Firewatch

[Subyman]

Camp Santo's first game comes out tomorrow. These are the guys that run the Idle Thumbs podcast. Great podcast if you enjoy understanding and hearing conversations on the developer's side of video games along with gaming philosophy.

They got together with a popular screen print artist, Olly Moss, to create a "FPS wanderer" game. If you enjoyed Dear Esther, Gone Home, Life is Strange, The Vanishing of Ethan Carter, Everyone's Gone to the Rapture, and such then, well you probably already know about this game lol.

I've been looking forward to it because I'm a big Olly Moss fan. I own a few of his works and am excited to see his style translated to a 3D world. Some of the crew of Campo Santo worked on The Walking Dead season 1, so I'm interested to see the story aspect of the game. From what I've seen they have put a ton of work into the voice acting. The characters respond to pretty much any action you do in the game.

I'll be picking it up.

 

[DigDog]

gameplay
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5lyHZIzW8A

 

[Childs]

I preordered this after watching a lot of gameplay videos, although none of the videos get too into what the story is. From what I've seen it seems more like Gone Home meets Stanley Parable, with a somewhat sinister tone after the first "mission". I wouldn't classify it as a walking simulator, as it seems like there is a legit mystery to solve.

 

[Subyman]

I've got it preloading now. It unlocks in about an hour. The giant bomb quicklook with the developers had me really interested. I've been following it forever but that was the first gameplay I'd seen other than some E3 footage. The voice acting sounds great.

 

[Childs]

I've got it preloading now. It unlocks in about an hour. The giant bomb quicklook with the developers had me really interested. I've been following it forever but that was the first gameplay I'd seen other than some E3 footage. The voice acting sounds great.

Eurogamer did a 90 min stream of it in demo mode, so no major spoilers.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j129mHUzg_c

 

[ImpulsE69]

Reviews for this are pretty good and I like the style....dammit I do not need yet another game in my queue...

 

[Subyman]

Just finished it. When I first saw the credits roll, I was a little disappointed by the ending. But upon reflection, this game is amazing and is a real breath of fresh air in videogame story telling.

 

[Childs]

Just finished it. When I first saw the credits roll, I was a little disappointed by the ending. But upon reflection, this game is amazing and is a real breath of fresh air in videogame story telling.

So I guess they weren't kidding about the 6 hours eh?

 

[Subyman]

So I guess they weren't kidding about the 6 hours eh?

I finished in 4. Honestly, you'd have to be a really big fan of this genre to buy it at $20. Personally, I think it is well worth the cost, but it would be hard to recommend to others at full price. Definitely put the game on your wish list though!

 

[Childs]

I finished in 4. Honestly, you'd have to be a really big fan of this genre to buy it at $20. Personally, I think it is well worth the cost, but it would be hard to recommend to others at full price. Definitely put the game on your wish list though!

I already bought it at the preorder price. Just thinking I should wait till the weekend and finish it in one shot.

 

[Subyman]

I'd recommend going through it in one sitting.

 

[Childs]

Strange, Steam says it I finished it in 3 hours, but I think thats off by an hour or so. I literally checked every nook and cranny. A couple times I even double backed to caches because I couldnt remember if I copied the map or not.

Anyways, I didnt mind the length, but I wish the controls were better. Give me Battlefield style sprinting and movement. Probably would have finished it sooner, but the slow movement and deliberate climbing was starting to get on my nerves.

Spoiler

I wish they stuck with the conspiracy thing. They laid the foundation for the kid, and it was nice, but I was getting ready to kick someone's ass after getting sucker punched. lol Kinda makes me wonder if they scaled back what they originally wanted to it. In this way it reminds of Lifeless Planet. Great potential, but it seems like the devs cut it short to pay the bills.

 

[ritditditdidoo]

This is the worst game I have played since 1994. I am amazed people have anything positive to say about this at all. I am too annoyed to even go into it any more but I will if anyone cares.

 

[darkswordsman17]

I've been wanting to play through it again and see if there's much more in the dialogue and do some more exploring. Unfortunately I take it there isn't too much that will change (and essentially nothing as far as the gameplay/story goes).

I'm really mixed. I like the world and the visuals, but the game itself is fairly lackluster. The story seemed like it could get interesting but really just disappointed. It definitely could use some additions to flesh things out.

Honestly, it feels like an Early Access game that hasn't really been finished. It has some good components to work with but really needs more, and that's even at its $20 price point. I enjoyed it, but no way would I recommend it at full price. I'd even say for quite a lot of people $5 would be pushing value.

 

[ritditditdidoo]

For me it was just like watching a bad movie. It was about the same length and it had about the same amount of interaction, and it left me feeling the same. But it cost about 4 times the price. It baffles me why they would make a free roaming game with pretty graphics and the ability to run around and jump over obstacles and pick up items etc. and then do absolutely nothing with it. It is so linear and there is such little interaction, it really should have just been a movie. But I think movie critics would have torn it to pieces.

 

[JimmiG]

For me it was just like watching a bad movie. It was about the same length and it had about the same amount of interaction, and it left me feeling the same. But it cost about 4 times the price. It baffles me why they would make a free roaming game with pretty graphics and the ability to run around and jump over obstacles and pick up items etc. and then do absolutely nothing with it. It is so linear and there is such little interaction, it really should have just been a movie. But I think movie critics would have torn it to pieces.

I thought the game looked interesting until I realized how linear it is.
Wishlisted it and waiting for 75% off.

 

[ritditditdidoo]

It pretends to have choices but it is all completely fake. I don't know why more people don't call it out and say it like it is.

