![]() I’m really looking forward to seeing how Night School plays with these ideas of temporal cause and effect even more, and some puzzles will play out across multiple timelines. This ending to the demo left me with the tantalizing timeline conundrum of Riley and Jacob’s actions in the past being the cause of the mine’s state in the present. However, during this whole ordeal, their actions caused a bit of a collapse in the mine, leading to the elevator crashing down behind them. The pair eventually made their way back to the now-functional elevator and, after a bit of puzzle-solving, both made it up and across to another tear that took them back to the present day. ![]() And if you know anything about canaries and coal mines, that’s not a great thing to find. Retracing their steps in this new era, they found that same birdcage, but this time, the bird was dead. The mine was also now completely functional, but surprisingly still empty. The entire screen was now framed in jagged edges of neon light, lending an otherworldly quality to the whole thing. Seeing no other way around, the pair slipped through the rift, finding themselves back in the same mine, circa 1899. A… time tear, if we’re naming this stuff?” it’s clear that this wasn’t the first time they’d found one of these anomalies. From the dialogue, “It’s another one of those things. The strangeness culminated in them encountering a bright orange rip in reality. A bit further ahead, the path forward was blocked by a crashed elevator that looked like it had been there for a century. It’s a strange sight, considering how the rest of the cavern seemed undisturbed for decades. In our playthrough, the pair remained together, climbing down into the chasm and eventually making their way to an abandoned mine, where they stumbled across a live canary in a cage. Being the more agile of the two, Riley could choose to try to make the jump herself and separate from Jacob, or take the long way around and stick together. At one point in the demo the pair reached a small chasm. The same goes for distinct traversal decisions that play out similar to dialogue choices. The team also focused on creating multiple routes to take towards any given destination, with lots of ins and outs that lead to different micro-stories. Chatter on your new walkie-talkie can be ignored or engaged in, leading to side stories with characters that can be experienced or completely missed. They’re a group known as Parentage, a masked cult who is attempting to “undo” everything that Alex fixed in the original and instead is trying to use those time / space portals to pull something out.Īpart from the aforementioned free-flowing dialogue, Oxenfree II expands upon player choice in a handful of other ways. The game’s main antagonists were also brought up, but not directly shown. It feels like the pair had drifted apart, only recently being reunited. She soon discovers a long history of ghostly happenings on the nearby Edwards Island and becomes entangled in a frightening, supernatural mystery.” Yup, sold.ĭuring our hands-off demo, we were introduced to Riley and her old classmate Jacob. ![]() ![]() While the new characters, setting, and five-year jump in time makes the sequel stand apart from the original, it’s clear that Lost Signals is zooming the lens out on the world and events that came before it.Īccording to the synopsis provided by Night School Studio, “Riley Poverly is an environmental researcher who returns to her hometown Camena to investigate mysterious radio frequency signals causing disturbances in electronic equipment throughout the small town. This time around, instead of following Alex and her high school pals on their overnight bonfire party gone awry, the focus is on a new set of characters who are decidedly older than their teenage counterparts. So, it’s no surprise that the small preview I got to see from Oxenfree II exudes that same level of spoken artistry as the original. It’s up there with Disco Elysium and Firewatch as the games where I could spend hours just listening to the characters shoot the shit. A combination of the realistic-yet-stylized writing, wonderful performances, and implementation of the Aaron Sorkin-esque “walk-and-talk” mechanics all work together to create characters that just sound right. And after seeing a brief hands-off preview demo of Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, it’s clear that the follow-up understands the exact directions that an expansion of this universe should go in.įor my money, the original Oxenfree contains some of the most natural and conversational dialogue in any game ever. Night School Studio’s debut took the beating heart of the LucasArts-era adventure game, packaged it in some of the most remarkably stylish visuals and sound design imaginable, and made it feel like something wholly unique. 2016’s Oxenfree is one of the defining indie games of the last generation.
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