My Two Cents
Okay Camp Santo, I get it. You are a small group of developers that wanted to create something special that other people could love. I say mission accomplished. Firewatch, at its core, is a fantastic game with excellent voice acting and an original idea. Unfortunately, games are not reviewed based on just their core gameplay.
I purchased this game at the full introductory price of $17.99. I was pretty upset when I completed the game in just under 4 hours. Many users report completing the game in under 3 hours. At the very least, this game should have had a free roam mode that allowed players to go back after the story is finished and enjoy wandering the landscape. At least then we could have spent another couple hours exploring and taking pictures with the camera-something I forgot all about until the end of the game.
I would have liked to see more days played in the game. I was a bit frustrated to see the day end, and skip 3 weeks to start the next day. What happened during all that time? I have to imagine something fun or exciting happened on at least one of those days. I don’t see how it would have been that difficult to add in a dozen or so days where you play out a little mini story for the whole day. For example, one day Henry could be sent to get supplies, but when he gets to the drop point he finds no supplies in the box. What could have happened to them? Did someone take them? Were the supplies ever delivered in the first place? A trail of clues (á la beer cans) could lead Henry on a quest to find the missing supplies. Perhaps after half a dozen clues leads Henry across the map, he finds evidence that a bear attacked the supply carrier. Mini quests like these could add tons of hours to the gameplay.
Speaking of bears, where are all the animals? In the whole game I saw one deer. ONE DEER. In a whole summer of being in the woods, I saw no birds. No squirrels. No bears. No foxes. No snakes. And just one deer. C’mon.
Why aren’t there more caves? There should be at least one or two more caves to explore in this game. Caves are not difficult to render since they don’t require a precise structure. You wouldn’t even have to create perfect paths if Henry could jump because…
Henry can’t jump. He can’t just jump up and down. Aside from the scripted points in the game, he can’t jump at all. Why? If this game were open world, he could jump into and out of trouble. It would give players more exploration options, and it would allow the environment to be imperfect, more closely resembling real rock formations and countryside. Henry cannot swim either. Why? Games like Fallout do not use any additional commands or controls to swim, so why not allow it? Finding some hidden treasure (or hidden horror) in the lake could add a whole new story to the game.
A game set in the wooded back country should be open world. Period. The fact that this game is semi-linear is absurd. Implementing a death/respawn system could have made this game a truly open world environment. If Henry gets into a place he can’t get out of, respawn. If he walks through some bushes and off the edge of a cliff, respawn. Forcing players to start at the beginning of the day might be enough of a penalty to discourage reckless behavior. If not, perhaps restarting several days prior might be better motivation. The notion that you can die in the game could instill some level of fear, causing the player to think before they act. Currently, all you have to do is follow along with the story and there’s no worry that things won’t work out.
What is the point of the multiple choice prologue? It appears that no matter how you go about it, the wife still gets sick and moves away. I get that making choices helps immerse the player in the story, but perhaps make it so some of those choices actually affect something. Regardless of the dialogue options or the actions taken, the story never changes.
A few extra days of development for multiple endings could have doubled or tripled the game’s replay value, and it’s monetary worth as well. Perhaps there could have been an ending where a cut scene shows Henry signing divorce papers, and hints at a romance with Delilah. Maybe another (sad) ending has Henry getting caught within Ned’s booby-trapped hideout, and Henry burns to death in the fire while Delilah is left waiting, pleading to hear Henry on the radio. Perhaps another ending could extend the existing ending, where Henry and Delilah return to their towers the next summer, leaving the game open for a sequel.
I really wanted to like this game, and I do…If I pretend not to remember that there’s no reason to play it again. I think a wiser choice for Campo Santo would have been to price this game at $10 and make sure it’s left open for a sequel. If they had done that, I (along with many others) might have been more satisfied with Firewatch, and we would have been more interested in crowd-funding a sequel too. Instead, we are left with a sour taste in our mouths from a story that was too short, and one that gave us no reason to go back.
