There might be two naked podcasters out here.
Thank you for joining us again this week! We’re going to be talking about Firewatch, the first and currently only game from Campo Santo. Firewatch is a walking simulator mystery game set in a open world forest, but that really doesn’t get to the meat of why you should play this game. While the game world is beautifully designed, and it’s fun to explore the forest, the key to the game’s success is in building a relationship between yourself and the game’s other lead character Delilah. Everything from scripting to the voice performances of the lead actors really sells their dynamic and makes the character exploration a real joy to play through, even though the narrative itself is pretty troubling. And that’s the beauty of it. Firewatch does a lot to put you in the headspace of its lead character, making you really focus on the moment to moment little things that are going on, while still being able to explore its big picture themes in the time between conversations. Also, you can adopt a turtle, which is pretty great too. We’re going to be talking about how the A and B plots of the game intermingle and how the tone of each effects how we feel about the game overall, visual style and color, and a hypothetical short film version of Pixar’s Up.
So that’s Firewatch, possibly a couple years late, but it’s been on the list for a while. Did you play this game at release, or at any point over its releases on a bunch of different platforms over the years? Were you aware that they were bought by Valve and if so, are you as sad as we are that their next game seems to have been pretty much shut down because of it? Let us know on our Discord, or in the comments! Next time, we’re going to be tackling another indie game in the form of Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP, so be sure to check us out then.