Thus, if a game like Bioshock exhibited the tension between free will and control in the canned choices of games as such, Firewatch could be viewed as attempting an affective or emotional version of this, between hiding in the present as if there was no time and space outside it, and completing the tasks of the game in order to complete it (though its story is intentionally incomplete). The game’s characters are hiding from the world and, as you explore the world, you are hiding from the world in a more formal sense. But, just as the characters in the game cannot escape their pasts, you, as the player, cannot escape the feeling of being oddly away from things while not, while sitting at a screen. This play-present is not exactly haunted by the past in the same way the characters are, but is a present that haunts itself by attempting, virtually, to be away from time, to be only a series of played presents.

Ben Woodard, “The Present Alone is Our Sadness“