A big fan of Firewatch, the first-person adventure from Campo Santo, took a trip to my homeland of Montana, and found some surprisingly accurate real world representations of pivotal scenes from the game. The game scenes were already real enough, that it didn't take much more than pointing a camera and throwing in a track from the Firewatch soundtrack. It's a short, entertaining watch, and its actual scenic vistas are highly evocative of virtual vistas I last saw nearly six months ago.
The video goes to show the research and work that went into making Firewatch's art direction feel authentic despite its stylized distance from realism. It's one of the reasons I liked it so much, having camped in those fire lookouts on occasion growing up. (You can too.) Firewatch mostly uses a saturated palette, which captures the quiet energy of a lush forest and dry heat of a mountain summer—all without the use of a haptic feedback bodysuit. Fancy that.
Watch the fan video and trailer back to back, and note the similarities for yourself.
