INTENTIONAL ANTICLIMAX Photo credit: Tim D'hoore https://www.deviantart.com/xxxscope001xxx https://www.artstation.com/tdhgraphics
Written by Danielle Carpenter
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pon Firewatch's release, the game was met with high praise for its solid plot and incredible environments. But this was not the consensus among everyone. A large portion of people who played the game complained about the ending. Among the disappointed was YouTuber Felix Kjellberg, more commonly known as "PewDiePie", who finished the game and complained, "That was it? That was f***ing it? Are you f***ing kidding with me right now? No f***ing way I will accept that as a decent ending." 23 Many people shared Kjellberg's sentiments and were angered that the game seemed to just end with no interest in what had seemingly been built toward. What has become very apparent from reading the negative feedback toward this game is that gamer responses have been misdirected. Firewatch was met with reactionary criticisms, usually shallow and almost always aggressive. Rarely was there rational discussion on the game's faults. Rather, the game didn't end the way they expected or wanted, and therefore it was bad. Video games tend to all feel very similar. This does not equate to them being bad or less interesting, however it does speak to the idea that the gaming industry needs more diversity in the stories being told and the mechanics being presented. Gamers are familiar, and comfortable, with how games usually behave and what they look like. Firewatch defies our expectations in every way, most so with the ending. It is worth our time to to explore Firewatch's story and the developer's choice to end the game on an anticlimax versus what is traditionally expected, and why challenging our expectations is what makes the story succeed. First, it is important that we define what an anticlimax looks like. If a climax is an exciting event built up in a narrative, than the anticlimax does the opposite of this. It can be born from
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bad writing or can be intentional. Typically the anticlimax is used in comedy. An example of this comes from Monty Python and the Holy Grail when the Knights and the French are seemingly about to do battle when a policeman comes and arrests King Arthur. But there are other non-comedic examples of anticlimax. When our main characters Katniss and Peeta, in The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins, are the only two tributes remaining in a battle royale to fight to the death and are forced by the capitol to try and kill one another, the expectation is that they will indeed fight and one of them will win. The narrative has been building toward this. But instead of playing along with what the government wants, Katniss pulls out poisonous berries from earlier in the text and they prepare to eat them. Seeing this, the game runner quickly announces they stop, which results in both of them winning the Hunger Games. Another example comes from Charles Dickens. In his novel Great Expectations, the main character Pip believes that his benefactor is Miss Havisham until it is revealed at the end that it was actually the escaped prisoner he helped at the beginning of the book. This works as an anticlimax due to Miss Havisham having lots of wealth and making Pip a gentleman versus the prisoner who seemed to have nothing, was presumably quite nasty, and was a random stranger at the beginning of the book. One of the most polarizing anticlimaxes in film in recent years is 2003's Signs directed by M. Night Shyamalan. The film follows an ex-minister named Graham Hess who left the church after the death of his wife. Strange things begin happening on his farm and it is soon revealed that an alien invasion is upon them. The film leads you to believe that there will be some big confrontation by the end. While it does somewhat amount to this (i.e. "Merrill, swing away"), the bigger revelation
