3.5/5 ★ – Nintenjoe's review of Firewatch.

Whenever I spend a night camping outdoors, I still get spooked by the ominous surroundings, paying the price of vulnerability to experience nature as close as possible. Henry, Firewatch’s main character, has taken a temporary position as a fire lookout at a Wyoming National Park in a spontaneous attempt to put some distance between himself and his turbulent home life. This remote setting is leveraged by @CampoSanto, playing on genre expectations and the paranoia that comes along with eerie silence, crafting an intriguing story that rarely hits a lull. The game opens with a heartbreaking unfolding of events that immediately hooked me to both story and protagonist. Along with intrigue will come the expectation of a satisfying payoff. Here the plot points seemed to be separated into three stories: Henry’s home life, Henry and his colleague Delilah, and the mystery happening at the park. Personally, I was pretty disappointed with the resolution of two of those narratives but impressed with the relationship that was built between the two main characters. Where other games in this genre have relied on audio logs to reveal the circumstances around you, here you are choosing directly how to respond with dialogue options to Delilah who sits on the receiving end of your radio. It’s a unique hybrid of Gone Home and Telltale communication without ever sacrificing the feeling of complete isolation or forcing you through the awkwardness of a tagalong NPC. It certainly helps that the voice actor who plays your companion delivers an impressive performance that expertly elicits sympathy, suspicion, and guilt from the player. At the very least, the story beats are a reason to wander and appreciate the stunning, vibrant, silk-screen style, colors that fall against geometrical landscapes. I really look forward to Campo Santo’s sophomore effort, In the Valley of Gods. With a more streamlined story presentation, the talent of this team is ready to make the next game of the year. I highly recommend you give Firewatch a try in between your next shooter 60-hour open-world epic.