TychoCelchuuu

David Lynch's Josh Brolin's Campo Santo's Fire Watch With Me: A Motion Picture Event

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Finally got some solid play time into this; I'm kinda taking it slow/I don't like to binge on games so I'm only about 2 hours in and called it a night. I was accidentally an asshole so many times, oh man. Not even just during the radio conversations, man. I thought I was being helpful/doing what I thought I was meant to be doing, but no, I just turned out to be an asshole.

 

Funny thing is, I tweeted something along those lines just yesterday. https://twitter.com/eRonin/status/697406214125125633

Would you say...you're the Accidental Asshole?

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I've only gone through day 1 and 2 so far. I really like the sense of place. The idea of getting familiar with a space of this scale is appealing to me. They did a great job of making a memorable place that I enjoy browsing while listening to story.

A big reason I enjoy hiking (in physical space) is that we encounter interesting things to see and do light path-finding while conversing; Firewatch seems to symbolize that well.

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Started playing this on PS4 yesterday. I’ve only got through the first day, which took me at least two hours because I was investigating everything I could find. Thoughts based on Day 1 only:

 

I had a slight moment of panic where I thought they might be doing the same thing that the first level of Deus Ex: HR did, where the player is punished if they ignore repeated reminders and take too long to reach the first mission objective.

I really like that I ended up doing stupid things to test the boundaries of the simulation, without any expectation that they’d be rewarded by trophies or RPG-like mechanics. I liked that there’s a verb for tidying up the beer cans, for example, and that you can eat the candy bar you find in the lock box (complete with quality crunching noises). I don’t know what any of this is for, but I like it. I wonder if I could have given the candy bar to the raccoon...

I carried the boombox all the back from the lake to the tower which meant listening to that song on loop at least five or six times because you can’t turn it off. I thought Harry might want some music in his tower! But by the time I got there the sound was starting to annoy me, so I left it in the outhouse before going up to the tower. The next day, it was gone. :(

My only slight criticism is that I’m finding it a little difficult to bring up and select the dialogue options. Doing this with the PS4 controller means holding L2, tapping R1 (or R2?) to highlight the option, then releasing L2 to actually execute the selection. This seems kind of odd to me – like I’m selecting a weapon or something? -- but I’m sure I’ll get used to it.

 

All things considered: it’s really impressive so far, and I can’t wait to get back to it.

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I've only gone through day 1 and 2 so far. I really like the sense of place. The idea of getting familiar with a space of this scale is appealing to me. They did a great job of making a memorable place that I enjoy browsing while listening to story.

A big reason I enjoy hiking (in physical space) is that we encounter interesting things to see and do light path-finding while conversing; Firewatch seems to symbolize that well.

 

Now you've gone and made me want to go hiking, but it's very, very cold where I am at the moment.

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I'm stuck at work for a few more hours and can't wait to go finish the game (I assume I'm more than half way through but I don't know for sure).

 

Reading the Tom Chick review, I can see where it might end up disappointing but I simply can't understand his comments about "generic trees, rocks, and bushes" or "All the walking does nothing to create any sense of wonder or even scenery." I just can't imagine he played the same game I'm playing.

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Since this is a spoiler from the very first moments of the game (and doesn't actually tell any story stuff, just a structural note), I'm gonna post it here and not in the spoiler thread:

 

There was something about the text adventure in the beginning of the game that made me hear Sean's voice reciting it in my head. But it wasn't a serious voice, it was a silly-serious, half-joking voice. I'm now realizing that it was the voice he used to read the 'Ode to Waluigi'!

 

Needless to say, it undercut the emotional weight I think it was meant to carry. I suppose that's the problem with their other "product" being a podcast where we hear them as friends chatting. Opens them up to the audience, and thus the gestures of storytelling get obfuscated by our experience of them as people.

 

(and obviously the game was made by more than the idle thumbs; i'm not attributing the writing in the beginning solely to Sean, it just broadcast in my brain that way)

 

My wife and I played for a good hour and half last night.  We got up to get ready for bed and both went, "SHIT, it's 11pm already!"  Feels like a good sign that we both lost track of time.  :D

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I'm stuck at work for a few more hours and can't wait to go finish the game (I assume I'm more than half way through but I don't know for sure).

