How to Play Firewatch
After more than two years in development, Firewatch — Campo Santo’s mystery adventure game about a fire lookout in Wyoming — will see release on the ninth of February, 2016, the birthday of Johann Sebastian Bach’s uncle.
In gaming history, Firewatch shares a release date with BioShock 2, the Xbox 360 version of Stacking, and volleyball. (Volleyball was first demonstrated in Holyoke, Massachusetts on February 9, 1895 by William G. Morgan, who invented the game after identifying a need for a sport that was like basketball, but suitable for the unathletic businessman.)
Because it’s something big video games often have, I asked Campo Santo if they planned to release an official Firewatch strategy guide. A definitive companion to help players through the world of Firewatch: something the world is probably crying out for, much as it cried out, once upon a time, for a non-strenuous ball sport that the middle-aged Massachusetts gentleman could play on his lunch break.
Campo Santo had no plans to produce such a guide, so I wrote it and printed it here. Think of it as a holiday gift, courtesy of the last Campo Santo Quarterly Review from a pre-Firewatch world. It’s a guide for you, no matter who you are, on how to get the most out of this game.
Full disclosure: I haven’t really played Firewatch, and even if I had, I wouldn’t be allowed to spoil a game that doesn’t come out for another two months. I’ve filled the gaps in my knowledge by relying on interviews with Campo Santo and other experts, and covered for the absence of spoilers by excerpting from the manuals of other video games; the effect should be seamless.
HOW TO GET EVERY PLAYSTATION TROPHY OR STEAM ACHIEVEMENT IN FIREWATCH
JAKE RODKIN, creative director: Complete the game. Trophies are placed at some chapter stops throughout the game’s story. You won’t find or experience everything there is in the game in one playthrough, but you will get all the trophies.
HOW TO EXPLORE THE WORLD OF FIREWATCH
EXCERPT, KING’S QUEST COLLECTION USER MANUAL: The world of King’s Quest VII is a world of exploration, and you wouldn’t want to miss anything! Look at each new room carefully. Click on anything and everything that causes your cursor to highlight. If you feel you are “stuck,” leave the room and explore others. You never know where you might find just what you need. Above all, relax, let your imagination run wild, and have fun!
JAMES BENSON, animator: If there’s nothing to radio about nearby, you should probably move on.
EXCERPT, KING’S QUEST COLLECTION USER MANUAL: Explore each area of the game very carefully. Search the wizard’s domain, both inside and out — even (or perhaps especially) those places he doesn’t want you poking around in.
EXCERPT, KING’S QUEST COLLECTION USER MANUAL: Look to the fables and fairy stories of yore for clues. Leave no stone unturned, no avenue unexplored, and you will triumph in your quest. Along the way, collect as many treasures as you can. The kingdom of Daventry will need everything you can bring back. And you will profit from the experience.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU PUT THE FAMOUS KONAMI CODE (UP, UP, DOWN, DOWN, LEFT, RIGHT, LEFT, RIGHT, B, A) INTO FIREWATCH
BEN BURBANK, programmer: If you enter the Konami code on the main menu you will either make a New Game or Continue from your previous save. I just tried it and it really works.
JAKE RODKIN: It’s worth pointing out that in this new game you’ve started post-Konami code, Henry can’t die. He also has 100 times more ammo.
BEN BURBANK: [If you enter the Konami code in the game, the main character Henry] will do a very nice dance and then pause the game.
HOW TO BE COOL IN FIREWATCH
JAMES BENSON: Henry doesn’t have a jump button, to keep players from bunny hopping around and making it feel like they’re playing Quake. This could mean the entire game just has to be totally flat, or made of smooth rolling hills. So there are various spots in the game where Henry can do something a bit cooler than he normally does, like climbing up a rock or jumping over a gap. It’s at predetermined spots where we can make sure it isn’t silly or causing problems. The symbol for this in the editor is a pair of sunglasses, so that everyone understands that these moves are slightly cooler than Henry’s default lifestyle.
In an effort to keep Henry from getting too cool for school, there’s actually two versions of every move. One of them, he’s quite good at things. He’s not [Assassin’s Creed’s] Ezio, but he gets through it fast, but this only activates if you’re running. If you just walk up and press the button like normal, then he does a crappy normal guy version.
Oh, and to do them you run up to stuff that looks climbable (usually there’s some white scratch mark stuff on top of them) and press spacebar.
