Several recent movies have been set in Wyoming. Now, the state stars in a video game, too.
Firewatch is a first person adventure game from San Francisco studio Campo Santo. It’s a mystery thriller set in the Shoshone National Forest in 1989, a year after the Yellowstone fires. Co-creators, Nels Anderson and Sean Vanaman, both grew up in Wyoming and wanted to capture a sense of the state’s vast wilderness.
The plot revolves around the complicated relationship between two protagonists, fire lookouts Delilah and Henry. Game designer and programmer Nels Anderson says every interaction and dialogue choice the player makes impacts the outcome of the game.
"If the game was literally just doing the job of a fire lookout it would be incredibly dull. Obviously, the game is definitely kind of like a mystery thriller, so we’re being a bit coy about the meat of what’s going on. The basic idea is that you spend a lot of time traversing the wilderness, talking to Delilah about the things that are going on, and just trying to figure out what is happening."
The widely anticipated game has been two and half years in the making and has been highly reviewed for it's visuals, writing, and voice acting. Anderson says he hopes players experience a real connection to the characters.
"If it ends up being that Henry and Delilah end up feeling like people you just want to go down to the bar and get a beer with, if that’s how things end up feeling at the end, I think we’ll be pretty happy with what we pulled off."
Firewatch is out now on PlayStation and PC.
