Firewatch

[SlightlyJames]

I caught sight of this game a couple of days ago, the main thing that piqued my interest was the involvement of Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman, who were co-directors and writers of Telltale's The Walking Dead - one of my favourite game stories ever - before leaving Telltale to form Campo Santo with a couple of other guys and work on this game.

Firewatch is a first-person adventure game where you play as a guy called Henry who is starting his new job as a fire lookout in some forest in Wyoming. Pretty damn near all the dialogue in the game is between Henry and his boss, Delilah, over the radio. Actually seeing other people in the flesh is a rare occurrence and is generally very brief, the majority of the time spent in the game is just you and your surroundings.

It's difficult to talk in depth about the game as it's heavily tied to the story and beyond some light exploration there isn't much to speak of in the way of gameplay. I can say that the forest is very pretty and though sparse there is some music that chimes in on occasion when the situation calls for it. I did find the story to be quite interesting and I'm glad I went through it, it's well written and well acted, I found myself searching around for anything to examine and get a bit of conversation out of.

There's an impressive amount of attention to detail in the environments, particularly Henry's lookout tower and a few of the key locations in the game. Conversations and choices you've made will be reflected in surprising ways, things you pick up while you're walking around might be left in locations that reveal something about Henry and what he's been up to in his down time, I appreciate stuff like that.

Quite short and almost entirely narrative driven, this is the kind of thing you would finish in a day, as such the current price tag of £15 is likely too steep for some, I would say it's definitely worth snagging if it's ever at a more palatable discount though.

Anyone else played this game? I'd like to hear some other people's thoughts on it.

[Kreashko]

From what I hear this game is pretty interesting. Short, but interesting. I really want to check it out.