio, Campo Santo, and in March 2014 announced the first game, Firewatch. Then it seemed that the "observation tower" would be a project in the survival genre with a good single player company and a well-thought-out plot. At least, such hopes arose at the sight of the first trailers. Initially, the game was supposed to appear in 2015, but then its release was postponed to early 2016, and in February, Firewatch became available for PC (Windows / OS X / Linux) and PlayStation 4.

The game turned out to be completely different from what I personally imagined it (and many others, I think), but what can I say for sure - Firewatch should be played by everyone who is not indifferent to computer games any genre, even though the game turned out to be very controversial. It will be very difficult for me to talk about Firewatch without spoilers, so I will very briefly describe those points that are important for understanding, and then I suggest that you simply decide whether to play or not.

The mention of Telltale Games and the projects of this studio at the beginning of the article was done for a reason. The fact is that Firewatch at its core strongly resembles The Walking Dead and all subsequent games in this format. The basis here is a certain story and narrative, and your task is to closely monitor the course of its development. At the same time, you don’t need to do a lot of actions as such, that is, in the usual sense, this is not so much a game as an interactive, damn beautiful story from the graphic side. But it is presented differently than in The Walking Dead and other similar games.

In Firwatch, you play as a very specific person, Henry, the game will kindly tell you a brief history of his life at the very beginning. So it turns out that the main character gets a job as an observer in the Shoshone National Forest, Wyoming, USA. The plot develops mainly due to communication on the radio with the boss girl Delilah. The characters get to know each other, get to know each other and then spend the whole game together, keeping in touch via the radio. The game is played in the first person, in some moments you can choose one of several answers when communicating with Delilah, and in the future the game will take them into account. The plot develops slowly at first, but then faster and faster. There were supposed to be descriptions of the plot points, but if I add them, I will spoil the impression of the game for you, so let's move on.

The developers have done their best to ensure that the player can completely immerse themselves in the story they invented and listen, read and watch it with wide eyes. To do this, Firewatch has absolutely amazing graphics and gorgeous music. Both components are top notch.

The game is made on the Unity engine of the fifth version, so in theory it can be ported to mobile Operating Systems. However, the quality of the picture in Firewatch is not due to the steepness of the game engine, the resolution of textures or the detail of objects, not at all. The Campo Santo designers were able to draw and embody insanely beautiful landscapes, day and night changes, lighting and many tiny details in the game. Being in the woods of Wyoming, you can take screenshots every second, and literally any screenshot of nature is good to immediately print and put in a frame or on your desktop as “wallpaper”. At some moments of the game, you forget what's next and what to do, you just want to stop and look at all this beauty around. In this regard, Firewatch is a great example of how important game design is, not photorealistic graphics, but the right combination of all the components that make the picture in the game.

Sound is also excellent. The rustle of leaves, the wind, the sounds of fireworks, the crumpling grass underfoot are done perfectly. The musical accompaniment is simply amazing. The music for the game was written by composer Chris Remo, who has been creating soundtracks for games since 2009.

As you can see, I wrote almost nothing about game mechanics, gameplay and other things that are usually talked about when describing games. There are two reasons. First, in Firewatch, all this is really not enough, this game is a story, where you are assigned for the most part the role of a spectator and an observer. The second is that it will not be possible to briefly tell the plot, leaving behind the most interesting moments, because the game is short. And this, by the way, is another argument in favor of buying the game.

To complete Firewatch, you will need 3-5 hours, no more. But, believe me, this game will definitely not leave you indifferent. On Steam, the toy costs 420 rubles, and, in my opinion, it fully pays for this money.

P.S. If you're thinking, while playing Firewatch, "This is the style of a survival game," then I've got good news for you. There is a project called "The Long Dark", and this game is similar in style to Firewatch, while being a harsh survival simulator. I'll try to talk about it next weekend.

Firewatch was released last week - a meditative, inhumanly beautiful interactive adventure from the young studio Campo Santo. We figured out why this game should not be missed.

The protagonist of FIrewatch is a bearded middle-aged man named Henry. He leads an ordinary life - he has a beloved woman, a devoted dog, he loves beer and is in no hurry to have his own children. Misfortune in his life happens on the threshold of forty years - his half Julia is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease. Henry sends his beloved to her parents in Australia, and he goes to Wyoming, where he becomes a forester in the local National Wildlife Refuge.

