In 2014, Governor Rick Scott was suspended from the stage after learning that his Democratic opponent, former Gov. Charlie Crist, had a small electric fan underneath his lectern. In 2016, Gamergate brutally harassed a Nintendo employee, targeting her on social media and accusing her of pedophilia. Conspiracy theories are often seen as laughable, but they can be dangerous in times of global political turmoil and COVID-19. In Firewatch, the game’s most famous ending is a viral rallying cry.
The Watergate Scandal, one of the biggest scandals in American history, has lent its name to every scandal going forward. From political upheavals to anxieties about sex, technology, and women, conspiracy theories can tell us a lot about what’s going on in our societies and how to address them. Over 150 Republicans who supported former President Donald Trump’s false claim that he defeated Joe Biden two years ago were elected to the United States.
Conspiracy theories have become more mainstream in video games, with many people attracted to conspiracies because of their ability to weave plot and game play in such a way that players are motivated to finish. The art lies in weaving plot and game play in such a way that players are motivated to finish, not just for the sake of blasting away the bad.
In reality, the community and moderators quickly shut down the idea of conspiracists being self-involved, paranoid idiots. Players are left to wonder whether they should follow suit and guess that the Evil Corporation is in on the conspiracy. Both end-states seem wrong for players, as conspiracists could always add more content and fact-checkers could help.
📹 7 ‘Bad’ Endings That Were Undeniably Cooler
Games with multiple endings often include a ‘bad’ ending to make you feel bad about the bad job you did. But you might not even …
Which game will never end?
MojoPlays has compiled a list of 10 games that will never get a proper conclusion. The list includes the “Half-Life” series (1998-2020), “The Order: 1886”, the “Mortal Kombat” series (1992-), and the “Gears of War” series (2006-19).
The “Assassin’s Creed” series (2007-) has been criticized for overstaying its welcome, with some even having a trilogy where the series didn’t feel like the same. The problem is that the series is often released without a proper ending, making it feel like Call of Duty without a clear end.
The “Sly Cooper” series (2002-13) had a satisfying ending with the third game, “Honor Among Thieves”, where heroes and rivals team up to defeat a greater evil. However, the game “Thieves in Time” left the story open as it ended on a cliffhanger, causing fans to be upset. It has been over a decade since “Thieves in Time”, and Sly’s story remains open as he wanders the deserts of Ancient Egypt.
To address this issue, Sony could ask Sucker Punch Productions to revisit the IP one more time so the story can close on a satisfying note.
Who is the saddest game character?
The Boss, Booker DeWitt, Dom Santiago, Sarah Kerrigan, Lee Everett, and Mordin Solus are some of the most tragic characters in the gaming world. These characters, known for their depth of human emotion, offer heart-wrenching tales of grief, redemption, and sacrifice. Other characters, such as Ronan O’Connor, Arthur Morgan, and Mordin Solus, explore themes of regret, forgiveness, and the pursuit of peace and justice. Lee Everett, Sarah Kerrigan, Dom Santiago, Booker DeWitt, and The Boss leave a lasting impact by delving into the complexities of loyalty, loss, and the power of choice.
These characters have left an indelible mark on the gaming landscape, evoking emotions of sorrow, empathy, and contemplation. Each entry in this list unveils a captivating and heart-wrenching tale, exploring themes of love, betrayal, and the fragility of the human condition.
Has a game ever ended in 0 0?
According to Pro Football Reference, 73 games in the history of professional American football have resulted in a 0-0 tie, with the most recent occurrence occurring nearly eight decades ago. The most recent occurrence of a 0-0 tie in the National Football League (NFL) took place on November 7, 1943, when the Detroit Lions hosted the New York Giants at Briggs Stadium. This was attributable to the reduction in the number of players on the two teams during the Second World War, with a significant proportion of the players being deployed overseas.
Is gaming good for mental health?
Gaming can be an efficacious method for maintaining mental health, providing a respite from the pressures of daily life and affording individuals the opportunity to acquire new competencies and sustain social connections. However, excessive gaming can result in the formation of unhealthy habits, which may necessitate a reevaluation of one’s gaming habits. The objective is to assist individuals in engaging with gaming in a manner that is conducive to their well-being.
What are 3 reasons video games are bad for you?
Excessive gaming can negatively impact relationships, education, career, sleep, mental and physical health, stress, maladaptive coping, and other important life areas. Video game addiction is linked to personality traits such as low self-esteem, low self-efficacy, attention problems, impulsivity, aggression, anxiety, and depression. In severe cases, gamers have even died from gaming addiction due to exhaustion, insomnia, stress, malnutrition, and dehydration.
Each individual has their unique experience with gaming and its impact on their mental health. A 2019 survey found that around 80 percent of gamers found video games helpful for mental stimulation, relaxation, and stress relief, while others felt they contributed to or worsened stress, depression, and anxiety. Prioritizing mental health while gaming should be a priority.
How long should a 14 year old play video games per day?
The American Academy of Pediatrics advises children to limit screen-based entertainment to two hours per day. Parents should create a “media plan” that limits video game time without affecting behavior or homework. Gaming systems should be kept out of bedrooms, have a digital curfew, and be kept away from the dinner table. Setting clear expectations and limits about gaming during after-school hours is crucial to ensure a child’s time for school work, friends, chores, or conversation doesn’t get pushed out. Monitoring a child’s gaming habits is also essential, as studies have shown that playing violent games can lead to less empathy and unsafe behaviors.
What game has the saddest ending?
Video game endings can be both bittersweet and devastating, often leaving players emotionally moved. Some games, such as Prey, Red Dead Redemption 2, Professor Layton: The Unwound Future, Red Dead Redemption, The Last Of Us Part II, Inside, Halo: Reach, and Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season One, have left players in tears with their tragic finales. These games are meant to be fun, but sometimes developers choose to give players an ending that falls somewhere between bittersweet and devastating.
Some of the games that left players emotional, distraught, and possibly in tears include Prey, Red Dead Redemption 2, Professor Layton: The Unwound Future, Red Dead Redemption, The Last of Us Part II, Inside, Halo: Reach, and Telltale’s The Walking Dead: Season One.
What is bad ending in video games?
An unfavorable conclusion is reached when a player makes an erroneous selection, fails to achieve a designated objective, or fails to obtain essential items. Such endings were prevalent in classic video games and gained popularity due to their unsettling and frightening nature. On occasion, the game does not provide clear instructions, as evidenced in Entry 25. Such conclusions are uncommon in contemporary video games.
Which game has the saddest ending?
Video games can be emotionally powerful, and a sad ending can leave a lasting impression on players. A good ending helps put the events of the story into another context and helps fans remember the game and its story in a more positive light. It is important to have an ending that caps off a wonderful journey and justifies the many hours invested in a game.
Despite players demanding the highest quality standards and high expectations, some of the saddest endings in video games end up being executed to perfection, making these games more memorable than ever. The holy matrimony of narrative and gameplay is what most video game players seek out, as the immersive medium of gaming allows players to get immersed in a way that movies and TV shows cannot. What truly makes a video memorable is when it sticks the landing, and this is especially true in the case of games with sad endings that leave players with a sense of melancholic satisfaction.
What is the most disliked game ever?
Big Rigs, an adult adventure game, has been criticized for its monotonous gameplay, poor puzzle designs, low-quality graphics, voice acting, English translation, and childish humor. It has the lowest aggregate score of any video game, with an 8/100 on Metacritic and 3. 83 on GameRankings. The game was split from Midnight Race Club by GameMill Publishing, which initially sought to release only one racing game stock keeping unit.
