Firewatch's Boombox
Firewatch's Boombox
One of my favourite niche experiences with music in video games was discovering the boombox in Firewatch. I was not the only one that took it with me!
Hot off the back of my recent Red Dead Redemption 2 adventures, I couldn’t quite get myself away from a game that presents me with more sunsets I could shake a Campari spritz at, so Firewatch was next on the list for me. While playing this game, I came across an incredible and unique way that music was used to enrich the gaming experience, unlike any other use I’ve seen before.
Background on Firewatch
‘Day One’ - Setting the scene
Why that boombox in the wild is such a genius idea.
1. Background on Firewatch
Firewatch is one of those games that has been advertised surprisingly well by many a community, as well as winning the BAFTA for best debut game in 2017, which left me eager to play it. When I’ve seen videos on social media talking about their games they wish they could forget and want to play again, Firewatch often gets listed.
Firewatch is a single-player first-person mystery set in the Wyoming wilderness. The year is 1989. You are a man named Henry who has retreated from his messy life to work as a fire lookout in the Wyoming wilderness. Perched high atop a mountain, it's your job to look for smoke and keep the wilderness safe.
Having not had any info on this game spoiled for me, I had no expectations to see music in this game other than background music. My guess would be the soundtrack was mainly ambient scene-building music that would make the most out of the game, with alot of dialogue doing the heavyweight movement of the narrative. It had to have some sort of music though because without any music it would be like a British soap, such as Eastenders - notoriously no music outside of the theme tune and lots of talking.
Given Firewatch’s lasting reputation, I imagined the soundtrack to be as powerful as the game itself. And you know what? I was absolutely right. The tracks range between one to three million average plays and is owned by the composer, Chris Remo. Chris Remo was an integral part of Campo Santo’s development of the game through art direction, storyboarding as well as being the composer and it clearly shows how impressive this soundtrack has integrated with the feel of the game. Campo Santo was the small indie team that made this game, and Campo Santo got bought by Valve in 2018. Excellent choice too - creativity meets innovation.
But here’s the thing, as incredible the soundtrack is, I’m not actually going to talk about it. There was one moment in the game that made me reimagine how to use music in a way I’ve never considered before.
2. ‘Day One’ - Setting the scene
In the next bit, I do explain what happens on the very first day, but the rest of the story remains spoiler free.
I was compelled to write something on Firewatch when I arrived at the first level, or ‘Day One’. After the intro sequence, you learn your character has taken a job in the forest where you’re working alone in a watchtower, and you are communicating with a ranger called ‘Delilah’ over a handheld radio who is sarcastic but friendly despite an isolating job.
You can choose your responses and decide the narrative using the handheld radio. Your first mission is to head out of your watch tower and investigate some fireworks in the distance, so you’re tasked with telling whoever is setting them off to leave, as fireworks + forest = Fire…and that I guess stopping that is your duty. You were advised to get the people to stop doing fireworks and leave the forest. You are not to harm anyone but you are told to give a stern talking to and/or to confiscate anything that you like to disuade them.
There is no HUD display (such as a ‘health bar’ or any info on the side of your screen) instead you have to manually bring up a map and a compass and find you way to where you are instructed. This is quite engaging and realistic as you end up learning the forest like it is new to you, just like the protagonist in the story.
The protagonist character you play as also slept in all day, so its late in the day and the sun is beginning to set. On your journey down, it is largely as expected - a quiet composition from the soundtrack plays, but the walk is dialogue heavy given you chatting on your radio with Delilah. In between the occassional conversation with Delilah about things you find on the way, such as reporting beer bottles to confiscate and still-warm fires to determine location, you can hear the sounds of nature and your boots hitting the path on your hike.
So far at this point I had not seen another person, and the only person I’d spoken to is Delilah over this radio. As you approach the suspected area after discovering several clues pointing in their direction, you begin to hear some music as you approach. When you arrive, you discover the two people swimming in the lake in the distance. Your character confronts the two people from afar where you exchange a few insults with your adjacent values. They are in a lake skinny dipping and partying - but they have a boombox by the side of the lake where you emerge from the hike, playing a track on a loop.
3. Why that boombox in the wild is such a genius idea.
I don’t know about anyone else who may have played Firewatch, but even though I had not even locked in an hour into this game, the game did such a good job of me feeling alone that I didn’t want to be in silence for my trip back. I was already primed to confiscate anything I wanted, and the two troublemaking trespassers were constantly telling me to ‘put the boombox down’ despite being so far away from me. I felt it was only right for me to take that boombox for my trip back to the watch tower during the last parts of light.
I listened to this track on loop, perhaps 4-5 times, maybe more. I also wanted to listen to ‘something’, because I was having to find a new route back to the watch tower of safety with the sun rapidly setting as I travelled back to base. The track stuck in my mind even after I arrived back for the next day as I already had associated it with some feeling of comfort amongst the loneliness of the forest. The scene had been set to make me feel more comfortable carrying a boombox around, despite me having to put it down on the floor everytime I wanted to interact with anything else on the way and then pick it back up again.
Here’s a screenshot of me playing this game:
I’m not the only person that did this by the way! The track is called ‘Push Play’ by Cheap Talk and is made to sound incredibly familiar and of the time (1989). Polygon have written an exceptional breakdown of the story behind this track, the recording procedures manually recording to tapes, and the effort went to capture that sound from that era too. Check out the comments of various YouTube videos (which almost have the same number of play uplift compared to other tracks on Cheap Talk’s streaming version). For the record, Cheap Talk’s whole album was self-released.
To me, this was a fascinating way to engage with audio/music. I had made the choice to carry a boombox playing music back with me, as that was better than the alternative - silence and loneliness. Also, given the isolation set in the game, there was an attachment to this music as it was a humanising element that was keeping me company. I think this was an incredibly underrated way to utilise music with such a deep ‘mechanical’ context to its existence in the game. Instead of making the music integrated with the narrative, it can be integrated with the moment instead. Using the presence of music to create a feeling amongst silence is a genius way to draw attention, and to choose this song over an alternative of nothing is brilliant.
This is what a sync in a film is trying to achieve, but games don’t babysit your inner monologue like a film does - a game presents you with choices, and you have to choose to progress. I spoke to a friend who said on their playthrough they threw the boombox into the water, but that wasn’t what I wanted to do. That’s the one element games have over any other medium - choice. Firewatch accidentally provided a way to ‘choose’ the presence of music in their story in this unique way, and the sound itself added to the feeling that the game was trying to engineer for the player.
Well done Firewatch. I look forward to completing you, and by the sounds of things, trying to forget you after so I can enjoy it all over again.
TLDR:
Firewatch made players lonely, put them in a forest, made them walk for ages, and then lets them decide if you want to steal a boombox for your return to safety. Presenting music as an option added a unique style of immersion. Research suggests lots of people engaged with Firewatch’s boombox in this way.