After sampling such survival/first person crafting games as The Forest and Stranded Deep, seeing Firewatch and watching IGN’s 17 minute gameplay preview made me extremely anxious to see what this potential masterpiece could really do for gaming this year.
Campo Santo ‘A small but scrappy game developer in San Francisco, California’ are the developers of this highly fascinating game.
Taking place in Shoshone National Forest, you play as Henry, a recently divorced man who retreats from life and acts as a fire lookout. His only connection to the outside world, apart from those people he interacts with during the game, is Delilah, his supervisor.
What makes Firewatch stand out from the others is the solitude, the great outdoors, the way in which you are truly alone with your thoughts although there’s an added bonus of having the ever present Delilah on the end of a two-way radio. That and the lack of any flesh eating creatures who only come out to find you when it gets dark, although if the gameplay video is anything to go by we could be in for something just as bad.
[Tweet “….extremely anxious to see what this potential masterpiece could really do for gaming this year”]What struck me so much with this game is the way in which you interact with your supervisor: you have a choice of retorts to most of her questions and throughout the gameplay you can hear the chemistry between the protagonist and Delilah grow as he treks back and forth across the wilderness. However the way in which you interact is up to you. This man, Henry, has taken this job so he can withdraw from the outside world and ultimately forget about his recent messy divorce. How you play this game and how you build or ultimately destroy your relationship with Delilah is up to you.
The world about you is vast and seemingly boundless, aside from the task of looking out for smoke or indeed fire it seems as if the opportunities for exploration and discovery are endless. The vistas in the video look amazing and thanks to the screenshots on the Campo Santo’s website, it only makes you want to see more.
This plucky little studio may have a real gem on its hands. all I want to know is how much and when can I have it?
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