Firewatch (2016)

Firewatch (2016), published and developed by Campo Santo Productions LLC

What do you do when the love of your life gets sick? What if the love of your life is diagnoses Alzheimers when she's barely 40-years old, causing her to forget you and become an entirely different person?

One solution is to get away from it all, escape the harsh reality to a secluded fire watch tower somewhere deep in the dense woods of Wyoming. In 1989 Henry does just that,. Escape The harshness of the disease he can't do anything about after his wife gets worse in her condition.

The only line of communication Henry has is his walkie-talkie which has a fellow watch Delilah on The other end. She gives The ropes to him, tells him what to do until Henry can get along on his own. But at the same time, Henry opens up to her, telling the reasons he ended up in the woods, away from it all.

So it is 80 days summer in front of henry, looking for fires and trying to clear his head of the sorrow that is his wife. Or it would If not for the mysterious things that begin to happen.

The first is the campers that go missing the same day Henry sees a mysterious figure in the dark. They leave behind a torn-up camp and a note where they accuse Henry of threatening them. Apparently, they thought it was him, who tore up their camping gear.

The second mystery is a large, fenced-off area in a place that should not have fences at all. It should not have anyone living there, period.

And then there is the old mystery of a kid who went missing. A kid who was spending his summer along with his father who was a fire watch. On this little mystery, Henry stumbles when he finds an old backpack hanging from a tree, which prompts Delilah to tell about Brian and his father Ned, who was a drunkard and suffered from PSTD, and how she looked through her fingers when Ned brought Brian with him.

While the story happens during the 80 days of Henry's fire sigil, a good portion of it is skipped over. This isn't a game of experiencing his mundane day to day job, this is a game of experiencing the most interesting and profound aspects of his almost isolated environment.

Don't mistake Firewatch as a walking simulator either, as you do have puzzles. They aren't difficult, but there are other things to do besides walking and talking in the walkie-talkie. At its core, Firewatch is about the mysteries and Henry coming to terms with his own sorrow, so it does lean more heavily towards being a narrative-driven experience, sprinkled with a couple of simple puzzles on the way.

In a sense, you could say that navigation is one puzzle of the game. Delilah often gives you a place you have to find, you then need to refer to your map and compass to find it. This is not difficult and the routes are rather clear, even clearer after you find dropboxes with more complete route maps in them. Other puzzles are more in terms of finding the right item and using it in the right place kind of a deal.

As you'd imagine, Firewatch is not a long game because of its narrative and focused nature. But it does have a solid story with good voice acting. The gameplay, what there is of it, is well constructed and as a whole, it manages to avoid one thing that is common with these types of games, wearing out its welcome.

So, if you are in a mood for a nice little mystery and rumination about the unfairness of the world, then Firewatch is worth checking out.