You never know if you’re being watched from among the trees or who you might run into next. Downed communication lines, a shadowy figure lurking in the darkness, and two teenage girls who go missing after Henry speaks to them combine to make the Shoshone National Forest a place of anxiety.
As the player, you have some control over how much or how little you divulge to Delilah, but as the days turn into weeks their connection builds and she remains in communication with you as you start to investigate the mystery that drives gameplay in Firewatch. Throughout the game, Henry opens up about Julia and speaks about their life together. Henry and Delilah quickly form a connection that’s a testament to the voice-acting talents of Rich Sommer and Cissy Jones. Here he meets Delilah, a lookout in another watchtower visible from your watchpoint. So in the Spring of 1989, without knowing what else to do, Henry takes a job as a fire lookout at Shoshone National Forest in Wyoming. It doesn’t affect the outcome of the game, just your emotional connection to Henry as a character. Whether she’s residing in a nursing home in Boulder, CO, or living at home with her parents in Australia is a choice you have to make very early on. Where other stories would have had Julia die tragically, Firewatch implies that she’s very much still alive, but her brain has deteriorated to a point that Henry could no longer care for her. The horror of Alzheimer’s took that away. Henry had a life, a happy marriage, and an adopted dog he loved. You choose decisions that don't necessarily affect the end of the game, but they shape the narrative for what Henry, and by extension you, are going through. It’s this kind of emotional whiplash that lays at the heart of the story Firewatch is trying to tell. This is an interactive story that helps you shape their backstory to an extent, and it very quickly turns from heartwarming to heartbreaking.
We see their good times, their bad, their silly arguments and their huge confrontations-and the early onset dementia that Julia is eventually diagnosed with. We never meet Julia, but in the first five minutes of the game we get to know her anecdotally and connect with Henry on a human level. The opening of Firewatch quickly takes you through the whirlwind of the marriage between Henry and his wife, Julia. It’s not for everyone, and certainly can’t replace clinical solutions such as a qualified therapist, but when the world becomes a bit too busy, there’s something comforting in knowing you can always wander among the trees. Firewatch helped me not only connect with Henry on a personal level, but the scenery and narrative in this game helped me remember that spending some time in the natural beauty of the world can be like running nature’s defrag program, especially when recovering from emotional trauma. The loss in this game is tangible, and it helps move the story through each mystery and breathtaking landscape. The Wyoming wilderness helps him confront grief in a way that he never would have been able to in his day-to-day life.
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