Firewatch game genre. Firewatch is a story about adults. Review. Watch Firewatch Walkthrough

Introduction

When the unknown indie company Campo Santo unveiled its Firewatch quest at PAX 2014 last year, few people attached any importance to this announcement. Yes, beautiful landscapes were shown in the trailer, but after The Vanishing of Ethan Carter it is difficult to surprise the audience with graphics.

The American company, it seems, also understood this and decided to take not only the beautifully executed visual part, but also directly gameplay. And the plot. And soundtrack. Yes, and in general to everyone.

If this is not ideal, then something very close to it.

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"You see Julia..."

It is with these words that the grand adventure called Firewatch begins. From the very beginning, the creation of Campo Studio positions itself as something special, something that game industry haven't seen yet.

Indeed, in what other modern game genre "quest" can now see the elements of a text quest? That's right - in any other than Firewatch.

Moreover, the ten-minute "text" segment here is not made for beauty at all, and the decisions made at the beginning will be reflected in the content of the dialogues in the future.

Naked text in front of us draw pictures of the difficult life of an ordinary guy from Colorado named Henry. Having pretty much given up in a bar back in 1975, he falls in love with a certain Julia, after which they seemed to have a long and happy life - they live together, get a dog, think about children ...

But fate puts everything in its place - soon her beloved Henry is diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease, after which she goes to the care of her parents in Australia. Left alone, Henry decides to run away from the worldly bustle with grief and gets a job as an observer on one of the fire towers in the Shoshone National Forest, in Wyoming. Well, what, the work is not dusty - know yourself to sit on your tower, read books, but think about the frailty of life.

However, he still fails to completely avoid human society - on the spot, his new acquaintance and part-time colleague, Delilah, begins to communicate with him on the radio. She will be the one best friend player for the entire duration of the passage and will be the second on a par with Henry the main character of this story. Even despite the amazing fact that we never get to see her.

The best phrase that characterizes Firewatch is pleasant loneliness. For the entire duration of the passage main character will not meet a single living soul and will communicate only with his friend Delilah. Nevertheless, despite the small number of characters, the story is perceived surprisingly well, and you do not get tired of following it right up to the very last point.

But making a non-trivial plot is only half the battle, because you need to fasten a working and (preferably) interesting one to it. game mechanics. And the American indie studio coped with its task.

Firewatch, without exaggeration, gives a new unique experience in interaction with the surrounding game world. The fact is that Henry can have conversations with his new colleague literally on any occasion, just hover over an object with a walkie-talkie icon and press the “Shift” button.

Starting from a heartfelt discussion of the beauties of American nature…

... and ending with the condemnation of negligent youth, throwing beer cans everywhere.

After all, how is the interaction with the outside world in the average quest? The main character, under the control of the player, carefully studies the location, objects and sometimes makes some brilliant conclusions, thereby moving further along the plot. In Firewatch, things are a little different - everything interesting that Henry sees, he can discuss with Delilah on the radio.

Moreover, these will not be dialogues pre-written by the developers, here the player is free, as in some RPG, to choose the answers they like. The only thing is that the decisions made and the phrases spoken will only affect your conversations with Delilah in the future, but you can’t count on more - there is only one ending in the game (not counting the secret one) and it won’t be possible to influence it.

The Shoshone National Forest is full of attractions and interesting places, which, however, are easy to miss on the first playthrough. So in order to get the most out of the game, it is better to go through it at least two, and preferably all three times.

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And here I want to compare Firewatch with the recent Life is Strange. These games are very similar in both plot construction and visual accompaniment (more on that below). "Strange Life" also caught on cool story in the initial episode and kept in suspense until the very end, after which it eventually turned out that the scriptwriters were not able to surprise with anything.

And about the same thing happened with Firewatch: if at the beginning the story of the forester Henry begins quite ordinary (although not without a twist), then gradually it unwinds to such incredible proportions that even the screenwriters never dreamed of " X-Files". I don’t want to break away from the game even for a second, and Fox Mulder’s quote keeps spinning in my head: “The truth is somewhere nearby.” Yes, she is really close (the game takes about five hours, no more) and, unfortunately, it turns out to be nowhere easier.

