Firewatch, it could be argued on a surface level critique is a walking sim and indeed Firewatch does tick several of the boxes of what could be argued defines a walking sim. Short length, check. First Person, check. No combat, check. Exploration, check. Set in an unpopulated location, check. Story details gained through objects in the world, check. So Firewatch does fit the walking sim mould, but Firewatch’s game design does much more than that.
Firewatch takes place in Wyoming in 1989 at the Shoshone National Forest. The game follows Henry, who has taken on the role of a fire lookout over a summer after wanting to take time away from his problematic day to day life. This setup allows Firewatch to have one major advantage from other walking sims is that the story of Firewatch takes place over multiple days as well as having Henry talk to Delilah, his supervisor, which allows for the elements of the story to drip fed over the five or so hours through in game conversations rather than needing the story to be told entirely through the player exploration.
Firewatch borrows from Telltale or Bioware for a portion of game design as during your conversations with Delilah, you are able to select a range of dialogue options to progress the plot, gain information or characterisation. Many of the dialogue options available during these conversations are often quite funny.
Including these conversations does solve one of the problems of walking sims, that usually the majority of the characterisation of the player character is carried out via locating in game objects or locations alongside voiceovers from the player character explain past events than through more naturalistic means, such as the details being discussed during conversations between characters. Well the former approach is normally well done, having important information delivered through dialogue does add a bit more depth to characterisation and arguably the game world, even if these conversations are carried out via radio, as is the case in Firewatch. The simple inclusion of another character which player interacts with into the game world allows for events to unfold as you play through the game, instead of the player learning about important events which occurred prior to when the game starts and player character’s arrival.
Due to the more open nature of Firewatch and the location setting, the game is designed around the need to clamber around the world. The player can use a range of tools which are collected during the game to when the player has to do some clambering. For the most part this well done, however, near the end the of the game I did encounter on a couple of occasions where the player character would not go where I was intending when climbing up of objects or moving across a beam as either the character would go in a direction without being inputted to do so or requiring the assigned button to pressed twice before the game would respond as intended. The player character did also get stuck temporarily in the environment, on occasion, when walking around enclosed environments.
Other than these very minor issues, Firewatch for the majority of the time is an excellent walking sim which examines some interesting topics throughout its plot. Its short length also ensures it doesn’t get repetitive in the gameplay department. The more comedic nature of the script also ensures that Firewatch doesn’t get too bleak when touching on these deeper topics and allows the game world to feel lived in. Firewatch is a game which very much should be experienced.