Lula 3D, an adult adventure game, has been criticized for its monotonous gameplay, poor puzzle designs, low-quality graphics, voice acting, English translation, and low-brow humor. It received an aggregate score of 28 from 14 reviews on Metacritic. In 2013, Polygon cited Lula 3D and other “low-brow” pornographic games as a factor in the mainstream video game industry’s general non-acceptance of adult video games. In 2017, GamesRadar+ ranked Lula 3D as the 44th worst game of all time, arguing that the game’s lack of fun is rivalled only by its lack of respectable clothing.
Jolt Online Gaming gave Lula 3D a 1. 8 out of 10 for making “every mistake that can possibly be made by the designers of a 3D adventure”, criticizing its poorly-implemented controls and camera, tedious gameplay, and voice actors compared to people auditioning to be a phone sex operator. Jolt concluded that Lula 3D is not for those who enjoy good games or sexual humor.
📹 Games with unsatisfying endings.
This video is about Firewatch. 🙂 Support me on Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=74033438 Join the discord: …
I used to think Firewatch had a bad ending, not meeting Delilah after all that seemed kind of frustrating. But after all these years, the ending makes more sense. Henry was trying to find a escape. With Delilah, he found that. But both of them were just running away. You can’t always run away from your problems. Someday you’ll have to face them. It’s a powerful ending no matter how off-putting it felt.
Man, I loved this game so much. Being able to navigate around the Forrest and solving a mystery. The conversation. The sadness. It wasn’t a bad ending. This game made me rethink the types of games I really enjoy. If it wasn’t for What Remains of Edith Finch, I would have never have found this game. Both are just fantastic.
This article made me realise that the whole game was isolating. That you never got to interact in person with any character. Whether it was Delilah, seeing the teens have fun, the veteran. It’s like you’re the one that has to navigate through the grief, and no one is there to help you through it. It’s you and you alone to save yourself
I loved that Firewatch was happy to be such a specific, emotional experience. Having Delilah run from the responsibility and pressure of meeting you in person mirrors your own running away from your wife’s problems. The reality you didn’t want to or weren’t able to face. The emptiness at the end of the game hit like a hammer and I wish there were more that took those swings.
I actually really liked the ending to Firewatch. It feels so real, that a man wrapped in guilt, trying to escape a life he can’t cope with would want to get swept up in some grand mystery in the middle of nowhere. The fact that it turned out to be nothing, and the main “villain” being a man just like Hank was really impactful. Even not being able to see Delilah at the end made sense realistically
When I played Firewatch, the ending actually affected me. Because I didn’t get to meet her or see her, That stayed with me, because I as the player, really felt something for these characters. I went to bed, and my dreams did the rest. I dreamed that as I was escaping the Fire, I saw her there, at the end, as I reached her tower, she was there at the base of it… With the dream, Firewatch was on my mind for a solid week, before I finally let it go. It was such an emotional ride, that I’ll never forget. Recently I tried replaying the game, but after about the midway point, I gave up. There was nothing left… It was like walking through a grave yard. Speaking with her again, felt empty…. Definitely the strangest experience I’ve had with a game.
I feel like this article really accentuates the difference between an unsatisfying ending and a bad one. Bad endings leave you with a bitter taste in your mouth, like your time would’ve been better spend doing basically anything else than playing this game. Often, they don’t make sense or are just… lazy. Uplifting or depressing, regardless they just feel wrong. Unsatisfying endings, like that in Firewatch, are well-crafted and grounded in the reality of the game. While they don’t wrap everything up with a bow and feel-good emotions, they still feel good. Fitting. Rewarding, in a strange way, despite not being what you might’ve wanted.
The ending to Borderlands is much better than I remember. You were one of the first to make it to the core of the compound around the vault. Eons before that ancient race was so advanced that none would ever break their security. Until now. And that security wasn’t to protect a weapon. It was to protect the universe FROM a weapon. The destroyer was almost ethereal. A being from a higher dimension that thinks only of consumption, and gains the attributes of all it consumes. But by accident the ancient Eridians made exactly what was needed to kill it. It was forced to be in our dimension, and play by it’s rules to feed. It was mortal. It’s just sad the explanation that made it better was in future games.
One of the things I found fascinating about Firewatch is Ned & Brian’s story is actually spaced in the drops and there are enough clues that you can put together what happened before going into the cave. While I do wish that the mystery sub-plot had a better ending, Henry and Delilah’s story HAD to end that way. (Though the secret end where Henry lets the fire consume him is a valid option as an ending with the mental state he is in.) He’s still married to his wife and very clearly loves her, he just doesn’t know what to do when it comes to her care. Yes, things can get flirty if you let it, but if you only have one person to talk to for almost 3 months, you are going to be close. Henry is a man running from his problems, from his grief. Until he processes that, Delilah made the right choice to stay away. That is what makes Firewatch such an amazing game.
“There was nothing on that mountain that mountain that could possibly satisfy the hole left inside of him, no answer to his suffering.” There actually is something up there that can heal Henry’s pain. There’s an alternate ending, and all you have to do is… well, it’s the title of the game. Just watch the fire instead of getting on the helicopter. I personally find this a lot more satisfying of an ending, imagining the pilot radioing this back in, that you refused to board, imagining this information being relayed to Delilah, imagining Henry becoming another ghost of the mountain. It’s really the last and only decision you can make that gives Henry some agency.
Your segment about the cod ending really resonated with me. There’s this otome called even if: TEMPEST, where the main character suffers so much pain and agony at the hands of her family and continues to suffer throughout the story, sometimes still because of them even after escaping their grasp. At the ending of the game, the player is presented with much the same choice, and again the revenge option is the wrong one. Only there is no consequence to taking your revenge within canon, and the abusers face no consequences if you choose not to kill them. One of the main themes of the game is that the main character is desperately seeking power to be able to fight back against these people, and once you have it, you’re not allowed to use it without the game breaking the plot to force a bad ending. It feels horribly unjust and unsatisfying, because even if the moral is the good ol’ “the best revenge is letting go and living well”, you are actively letting a criminal get away with their crimes and have lost your main motive for even getting this far. Edit: Oh, and there is genuinely no satisfaction to be had in the revenge-taking. Your abuser is portrayed as this cocky, untouchable person even in their last moments. Edit 2: Thinking back on it, all I truly know is that the revenge ending ends up in execution, and the non-revenge ending might have had them imprisoned (which would be fine by me), but if the game doesn’t mention it I’m not making it up for them.
Firewatch’s ending and story has stayed with me for so long precisely because of its “anticlimactic” finale. As you said, the vet staying in the woods mirrors Henry’s desire to escape from the tragedy of his real life. The idea that the government is spying on 2 random people is easier for him to deal with then his wife’s Dimentia is heart breaking and feels very real. Great Essay! Happy youtube recommended you. Subscribed.
I was in my mid twenties when firewatch came out. I remember playing it at or around release and just really feeling disappointment with the ending. I look back at it now, seven years later, and it’s kind of crazy how much more I appreciate it. When I was younger, I wanted to believe everything I had been through in my life, all my personal suffering, meant something. Firewatch begs the question that some things just… happen. There is no greater purpose or reason or meaning. Life just occurs sometimes. And you can rage and fight, putting together every combination of the pieces to try and form a coherent whole or you can just accept it, take your licks and move forwards with your life.