Paradoxically, despite the weak ending, there has not been a stronger Firewatch plot in computer games over the past five years. Here there was a place for mysticism, and conspiracy theories, and detective, and drama, and even comedy.

But, as in the case of Life is Strange, the unfortunate ending is not able to spoil the impression of the game. Firewach is first and foremost an interactive book (or movie, if you will) that raises the bar of quality to a new level.

In terms of gameplay we have typical quest with small (almost minimal) interspersed with pixel hunting: here you can read notes, do rock climbing and explore the location for different kind interesting things while talking with Delilah on the walkie-talkie, but all this in no way interrupts the narrative. The two elements go hand in hand and do not interfere with each other - for the first time in the entire thirty-year history of the genre.

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If you want to get a rough idea of ​​what the game looks like in real life, then imagine a mixture of Life is Strange and The Witness - cartoony style is combined here with incredible landscapes, and in such a way that by the end of the playthrough the folder with screenshots bloats to an incredible size.

And at the same time, to provide such a picture, you do not need a heavy-duty PC: for comfortable game at 60 FPS, only an Intel Core i3 2.00 GHz, 6 GB processor is enough random access memory and video cards of the Nvidia GeForce 450 level. Yes, another flagship is not required at all to render natural beauties.

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Conclusion

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The only piece missing from this puzzle is a happy ending, but compared to the rest of the pieces in the big picture, it looks so small and insignificant that the developers can easily forgive its absence.

Trailers Firewatch lured by fantastically beautiful landscapes and hinted at some terrible secret hidden in the forests of Wyoming. In the commercials, the forester wandered among the trees and rocks, and all around was going on strange. It looked like something along the lines of Alan Wake and novels by Stephen King - calm, suddenly replaced by enveloping horror and an irrepressible sense of anxiety. But we were deceived.

The game really makes you nervous and worried, but not at all out of fear of being eaten by a creepy monster. Firewatch is a game about relationships, about loneliness and running away from yourself. Damn beautiful.

slow man

Henry, main character Firewatch, by no means a big lover of nature, as one might think. Sitting on a fire tower in the deep woods is his way of escaping from oppressive problems in his personal life.

But don't jump to conclusions we are talking not at all about the classic troubles, like misunderstandings or betrayals. Henry's wife suffers from progressive dementia. She is a little over forty, but she no longer recognizes her own husband and needs constant medical care. What to do with it and how to survive it, Henry has no idea. He can only hide - looking for peace and trying to put his thoughts in order.

Henry's past is an important part of the overall story. It is with his help that Firewatch sets you in the right mood and helps to identify yourself with the hero. At first, we read short essays describing episodes from Henry's life, and from time to time we make minor decisions.

Short, unsaid phrases paint vivid pictures in your head. Here is Henry awkwardly flirting with his future wife. Here we are choosing a dog together. Here we dream of children. But the first "episode", hinting at a terrible diagnosis. The essays become more and more disturbing, and the feeling of despair creeps closer and closer.

You can get emotional and shed a tear even before you really start playing.

By the end of the introduction, there is no longer any hero on the other side of the screen. You are Henry. Personally, you climb the creaking steps of the fire tower, with all your heart feeling the desire to hide from insoluble problems, to find a new meaning of existence. And as soon as the generator switch is lowered, a glimpse appears, a beacon in the darkness of our life: Delilah gets in touch via the walkie-talkie.

Endless summer

The girl looks after another sector of the forest, and at the same time for a hero inexperienced in the new profession. She jokes a lot, pokes fun at Henry and is very friendly. However, from the first minutes it becomes clear that humor for her is a protective barrier behind which no less emotions are hidden than those of Henry himself. Perhaps this is what brings them together?

Under Delilah's leadership, we begin our duties. We wander through the forest, disperse teenagers with beer and fireworks, and just chat with a colleague about everything. Almost any event, any subject can be discussed on the radio. Behind the fascinating chatter “about nothing”, the conversations become more and more frank. Delilah opens up to us more and more, and we to her. There are no empty remarks here, every word bit by bit reveals the characters of the characters. After a couple of hours, the brain already refuses to perceive the voice coming from the walkie-talkie as a pre-recorded set of replicas. On the other side is a real live person. Otherwise it can not be.