 

Reading the Tom Chick review, I can see where it might end up disappointing but I simply can't understand his comments about "generic trees, rocks, and bushes" or "All the walking does nothing to create any sense of wonder or even scenery." I just can't imagine he played the same game I'm playing.

 

Yeah, I largely agreed with the overall thrust of his argument for why the game didn't work for him, but there were some odd bits that I thought were crazy and that was definitely one passage that stood out.

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I carried the radio all the way back to the tower and when I woke up the next day it was gone! I wanted to listen to funky chooons all the time

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Wow this runs like warmed up shit :tup:

Ah it runs fine. I don't know why I had such an allergic reaction to it yesterday. Probably because I'm playing it off the back of the witness.

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I'm stuck at work for a few more hours and can't wait to go finish the game (I assume I'm more than half way through but I don't know for sure).

 

Reading the Tom Chick review, I can see where it might end up disappointing but I simply can't understand his comments about "generic trees, rocks, and bushes" or "All the walking does nothing to create any sense of wonder or even scenery." I just can't imagine he played the same game I'm playing.

 

Like most of the people on here, I have mixed feeling about the Tom Chick review. Instead of making me think "this thing shouldn't be a game," it just made me think that if Sean were to write a novel I'd want to read it.

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finished this yesterday, and enjoyed it, but the overall impact was maybe less then the sum of its parts (which, viewed individually, are incredible). Maybe I'll do a big write-up to figure out my thoughts? In the meantime, I'd like to mention how totally bizarre it felt sitting down and finishing something in a few hours that the thumbs have been working on for years. Video games, y'all.

 

SIDEBAR: hoping a commentary mode appears someday. I thought they both started and stopped at Valve, but Gone Home added one it and it was awesome

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Pretty sure Valve didn't start game commentary, I know Sly Cooper 1 has commentary tracks and that predates Half Life 2, and there's probably more before even still. Ratchet and Clank Going Commando had a museum with audio commentary on making of stuff concerning items, models, and controls in the game. Not sure what you mean by stopped at Valve, as a larger amount of games seem to include more game commentary than ever before. Seems like patching in commentary is still expensive though. Life Is Strange released commentary as DLC recently but they are just video files. Maybe Firewatch could do similar the way the Telltale games that Sean and Jake worked on did commentary with compilation videos.

 

I hope for a good list of all easter eggs as well as every optional event to be released by someone at some point.

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oh, neat! I wasn't aware of any of that. I'm excited to check out the LiS videos - that was one of the most interesting games of last year.

 

I'll confess I haven't played any of the examples you listed past that, but I think I'm still fine crediting the idea to Valve. In-world nodes are a much more engaging/elegant solution then the standard behind the scenes reel, and the first time I saw them was in that old Lost Coast tech demo (and it became a feature in Valve games ever after).

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Pretty sure Valve didn't start game commentary, I know Sly Cooper 1 has commentary tracks and that predates Half Life 2, and there's probably more before even still. Ratchet and Clank Going Commando had a museum with audio commentary on making of stuff concerning items, models, and controls in the game. Not sure what you mean by stopped at Valve, as a larger amount of games seem to include more game commentary than ever before. Seems like patching in commentary is still expensive though. Life Is Strange released commentary as DLC recently but they are just video files. Maybe Firewatch could do similar the way the Telltale games that Sean and Jake worked on did commentary with compilation videos.

 

I hope for a good list of all easter eggs as well as every optional event to be released by someone at some point.

 

The first commentary mode I remember seeing was in the PC version of Escape from Butcher Bay. They even did the thing where you activate a floating icon to hear it. There's also some in Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut, the special edition of Gunpoint, and the recent Extended Edition update for Shadowrun: Hong Kong.

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So I finally found some time to play the game. Well, start it anyway. Awesome that there's a checkbox for head-bob and motion blur. However, I haven't yet figured out how to remap keys. Don't get me wrong--the menu is there. But you aren't allowed to remap something to a key that's already mapped to some other command. And a surprising number of keys are mapped. So to remap the WASD keys to use ESDF I feel like I'll need to spend 30 minutes or so playing a towers of hanoi-like game with key mapping. Worse, I checked the keymapping config file and it's binary, so I can't edit things that way either. So... I'll keep poking at it I guess. Worst case I'll use a gamepad, but my brain doesn't terribly like that for first-person games. Onwards and upwards.

 

[edit]

 

Okay, sorted. I mapped everything to the right side of the keyboard and then moved it back. That was easier than I expected.