I’m actually somewhat relieved to hear that there wasn’t a “good ending” I missed out on in Firewatch. I thought I had somehow caused the “bad ending” with my dialogue choices. (SPOILERS) I was even pretty sure it was because of that time when we hear her talking to someone else over a hot mic. I figured it was only bait to sound like she was talking about me and I didn’t care even if she was, anyway. My final interpretation of the situation was that she was probably just radioing another tower somewhere and talking about someone else. With that in mind, I chose to ask who she was talking to. My thinking was that she was about to tell me about another colleague I hadn’t met, which would have been interesting. I was just trying to make friendly conversation; I didn’t mean it in a jealous or prying way at all, but she reacted pretty negatively and there was no way to backpedal or explain myself. I was always worried that that was why she decided not to wait and say goodbye in person, so it’s nice to hear that she wouldn’t have come no matter what.
i’m not sure if anyone still remembers this game, but presentable liberty is the epitome of an unsatisfying ending. not because the ending is poor, but because it leaves you completely hopeless. you were the cure, trapped inside of the only room which could ever grant you peace and freedom, but unfortunately you learned these things just a day late.
I believe the thematically best unsatisfying ending in any game was the one in Kane & Lynch 2: Dog Days. The game is centered around the fact that you, the player, are both the cameramen and the puppeteer, filming and controlling two broken and unreedemable sociopaths struggle for survival against the entirety of Shangai underworld in the span of 48 hours of pure hell; it’s kill or be killed and the only thing you do for 4 hours is shooting your way out increasingly desperate and hopeless situations; the only purpose to such violence is to escape Shangai. In the end you shoot up an airport and rush to a departing airliner, Kane & Lynch hijack the plane, leaving you the cameramen behind, the plane takes off and the cameramen hastily turns off the camera, they have escaped for now and the Dog Days are over, the two men literally escape the story and there is nothing more to be filmed, cut to black and the credits roll, for the entirety of the game you only heard deafening gunfire, our characters swearing and the inhuman droning of the soundtrack only to be met with a calm chinese love ballad. All the bodies you piled up were purposeless, all the violence inferted and subjected meaningless, it is a game truly about how the banality of evil, and i can’t stop thinking about it.
Thank you for this. I played Firewatch when it first came out — which feels like a lifetime ago but was apparently as recent as 2016 — and my abiding memory of it has always been how bitterly disappointing I found the ending. After loving the game so much and finding it so refreshing and engaging, the ending left such a bad taste that it kind of ruined the entire game for me retroactively and killed off any desire I may have had to revisit it, and consequently I haven’t really thought about the game since. Your article has not only reminded me of what I loved about it and allowed me to relive a story I otherwise wouldn’t have, but also did such a good job of explaining and contextualising the ending that I now feel a little silly for responding to it as negatively as I did. It’s really given me a new perspective on the game — I may end up replaying it after all. I looked up Campo Santo to see what they’ve done since. Apparently they were subsumed by Valve in 2018, and though they were at one point working on a title called In the Valley of Gods, all mention of that game has now been scrubbed. Other than Half-Life: Alyx, Valve has apparently decided that Campo Santo’s creative storytelling prowess is best put to use working on auto-battler Dota Underlords, and… Steam. I love the games industry.
You’re absolutely right. The ending of firewatch felt so bad in the moment, but it made the game even more memorable. The more I think about it, the better I think it was. It hits you right in the feels, but not in the sense we’re used to. If I recall correctly Gone Home did something similar and was the game that originally led me to play Firewatch. It’s also just a gorgeous game with great voice acting.
Someone pointed out that given some context clues Delilah was bored and was using the veteran guy to mess with Henry but it went completely ass backwards when they discovered the dudes deceased child at the bottom of the cave and Delilah panicked and that’s why she left you at the end because she was too guilty and felt responsible for both the death of a child and the manipulation of Henry and she felt like she couldn’t face him and left meanwhile the veteran still not wanting to face the loss of his kid or society just retreated deeper into the park either dying in the fire or finding a new hiding spot
I’m so glad the article took the course it took. The expectation setting was great and I agree with your end point. That’s what grief is. I too, always wondered why people were compelled to make that type of story/ending. After experiencing my first big grief in life 1 year ago, I began to notice how much of media I love is filled with grief. Or, actually, how much of the world is surrounded by it. Built upon it. Thanks for this article.
Firewatch reply upset me when I finished it. As I let it sit, as i slept on it, I came to the same realization you did. Namely, that this is a reflection of real life. Grief doesn’t go away because you figure out what’s going on, or because you beat the bad guy, or because you escaped. That gratification was missing. It was sad. I felt robbed. I was confused. Much like Henry did. But life went on. This lesson, that a story doesn’t have to be gratifying or satisfying too be beautiful and worth the telling or hearing, dramatically shaped my outlook on the media I consume, and how I deal with big emotions like grief. Basically, do the best you can as you keep on living, and look for the beauty in what you had while you had it.
I cried during Ned’s monologue when I played the game. Not just because of that but the culmination of everything. The soundtrack is definitely part of it, it’s so expertly crafted and perfectly tells you how you should feel at any point in the story. It’s one of the few games that made me forget I was playing a article game.
Man, I kind of had a similar experience with Cyberpunk 2077, in that an unsatisfying ending actually was more emotionally impactful. I went with the Arasaka ending, and most people hated it, but based on how I had played my corpo V it was so fitting. It was depressing, and unsatisfying, but it worked so well. Great article, definitely subscribed.
I have no idea how to feel about this. I feel conflicted. On one hand, yes this is art. Its beautiful in how unsatisfying it is and how it meticulously creates these layers on intrigue only to let it all fall down. That is just beautiful. But on the other, i hate it. I hate this sort of thing and hate that it’ll stick with me forever. Chilidish or not, those good satisfying endings are better than what this offered me. And yet, I can’t help but feel like this leans towards cynicism (which is the worstest thing by the way). Maybe thats just my emotions getting in the way of my critical thinking, but who cares. And after looking through my own feelings and thoughts I feel like a certain game does it best. Far : Lone Sails is a game where you’re trying to get from point A to Point B. Plain and simple, using a sort of vehicle in order to do so. You get upgrades as you get further and encounter jaw-dropping sites all without knowing what your goal is. You see abandoned houses and deserted areas, making you believe that you’re the last one left. And eventually, boom, your vehichle is completely cut in half. Unable to use fuel, you use the sail upgrade to slowly make your way to the end, opening and closing the sail to literally balance the vehichle on one wheel. And once you get there, its just a tower with a contraption on top. You put some fuel in, and it lights a fire. Thats it, a journey to just light a fire. But as the camera goes out, and night roles in, I realized something that cured my attitude.
What Firewatch helped me with was the idea that while good times don’t last forever, neither does the pain of them. The whole story was in some ways about Henry overcoming that burden and letting go of his fears while also not forgetting them. I don’t think it’s childish to have wish-fulfillment endings but to argue they are the only true ending to every story doesn’t fit the picture for every story told. I don’t really feel it’s a void ending like you described. That to me just feels like it was attempting to leave the interpretation up to the person.
A small thing I noticed: I like how you can view the Chapters in any order you want. Only the Firewatch ones are connected in some way. The rest can be viewed out of order. I’ve never seen a article like this before. It’s a nice refresher from the articles where you’re forced to see Chapters in a certain order or else you’ll get confused as to what happens in it. Here though? It’s a small-scale article about disappointing endings. Just that. There doesn’t need to be a grand narrative that ties everything together or hidden codes or messages that leads to something else. This is a simple article made for people like me that just want to sit back and relax without worrying about everything. I think that’s pretty cool.
