![]() Also, we should say that it’s not entirely a solo affair, there are other characters, and one other significant one… Rik: You play the game knowing who you are, instead of not knowing at the start and finding out more as you play. With the other games we’ve played – there’s not been any sort of intro as such, they just start right away. Like, this is what happened, and this is what you’re doing now, and eventually you’ll see how they relate. But I saw that more as different bits of the story being woven together than a practical thing. Rik: You control Henry in snippets of his journey to the forest and then to his lookout tower, in between the text prologue outlining how he got to that point. Jo: I thought it was better than watching a big cut-scene, or just reading some text. Rik: There’s more to the controls than is covered in the intro. Rik: It’s just walking around mainly, though, isn’t it? Jo: Playing it a second time, I think that first bit is a nice intro to the controls as well, because there are tiny action bits interspersed between the text choices. Rik: It’s a bit unusual, in that Henry is defined by that initial introduction, and you don’t really uncover much more about him in the game. Jo: It gets right to it, in that respect. ‘Do you put your wife with dementia in a home or try and look after her even though you don’t know how’ – ummm, I just started playing this game, dude. Some choices are better than others, but sometimes neither is good. ![]() Jo: Yeah, you can sort of decide what type of person Henry is. Rik: And the choices feel important, which is kind of ironic considering there aren’t really any more in the game. I wasn’t expecting deep stuff to be presented so quickly. Rik: So, I was slightly surprised by the text prologue. The only reviews I read didn’t spoil anything at all. Jo: Did you know much going in? (I had only watched the trailer). Rik: I think Bioshock (or Bioshock 2) people were involved again? Will have to look it up. I think some of the same folk worked on Gone Home and Firewatch? I know that Chris Remo (who does the soundtrack on both games) worked on them both at least? There’s a Venn diagram in there somewhere. But Gone Home and Ethan Carter aren’t as similar to each other, I guess. They’re like each other and also like Ethan Carter. But I guess I leaned more towards Firewatch than Her Story because it appeared most similar to Gone Home. And every Steam and GOG sale since has re-emphasised that point. ![]() Jo: And then I was kind of like… ‘hey, there are all sorts of games out there I could play’. ![]() Rik: So we are completing that trilogy I guess. Jo: After Gone Home had reignited my enjoyment of gaming, someone recommended Firewatch and Her Story. Rik: No, I wait for sales, as we’ve established. Jo: So, once you’d got your new PC did you buy Firewatch when it came out? I had also played Gone Home by then, so kept my eyes peeled for stuff that was similar. I bought my last new PC in 2015, and I guess with a new machine you sort of go looking for what’s fresh and hip for a little while. It probably came out at the tail end of when I still paid attention to games media, in terms of the latest releases. But I guess I was thinking about what bothered me about Ethan Carter with the wandering around and I kept thinking “well that didn’t bother me in Firewatch…” Jo: I think I was keen to play it off the back of The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, not that I want to launch right in to comparing the two. We sort of both agreed it would be the next one we covered, although you’d played it previously and I hadn’t. Rik: Well, shall we start with how we came to choose this one? I don’t think it was anyone’s choice, particularly. Otherwise, ***final spoiler warning*** for the discussion ahead! It also received quite a lot of critical acclaim, with which we’re both in accordance, so we’d definitely nudge you enthusiastically in its direction, if you’ve not played it already. Here’s a short teaser trailer:Īs with the other games we’ve covered in this series, Firewatch is pretty short and offers at best a gentle challenge. That’s probably about as much as we want to say, unless you’ve played the game already. Set in 1989, you are Henry, a middle-aged man who takes a job as a lookout in the Shoshone National Forest in order to put some distance between himself and his problems. Today we’re looking at Firewatch, the 2016 adventure from developers Campo Santo. Bear in mind the bit about spoilers though, before clicking on those links. That’s a sentence that neatly describes what we do each time, but in case you aren’t one of our legion of enthusiastic regular readers, previous instalments have seen us tackle The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Gone Home and Her Story. Hello and welcome to the latest in our series of discussion reviews of modern indie adventure games (with spoilers).
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