There, Henry hopes to escape from worldly problems, left alone with the nature of the American West. The only interlocutor of the protagonist at the new job is Delilah's boss, who communicates with him on the radio and gives him instructions.

firewatch- new game in the popular modern genre, let's say, contemplative-interactive first-person adventure. In addition to the uninterrupted chatter with Delilah and walks in the park, Henry for the entire game, with the exception of the main storyline, there are only a few tasks to solve - to drive the young people who launch fireworks out of the park, cut down a few bushes and trees, and also learn how to use a compass and a map.

In general, no revelations from a gaming point of view, even compared to other representatives of the genre. But Firewatch does not try to win you over with multi-level mechanics, complex puzzles (like the recently released one) or an incredibly intricate plot - it is about something completely different. This is a very straightforward and accurate from the point of view of the plot, but at the same time a work of inhuman beauty. In general, about not the most common problems of an ordinary middle-aged man.

In addition, Firewatch is a classic work of deception, but in games, unlike in movies, this is quite rare. Literally everything - starting with the storyline - in the game is not what it seems at first glance. Having settled down as a forest orderly, you will end up doing anything for all five hours of playing time, but not your main job. The same goes for the plot. Starting as a visual novel about a firefighter, Firewatch will throughout its runtime try to pretend to be a near-survival quest, a village detective, a manic surveillance thriller, and God knows what else.

Against the backdrop of this virtuoso game of giveaway with the player, the ending of Firewatch, precisely because of its logic and excessive predictability, is very disappointing at first. But on reflection, you realize that Firewatch is not a game about world conspiracies, alien invasion or "dog dream" - that is, about those plot constructions that are so loved in any entertainment narrative industry. This is a game about how you can't run away from worldly problems, no matter how hard you try.

Even if you come up with adventures out of the blue and start believing in them. Closer to the final - here's a spoiler for sure! “Henry will even ask Delilah several times if there is real surveillance on them, and did they really make it all up to themselves. And all because he does not want to return back to his real life from the beauties of Wyoming - to the sick Julia and other problems.

This is precisely the most important thought of Firewatch, on which the rest of the story is strung. And that's pretty cool, because Campo Santo's game doesn't try to win you over with cheap twists or a spectacularly staged ending. It completely and completely, and especially the ending, essentially hints at something else - that real life is more complicated, harder and, in general, scarier than all your fantasies put together.

However, this semantic twist in the finale of Firewatch can be overlooked. Because it is served only in passing in the final dialogue between the main characters and many players can simply skip it. It is precisely because of its non-obviousness that the ending of the game may seem crumpled and disappointing, but in fact it is not.

Otherwise, Firewatch is amazing. This is an incredibly beautiful and deep game with amazing "adult" dialogues (jokes about Tom Cruise's height, drunken flirting with a boss at night and talking about incurable diseases are not always found in modern games) with a very simple but logical plot.

As with any performance in the interactive adventure genre, there are reasonable complaints about Firewatch - a certain paucity gameplay, some limited actions (relatively speaking, the hero cannot go where the developers do not foresee) and modest timing, which can repel fans of the boundless story games for $60. In addition, the PS4 version has technical problems - falling fps, not so polished picture - and (yet) there is no Russian language.

But you stop noticing these little things and shortcomings as soon as you find yourself in the virtual forests of Wyoming, as soon as you start flirting with Delilah, drinking whiskey and admiring the deadly beauty of sunsets that you rarely see in real life. Firewatch is not a revelation, not a game that will turn the entire industry upside down, but it is, pardon the cliché, a very solid work by modern industrial standards, which we recommend to absolutely everyone.

Game tested onPS4

Each of us has ever wanted to be alone. Get away from annoying problems, immerse yourself in yourself, relax and be distracted. That's exactly what the protagonist of Firewatch named Henry did - the story turned out to be fascinating, but nowhere near as deep as many might expect.

⇡ Rest only in our dreams

The plot of the game takes place in 1989, a few months after the infamous fire in the American national park Yellowstone. Henry arrives in Wyoming and takes a job as an observer on an observation tower in the woods. We did not know about the reasons for his stay in this place before the release, but they turned out to be understandable and are explained with the help of the prologue. The decisions made in it will partially affect the dialogues with Henry's boss - Delilah.

It is Delilah who is the only character with whom Henry keeps in touch and has the ability to communicate via a walkie-talkie. The observer does not have a permanent job, you have to do something only in case of danger, and one arises almost immediately - the developers talked about it two years ago. Some hooligans set off fireworks near the lake, which raises the possibility of a fire, and Henry goes to find them and teach them a lesson.