What I felt about the ending of Firewatch was that none of the doubts I had about Delilah or the government spying on them were actually erased. With the heli ride at the end, I was still wondering if Delilah might have been spying on me for other reasons than her own curiosity. I think this sort of story writing in games helps the player become more mature, by forcing them to realize that life doesn’t always have a clear end to any given situation. It teaches us to deal with unresolved emotions, among other things that are painfully bound to what being human is about…
Fire watch had a great end for me, it entered the character as someone in the middle of his life with a mid life crisis, then we get to see his brief break from it all, then after that his life will go on away from the player. Felt really good for me, kind of having a sense of your never really gonna know the end of a certain situation in life.
For me, endings like Firewatch’s feel like they help me process things better. I get to sit there and introspect. Happy endings may be nice for escapism, but they just make me feel worse about any major problems in my own life. I can’t expect to have things just work out perfectly like that. A lot of times, unsatisfying endings have some amount of finality or some narrative catharsis that you don’t always get in real life. I also find myself taken out of the story with happy endings like I’m jarred out of the narrative because I don’t think those perfect moments last long. With endings that aren’t perfect, there’s usually a somewhat pleasant melancholy (which I know not everyone gets). A sort of permission to be sad in a society that overemphasizes positivity to the point where it can sometimes be toxic. So yeah, I tend to find mixed endings more appealing than unilaterally positive or negative ones.
To me, the reason why I liked the Firewatch ending and hated TLoU2 ending is because in Firewatch, you still feel like you accomplished something. Like you said, it wasn’t the ending we were hoping for, but it was A ending. We got to the bottom of the mystery, so imho, it was a good ending. We know that the bad stuff that has happened to Henry will still be right there, waiting to greet him, but sometimes, life is just like that, you know? Sometimes life just sucks. And in Henry’s case, it sucks mostly because of things out of his control. In TLoU2, on the other hand, it’s frustrating because the things that make Ellie’s ending such a shitty ending are a result of her own choices, and you don’t ever get to make those choices for her. And we as the player are supposed to take the consequences of her own choices, while never being allowed a saying in those choices. She set out to avenge Joel, she killed half of the world to get in a position where she could finally have her revenge, and in the end…. she didn’t. Because, after leaving piles and piles of bodies behind her, she wanted to “stop the cycle of violence and revenge”. And at the end of the story, she lost Joel, she lost Dina, she lost their baby and she lost her fookin fingers, as well as the ability to play the guitar, consequently. Firewatch’s ending might be unsatisfying because people wanted a different resolution to the mystery, or to meet Delilah in person, and they might be right, but at least we know that the devs gave our boy Henry an okay ending.
Jesus Christ Firewatch made me feel alive and concious of the people & time slipping by. I’m not sure weather i would wanna play this game again for the first time or not at all to begin with… it gives the same feeling you have when your pet dies and you thinks to yourself you will never be ready again to get another pet. Anyways i’m glad i played this game and found your article years later.
Dude you’re one of my fav essayists on YouTube. You’re so creative not only in the topics you cover, but how you present them and the emotion you can invoke. I love how you broke up Firewatch’s story with the stories of other games all culminating in a satisfying ending. As contrary as that is to the topic of the article lol
I think that firewatch is definitely more of a game that wants to be more real with you than a lot of other games. It was more about getting to the end and realizing its not some crazy game with aliens or crazy government bs. It’s just a journey through the emotions of people. People who have hopes, dreams, regrets, guilt and so on. It is an empty ending. That loses all of its mystery. Its more like watch a mystery movie set in a real world senario. However i only don’t knock the end immediately because there is no sequel, and it ends the way it begins. Lonley but hopeful. Such a weird way to end but its kinda nice to have a game hit you with the empty numbing unfeeling loneliness. Could have been better but i see why it ends this way. Nice article, btw great editing and topic. Really kept me perusal.
I honestly barely even had the hope of actually meeting Delilah in the game. I feel like games with no mirrors or any visible characters outside of your hands have become way too obvious in the fact that the devs didnt make any character models (at least for close up conversation). Thats fine except when a game is trying to make you think youre going to meet someone face to face.
After perusal this I realize how much I can relate to the characters of fire watch. It’s weirdly comforting to know that something out there can describe my actions so accurately. From being lost and lonely to escaping into the wilderness and distracting myself and finally coming home and realizing that all the things I left behind are still waiting there for me. The only thing that really kept moving was time.
I think that firewatch’s ending thematically made alot of sense. I finished the game and really wanted more. A different ending where we catch the bad guy and save the day. New secrets with more lore hints. And I played throught the game again, picking different dialogue choices and it still ended exactly the same. I expected the game to be like an undertale shtick where dialogue choices mattered, but it didn’t really. It kinda makes sense though, because realistically if any of us were put in that situation we would be just as useless. That’s just how it be sometimes. Great article as always, keep it up!
The ending that felt most unsatisfying in a game for me was Danganronpa v3. The reveal at the end felt so mean-spirited toward fans of the series, making you wonder if any of it—the hours you put into this game and the previous ones—was worth it at all. A lot of games have unsatisfying endings, but few have outright mean ones. Great article.
Great article. I ended up gaining a new perspective on Firewatch, a deeper understanding of the emptiness I felt after rhe credits rolled. However, respectively, I have to disagree about the inclusion of Part 2, as, unlike with Firewatch, Ghosts n’ Goblins, and COD Black Ops 1 and 2, the contradiction of Ellie’s motivations at the end, which aren’t really consistent with the narrative, don’t just illicit a feeling of emptiness within the player, but also hollow out the game itself in the end. When the writers had the opportunity to go all the way and commit to the character they created, they faltered; they couldn’t muster up the courage to pull the trigger. To commit to a logically consistent dark tone. If the writers couldn’t trust us to make that choice or simply wanted a linear experience, like the developers of Ghosts n’ Goblins, they should’ve gone all the way, showing the true extent of revenge and its consequences. I mean, think about it: Had Ellie gone through with drowning Abbie on that shore, seeing the former back at the farm house, two fingers missing, and no family, we would’ve seen the consequences of her decisions in full. Yet, because she sought mercy, or some form of redemption, going back to an empty house doesn’t really make sense, narratively speaking. Either way, it doesn’t really make sense why Dina would leave such an isolated, self-sustaining, beautiful home, but I digress. The Last of Us Part 2 is art, yes. I wouldn’t say it’s well-written or well-crafted, as the emptiness I felt didn’t correlate with the game’s narrative whatsoever.
I hate the idea that sparing the big bad guy is somehow some sort of good moral choice in movies and games especially superhero movies. Forget about the hundreds of nameless cronies killed along the way as long the person responsible for all the mayhem lives then it’s good. If anything they are the only person who absolutely should die
Firewatch felt at its best when it was about the chemistry between Henry and Delilah. I wish that pseudo-mystery thing that happens in the 2nd half never happened; it took us away from that playful chemistry. For me, I do not remember this game for this “mystery plot”, I remember it for the simpler things, about two people just bonding and getting to know each other, with faint hints of a possible romance. I once had an ex who I met kind of similarly, talking online for weeks and finally deciding to meet. So maybe thats partially the reason Firewatch hits so close for me haha. Delilah being absent in the end of the game just destroyed me, I felt bitter at Delilah, as if she never cared to meet at least once before leaving, even after everything that happened. No game has made me feel like that ever. This story was SO simple, so inconsequential, maybe thats why I love it so much. No saving the world, no fights, no fancy game mechanic. Just a story of two people getting close, and then it going nowhere, something that happens in a lot of potential romances. What a game.
