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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription. ## Video: A Deeper, Darker Look at Firewatch With Campo Santo - IGN First [Watch (HLS stream): A Deeper, Darker Look at Firewatch With Campo Santo - IGN First](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/ouDeRRm5.m3u8) (17:32)  _Published 2015-06-22. A Deeper, Darker Look at Firewatch With Campo Santo - IGN First_ --- Jul 27, 2023 6:27 PM UTC --- ## More From This Series [All Videos](https://time.com/video/) [Quantum Break Trailer](/video/dipUCxbp/) ### Quantum Break Trailer [Firewatch Trailer](/video/j0w2lXOf/) ### Firewatch Trailer [Quantum Power - Time Is Power trailer](/video/EapCJ28H/) ### Quantum Power - Time Is Power trailer --- ## Transcript [ NOISE ] Hi, I'm Sean Vanaman. Hi, I'm Jake Rodkin. Hi Jake. Hey Sean. Wanna play this video game that you and I have been working on for a while? Yeah. We work at Campo Santo, and this is Firewatch. Yeah. It's obviously a look at a game in early development. So good job on this title card Jake. We're starting right off with the commentary track where you describe exactly what's on the screen. [ LAUGH ] So yeah, this game takes place in a real Actual time in a real world in the back countries of Wyoming and you're from Colorado. Which is something that we think is like important I guess? Yeah. Like, in terms of like- When we decided we wanted to make fire watch one of the things that was really Sort of just intriguing to us was to try to do a game that is about a real person in a real place at a real time. A real fictional person, in a fictionalized version of a real place in a fictionalized version of a real time in history. Obviously, for all we know, there were some teens setting off fireworks by a lake in Thoroughfare in 1989, but, you know, who's to say? That's true. And, you're this guy. So, this is Henry. He's voiced by Rich Summer. If you watch Mad Men, he's the voice of Harry Crane, the TV ad rep in Mad Men. The voice of the woman you're hearing Slipped. Is coming Delilah and she's played by Sissy Jones who was Katjaa in the first season of The Walking Dead. Reprimanding some idiots before they burn the entire forest down with what looks to be a commercial arsenal of fireworks. No, I don't think so. Great. Get going then. It's to the west. Bring out my map, figure out which way I'm gonna go. This map works with light the way maps work right now [ LAUGH ]. Which is I need the sunlight to see that I just fell down right there where- Where the trail's out. The trail's out. And I'm gonna walk towards the meadow and head out to that lake. Yep. And I can see that I am currently facing south, which is the wrong direction, because she told me to go west, which is that way. Later in the game, if I had ropes, I could totally go out this way, but we're going to go this way. I can run. [ LAUGH ] Wow. And a concept that was like kind of hard to come up with in the game, because you can talk about things that you're looking at, but talking about, sort of like, areas and concepts was something that took us a long time to design. Wow, there's a big rock outcropping down here near the lake. It's really something. Yeah. Makes for good camping. There used to be a group of guys who would boulder out there a couple times a year. What happened to them? Don't know. Just stopped coming out. I'm just gonna sneak around a little bit. Yeah this is like a different sort of like Off the beaten path area. And there's a lot of these in the game that you can either use abilities or your traversal skills to get to and find, well, this is a clawed- up tree. Hey, there's a tree out here that's been ripped to hell. And? Don't you think that's disconcerting? Henry, there are 500 lb grizzly bears out here. They sharpen their claws on trees. We don't have grizzlies in Colorado. People killed them a long time ago. Well, in the thoroughfare, they hunt people, they kill people, they bury their bodies and then come back weeks later to eat Them because they prefer rotten meat. People just disappear. Don't you think that's disconcerting? No Henry. That's life. Christ, lady. So yeah, we have found this camping site with litter, which is a disaster. We can, well we'll throw this back on the ground. You know what? **** it, I'm not the maid. Finding a bunch of empty beer cans. They threw them all over hell. The idiots down at the lake? Yeah, them. Just found where they're hanging out. Are you going to be a good guy? Of course. Oh, look they decided to have a campfire, too. We could leave it going. No, I'm going to kick it out. They color coded the fire danger signs in case people were illiterate But I guess that doesn't take into account just plain stupid, does it? When we first started play testing Firewatch, one of the things that basically every play tester said was that they actually also wanted to do their jobs and be like a good ranger type person. So we then decided we could let you stamp out the campfire. Gonna keep this for later. [ LAUGH ]. What the. I got some clothes. Body left some clothes out to dry. It looks like two people. What if they're naked? Won't that be exciting? Look, they're obviously, still there. Tell them off and then, head back. Keep fireworks. Job done. And this game like I said is really in early development so we have a solution to make your shadows really nice. But