Subject #1: Firewatch
Disclaimer: This blog is NOT a game review. It is completely focused on what design decisions made the game what it is and hopefully try to critic over them. And yeah, spoilers (alerts) are provided where needed. Head in!
First Glance
As soon as Campo Santo’s Firewatch fires up, we are greeted with this lovable menu screen.
The first set of feels that the game takes you through is the sound of wind blowing across your ears in complete silence of the birds chirping, enjoying the view of the white board furnished watch tower.
Presumably it’s a Fire watcher’s tower.
On clicking on the Settings option, the camera turns to the right and we are greeted with this interesting settings menu:
I would like to divert your attention to the color scheme first. Orange is also the color of forest watchers’ uniform, probably inspired from scouts’ uniforms.
Next is the menu selection box. Look how the boxes have a lot of slanted edges.
Just in case you are wondering, “Why does the slash in between ‘Graphics’ and ‘Controls’ look so fishy?”
This is what it’s meant to do when I change the sub-menu from ‘General’ to ‘Graphics’
Ingenious right?
This is how this game tries to incorporate its story elements in its game play. All the crooked lines are supposed to mimic the behavior of honorary ribbons. We all might be familiar with this type of decoration gimmicks used in formal functions.
I may be completely off but even if it is not what the designers meant, I am happy that I could relate such subtle things together.
Similar to the ‘Settings’ menu, every other menu’s appearing animation is basically the camera moving to different places in the forest site.
E.g. This is the ‘Special Features’ screen. Focus on the changed background.
I have noticed that the moving camera menu style is a lot more common in modern ‘feel-good’ games. It lets the user know they are free in this world, no hard rules shall be applied over them.
The Actual Game
One of the main reason why I wanted to analyse this game for such a long time is because of how it introduces its main character and his backstory to the player.
On starting a new game, we hear a restaurant-like background soundtrack. People are chatting, some liquids are being poured into glasses(probably wine) and all-in-all the mood is very relaxed.
But be vary this is not the game. It is only helping you create the backstory for your character. Later the protagonist is seen narrating his past events according to what choices the player made in this initial stage of the game.
The mood is set. It’s probably a party and we going to meet someone here.
You click on the orange colored prompt. Next is:
The music changes too. Soft piano greets the new personality. The restaurant babbles have lowered in volume. A hesitating guitar fills the air occasionally.
Through this click-to-proceed flowchart, you are often faced with choices like:
Note that these won’t affect the outcome of the game’s story. This is merely a tool to keep the user engaged throughout the entire journey.
In between this section to make the player realize that it is not a click-click-proceed type of a game, the screen blacks out and we find ourselves to be a medium height, somewhat fat guy (Henry, the protagonist), leaving the elevator.
In this elevator we are given a bagpack.
Notice that the menu design scheme is still being followed in the in-game prompts.
It also helps the player a lot by being able to see their character when the camera is pointing straight downwards.
Imagine seeing nothing but air instead of Henry’s character. It would take away a lot of bonding that the player is supposed to develop as the game progresses.
You place your bag in the truck and the backstory continues.
Restaurant music has obviously stopped. I don’t expect them to stay in the bar for an year.
Seeing the game get some action
Immediately you find yourself heading to your new fire watch duty and along this trail, you complete bits and pieces of your backstory by blacking out to the click-click-proceed sequences.
Notice the change in the environment hue. It helps the player to keep the attention to the actual environment to a minimum till the game tries to complete the backstory.
Here in my honest opinion, the developers could have done this part better.
Instead of stopping the user every now and then and interrupting the player in appreciating the beautiful environment in front of them, completing the backstory in one go could have helped this scene get more praise.
But there is again a problem. The backstory part gets quite long and there is only so much reading that the player can do without getting any rewards and in the end wrongly posing the wrong kind of idea about the overall game.
To correct this, the story could have been cut short. But this would lessen the bondage the player would develop.
Seeing all the consequences, I think I understand the compromise that the designers had to make to keep the story going.
Setting the story, finally
You reach your watch tower in the night
The first human contact the player gets is through Henry’s boss, Delilah trying to get to him on the radio.
The game does an incredible job of making a talking radio and trekking in the middle of a dense forest, interesting enough for the player to actually concentrate on the story.
And the way that the developers do this is by…
Now that the player actually made his own story, any mention or any question that Henry is asked, directly hits the player.
This is absolutely fantastic. Countless story mode games fail to do this effectively and sometimes they don’t even know if the player feels the same way about the character as the game wants them to.
Firewatch does this with full confidence in its story and design.
And there commences your first day at the job.
Rest of the game is pretty linear but the interesting dialogue choices you make while talking to Delilah about the tasks she gives you, any problems you tackle, your sick wife Julia and many other talks about personal things; keep you engaged.
Controls
However there is a bit of downside in this game. The PC controls are wrecked.
You tap R to run while holding any of the WASD keys,
Bring up the map using M, and you bring up the map a lot in this game;
Bring up only the compass sans the map by N,
F for flashlight,
TAB for inventory which you don’t even use for anything except when you get extra curious on the documents you collect.
Collectively the heat map looks a bit like this:
I can’t stress enough the fact that how painful it is to use the WASD + Left shift configuration for games. This is only worsened by the fact that my other hand is on the mouse and M and N are frequented by my left hand more than the right hand, while using the directional WASD keys.
However I have been told the console controls are a lot better to use. So I guess I took this one on myself(I had a controller lying next to me for the entire 5 hours).
Closing statements
With this I guess I will end my analysis for Campo Santo’s Firewatch. You might find this one to be very much focused on the near start of the game and very superficial near the end. This is actually how I plan to make these blog entries. I will be concentrating on the best parts that I find in a game and try to convert the same feelings they give the player, to text.
Don’t forget to check this game out: Link