 

[edit the 2nd]

 

Whelp, my brain hates it. I'll continue to experiment with FOV to see if I can improve things. But something about the perspective doesn't sit well with me, and even with head-bob disabled the game likes to make you look at your hands while they do stuff, which is bad news. 30 seconds into the first-person part and I already have a headache and feel a tad nauseous. This may have to be a PS4 game or something.

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The beginning damn near had me tear up. I hope I'll geg time to play this properly soon.

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The first commentary mode I remember seeing was in the PC version of Escape from Butcher Bay. They even did the thing where you activate a floating icon to hear it. There's also some in Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut, the special edition of Gunpoint, and the recent Extended Edition update for Shadowrun: Hong Kong.

Yeah I'm definitely more a fan of that method. Sly Cooper you had to earn them through time trials and then you could play them at any time during the level, but considering you probably already practiced the level enough to finish time trials, it was kind of annoying to play the level once again to hear it.

 

One thing I loved about MGS4 was that their commentary came in the form as part of downloadable podcasts. I'm sure they were available on the web but it was nice to just listen to making of stuff after finishing MGS4 the nth time for whatever unlockable. Made the time go by much faster. I almost think just making a running Firewatch podcast and putting it in game would be hilariously suitable.

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[edit the 2nd]

Whelp, my brain hates it. I'll continue to experiment with FOV to see if I can improve things. But something about the perspective doesn't sit well with me, and even with head-bob disabled the game likes to make you look at your hands while they do stuff, which is bad news. 30 seconds into the first-person part and I already have a headache and feel a tad nauseous. This may have to be a PS4 game or something.

I don't experience these symptoms as intensely as you, but I do experience them. The movement animations like ducking below the spot where the propane tanks are while going down the fire-tower stairs are especially nauseauting. Climbing up steep rocks creates a similar problem for me. I suspect that part of the problem is that I sit too close to my monitor, but I don't typically have these problems in games.

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I hope for a good list of all easter eggs as well as every optional event to be released by someone at some point.

 

Jane mentioned on Twitter that there are small easter eggs for about 5 other video games and they're all pretty subtle.

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The first commentary mode I remember seeing was in the PC version of Escape from Butcher Bay. They even did the thing where you activate a floating icon to hear it. There's also some in Deus Ex: Human Revolution Director's Cut, the special edition of Gunpoint, and the recent Extended Edition update for Shadowrun: Hong Kong.

 

Pillars of Eternity also has a commentary mode, it's audio from the various developers that'll play when you enter a map or reach a certain part of a map. Not for a first time play through, it'll talk about all the stuff on the map, design questions sometimes, etc.

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As I regularly tell Dave Gilbert, commentary nodes need to come with an option to just listen to them all without having to (re)play the game.

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I don't experience these symptoms as intensely as you, but I do experience them. The movement animations like ducking below the spot where the propane tanks are while going down the fire-tower stairs are especially nauseauting. Climbing up steep rocks creates a similar problem for me. I suspect that part of the problem is that I sit too close to my monitor, but I don't typically have these problems in games.

 

The lady found the game to be nearly impossible to watch, particularly any of the animations that included ducking or climibing over rocks, so she just listened to it, and would watch when I was doing things mostly standing still.  A lot of that was because she wasn't in control, but it was definitely more severe than other first person games she's watched.

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The lady found the game to be nearly impossible to watch, particularly any of the animations that included ducking or climibing over rocks, so she just listened to it, and would watch when I was doing things mostly standing still.  A lot of that was because she wasn't in control, but it was definitely more severe than other first person games she's watched.

 

I think some of it may be the art style. Specifically, how the world presents as having very little visual depth. Generally I'm fine so long as the FOV is at 100 and all the blurring effects (motion blur, depth of field) are disabled. Any time the game takes away control of the camera (head bob, looking down when vaulting over a barrier, etc) can be a problem as well, though it's a tad situational and somewhat a matter of degree. I play tons of Battlefield, for example, and it does do some of these things, but only to a small degree, and the game doesn't bother me at all. If I figure out the magic formula I'll let you all know.

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Hmm, a few games have made me feel sick before, but I didn't experience it on this game the way I thought it would. I do know when I move camera around in games it really bothers my wife half the time, because if she doesn't know what I'm looking at or why it makes the game seem like a cinematic mess.

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