Firewatch PS4 PlayStation 4 1

Although we have some serious narrative hang-ups, Firewatch is still a game that we recommend you play – purely because it sparks some great discussion. However, outside of the debatable plotting issues, the game has some undebatable performance problems – particularly on the PlayStation 4, where it runs worse than Usain Bolt on hot coals.

To its credit, Campo Santo's acknowledging the problem – though it seems to be shifting the blame ever so slightly to Sony and Unity, the makers of the engine upon which the title runs. "Unfortunately, it's a process that requires all three parties to be involved unlike a typical bug that we can quickly fix on our own," explained Sean Vanaman, the developer's co-founder.

It sounds like a cop-out, but Unity is fast-becoming the Unreal Engine 3 of the modern era. The latter famously leveraged the PlayStation 3 about as efficiently as a hot turd, and the former doesn't appear to play nicely with the current crop of consoles – or many PCs for that matter. We can't go into detail, but we're currently reviewing another Unity-based game on the PS4 which has very similar problems to Firewatch.

So, what can be done, then? "We'll definitely be patching all platforms with every little content and performance fix we can find so folks can rest assured that we're doing everything we can," Vanaman continued. He also alluded that the issues weren't quite as pronounced on the PS4 development kits that the developer used to test the game. Maybe, next time, it should check on a retail system, too.

"I've played the game for hundreds and hundreds of hours on the PS4, and maybe because it's on test-kits and some retail boxes are different I personally didn't experience these things," Vanaman concluded. "We're super f***ing bummed that this is happening for some people and we're working actually, literally, around-the-clock on it."

[source reddit.com]