Firewatch Has The Most Unsatisfying Ending Of All Time

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Shahmeer Sarfaraz

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In my opinion, a good ending is one that gets people talking about the product in question and divides opinion, imploring the consumer to draw their own conclusions. And no other game pulls off this trope better than Campo Santo’s Firewatch.

With rave reviews from both critics and fans alike, Firewatch is considered a cult classic with only one gaping flaw: its rather unsatisfying ending.

Why It Matters: Firewatch is one of the best depictions of grief and its consequences in gaming, but its ending fails to hold everything together.

The Plot Of Firewatch

The narrative adventure game set in a national park during the ‘80s isn’t your run-of-the-mill title with blockbuster gameplay, rather it’s a story with heart that touches on some serious themes like grief, loss, and regret built upon dialog options.

Our protagonist is Henry, a middle-aged man who takes up the job of a fire lookout at the Shoshone National Forest. A small prologue shows us how Henry gets the job after his wife Julia gets diagnosed with dementia and moves out.

Through a walkie-talkie, Henry is contacted by Delilah, a lookout in another tower and our main companion in Firewatch, who becomes a close friend.

Throughout the first days, we keep coming across mysterious stuff like an abandoned campsite, Delilah talking to someone else about Henry not knowing something, and a bag belonging to Brian Goodwin, the son of a former lookout who was stationed at Henry’s tower.

On day 76, Henry is near the lake when he finds a notepad detailing all of his conversations with Delilah before he is knocked out by an unseen figure following strange radio static.

When the protagonist wakes up, the evidence is gone, and a strange noise leads him to a fenced-off portion of the park at Wapiti station.

Unable to get through, Henry contacts Delilah, and they find out someone has been listening on their line. Day 77 of Firewatch sees us finally break into Wapiti station and find an abandoned government site with a camp that contains detailed folders on both him and Delilah.

Scared by this new reveal, Henry takes a receiver from the camp and goes back just to see the station go up in flames minutes later. On day 78, two different fires are burning and you are cut off from Delilah and explore Cave 452 on your own.

The Ending And Why It’s Bad

Here, Henry discovers the hideout of Brian Goodwin and some of his memorabilia, with Firewatch unveiling its biggest secret. Deeper into the cave, Henry finds the corpse of Brian Goodwin, who died from a climbing incident.

Day 79 is where Firewatch draws to a close, with the two fires combining to wreak havoc on the park. A helicopter is supposed to come to pick you and Delilah up, setting up a first meeting. But before that, the mystery behind Brian Goodwin is solved when we find a tape recorder his dad Ned leaves for Henry.

Ned discloses to Henry how Brian died while learning how to climb with him, and he just hid at the park because he was scared to face the world.

The teenage girls were safe, and the government researchers were on hiatus, meaning that everything mysterious happening at the park was just a grieving man afraid to face the world. While heading to Delilah’s lookout, Henry finds out she has already left on another helicopter because of the fire.

The player doesn’t get to see the person they have spent the entire game with and Henry can only roam through her watchtower, waiting for his helicopter.

The Ending Feels Incomplete

It is an understatement to say that the ending of Firewatch is anticlimactic. The game beautifully crafts a mystery throughout the four hours just to pin it on one aggrieved man. 

Firewatch isn’t about an overarching mystery; it’s about the grief humans go through every day.

Of course, there is the part where we don’t get to see Delilah, the one person whom Henry had connected with. But grief is isolating, and no one can resolve it for us, and maybe that is what the ending wants to convey to the user. 

Shahmeer Sarfaraz

Shameer Sarfaraz has previously worked for eXputer as a Senior News Writer for several years. Now with Tech4Gamers, he loves to devoutly keep up with the latest gaming and entertainment industries. He has a Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science and years of experience reporting on games. Besides his passion for breaking news stories, Shahmeer loves spending his leisure time farming away in Stardew Valley. VGC, IGN, GameSpot, Game Rant, TheGamer, GamingBolt, The Verge, NME, Metro, Dot Esports, GameByte, Kotaku Australia, PC Gamer, and more have cited his articles.