“Micah, you’re reading a lot into two screens of dialogue. The protagonist always gets the girl, right, even if he’s generally horrible?Īnyway, maybe the game only smacks of male entitlement to me at this point because we live in a world where “incels” have murdered people because they think they deserve women, and where if a gamer hasn’t heard Feminist Frequency’s critiques of “women as reward” in video games, they aren’t paying attention. That the game presents the story it is telling as plausible implies that it thinks it’s normal for a sexist drunk with bad taste to get the girl. No one shares their food with drunk strangers who have just demeaned them in front of their colleagues.įinally, and most offensively, Julia would most assuredly not go out with me. She would rightly feel justified and in-the-right.Īnd she would not share her food with me. She would not feel bad for putting me in my place. Julia is a professor I am a sexist drunk with bad taste. This has been, “Video games make Micah feel bad about himself,” with Micah. till I was 31, and the highest rank I ever made it to was Visiting Assistant Professor. The game is off to a great start.Īnd speaking of burns, Julia is a professor - not “assistant professor,” not “associate professor” - a professor and still in her late 20s? She has tenure already? I feel burned by that too. Campo Santo is telling me I’m a sexist drunk with bad taste. Oh, also, I drink Coors? Even I, a teetotaler, know the difference between good beer and bad beer. This makes me wonder whether I trust them to tell me a good story. However, they are asking me to role play a drunk, and they only give me sexist dialogue options. I shall be a better person because of Campo Santo’s burn. Now I’m afraid I might do that kind of thing in real life.Ī learning moment for me. I took his read on the situation for granted (this is all being described in text, with no visuals), and didn’t even ask myself whether it might be wrong. I myself, not just Henry, assumed Julia was a student. The burn of this is that I made the mistake. I assumed, because she was female, that she couldn’t be an authority figure. I’ll ask Julia about her interests and goals, rather than commenting on her body.Įxcept even the polite option was sexist. Well, the least I can do is choose the non-sexist dialogue option. You want me to role play a drunk, Firewatch? I not only drink - I get drunk in public. Makes things difficult for me because I’m a teetotaler, but I can try to keep role playing as Henry. I hear they have mountains, and I love mountains.Īh, so this will be in the 2nd person, eh? I see Julia. And the general graphic design of the text adventure screens is great.Īnyway, so we’re in Boulder in 1975. Shouldn’t it be, “Campo Santo, in association with Panic, Inc., presents. The game opens with the following screens: I deliberately tried not to learn too much about the game before its Switch release because the reviews always seemed to start with “Weird stuff happens in this game, so. Since I only got back into gaming via the Switch, that was where I played it. Backgroundįirewatch - an indie game by Campo Santo - was released in 2016, then ported to the Switch in 2018. Today, let’s talk about a game I quit in protest.

The second time, I stopped because I had finished the main campaign. The first time, I just got distracted by other games. Last time on WISP, I talked about a game I stopped playing twice.

Firewatch lets play