Riona (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
rionaleonhart) wrote2025-03-16 03:02 pm
rionaleonhart) wrote2025-03-16 03:02 pm
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I Know What Cobalt Is, Jacob.
I've finally got around to playing Oxenfree II: Lost Signals!
I was a little surprised to realise that Riley and Jacob were in their thirties! I made the mistake of assuming that, because the first game was about teenagers, this one would also be about teenagers.
Riley, at the age of thirty-two, is the second-oldest female videogame protagonist I've ever played as, because women over thirty are shockingly underrepresented in videogames. The oldest is Chloe Frazer, who I think is in her late thirties during Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.
The reveal of Riley's pregnancy was really cleverly done, I think! Jacob is rambling about something unrelated, and you're suddenly presented with the dialogue option 'I'm pregnant.'
The game could have just chosen to have Riley say she's pregnant! But the fact that it's presented to you as a dialogue option, so you as the player read and process it a moment before she actually says it, really makes it impact differently; you're thrown so abruptly into Riley's state of mind. I sat there for several seconds before choosing the option, just thinking, Holy shit, I'm pregnant and I'm about to tell him, while Jacob continued talking in the background, oblivious. Just a cool little moment you could really only get in a videogame.
The ending choice made me very unhappy. Olivia is sixteen; I don't think she's old enough to consent to being trapped outside time forever! But Riley is pregnant, and if she traps herself instead, her child will never be born.
I thought Jacob might be willing to close the portal himself; he'd talked a lot throughout the game about wanting to do something great with his life, wanting to be remembered for something. But no; I'd been TOO NICE to him throughout the game and given him hope for his future, and now he didn't want to trap himself. Which is good, I suppose, but meant I was left with the awful Olivia-or-Riley choice!
I chose Olivia to trap herself, in the end, because she was insistent that that was what she wanted, and I could not ask the foetus for his opinion. But I didn't feel good about it.
It's nice to see Alex and company freed of the time loop at last! Oxenfree II takes place five years after Oxenfree, though, and Alex says at the end that her friends don't remember the events of Edwards Island. Does that mean they're going to return to their lives and discover that five years have gone by in their absence? They've been missing for five years, but they don't remember any of it and they haven't physically aged? I demand an Oxenfree III to explore this; that could be a really interesting story!
The main thing that distinguishes Night School Studio's games is the dialogue: the naturalistic feel to it, and the realistic way conversations flow, without awkward pauses for the player to choose dialogue options. It was the first thing that struck me about Oxenfree.
That strength is very much still present in Oxenfree II, and, as a bonus, this game is much more generous with timing windows than the original Oxenfree; you no longer have to process and choose your dialogue options within a couple of seconds. I enjoyed the lively conversations!
I didn't find the characters as interesting or as strongly drawn as the Oxenfree cast, though, so ultimately I didn't get as invested in Oxenfree II. Riley and Jacob go through a nightmare together, nobody else will understand what they've experienced, and yet I don't really end up shipping them? If that happens, surely something has gone wrong with your character writing.
To be fair, the first Oxenfree had an advantage in getting me invested because I love siblings and I love strangers bonding intensely while undergoing trauma, so I was delighted that Alex and Jonas presented me with the narratively unusual combination of 'strangers who are also siblings bonding intensely while undergoing trauma'.
I was a little surprised to realise that Riley and Jacob were in their thirties! I made the mistake of assuming that, because the first game was about teenagers, this one would also be about teenagers.
Riley, at the age of thirty-two, is the second-oldest female videogame protagonist I've ever played as, because women over thirty are shockingly underrepresented in videogames. The oldest is Chloe Frazer, who I think is in her late thirties during Uncharted: The Lost Legacy.
The reveal of Riley's pregnancy was really cleverly done, I think! Jacob is rambling about something unrelated, and you're suddenly presented with the dialogue option 'I'm pregnant.'
The game could have just chosen to have Riley say she's pregnant! But the fact that it's presented to you as a dialogue option, so you as the player read and process it a moment before she actually says it, really makes it impact differently; you're thrown so abruptly into Riley's state of mind. I sat there for several seconds before choosing the option, just thinking, Holy shit, I'm pregnant and I'm about to tell him, while Jacob continued talking in the background, oblivious. Just a cool little moment you could really only get in a videogame.
The ending choice made me very unhappy. Olivia is sixteen; I don't think she's old enough to consent to being trapped outside time forever! But Riley is pregnant, and if she traps herself instead, her child will never be born.
I thought Jacob might be willing to close the portal himself; he'd talked a lot throughout the game about wanting to do something great with his life, wanting to be remembered for something. But no; I'd been TOO NICE to him throughout the game and given him hope for his future, and now he didn't want to trap himself. Which is good, I suppose, but meant I was left with the awful Olivia-or-Riley choice!
I chose Olivia to trap herself, in the end, because she was insistent that that was what she wanted, and I could not ask the foetus for his opinion. But I didn't feel good about it.
It's nice to see Alex and company freed of the time loop at last! Oxenfree II takes place five years after Oxenfree, though, and Alex says at the end that her friends don't remember the events of Edwards Island. Does that mean they're going to return to their lives and discover that five years have gone by in their absence? They've been missing for five years, but they don't remember any of it and they haven't physically aged? I demand an Oxenfree III to explore this; that could be a really interesting story!
The main thing that distinguishes Night School Studio's games is the dialogue: the naturalistic feel to it, and the realistic way conversations flow, without awkward pauses for the player to choose dialogue options. It was the first thing that struck me about Oxenfree.
That strength is very much still present in Oxenfree II, and, as a bonus, this game is much more generous with timing windows than the original Oxenfree; you no longer have to process and choose your dialogue options within a couple of seconds. I enjoyed the lively conversations!
I didn't find the characters as interesting or as strongly drawn as the Oxenfree cast, though, so ultimately I didn't get as invested in Oxenfree II. Riley and Jacob go through a nightmare together, nobody else will understand what they've experienced, and yet I don't really end up shipping them? If that happens, surely something has gone wrong with your character writing.
To be fair, the first Oxenfree had an advantage in getting me invested because I love siblings and I love strangers bonding intensely while undergoing trauma, so I was delighted that Alex and Jonas presented me with the narratively unusual combination of 'strangers who are also siblings bonding intensely while undergoing trauma'.
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If you've read that entry, I'm likely going to be repeating myself. I insist you forget everything I wrote. That's a normal request, right? Right.