melmer

Firewatch Spoiler Thread | Henry Two Hats

Recommended Posts

Henry's state in regards to his wife is basically the only choice that matters and depending how you played it he reaches different places by the end. He will have made a kind of peace, or tried to move past it. You could leave the ring or put it back on. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Why give the player a choice in responses if all responses lead to the same ending?

Why eat any food if you're just going to get hungry again? Why bother waking up in the morning if you'll just fall asleep eventually? Why do anything when we're all going to end up dead anyways?

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

My one regret with this game is that I stupidly watched a Let's Player play it first without realising what it was, so now I've spoiled it all for myself. I'm not sure if there's any replayability for me to go back and play it myself... but that being said I was totally hoping that Delilah was going to be some psycho experimenting on me, but I do like that the story has a rather normal, believable, ending.

Maybe I'll just buy it anyway.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

*shrug* There are conversations that you might hear on one play and not another, as well as different choices you could make, but I'd say replability is fairly low. That being said, I support buying games that you've enjoyed through Youtube. I've bought a few here and there with no intention to actually play them.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I probably will do that. After all, I still got the enjoyment of the game but didn't pay for it so it's only fair I cough up my money!

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yo, how good is the moment on the final day when you open up the cabin door and a gust of wind blows fiery debris across your field of vision?

 

It's good.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Why give the player a choice in responses if all responses lead to the same ending?

Seriously, why are response choices given in this game if they lead to the identical outcome.

Literally all that time spent racking your brain as to which response you should give, is meaningless in Firewatch, as they all lead to -exactly- the same ending.

 

 

I think you're expecting Firewatch to be a different genre from what it is.  In some games, conversations are a means to an end, you try to figure out what to say in order to make something happen.  In Firewatch, the conversations are ends in themselves.  The reason you have a choice in responding is supposed to be that it's fun to have a conversation with Delilah and make choices.  The conversations aren't a puzzle to be solved, they are an experience to be enjoyed.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

i think the subversion of the players agency on the mind and intention of others is pretty central to firewatch. sorry but delilah just doesn't like u in that way

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The part that irked me the most about Tom Chick's review is the implication that he thinks we pretty much know all the things games are good at and the things games are bad at.  That seems like a depressingly reactionary view of the potential to discover new ways of making games.

Even if Firewatch were a failure, surely we're nowhere near exhausting the possibilties of game design such that we could say Firewatch failed because it tried to do something Games Were Not Meant To Do and Never Will.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Tom is in my reading not being prescriptive, he's just saying that in this specific instance, the game did not succeed for him because of its conflict between the story it's telling and being a game. Note that he brings up Gone Home as a very similar game that does succeed.

 

It's not about saying what games shouldn't try to do, it's about highlighting how this particular game failed at doing something as well as it's been done before.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Arise, thread, arise!

 

Played through this last night, and mostly liked it but am having a hard time really making it cohere in my mind. I just don't understand the character of Ned, and even after watching the spoiler cast and reading this entire thread (which really took me about as long as playing the game, both together) haven't really resolved that for me. I get that you take a guy who was a bit kooky, add tragedy and guilt, and you get a total creepy weirdo, but I'm having a real hard time resolving the keys and backpack. Either he wants you to find those keys or he doesn't -- I'm having a hard time understanding either why he wants you to find the keys or why, if not, he doesn't hide them somewhere a lot harder to find, particularly someplace that isn't packed with a tracking device. I had inferred at first that he felt guilty and finally wanted the body to be discovered so he could move on, but then I guess there was paperwork in his room that suggested he was unpleasantly surprised? I just can't resolve all this.

