[Spoilers] disappointing ending / Your opinion

[[Juicy] Steak]

So from the very first beginning where delilah accidently left her microphone activated while talking off screen I was like "Woah ok there is something in the bushes here. Something about this is not right. Is it an expirement?"
Then later D. even said herself :"So you think it is an experiment to put two people out in the wildness?" I was "WOAH".
To make it short: The whole time the game built up a great atmosphere. It gives you the feeling that something creepy is going on and all the time you can't really say what D. is actually up to (imo). And then it comes to the ending.
Ok (SPOILER) it was ned that killed brian and that did all this stuff I was like "meh. Nope there is more". Then D. wanted to hurry and the game still had this great tension.
Then I stood in front of her tower and I knew "Ok in there there will be THE SECRET Something that gives me a moment of just pure "WTF". What will I find".
You climb up the stairs. No one there. ok. And the drawing says "What we know". That tbh gave me the feeling like ok there is more.
And then you finally talk to delilah AND:.

nothing.

just nothing. All this time the game built up to be "What is going on?!!". And srsly it was only ned?! Only a lonely creep?!. This is by far the mos disappointed ending I met in my last gaming years. And this is why my overall thoughts about this game get stomped into the ground.
And that you actually never see Delilah is pure crap I mean you even see Henry (in the credits) and on photos..

What is your opinion? Were mine too high?

[Mike ={JcC}=]

It's a while agho when i played this game, but i felt exactly the same as you. To be honest for me it was like "here is the moment when they run out of money to pay the author who wrote the story, and the intern had to wrap it up"

[[Juicy] Steak]

Originally posted by Mike ={JcC}=:

It's a while agho when i played this game, but i felt exactly the same as you. To be honest for me it was like "here is the moment when they run out of money to pay the author who wrote the story, and the intern had to wrap it up"

That sums it up pretty good. Also I now have the feeling that it makes allmost no change concerning what options you chose to say.e.g.: If you cheat on Julia or not does not change the ending I guess.

[Tew]

I don't mind the idea that it wasn't really a huge government conspiracy and it was reallly just nothing all along and it was only you blowing things out of proportion but like...the ending is just a wet fart. It doesn't end with heartbreak, it doesn't end with you flying over a helicopter looking at all the places you've been or with any kind of solid final scene or whatever it's just...nothing.

And I don't mind an open ending, even if at the end D was like "Maybe we can talk over drinks" if you chose the correct options for her it would have at least been SOMETHING. But instead it's nothing. I really enjoyed the game but I agree the ending wasn't great.

[Gordon Grievous]

I actually kind of liked it. This was a game based solidly in reality, and in reality there's not always a happy ending where you get the girl, or some sort of government conspiracy. You go on an adventure, and when it ends you move on with your life. Delilah said it herself that Henry should go back to his wife, which was the right thing to do.

[Kaden Auduin]

I partially felt the same as you op, but after finishing the game for the first time in one sitting last night, I took some time to think about it. I can understand the disappointment in the ending, however I think it stems more from we as consumers being used to happy endings, or having a story end in the way we expect. Firewatch on the other hand deals with some very real world issues. It's not just about a summer job as a firewatcher, but of a husband who has seen his wife slip away from him into early onset dementia. He's watched his wife spiral into an ever worsening condition and is helpless to do a thing about it, so in the end he runs away. Right or wrong, it's a very human reaction on his part.

When things start getting weird in the forest, and Henry doesn't understand what's going on, those feelings of being helpless, being out of control come slamming back down on him full force. Those feelings he was running away from, the reason he took the job in the first place, are right back in front of him. Even though it turns out to be a far less serious issue than he believes, the fear of the unknown, coupled with his past experience and a dash of ongoing solitude, makes him turn a molehill into a mountain as they say. Under the hood, Henry is dealing with much more than is right in front of him, whether he wants to acknoledge it or not.

Now we take into account Delilah, who has been at this job for many years. If you read the notes about her along the way, and get the right dialogue options, you find out she is borderline alcoholic and narcissistic, she has a boyfriend she's cheated on several times, a sister she doesn't get along with, and a strained past with her mother. Taking all that into account, she took the job for pretty much the same reason as Henry did. She basically wants to escape her own life.

During the story, she finds out that because of her need to escape, and unwillingness to do anything that takes her out of the comfortable little bubble she lives inside of during her summers working, a young boy died. She knows that if she had done what she was supposed to do, that child might very well still be alive. At the end of the story, the sheer weight of that guilt is crushing her under it's weight. She knows she'll never return to that job, and even states it in the dialouge.

