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Huh new subgenre? I always considered it already part of the well-established genre of narrative driven walking simulators.
Yeah I don't know that Firewatch was a significant divergence from the rest of the walking sim genre, let alone establishing is own subgenre. But it is weird that there did seem to be a bubble of these sorts of experiential/narrative walking sim games for a minute. Some of them pretty popular. Firewatch, Gone Home, The Stanley Parable, etc. Maybe 10ish notable titles all within the few years between 2013-2017. Then nothing significant for nearly a decade now. But thank God we've had 40 more online battle Royale shooters since then!
Gone home was great, another good one was Everybody's Gone to the Rapture.
The Long Dark feels similar in style, though it has a lot more game elements to it.
Now if only they'd finish the actual fucking game instead of tweaking the multiplayer no-one asked for, releasing a full six part DLC or developing and getting a significant way through finishing a full sequel.
Not salty about that one at all, nope.
Recently tried to start a new run of The Long Dark. But holy shit, the whole survival mechanic is so bothersome. Even on easy or medium setting you can't walk 500m without your character literally starting to tumble from hunger or exhaustion.
If I ate what my character in the long dark eats, I would be rolling through the snowy forest, yet he is constantly on the verge of starving to death. 2 entire rabbits for breakfast? 2h later and he acts like he hasn't eaten in weeks... Same for water, energy or warmth.
I agree it's a bit stark but it does ease up once you get used to the hunting and gathering mechanics, not by much though.
I think the in game reasoning is that the cold your experiencing is already coldest canada, but has an element of extra ice age cold.
Coldness increases calorie consumption due to the heating requirements i think , but i can't say I’ve been anywhere cold enough to say if it's accurate or not in the game.
Is it really still not finished? My god.
I picked it up in early access for nothing and honestly never got round to going back to it after all these years. I really enjoyed the hour or so I spent messing about and then life got in the way.
I really enjoyed the first two chapters, it's up in my top 50.
To be honest I’ve only made it to the beginning of the third chapter but that's mainly because i didn't want to get further into something that wasn't complete yet.
Which was more prescient than i imagined because it was 6 years ago.
Dear Esther was the first I played, that soundtrack is great
Firewatch was such an awesome game, bit short though.
I feel like it was the right length so as not to overstay its welcome. It's a nice narrative experience, with a unique dialogue, but had it kept going I think I would have grown tired of it
I also wanted more, but I think you are right, it's paced exactly right for what it is.
Sometimes less is more.
I love games like this. I replay Firewatch probably once a year. Walking simulator is such a dismissive genre name, but these games tend to be short and emotionally rich. What Remains of Edith Finch is one of my other favorites.
I wish there were 1000 more to play. Yes, I enjoy sinking hundreds of hours into Satisfactory or Dark Souls, but sometimes I want to feel things and that is what these games deliver.
I really like Quantic Dream's games. A little bit of action sprinkled in to a narrative-driven walking sim where your choices can impact the game really gets you emotionally connected. Their use of facial mocap really takes the immersion to the next level too.
I highly recommend all of Heavy Rain, Beyond: Two Souls, and Detroit: Become Human if that's the sort of games you enjoy.
It was just a regular walking sim. Didn't really do a lot that other walking sims didn't.
If your game doesn't feature shooting, platforming or sportsball, then you're already off the mainstream slop, and you're going to have to accept that you're going to make less money by targeting niche audiences.
FWIW, I liked it. But I can see why a lot of people wouldn't be interested. You're dealing with a world where people's "game collections" are just 6 yearly iterations of CoD and FIFA.
I really liked the first 80% of Firewatch. The last 20% though... I guess I didn't hate it, but I also really didn't like the switch in tone. Without giving spoilers, the ending left me feeling kind of disappointed with how normal it was. I remember finishing the game and immediately going to look if there was an alternative ending, because certainly the game wouldn't just end like... That.
Like, imagine working on a big murder mystery where a man was found dead inside a locked room with no windows. You gather tons of clues, interview countless people searching for a motive, spend a lot of time putting together all the pieces and... It turns out he simply tripped and hit his head.
Like, there's still a mystery. There's still a good story. It's not even a really bad ending, it's just not nearly as exciting as where you thought it would lead.
I see this opinion quite a bit. I also see the opinion that I'm about to give you quite a bit.
I think the ending was fitting. Life goes on, not everything has a spectacular ending. Yet we go on.
