Firewatch is a pretty damn gorgeous game, with a distinctive art style that makes the most of its wilderness setting. Playing through the story was a rather guided experience though. You could wander off the beaten path a little, but you weren’t given free reign over where to go and when. That changes with the free-roam mode, which lets you wander off and explore to your heart’s content, with a dynamic 24-hour clock that has the sun and moon taking turns to crawl across the sky.
This was included in the Xbox One version of the game from day one, but has now been added to PlayStation 4 and Steam.
The patch also rolls in enhancements for the PlayStation 4 Pro that is out today. Playing on a 1080p display, level of detail distance has been increased, loading times have been smoothed out and shadows are of higher quality. Playing on a 4K display, the game is now rendered at 1440p while the overlaid with a 4K UI.
Anyone planning on heading back to got watch some fires?
bunimomike
Feel like it’s very much a single play through for me so “no”, I won’t be returning. However, lovely updates for anyone coming to the game for the first time. :-)
homerjnick
Is this much the same as Everyone Has Gone To Rapture? Because that was a great looking “game” but utterly pointless…basically a lesson in how to hold forward on your joystick for a few hours.
JR.
Much better IMO. They should have called that game Everybody’s Gone To Bed Because It’s So Goddamn Boring. Although I think maybe I just wasn’t in the right mood that day to be fair.
Firewatch is different because you’re constantly communicating with a mysterious woman on your walkie talkie, who guides and accompanies you throughout the story. You don’t really know what the hell is going on or who to trust. I loved it. Plus its one of the most gorgeous looking games ever.
double-o-dave
Everybody’s Gone To Bed would be an understatement.
I wasted about an hour of my life wandering around a village doing… well, nothing. Took me about 2 minutes just to walk to the bottom of a garden to be welcomed by a locked shed door, then another 2 minutes to walk back to where I was which was also pointless.
In fact, it took forever to walk to anywhere, even though anywhere, wherever it was, was pointless too!
What made it worse was the same push bike was everywhere – could you ride it – NO!
I would’ve actually preferred to listen to Rapture by Blondie on repeat for an hour.
tactical20
I played through this hoping for an exciting ending with an eerie twist and instead was utterly disappointed, lol! Couldn’t recommend it tbh. The glitchy framerate was annoying too. Missed a couple of easy trophies in my playthrough. Wonder if I can go back and get them in free roam? Pick up a baby turtle and listen to a cassette tape, or something dumb like that. I actually found the tape near the end of the game, but didn’t have the option to listen to it anymore, which was rather bullshit.
tactical20
Downloaded update, and no you can’t go back and get missed trophies. In fact in freeroam you don’t have an axe or rope, so loads of areas are inaccessible. This is particularly stupid, as freeroam only unlocks on completion of the game. There goes another GB of completely wasted space on my HDD.