“It's a very intentional and constrained colour palette, and has a stylised component to it that I think really prizes economy with a strong palette.”įirewatch’s soundtrack could also be described as being constrained or prizing economy, and Remo explains that was also a deliberate choice to reflect not only the art or the environment, but the tone of the game itself. While Moss had worked in video games previously, his main experience was with movie posters, which Remo thinks might have translated to Firewatch’s instantly recognisable look. That was before there was a sort of story idea or anything, and that really established the visual design of the game that carried through pretty much right until ship.” Olly Moss, the art director, created a piece of concept art that was the first material created for the game. “You said that the art is sort of the first thing you think of when you think of Firewatch, and maybe that's appropriate because it was the first thing that existed about it. “The whole look of the game was established extremely quickly,” Remo says. Related: Five Years On, Firewatch's Designer Says Its Choices Were So Subtle Everyone Thought It Was A Linear Game According to Remo, that’s because the art was one of the first things in place for the game, while the music was created alongside the game’s complex dialogue systems. The art, with its warm orange hues and strong silhouettes, is vibrant and striking, while the music is deliberately understated. However, Remo also served as the game designer and composer, and we also spoke about how the art and music take this idea of subtlety in different directions. So much so, in fact, that many players never realised they were making decisions at all. In an earlier feature from this two part interview, I spoke to story designer Chris Remo specifically about the game’s narrative choices, and how they were deliberately designed to be as subtle and non-invasive as possible.

Firewatch turns five years old this month, and it’s a game mostly propped by three elements: artstyle, narrative, and music.

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