Games | Superior Realities

Some months back, I watched a friend livestream Oxenfree over the course of a couple nights. I had never heard of the game beforehand, but it intrigued me. So much so, in fact, that I resolved to buy and play through the game myself, even though I’d already seen all of it via her livestream.

The Steam summer sale provided me the perfect opportunity to finally grab Oxenfree, and having now experienced the game both first and secondhand, I will now bring you my thoughts on it.

Oxenfree is a difficult game to define. It’s part of the new generation of highly story-driven games with little to no substantive gameplay.

The story is about a small group of sometimes troubled teenagers holding a beach party on an abandoned island. The island is famous for its mysterious radio signals that seem to come from nowhere at all, and while investigating those signals, the main character (Alex) accidentally opens a bizarre rift in space.

Shenanigans ensue.

There are definite shades of Life Is Strange here, right down to having a teenage girl with blue hair, but there’s less lesbian romance and more surreal creepiness. There’s are also very strong echoes of The Secret World, especially its Halloween mission The Broadcast. Personally I think The Broadcast is one of TSW’s best moments, so any comparison to it is a very good thing.

If I had to put a label on Oxenfree, I’d call it horror, but it doesn’t fit any genre particularly well. It’s closest to horror, but it’s not a particularly scary game, really. Don’t expect to be jumping in your seat or yelping in terror. It’s more strange and creepy than genuinely frightening.

The graphics are unusual, but interesting. I’m normally not a fan of the whole 2.5D thing, but the art here has a really nice style to it, and overall Oxenfree is a nice game to look at, even if it was clearly done on a budget.

Taking a cue from The Secret World, Oxenfree also likes to mess with its own graphics, blurring, shifting, and turning things upside down, among other things. It helps sell the surrealism of the game quite well.

Something else Oxenfree shares with TSW is fantastic sound design. The soundtrack is very ambient but sells the spooky atmosphere excellently, and the sound effects and voice acting are strong.

One thing I couldn’t see from watching my friend’s livestream is that Oxenfree’s gameplay has some minor hiccups, though nothing too frustrating. Movement, for example, can be a little finicky. Alex doesn’t handle corners very well.

Somewhat more troublesome is that your dialogue choices have a tendency to time out, sometimes very quickly. In a story-driven game, that can get irritating. I’m used to Bioware dialogue wheels, where you can puzzle over what to say for as long as you like.

Oxenfree offers a lot of choices to the player, but they don’t seem to matter very much. I made a lot of different choices from my friend, but the end results seemed to be almost entirely the same. You can get slightly different endings, but that’s about it.

Ultimately a game like Oxenfree lives or dies by the strength of its story, and the good news is Oxenfree’s storytelling is quite strong. It’s a very surreal experience, but it’s fascinating and compelling in its oddness, and the ambiance is, again, excellent.

It doesn’t have quite the same emotional punch of Life Is Strange, but that might be a good thing. Life Is Strange got a bit over the top after a while. To put it mildly.

The consensus seems to be that all of Oxenfree’s characters are likable except one, but not everyone agrees on who the exception is. My friend hated Clarissa, but I like her just fine. It’s Ren I can’t stand.

Anyway, the point is Oxenfree’s cast is pretty strong.

The one significant gripe I’d have with Oxenfree is its recently added new game plus mode (for lack of a better term). You can now replay the game for a slightly different experience with some new or modified scenes and an extended ending.

It’s a free update, which is nice, but it doesn’t really change much, so mostly you’re just playing the same stuff all over again. And while the new ending is theoretically more conclusive, I honestly liked the original ending better.

It’s hard to explain without going into major spoiler territory, but basically they solved one problem by creating a bunch of new ones and kind of invalidating the rest of the game. It feels like adding something just for the sake of being able to say they added something. I think I’m going to recommend just skipping the new game plus mode entirely.

But the base game is great.

Overall rating: 8.7/10

Some time ago, The Secret World ran a series of contests as as part of their “IAMTSW” festivities. Among these was a character backstory competition, and of course, I had to enter.

