Firewatch Metagame

Firewatch is an adventure, walking simulator game where the main character, Henry, gets a job as a fire lookout in the middle of the Shoshone National Forest. When Henry arrives he is soon met with the opportunity to talk to another lookout and his supervisor, Delilah. Although Henry applied for this job because he wanted to get away from everyone. He quickly decides to not talk to his supervisor through the walkie-talkie found in his lookout. Because of this decision Henry finds the main locations of the national park mostly on his own but with the help from the maps found in the yellow cache boxes. As he watches and explores the beautiful national park strange events start to happen to him making him completely forget about his other fire lookout just across the way. The strange events lead Henry to unravel a mystery that happened before his time. As the story unfolds even more Henry finds himself in the middle of a large forest fire. He has to make one final decision to evacuate and ask for directions from Delilah or to stay and try and help fight the fire as much as possible.

Interface: all images edited in Photoshop 🙂

The game Firewatch heavily revolves around the interactions between Henry and Delilah. They communicate through walkie-talkies given to them by the park service. The player never gets to see what Delilah looks like leaving it up to the imagination. At the beginning of the game, Delilah acts as a guide towards the player often telling them what to do or where to go. As more of the mystery unravels throughout the game Delilah imparts her knowledge of past events and people to the player. This communication is a very big part of the overall game. By making the continuous decision to not communicate with Delilah the narrative changes to that of a lone wolf solving mysteries as best as he can. This way of play expands the narrative and creates an interesting dialogue between that of man and nature. This way of play arguably makes the game even more of a walking simulator because without Delilah to give directions of where to go the player would be even more lost in this large national park.  In the book Metagaming by Stephanie Boluk and Patrick LeMieux, many games are discussed when talking about the topic of metagaming. In the notes section of the book, a game called Journey is discussed. Journey is an adventure game that was released in 2012 for the Playstation 3. In the game, the player controls a robed figure in a very big desert setting. Other players can be found while playing the game and even start to play together. The catch is that the players can only communicate through chimes. They also can not see their gamer tags until the credits roll at the end of the game. These chimes that the players communicate with transform plane pieces of cloth into that of vibrant red color that help the players progress through the game. This game shares similarities with the Firewatch metagame discussed above mainly through communication but also through themes of nature and the lone wolf. The idea that communication is so close but so far away is shared between the games as well.