The hero has a card, which he holds in his hands and raises at the touch of a button. The desired location is almost never indicated directly, you have to navigate either by the names of lakes and canyons, or with the help of Delilah's prompts and a compass. It is worth going in the wrong direction, as in most cases it will be possible to contact the boss, and she will hint where to go. It is not easy to get lost here, and the possible paths are always obvious, although for clarity, you can look for other people's maps throughout the forest and draw all the available paths on your own - these are a kind of collectible items.

Despite the openness of the world created by the developers, there is no non-linearity here. The game is divided into several chapters, each of which is one day in Henry's life in the forest, during which he has to go somewhere and solve problems. Either hooligans on the lake, or cut wires, or something else that was not shown in the trailers and which we will not talk about. From the very first day, an element of mystery appears in this story, which gradually makes the passage more and more exciting.

Since Delilah is the only character who communicates with Henry, you can talk to her on almost every occasion. Found something unusual - contact her. We saw an interesting location - she is always ready to discuss it. You can’t cope with something - the girl will surely give advice. There are a lot of dialogues here, so even an ordinary walk to the tower will certainly be accompanied by conversations about a cave in a canyon, a toilet in the middle of a forest, beer cans lying on the ground, and about the protagonist's past.

And the dialogues here are, without exaggeration, delightful. There is a feeling that Cissy Jones (Katya from the second season of The Walking Dead) and Rich Sommer (Mad Men) are not acting, but really are the boss and observer on the tower, their conversations sound so convincing. They constantly joke, react to what is happening, always find topics for discussion. And it cannot be said that this is the merit of only the writers (by the way, they previously worked on the first season of The Walking Dead), who did an excellent job. Such acting, believe me, there has not been a video game for a long time.

Therefore, as soon as it becomes possible to contact Delilah by radio, you press the button immediately - you want to listen to how the discussion will end in the end. Developers from Campo Santo developed the idea of ​​modern "walking simulators" with two simple things: division into chapters and the ability not only to study objects around, but to discuss them with a "living" person. There are practically no notes, audio diaries and boring videos - if you get any information about the object, it is only from Delilah. The ability to choose in the dialogues also adds interest - you can remain silent, laugh it off, and sometimes even say some kind of rudeness.

⇡ foliage noise

Unfortunately, the passage will not last long. The developers promised about six hours of gameplay, but it's hard to imagine what you can do in the game for so long. Even if you study every thing and contact the boss for any reason, you will see the final credits after four hours, and if you just run ahead of the story (by the way, we do not recommend doing this), then you will spend no more than three. Moreover, closer to the finale, the authors force you to walk around idle from one corner of the map to another too often, which artificially delays the passage and exhausts you a little. Although the dialogues partly draw out even such situations.

Such a short duration looks strange and arouses suspicion. Especially when you consider that the first half hour of Firewatch was shown two years ago, and since then little has changed in the initial chapters. On the Steam forums, the developers wrote that it was not easy to add an extra hour or two to the story they invented - it was finished and did not need additional chapters. But in reality this is not entirely true.

Toward the middle of the passage of riddles and mysticism, it becomes more and more, and you expect interesting and unusual twists from the game, but in the end you get nothing. The authors are preparing you for something grandiose, but in reality everything turns out to be too simple and banal, and some moments even seem far-fetched. Even the final turned out, frankly, no - it will have one great episode that will answer one of the questions, but otherwise the ending is crumpled and too fast.

And it would be nice if there was a non-linearity, for the sake of which the game could be played several times in a row. But this is not here either, since the consequences of the choice in the dialogues are so insignificant that you don’t notice them - the story will not change in any way and will not offer anything new. Henry and Delilah's conversations are great, but you don't want to start all over again for the sake of previously unheard remarks.

Don't think Firewatch is bad game. This is not true. For a debut project, this is an excellent result, even considering that most of the Campo Santo employees are professionals in their field, and not enthusiastic beginners. But when you listen to excellent dialogues and enjoy beautiful music from the composer Gone Home, you see the forest changing with each new day of summer, you want to get a more detailed story. Perhaps the creators had to abandon the mystery and just show the relationship of adults, but now you can’t change anything.

Due to glitches, the forest is not visible
Amazing things happened to the PlayStation 4 version during the playthrough. During the first passage, the author of these lines constantly observed “jamming” of the image and slowdowns during the movement, and a couple of times he completely fell through the ground, since a whole piece of forest disappeared without a trace. As soon as the game was restarted, most of these problems disappeared, although the drop in frame rate and “brakes” during frequent autosaves still remained. The game, by the way, can easily hang during the loading process. Therefore, we advise you to go through the project on a PC - there, they say, there are noticeably fewer problems.