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granto's Firewatch (XBONE)
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| [March 29, 2018 06:12:46 PM]
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For my final playthrough, I was able to finish Firewatch. I played far longer than I intended, but I really wanted to get to the ending of the game. The ending proved interesting, but also seemed to squander a lot of the setup that led to it. I definitely think things could have been more satisfying, and things tied together in a neater way. I also felt like more resolution to Henry's and Delilah's past would have been very satisfying, especially if it included a strong conclusion to their relationship. Overall, I really related strongly to both characters, even with them making some poor decisions. I played Henry as a little more levelheaded, balancing out some of Delilah's more impulsive tendencies. For example, when Delilah suggested starting a fire to cover up for something, I suggested that was probably a rash decision. I am curious that if I had said otherwise, if we would have actually set the fire. Either way the fire is set, so it would have been interesting. Like I mentioned in my last Gamelog, the game really dives into the choices we make, especially under pressure. There's the hint of them being in a social experiment which ends up not being the case, however the narrative still focuses heavily on the choices the main characters made in the present and the past. This particularly focuses on the choices we make when under duress, when it is the most difficult to make the "right" choice. I think a lot of it involves our natural tendency to seek out happiness for ourselves, and sometimes the choices we make to maximize our happiness do not do so for everyone involved. It will be interesting to dive into this more, perhaps from the Utilitarian approach, where maybe one person's happiness outweighs the misery of someone else. There's definitely many interesting lenses for this, and I think the game gives a lot of good material for exploring this. I look forward to writing up something over the next week that explores these ideas.
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| [March 29, 2018 06:07:28 PM]
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For my second playthrough in Firewatch, I got the majority of the way through the game. Things escalated quite a bit with Delilah, with a strong relationship developing between her and Henry. This relationship developed very fluidly, through the well-written dialogue. I like the system the game uses for dialogue, and it all flows very well. A lot of seeds were laid in the portions I played for the game, I learned about a boy named Brian and his dad Ned who used to have the same job Henry does now. We learn that they abruptly left, and Delilah had not heard from them since. You get the feeling that there is definitely more to this and that it will pop up later, particularly as Delilah seems to have a good relationship with the boy and did not care for his father. Not only that, but a conspiratorial thread started with a potential research site that is potentially monitoring Henry and Delilah. Overall, I have really enjoyed my time so far with the game. The game seems to take a deep look at people, and the choices they make, and how sometimes the best choice for one person has a lot of consequences for other people. There's this heart-wrenching notion that even good people can do the wrong thing, and that this can cause a lot of pain. You see this in the backstories of both of the main characters, with Henry's wife, and Delilah's ex-boyfriend. Delilah's ex had a family member pass away, and Delilah did not want to deal with the aftermath and be there for him, and selfishly chose to focus on her own life-goals. This left him to deal with it on his own. The ethics of these kind of situations is super murky, particularly since you feel for the characters and see them as good people, despite the poor decisions they have made. I believe my paper will try to wrap up some of this into an interesting ethical dilemma.
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| [March 28, 2018 11:04:38 PM]
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For my first gamelog I played approximately the first hour of Firewatch. Overall the game really impressed me with the quality of storytelling, as well as just a general level of polish I was not expecting. The game is super fun too, and has a nice explorative aspect to the gameplay. There is a map and compass which enable you to navigate through the environment. I did find the coloring and terrain to be somewhat confusing to navigate. It would have been nice if this was more naturally easy to navigate through rather than constantly checking my map and compass. This was exacerbated by the portions at night where visibility was reduced. The game constantly gives you little choices along the way, both in dialogue and action. For example, in the first day you go to tell some campers not to set off fireworks. Along the way you find a mess of beer cans they left behind, optionally you can clean these up. Who knows if this has consequences, but it's a cool mechanic to make the world feel more livable and interesting. The general premise of the story was also interesting, with the primary character's girlfriends struggles with early onset Alzheimers. Alzheimers runs in my family so it is definitely something I relate to, and early onset of the disease can be extremely heartbreaking. I'm interested to see where they go with this, particularly after the main character's choice to run away from his problems in the beginning.
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granto's Firewatch (XBONE)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Wednesday 28 March, 2018
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