Via light interactive mechanics, familiar conversational choices, and spectacular production design, Firewatch unspools a taut and fascinating mystery that remains gripping for the vast majority of its four-to-five-hour runtime. Presented entirely from the first-person perspective, Firewatch puts players into the squat and stressed body of Henry as his shame-filled sojourn turns potentially hazardous. This is the premise of Campo Santo's Firewatch, an excellent mystery adventure game in the vein of Fullbright's Gone Home and Telltale's various licensed properties. In theory, this should be the perfect place for an ashamed man to decouple himself from the eyes of the world and wallow in his own self-pity, but almost immediately after his arrival, things begin to go terribly, strangely wrong. His only contact is Delilah, a coordinator of sorts for the various lookouts in the park, who he only speaks to over a radio. He's taken a temporary job as a lookout for the park service, tasked with keeping an eye out for signs of wildfires (among at least a dozen other unadvertised responsibilities) in almost total isolation. In Henry's case, that place is the Wyoming wilderness during a particularly dry summer in the 1980s. What, you were expecting a more complicated answer? I can't imagine why. What is Firewatch? It's a first-person mystery adventure game. We would look for the furthest place from the source of our guilt we could find, and we would hole ourselves up there until someone or something pushed us back toward civilization. The circumstances that befall Henry would test anyone's resolve, and as much as we'd all like to think we'd persevere in the face of such a test, the greater likelihood is that many of us would do as Henry does: we would flee. The kind of mundane, run-of-the-mill coward just about anyone could find themselves becoming if the right (wrong) combination of circumstances happened to befall them.

Not one of those sniveling, cartoonish cowards you frequently see portrayed as villains in various entertainments, but an average one.

Firewatch platforms