#FIREWATCH GAME JOURNAL PC#
Fragments of Him is a forthcoming PC game designed by Mata Haggis, a professor at Breda’s NHTV University. There are several fascinating examples on the way – and all, in some ways, insert the same sorts of questions between player and character. There’s an emerging generation of designers who are asking more questions about how we relate to the games we play and the characters that inhabit them. Again, this isn’t a new idea, but the rise of indie game development (facilitated by digital game distribution and the availability of cheap development tools), has made it easier for smaller, more experimental teams to start exploring more personal, more challenging game design concepts. They do, of course, belong to a loose genre known as experiential games, most commonly associated with two titles – The Chinese Room’s Dear Esther and Fullbright’s Gone Home – which stripped back all interactive components, and put the focus on simply experiencing the environment and narrative. What both Firewatch and Cibele have in common is the idea of experience being the central component rather than action or puzzle-solving.
#FIREWATCH GAME JOURNAL FULL#
That’s where the folders full of my pictures, blog posts and poems came from – it was to give the player context so that they can feel like they understand the character outside of what she’s just saying.” So I added real things from my life so that people could understand who I was from many different angles – they could infer what I was like without really being with me. “As I was writing the script, I realised there were things I want to express that I couldn’t through dialogue alone I decided it had to be more than just playing in this online game and listening to conversations. “I kind of realised I had to establish a critical distance from what was happening,” explains Freeman. And they often contradict the story she’s telling Blake. To this end, the player gets access to in-game Nina’s PC desktop, which contains poems, journal entries and photos – these are all genuine relics from Freeman’s life. But at the same time, Freeman wanted us to understand the friction between the way the in-game Nina presents herself to Blake and what she’s actually thinking. The player effectively takes on the role of Nina as she meets her boyfriend online, and we listen in on her conversations with him, in a familiar adventure game style. And it’s an approach that’s becoming more common.Īnother intriguing example released this year is Cibele, a semi-autobiographical game about designer Nina Freeman’s relationship with a man (known as Blake) she meets in an online role-playing adventure.
![firewatch game journal firewatch game journal](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/fire-watch/images/7/76/Henny2.png)
In a medium where the default mode is for us to identify with the character, it’s a refreshing change to be told that the person we’re ostensibly controlling may not be entirely trustworthy. The first-person shooter Bioshock used it to devastating effect in its tale of a failed underwater utopia, experienced via the duplicitous voice of Andrew Ryan while the psychological horror game Heavy Rain famously pulled a character plot twist so audacious, some players could barely forgive the writers for their transgression.įirewatch is certainly more subtle than those examples, but it cleverly explores the conflicted emotions of its lead character, while allowing the player to maintain a skeptical distance.
![firewatch game journal firewatch game journal](https://images.gnwcdn.com/2017/articles/2017-07-07-22-52/firewatch_order_form.png)
Games have, of course, played with the literary device of the unreliable narrator for many years.
![firewatch game journal firewatch game journal](https://images.ctfassets.net/2lpsze4g694w/4E0yLIAU7qOtBQUbyzQsd9/6ad2b760376b3a84205de861ef14bc71/henry-julia.jpg)
(Spoiler alert: next paragraph contains Bioshock and Heavy Rain spoilers) Quietly and subtly, we are encouraged to ask questions about what’s really going on.
![firewatch game journal firewatch game journal](https://miro.medium.com/max/1170/1*0nKKA11aU5K-WbvIwTNYXg.jpeg)
A mini-text adventure at the beginning of the game tells us that his wife is very ill, he has come here to escape his life. But then, right from the start, we realise that Henry is in turmoil.