It asks you several questions at the start and gives you 2 options for everything and I got excited that it was going to be like a text adventure. But it was a complete lie. The answers have zero impact on the game, absolutely zero impact. Nothing you do or say in the game has any impact on how it plays out. And the bits where you "explore" are fake too. It gives you a map and makes you think you are out in the wilderness, but there are invisible walls all over the place. There are only 3 or 4 paths you can run along and they have invisible walls all around them so you can't go anywhere other than these few paths.

And there is nothing to even do on the paths, you just discover a few things as you run along them and dialogue plays out, so there needn't even be a graphics engine that lets you run or roam, it makes no sense. It could have just been told as a movie or story book. I am sure the only reason they made it a game like this is to pose as something more than it really is, and because no book publisher or tv producer would be interested in such a tiny and inane story.

Really disappointing. Usually I wouldn't care this much, I have played a lot of games I didn't enjoy but they are what they are, at least they are not deceptive like this game. I also bugs me that it gets good reviews (although there are a fair number of bad ones too on Steam). But the good reviews make no sense to me. There are so many games with such great stories compared to this, especially nowadays with so many indie games. When I think of all the adventure games I played as a kid with amazing stories, and they were so relaxing, immersive, they had puzzles, great characters, they had everything, and now in 2016 we get something like this and it still manages to get good reviews.

 

[Childs]

I dunno, it was compared to games like Dear Esther, Stanley Parable and Gone Home. I kinda knew what I was getting into when I bought it. I was somewhat hoping it would be like a virtual hiking game. Maybe like wandering around in Minecraft with better graphics and good music. I think the choices early on are supposed to set your frame of mind. They could have chose it for you and just narrated it, which would have been fine as well. I replayed the beginning a couple times to see what it effected, and it was really just subtle dialog changes between you and your boss.

I think they probably ran out of money and had to narrow the scope. The invisible walls and the gimped movement wore on me after awhile. I think I literally explored every inch of the map looking for secrets and stuff, and it seemed at times like I found something, but with the layout of the map I was always going to find it. I did like the atmosphere, dialog, and music, so I dunno, it wasnt great but there was enough there that I didnt feel ripped off. Like most things in life, it simply could have been better. I would advise someone who is interested in the game to wait till its $5, or watch someone play on Youtube. Its pretty much the same experience.

 

[mikeymikec]

I just completed this game, I bought it for about what I consider to be half-price for a PC game (£15 UKP). It's extremely short even by short PC game standards (5 hours absolute max? I think I finished it in two or three sittings). It feels more like a short story than it does a computer game, and while I appreciate it because it's different from most PC games, I think there was quite a bit more they could have done with it.

Early on I thought that I wouldn't have to keep looking at the map because the game would give me sufficient time to get my bearings, but because whenever a "mission" ended, it skipped straight on to a new day; so it would have been tedious sometimes to do twenty or thirty long walks back to the lookout hut, but with that I would have got my bearings.

I think this plot would have worked a lot better as a TV mini-series, with a whole load of other stuff about living in the wilderness.

 

[Mandres]

I thought they did a masterful job of building intrigue and suspense, and then totally dropped the ball at the end. My mind was racing about halfway through trying to figure out what was happening and whether any of it was even real or if the protagonist was just losing his grip. Every little noise made me jump out of my seat and they really made me feel disoriented and paranoid. There was a lot of really interesting ways they could have wrapped up the story, but they picked the absolute worst. It ruined the whole experience for me.

 

[BSim500]

Yeah I have mixed feelings about the game too. On the one hand, the banter / conversational writing and voice acting are top-notch. The art style & color palette go well together (kind of a red/orange version of The Witness). Even for a story driven game though, the length does not match the price tag. As for the ending, I think they were trying too hard to be "edgy" with the "anti-romance-trope" thing, ie, they were so obsessed with how they didn't want the game to end (Delilah romance), they forgot to put in something interesting instead.

 

[Stuka87]

Wow, waking the dead with this thread.

But, I also loved the game, but was let down by the ending kind of. I am interested in how the movie will turn out.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

I really enjoyed Firewatch. It was probably my second or third favorite game of 2016 and I found it worth every penny of the $20 it cost. I did turn off the current location cursor mark on the map so that I had to use map and compass the way you do in real life when hiking. I thought the dialog was hilarious, though I always picked the sarcastic answer. Every little thing I did I wanted to call Delilah and tell her. I liked the story, I love the graphics and art style, and the dialog was some of the best I have ever experienced in a game. I'm fine with the ending too. I thought it fit that Delilah was escaping the real world just like you were and that she had no desire for a real relationship. But that's what your character seems to be wanting at the end. It sounds more like she was angling for a quick bang the night before you left had there been no fire. Overall I loved Firewatch. It was so different from what I usually play and a game driven by such strong dialog was a welcome change of pace from carjacking people or cutting zombies' heads off and such. It was a rock solid 9/10 in my book, where I'd say 7 is something enjoyable to play, 8 is something I really like, 9 is something I love, and 10 is reserved for one of the top 5-10 games I have ever played.

 

[SteveGrabowski]

Blech at the movie though. There is no way I'm watching that. Hollywood needs to get its own ideas.

 

[Fallen Kell]

The game is easily worth the price of a movie if you ask me (so tickets/popcorn/drink). I too will join the camp of the disappointed with the ending, but it really did have some good story/dialogue based gameplay with some interesting elements. It all is really presented fairly straight-forward, and I wish there were some additional dialogue choices that made a difference in how things played out, but overall I really enjoyed it when I played it (several months ago).