|
I have to agree that the ending felt weak to me. I don't know what I was expecting exactly - the game delivered on characterization and dialogue, but the ending really didn't do it for me at all. In particular, the motivations of the responsible party felt inexplicable even after the reveal, which was as a result entirely unsatisfying.
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 00:42
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:15 |
|
|
Accordion Man posted:I'm starting to think that its Gone Home's ending again and gamers excepted some big bombastic genre fiction-eqsue twist when there was never going to be one because the game is grounded in reality. I do think it's similar to Gone Home, in that (spoiler for both games) it sets you up for an expectation that's far more interesting than what it actually delivers. It's fine to subvert the player's expectations, but only if what you give the player instead is something more interesting than what they were expecting. Giving them something less interesting just evokes a disappointed "Oh," which is what it did for me. I think that's only part of it though, and it's nowhere near as bad in Firewatch as it was in Gone Home - I think the other big part, as I said, is that I just don't understand why Ned did any of this. I get it, he's a hermit with PTSD and his son's death hosed him up. Kinda. What the hell is with the complicated science experiment fakeroo? Why would he go through all that trouble faking reports, planting radios, and all that? I feel like none of it received an adequate explanation, the whole thing just... sputters and peters out.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 01:35
|
|
|
GreyjoyBastard posted:He didn't want anyone finding the body, basically. He probably hoped that even if Henry figured out he was being observed he would take the science thing at its creepy face value and not investigate the cave. But... why did he give Henry the key, then? If he hadn't done that, there was no way they were going down there. In fact, the only reason they did so is because of the key!
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 01:44
|
|
|
CJacobs posted:He shuts Henry in there thinking there's no way out and Henry will die there- which there isn't, because when you go in there the first time Henry doesn't have any anchors with which to repel down the shaft. Luckily, he has his But again, if you're trying to keep someone out of a particular location, and they have shown no inclination towards going there in the first place, why would you give them the very thing to provoke them into going there? If Ned really wanted to kill Henry, he could just knock him out - he's proven capable of ambushing him. All Ned had to do in the first place is stay silent and out of sight, just like he's presumably been doing for the past three years. I get it, he's crazy, but I don't find stories with antagonists acting irrationally and counter-productively particularly compelling. It's like those idiot ball things, y'know? e: Accordion Man posted:They totally it explain though. They really don't. I get that the research site belonged to someone else, the question is why Ned would do all this stuff that ultimately just provokes them into investigating him when all he could do was lie low for a while.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 01:53
|
|
|
Accordion Man posted:I forgot to bring it before, but what happened to Accidental Savior from Gone Home being one of the books in the game? I remember seeing it in the previews but I couldn't find it ingame. It's in the cache box that has the "Lending Library" sign over it and a whole bunch of books. It's buried near the bottom of the pile, if I remember right.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 10:23
|
|
|
I mean the dialogue and interplay between Delilah and Henry are really this game's strongest point. It may well be worth playing for that alone, and it's not like the price tag is atrocious or anything. I've paid more for movies half the running time. Oddly enough, I don't feel compelled to go back and do an rear end in a top hat Henry replay or anything. Maybe it loses something knowing how the story ends.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 11:41
|
|
|
Yeah, I'm with you on that. The game opens pretty strong, I felt, and the first few days were a nice introduction to the character. But I think it launches into the rest of the story arc too quickly without really giving itself a chance to establish just how isolated and lonely Henry is during the massive two-week timeskips we never end up seeing. The teenager plot kind of sputters out and dies, too. I mean, it never goes anywhere after day 3 or so. They go missing, Henry and Delilah fret over it, and then the problem fixes itself out of the blue. Okay, that's... good, I guess. I never felt any urgency or real worry about that anyway.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 13:46
|
|
|
Corin Tucker's Stalker posted:Yeah, I'm not saying Firewatch is the first game to take this route or that doing so automatically makes it good, but responding to specific complaints about the game not going in a direction that felt bigger or more sci-fi/paranormal/whatever. That isn't my complaint, though (don't know about anyone else). My complaint is that the fake premise is relatively interesting, if not particularly new, but the actual reveal behind it is boring and uninteresting and barely makes any sense. If you're going to bait-and-switch your players, you really need to deliver something that's even more interesting than what it seemed at first, and I don't feel like this game (or Gone Home) did that. It's like a Scooby-Doo episode, except it wants to be taken seriously.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 16:30
|
|
|
There was another little thing I think it was a shame it wasn't really expanded on: the midnight radio call where Henry thinks he's talking to Julia, and the game presents it straight, but he's actually calling up Delilah. I thought that was interesting and foreboding, but sadly it never comes up again.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 19:08
|
|
|
I mean besides acknowledging that it happened.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 19:26
|
|
|
Tommofork posted:What else are you looking for? A Henry losing his mind plot point? That's one possible way of going about it, though it wouldn't fit very well with the existing narrative. But honestly I don't know what I'm looking for, exactly. It just feels strange that it happens so suddenly, then Delilah mentions it two weeks later, and... Henry doesn't acknowledge what she said at all, and it never gets mentioned again. It feels like the beginning of a plot point that never materialized. Henry does wonder later on if he's losing his mind and imagining everything - that would be a nice point to tie in with the radio call, but he never mentions it.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 19:31