The first and only trailer I saw of Firewatch beforehand was the one that focuses entirely on Henry being scared about what’s going on and asking if “people die out here” and such. That trailer has multiple voice lines that I have never heard in the actual game. I felt really deceived by that, the trailer is incredibly misleading about what the game is actually like, and I have had a sort of grudge against the game ever since. The trailer is still up, article id `KqJ2yW1cbPY`
I feel like the question is, what is the point of stories as “a thing”? Why do we want to experience stories? Why do we keep going past the first page of a book? When a story is unsatisfying, it means it didn’t fulfill those things. Those things weren’t satisfied*. You can have a sad ending, or a dark ending to a story. But having no real ending that satisfies the story I to that point *is bad. I played Firewatch forever ago and felt the whole experience was pointless because there was no ending. Even if the point was “everything is void of meaning” or whatever, the character realising that and reflecting on what happened in the story would satisfy. Because there would be a point to experiencing those things. The reaction would be the point of the story. I’ve pretty much forgotten everything about Firewatch because it basically told me “This was a waste of time.” Maybe it had some sort of “button” on it—but from the article sounds like it really didn’t, in which case I stand by my point.
I would like to point out, my biggest problem with Firewatch will always be that the ending does not actually gel with the story told. Specifically, the paper we find that details the boy and his father going missing says there was an exhaustive search of the area for weeks, before they were considered lost. That makes sense, and is what is supposed to happen. Now, Daddy being able to hide himself, and not waiting anything to do with people anymore makes sense. But then we get to both how his son died, and more importantly, the locked area of the cave. That bridge, which I will remind you is noted to go out sometimes, and would have been out when the search teams arrived, was repaired not by daddy, but by the people after him. This means that at no point in 3 years did anyone decide, ‘hey, maybe we should check the cavern below the bridge for the missing person?’ because dad never once moved the son’s body, he just left it there, too ashamed to face it. In a narrative sense, it kind of works, tragedy and maybe showing that the ‘exhaustive’ search was nothing of the sort. But everything else implies they weren’t lying, and somehow just missed his body down there during those weeks. It feels cheap, like a plot point that doesn’t work, but is there solely for the twist. And it killed my enjoyment of the game beforehand, as that was the last memory I was left with.
Firewatch in particular for me feels like it confronts the player head on in terms of escapism. You can go on as many magical adventures as you want, in the end you’re living your life. Escapism doesn’t fix anything, it just wards off your anxieties, grief, complexities of life. Escapism can help you cope, for a time, but you can’t live there. You can only drown the world out so much before it comes crashing after you. (I’ve been dealing with a lot of massive fear, uncertainty, anxiety, doubt for the past couple months. Almost all of my time has been just trying to drown it out, numbing it all and engulfing myself white noise to numb my fracturing sense self. Feels like I’ve been slowly drifting back to the ground, and boy is it gonna suck. It’s been a long time coming though, and I’m confident I’ll be all right on the other end of it. This has been pretty cathartic, thanks TCJ for the vid)
I played Firewatch in my senior year of high school, which is when I also had to read Jane Eyre for my literature class. Needless to say, I was shocked to find that one of the books you could find in the game was Jane Eyre, but looking back on it after perusal this article I’ve come to appreciate its inclusion. At first, I saw the connection between both Jane running away to Whitcross and Henry running away to Shoshone Park and thought that Jane Eyre’s inclusion was to make a point about how our first instinct is to run away from our problems, as both Jane ultimately returns to Rochester and Henry is forced to go back home to Colorado. But after perusal your article, I feel like Jane Eyre was included to just poke fun at the fantasy of the release running away could have. Jane Eyre ultimately ends with Jane returning back to Rochester on the basis of a coincidence in which they both envisioned Jane returning and even when Jane does return, it just so happens that Jane has an equivalent financial status to Jane, Rochester is blinded and needs a caretaker and that Bertha Mason is dead. When compared to the harsh reality portrayed in Firewatch and what you mentioned about just being left with nothing, I feel like I can only scoff at the events of Jane Eyre as a child-like fantasy. I don’t know if you’ll read this but I really loved this article and I hope everything is working out for you 👍
Man, this article reminds me how good Firewatch was. It’s one of the few games I felt emotional after finishing no matter how bad the ending was. Sometimes I just want to go back to the first time playing it and experience the emotions all over again, but I somehow also never want to go back as the ending is finite. This makes it feel real but unsatisfying, but I’m just glad I got to experience it before saw I anyone play it. Thanks for the article.
First off, I liked the article. Interesting structure, good voice, good script, and I enjoyed perusal. That said, comparing Firewatch to TLOU2 is like comparing Your Lie In April to High Guardian Spice. The problem with these “real world” stories, the ones that get it dead wrong in any case, about loss and grief is that grief, and life, isn’t just a cold, empty, terrible feeling, but the people who write terribly conceived stories don’t care. They want their audience to suffer, not for art, but just to suffer. There is no cold contempt for their own audience in Firewatch. There is nothing but contempt in TLOU2. With Firewatch, we have a story told to near perfection, very subtly, about grief but also about how you build a perception of the world up, often out of almost nothing, and craft horror stories out of thin air to fill in gaps. It’s not just a story about grief, it’s a story about how you view the world, and how grief fits into that misconception idea. Grief is a single data point in a long story you know almost none of, and with it, you fill in gaps and the picture you paint is often a cold, terrible one. A horror story, through and through, that is based on a very small amount of information. Compared to the ghost stories we tell ourselves, reality is a bit more brutal, and a lot less interesting, and the end of Firewatch shows that beautifully. You GAIN something from Firewatch, because the people who made it knew what they were doing, and they were crafting a piece of art, not a political statement, nor a rebuke for their audience.
far cry 5 personally is one of the most unsatisfying endings ive ever played. you work hard to rescue your friends and the normal innocent people who have been cut out from their freedom from a drug family destroying the brains of people to become their pets and do their bidding. you connect with these characters u come to help and become closer and closer friends. but in the end, it didnt matter. the end was imminent and going to happen anyway due to the nuclear warfare brought up as clues over radio broadcasts which appears at the end but worst of all. the man u come to bring down survives and re-assembles his flock either with you or not. how ever an ending like this made the game unique from the others in the series where the protagonist never wins but the villain and is one of the reasons why it is one of my favourite games
My favorite ending to anything is System Shock 2. Up until the very end, it’s very dark and intense horror of cybernetics, mutations, and rouge A.I. in deep space. Once you finally confront the big bad who tempts you to join her in delusions of the grandeur, your character speaks for the first time and, nonchalantly, replies “Nah” and shoots her in the face. Talk about tonal whiplash.
Firewatch was a masterpiece of a game. I never thought of it as about grief but it makes more sense to me. In my opinion, Firewatch tries to emphasize the loneliness when grieving alone, in the forest, by yourself. There’s no one there with you. You don’t see the teenagers faces, you don’t see the man who attacked you, you don’t see the man’s face in the helicopter who rescued you, and you don’t even get to see Delilah. You ARE alone, no matter how many people you’re surrounded by, you don’t know anyone. If you ask me? It’s true loneliness.
