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It’s a strange, but also deflated, approach to take. Hoping instead players are reminded of other games (better games) and that that rekindling will somehow mask its clear shortcomings. Outside of initial appearance, outside of reminiscing on those past successes - on a game like Firewatch that managed so wonderfully to break from out the stigma of its proposed genre stereotypes - The Suicide of Rachel Foster clearly isn’t in the business of giving its brief, story-driven efforts any sense of unique underpinning. In rather, haphazard, forcibly-dramatic circumstances I might add. This then is exactly where the deviation in quality begins and sadly doesn’t end until the closing scene and accompanying end choice is laid out to the player. An introduction, in Firewatch‘s case, that brilliantly set the stage while offering some opportune sympathy with its main protagonist. Right from the get-go - the literal first minute-or-so - shifting back-and-forth between expository, on-screen text and slow-crawling gameplay via the most-cliche of funeral scenes - is reminiscent of Campo Santo’s own “walking sim”-fashioned, first-person adventure. Firewatch will automatically be the first name people will clamber to when it comes to drawing comparisons with One-O-One Games’ latest, The Suicide of Rachel Foster. Nor should they be mistaken or interchanged for one another when it comes to comparing two specific creations - in this case, two specific video game releases. “Inspired by…” and “replicating” are never the same thing.