I chose my Templar as the subject. While she’s not necessarily my favourite of my characters, I think her backstory is probably the most unique and potentially the most interesting.

In an effort to stand out, I chose to emulate the writing style of the in-game lore entries from the Buzzing. I wanted it to feel just like the lore you’d pick up while playing.

Unfortunately, I didn’t win anything in the contest, but I’m still fairly happy with how it turned out, so now I’m sharing it with you, dear reader. I hope you’ll enjoy it.

———————-

Our wisdom flows so sweet. Taste and see.

TRANSMIT – initiate Brutus signal – RECEIVE – initiate the Frankenstein lexicon – HAVE NOT I CHOSEN YOU TWELVE, AND ONE OF YOU IS A DEVIL? – initiate the black in the red – WITNESS – Dorotea Senjak.

A young woman works at a computer. Clickety-clack, clickety-clack. Her world is full of tax codes, surcharges, and compound interest. Money is a nonsense thing, a set of imaginary rules that governs the lives of all sweetlings. Yet she is content with her life. She brings order to nonsense. She feels safe.

She walks home, sipping her third Moca Loco of the day. She finds her bed and sleeps, but her dreams are strange. It is there that we find her.

Her fingers spit flame. She gasps, and primal forces rend her furniture, burn her clothes.

Time passes. She learns to control her new powers, but her fear does not subside. She believes she has gone mad. If only madness were so simple.

Then comes the knock at her door. A clean, polished woman greets her with the symbol of the cross.

A plane ride to London. A vision on the street. Understanding dawns, and the accountant learns that there are stranger things still than tax laws. Her mind fills with images of fangs in the night, and shadows that whisper.

Initiate biological scan: The eyes widen. The pores excrete saltwater. The heart pumps faster. The voice is silent, but the flesh screams in terror. The neat little world she knew was a lie.

She finds her way to the Templars. They fill her mind with images of pride, strength, and tradition. The flash of steel and the heat of righteous fire. The smooth baritone of a man named Richard soothes her, and she begins to feel safe again. Monsters are real, but so are heroes.

But there are no White Knights in the Dark Days, sweetling.

She thought she would save everyone. She thought mercy was the watchword. Templars do not understand mercy. “We cannot offer salvation on a case-by-case basis,” says the man behind the desk.

For every howling undead she puts down, for every slavering wendigo that meets its end at her hands, ten take its place. The horrors of the night are without end. The black water overflows.

Hope is a concept we do not understand. What is time to us? We stand outside. Everything has happened. Everything is happening. Hope is a product of a linear mind, an ambition for a bright future based on fragile emotion.

We can only see the effect hope has on sweetlings. Its presence can give you the power to withstand the darkness. Its loss can break you.

Our little accountant with flaming fingers lost hope.

Knowledge is a terrible burden. We have broken sweetlings before. We will do it again. We seek the greatest among you, but little do we understand your fragile kind, and you are cursed with free will.

Enter the other voices.

“We can make everything right again,” they purr. “We will reboot the world,” they hiss. “You need only accept our gift,” they breathe.

Tears stain her cheeks. She accepts.

Initiate biological scan: She is changing. The eyes redden. Terror metastasizes to madness. They whisper in her mind. Always whispering, louder and louder. Whispers that scream across the black voids of time and space.

Part of her still wants to save everyone. It fought to a standstill with the part of her that dreams of the stars that scream, and now each pretends the other does not exist. She saves a child one day. She opens the door for the hungry void the next. The left hand and the right hand are no longer on speaking terms.

O, poor Mr. Sonnac. If you only knew the dark little thoughts that dance in your star pupil’s decaying mind. You would weep, even as you boiled her in her own skin.

We have created a monster, sweetling. It is not the first. It will not be the last.

Be seeing you, sweetling. In the reddened half-light.

Superior Realities

Category Archives: Games

Review: Oxenfree

Fan Fiction: The Black in the Red

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