I played Firewatch before and I must say the way you presented the story and ultimately its (arguably) unsatisfying ending was fantastic. Perfectly mirrors what one experiences on their first play-through. I thoroughly enjoyed this article. This style of article essay is exactly the kind that I love perusal. Thanks to the algorithm for suggesting but mostly to you for turning me into a brand new subscriber. Can’t wait to watch more of your content.
Funny thing about Black Ops 1, you used it as an example of a feel good CoD ending. It’s not. Spoiler alert. The last scene heavily implies that the Russian branwashing of Mason suceeded, and that he was the speculated 2nd gunman in the Kennedy assasination. You killed John F. Kennedy. Also, the ending to Tlou2 is not just unsatisfying, if it was, that wouldnt be an issue. In a way, Tlou1’s was too. The problem is, its also undeserved to the characters, and insulting the audience for a variety of factors ranging from the inability of the player to influence the outcome where it could obviously be influenced, to out of character decisions and general poor writing and characterisation. Firewatch played into the conspiratorial imagination of the mind, only for it to be all shut down when you put all the pieces together. Borderlands does the same but obsures the truth more. It also plays into the nature of myths and how theyre most often straight up wrong. When the vault turns out to be not real, in all honesty, you should be happy youre getting a reward at all, realistically speaking. BO1 heavily foreshadows every single twist, including the ending, with several lines and visuals. Think Pentagon scene, and Dragovich responding to Mason saying “You even tried to make me kill my own president!” with “Tried?” Tlou2 does none of that, subverts expectations for subversion’s sake and completley breaks the characters and plot along the way. The player has no choice in the matter, and is stripped on the ability to course correct and act as the character they’re playing as and are (at least in Ellie’s case) attached to, leading to frustration.
For Last of Us 2, I would say that in that ending, its more childish than actually finally killing the antagonist character. Or how about this, Firewatch is a GAME not a movie. I would understand these kinds of endings in the context of a movie, an unchanging narrative. But one can do so much with a game and yet they choose to limit themselves to a movie. What people felt at the end of these 2 games is real, the same with Borderlands, a very gamey game where people dont much care for the story still felt scammed out of a real ending. In terms of art, the audience reception is real. You cant just create something, PRESENT IT and expect people to take it in exactly how you want them. You have to know what people want, or is… And then present your art to them. Last of Us 2 for a lot of people felt like it was an expression only for the creators and not the players. Or at least, in terms of the story. And I dont think a majority of the creators agreed with the story either.
I like how they didn’t bother to play into the conspiracy aspect of the game and instead made most of the dialogue and progression at that point an extension of Henry’s own uncertainty and paranoia. It never was some grand conspiracy between Delilah and Ned or whatever. It was a separate camp blocked off by a fence to keep people from messing with the comms system, it was never someone keeping tabs on Henry, it was just a group of onlookers tracking Elk and ultimately, Ned grieving the death of his son in a very unhealthy way by shutting himself in and tapping into their radios. So much of the suspense in this game is built upon Henry’s own perspective of the world around him and that happens a lot in reality as well, not just this game. We always think someone is out to get us or that WE did something wrong, when the reality is often times a lot simpler than we’re making it out to be. No one died that we came into contact with during our time surveying the forest, which was another huge thriller-aspect of the game, did the teens we come into contact with get roped into this grand conspiracy? and ultimately, we uncover a truth that’s even sadder than Henry’s own background; Ned is just a crazy old man who never fully greived the loss of his son in a healthy way.
Amongst the many games I’ve played, there are a few I view above all others ( that I have played ). Games that redefined my expectations of what games can be, and amongst these seminal games, I include Firewatch. Firewatch is one of my favorite games, and it is one I am more than happy to talk about anytime, anywhere. It is the true ending. Delilah told us she was scared of commitment and had already flaked out of previous relationships. Of course there was no government conspiracy. And when it’s all said and done, Henry is still going to have return to his broken life. It sucks, but realistically, what other ending could there have been. This is unflinching commitment toward telling Henry’s story. Not your story, not my story, Henry’s story. I understand a lot of people don’t like the game because the middle had so much buildup creating an expectation for an equally grand ending; and that the ending we got was like a needle popping that balloon. To which I say… what about the journey? While convinced of shadowy conspiracy, did you feel anxiety? Maybe even a little fear? Think of how effectively the game communicated those emotions, Henry’s emotions, to you while ostensibly doing so little. No explosions like Call of Duty. No ghouls or zombies like Resident Evil. You got a little bonk on the head one time. Yet that incredibly simple, almost muted moment, sets the tone for the rest of the game. It’s textbook perfect execution. Amazing game.
Video games are good because they give players the ability to do what otherwise cannot be done, to tie up loose ends and see good things come to fruition. Not to relive the pain and suffering present in the real world. With articles like this, it’s important to KISS: Keep it Simple Stupid. article games aren’t about existential melodrama. They’re about having fun and enjoying yourself. Sometimes that comes in “wish fulfillment,” sometimes that comes in immersive realistic stories with strong emotional payoffs. What good games never have is content that arbitrarily tries to buck that trend for no other reason than to “do things differently.” Because of that, this article feels fundamentally misinformed at best, and pretentious at worst. Firewatch has a score of 7.2 out of 10 on MetaCritic. It’s a forgettable game that won’t end up on any “Best Of” lists in the future, because it wasn’t “best” at anything. It was regarded by the public as an average game with an exceedingly disliked ending, a fact you knew and understood but mistakenly interpreted as having some deeper meaning that would suddenly make it a masterpiece. Don’t get caught up in basing your core philosophy around what makes a great game, on games that weren’t. It’s a bad foundation and will influence your future work. I’ll leave with a quote from someone that knows more about making good article games than I do: “If it’s not fun, why bother?” – Reggie Fils-Aime, President of Nintendo
A way out is the only game that ever made me cry at the end, just because over the course of the game, hearing Vincent and Leo talk and get to know each other gave me an attachment to both my character and also to leo, combined with the fact that the players know what has to happen in the final Mission but neither wants it to. Even so, 10/10 game
Haven’t seen anyone bring this up so I thought I’d mention, even if I’m just coming back to this article & it’s probably too late: It is interesting that you mention that killing Menendez has to be the canon ending as (I don’t know if you knew this or not but) it is the canonical ending; Raul dies, Cordis Die riots begin & then they soon die out, that’s pretty much it. You wanna know how you find out? In Black Ops 3, there is a terminal in the campaign’s various hub which you can access which operates somewhat similar to the one found in Black Ops 1 – you can find out various information about the Black Ops world before & after BO2. Included in this is the failure of the Cordis Die revolution and it is explained that most of Menendez’s supporters saw it as an act of cowardice rather then the will of a Martyr or something like that. It was written off to support a new narrative for BO3. Turns out the true unsatisfactory ending to BO2 was hidden away a niche corner of BO3
I hoped that you ended where you did with your essay; good stuff. Games like Firewatch, The Beginner’s Guide, and Disco Elysium are my absolute favorites. A game’s ability to put you in the shoes of its protagonist and make you experience directly what they are going through is an avenue that’s not explored enough yet. article games are the next frontier in story telling, and with these titles, the games industry is dipping its toes in tragedy, reflecting ourselves back at us. You mentioned that you didn’t quite know what it was that attracted you to these titles, perhaps catharsis is the answer. Keep it up.