The developers deliberately made the character of Henry "flexible": choosing the answers in the dialogues, we adjust the image of the character to suit ourselves.

Something about Henry can be gleaned from the annotations of the books he brought with him.

Most of the books are fictional, but sometimes you can find funny references.

The area of ​​the forest entrusted to us is quite large and completely open. At first, it is not very easy to navigate, but after a couple of hours, all the trails and edges become like family.

But through the routine duties of a forester, a thriller gradually begins to seep. Someone cuts the telephone wires, a strange person hangs around near our tower at night, incomprehensible sounds come from the depths of the forest. Gradually, a real threat looms over us and Delilah. The feeling of paranoia is built up gradually and very subtly.

Likewise, flirting with the mood, Firewatch intrigues, captivates... but ends abruptly and isn't very interesting. Yes, and everything becomes clear long before the final. However, by and large, the game has two endings - one draws a line under the history of mysterious incidents in the forest, and the other dots the i in the relationship of the characters. And if the first can really upset, then the second turned out to be strong in its own way.

Firewatch caresses the ear, the eye, and even the soul. In these forests, you want to get lost, just doing your duties as a forester. No puzzles, puzzles and difficulties in general - wander and contemplate. Many will certainly be turned off by this: Firewatch does not do much to use your skill specifically play. Looking around, listening, to some extent even playing a role in dialogues with Delilah - this is here from the heart. But no matter what you do, you will reach the end. Soon enough.

But. But again.

* * *

When I woke up the next morning after beating the game, I felt like I missed Delilah like a real living person. I missed the familiar forest paths and the sunsets over Lake Jonesy. I launched the game and went through it again in one breath to relive all these emotions and sensations. I'm sure it will happen again soon.

Of course, not everyone will be as impressed with Firewatch. Someone does not care about the beauty of the summer forest, someone does not favor overly talkative people, and someone needs tests and more tangible gameplay from games.

But if you are open to new things and love sincere, heartfelt stories, then by no means miss Firewatch.

Firewatch is a first-person adventure and the very first release Campo Santo, studios from San Francisco. The studio brought together the writers of the first season of Telltale's The Walking Dead, designer Mark of Ninja, and acclaimed artist Ollie Moss, and this talented hodgepodge of developers came up with an intriguing, memorable character, interesting relationship, and beautiful setting.

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Plot of Firewatch

Henry, the protagonist of the game, is sad at heart. Why else would he take refuge in the woods of Wyoming and become a lookout in the national forest? It all starts in Colorado, when Henry, drunk, tries to hit on a woman in a bar. He makes her so sorry that she agrees to a date, which, surprisingly, turns into a real relationship. These parts of the story are told only through text and music, although they are still interspersed with full 3D segments, one of which is, say, Henry getting out of the elevator into the parking garage and climbing into his red pickup truck.

While it's not exactly like Kentucky Route Zero, the pinnacle of the adventure game genre, it's Firewatch there are also various possibilities to partially delineate Henry's character. When your girlfriend Julia wants a dog, will you welcome the Beagle she loves with open arms, or will you insist on a German Shepherd for her protection? When she asks about the children, will you ask her to wait? These decisions are not superficial, they are really important. Although they do not affect the outcome of the relationship in any way (you already know that Henry will run away from problems to the reserve in the 80s), they will affect how you hone elements of Henry's character.

Pairing these text-adventure-style elements with the 3d segments of Henry going into the woods makes the game's opening an even more intense and bittersweet experience, because you'll already know how it's all going to end. Naturally, nothing pleasant awaits the protagonist at the end of the opening part of the game, but still there is a rather surprising twist. Julia, by then Henry's wife, comes down with early signs of Alzheimer's. I did not expect that these two lines of text would hit me so hard, and the decision that leave Julie under supervision in medical institution or taking care of her myself was definitely not easy - and it must be said that I didn't even know what she looked like. While Julia and her relationship are described rather superficially, the decision doesn't feel quite as abstract and out of touch with reality as choosing whether or not to save one character and let the other die in Telltale games, for example. These solutions are familiar problems from the real world.

