Maybe, just maybe, disappointment was what Campo Santo was going for. The isolation of the woods along with the knowledge that never again would Julia lovingly lay her eyes on Henry led many to believe that maybe these two flawed characters had found what they were looking for in one another.
Henry discovers that he was alone the entire time. Sure, there may have been an actual Delilah stowed away in Thorofare Lookout keeping him company for the two and a half months he tried and failed to keep the forest from burning, but she wasn’t real. At least THEY weren’t real.
The entire story was one that leads the player to believe that there is something much deeper going on. Even the mystery serves to remind the player that sometimes what’s on the surface is really all that is there. The majority of the game is spent trying to get to the bottom of a conspiracy that didn’t actually exist. The tapped radio, the detailed reports, and the fenced off area weren’t some big government scheme, but rather a scared man, who lost his boy in an accident and did just as Henry did, ran.
In the same way, Henry and Delilah were not two broken lovers on a crash course put in motion by fate. They were simply victims of their own circumstances, placed in one another’s path to avoid slipping into the insanity of isolation, a fact that Delilah knew long before Henry ever did.
What was real were all of the issues Henry ran from, the wisdom behind Delilah’s parting advice that maybe what Henry needed to do was take care of his dying wife rather than to run, and the fire that consumed the safe haven of a place and relationship that Henry thought he could find rest in.
Firewatch reminds the player that solace isn’t found in our failed attempts to run away from the difficult curveballs life throws us. Nor is it found in the quick-witted, faceless banter of a relationship that never could have been. Often times it is found in a harsh reminder that the thing that is calling for our attention is the very thing our attention should be focused on.
Delilah never got the answer to her question. She was left only to her imaginative drawing contingent on the honesty that Henry afforded her when describing himself. That scene metaphorically sums up the entire experience of Firewatch, leaving the player to ultimately craft the answer to the question, “What do you look like?”
