Fine-looking first-person explore-o-adventure-a-mystery Firewatch [official site] will arrive for Windows, Mac, and Linux on February 9th, 2016, developers Campo Santo announced today. Firewatch, if you’ve missed it, is a thriller of sorts set in the wilds of Wyoming. John played a bit and dug it, and you can carry a tortoise, and gosh dang its trees are gorgeous.
It’s an interesting-looking game about a chap who tries to escape his woes by working in a fire lookout tower, only to find something fishy is afoot. It’s a dialogue-heavy first-person affair with plenty of chatter with your radiofriend (as far as I’ve seen, anyway), and did I mention how gorgeous its trees are? They’re really good trees. The whole dang game’s gorgeous. It was previously due this year, but now it’s not.
Campo Santo are a small team with folks formerly of Telltale (including the main folks behind The Walking Dead‘s first season), Klei Entertainment (Mark of the Ninja‘s lead designer), Double Fine, and other pleasant studios and places. Also, they have the best video game company quarterly journal.
Anywho, here’s a hunk of work-in-progress gameplay from March:
[Disclosure: I’ve been friendly-ish with a few Campo Santo folks at times, but I think the last time I saw any of them may have been when I threw co-founder Sean Vanaman to the ground and stood on his chest to demonstrate to a friend that bullying is wrong and that it’s important to stand up to bullies, so I don’t know how much that counts for anything. The important thing is, never invite me to a barbecue.]
12/10/2015 at 18:11 draglikepull says:
Their podcast Idle Thumbs is also very good.
12/10/2015 at 18:12 Lars Westergren says:
This is a game I don’t want spoiled for me, so I’ll probably stop reading news about it.
12/10/2015 at 19:09 phanatic62 says:
This. Although I’m on their mailing list I’ve avoided looking at anything other than screenshots and their game dev stuff. I would rather go into this game with a relatively blank slate.
I managed to do this with Mass Effect 3 a few years ago. Other than the knowledge that there was an ending that a lot of people were upset about, I managed to avoid all spoilers related to the game. Then I finally got it and never finished it. But someday I MIGHT.
I would like to point out that I am not one of those people who goes nuts on others about spoilers. I think the onus to avoid spoilers is on the person waiting to consume the media in question. Walk out of the room/fast forward the podcast/stop reading the article or comments. If you really don’t want to know what happens in something, you have to take an active role in avoiding the content.
12/10/2015 at 18:43 anHorse says:
I look forward to Idle Thumbs ignoring the majority of the game to rant about how the female character isn’t absolutely perfect
…oh nevermind
12/10/2015 at 19:22 Urthman says:
Ha. Just like they’ve said on the podcast, the nice thing about a podcast is that haters aren’t going to bother actually listening enough to get all angry about anything particular you say. The worst that can happen is this sort of vague, “I’ll bet this is what they talk about,” grumbling.
12/10/2015 at 19:32 draglikepull says:
You sound like someone who could use a hobby. Have you considered video games?
12/10/2015 at 22:19 Stellar Duck says:
You know, they’ve ignored the entire game so far, aside from talking about their trip to Wyoming or whereever the hell it was and a few scattered comments on the fact that they are making it and what sort of challenges they present.
Which is a crying shame as I really want them to talk about it! And it’s probably because of people like you and your sneering comments.
It must be hard, being this perpetually offended by every little thing.
12/10/2015 at 23:22 anHorse says:
“It must be hard, being this perpetually offended by every little thing.”
I dunno, they seem to have gotten a pretty popular podcast out of it
13/10/2015 at 05:55 Urthman says:
But the cool thing is that they have fans who put each episode on their YouTube channel and label with timecodes all the subjects they talked about, so anyone can see for themselves at a glance how wrong you are.
13/10/2015 at 20:25 karachokarl says:
link to youtube.com
Well played!
12/10/2015 at 18:46 FFabian says:
Sorry no time for this. XCOM 2 is released February too … but I’ll probably try to squeeze some time in for this anyway.
12/10/2015 at 18:58 Shooty Deluxe says:
Glad to see I’m not the only one with a fixation on trees in video games.
Maybe I should go out more…
13/10/2015 at 09:48 Thulsa Hex says:
Things kind of came to a head with me this summer when I started rating real-life trees against those found in the Witcher 3, and not the other way around.
13/10/2015 at 09:50 Thulsa Hex says:
Actually, I think I even said, “Real life trees are pretty cool too,” when I was in the car with my wife. The silence that followed was telling.
12/10/2015 at 20:55 XxBrentos9xX says:
“You know what? Fuck it, I’m not the maid”
Methinks me might try this game
13/10/2015 at 05:20 Pantalaimon says:
Has anyone seen any minimum/recommend specs for this, or would anyone like to speculate? I fear that this might be the game to finally push my aging system to breaking point. And I own the wrong console as far as this game is concerned.
But I guess it’s good to have incentives to buy a new PC…
13/10/2015 at 09:57 Thulsa Hex says:
I’m very interested in this, too, despite knowing practically nothing about it beyond what’s written here. The art direction really grabbed me (those posters that were knocking around are beautiful) and the voice acting/writing in the short E3 trailer seemed excellent. Kinda reminds me of Pixar, but with a little more sinister.
13/10/2015 at 10:34 foop says:
I’m really looking forward to watching someone play this through on Twitch. I’ve loved watching the early preview videos of the gameplay but I know if I try it myself I’ll get frustrated.
Gaming has gone a bit weird, hasn’t it?
14/10/2015 at 20:41 cannedpeaches says:
I’m buying it solely because of Rich Sommer, because watching Harry Crane on Mad Men wearily try to survive office life is guaranteed to be a pleasure when he’s try to survive forest fires instead.