3/17/2024 0 Comments Firewatch ending disappointing![]() ![]() It also does it artfully - those initial moments are a seduction. The trick here is that it’s not enough to simply present that emotional devastation like a cat offering a dead rat (I MADE DIS SORTA). ( See also some earlier thoughts on simplicity and elegance in plot and character.) (If you want further thoughts on characters and plot and how the story lies between a character’s problem and a character’s solution - my Zero Fuckery Guide to kick-ass characters.) He has a problem and his solution to that problem is to go hide from the world in the wilds of Wyoming, taking a job that requires very little of him except isolation. The decision to be where he is (and for the game to be what the game is) is not because of hammering home some plot point but because that’s where Henry wants to or needs to go. No, the guy is just alone and fucked up and wants to be more alone and so he goes to be isolated. To translate that, when we see the character take the lonely role of “firewatch” (meaning, he lives at a firewatch station and monitors the park for forest fires), he does not do so because he has some love of parks or fire or because some Sinister Villain has driven him to this. It lays waste to the character’s emotional interior and then that personal apocalypse launches into not the mechanics of the plot but instead, the character’s connection to and the necessity for the plot. It does not establish physical stakes, but rather, emotional stakes for one character. Firewatch on the other hand uses this opportunity not to set out a plot problem but rather, a character problem. ![]() What’s interesting with Firewatch is that we assume those initial story moments must be PLOT-focused, right? As in, SET UP THE PLOT PROBLEM WITH AN INCITING INCIDENT BECAUSE OH NO ROBOTS ARE GOING TO LASERBOMB THE SUPERBOWL. Those opening moments are an opportunity to chum the waters with narrative blood - then the audience comes swimming closer, looking for bait, and that’s when you draw in the net or use a gaff hook or something-something some-other-fishing-metaphor. Point is - you gotta get in early and make those first moments count. In a comic the first five panels - whatever. Maybe in your book it’s the first five pages. Here it’s the first five minutes, same as it might be with a film or a TV pilot. This leads us to our first lesson, actually - The Earliest Moments Matter Challenges that are purely emotional, that are difficult because adulthood is frequently about setting up expectations for yourself and yet sometimes, sometimes, those expectations are dashed against the rocks of reality until dead. Mature not in the sense of, OMG IT’S PEE PORN, but mature in the way that adult life sometimes throws challenges at you you would’ve never before imagined. I won’t spoil how this game opens, but I will say that the emotional collapse that awaits the character of Henry is one that is painfully adult in nature. It’s not even quite in the vein of UP, where you watch a man’s life and marriage zip by in fast-forward to an unfortunate, if inevitable, conclusion. ![]() Those first five minutes are harrowing not in a genre sense - it’s not like, OH, DANG, MY GIRLFRIEND WAS TAKEN AND KILLED BY NINJAS, NOOOOO, I WILL AVENGE YOU, BETTY-SUE. ![]() It’s also frequently beautiful in ways both visually and emotionally. It’s almost like being a house so empty it invites a haunting - and boy howdy, this game is haunting. You are an empty person waiting to be filled up. You as the player have been hollowed out much as your on-screen avatar, Henry, is hollowed out. This is an important moment, narratively. At their end, you are left gutted of your stuffing - and then, only then, does the game begin. The first five minutes of Firewatch are sweet until they are harrowing. ![]()
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