Video Gamers Podcast - Gaming Quick Takes - Pauls Firewatch Take

Episode Date: June 10, 2023

From gaming hosts Josh, Paul, and Ryan we're bringing you even more gaming content each week.  Gaming Quick Takes are a short series of game recommendations, funny moments, off-topic chat and more. A small dose of gaming to brighten your Saturdays! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hey guys, welcome to this Quick Take episode. We're so excited to have you here with us. In the past, these Quick Take episodes actually were only available to those who financially supported the show through Apple subscriptions and Patreon. But due to popular demand, we have decided to shake up the perks for our supporters and we'll be releasing these Quick Takes on Saturdays to everyone, giving you all some extra free content that was previously unavailable to the public. And these Quick Takes are a little more laid back, and they're hosted by just one of us. So sit back, relax, and enjoy this Quick Take episode.

Shazam! Boom! Hey, what's up everybody? Welcome back to another Quick Take episode here with me, Paul. I am a little bit under the weather here, so my voice might sound a little bit congested, but I will do my best to get through this Quick Take where I wanted to talk to you guys about Firewatch. Now, you may remember back a few episodes ago when Josh and I had Michael Butler on, we did a draft of the best character to have a beer with. And Delilah was one of the characters drafted who I did not know because I had never played Firewatch. And the guys just talked about how much they loved that game and how good of a pick Delilah was.

And I even said on the episode that I would pick it up a pick Delilah was. And I even said on the episode that I would pick it up and give it a try. And I did. And so I know that Josh already released his episode on Firewatch, which he kept completely spoiler free. I am going to jump into all things spoiler. So if you plan on playing Firewatch and have not, you'll want to turn this off here within the next minute or so, because I'm going to dive into all of my thoughts about where this game goes. Now, I did play all of Firewatch over the course of two days. It is a very short game. It's about four and a half, maybe five hours total to complete. And it's one of those games that is essentially an interactive movie. It is very story forward.

And the game has almost no gameplay whatsoever. It is mostly composed of dialogue between you and Delilah over a radio. And you use a map and compass to find your way from objective point to objective point. There are absolutely no weapons. There's no fighting. There are no puzzles. It's essentially a little bit of exploration and developing the story over either finding objects that you read or through dialogue options over your radio with Delilah. All right. Now I will say here in the beginning, I thought Firewatch was a very good game. I would not go as far as to say it was great, but I would say it's like a solid 6.5 or maybe a 7 out of 10.

It's very enjoyable. I found the story. I wanted to know what was going to happen next. It was definitely drawing me in. I would just say that now that there are so many interactive movie type games, that there's just a lot that do it a little bit better, in my opinion. But let's go ahead and let's jump in and talk about this a little bit. All right, so Firewatch opens up where you basically are given a series of choices as you play as Henry. And so it goes through how you meet this woman named Julia, the two of you

fall in love. The game makes you pick a whole bunch of options, like what kind of dog did you get together? You end up being married. What are you guys going to do when one of you gets a job offer out of state? And basically, it has you go through a series, and it kind of narrates your background and your story prior to the events of Firewatch. And so the game makes it very clear that Julia is very much the love of your life, at least in the past. And she has developed early onset Alzheimer's, and it's becoming a little bit more difficult for you to care for her. She's requiring a little bit more around the clock help, which is a little bit beyond your abilities. And so ultimately what you end up doing is shipping Julia back to

Australia, which is where she's from, and her family is going to care for her there. And you basically go take a job to be a lookout for forest fires, hence the name Firewatch. And you're basically living by yourself in the middle of the forest in an outpost tower. And you're kind of trying to ponder what your next steps are going to be in life. All right, now this was one of my issues with Firewatch is that they have you go through all these options with Julia in order to help you feel connected to the character. You understand that you love Julia, but now you're just kind of just abandoning her. I didn't totally buy it. I wanted a little bit more detail here because, you know, when you get married, you know, your vows are in sickness and in health. And obviously having a spouse going through early Alzheimer's is horrific and very

difficult. But I felt like the game didn't even really dive into the deeper emotions there. It was just kind of like, well, you know, she's got Alzheimer's, it's not going to work out. So I'm going to go live in the forest. You know, I don't know, I felt like I needed to know a little bit more about how bad things were in order to lead Henry to leave like this. All right, so the game, I think, tries to bring in a little bit of like the movie Rear Window by Alfred Hitchcock, if you guys have seen that. You know, the game includes some things that are happening. Your outpost gets ransacked one day while you're gone. Some girls that you ran into out in the forest, you find out later that they've been reported missing.

