Firewatch: How the game tricks the player with it's gameplay and storyline

Firewatch is one of the most unique and compelling games that I've played this year. From it’s compelling storyline, unique gameplay design and atmosphere, it’s a game unlike any other in the genre. And the game utilises all of the above to subvert your expectations of this kind of game completely.

Also, FYI, I will be spoiling the game’s plot below so if you want to experience it for yourself, do not read further. If you don’t care about that or if you have finished the game, read on and enjoy.

The premise involves Henry, a middle-aged man who takes a job at a Firewatch tower in the middle of nowhere to get away from his problems and contemplate, his only human contact being with Delilah, his supervisor, who is based at another tower and contacts Henry through the radio. However as the story starts and a mystery unfolds, he’ll soon discover that he hasn’t gotten away from problems altogether and will bear witness to what happens when you do.

So as the game starts, you’re introduced to your characters, you get a grasp on how the gameplay works and you’re introduced to this open world that it gives you. A wide open forest for you to explore. At first, you deal with mundane stuff like cleaning up dirty campsites, illegal fireworks, fixing stuff, etc. And the days tick down as you go about your business. But then, the game throws you for a loop and reveals it to be a narrative-driven game rather than an open-world game.

Suddenly, two teens go missing, you discover that your conversations with Delilah are monitored, and you’re beaten unconscious and afterwards, you find a fenced-off government research area. At this point, you can now safely say that something strange is afoot.

At least, that’s what the game wants you to think.

Firewatch does an incredible job of putting you into the shoes of Henry as he’s suckered into this supposed giant conspiracy and starts to doubt everything around him. Not helping matters are other matters putting him on edge, including a small wildfire and the fact that Delilah may be in on the whole conspiracy. It is one pileup after another.

And then the reveal comes.

Before I give the big reveal, it’s important to establish some context first. Early on in the game, we find out about this kid named Brian Goodwin, the son of the previous lookout, Ned, a Vietnam war veteran suffering from PTSD. Due to his PTSD and his mother dying while he was on deployment and being left to raise his son on his own, Ned drinks heavily and fails to bond with Brian, who enjoyed fantasy novels and role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons (or rather the in-universe version of “Wizards & Wyverns”). Ned even brought him to the lookout tower; despite it being against the rules, Delilah was fond of Brian and lied about his presence. Unfortunately, Ned wanted his son to be different and forced him to go rock climbing, even though he didn’t want to, taking him to a dangerous cave to do so, rather than teach him properly. Due to his inexperience and Ned’s recklessness, Brian falls to his death.

The context given, here’s the reveal.

It turns out the whole conspiracy was a hoax. Created by Ned, no less.

After Brian died, unwilling to return to society, Ned disappeared and has secretly lived in the area ever since. He created this entire government conspiracy as a red herring and a ploy to get Henry and Delila off his back. He doesn’t want to be found. He doesn’t want to come back to society, EVER.

This, of course, fails and you come across his hideout, where you see how he created this entire conspiracy. Ned himself is nowhere to be seen and is never shown for the entirety of the game, but he leaves behind a cassette tape where he confesses to everything that has happened, though he doesn’t accept responsibility for his son’s death. Even though you can take pictures of the hideout and gather stuff to be sent to the authorities, it still doesn’t make it any less of an anti-climax. You then pack up and head to the rescue helicopter……..and then the game ends.

The game itself deserves an award for how it played with our expectations of this kind of narrative game, which is simply the result of good storytelling. Sure, it also tricked us into believing that the game was truly open-world (and there’s even an open-world free-roam mode or an audio tour mode), but the true trickery comes from the narrative itself. The way it presents these elements in the story does a good job of building your expectations, making you believe that it’s all building up to a climax, that it’ll lead to something big, or at the very least, meaningful.

But then the game chooses to hit you in the face with reality instead as we get the reveal and we’re either left in shock or connecting the dots, like Henry does. And in doing so, also presents a theme of how things may not be as big as we make them out to be as well as Ned being a foil for Henry himself and showing what would happen if Henry stayed in the forest as a lookout. It’s quite an abrupt anti-climax that shatters our expectations and leaves us empty.

And yet it makes perfect sense as to why it does it. That is why it’s an amazing game.