Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Firewatch Is Less about Observing the Wilderness Than It Is about Observing a Relationship

A nicely told story. Also, quite pretty to look at. Its plotting reminds me of Hitchcock in certain ways, containing characters that are way less than perfect human beings, with its real focus on human drama, despite the lure of a thriller-style plot. In other words, the mystery doesn't really matter here. Much like in Hitchcock's Notorious, it's a MacGuffin that motivates the characters to act, but isn't the real heart of the story, which is, instead, its focus on exploring the relationship that evolves between its characters.

I allude to this idea briefly in this review, but I will talk about the idea of Firewatch as governed by the MacGuffin in greater depth in an article that will post tomorrow. There are some problems with that MacGuffin and the way that it's handled, I think, but again, that's something I'll talk about more in a longer post that is less of a review of the game and more of an analysis of it.

In the meantime, it is still a game worth playing. Not quite as compelling as January's Oxenfree, but Firewatch is still a pretty good character-driven story, despite its flaws as a "thriller."

Firewatch Is Less about Observing the Wilderness Than It Is about Observing a Relationship

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