I think one of the best parts about games that have unsatisfying endings to me is that they’re so much more realistic, at least in the sense of how endings turn out in reality. Endings more often than not aren’t satisfying in real life, something ends and that’s that. You’re never guaranteed closure, you’re never guaranteed anything. Something as passionate and bright as an inferno sweeping over a mountain can just disappear, seemingly out of nowhere and it won’t let you get more out of it, it’s already gone. There’s nothing more to see, there’s no continuation to the story, there’s just a bitter absence of something more intriguing that you’re left with.
I initially hated the ending of Firewatch. it felt like so much was building up, so much mystery was being set, all for it to be explained away simply and boringly. But as I sat with it, which I would have done if those things had paid off, I began to understand it just as is discussed in the article. It really is a good ending for the journey it’s really setting up, not the one it makes you think it is. I still get a feeling of melancholy when I think about the game.
Firewatch, to me, is the culmination of trying to flee your grief and problems. Goodwin didn’t want to return to the world and face others about the death of his son, he didn’t want anyone to tell him he was responsible by forcing his son into activities, in a remote region, where his son wasn’t supposed to be in the first place. Henry doesn’t want to stay in the reality where his wife no longer knows or remembers him. A world where (if chosen) he failed to be the caretaker his wife needed. He wants the distance and the distraction. He wants to run away. In the end after all that time passes, he has to return to the world, and the grief did not go away, the problems didn’t disappear and there was no miraculous ending to make his life better.
I played Firewatch in August last year on an evening, it was just such a relaxing game, while it had the parts that got me even scared like when you find out about someone spying on you, but overall it was just like perusal a slow movie you like, sometimes just thinking about random stuff around you.
I just wanted to say that this was a wonderful article, it was really well put together and enjoyable so I just wanted to leave this comment and a like. I will do as you say and not subscribe, while I don’t use the word “wokeness” there’s clearly a push of certain stuff and lectures I dont like in certain media I like, be there comics, movies and article games, I don’t hate anyone, as long as you’re good to me I’m good to you and I believe as long as you’re over 18 you can do whatever you want with your life as long as you don’t hurt anyone. I just don’t like people pushing their agendas onto other people, that’s all. Anyways I might still check some of your other vids if they’re as good as this one lol
I am still salty about the ending to fire watch to this day, I was so intrigued by the conspiracy plot and it was being told so well, the fact that it’s actually a deliberate middle finger to the player, that it’s actually very mundane and the game is practically shaming you for being invested in that and not catching on to the real point of the story, actually makes me more angry.
Outstanding article. You reminded me that ancient tales were based on tragedy: riches to rags, or comedy: you get what you wanted, but it became a your worse nightmare; slap stick mayhem ensues🤣. Happy endings in stories fails to take into consideration the consequences of your actions, and how to learn from them. Games with unsatisfying endings are a type of story telling that feels like ancient stories ( assuming the game’s production was not cut short because suits panicked because profit margins were not met (Greed)). We always go back to what we know, because “there’s nothing new under the sun”. Before humans were the top of the food chain, satisfaction was: 1. Not being eaten, and 2. being able to survive one more day (like all life on planet Earth, and the Universe(It’s all one)).
I think the biggest factor (for me at least) as to why these endings are so unsatisfying is because they’re usually a grim reflection of reality. Oftentimes we just get bad or bittersweet experiences and that’s that, you just have to go on and continue in life. But when it comes to games, a medium that we often turn to for entertainment and escapism from these moments, seeing that reality brutally reflected back on the black mirror can leave you feeling empty. It’s even worse when you pair it with the fact that the story just ends there, that’s it. Unlike life, where you can continue on after those bad and bittersweet moments, for these stories and the characters and worlds they inhabit, it quite literally is game over. There’s no more to these stories, these characters, and we’re helpless to do anything about it. For some, it can be devastating and depressing after being engaged with these games for so long just to seemingly end mid-sentence (myself included), but I also think that it says a lot about these stories and their creators that we cared so deeply to see them end in a satisfying way. Some of the stories that have stuck with me the most were ones that never seemingly got resolved the way you wanted them to, and maybe that was the point all along. I still occasionally think about Firewatch from time to time, even though it’s been 7 years since it came out because of its ending since it was the first game I had really experienced that conveyed that feeling of going separate ways with someone, even though neither of you really wanted to.
i think Stray had a really underwelming ending, i guess i expected so much more than just “Woo the door opened, now you leave, the end” I was hoping to see the other cats again, maybe venture outside a slightest bit, or atleast be able to go back through the city and see everyone again, maybe even be able to revive the little robot dude
Firewatch is one of few games that give me that feeling of longing of something never exist, something i never experience myself. other being Skyrim’s Dark Brotherhood questline, GTA IV’s The Lost and Damned, and Va-11 Hall-A. i think it’s for the best. it wont be much better if we can meet delilah anyway. at least that’s what i think.
I think something great that I love about Firewatch is how Henry and Goodwin are two opposite faces of the same coin. They are both men striken by grief and tragedy, and trying to deal with it. Both take the same instintive decision, avoiding the problem and just trying to live on. But you really can’t do that, can you? I love the ending because you realise all the big conspiracies, misteries and questions were never really there. They were just distractions. Henry might as well could become Goodwin, live with Delilah, never go back with his wife, maybe go to another isolated park and work there. I feel like that´s the point in the last conversation with Delilah. You can take dialogue choices, that reflect how you as a player feel about Henry and what he just lived. I don’t think it’s dissapointing that you don’t get to see him come back or deal with his issues. I think you as a person can imagine what happens after the fire, depending on how you played the game. I really think Henry learned and won’t end up like Goodwin, alone and scared in a cave, with the ghost of the most important person in your life looming over you, thinking everyone in the world is against you. It broke my heart perusal all those drawings and pictures in the site. Imagine living 3 years like that. I hope Henry grew and learned
I dont like games with unsatisfying endings, its a waste of time for me to play a game just to feel like shit in the end. The only reason they are so overpraised is because they are different from the traditional “good ending” stories and that makes them memorable, but that doesnt mean they are good or worth playing. Art can be bad sometimes.
Nice article/interesting insights — Firewatch is a game had me really intrigued for the first half… then once the red herrings started falling apart, it went south for me – really quick. I have this mental thingy now-days where I play about 1-2 hours of a game, and may not ever get back to finish it. However, I finished THIS game, although the only thing that kept me going after the first half was the thought of finally meeting Delilah. So this experience was a disappointment for me. I feel like a bad ending just justifies the saying “well, there’s XX number of hours I lost and will never get back.
I have a theory about Firewatch and the three characters we hear in the game (minus a hallucination scene of Julia’s voice). All three characters represent “isolation” and the reasons for why they choose it. Ned Goodwin went into isolation because he couldn’t get over the death of his son, Brian. He didn’t wish to face the reality of what happened and instead decided to live as hermit. The end of the game clearly has him so consumed by guilt and regret that he would rather journey further into the wilderness than be found by anyone. He’s completely lost himself to isolation. For Delilah, she’s obviously someone who has been lying and manipulating Henry throughout the game. Not in a conspiracy kind of way, but rather because she is pathological liar. The way she describes her past highly hints that she never could trust or settle down with any man she dated. She even mentions having a sister, which is makes me wonder why she has been doing this job for over a decade and not spending time with her. I believe Delilah choose to isolate herself because a part of her knows she is a terrible person and can’t trust herself. It’s why she never sees Henry in person at the end of the game, because she is sparing him of being further manipulated by her. She knows that if she were to meet him and continue their friendship, she would only seek to use and hurt him, as she did with others. It’s why she tells Henry to go see his wife once it was all over. For Delilah, she never made the attempt to face herself and make changes, similar to Ned, but she hasn’t entirely lost herself to isolation.
