Real life isn't satisfying. Going out into the woods for an entire summer doesn't mean all of your personal woes automatically get solved. Obsessively pursuing what you perceive to be a conspiracy against yourself doesn't mean you get a neatly-wrapped conclusion. Fires don't wipe the land perfectly clean, but instead leave suffocating ash and smoke in their wake. Going out of your way to fix a particular problem more often than not just leaves you with more. This is a theme that I could see being adapted brilliantly as a video game, but the problem is that Firewatch doesn't try to emulate real life, instead it tries its hardest to be a movie. Beyond just being a walking simulator about the great outdoors where you're pretty much only allowed to traverse man-made paths, the game skips through all of the "uninteresting" parts of your job as a lookout to make sure something important's happening at all times. It's so sanitized, so free of anything that's slightly inconvenient or boring, that you really can't call it anything but satisfying, and therefore can't call it anything but a failure at getting its point across as a video game. I'll fully admit that my rating here is entirely for the concept and atmosphere. It puts the barest amount of effort in and still manages to be unnerving, which is why it's so frustrating. It really seems like these guys wanted to make a movie, and they should have! But then again, if they did, they probably would've had to rewrite Delilah to be a real person with a real personality instead of just another endless dispensary of sarcastic quips. Probably not worth the effort.