|
|
|
Actually, how did the teens get back to the tower before Henry did to trash it? The closest way back to the tower is through the canyon and the cave, i.e. the way Henry takes immediately after scaring them off. The way up My lovely Boss Is Going To Get Me Killed Hill ( ) is unpassable, and to boot, the two are now sans clothing. The most likely way for them to go after being discovered is back to their tent on the other side of the area. It's way more likely Ned was the one who trashed our tower. We know he's in the area - we run into him on the way back.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 10, 2016 23:31
|
|
|
Someone on the last page or thereabouts said something to the effect of the ending not being the problem, but the lead-up to it, and thinking more about it I agree. This game feels like it mixes elements a little too briskly without following through. If the game had focused entirely on the human elements, on Henry and Delilah running from their problems and whatever, then that would've been a fine game. Remove all the paranoia, remove Ned maybe even, and make the wildfires the main threat. Hell, throw in some scenes where Henry is freaked the gently caress out by fire and refuses to go near any of it until he works up his courage through conversation with Delilah. Make it symbolic of his family issues. You can probably keep the teens in if you like, but the bit about them going missing has to be wrapped up better than Delilah just ending that subplot out of the blue one day. Or, you can go hard on the mystery angle. Crank up the paranoia. It would be a different game, but I think also a better game than going halfsies and not committing to anything. Make the player worry about that radio call you overhear near the start. Make him worry that Henry's going insane and that you can't trust what you see. Can you trust Delilah? Can you trust anyone? Plant loose evidence suggesting she's in on it, or maybe she isn't. Ned can fit in this one, but not as a perpetrator. Make him a victim of the same conspiracy. Add in radio calls with him where the two of you try to work out what's happening. Really play on Henry's feelings of isolation. Point is, as it stands, the game doesn't seem to know if it wants to be a human drama about people who are unsure of themselves and what path to take in their lives, or a suspenseful paranoia mystery with elements of conspiracy. Smushing them together is just going to disappoint someone, no matter what they expected.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2016 10:29
|
|
|
Raxivace posted:It's more comforting for some to think there's this vast conspiracy against you to blame for your problems than to admit any fault that you yourself may be responsible for That makes no sense in context, though. The pair being spied on has no logical relation to the problems Henry or Delilah are running away from, and I don't think either of them ever make a connection like that. The reason they start worrying about a conspiracy is the radio transcript Henry finds, and you know, if I found something like that, I'd be pretty concerned that someone was spying on me too. And he was right about that! Someone was spying on them. What's worse, that someone intentionally misled them into thinking it was some kind of science experiment by arranging fake evidence for them to find. The only reason it doesn't really count as a conspiracy is that you generally require more than one person to conspire with. Henry and Delilah didn't invent or warp anything to come to that conclusion, Ned was very explicitly setting out to make them think that. edit: To elaborate: When someone starts believing in conspiracy theories over things like 9/11, they do so because the straight-forward explanation is emotionally unsatisfactory. The straight-forward explanation is that a group of religious fanatics perpetrated a horrible crime for reasons that are complex and ultimately geopolitical, which is hard to understand and makes people feel uncomfortable and vulnerable. So instead of accepting that explanation, people invent fanciful ones. Well, what's the simple, straight-forward explanation for finding a transcript of a radio conversation you had that as far as you know no-one should have been listening in on? Fans posted:So are the missing person posters for Ned? The picture seems to match the poster of Ned at the end of the game. The name on the missing person poster is Mitch Michaels, so no. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 11:33 on Feb 11, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2016 11:26
|
|
|
How did you expect them to react? Every single conclusion you can draw from the evidence they were given (transcripts of their conversations, personality evaluations, Henry getting knocked out, fenced-off site, surveillance equipment) is going to be alarming and conspiracy-like in some way or another. How can that not worry the poo poo out of you? What is the non-paranoid-ideation way to react to that? There isn't one, short of ignoring it entirely, which sounds way dumber! In fact, whenever there is a simple explanation, Henry and Delilah go for it (teens trashed the tower - though I think it was really Ned, in hindsight - animals trashed the teens' camp, teens cut the comm wires). It is only when things veer straight into "okay there is no way this could be anything other than someone spying on us" that they go into that territory, which Ned of course takes full advantage of.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2016 12:39
|
|
|
Toady posted:And then it turns out to be the simplest, most obvious explanation I really don't know in what kind of world the actual explanation is simple or obvious, especially given the physical evidence available to H&D. Ned wasn't supposed to be out there in the first place, and he hadn't gone missing (in that no one had reported him missing, at least). As far as Delilah knew he had gone back home with his son.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 11, 2016 19:57
|
|
|
NaDy posted:I noticed some people complaining that the story didn't have any branching paths to it. I'm curious, did any of the pre-release material suggest that that was going to be a thing? Heck, the current blurb on the Firewatch home page says this: quote:But when something strange draws you out of your lookout tower and into the world below, you'll explore a wild and unknown environment, facing questions and making interpersonal choices that can build or destroy the only meaningful relationship you have. I think describing the game in these terms is overstating the impact your "interpersonal choices" have on the relationship between Henry and Delilah. As we have seen, the ending is the same either way, and it mainly boils down to a few different lines here and there and what they refer to previously-encountered things as. Is it even possible to "destroy" your relationship with Delilah?
