Firewatch is a 2016 adventure game developed by Campo Santo and published by the developer in partnership with Panic. The game was released in February 2016 for Linux, OS X, PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One in September 2016, and for Nintendo Switch in December 2018. The story follows a fire lookout named Henry who works in Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. Henry interacts with his supervisor Delilah using a walkie-talkie, choosing what to say from dialogue options, and developing his relationship with her. Over the course of the summer, Henry and Delilah are menaced by unseen forces and have to unravel a years-old mystery.
The game was directed by Olly Moss and Sean Vanaman, written by Chris Remo, Jake Rodkin, Moss and Vanaman, and produced by Gabe McGill and artist Jane Ng. The game's environment was modelled by Ng, based on a single painting by Moss. The design draws inspiration from New Deal advertisements by the National Park Service and field research conducted in Yosemite National Park.
The game received generally positive reviews, earning praise for its story, characters, dialogue, and visual style, but the presence of technical issues and the game's ending were both subjects of criticism. Firewatch won the award for Best 3D Visual Experience at the Unity Awards 2016, Best Indie game at the 2016 Golden Joystick Awards, Best Narrative at the 2017 Game Developers Choice Awards and Debut Game at the 2017 British Academy Games Awards. By 2018, the game had sold over 2.5 million copies.
Gameplay
Firewatch is an adventure game played from a first-person view that takes place in the American state of Wyoming in 1989. Like other walking simulator games, Firewatch features no combat or puzzles. The player takes on the role of Henry, a fire lookout in Shoshone National Forest. Through exploration of the surrounding area, Henry uncovers clues about mysterious occurrences in the vicinity that are related to the ransacking of his tower while he is out on a routine patrol and a shadowy figure that occasionally appears watching him from afar. To aid in navigation, the player has a compass and a map that Henry appends additional information to throughout the game.
Henry's only means of communication is a walkie-talkie connecting him to his supervisor, Delilah. Delilah tasks the player with minor duties, such as checking in on campers setting off fireworks, and engages him in conversation. The player may choose from a number of dialogue options to speak with her upon the discovery of new interactive objects or environments, or can chose not to answer at all. The player's choices will influence the tone of Henry's relationship with Delilah. As the story progresses, new areas open up for the player, and certain plot points take place on particular days. Scattered supply caches contain objects like ropes that Henry can use to access new areas. Other objects found in the wilderness can be kept in the inventory for later use, including a disposable camera that players can take snapshots with.
Upon completion of the game, players unlock a free roam mode that allows players to explore the map with no objectives and a day-night cycle. A developer commentary mode adds listening stations scattered across the map with cassettes that provide players with behind-the-scenes information.
Plot In the spring of 1989, after his wife Julia (Larissa Gallagher) develops early-onset dementia, Henry (Rich Sommer) takes a job as a fire lookout in Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. On his first day, Delilah (Cissy Jones), a lookout in another watchtower, contacts him via walkie-talkie and asks him to investigate illegal fireworks by the lake. Henry discovers a pair of teenage girls, who accuse him of leering. On his way back to his tower, he comes across a locked cave and spots a shadowy figure watching him. He returns to his watchtower to find it ransacked. The next day, Delilah asks Henry to investigate a downed communication line, which he finds cut. Henry and Delilah plot to scare the teenage girls off, but Henry finds their campsite ransacked and abandoned. The teens are reported missing; fearing an inquiry, Delilah falsely reports neither she nor Henry encountered the girls.
While out hiking, Henry finds an old backpack and a disposable camera belonging to a boy named Brian Goodwin, who was the son of former lookout Ned (Mac Brandt). Ned was an outdoorsman who drank heavily due to traumatic experiences in the Vietnam War, while Brian enjoyed fantasy novels and role-playing games. Though it is against the rules for employees to bring their children to the towers, Delilah was fond of Brian and lied about his presence. He and Ned apparently left abruptly and never returned.
A few months later, a small wildfire breaks out south of Henry's tower. Henry discovers a radio and a clipboard while fishing, with notes including transcripts of his conversations with Delilah. He is knocked unconscious by an unseen assailant and wakes up to find the clipboard and radio gone. In a nearby meadow, Henry finds a fenced-off government research area. He breaks in and discovers surveillance equipment and typewritten reports detailing his and Delilah's conversations and private lives. He also discovers a tracking device and takes it with him. Disturbed by this discovery, Henry and Delilah discuss destroying the government camp but decide against it. However, as Henry hikes home, someone sets fire to the camp.
