Firewatch and our need for control
Be aware: this article has Firewatch spoilers.
In the search of new games to play in this quarantine I’ve stumbled into a lost game in my library: Firewatch. I’ve bought the game to play with Damaris (my fiancée) a few months ago, but she’s no used to first person games, so she got kinda of sick while playing and didn’t enjoy the experience, so we ended up not playing the game and it got lost in my Nintendo Switch’s HD until, fortunately, being found again.
In Firewatch you take the role of Henry, a guy that have a problematic history with drinking and his wife, that has Alzheimer's, is living far away after lots of problems related to the disease. Trying to take a time for himself and deal with guilty and remorse, Henry decides to take a voluntary job of fire lookout at the Shoshone National Forest, isolating himself from the society for a while. Alone in a watch tower of his own in the middle of the forest, the only human contact of Henry is his supervisor Delilah, which he can keep in touch through a walkie-talkie.
The connection with Delilah is immediate and inevitable. She’s always showing herself available to talk and has a peculiar sense of humor, Delilah is always with you, one walkie-talkie away. It’s worth noticing the amazing work of the actress Cissy Jones dubbing the character, which makes the bond with Delilah even easier. Right in the beginning of the game, when you are sent to investigate a possible fire in forest, the story begins to unfold: some strange things starts to happen and Delilah is your only ally against an unknown enemy into the woods, strengthening the connection between you two.
When more strange things happens, more the things are getting out of control and there’s when the game shines in its roll of putting you in Henry’s skin. In the same way that Henry wanted to unfold all the mystery that was happening in the forest, so did I. Through the story of the game, more evidences are shown to reaffirm to you that something isn’t right, that something really odd is happening and that you are part of it. I felt in control, as if it was my mission to solve all those characters problems, a completely different situation of what I’m going through in my real life.
In the last few months everyone that lives in Earth is going through a extremely difficult situation: the coronavirus pandemic. While I keep myself at home for my own safety and everyone else’s, I got to constantly remind me that I don’t have control of anything besides of what I decide to do and to avoid an anxiety crisis, I tell myself that stay home is the only thing I can do.
I’ve always had problems with control and that caused me a lot of problems during my life, mainly in human relationships, cause we can’t control what other humans think or do, unless we are in a game… In a game everything is about you: you are the chosen one, the hero, every problem of that world revolves around you, you have control on everything and everyone, you’re the only one that can save them.
So it was natural to assume that in Firewatch I had control on everything that was going on. I was going to find who was behind every mystery, I’d shape my relationship with Delilah how I wanted and I’d save the day. I believe that a lot of the players thought like that when playing the game for the first time, this expectation caused the game to receive reviews saying that its end is anticlimactic, like this one from IGN:
You probably already have guessed, in the end you discover that you had almost no connection with the mysteries in the forest and somethings that looked like mysteries were actually misunderstandings. Sinister things really took place there, but you had no control over them, it just happened that you were there at the time, you’re not going to save anyone, you have your own problems and are alone in a forest, running from them.
In the end, before getting off the forest and going back to the normal life, there’s still one hope left: meet Delilah. But, regardless of the choices that you made during your gameplay, Delilah takes the decision for you: she doesn’t want to meet you. She have problems too, she was vulnerable too, she was running from something too and, most important, she’s human too. In a gameplay perspective remove this “power” from the player can be something bad, but in this particular case it strengthens a lot the amazing character that Delilah is and reinforces the message that I got from the game: we don’t have control over other people decisions.
All of this combined made me love the experience of playing Firewatch. I was hoping for a normal game experience and instead received something completely different, that made me feel all kinds of feelings.
I’m not gonna lie, when I finished the game the I felt very bad. I immediately googled if there was more than one ending, just to find out that this is it and I wasn’t the only one feeling this way. But, after a while, I got myself still thinking about the game, I’ve had already finished it, but the feelings were still there.
It was then that I realized how brave and amazing Firewatch is, when the game removed my control over things, it let me in a uncomfortable situation, just like life does. Sacrificing commons elements of narrative, the developers made something completely new and full of soul. Firewatch isn’t a normal game experience e that’s why it is one of the best games of this decade.