Delilah

While Henry settles into his new home in the observation tower after long journey, he will be greeted by a voice Delilah, his immediate superior, who will communicate with him using a walkie-talkie. This, in fact, is the main part of the gameplay: traveling around the district, talking with Delilah on the radio.

The conversations between these two characters seem natural, thanks to the strong script, which is matched by the performances of the dubbing actors. On the way to the clueless teenagers who decide to set off fireworks in the protected forest, players will be able to hear constant curses and sigh-inducing jokes from Delilah and Henry's catchy responses. Their relationship is so natural that, although they take turns stumbling upon some secrets of the interlocutor, they gradually reveal themselves to each other, however, it will still be quite difficult to mention an abandoned wife the first couple of times when such an opportunity presents itself. Luckily, silence is also a possible dialogue option.

The personality of Henry himself, however, deepens not only with the help of dialogues. Many game elements allow you to learn more about it. He's not a camera on wheels. You'll be able to spot his shorts-clad legs when you look down, or his big, meaty arms as he huffs and labors trying to climb a small ledge about a meter high. He is an ordinary, everyday person, and the animation work reinforces this feeling. Firewatch is simply overflowing with such details and wants you to pay attention to them.

The color palette of art director Olli Moss is not only beautiful to look at. The rather exaggerated colors make the game's visual style quite remarkable and unique - from bright orange colors to lively dark evenings - while being quite crisp and not at all like confusing photorealism. I very rarely got lost in unfamiliar forests (although there is still a map that Henry can look at and on which he writes various notes every now and then). The whole location is worked out in detail - during the plot twists and turns you can get acquainted with the presented territory - while the relative isolation still makes the environment quite frightening, especially when the story moves away from the initial events with elements of drama and comedy and turns into a real thriller.

Most impressive is the thematic cohesion of the game. Generally speaking, Firewatch is about guilt, which develops here into lockdown-induced paranoia when things get pretty scary. After his first day on the job, Henry heads back to his tower to find the place completely trashed by some looter. Maybe teenagers? Or that traveler whose silhouette you noticed on the way home? While Henry has Delilah in touch, it is isolation that has brought him here to the woods, and because of game events he fails to get rid of these gnawing emotions - they are even more intensified.

The same persistent doubts, doubts about the correctness of decisions and fear reappear in the second act, when outside forces seem to be watching Henry and eavesdrop on conversations between him and Delilah. And at this moment, quite by accident, their carefree and innocent flirting begins to seem somehow wrong. Something that the still-married Henry might be ashamed of.

The ambient sound design shines most brightly at these moments, as almost everything is from strangely strong rattling iron fence to fast movements seen in the distance - awakens fear; especially after Henry is unexpectedly attacked when he goes fishing for a bit.

A slight fear among the colorful forests of Firewatch

This is where Firewatch seems to me to have reached some sort of Hitchcockian level of fear. No monsters, just one encounter with some ill-wisher. Yet due to hero watching, mystery, vulnerability and isolation, I wandered around, always looking around and looking around instead of frolicking in amazingly beautiful forests. Music, art and dialogue quickly made this forest familiar to me, and made me reminisce about school trips. Then this in-game comfort very quickly and suddenly came to naught.

Different aspects of the gameplay (pulling out a walkie-talkie or card, entering the same code to open every closed supply box of the park) along with unique animations and believable voice acting help Firewatch is really heartbreaking, yet the game manages to combine both sobriety and maturity in its story without becoming your typical walking sim genre. Pleasant conversations and budding relationships between two fairly endearing characters give way to harsher reality and lengthy, genuinely tense segments in which you can really feel like you're being stalked and vulnerable. The result of all this is a solid and tense story about people, the entire length of which will be worth your time.

There is such a game studio - Telltale Games. Perhaps its name will not tell you anything, but also, most likely, you have at least vaguely heard about games The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones and The Wolf Among Us. It was these projects that made Telltale Games a famous studio, brought her popularity and money. The games themselves, all three projects, are made in approximately the same genre and style - these are the so-called graphic novels, where several game mechanics are combined, and all together they create an adventure game where the plot and story dominate. In fact, Telltale Games created and then popularized the genre of game-series, where most of the time the player follows the development of the plot, slowly clicking and performing some actions, occasionally joining the game at the most important moments of the story.