HOW TO PLAY FIREWATCH IF YOU ARE A HARDCORE GAMER
PATRICK EWING, programmer: It’s fascinating to watch people playing a new game for the first time, which is something I’d never fully appreciated before. Especially watching their hands; I noticed this one hardcore gamer type and the minute her thumbs touched the controller they started doing all these rapid micro-movements, feeling out the tuning of the controls. Then she started strafing around the Firefinder in Henry’s tower in perfect circles while carrying on a very casual conversation with Delilah, which was a pretty funny scene to me.
HOW TO PLAY FIREWATCH IF YOU ARE A CHILD
GABE McGILL, coordinator: Firewatch’s ESRB rating certificate [is] M (17+).
JAKE RODKIN: Firewatch contains suggestive themes, nudity, strong language, use of alcohol, and a drug reference.
BEN BURBANK: I would have played it at like 10, 11? But as a parent in 2015 it’s probably more of a 12 to 13 thing now. Basically once every other word out of their mouths is “fuck” when I’m not around.
JANE NG, artist: I would let a 12-year-old of mine play Firewatch, but talk to them about not cussing at me, and other people they should show respect to. I wouldn’t actively encourage a 12-year-old to play, but if they ask, I’ll let them, but would want them to discuss the experience and what they thought with me afterwards.
BEN BURBANK: I think of it more like, if my son (currently seven) is having a sleepover, would other parents freak out at me if their kid played this game? And right now, the answer is definitely.
HOW TO PLAY FIREWATCH IF YOU MADE IT
WILL ARMSTRONG, programmer: I have never been able to play a game I have worked on. By the time I am done developing a game, all I see are the flaws. Every dropped frame, every ugly camera transition, every UI frustration becomes code I recognize. I can’t escape all the decisions that led to those issues living on the disk. On top of that, in doing my job, I have to play through every part of the game over and over and over again trying to reproduce errors. The story becomes tedious noise in the way of a bug. There are no surprises left.
Right now, on Firewatch, it is even worse. When I play through the game and see a small problem, I know I won’t be able to fix it.
NELS ANDERSON, designer: Being able to see the game more holistically without fixating on all the tiny things is definitely a big challenge right now.
CHRIS REMO, composer/designer: I don’t think — at least right now — I’m capable of enjoying it as a game in the true sense. We’re designing the game with a lot of focus on allowing player exploration and choice, especially in conversation, so I think there will be players who enjoy playing it more than once. But definitely it is a game that is intended as a singular narrative experience that will mainly be played from start to finish once per player. So, at least for me, the pure enjoyment of play has been somewhat dampened by the sort of sustained micro-focus and repetition that comes along with game development. That will pass, I suspect, once development is done and the full complete game has some time to assert itself in my brain in place of the segmented collection of disjointed mini-games that effectively comprise my daily experience with Firewatch. I’m excited for that!
NELS ANDERSON: I know the areas of the game that I implemented pretty much backward and forward, but there are other bits that I’ve touched quite a bit less. And going through those moments I end up playing the game pretty close to how someone who is playing it for the first time probably will, seeing things fresh, and that’s exciting and interesting. There’s a lot of enjoyment in those moments before some small bug that’s in my purview to fix comes smashing through the skylight and I’m slammed back into the reality of, “Oh balls, gotta fix that too.”
HOW TO PLAY FIREWATCH IF YOUR VOICE IS IN IT
CISSY JONES, “Delilah”: It’s always fun to come across a character I’ve lent my voice to. It doesn’t ruin the illusion, but mostly because the situations are so fleshed out and feel so real.
ERIN YVETTE, “Chelsea”: The first time I encountered a character I voiced was while playing Telltale’s The Walking Dead. I let a bunch of choices time out because I was frozen thinking, “Weird. That’s me. My voice is in this thing.”
I’m happy to say I’m finally past that, so I can play the games I’m in with full functionality and really invest in what’s happening. Though I definitely make choices differently when a character I voice is affected. It’s cheating, really, but I know what all of the outcomes of the choices are from recording them. So it’s less about what my gut tells me to choose, and more about choosing what triggers my personal favorite interaction. Or what will keep my character alive.
HOW TO PLAY FIREWATCH IF YOU ARE IN A RELATIONSHIP, OR WOULD LIKE TO BE
SEAN VANAMAN, writer: I would say Firewatch is a good game to play if you’re in a relationship and like to talk to your partner about relationships, but it’s probably not a good date game in the colloquial sense of trying to get laid. Firewatch probably won’t get you laid, regardless of your gender or orientation. But it may bring you closer to the person you care for, which, in turn, can and should get you laid. But not in that “hey I just met you, let’s make some sexy mistakes” kind of way.
