I have a lot of technical problems with this game. There is the occasional 5 seconds stutter, and the game sometimes hangs for good 5 mins for no reason.
The story is ok I guess. More like a radio play. You got this open world out there but the game simply bolts a rail into it. Whenever the game feels like it, your day will be ended. No polite prompt like “do you want to end the day?”. Nothing. And the game tells you Henry is enjoying the environment rather than letting you explore.
It would have been much easier and cheaper to make it as a low budget indie movie.
Hey at least it is short and there is one less entry on my backlog.
I had the same problem Soma. I approached it as a game, versus a story. Some call that a walking simulator, which is a term I just don’t think applies.
It is much more akin to a movie than a game, espcially once you know that all of the major points happen regardless of your choices. It’s like a pick your path kids book, but with limited paths.
But the story was decent. It drew me in, and it was an emotional focus on loss and moving on, which I enjoyed. I don’t think I would ever put it into a traditional gaming ategory though, simply because I didn’t game enough to really call it a game.
I can’t help but be worried by this. I find it hard to imagine Idle Thumbs will continue, though maybe Important If True can. And while this may signal a welcome return to writing-led games for Valve, it could just be another passing fad that they’ll drop a couple years down the line, leaving us without one of the more interesting indie studios around.
This is how Valve has created most of its games. Acquire promising developer, refine their next game to the level of a classic, never make another one.
I don’t see why Idle Thumbs won’t continue, though.
Nine times out of ten, when podcasters go to a big developer/publisher, they stop podcasting, at least about games. Maybe Valve is different enough that it won’t be the case this time, but on the other hand I can’t think of any Valve podcasters. I think even Tom Francis stopped appearing on C&C when he was in their offices, but that might have just been crunch.
C&C records at Chris Thursten’s place around a physical table in Britain, so when Tom Francis was in Seattle he couldn’t very well attend. it’s also why a couple cast members left when they moved to other countries, etc.
I bought this on Monday. I’ve been enjoying it so far.
Unexpected things:
The game starts off by establishing background, and has my character drinking and getting drunk in 3 different scenes before any input for me, which made me dislike this character from the beginning.
Playing a character you dislike is actually kind of liberating. I’ve never had this feeling before. Is this what it’s like playing an evil character in an RPG? I should try this more often.
I really like navigating by looking at the map and using the compass. I know some will complain that this is the only gameplay, but my expectations for gameplay are already so low coming from the label “walking simulator” that when I did find the navigation to be quite a substantial part of the gameplay, it took me by pleasant surprise.
I finished this yesterday in one (looong) sitting. I really enjoyed it, from the excellent visuals and sound to the moment-to-moment ‘play’ and interactions between the characters, which ultimately carried the entire experience. I found the item picking up, reading/examining, holding and dropping surprisingly finicky and I swear I missed a good chunk of dialogue because I didn’t radio certain things in before grabbing them. I wanted to ask though (spoilers!)…
Was it Ned that set up the ‘research station’ and how did he haul all that gear up there? And why go to all that hassle to cover up the death of his son when he had the key to the cave? Or better yet, given him a proper burial. It’s not like Henry and Delilah were close to discovering anything suspicious beyond the two lake girls. It seemed like a lot of the convoluted story hung on Ned’s decision to try and unnecessarily cover the incident up.
That said, I still loved the build-up, the sense of mystery and the way the game’s atmosphere shifts from beautiful and calming solitude to ‘I feel like I’m being watched’ tense and creepy. The grizzly and strange person were always in the back of my mind. I too loved the map and compass combo, it’s the closest I’ve felt to my time with the excellent (but nowhere near as polished) Miasmata. I suppose I should check out The Long Dark…
@ARogan I too took a lot of ‘evidence’ pics as well, especially after the teenagers’ trashed camp site episode.
Ever since I finished this, I have found myself somewhat haunted by the story, thinking back on it frequently. So it had a lasting effect on me, which is to its credit.
For me it was my first true experience with walking simulator or, I guess, mystery-lite. I really enjoyed it, but as someone who is feelings driven, they built up the dialog and friendship between the main protagonists, only to leave it unfulfilled in the end (in multiple endings.) My thoughts as I left the game were I invested time into that, only to have the game let me down, like some one sentence summary of the ending of a romantic friendship book.
I guess it was different for me. Since I didn’t like the character I was playing, because of the intro, I really didn’t desire a happy ending for him. So the experience and healing he got over the summer, it was more than he deserved, and it felt quite cathartic to me.
I still enjoyed it. It did have some suspenseful moments. I think it lost a bit when the time passing started to happen more frequently. We’re used to playing games where we determine the action day to day. So a game presents us with a mystery requiring investigation annnnnnnd … we spend weeks without really doing anything.
I loved this game, mainly because I got to spend time with characters who have been around enough to know better but are still massive fuckups. I can’t imagine the game works as well for people under 40 though.
It spoke to that weird corner in my soul that’s always wanted to chuck every complication in my life and go live in the woods. But didn’t, because I’ve been around enough to know better, though I’m still a pretty big fuckup.
Honestly, until I found out that little camp that the kid had created, I hadn’t been paying much attention to Ned & the kid at all, even though they had been mentioned. The story wasn’t really about them. So even though that tragedy overlaps and intervenes in the lives of our two main characters, it’s not a story about Ned and his kid. So the fact that the Ned portion is not thought out well doesn’t bother me. It’s like if someone wrote that the motivations and actions of the skinny dipping teens didn’t make sense. I would shrug and say “ok, if you say so”.
But most of the events in Firewatch hang on Ned’s actions which don’t make a bit of sense. You could say “well, it’s not about that”, but the game literally spends most of its time swirling around an otherwise really compelling and tense central mystery before falling apart. The rest of the experience was so much stronger, more confident and subtle. I think it deserved something a lot less clumsy and convoluted than that.
Reading through that Reddit link I don’t know that the guy is way off base but he does seem to be overthinking things. Like I don’t believe it’s ever spelled out but I got the distinct impression that Ned was screwing with Henry and Delilah out of boredom. And I don’t think Ned was ever really trying to kill Henry. And I also didn’t find it strained credibility that Delilah didn’t know about the listening post because there wasn’t anything there that couldn’t have been thrown together in a few days. But that’s just me.
I had the impression the research station was legitimate, but Ned was watching and set fire to it after Henry left to sort of pin the blame on him (if blame had to be doled out); if he had started a random fire, fire investigators would have poked around.
Honestly the story about Ned was the weakest part of the game, imo, and a bit too “screenplayed”. A game that just revolved around the increasingly paranoia of constant isolation would have probably been more sophisticated but maybe not as narrative tight.
I always thought there would come some “surprising” information about Delilah, I some why pictured her in a wheelchair. That she was stuck in that tower of hers, maybe getting her supplies through an elevator, and just asking Henry to go fix and do everything all the time. I was almost surprised that this WASN’T the case when I finished it, honestly.
