Firewatch
Rekindle your love of the outdoors
£14.99 FROM Campo Santo, camposanto.com NEEDS OS X 10.8 or higher
Henry’s life has gone off the rails, so he’s signed up for a summer as a forest fire lookout to escape from routine while he gets his head together.
He’s inducted into the role by Delilah, who instructs him by radio from her nearby tower, which is the perfect excuse to guide him through a painterly rendering of the great outdoors.
Firewatch is less a game than an interactive novel. Against the solitude of its setting, conversations between Henry and Delilah give you an insight into their personal lives, endearing them to you with some of the best voice acting we’ve heard in a ‘game’.
The backdrop isn’t wholly convincing, though; an initial sense of roaming gives way to some parts feeling very much like gaming constructs, and later on things feel very carefully guided. Even so, the dialogue seeds intrigue that sets your mind racing almost all the way to the end.
Firewatch speaks about middle-aged concerns in the way Stephen King’s Standby
Me speaks about adolescence. It’s a page turner, a journey of self-discovery. Ultimately, it left us with mixed feelings. After about four hours of play, we wanted to follow Henry and Delilah beyond our inevitable parting of ways, yet we felt a little underwhelmed by some of the resolution.