JANE NG: “Firewatch and chill” will end in snuggling and crying, maybe. Then again, who knows, it could turn into, “Let’s not waste any time, we only live once.”
OLLY MOSS, artist: If the game makes you cry, please write Peter Molyneux and tell him we finally cracked it.
HOW TO PLAY FIREWATCH IF YOU ARE A ROBOT
CHRIS BARANIUK, freelance technology journalist: I hadn’t heard about any robots that physically interact with a game before. It’s sort of an interesting problem, like, getting a virtual bot to interpret coordinates and stuff from game code is one thing, but optical pattern recognition and physical interaction with a controller or touchscreen is probably pretty hard. There is at least one robot that solves Rubik’s Cubes. “CubeStormer 3.” I had to look that up, but I’m glad I did.
HOW TO PLAY FIREWATCH IF YOU ARE CUBESTORMER
CHRIS BARANIUK: Well, not a lot [would happen.] Although if any of the items you find lying around in Firewatch is a Rubik’s Cube, it might get excited.
HOW TO PLAY FIREWATCH IF YOU ARE JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH
SEAN VANAMAN: Honestly, I feel like Bach’s high society upbringing would lead him to believe that Firewatch is low class.
JANE NG: His wig would be ruined.
CHRIS REMO: Bach probably wouldn’t be very impressed by Firewatch’s formal incoherence, but I think he would appreciate its depth of human feeling. He would probably be delighted when, late in the game, the repeated [REDACTED] motif is transposed to [REDACTED].
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH, composer: Like all music, the figured bass should have no other end and aim than the glory of God and the recreation of the soul; where this is not kept in mind there is no true music, but only an infernal clamour and ranting.
HOW TO PLAY FIREWATCH WITH A MOUSE AND KEYBOARD
JOHANN SEBASTIAN BACH: There’s nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.
WHETHER YOU SHOULD PLAY FIREWATCH WITH A MOUSE AND KEYBOARD, OR A CONTROLLER
SEAN VANAMAN: I think it looks smoother and feels more naturalistic coming out of the screen [with a controller.]
OLLY MOSS: I really get into the Henry mindset and end up playing quite performatively, and I find that easier with a controller. Whip-neck mouse-look kinda takes me out of it, but I don’t think it’s a huge difference.
JAKE RODKIN: I prefer the mouse and keyboard because it’s how I’ve always played first person games (and I like the precision) but I don’t have a strong preference. The movement looks nicer as a spectator when the person is playing with a controller.
JANE NG: I’m with Jake, I prefer mouse/keyboard, mostly actually because I haven’t really played Firewatch much with a controller, ha. I actually usually play games on PC with a controller so as a player I’ll probably do the same with Firewatch.
JAMES BENSON: Controller feels nicer to me since you need zero twitch reflexes, though I test mostly with keyboard and mouse when working.
OLLY MOSS: Yeah, when I am testing I use keyboard and mouse, so when I use the controller it’s sorta one step removed from “THIS IS MY WORK DAY.”
BEN BURBANK: I’m going to play it streamed from my PlayStation 4 to a Vita, which is how I play most video games these days. I’m not sure how that will be any better than any other configuration, but I find it the most awkward and thus charming.
HOW TO APPRECIATE FIREWATCH’S REFERENCES TO THE VIDEO GAME GONE HOME
STEVE GAYNOR, developer, Gone Home: Gone Home is like Firewatch in a house… so you should play it. I think it’s $19.99. You can go to gonehomegame.com and find out more.
WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE ‘LORE’ OF FIREWATCH
JAMES BENSON: The lore of Firewatch is, basically, the actual history of the planet Earth. So in a sense, it has the most complete and expansive lore of any game ever.
ERIN YVETTE, “Chelsea”: Chelsea is a 20-something who has changed majors twice (contemplating a third) [and] donates annually to the International Fund for Animal Welfare. But I guess all you really need to know is that she’s laid-back, a little reckless, and likes being tipsy.
CISSY JONES, “Delilah”: I think Delilah can be whoever you want/need her to be. If you need a confidant, friend, potential romance, or just an ambivalent contact, and it’s aided by the fact that you don’t know what she looks like. It’s entirely up to you and the interactions you choose to have with her.
HOW TO PAY FOR FIREWATCH
NELS ANDERSON: [The price is] TBD, but about what a downloadable game of that scope usually costs.
