![firewatch drawing firewatch drawing](https://i.pinimg.com/originals/e5/4f/ab/e54fab8c8a1ea833b456d436c2c3d340.jpg)
The player’s role in the narrative is to color in their version of Henry by interpreting how he would respond to various situations. As in a game like Cardboard Computer’s Kentucky Route Zero, the plot’s foundation is inflexible. The player guides Henry’s side of their dialogue, choosing from a list of prompts that don’t necessarily affect the story, but instead inform how Henry develops as a character in the audience’s mind. Henry and Delilah’s conversations are the backbone of the game. Before long their relationship becomes more personal, the two loners keeping each other company by chatting about pretty much anything that pops into their heads. Fellow lookout Delilah radios him, bringing a shred of humanity to a place otherwise detached from civilization. It isn’t long before the romanticism of his retreat breaks down. Henry, like so many fictional figures before him, runs from his problems, hoping to find answers (or at least some sort of solace) in the wilderness. His wife’s worsening dementia is wearing on him, heightening a midlife crisis that he can’t seem to solve. Henry comes to Shoshone to get away from the difficulties of his personal life. Henry, Firewatch’s protagonist, has taken a job as a lookout at Wyoming’s Shoshone National Park, a sprawling wilderness of dense woods, dramatic cliffs and placid lakes. The idea endures, and it’s the basis for Campo Santo’s Firewatch, a videogame where the isolation of nature is used to examine the ways in which we relate to others. Whether there’s truth to this sentiment or not hardly seems to matter. As a people, we’ve always been obsessed with the idea that a retreat into the wilderness can bring us more in touch with ourselves-that isolating from the rest of civilization can reveal deeper truths about the world we live in.
#Firewatch drawing full#
The world is full of stories about hermit mystics, society drop-outs and nature-worshipping romantics. We have plenty of fiction about this, of course.
![firewatch drawing firewatch drawing](https://images-wixmp-ed30a86b8c4ca887773594c2.wixmp.com/intermediary/f/a1add051-0e8a-4d60-ad6d-28ebf43e818e/da2wsl4-69b783a0-48c2-4e41-86ff-360e40fb3ac2.jpg)
There’s nothing that brings someone into their own head as thoroughly as spending time alone in the woods. This article discusses plot points from the entire game.