Henry takes a summer job manning a fire tower in a remote national forest in Wyoming. For the next three months, he's on his own. Just him, and the bears, and the drunk college girls messing with fireworks. Oh, and Delilah, the woman manning a tower to the north. At night, Henry can see the lights from his tower, though it's her voice he'll become very familiar with, and she's contacting him over the radio all the time. As it turns out, there may be more people in the woods than Henry knows.
Firewatch is people running from their pasts. The game starts with Henry making his way to his tower, interspersed with text describing the course of his relationship with his wife. Though you can choose between options in certain cases - the first thing you said to her, what kind of dog you get - it all leads to the same place. Early onset dementia for her, and a flight to a remote fire tower for Henry.
Most of the game is you talking with Delilah while you wander your section of forest on one task or another. Or, depending on how you play it, Delilah talking at you, while you wander your section of forest on one task or another. The game gives you anywhere from one to three responses depending on the situation, but there's also a time limit to respond, so "silence" is also an option.
The game will point when you've reached something Henry finds noteworthy or confusing, - aspens, an abandoned backpack, beer cans - and you can contact Delilah to report it, if you want. The third time through I triggered a dialogue where Delilah mentioned how some firewatchers talk all the time. When Henry asks if she means him (because not all Henry's dialogue is chosen by you), she confirms it. So the fourth time around, I gave her the silent treatment. I only reported what the game required to advance the story. (Also, there was one time she was freaking out thinking I committed arson, and it got annoying enough I finally replied to shut her up.) Likewise, I withheld any personal information about Henry. In that playthrough, Delilah knows, or assumes she knows, that I'm running from something or someone, but doesn't know who or why.
I also, on that last playthrough, tried to withhold the truth of what I found in the cave from Delilah. I thought that would have been an interesting choice, to just leave it there, a secret held by two people that have never conversed, or really even met, and will never meet again. The game wouldn't allow that, refusing to advance until you told her.
When I started playing, a coworker said the game really messes with your head. I didn't have that experience. I think, after Henry got clocked on the skull, and I realized it wasn't something I could avoid, I stopped worrying. It felt like, whatever happened was unavoidable, so it was pointless to stress. No matter how close I am to my tower when Delilah reports there's someone up there, I can't catch them in the act. Also, I replayed the game to try playing differently in terms of how immediately I completed objectives, or how forthright I was with Delilah, to see if I could change the behavioral report you find in the latter stages of the game. It didn't work, which increased the feeling of being on rails.
(Somewhere, the obnoxious Uber-Narrator from that one ending of The Stanley Parable DeLuxe Edition is yelling at me that all the choices are illusions and I should go outside. It's friggin' cold out there, lady!)
I probably should have taken more time to just wander. You can only go so far in any direction before you hit terrain the game won't let you climb or cross, but whatever objective you've got will keep. You're not going to be killed by a puma if you dick around in the woods too long, the story simply won't advance until you finish that objective. If you want to take a bunch of photos of the lake with the disposable camera you found before checking if the firefighters are at the old campground, do it. Doing extra exploring was how I found my pet turtle!
The game gives you the option to push for a romantic relationship between Henry and Delilah, but I never felt comfortable with that. He's still married, even if it's unclear how often his wife remembers who he is. I'm of the opinion Henry needs to sort that first. Considering how commitment-phobic Delilah seems, it doesn't look like a great plan anyway. Both of them, as well as the "third man", out in the woods, are trying to hide from things they don't want to face, but it's not going to work. Even if you keep running, the past follows along.
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