Everyone loves a happy ending, and it’s not hard to understand why.
I could go into the psychology, but simply put, knowing that everything will turn out alright in the end creates a sense of security. And not only that, it’s convenient.
It’s often easier to wrap up all the narrative loose ends with a “good ending” than leave questions unanswered. It satisfies the audience, leaving no doubt in their minds about the security of the world they’ve become invested in, about the fulfillment of the characters’ (and by extension, their own) hard-won happiness. Good endings are there to provide easy comfort in uneasy times.
That said, when the ending doesn’t go as the audience expects, they lose that sense. They may feel disappointed, or even betrayed, if the narrative leads them on only to abandon them right at the end. They may even become disillusioned with the narrative itself. After all, what’s the point of investing oneself in a doomed story? Why does it matter if it all just goes down in flames anyway?
That said, Firewatch was an independently-made game released in 2016 by Campo Santo in partnership with Panic.
Its story follows a man named Henry who has taken a job as a lookout at a national park, where he keeps watch for wildfires along with his partner, Delilah, who he only ever speaks with through his radio. As the game progresses, Henry and Deliah begin to suspect that people are spying on them, attempting to frame them for a string of recent disappearances. They find tracking devices and notes on their behavior, journals from an employee who went missing after his son’s death, and the son’s body itself, trapped at the bottom of a cave. And throughout all of this, a fire has begun to spread, and the characters are forced to evacuate.
Players assumed the ending would answer all of their questions: Who framed Henry and Delilah? What happened to the boy in the cave? Where did the boy’s father fit into this? And would Henry and Delilah begin a romance after they escaped, as the story implied?
However, in the end, none of these things happened. Answers were revealed, but they were the wrong ones; the father denied involvement in his son’s death, the surveillance belonged to ecologists conducting surveys, and Deliah chose to leave before Henry reached her. The game ends with Henry evacuating the park — confused, frustrated, and alone.
Firewatch was widely acclaimed by both critics and players, receiving praise across retail platforms and review websites for its writing, characters, and stunning visuals. Frankly, the reviews would have been perfect, were it not for the fact that everyone seemed to hate the ending.
Their complaint was simple: The ending of the game did not feel narratively fulfilling. People had gotten attached to both the story and its characters and did not feel that either were used to their full potential.
However, I believe this anticlimax is actually one of the game’s greatest strengths; at least, from a writer’s perspective.
The thing is, nobody wants to participate in a story that ends in disappointment, and yet, they so often do because disappointing stories are deeply, intrinsically human.
People must face countless struggles every day. Sometimes things work out, and they are rewarded for their hard work and earn happiness for months or years at a time. But eventually, they must face losses and failures once that happiness inevitably fades. People leave, loved ones pass away, the place one grows up in is never quite the same as the place they die in, and the cycle continues.
Firewatch struck a chord with so many people because it was representative of that struggle. Henry and Delilah both came from broken backgrounds and found comfort in each other. They tried so hard to be happy, and people were genuinely happy for them. But life is unfair, and the players were left with an ending that left them unsatisfied, unhappy and frustrated.
Anticlimactic endings like Firewatch’s are emotionally significant because they reach people on a level that happy endings will never be able to. “Good endings” may be satisfying, but they’re only that. They’re conventional at best and boring at worst, and while they may leave the reader with closure after the story ends, they tend to either be forgotten or muddled due to how common they are.
Firewatch may be difficult to stomach, but only because it forces its audience to face an uncomfortable truth: Their lives are not dissimilar to that of the characters, and their own daily struggles are reflected in the game’s unsatisfying ending. People respond to this game and stories like it because they see themselves in them, and they don’t like it. And yet, they continue to hope for some mythical “good ending” because they crave such an ending for themselves.
It is this commonality that I believe gives stories like Firewatch their value.
Not everyone gets a happy ending. But everyone knows what it’s like to hurt, to lose everything and have to start over. To form connections, like Henry and Delilah, break them, and create new ones. We find ourselves in them, and so, we can also find each other.
Heartbreak yields to solidarity and community. To me, that’s a far greater comfort than a happily ever after.
I rate Firewatch four out of five stars.
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Firewatch is rated M for Mature and is available on PCs, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and the Nintendo Switch.
