Firewatch works hard to make its players love Delilah, and while I was always conscious that I was listening to canned lines, the performance and the writing (particularly its wit) could not fail to make me feel fond of her. Both as Henry, already having temporarily fled from the unthinkable pressures of a wife fallen deep into Alzheimer's, and as myself. I didn't choose those options because I thought they would make me a bad man. Happier than I would be to search the internet and find out if that's at all the case. I am happy with that happy to imagine an alternative reality in which love is declared and an optimistic future awaits. I have decided that I will never replay Firewatch, because I have written my history in it and I do not wish to revise it, so I may well never know what alternative outcomes there were or were not. I don't know what might have happened if I did. I also did not, when the opportunity arose, pick the options that would see me declare something more than friendship. I don't know what would have happened if I snapped at her or clammed up or called her out. I say that, but of course I picked the conversation options that would ensure that: I was funny, I was reassuring, I didn't chastise. She mocks and jabbers and wants to play when all he wants to do is mope - and when all I want to do is stroll through the trees and dream of it being my life.Īs the game slowly weaves drama into the melancholy and tranquility, she becomes something else: a confidant, perhaps a friend. Delilah, forever unseen but regularly heard, is at first an unwelcome intrusion upon Henry's communion with nature and pursuit of the distance required to make a decision about how he will spend his future. I don't really want to be a farmer on his own in a field, day after day: I want people to be there but I don't want them to need anything from me.įirewatch is very much about that duality. The contradiction is glaring: I want to be on my own, unbothered by anyone else's needs, but I want to mean something to someone nonetheless. Partly, and relatedly, at how much attention Henry was immediately given by an interesting person (later tempered by the realisation that, unfortunately, Delilah has just a touch of the manic pixie dream girl to her). Partly at the easy repartee he and unseen deuteragonist Delilah were capable of - oh, to be capable of such effortless wit, such natural connection with another human being. Many-splintered jealousy: primarily at the aforementioned freedom available to protagonist Henry, in his escape from the pressures of life and into somewhere truly beautiful. But it also makes me feel panicky, and guilty.įor the majority of Firewatch, my foremost emotion was jealousy. At least Firewatch gives me the chance to live a small part of it. I might dream of a life in the woods, but in truth I would soon become desperately lonely and bored. Then I turned on the radio this morning, to hear a feature about how extended isolation has contributed to a disproportionately high suicide rate amongst British farmers. ![]() It was all I wanted from life: an escape from glaring screens and beeping devices and an inbox which endlessly refills itself with requests I can't do anything about. I spent most of my time with Firewatch wishing I was there, alone and without pressures in its peach-hued Wyoming wilderness. Contains spoilers and theories which may or may not be spoilers.
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