Firewatch didn’t really hit for me because I always felt they tried to hamfist a certain angle to the story down my throat. Like there’s these dialogue options allowing you to express yourself in different ways but there always felt like one of the options was clearly the wrong or joke options and that the game didn’t want to take you seriously if you actually selected them continously. Like the whole thing with forgetting your wife only to remember her at the very end only works if the player actually forgets your wife, which not all players are going to. It has somewhat of the same thing going on as The Beginner’s Guide but in that game it works a lot better because you’re not the one making the assumptions so you can still look at it from a third party’s point of view and appreciate what the game is saying even if you figure it out early on.
Great article! (+1 sub from me 😁) Personally I find a strange sense of satisfaction in “unsatisfying” games. Games like Firewatch and TLOU 2 are rare works of art in their willingness to paint loss, grief, and vengeful hatred in painful detail. For anybody who’s actually experiencing those feelings in real life, it can be unbelievably frustrating how rarely people are willing to talk about them. But these games… they talk about them. These games remind us that however “unsatisfying” life can be, we are not alone in our unsatisfying experiences. In some ways, this can be even more comforting than a happy ending.
As someone who just loves the craft of storytelling, a well executed ending that’s deliberately unsatisfying… is paradoxically very satisfying to me. lol I love it when authors break the mold and try to make the ending of a story thought-provoking and difficult to process, and I’m always on the lookout for stories that do it well. I think TLoU2 is probably my favourite example of this being done right, at least for me. I know a whooolllle lot of people didn’t like that game, and I’m not here to argue about it. But for me that ending really worked and I’m so glad they had the balls to do it.
Another good example is Republic Commando. The game ends on a cliff hanger when Sev gets left behind, but it leaves you in the mindset of Delta. “We can’t leave him. We won’t leave a brother behind.” But you do, because in the end you really don’t have a choice. Does Sev survive and become a rebel? Does he die on Kashyyyk? We will never know, just like Boss, Scorch, and Fixer will never know. They will get a new squad mate and maybe he will live up to Sev. Probably not, but get used to it since Sev is gone. And the Empire, well the Empire doesn’t care about one renegade clone unless he becomes a problem. Then Delta may get to see their long lost brother again, although they would likely rather he didn’t survive in the first place.
I think for firewatch i just get annoyed that the first half isnt whay the game is about. I really loved the idea of explorkng a forest slowly and sorting out a few tasks and problems. The story in the 2nd half was good, but the potential of the first half just takes the entire wind out of everything afterwards. I will say though, its one of the most beautiful and atmopsheric games ive played and it makes me more mad that that was just a side part of the game
I find it hard to believe that anybody who truly experienced tlou2 would have wanted to actually go through with killing in the end. Of course, that’s what you came for. And most probably do emphasize more with ellie. But this ending was so brutal, and so long, and you know the history of both characters. While Ellie was winning and struggling, at some point, while you have to do it, it actually became hard to watch for me and I just wished she could stop. Few games have ever induced such intense emotions for me.
This is why I love the ending of The Hunger Games series. It’s realistic. Some things are happy, but it mostly ends in a grey area. The entire journey has built up to this happy ever after ending, but that isn’t always the case. People are lost. The main character suffers from PTSD and is just scrapped when the world is saved. In the end, all that had happened was mostly for nothing. Sure the entire world has a bright future, but for our main character, well she’s basically right back where she started, in district 12. Yes, with a husband and children, but not with the people who gave her life meaning before.
honestly botw was a unsatisfying ending because the final boss ganon was hyped up so much from the beginning and when i finally beat it i have a massive rush of dopamine and want more but it just sends you back to hyrule castle and the only replayability is doing the infinite amount of shrines and side quests
My issue with Last of Us 2 ending was not at all wokeness. It was the fact that you killed so, so, so many people. You lost people on your side and Abby lost people on her side. Ellie lost her fingers during the last fight (which honestly would further enrage Ellie) that her stopping herself made it unbelievable to the max. Now if the game went with a more morality system and choose what to do type of thing. Sure, I could buy it. But the way that game progressed and what Ellie lost (which was everything) she had nothing else to lose at that last fight, she should’ve just committed to doing it or Ellie should’ve just died. Honestly for me, it was extremely unrealistic that it ripped me out of the game.
Firewatch is a good story. And good stories don’t need satisfying endings to be good—to be moving, instructive, engaging, whatever. Firewatch’s ending is rational, it wraps everything up in a neat bow, it leaves the audience wanting more. But the game fulfills it’s purpose as a storytelling medium throughout; the choice to be without some grand spectacle at the end doubles down on the journey leading up to that point. The ending prompts reflection and understanding, acceptance and empathy. If it did turn out to be some huge government conspiracy or cruel psychological observation experiment, the break from realism would remove the relatability of the narrative, I think.
My opinion about what is art,at least since I had the wherewithal to formulate it, was always that art is supposed to teach,prepare, and give you experience with something that can happen to you in the future or at least happen to someone you know. And because you explored the situation through art you are better prepared,as well as you can be. So to me Firewatch seem perfect(have not played it, didn’t know it existed).
i play NITW (night in the woods) its a really good game that made me feel depressed and it made me feel some what empty. the only think you see after the credits is the last journal entry. don’t get me wrong NITW is one of my favorite story based game ever but when you finish it no matter how many play-throughs you do it all ways gives me the same feeling.
The ending resonated with me. Basically you can only temporarily run away from your problems, but eventually you need to face them. Meeting Delilah would be nice, but it isn’t needed. I felt the message of the game was about running from problems and that our small choices don’t matter. The choices you make about your dog and comments to your wife at the beginning don’t really matter. You still get married to the love of your life, and your wife still gets dementia. Your character will take the job no matter what, and we are put in the shoes of a person who has to process their emotions. The entire game is playing out just a fraction of a person’s life and nothing we do in this random place is going to change the fact that he needs to go home and fix his marriage and be there for his wife. The game could have been about a janitor mopping up vomit at an Elementary school and still been about running from your problems. But exploration and drama make for better gameplay. The fact the drama gets taken from the player is realistic, we aren’t the main character of the world but just a part in it. Eventually we all have to return to reality, which is poetic since that’s what games are. You escape and then have to face reality.
The most frustrating, and at the same time most memorable part of Firewatch for me is that, being, viscerally through Henry, attached deeply to Delighla, in the end, you have an option to suggest meeting up later with her. Since the whole latter part of the game had this promise of you reaching your new friend, soulmate, romance interest, whatever, in the end, and the plot refusing it, the option to ask her out seems wonderful. Yet, she just said no to me, lmao. It hurt quite a fucking bit and I still remember the feeling.
It kind of reminds me of the ending to Ori and the Will of the Wisps. While you get the happy ending of rescuing your friend, I also wanted to see the antagonist get a happy ending, after all they’ve been through. But there is no happy ending for them. They’re too far gone. That ending made me cry my eyes out. And that’s what happens in a lot of cases. There is no happy ending for some. Some are beyond saving. And while it hurts to see, it’s important to remember that not everything gets the good fairytale lived-happily-ever-after ending. That’s how life is, unfortunately.