Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2018/12/18/firewatch-available-for-ninten.html
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This sounds interesting. I don’t have a Switch, but might look into it for another gaming platform. The past couple of weeks I’ve been reading about the Big Blowup, a series of catastrophic fires in the Washington - Idaho - Montana area in 1910, that started policy for the USFS as we know it today. Try heading towards the site of a known deadly wildfire to cut a firebreak - on a packhorse!
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Is this a game that’s mostly narrative? I’m looking for a game for somebody that likes to play games, but not twitch games. Katamari is favorite of hers as are some of the TellTale games (like Walking Dead). Is Firewatch an all story-no action game?
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That’s pretty much what I hear. Unfortunate that it is too late to recommend Full Throttle Remastered, which was free on GOG.com last week.
I can’t see much point to getting this for the Switch when it ought to run on any potato-PC.
I’m admittedly biased since I work with the team, but Firewatch was made by the guys who wrote/designed The Walking Dead at Telltale so I’m betting it’ll be a good fit for her! No combat—lots of story, character interaction, and wandering the Wyoming wilderness. It’s a pretty great time.
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Firewatch was created by my former co-workers at Telltale. After season 1 of The Walking Dead, Jake and Sean left Telltale in order to further their career. Under a publishing deal with Panic, Firewatch was made.
The game is all about narrative in first-person perspective. While it’s the control scheme of a FPS, it’s not demanding controls. The dialog choices do have a timeout, but it’s not a quick-time event level of reaction. The game was the evolution from what they learned and defined for themselves with The Walking Dead, and leaving Telltale game them the ability and freedom to further explore where they wanted to take interactive narrative. I know I’m biased, but I believe we are all better for it.
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The last living Beat Poet, to my knowledge is Gary Snyder. Neat guy. When I was in my 20s I was invited to go mushroom hunting with him, I didn’t take him up on the offer. He wasn’t being skevy, just be a living vestige of the 60s.
The isolation lead to a lot of thinking and writing.
From Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Down valley a smoke haze
Three days heat, after five days rain
Pitch glows on the fir-cones
Across rocks and meadows
Swarms of new flies.
I cannot remember things I once read
A few friends, but they are in cities.
Drinking cold snow-water from a tin cup
Looking down for miles
Through high still air.
From The Poetry Foundation
I met Gary Snyder some years ago. He was teaching at a conference, I think. Perhaps it was a book signing at Borders- but I doubt it. I may have just run into the guy at some coffee house, as I have some fantastically odd experiences while working with a cup of deep dark caffeinated joy in my hand. He invited me visit him and his wife and go mushroom hunting with him sometime. We talked about writing, the Earth, the environment, and other things. I think we talked about tea. He wasn’t being skeevy, but rather being a living vestige of 60s. He signed a common place book of mine, and somewhere I have a scribbled note with his address and invitation. There are few things in hindsight I wish I had done, but that is one the list.
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Get it from GOG if you have a Windows machine. It’s an interactive story rather than a game in the classic sense but it’s really atmospheric and immersive with quality writing. I loved it.
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I think it’s on Xbox as well. Definitely PS4, which is where I played it.
Great game. Wished it had more of a creative mode to dick around in the lush settings.
Alternately, I want to quit my day job and become a fire lookout.
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Have you tried the “commentary mode” with the game? While not exactly a sandbox, it does expose out a few development tools to illustrate certain concepts. And you get a rad portable cassette player!
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Wait… there’s a LADY on the other end of the radio? Things are looking up!
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Please therefore make us an actual tool, a reliable deployable IRL Firewatch that can be used right out of the box, plug and play, to locate fires, including but not limited to wildfires near people and buildings.
We need this tool right now. We needed this tool…
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Apparently it does have a free roam mode where you can just wander around and look at the (really, really wonderful) scenery.
You can also pick up a disposable camera, and take pictures with it throughout the game. At the end it sends you a url with a link to all of the pictures you took. You can even choose to get them printed out for real.
The developers are great too. I bought it not long after release, and ended up encountering a bug that left me stuck. I emailed their tech support address and actually got a reply, and ended up emailing over my save file so that they could fix it. It was only afterwards that I realised they weren’t a dedicated tech-support person, but one of the lead devs.
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It’s a really great game, I think it would qualify as a walking sim, but it’s a lot less boring then that name implies. There is nothing really hard, about the game, it’s not challenging in the way most games are. It’s just a really fun, emotional and immersive story. Like a gorgeous movie you get to act in.
Highly recommended!
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More platforms means a more likely match for someone’s needs?
I don’t have a huge amount of free time at home, but I am on the bus for an hour and a half to two hours a day. So a PC game would require me to buy a windows laptop and haul it to/from work. A switch is a lot less bulk and I happen to own one. (an iPad would be even better because I happen to already haul one to/from work).
The switch may (or may not!) bring anything to the actual game experience, but it does open it up to enjoyment by a different set of people.
(other people may just not want to deal with having a gaming PC, so they have a phone and maybe a tablet and some game console as their computing devices…)
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