I think I related to the game quite well because I finally played it after ending a long-term relationship. I think it actually helped me process some stuff - not that I couldn't without it, but it maybe helped bring it out into the open.
edit: on a reread, the two opinions aren't exclusive, both can be held. and I do agree with you, it's a bit of a "..that's it?" moment. in my haste to form a reply on the internet for validation I read a little bit deeper into your comment then you actually wrote. I like how you worded it. and there is a commonly held opinion that is more opinionated than yours, which I thought you leaned a little more towards than your comment actually does
Yeah, I actually think from a narrative perspective it's very fitting, maybe anticlimactic, but fitting.
You have this guy trying to get away from the realities of life, he wants things to be more than what they are, but in the end that just isn't the case. It's melancholic, but also cathartic in a way.
The ending is perhaps wrapped up a little too perfectly. You look at something like Twin Peaks and you know who did it, but it ends in whatever the opposite of wrapped up perfectly is and people talk about it for decades.
I enjoyed the game quite a bit. It told a weird story that i enjoyed, in a small game world that i enjoyed being in. It could have been better in many ways, but id go so far as to say i loved it. As a game to just chill and play, without needing to be on your guard all the time, it was relaxing and entertaining. It was like reading a good book, you wanted to see what happened next.
Im not sure that id want for this style of gaming to be the next big thing, but I would have liked to have seen that style built on. Its a shame Campo Santo disappeared into Valve... I had hoped that Valley of the Gods would still see the light of day, but he says thats unlikely. Its a shame that Valve devours great game makers, then they never make games.
I couldn't finish it.
This is certainly on me, but I just couldn't handle the story. Without too many spoilers, the game's story includes a tragic death, and when I played the game I was actively dealing with a recent death in the family and when I got to that part of the story... I just couldn't go any further.
And while this is a special case, it's also typical for how I play games, I play to escape the emotional social dilemmas of my life. Give me a strategy game, a puzzle game, a factory game. Give me some abstract puzzle to solve, a system to optimize, an army to outmaneuver; the last thing I want is a deep story with complex characters. Emotions just add weight to the experience, and my whole objective is to try to shrug off some of that weight for a while.
I agree. I’d rather watch a show or a movie with my better half for the plot. I play games for the game part. I don’t need or even want my stories to be interactive.
But people are different
I know the term walking simulator is used as a bit of a pejorative but firewatch and was very interesting experience. But it was just a walking simulator and there is a limit to how much you can do with that.
If you have a compelling story you want to tell there are better mediums than video games through which to tell that story unless you have some kind of unique thing you want to do that makes interactive media more appropriate.
I can't imagine for the sake of example that Game Of Thrones would have had anywhere near the cultural impact it did if it had been released as a video game.
I got to admit - I only played Firewatch briefly (~20 minutes). I just remember walking around and replying to a lady on the radio before stepping away and never jumping back in.
It seems I missed what the reactive storytelling was supposed to be about.
Its the kind of game who's value can be gotten out of a youtube video. It was hardly the first game of that subgenre either, Gone Home comes to mind.
It's been like 10 years, but I still feel guilty I never bought Oxenfree after watching a Lets Play. I did get the sequel.
You know what, I remain not at all sold on Firewatch, or Edith Finch. I get that it's a new genre, but they just didn't do anything for me. Weirdly, Come Home did work for me a bit more, despite not being all that different.
Oxenfree on the other hand, I thought that game was really brilliant. It really evoked that feeling of being 16, hanging out with friends trying to be cool, sussing out who likes who, etc. There's a sense of adventure and terror in being that age, and with the addition of just a little bit of creepy mystery, you've got a real great recipe for a unique experience.
I also really liked their system for interrupting characters' monologues and being able to get back to them later with a quick "oh, what was I saying?", it's essentially like being able to pause a cutscene, actually play the game for a bit, then return to it.
Personally, Edith Finch and The Vanishing of Ethan Carter really played to some themes of family and nostalgia that hit home. Something about returning to a place you moved from and seeing things in a different light now that you're older just makes for a beautiful story.
I think they had something great there, I very much enjoyed playing it but the ending was so awful that every time I see a game that looks similar, I do not engage with it.
Hated the ending. I thought the game was finally about to get good, then it was the end, and a bad one.
Kinda grim definitely. Rather like life.
I thought it was a clever take on why isolationism leads to theories and assumptions about everyone else. The rangers are isolated and created their own paranoia. Obviously, they couldn't readily get more information, so it's not their fault for being in the dark.
