Having listened to all of Idle Thumbs, I understand why Firewatch is structured the way it is. The creative heads of Campo Santo have talked at length in their dumb, awesome podcast about how much they hate conventional video game narratives predictably becoming convoluted and out of touch. Hence, the anti-climax that is Firewatch. That in itself would have been laudable, if only Fullbright didn't already do it and did it better in 2013 with Gone Home.
Firewatch tells a very personal tale with the trappings of a thriller. It does a really good job building up paranoia, so much so that it can be very easy to lose sight of the emotional grounding, your mind taking on terrible flights of fancy before being abruptly brought back down to earth, seemingly nosediving into a confusing wreck. You can trace the trajectory of the game's lofty goal of rejecting tradition, which is commendable, but you feel like ejecting instead to escape into the heady space of schemes and conspiracies.
Yet it somehow sticks the landing! There are plenty of terrible ending sequences that torpedo great video game experiences, but Firewatch is a rare example of the finale actually salvaging the story. I never wanted so much for Henry to find some semblance of satisfaction on his sabbatical in the lushly hypnotic Shoshone National Forest and in his dealings with Delilah than in that last run back to a fire lookout. I knew from the start that he wouldn't, as hot pursuits of pure escapism tend to go up in smoke, but that resolution was real and human and good.
Firewatch tells a very personal tale with the trappings of a thriller. It does a really good job building up paranoia, so much so that it can be very easy to lose sight of the emotional grounding, your mind taking on terrible flights of fancy before being abruptly brought back down to earth, seemingly nosediving into a confusing wreck. You can trace the trajectory of the game's lofty goal of rejecting tradition, which is commendable, but you feel like ejecting instead to escape into the heady space of schemes and conspiracies.
Yet it somehow sticks the landing! There are plenty of terrible ending sequences that torpedo great video game experiences, but Firewatch is a rare example of the finale actually salvaging the story. I never wanted so much for Henry to find some semblance of satisfaction on his sabbatical in the lushly hypnotic Shoshone National Forest and in his dealings with Delilah than in that last run back to a fire lookout. I knew from the start that he wouldn't, as hot pursuits of pure escapism tend to go up in smoke, but that resolution was real and human and good.