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Jan 16th, 2018 at 00:58:09 - Firewatch (PS4) |
I just started this game today. I've heard a lot of contrasting opinions about Firewatch - some love it and call it a fantastic game; others will argue for hours about how it's not a game at all. The first 45 minutes that I played, however, I absolutely loved. It felt real and raw and immersive: a combination of great voice acting and phenomenal art direction gives the game an atmosphere unlike anything that I've played before. The warm, earthy colors and silhouetted shapes makes the entire game feel like a vintage National Parks postcard, which can't be a coincidence. The intro of the game as well as the first chunk of the actual game does a good job of bringing interesting choices into the gameplay itself. The introduction was heavily text-based, which I thought was a daring choice to make. By starting the game off with character introductions and dialogue options, though, it allowed the player (me) to feel like they owned the character. Simple choices, such as which dog I should adopt, let me feel in control and interact with the game itself. Harder and more complex choices, such as whether or not my wife should see a counselor, started to bring in interesting questions of ethics and morality into the narrative. What type of person should my character be? Should he be kind and caring for his wife, or try to ignore the bad and pretend that everything is fine? Should he insist on being her primary caregiver, or instead find a home for her that would perhaps give her better care? These choices not only provide a complex background for what could have been a one-dimensional character, they also force the player to examine their own choices. If the player chooses a less-than-ideal option, what does that say about the player themselves? What types of consequences will come in-game because of those choices, and what effect will that have on the player
From the little gameplay I've experienced, no consequences have come from any of the choices that I've made (I only made it to the point where I discover that my watch tower has been raided). I hope that that changes, and that the choices that I make within the game actually have consequence in the world that they were made in.
This entry has been edited 1 time. It was last edited on Jan 16th, 2018 at 00:59:06.
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