The pandemic started when I was in my second year of university, only 19 years old, and it was a kind of solitude I hadn’t experienced before. It left me cold and distant, burying my feelings and struggling to connect with my emotions as the recent past blurred into a hazy homogenous blob. But then I found 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Firewatch, and it was like seeing my reflection in the mirror for the first tiඣme in an age.
Henry’s wife is suffering from dementia and their marriage is falling apart, so he takes a job as a firewatch and secludes himself in the woods. That’s where we step into his shoes. The only human interaction is over the radio, forging a friendship with a woman called Delilah. But even as we reach Firewatch’s final crawl to the finish, Delilah and Henry don’t meet. The only evidence of her existence is her room in her lookout tower. The only proof she’s real is the things she’s left behind, a feeling that echoes earlier in the game when partygoers litter cans ofꦚ beer on the beach, and vandals trash Henry’s bedroom. You don’t see any of these people, you don’t interact with them, buꦇt you know they were there.
Firewatch is lonely to an eerie degree, but among that unsettling isolation is a stark beauty in the nature surrounding the tower. The mere existence of his surroundings was enough to interest Henry, and while a trip to the kitchen or the sofa isn’t as thrilling as a walk through the mountains at midnight, finding comfort in the simplicity of my own space helped me come to terms with such strong solitude.﷽ Like Henry made the tower his own, I sta🐬rted to decorate my bedroom more, adorning shelves and my desk with geeky collections of figures and other items, turning mundane living spaces into an expression of my passions.
The monotony whittled away, but loneliness on that scale𒊎 leaves a permanent mark. Henry is notably more awkward and struggles to find the right words with Delilah. He comes off as goofy and embarrassing in an endearing way, but there’s undeniable hurt beneath it all. I’ve no doubt many of us felt that way even before restrictions were lifted, when our only contact with the outside world was through Zoom calls and messenger chats. Having to unmute because a lecturer asked you a question felt like crawling out of a dark cave and squinting at the bright light. Just saying hello, as even the once-common niceties became rare and rusted, was harder than ever. You get far too used to yourself when you’re the only person you spend time with, and you don’t have to hold꧟ a conversation with the thoughts in your head.
Even when we were allowed to go back out into the world, everyone had to social distance and wear masks, something we really should still be doing. I✤ saw a lot of that in Firewatch, as you never truly meet anyone. When you’re sent to deal with the women lighting a fire and swimming in the lake, they’re a blip in the distance, cloaked in darkness that mo🔥rphs them into silhouettes. They’re there and you can talk to them, but it’s like yelling at a shadow. Everyone is within reach, but just beyond your fingertips, walking a fine line that, at the height of the pandemic, made going outdoors feel as lonely as staying inside.
Even though we could re-enter the wider world, it felt impossible to make lasting relationships with isolation still a focus. University stayed remote, so the campus was often barren and lifeless, and there was no room to safely socialise. Being trapped inside🌱, which forced existing friendships♎ to become digital, was lonely enough, but a side-effect of the pandemic was that it made it harder to meet new people.
You were trapped in the same bubble you’d been in since before it started, and as the surroundings grew monotonous, so did social lives. But embracing that new digital world, even briefly, is what helped keep the pandemic from swallowing our social lives entirely. I met new people from the student paper and began to socialise through Jackbox and other online games, even rekindlingꦓ old and forgotten friendships - thoܫse were my Delilahs.
When the game finally comes to an end, we don’t get to see Delilah. Even stepping out of that familiar zone we’ve isolated ourselves in for so long, the loneliness creeps ahead of us. She’s gone, Henry is still by himself, and little has actually changed, our only way of truly speaking to her still being over the radio. It’s a lot like how we’🌄re still in the pandemic, even if so many want to forget that fact and forge on like it’s all over. Firew💮atch might be seven years old, but it’s the one game that captures the unique loneliness of a pandemic.