One of the main developers of the first game in this series, The Walking Dead, Jack Rodkin and Sean Vanaman, left Telltale Games in 2013-2014 and created their own studio - Campo Santo, and in March 2014 announced the first game - Firewatch. Then it seemed that the "observation tower" would be a project in the survival genre with a good single player company and a well-thought-out plot. At least, such hopes arose at the sight of the first trailers. Initially, the game was supposed to appear in 2015, but then its release was postponed to early 2016, and in February, Firewatch became available for PC (Windows / OS X / Linux) and PlayStation 4.

The game turned out to be completely different from what I personally imagined it (and many others, I think), but what can I say for sure - Firewatch should be played by everyone who is not indifferent to computer games any genre, even though the game turned out to be very controversial. It will be very difficult for me to talk about Firewatch without spoilers, so I will very briefly describe those points that are important for understanding, and then I suggest that you simply decide whether to play or not.

The mention of Telltale Games and the projects of this studio at the beginning of the article was done for a reason. The fact is that Firewatch at its core strongly resembles The Walking Dead and all subsequent games in this format. The basis here is a certain story and narrative, and your task is to closely monitor the course of its development. At the same time, you don’t need to do a lot of actions as such, that is, in the usual sense, this is not so much a game as an interactive, damn beautiful story from the graphic side. But it is presented differently than in The Walking Dead and other similar games.

In Firwatch, you play as a very specific person, Henry, a brief history his life the game will kindly tell you at the very beginning. So it turns out that the main character gets a job as an observer in the Shoshone National Forest, Wyoming, USA. The plot develops mainly due to communication on the radio with the boss girl Delilah. The characters get to know each other, get to know each other and then spend the whole game together, keeping in touch via the radio. The game is played in the first person, in some moments you can choose one of several answers when communicating with Delilah, and in the future the game will take them into account. The plot develops slowly at first, but then faster and faster. There were supposed to be descriptions of the plot points, but if I add them, I will spoil the impression of the game for you, so let's move on.

The developers have done their best to ensure that the player can completely immerse themselves in the story they invented and listen, read and watch it with wide eyes. To do this, Firewatch has absolutely amazing graphics and gorgeous music. Both components are top notch.

Game made on Unity engine fifth version, so in theory it can be ported to mobile Operating Systems. However, the quality of the picture in Firewatch is not due to the steepness of the game engine, the resolution of textures or the detail of objects, not at all. The Campo Santo designers were able to draw and embody insanely beautiful landscapes, day and night changes, lighting and many tiny details in the game. Being in the woods of Wyoming, you can take screenshots every second, and literally any screenshot of nature is good to immediately print and put in a frame or on your desktop as “wallpaper”. At some moments of the game, you forget what's next and what to do, you just want to stop and look at all this beauty around. In this regard, Firewatch is a great example of how important game design is, not photorealistic graphics, but the right combination of all the components that make the picture in the game.

Sound is also excellent. The rustle of leaves, the wind, the sounds of fireworks, the crumpling grass underfoot are done perfectly. Musical accompaniment just amazing. The music for the game was written by composer Chris Remo, who has been creating soundtracks for games since 2009.

As you can see, I wrote almost nothing about game mechanics, gameplay and other things that are usually talked about when describing games. There are two reasons. First, in Firewatch, all this is really not enough, this game is a story, where you are assigned for the most part the role of a spectator and an observer. The second is that it will not be possible to briefly tell the plot, leaving behind the most interesting moments, because the game is short. And this, by the way, is another argument in favor of buying the game.

To complete Firewatch, you will need 3-5 hours, no more. But, believe me, this game will definitely not leave you indifferent. On Steam, the toy costs 420 rubles, and, in my opinion, it fully pays for this money.

P.S. If you're thinking, while playing Firewatch, "This is the style of a survival game," then I've got good news for you. There is a project called "The Long Dark", and this game is similar in style to Firewatch, while being a harsh survival simulator. I'll try to talk about it next weekend.