right now they look a little bonkers so you're gonna see that guy once in awhile. I found a bra. A nudie pyromaniac. [ MUSIC ] Remain professional. Mm- hm. There's a, oh. Yes? There are two naked ladies out here. Can you handle that? It's so hard to talk over them because I love the performances so much. Like, the fun thing about working with actors like Susie and Rich, is that- This might be hard for you, but try to pick your tongue up off the ground and do your job. Is that even now their reads get so entertaining. Yeah, it's tough. It's way better than the stuff we've ever written. Hey, guys Are you skeezing? So these girls have seen me. They've asked me if I'm skeezing. [ LAUGH ] We can talk to them though. [ MUSIC ] Please, we'll be nice to them, I think. Yeah, be nice. You've gotta take it easy with the fireworks, all right? You ought to take it easy, it's a sizzler buffet. [ LAUGH ] What? He's just some loser out in the woods. I mean he's gloating. Why do guys think it's all right to- We did take all of their stuff. It's true. We forgot we took all of their stuff, yeah. We took all of your stuff. Take more of your stuff. Take the radio. The fireworks, the whiskey, you name it. Just do it. What? You ****! Also, setting off fireworks out here isn't just stupid, it's illegal. Okay, well, you want this? Yeah. This is what you want? Oh they're gone. Oh they're gone. They left, cause we were angry at them. They'll never know that you stole the radio. They'll never know that we stole the radio. Get this bomb out of here. [ MUSIC ] I heard them say let's get out of here. So, there's no noise ordinances, or rules, out here? Oh, No. But that music I hear makes a good case for them. Yeah, no kidding. Chuck this thing over there. Good. So, now we're going to make our way back. It was kind of fun to build for the first time a just straight up traversal level that interacted with character performance. It's been really challenging and fun to figure out where Where are all the safe places where characters can start talking to each other. And give the player multiple ways to go. It's a really difficult design challenge but it's been fun to work on. Go up this way. So I have a bit of a confession to make. Hm, what is it? I'll ask her. Okay, I was drunk last night when I welcomed you to the job. Yeah, well, you're not the first boss to be guilty of that. I know I can get a little pushy, you know, putting you on the spot about why you're out here and stuff. And you thought it was a good idea to get into your Love life, I guess you'd call it. Yeah. Anyway, I'm sorry. It's fine. You're so nice all the time. I know, I like to be nice. You're way meaner when you play. Yeah. When I play, I'm just a **** to everyone. A storm. [ LAUGH ] That storm sounds, it's really good. Yeah, I really like the way Chris did that. Chris Reman's the audio designer on the game. Hey, I heard some thunder. Yeah, I've got eyes on a storm out to the north. Well that's bad, right? Because of the lightning? It just means We'll be busy. Hurry home and try not to get hit by lightning. Oh, you're going to do it. You're going to do it. Should I tell her about how I got hit by lightning or [ INAUDIBLE ] [ CROSSTALK ] I'm not sure I got a lot of choice in getting struck down. Especially not with your electric personality. This is one of my favorite slash least favorite things in the game. You don't like her puns? No. I love it actually. We can keep responding to her? but also you could just not. Oh my god lady The ark of our budding friendship. The way that you almost went there is a closed off path in the game right now. But over the course of the game, more and more of the world unlocks as Henry gets more abilities, I guess is the way to describe that. You get simple tools that you would find in real life that would let you clear trails and climb up and down areas, so you can access more and more of the map. As the story unfolds. Hey, what's the code again? The code is one, two, three, four. It's actually that for all of them. Secure. Shut up. The guy who's doing all of our animations is actually, he's- I got it wrong. It's one, two, three, four, dude. [ LAUGH ] The guy who does all of our animations, our animator, is a guy named James Benson. We found him actually because He did a series of YouTube videos that were all these just incredible detailed first person handed body animations where he would take Gordon Freeman's model from Half Life 2, and then animate him in just sort of his dream version of what the Half Life Games would look like. Where like He's getting in a fight with the crazy 3 legged walker from half foot 2 and he gets knocked over and his glasses get knocked off. He pulls out the gun and spins the chamber of the six shooter around. He actually did a trailer he ripped all the assets from half life 1 so it was all the super low pauly 1998 Assets, but then gave it like this triple A first person treatment, it's the coolest thing in the world, and we saw that stuff. It was actually, to me, part of the inspiration for wanting to make a first person game that has hands and feet and stuff that all actually work, and then we asked him if he wanted to work on this, and I was incredibly happy about that. So like I was talking about it only cuz I saw all that Lockbox stuff where there's just all that really fine tuning to hand movement of hands opening a combination