I don't expect to have meaningful interactions with the games I play at every second of it. The comparison with Firewatch is not fair either because the story and dialogue interaction is the main component of that game (and we could talk about how many things about that plot are wrong imo), Uncharted have other strong points but the focus is mainly the sense of adventure, maybe you don't feel it while you're playing it but it's evident that a lot of people do.
Some people want challenge and complex interactions in every game they play, others don't need or want this. I couldn't care less about platforming systems and failure at my jumps in Uncharted but here some people seems to hate this, that's why the want a full action game most of the time because they don't want basic platforming, I understand that but personally, as a fan of EVERY Uncharted game, I never needed full action on the games, I even got burned of it sometimes, I just want to feel part of a great adventure with great characters and so far Naughty Dog never failed me at this.
You're right the story and dialogue comprise the main focus of Firewatchif the game is going to put emphasis on those elements and have them be front and center for big chunks of time, then they need to offer something of interest to the player. Too many people bristle at the mere opinion that those slow parts and the pure climbing segments of Uncharted 4 are too frequent, too empty or too restrictive to be funextreme scripting and restrictiveness gets called out all the time, and it's no different here. It's completely reasonable to have expected 4 to be consistently action-packed based on previews and the series' pedigree.
Having light, low-impact adventure elements in the game isn't a problem. It's when those are used to prop up long stretches of the game that it falls short. If ND wants to go that route, they can't just take the post-train village segment from Uncharted 2, make it bigger and multiply it by 10. It's like putting a bunch of mini-game levels into Crash Bandicoot 3 where each isn't that great, and serves more to merely switch things up, and little more.
Games don't need filler to pad out their run times, or to provide lengthy downtime after every bit of actionSuper Mario 3D world is entirely focused on straight-up platforming, yet stays engaging all throughout. Hell, Uncharted 2 is almost non-stop action from the start of Nepal all the way to the end of the train level, and the climbing segments in that stretch don't overstay their welcomeeach shootout and action scene does something unique with its encounter design. That downtime in the Uncharted series is just not strong enough to stand on its own for every other section, especially when there's nothing else being done: those parts rarely ever have character development or gives insight into the story, rarely demands any engagement from the player and they only serve to be pretty.
If you got burned out from the action in past games, you could've just turned the game off.