You're drunk. And now, you're confident. Confident enough to make your way across the college bar to the pretty girl you've spotted. Time to make your moves, Casanova. Will you ask her what her major is or just let your words slur together in to something of a compliment? Either way, somehow in your drunken stupor, you've managed to charm her. Julia.
Half a cheeseburger and a week later, you're Julia's boyfriend.
Your life with Julia burns fast like a wildfire. It seems time is standing still and you're stuck in the honeymoon stage. You love her and she loves you. Everything is great ... until Julia's health starts to crumble around her. A few trips to the doctors and Julia is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. She's only 41.
As time moves on, things get harder and harder and eventually it's too much for you to bear. You see Julia less and less and eventually you're almost like strangers since she doesn't see you enough to keep you in her memories.
You find a job ad in the newspaper.
You take it.
You play as a middle aged man named Henry in this first person, adventure style game. The ad in the paper was a job for a fire lookout in the Wyoming wilderness, the Shoshone.
Your first day on the job turns eventful when your supervisor, Delilah has you track down the source of some illegal fireworks going off somewhere in the forest. Following orders, you trek down through the woods alone, keeping your radio at hand to talk with Delilah, filling her in on the situation that unfolds.
You find two teenager girls the source of the problem. They don't take kindly to you and after that day things start to get strange.
Cut communications wires, missing people, government conspiracies, and potentially, a crazed murderer tracking your every move and tapping into your radio feed, listening to the conversations between you and Delilah.
Once what was supposed to be a peaceful summer away from your already hectic life, turns into a nightmare of paranoia and fear.
Gameplay
The game plays as a first person perspective of the main character, Henry. You don't see much of him other than his arms, feet and occasionally his stomach. This decision was made to cut the cost on animation and lip syncing due to the budget and the size of the team in creation.
You are able to see Henry, if you're curious in a photo on his desk and in the end credits.
The game is open world to a point but still has a linear story to follow when you're ready. You can veer off the path of your main objective, but the day won't progress unless you've finished the task. In the game you're able to interact with most items, look at them and use them in various ways or report them back to Delilah.
The world is almost completely interactive as well. With areas blocked off until you obtain a certain item, your curiosity can be consumed by wanting to know what leads just beyond the blocked path or just over the cliff edge.The game takes full advantage of the mountainous region it's based in. Having Henry run, jump, climb and descend from ropes connected to carabiners and pitons.
Delilah is the main story driver. The conversations between you and her move the plot forward and each answer you've give her can make or break your relations with her or your ones back at home. Similar to the butterfly effect found most prominently in the game Until Dawn.
Delilah is available to you at all times via walkie-talkie and probably brings the best part of the game to life. the conversations between Delilah and Henry are completely voiced over. Their chemistry is flawless and it sounds like you're listening to a movie, rather than the choppy and dead voice overs you get in most games.
If you're interested in purchasing the game, you can find it on Steam for $21.99 CAD ($19.99 USD).
Development
Firewatch was created by Camp Santo. They're a ten person video game studio formed and situated in San Fransisco.
The companies blog hosts their development blog where they obviously post about the development of the game but recipes from the staff, if you're interested, maybe you should take a looksie.
Jokes aside, the team took the game very seriously, the art portion was probably the most in depth. The game setting is ver real. The team headed out to a state park to study it to make sure the visuals for their Wyoming forest were as beautiful as the real thing. To the right of this box are some example of the amazing art work that create the environment for the game,
From the design of the inside of Henry's lookout tower to the outside and the entire forest around it. It was all taken from real life inspiration from functioning fire watch lookout towers.
If the art wasn't enough to woo you, then the next best selling point of the game is probably the voice acting. The main characters, Henry and Delilah completely come to life without once seeing their face completely though each other conversational interactions.
When playing the game, listening to the two of them talk, joke, fight and just converse in generally doesn't sound like bored and chopped up voice acting that I find frequents games that have voice overs.
But what would you expect from seasoned actors? Rich Sommer voices Henry, and with movies titles like Mad Men and The Devil Wear Prada under his belt, it's no surprise he does this well.
Delilah is voiced by Cissy Jones who has lent her voice to various games like The Walking Dead, Grand Theft Auto V, Fallout 4, Halo: Guardians and Life is Strange. So it's no wonder why all her lines, sass and all, are perfectly executed.
And if English isn't your language, then you may be in luck because they're working on getting the game subbed in German, Spanish, French and Simplified Chinese. At the moment the game is out in English and Russian.
If you'd like to check out their development for more information or... recipes, then click here and if you want to check out their F.A.Q then click here to learn more!