And you find some things that are being built in the forest. And you find out that someone's listening in on your conversations on the radio. And so the game definitely hints that there's more going on to the story. maybe there's some kind of big conspiracy you're not too sure if there's maybe some people out here trying to wish you harm or maybe they're even trying to pin the current forest fire that's out of control on your actions and so as you're talking to Delilah over the radio the two of you are kind of starting to go a little bit crazy and wondering what exactly is going on. And so this is what's pulling you into the story, because you want to find out what's going to happen next. And I think this was kind of something that I struggled with a little bit, because ultimately, none of those storylines really

pay off. But none of them are just like the paranoia in your head. You know, it's almost like the twist of Firewatch is that there are no twists. You know, these girls have gone missing. And as far as everyone knows, you're the last one to see them alive. And so Delilah even kind of questions like, you know, did you have anything to do with their disappearance? And so you start to wonder, like, am I going to get blamed for these girls' deaths? Are they actually dead? Are they fine? And then you just kind of find out later, Delilah tells you, oh, yeah, those girls got found. And that's it. And so it's like, well, that was made such a big deal earlier in the game, because what are

we going to tell the police? And what is Delilah going to tell them? And, you know, so I kind of felt like it ultimately went nowhere. Also, the person listening in on your phone calls that you think might be this grand conspiracy is really just a dude who worked in your outpost before you. And he's just living out in the wilderness by himself and just wants to be left alone. No one's actually trying to harm you or frame you for anything. So it was kind of interesting because I felt like, and this might sound a little nitpicky, but I just felt like the game needed to lean in more. Either lean in on the conspiracy side and make there be some kind of big reveal at the end of the game, or go in the other direction and lean into maybe the fact that

Henry and Delilah are just going paranoid and they're going a little bit crazy by being by themselves out in the forest. With Julia having her mental illness with Alzheimer's, I thought that that was some foreshadowing that maybe Henry was going to go through the same thing. And maybe he wasn't imagining these things, but maybe he was building them up in his head and I thought it would go a little bit more into that rear window way of thinking but ultimately it just kind of didn't you know the game I would say is almost entirely made of red herrings which I think I would maybe enjoy more on my second playthrough. I kind of wish I knew that at the onset, to be honest, because I kept waiting for there to be a reveal or that the story

is building up to something. And ultimately, it just really isn't. It's kind of just like, here's a little slice in the life of these two people. In the end, they don't even meet. You're not even 100% sure that they're going to, but they've made it pretty clear that you're leaving Julia behind. And so maybe you're going to try to make things work with Delilah. So it's not even really satisfying with their relationship. And then all of the red herrings along the way don't really entirely pay off. So I felt like it was still fun. It was good. It just didn't land the way i wanted it to um which is why i say maybe on a second playthrough it would feel a little bit better because i kept waiting for

there to be some kind of reveal that just ultimately never came i i paid 25 for this game which ultimately i felt just fell a little bit short from calling it great and the fact that it's only about a four to five hour game i would not recommend it for the full price of 25 bucks but i did find out on our discord that someone said that it is now available on game pass i think it's absolutely a great game to play if you already have game pass and you can play it for no additional cost i would also say it's well worth picking up if it's on Steam sale or something like that. Ultimately, I would say the game is like a B minus in my book. You know, it's fun.

It's worth playing, just not worth the full price because it's just not really worth $25 of gameplay. I'd rather put that money toward something else, to be honest. Also, I would go as far as to say you could probably watch a streamer play it, and you're going to have just as much fun because there's no puzzles to figure out, there's no gameplay to do. Ultimately, you're just... It's almost like an audiobook, kind of. So you could probably enjoy it 95% as much just letting someone else be on the controls and to follow along with it. I will say that my last complaint is that really the only gameplay is looking at your map, looking at your compass, and finding your waypoint. And the game does not allow you to look at your map well while walking. You can technically walk while looking at your map,

but your character is swaying so much across the screen you can't look at the map well while walking. You can technically walk while looking at your map, but your character is swaying so much across the screen, you can't look at the map or figure out where you're going. So you're kind of stuck, you know, stopping, looking down at your map, reorienting, walking that way until you stop and check your map again. So maybe it would have helped if you just pulled up your map on the bottom half of the screen and it was a little more stationary. So it's kind of like even the one gameplay element is a little bit burdensome and just not really well polished in that regard. I feel like the story is well polished and the voice acting is absolutely phenomenal. I mean, those things they knock out of the park. The actual interactive parts of the game are a little bit lacking. Ending's a little bit lacking. So ultimately, that's kind of where I landed on a B minus. I know a lot of people really love Firewatch. Part of me wonders if it was maybe just one of the early interactive games that they played, because I would way rather play a game like Until Dawn or Heavy Rain or Her Story or any of these

other ones that are story driven. I just think that those games all have more interesting stories because if it's going to be story driven, you really got to nail that ending in order to really draw me in. This one just falls the tiniest bit short, but still worth playing in my book. All right. Hope you guys enjoyed this one here. Thank you so much, all of you out there, for helping support the show. Whether you are a $5, $30, $100 supporter, we really do appreciate it.

And we love you all. We'll see you guys next time.