 

I also think it's crazy that people actually got mad about this. Fuckin gamers.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

I think I'm in a similarish position, but with different parts of the plot. I was terrible at navigating around (partly because it seems to be traditional in games with navigation that your character is worse at getting past obstacles than a healthy human of the same age in real life), and as a result of this, and partly because it was hard to tell when a "chapter" would end, I missed out on exploring quite a few bits of the map [on reading around online post completing my playthrough, I discovered that there's an entire ruined house I missed, as well as missing finding the Elk with an actual tracking collar]. so, while I guessed that Ned had been co-opting an existing research station - hence the obvious notes in the tent from someone tracking actual animals - I didn't get the actual confirmation in my playthrough itself. I can see how someone having the same experience might have issues piecing together Ned's "capabilities" and how the actual events all worked together.

 

 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Yeah I missed both those things as well, though I inferred the animal tracking through being fairly confident there would be a relatively mundane explanation -- though I was notably worried about getting mauled by a bear following those signals.

 

The only scenario I can think of right now that makes sense for the backpack is if Ned got that backpack at the research site, took a cursory look inside and found supplies, did NOT notice a tracking device that was also in there, and set it up as a supply cache without considering the possibility it would be found. The key fob attached to the backpack was thus either the original, which he attached to a supply cache so if someone found his bunker they wouldn't get it, or a duplicate of the cave key provided to the researchers in case they needed to get in there for some reason.

 

Also, regarding what someone said earlier about how Ned could have set up any hoax, so why choose a conspiracy theory; I think it's also noteworthy that basically all his reading material for the past decade or whatever has been the random books left around the cabins and supply caches, most of which have been conspiracy thrillers. I don't think it's too big a leap to say that would probably shape the way he, ah, acts out.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

The wave receiver in the research site is the thing that wasn't supposed to fit ibo Ned's plans - he wasn't aware of it or that you had it. He had a bug out bag hidden near the trailhead out of the two forks region in case he had to make a run for it, and it had the ability to transmit an alarm signal back to his base (which is how the receiver picks it up). He didn't think Henry would walk right into it. 

 

(The way the wave receiver is found is not ideal and is really ambiguous whether Ned meant for you to find it or if it was there and unrelated. I put that sequence together, sorry.)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Ahh okay -- it supports his hoax so effectively at first that I assumed it must be intentional that you found it, but reflecting back on what it actually leads to it makes sense that it wasn't. So presumably he has a similar device somewhere himself and he had a tracker with the backpack so he could reliably recover it then.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Whereas I'd assumed that Ned didn't know you'd found it, or expect you to - but had one himself that he'd been using to track things like his backpack, also possibly stolen from the research station (or, possibly, had been using the one you found...).

 

[On the note of hoaxes and paranoia, one thing I did find a bit surprising is Henry and Delilah's joint astonishment that anyone can listen in to radio signals. I know neither of them is technical, but the whole idea of people listening into police radio with spectrum scanners and the like is not exactly out of the public eye, and I assume that the radios are just standard analogue walkie-talkies, rather than the encrypted digital ones that the police and stuff use nowadays. I imagine Ned being a bit bemused at how freaked out they got about that detail...]

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

It's been a while since I played the game, but I think they weren't surprised people could listen in, but that they were listening in (and then realizing what sort of stuff would have been heard). But maybe there's dialogue that is explicit about their understanding of things...like I said it's been a while.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Delilah does say something about it being impossible to listen in without tapping the radio IIRC. Of course since Ned lives there all the time, not just during the Summer, he can make whatever preparations he needs to.

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

So I decided to revisit this for the audio commentary and I love the way it was incorporated. I've never played a game with audio commentary on but I'm not sure another developer could top how clever Campo Santo was putting this together. 

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites
8 hours ago, xchen said:

So I decided to revisit this for the audio commentary and I love the way it was incorporated. I've never played a game with audio commentary on but I'm not sure another developer could top how clever Campo Santo was putting this together. 

Great to hear, I've been meaning to download this again for the commentary (new computer, new Steam install :p)

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

can someone mod Firewatch so at the end of the game when you walk into Delilah's tower you find Norman Reedus just chillin with some Monster

 

Death-Stranding.jpg

Share this post


Link to post
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now