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2016 11:31
|
|
|
I do like short, condensed games and have no problem with a 3-4 hour runtime for a game if the price tag is right, but I do agree that this particular story could have used a few more hours to flesh out the characters and the plot more, and provide better conclusions to things like the drunk teen subplot. It's such a gorgeous game, with well-written dialogue and good voice acting. It's actually kind of a shame it stumbles so hard on the ending and doesn't seem to know if it wants to be an interpersonal drama or a mystery plot. It certainly presents itself as the latter - see the blurb I quoted above - and for me and a lot of others, the way it panned out in the end was disappointing given that.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2016 11:52
|
|
|
I don't see how you can describe "veteran with PTSD kills son through negligence then lives as a hermit for years undetected" as "mundane". Sure, it's not as wild as secret behavioral experiments, but if mundane is what they were going for they should have stuck to drunk teenagers and forest fires and focused on the relationship between Henry and Delilah. As it is they bait-and-switch an improbable but interesting event for another improbable but also confusing and relatively uninteresting one.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2016 14:19
|
|
|
I didn't find all the notes, but I was totally getting a long distance gay crush vibe from one of them.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 12, 2016 19:13
|
|
|
sticklefifer posted:I did. There was a nice little callback to it later when it seemed like Henry was about to be framed, which surprised me. They thought of everything. I recall the developers saying the originally didn't think of it, but when they started testing the game, they noticed a significant number of testers threw the boombox in the lake for some reason. So they did the smart thing and added in responses for it. Mr Scumbag posted:It's a criticism you can have, of course, but it kind of assumes endings shouldn't be flat or melancholy, which is a little weird, in my opinion. I wouldn't have mentioned it at all if it didn't seem like such a popular opinion. Given that it fits in very well with the theme and grounded nature of the story, it's consistent which, like it or not, ties up the game adequately. I've said it before and I'll say it again: a melancholy ending is not the problem. The ending being inconsistent and bait-and-switchy is the problem. They could've made the game all about Henry and Delilah and their problems and forest fires and drunk teens and forgot about the whole other angle, and it would've been better. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Feb 13, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2016 12:19
|
|
|
I said it before, but it's somewhere back in the dark depths of like a dozen pages ago, so: It's fine to subvert the player's expectation, but only if the subversion is actually good and interesting and fleshed-out. What this game does is spend 50% of the game or so setting up an idea about a conspiracy, which is not exactly a new idea or anything, but okay, it's somewhat interesting. Then in the last 10 minutes of the game it reveals no, it was Old Man Jenkins all along, ha ha. Who then escapes leaving the player with no satisfying conclusion to any story arc - not Henry's, not Delilah's, not Ned's. It's promising fireworks and then going out with a fart. tl;dr: If you're going to do a subversion, make the subversion better than what you were fronting. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 13:53 on Feb 13, 2016 |
|
#
¿
Feb 13, 2016 13:49
|
|
|
|
| # ¿ Apr 29, 2024 04:15 |
|
|
I'm going ot agree with Fedule here and say that I liked the ending to Ethan Carter vastly more than the one to Firewatch. Ethan Carter uses the twist to recontextualize the game in a way that makes everything take on new significance, whereas Firewatch just pulls the rug out from under you and doesn't so much recontextualize events as shine a light on how goddamn little sense Ned's motivations make. What's more, they seem to want you to care about two side characters (Ned and his kid) that the game seriously hasn't built up enough investment in, unlike Ethan Carter, where you've spent literally the entire game exploring the kid's interpretations of the world. After finishing Ethan Carter, I enjoyed re-evaluating all the things I had seen and putting them into the new context. With Firewatch, I just felt annoyed and the story deflated. As for what constitutes a game... I'm a fan of the interpretation that a game requires 1) a goal, and 2) obstacles to the goal that can be overcome through proficiency. In that sense, Firewatch veers dangerously close to the edge, since the only real obstacles you can overcome amount to "can you read a map Y/N". On that alone, it gets a pass. But it doesn't have a lot more to offer in terms of gameplay. Walking around and looking at things is not an obstacle. Dialogue choices in this game are not an obstacle, since the game ends in exactly the same way no matter what you choose, and the only difference is which voice clips you hear on the way. Just because something isn't a game doesn't mean it lacks merit, mind you. I might well enjoy a well-written story being told interactively. There's no reason to throw a hissy fit just because something might not be a game.
|
|
#
¿
Feb 23, 2016 18:10
|
|