3/16/2024 0 Comments Firewatch ending![]() Contrast again to Gone Home where I was curious and worried exactly in sync with Katie. My mental space diverges too much from the fucked-up headspace the game tells me Henry's in. The problem for me with this is that I'm frequently being pulled out of Henry's head by immersion-breakers like him saying things that don't fit the Henry I've started to construct in my head. All the weird shit happening in the game ultimately comes from people's fucked-up heads. I was trying to explain why 'poorly suited for its story' does not equal 'not a game' for me, but using my own complaints to illustrate this.Īs for what the game's trying to convey - mostly I believe it's themed about running away not solving your problems - instead you carry them in with you. I'm conflating my own problems with Tom Chick's there a bit so it's making things muddled, apologies. "Ned Did Everything" is a bit Deus Ex Machina when the bulk of character development was on Brian, Brian's death was telegraphed but not in the good way, Delilah's voice acting (or perhaps her script) didn't work for a character who reflexively lies to the police, and yeah, I'm still thinking about the symbolism of the wildfire, which is at the heart of the thing, and I'm just not convinced it works yet.īut dear god, I'm not going to push the thing away and say "Bring it back to me as a novella, and then maybe I'll think about it in literary terms." OK, that's my problem with Tom Chick's review. Tom Chick seems to understand that what he seems to miss is the effort, effective or not, to use the medium of a video game to amplify those themes. aren't they at least an attempt to do that more effectively, more immediately?Īgain, there's an argument to be made that it doesn't work I personally tend to loathe dialog trees in games, and they're so pervasive that anyone who plays games regularly is completely inured to them, and unlikely to notice any effect that the technique (or mechanic, if you must) might have on the experience of the story, or the themes.Īnd this is story with themes. It's about not knowing what to say, or what another person is trying to say- a short story or a movie or a comic book could have conveyed that sense of being at a loss for words, but the the game's radio and sparse dialog options. The story itself is about the limits of communication, about misinterpretation, about there sometimes being no joy at all in learning the truth. That might have made the game just that much less gamey, just enough to make me want to think about it in other terms. In this one I saw the options to turn off waypoints and map markers and carrots dangling from strings, and promptly did so- if the game gives you the option to turn them off, then you don't need them. The first thing I do when I start a game is open up the options menu just to see what's in there (usually it's merely a wad of video-card gibberish, alas). ![]() If it had been more explicit or convincing (I don't have quite the right word here) then the complaints would be more along the lines of "the symbolism of wildfire doesn't quite work the conflagration in Henry's life is in in the past and growing more distant, not spreading to engulf things that previously seemed safe." Perhaps what the game lacks is self-confidence, but then this is a first game from a new company, and there is a theme of uncertainty in the story itself that might be undermined by more deft, direct presentation. Now, there's an definitely an argument to be made that the game fails to execute. I mean, go maybe go read the title of the game again, you know? Maybe it's more than just a literal description of the setting? The player can only observe and interpret the story, but the story is about observation. ![]() The problem with Chick's complaint is that this is quite clearly deliberate. It does not allow the player to influence outcomes. It does not, as Chick points out, give the player agency in a way that video game players are accustomed to. That's not to say that there isn't something missing from Firewatch. It's a much smarter argument than usual, but it is far too prescriptive about what sort of experience a game must be, or what sort of story a game is allowed to tell. Tom Chick's review can rather uncharitably be boiled down to "It's not a game."
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