CABEL SASSER, founder, Panic, Inc.: You must first save a little money during 15 years of operating a pretty niche Mac and iOS software company. It’s critical you encounter a character named “Jake Rodkin” — it’s easiest to connect with him when he makes interface skins for the MP3 player app you made back in 2000 — if you don’t talk to Jake at this point you will not be able to fund Firewatch.
Eventually “Jake Rodkin” will return to you with news that he’s leaving Telltale Games to start a brand new game company called Campo Santo. You must reply “Yes, that sounds amazing, we might be able to help you guys make this game!”
Occasionally, “Sean Vanaman” will appear in your Slack Chat Interface and request some money to pay employees. (His request will likely be followed with “Money Mouth Face” or “Grimacing” emojis, depending.) You must login to Wells Fargo CEO and initiate a Wire Transfer for the quest to continue.
HOW TO INITIATE A WELLS FARGO CEO WIRE TRANSFER
CABEL SASSER: Visit the Wells Fargo CEO front page and enter your Company ID, User ID, and password.
WHAT TO DRINK WHILE PLAYING FIREWATCH
SEAN VANAMAN: Honestly, I would probably suck down half a bottle of port and brown out and wake up during the credits.
WILL ARMSTRONG: Day 2 and 3 would go nicely with a Rosé.
JANE NG: I would personally just go with an easy Pinot Noir for the whole game.
GABE McGILL: Here is my draft of a full drink menu for Firewatch. [Spoilers, like indicating what points in the game to switch from one drink to the next, have been redacted.]
- Chardonnay, oaked
- Water (to cleanse the palate)
- Pinot Noir, earth-driven
- Pinot Noir, earth-driven
- India Pale Ale (IPA), hoppy
- IPA
- IPA
- IPA
- IPA
- Tequila, blanco with lime
- Water
- Coffee, cream and sugar
- Coffee, black
- Vodka, neat
- Whisky, rocks
- Light beer, macrobrew (preferably Coors Light)
HOW TO MAKE FIREWATCH
BEN BURBANK: First, place a large cube into a new, empty Unity scene. This box will be Henry’s tower, the central hub for your environment. From up there Henry will be able to see most of the world. Once you’re happy with the tower placement, go ahead and make some hills and trees and rocks so Henry will feel comfortable. You want to trick Henry, and thus yourself, into thinking that these woods are real; you should probably have enough trees that the renderer has trouble batching them.
Ask yourself: why is Henry in the woods? What does he want to do all day? Are there other people in the woods with him? You can sometimes make your Henry think there are people out there when he is alone; the opposite is also true. You should make sure to have nice music for when Henry is feeling fine, and maybe some other music for when he feels differently.
It is advisable when making your own Firewatch game that you give your Henry somebody to talk to on his radio. You should make this relationship the core focus of the experience, even though some people will pay more attention to the beautiful vistas and the big story happening around them.
JAMES BENSON: Firewatch is basically Doom except the monsters are things to talk to Delilah about.
HOW TO STOP MAKING FIREWATCH
WILL ARMSTRONG: For better and worse, we are a very diverse group of gamers. We all like and care about different things. It means we make really good stuff. But it also means that making things that we are happy with is very hard.
SEAN VANAMAN: It’s an insane duality — I am incredibly ready for it to be done but I want to keep working on it, improving it, polishing it forever. I’ve never felt that way about a game but I keep seeing things to make really shine in Firewatch, in a way that I just never have before. I don’t know what that means, but it’s the truth. So, in a perfect world I’m ready for someone to tell me I have to be done. I guess in this case it’s the bank.
OLLY MOSS: I’m really excited for people to finally play it. And after two years it will be nice to move on to something else. But at the same time, it’s quite tough to let go of. The temptation is to keep polishing and tweaking forever…. I think there’s always going to be a disparity between the thing you planned in your head and the thing you released. That’s not a qualitative assessment. It’s been the same with all my work throughout my entire career. As long as it’s bug free and works and we’re happy with it, then it’s done.
TRICIA, Tarot card reader: Ultimately, the project will come to a satisfactory conclusion, I believe, because Justice upright in the Earth position is what’s likely to manifest.