lock. But, check out those Half- Life videos if you [ LAUGH ] wanna search for James Vincent Half- Life. It's really good stuff. The most satisfying thing in this game is banging on that gate. So, about that cave. You're in it, aren't you. Yeah, I think it's my only way through the canyon. Oh yeah, I think that's right actually. It doesn't seem that dang- Woah! Oh! Henry! Seriously, it's completely fine in here. God damn it. This is one of the more fun things to record, because we just did it improv, just like Rich, it'd be really fun if you just played with the echo of a cave. I bless the rains down in Africa. Gotta get out of here. I think my idea is that every time you come back to this cave, every day there will be new things that you can just howl and- That you could just howl into it? Yeah [ LAUGH ] Upsy- daisy. It's now nighttime. And time of day in this game is sort of flexible, in that there is like real time. Like that sun is setting at an actual rate. You can probably see it. Yeah. But we can trigger it. When we want to or keep it going dynamically so it's sort of like this sort of like soft rubber band for what fits the story. And this spooks me every time it happens. [ LAUGH ] Every single time. There's some guy out here. Some guy? Wait he's looking at you? Is he doing anything else? God, I really don't like that. I don't think so. Henry, there's something I- Gonna run over there. Something someone should have told you about this area. What is it? It's outside. Come on. The whole thing. And people come and go as they please. It's madness. Yeah, okay. I get it. Bumping into someone in the middle of nowhere is part of the fun. Oh, I can see Delilah. That's awesome. Hey, you keep your lights on at night? I'm doing a crossword puzzle. I do a lot of crossword puzzles. Hey it's been fun having, I've never really worked on a game that has a lot of the stuff that Firewatch has, not only just the first person, but, like A responsive world where we get to see all of the same places over the course of the games at high noon and at dawn and in the middle of the night and stuff. One big climb left. All of this stuff is, we have one environment model or [ INAUDIBLE ] and then we have A guy named Paulo who does all of our graphics programming and of course Ali Mast doing sort of concept art and visual directions for the game. And he painted these skies. Yeah, he paints a lot of stuff actually in the actual game. We've been putting in a lot of work into sort of being able to have a game that has the look of a lot of all these graphic design stuff where as You look further and further into the horizon. We make the world look increasingly stylized, like our trees, as they get farther and farther away, their silhouettes actually puff up and get more graphic. Fat guy fall. [ LAUGH ] But when we first started out, we were not really planning on having the game be. As sort of responsive, and as versatile from an atmospheric standpoint where you can just go into the editor and sort of swing the time day around. It's all, like a lot of stuff, it uses a lot of the tools that you would use to make a more sort of procedural game, but then we've built a really art- heavy version of it. Like as the sun sets it gets this sort of atmospheric scattering as it hits the horizon, except Instead of modeling that using the real sort of atmospheric scattering that you'd find if you were doing a realistic thing. It's actually just the graphics engine is setup so that Ollie can just go and say, when the sun sets. I actually just want it to be this exact shade of blue when it hits the horizon or something. So you can just make it look You can pick all the colors sort of throughout the entire game. But any time of day. And then the game can move between them. So it's constantly impressive to me to watch those guys put this stuff together. Someone broke in. They what? They just wrecked the place! Threw my typewriter out the window. ****! Henry, calm down. I'll let the forest service know what happened. Did you see anyone from over there? No, I didn't. I was, you know. Doing the The crossword. Yeah. Okay, I put in a call. That was fast. That was fast. [ LAUGH ] Yeah well, do you have any idea who could have done this? That is a very good question, Jake. I don't know, who's out here? I mean don't know either. I've never had a lookout be a target violence. Great. Look, you're obviously mad. Just try to get some rest, okay? How the hell do I do that? Look, Henry, I can't explain why someone would wreck your tower and throw your typewriter out of the window, but I mean aside from forest fires, bad things just don't Don't happen out here. I know bad things not happening might be new for you. But I promise. Once you settle in, you'll like it. Okay, thanks. Good first day. Talk to you tomorrow. Sound so bummed. Yeah. Anyway. So, that's a demo that we're actually going to let people play live, here in San Francisco, so you can see that there's a comment card here, that we're asking for people's feedback, but yeah, thanks so much. This is Firewatch, you can follow its ongoing development on twitter at acamposento, and we're shooting to have this game out this year. We're having a lot of fun working on it, but we can't wait for you guys to play it. Yeah thanks for watching everyone. Thanks Jake. Thanks John. 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