So at the end of the story, we have a man who tried to run away from his problems, and at the end of the summer, is no further away from them than when he started, and a woman dealing with crippling amounts of guilt due to her not wanting to just deal with her own life, and take personal responsibility when it was obviously clear she should have. Taking all that into account, I do still think firewatch's story left a lot to be desired, not because it was a bad ending to the story, but because it was a very human and realistic ending.

In fact, it can probably be strongly argued, that it wasn't an ending at all, because we are left wondering what happened next. Life almost never wraps things up in a nice neat little bow, and neither did firewatch. What really happens to Henry and Delilah after the game ends? Does Henry go back to his wife? Does he keep running away from the problem? Does Delilah manage to move past the guilt that she feels? Or does she wind up putting down a fifth of whiskey one night, putting a gun in her mouth and pulling the trigger? These are all questions we'll probably know the answer to, and at the end of the day I think it's those unanswered questions, that not knowing, that has left such a bad taste in people's mouths. It's not a traditional video game ending and firewatch isn't exactly a traditional video game.

That's my two cents worth on the issue...take it as you will.

[etienne]

I agree with kaden auduin on the "borderline" aspect of Delilah. I believe she share some of the traits of the mental illness known as borderline personality: "history of unstable relationships" (own family, love relationships), "difficulty feeling empathy for others" (lied to to the police about the girls disapperance, did not wait for Henry at the end), "impulsivity" (wanted to burn down the research camp), "feelings of isolation boredom and emptiness" (always on close contact with henry...), "persistent fear of abandonment and rejection" (... while at the same time keeping him at a distance). I wonder if the development team had that in mind when they created Delilah. Well if so, they did a great job!

[Agima]

I liked it the way it is.

Make no mistake, we ALL would have liked that other conclusion with Henry and Delilah, myself included.

But in our present time, where all games offers us many choices to lead to tailored ending, it's nice to have something else.

For me (and I kinda knew it before playing), Firewatch game is like a book. And like a book, you read it and at some point you really hoped or wished that this or that did or didn't happen, and the more you got to the end, you hoped (or not) that it would or not end like it did. You couldn't do anything about it. I was written like that.

Like the books, Firewatch was like that too. A kind of reminder that like in real life, things doesn't always go the way you want.

[Duxa]

I just finished the game, was in my backlog... I enjoyed the journey but was really disapointed by the ending. I wanted some closure with Julia. Even if a sad one.

[romache]

It's a beautiful ending. It seems that people who complain about it are way too deep in the mainstream culture.

[Ryuu]

shallow ending, only one ending (okay, 1.5 if that alternative one is not a plain oversight), no replayability.

[[Juicy] Steak]

Originally posted by romache:

It's a beautiful ending. It seems that people who complain about it are way too deep in the mainstream culture.

As I tried to make clear it is mainly disappointing bc the game acts all the time as it would build up something completls different plus ur choices barely matter

[Ryuu]

Originally posted by Juicy Steak:

plus ur choices barely matter

^ This! All your choices only change small text bits, that's all.

[Lodis]

Originally posted by Ryuu:

Originally posted by Juicy Steak:

plus ur choices barely matter

^ This! All your choices only change small text bits, that's all.

Yeah, but there was one important choice in Firewatch which changed " my " Ending .... i found and heroically saved the turtle Turt Reynolds from a bush fire

[Ryuu]

Yeap apart from optional missable things which are all included in achievements — but still can't call those long-going choices
I guess with bigger budget those devs could really make some greater stuff comparable to Portal 2 storyline-wise for example (which is totally linear as well, but at least no illusionary choices).

Heard they're working for Valve now, let's see if it was worth it.

[[Juicy] Steak]

Originally posted by Ryuu:

Yeap apart from optional missable things which are all included in achievements — but still can't call those long-going choices :hee:
I guess with bigger budget those devs could really make some greater stuff comparable to Portal 2 for example storyline-wise (which is totally linear as well, but at least no illusionary choices).

Heard they're working for Valve now, let's see if it was worth it.

Idk stories of mel for example is a not valve-made mod is insanely good! Seriously it could be named "Portal: Part 2" and no one would notice, that it isnt valve made.

Not being a big player, doesnt have to mean something but I get your point.