She snarkily suggests that his wardrobe is probably filled with “gross bowling shirts”. The dismissal leaves her feeling vulnerable and awkward, but she manages to have a little fun with the situation, filling in the blanks of Henry’s appearance herself. It’s an intimate proposal to describe yourself to a stranger, particularly as these days if you’re viewing someone as a potential romantic interest, you’ve probably already creeped their social networks. She wants to be able to picture him physically as the two cannot meet. When Delilah asks about Henry’s appearance while sketching him, his silence seems to genuinely hurt her. Here was the only person Henry had contact with, someone who’s trying to form a bond with him, someone with their own baggage who desperately wants to connect, and I was relentlessly blanking her. Instead of quips and lighthearted jabs, her dialogue is filled with deflated “well, let me knows” and lingering “anyways…” She sounds defeated, and I started to feel like an asshole. All other conversations just exist to shape the character’s personalities and interactions. There are only a few key scripted moments where it’s necessary to talk to Delilah to move the plot forward. Upon starting this playthrough, I noticed how much of the conversation is optional. It got me thinking: what would happen if you went through Firewatch without talking to Delilah at all? How would that colour an experience that’s already about cutting yourself off? So that’s what I decided to do when starting over, and it was one of the bleakest experiences I’ve had in a game. The game’s themes of disrupted relationships and isolation were amplified. This wasn’t the experience I was supposed to have.īut then I noticed Delilah’s responses to Henry’s silence and how disheartened she was by being ignored. For the second time (and this time at a pivotal moment) my immersion was shattered, and I felt like it was time to give up. All I could do was wait for the reply window to run out. Delilah could talk to Henry, but I couldn’t make him respond. From then on Henry was unable to make contact with Delilah. While hurrying back to Henry’s post to investigate, a dialogue exchange from an earlier conversation triggered, after which, Henry turned his radio back off.
It’s a compelling moment, but the tension was soon broken. After completing the task, the radio is turned back on and the two face an unnerving situation – Delilah can see someone in Henry’s lookout in his absence. Weirded-out by a tequila infused Delilah, he turns his radio off so he can focus. It happened during a sequence where Henry treks off into the wilderness at twilight, following the blips of his orientation device. I was less than enthused by the prospect of starting over yet again. Aside from frequently encountering the distracting framerate issues, my experience was marred by two game-breaking bugs, the second of which came no more than half an hour before the game’s conclusion.
I played Firewatch on PS4, and it was a shaky experience. I was aching to explore its amber drenched vistas and unravel its mysterious story through the stocky digits and staunch forearms of Firewatch ’s protagonist, Henry. Ever since it came to my attention, it was the game I anticipated above all others. Big ones.įirewatch can never be the experience I wanted it to be, and to be blunt, it left a Firewatch shaped hole in my Firewatch shaped heart.
Spoiler Warning: The following contains spoilers about the plot, events, and the ending of Firewatch.
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