PATRICK EWING: It’s a pretty amazing privilege to be able to watch so many people play the game, this close to launch — [at the PlayStation Experience event in December] people kept our demo stations full around the clock, all weekend long. When you’re doing the gameplay wiring, you hear some lines of dialog hundreds of times, and start to lose track of how each conversation flows into the next, and how the characters reveal themselves gradually. Seeing so many people with wide, earnest grins on their faces as they make dialog choices and hear the conversation unfold is such a treat. It’s just so unfakeable and I think I’ll enjoy the memory of people smiling while playing more than any good review we might get, in the long haul.
JAMES BENSON: The last game I shipped took four years, so right now I’m looking around at the team going, “OK guys we’re about halfway done right?’’ I tend to think very poorly of my work before it releases and then I gather up all the positive comments afterwards, and use them to put my self-esteem back to where it was before I made anything. It keeps me at about the level of an average person but with exciting valleys along the way.
NELS ANDERSON: Oh shit, just got a recruiting email from Game of War. I’m out suckers, gonna go hang with Upton!
JAKE RODKIN: The goal is to just keep going after Firewatch. We’d like to be able to take a tiny break maybe, that would be an amazing luxury to have, and I don’t know if the next thing we do will be as big as Firewatch (it could be a very short game or series of short games… for all I know we could go insane and bite off something even bigger), but really we just want to keep going. I’m at the place right now where I fantasize about making “The Next Game,” specifically I imagine the freedom and agility we could have starting from a clean slate, using the knowledge and experience our team has amassed working together on Firewatch. I hope we get that chance!
HOW TO PLAY VOLLEYBALL
WILLIAM G. MORGAN, inventor, Volleyball; as told to Duncan Fyfe: Well, the beauty of the game is that its format and rules, as I have devised them, are very simple. There are two teams, “two” being easy to remember, as it is the same number of teams as in other sports. On each team, there can be any number of players, so as not to penalize the man who has few friends, or indeed too many! The players will “volley” the ball over the net to one another an unlimited number of times, until the ball hits the ground — and that is Volleyball!
For my money, there has never been a finer game of Volleyball than the very first, played on February 9th, 1895.
“A ball-sport for the business-man? Pish posh!” That was the prevailing opinion of the day. It was thought degrading to the notion of sport to design a game meant for the common man to play, and indeed, for the common man to excel at! This was not my view. As a spectator, I enjoyed the game of Basketball. But I wished that the physical demands it placed on players did not disqualify the amateur man, who was a businessman and a father, inhabiting middle age, who did not have time to raise his physique to the required level. Should he be denied access to all ball-sport? I said, No!
I arranged a demonstration game for my senior colleagues at the YMCA. Which left me only one day to recruit ten amateur players — two teams of five men each — who needed to demonstrate the value of Volleyball by being the least athletic men in all of Holyoke. I needed the portliest of gentlemen, belonging to the very median of middle-age, who evinced the least interest in physical fitness, those who drank — and drank heavily, ha ha! — to escape the pressures of both office and home.
My dear friends… how can I ever forget them? They were Fielding Forrester, the industrialist; Silas Mortimer, the disgraced doctor; Augustus McDermott, vice-president of the Cream Company; Mary King, the investigative journalist undercover at that time as an unhealthy businessman; H. Solomon Numbers, the jewel thief; Cheeky Charlie, that loathsome creature of the vaudeville stage; Boyce Crowley, my large nephew; Gary; Count Dracula; and Thaddeus Buttonqueen, the inventor of buttons.
Any professional athlete watching that day would have had to retrieve his jaw from the floor! Truly, it was those ten players who created Volleyball — who took my beautifully simple rules and interpreted them in ways that were surprising and personal, impossible to replicate. I told myself while the game unfolded, you must remember this, because the eleven of us will never play a game together again, perhaps never even be in the same room together again, and thus there will never be another game that was quite like this.
The deciding point of the February 9th game was scored in its final moments. Solomon Numbers pushed the ball o’er the net with a feebleness characteristic of how the game had been played thus far. The chiseled strongmen watching from the bleachers chuckled derisively, certainly detecting no threat to their dominance of the sporting world. But then — ! As the missile traced its arc, Augustus McDermott burst forward, pulled away his shirt and cuffs, bared his secret teeth and coiled his arms like mighty springs in anticipation of the ball’s descent. POW! At the moment of impact, he met the ball with a scream and terrible force: as we watched agog, the ball flew high above the court and into the azure, loosed from all velocity, and touched the face of God.
The game broke up, and I stayed on the court as the players went in their own directions. “We had a good run, didn’t we, from the previous afternoon until now?” I asked myself.
“Yes we did,” I decided. “The best.”