The only thing I specifically didn't like about the ending was how this whole manifesto of sorts was presented. I get that it gives closure on the writer's intended narrative, but it admits a lot of legal guilt for the antagonist.
I feel like the theme of "The hero being disappointed with the reality of their mission" has good ways of executing that are hard-hitting rather than just dismal. Spec Ops: The Line, The Fall, Papo & Yo, and The Sexy Brutale were all great iterations of this, building up to harsh late-game revelations.
Playing my 2nd playthrough of the Witcher 3. First playthrough was in 2016. Forgot alot of details about it, but this game... It feels like playing it for the first time again. Sure I know some contracts and monsters before finding them, but they've not stopped updating this game since 2016
My first version I played was v1.3
It's now v4.0+
That's insane! And the game is so full of incredible world building and dialogue and action it's just incredible. They added FSR support for those that care. Updated graphics, fixed many bugs and packed even more content into it
How dit CDPR make this. They do show that a game can stay good for a long time, even arguably past it's expiration date. Not saying it's expired it's just 10yrs old...
That said, fire watch was beautiful but it really had a linear kind of feel to it. It was almost scary at moments. Very peaceful at others. But it was more of a demo of what a great story game could be than an actual game. There was absolutely no incentive to replay it after one playthrough. Not even after many years. I still don't think I'll ever touch it again. It had no gripping ending or mystery except for not meeting the lady in the other tower.
If they would've made a game like this but with that Reddit creepypasta story of a park ranger that found stairs in the woods that teleported people... That would be interesting.
"fighting the medium" is an excellent phrase! Never played Firewatch, though I have made some stumbling attempts at creative writing, and it's made me realize that certain things are very difficult to convey organically in words. How do you get across to a first time reader that an alien isn't actually shrugging or winking or pointing with an index finger, but expressing the same thing through non human body language? And then how do you do it over and over and over again, because when posting stories to a forum you have to assume this is everyone's first time reading.
In a visual medium like a webcomic, it's super simple to convey it through a combo of dialogue and visuals. Even the nature of the story itself has to fit the medium. With a comic, people expect short self-contained scenes or character interactions that may or may not connect to form a story arc. This is what I like to write about, little snippets that serve to build the world, just a few lines of dialogue or a paragraph describing a scene, but that's not what people expect from prose. They want meatier stuff.
Makes me wonder what would be impossible to express altogether in one medium vs another.
Firewatch has certain choose your own adventure style "What is thy name, adventurer?" questions that it will refer back to later but it doesn't effect the actual game that much. You get slightly different dialog lines from Horny Boss Chick On The Radio. What did it do that Roger Wilco couldn't?
Odd, Firewatch was entirely forgettable for me — I don't think I agree that it should have sparked a subgenre.
Should it be influential? Yes, I think the only thing they did a very good job with was the dialogue. Am I surprised there aren't 'Firewatch-likes'? No.
See, that's what's weird to me. I thought the dialogue was terrible, but the voice actors were doing their best (and were good). Sort of the same thing as the dialogue in star wars 2&3 making hayden seem like a terrible actor, when he was quite good if given a better script.
I think if you examine the quality of the dialogue itself — yes it was rather boring. However, the reactive aspect was neat — a character remembering the thing you last said and using it to justify their position is good. Even if that position ends up being boring due to poor writing, it seems more dynamic and real — cuz people typically remember what you say.
Valve bought Campo Santo and Valley of the Gods got put on Valve Time.
They don’t make games like this because the people got put into other projects.
The Long Dark is finishing up their episodic content with Blackfrost on the Horizon. Article seems to be missing research
I loved that game so much
Hey devs. Make games like this and I'll pay full price for all of them.
Too bad it did not blow up, people like slop throughout the ages anyway.
People are determined to be unhappy aren't they. It's not slop it's just not for you and that's fine but it doesn't mean you get to be dismissive of other media. There's plenty of great games that are neither slop nor firewatch style narrative games.
Sorry, I am pretty determined that slop games exist, and I am happy settled with certain game design philosophies. No need for some toxic positivity moral police to say that is wrong. xD
Firewatch was okay. I waited for it to get good, and it just didn't.
What does "reactive storytelling" mean? I didn't play Firewatch.
I guess it's the combination of two industry gameplay types: "voice on the radio" like in Bioshock, and "branching dialogue trees" like in Mass Effect. You choose when to start a dialogue with your counterpart over the walkie-talkie after things you notice, or you can choose not to mention something.
Yeah but nothing you do changes major events. It's pretty on rails.
You can replay it just to get different conversations though.