# firewatching the naturalism of firewatch by campo santo firewatch by campo santo an ongoing garme already being played (via / within the imagination) from the spawn point of the trailer. gently sift through the narrative ashes // video here the "official narrative" walkthrough as players interact with the official trailer an unofficial in-garme narrative is generated. here's the official narrative (paraphrased) firewatch is a mystery set in the wyoming wilderness where your only emotional lifeline is the wholesome person on the other end of a blocky handheld radio in firewatch you play as a real man / lumbersexual labelled "henry" who has retreated from ir messy life as a masked inner city vigilante fighting for justice to work as a sensitive v-necked wearing pabst blue ribbon sippin' fire lookout in the wyoming wilderness. perched high atop a mountain of all-amerikan naturalism it's your job to look for smoke and keep the wilderness free from alien invaders an especially hot dry summer has everyone talking about ir (privileged) emotions. your supervisor a strong sassy and independent mountain lion of a woman named delilah is available to you at all times - that is over a small blocky handheld radio - and is your only contact with the world the player is supposed to read as the one you've 'left behind' (but not really) but when something predictably strange draws you out of your lookout tower and (back out) into the world you'll explore a wild and unknown environment (of your own unspoken intellectual prejudices regarding eg. 'amurika' 'nature'(tm)) facing questions and making deep "interpersonal" choices that can build or destroy the only meaningful relationship you think you have - the one you have with interactive garming technology another narrative walkthrough the first sound heard in the official trailer is (one imagines) the lonely cry of an american bald eagle bang - right there. despite where we're supposed to think we are / how we're supposed read about our location - eg. inside 'just a nice looking garme' - already we find ourselves lost deep in the amerikan wilderness of official narratives about nature naturalism the whole conceptual backdrop of (often deliberately) unconscious ideas concepts widespread cultural imaginings and myths - the 'natural' bedrock of our claims to knowledge about the places we call "home" / the everyday. that is the dominant ideological / cultural background (text) against which such stories are 'naturally' set try listening to the (mindly furniture-chewing) trailer voice overs as though they were separate from the visuals. it makes for a strange reading. the woman states that "henry there are some things you can't prevent." like cheesy dialogue perhaps - or the apparent inevitability and irrepressible march of the american project watching carefully for the unchecked spread of such natural ideas - unexamined ideas about manifest destiny for instance - which by ir artificial constructed nature deliberately drown other voices such as those of native american indians and ir actual living history (404 error - page not found) how often the stories we tell ourselves about the stories we think we're telling prevent other narratives from expressing themselves - histories more interesting and definitely more relevant to our current troubled human condition sure firewatch looks like another solid garme. players should however also not forget that wyoming is called "the equality state"; to give equal time for an active search of other less spoken narratives is (at this stage of teh garme) vital // video here: chiefs (documentary - also now removed from historical gaze) **update patch** in which something about firewatch brings to mind more white (as as state of mind) people having exciting middle class nuclear family threatening adventures i wonder what the nepalese saying is for "paleskin who feels manly need to conquer large cold rock - but still requires local (uncredited) talent to accomplish it"? // video here **update patch** 2: a firewatch reader in which your polite twitter request to be added to the firewatch reader was completely blanked // republic of bob