The next day, Henry uses the tracking device to find a backpack with a key to the locked cave. Delilah reports a figure in Henry's tower; when Henry arrives, he finds a Walkman taped to the door with an incriminating recording of Henry and Delilah's discussion about destroying the government camp. The next day, someone impersonating Henry calls another lookout and claims Delilah knows the cause of the camp fire, putting her and Henry more on edge.
Henry uses the found key to enter the cave but is locked inside. Heading deeper into the cave, Henry discovers the decayed body of Brian Goodwin. Henry finds a way to the surface and reports Brian's death to Delilah, who is upset by the news. The next day, an evacuation order is given for all the lookouts, as the wildfire has grown out of control.
As Henry prepares to leave, the tracking device begins beeping. He follows the signal and discovers a tape recorded by Ned Goodwin, who has been the figure watching Henry. Ned claims Brian's death was accidental and that the boy fell due to climbing inexperience. Unwilling to return to society after Brian's death, Ned secretly lived in the area ever since. Choosing to venture deeper into the wilderness, Ned warns Henry not to look for him.
Henry finds Ned's camp filled with items stolen from the government camp, the lookout towers, and the teenage girls, who Delilah confirms have been found safe. The government camp was simply studying wildlife; Ned created and placed transcripts there to scare Henry away. Delilah blames Ned for Brian's death and leaves on the rescue helicopter. Henry goes to her tower, and he and Delilah say their goodbyes via radio before Henry evacuates.
Development
Firewatch is the first game by Campo Santo and was created by Jake Rodkin and Sean Vanaman, who were the creative leads on The Walking Dead; Nels Anderson, the lead designer of Mark of the Ninja; and artist Olly Moss. Chris Remo was involved in many aspects of the design and also composed the score. In total, the game involved 11 people—eight in-house developers, and three remote workers.
Development for Firewatch began with a single painting by Moss. Moss, who had previously been known primarily for his graphic design work, had joined Vanaman and Rodkin to found Campo Santo after spending many years working on the periphery of game development. In creating the painting, Moss emulated National Park Service posters from the New Deal era in art direction and bold colors. The development team went on a camping trip to Yosemite National Park for inspiration for the game, where they visited a lookout tower built with the same design as its video game counterpart. Further inspiration for the game came from Vanaman and Anderson's experiences growing up in rural Wyoming. Jane Ng, lead environmental artist at Campo Santo, was tasked with translating Moss' work into 3D environments while maintaining his stylized artistic vision.
Firewatch runs on the Unity game engine. Because the game featured a single open world instead of discrete levels, the developers split the main scene file into smaller scenes that could be stitched back together during play; splitting the map up by discipline (art, design, lighting) allowed concurrent changes and reduced development time. Ng created 23 kinds of trees, which were reused thousands of times throughout the game. To give distant foliage the simpler look of Moss's style, the game uses a custom shader. The in-game fire lookout towers were built in accordance with government specifications, using standard lumber size, after Ng's first attempt was unsatisfactory. The developers tried to prevent the forest from feeling like a series of corridors or linear paths, balancing the sensation of wandering in the woods, without actually dealing with the frustration of getting lost. Gullies, rocks, or other terrain features were added to break up sightlines so that as the player traveled they could not see areas of the world that had not yet loaded in. Lower-resolution representations of the world were used in cases where the player could see but not travel to an area for better performance.
The walkie-talkie interaction in Firewatch is inspired by the relationship in BioShock between the player character and Atlas, as well as the dialog system from The Walking Dead.At one point in the development, it was intended that the protagonist would be able to communicate with multiple characters, such as hikers, but the idea was discarded due to its expense and the schedule requirements with which the team were working. The team avoided lip syncing and minimized the amount of character animation needed due to the limited team size and resources.
Anderson recalled that the constraints of the walking simulator/narrative exploration genre meant additional challenges. While the developers originally wanted the player to find equipment or gear that opened new paths through the wilderness like a Metroidvania, the realities of how dialogue would change if events happened out of order caused them to drastically cut back on optional exploration. Because the events of the game happened concurrently with the player exploring the wilderness, the developers could not rely on the usual options of relying heavily on notes or manmade objects to communicate information to the player, lest it disrupt suspension of disbelief. Likewise Delilah could not inform the player of events she could not see from her vantage point, and repeating information to make sure players registered it could break immersion in the story. Playtesting the game and identifying issues was difficult; playtesters had to play through large chunks of the game to have the context needed to evaluate it. If testers had issues, it was difficult to figure out where the problem lay. As a result, the developers had to build the game roughly in linear story order. Anderson recalled that a benefit of this arduous process was they had more time to change later parts of the game based on unexpected tester actions, and rerecording dialogue with the voice actors in their home studios was comparatively quick.