“Oh no.” The game immediately feels like it’s setting you up for something, especially once you hear your supervisor’s cheery and very female voice across the radio on your first morning. She’s still your living wife, but sometimes - more and more - it feels like she’s dead to you. You’ve left a wife you love, who sometimes doesn’t even remember you, who’s forgotten the dog she used to adore when you tell her of its passing. But where Up sets its main character up for a journey to let go of his past and move on, Henry’s story is not so straightforward. Short and sweet, it builds a believable and beautiful relationship between the characters and then tears it down only moments later. In explaining Firewatch to other people, I’ve often likened its opening sequence to the infamous one from Up. Warning, this story contains spoilers for the ending of Firewatch. All because, when it came down to it, their choices didn’t matter. Steam reviews chronicle players building up endless expectations for a certain ending, and then being hopelessly disappointed. Whether that makes for a good “game” is another question.Viewing only a small sample of the Steam reviews for February’s breakout indie game Firewatch seem to turn up the same theme again and again - love turns to apathy turns to hate in the closing half hour of the game. I think the game succeeds in what it tries to do, in that regard. The game works hard at instilling these same feelings in you, the player, by giving you what you think is going to be a mystery and adventure but it turns out it’s more mundane and unresolved and it ends kind of abruptly and unsatisfactorily. His adventure with her stopped halfway through and it left him feeling unfinished, unsettled, cheated, depressed, etc. His life with his wife went off the rails. I think it’s an intentional storytelling choice, not poor plotting: Think about the main character and what brought him to the forest. The more I thought about it, though, the more I appreciated the reason the game doesn’t come together in the way we wanted and expected. I felt the same after finishing my playthrough. What’s the point of putting the player through an adventure if it stops halfway through? I get why people like this game but in all honesty, the fact that it is halted in such an awkward and unrewarding place makes the whole thing not worth it in my opinion. Hell, it feels like one of those games where you get a free first episode and then pay for the rest. What's the point of putting the player through an adventure if it stops halfway through? Because that's what it felt like. The abrupt "resolution" is lackluster and feels rushed. You're forced to just sit and wonder why this and that happened, and shrug your shoulders. Surely there had to be more? There were so many questions to be answered, so many mysteries to be solved! Nope. I progressed through the game, really excited to tie everything together, figure out what that mysterious cabin was for, why that fire happened, et cetera. They seemed to be clues, pieces to a larger puzzle. The exploration was amazing as well, I discovered so many interesting, mysterious things. It felt like I was talking to a close friend. I really enjoyed the character(s?) and the friendship I built. It throws you into the rocky terrain of the forest, aided only by a companion from afar. And for 90% of my playthrough, it lived up to that standard. I decided to give Firewatch a shot since I've seen it praised as being the pinnacle of modern walking simulators. Please use flair to display what games you’re currently playing, not a punch line, username, tag, URL, or signature. New, mobile-friendly spoilers can be posted using the following formatting: Want to play online in a dead gaming community? We expect you to know these rules before making a post. Please click here to see our current rules. We no longer maintain our posting rules in Old Reddit. Join our Discord Join our Steam Group Posting Rules Whether it's price, waiting for bugs/issues to be patched, DLC to be released, don't meet the system requirements, or just haven't had the time to keep up with the latest releases. A gaming sub free from the hype and over saturation of current releases, catering to gamers who wait at least 12 months after release to play a game.
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