Video Game / Oxenfree 2

IS. LEAVE. POSSIBLE?

Oxenfree 2 (Stylized as OXENFREE II: LOST SIGNALS), Released on Jul 12, 2023 is the sequel to the supernatural thriller coming-of-age story, Oxenfree by Night School Studios.

Six years after Alex and her friends' fateful trip to Edwards Island, a woman named Riley Poverly takes a job with the Camena area weather station investigating the strange radio interference plaguing the area. Joined by her (slightly) more experienced partner Jacob in the field and their boss Evelyn over walkie-talkie, the job seems simple- place a few radio transmitters around the Camena coastline so Evelyn can interpret the strange signals they pick up. However, things quickly spiral out of control when the first transmitter connects with a familiar portal over Edwards Island, and an old malevolent force is once again unleashed. Riley and Jacob are now tasked with closing the portal, a job made even harder by the local cult, Parentage, whose leader wants the hole between worlds kept open by any means necessary.

Much like the first game, OXENFREE 2’s gameplay primarily involves making dialog choices and tuning into ghosts with a portable radio. New to this entry is the Walkie Talkie system, which allows you to talk to various characters throughout the night at anytime, anywhere, with opportunities and dialogue changing whenever you choose to pick up the line.

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TROPES. ARE. POSSIBLE.:

• Action Girl: Riley, bar none. Climbing up and down rocky cliffs without safety gear? Check. Breaking into a sprint to catch up to a parentage member? Check. Staring down the Ghosts that haunt the airwaves? Choose the right dialogue options and you can add another Check.
• Affably Evil: The Sunken are decidedly not this, this time around, unlike the first game, being far more willing to engage with the main characters in overtly hostile and threatening ways and offering no sympathetic moments. The members of Parentage Fit into this far more, being mere teenagers following the lead of Alpha Bitch Olivia.
• All Love Is Unrequited: Maria has a crush on Charlie, who unsurprisingly doesn't return her feelings. Charlie, meanwhile, seems to be in Parentage because he's interested in Olivia who is oblivious-at-best to his feelings. And Riley dumped Rex's unseen father before the events of the game.
• Ambiguous Situation:
  • When you encounter Violet at the transmitter site past the caves, she gets possessed by the Sunken and begins recursively acting out a past argument with her mother. Other than it being a dispute over money and responsibilities, no other details are given and the player never sees more of Violet's past after saving her.
  • The players never see Jacob and Olivia's respective Lotus-Eater Machine if they choose to have Riley sacrifice one of them, leaving it ambiguous what moment they'll be forced to live out for eternity.
• Because You Were Nice to Me:
  • As you progress into the story, 2 of the 3 Parentage Members in Camena eventually become possessed by the Sunken. Freeing them from the possession, and being kind to them in dialogue options before and after, result in them standing up to Olivia in the community center, buying you valuable time to get to the radio before she can.
  • Oddly inverted with sacrificing Jacob at the end. If Riley is consistently rude to him throughout the game he'll volunteer for this, but befriending him gives him so much hope for the future that he decides he has too much to live for and he won't do it.
• Belated Happy Ending: Alex and friends are freed from their horrible fate from the first game and get to resume their lives as if nothing happened. The characters introduced in the second game have to pay the price for this, though, as described in Bittersweet Ending below.
• Bittersweet Ending:
  • There are several endings that depend on the options you chose throughout the game and who you choose to sacrifice in the end, yet all are bittersweet. As for sweetness, Alex and her friends are finally freed from their tragic fate of being forced to relive the events of the first game for eternity and the Sunken are sealed away forever. As for the bitterness, the player must sacrifice Riley, Jacob, or Olivia to achieve this, which means that one of them will have to live out a moment in their past or future forever, never being able to progress past that point.
  • Choosing to sacrifice Riley is particularly heavy on the bittersweetness: It's shown that her "moment" is her spending time with what would have been her future son in Camena, which is presented as peaceful, but the sweetness of it is undercut by the fact that it's doomed to repeat forever, with Riley fully aware of not only this but also the sacrifice she made and will never be able to undo. Worse yet, she implies that she's already been repeating the moment for decades, or at least long enough that Jacob is likely no longer alive by the time we see it.
• Call-Back: Early in the game, you find a large gap that looks very similar to the one in the first game, which gave you an achievement for jumping over. You don’t make it this time around, and Riley makes a snarky comment on the map if you try.
• Cool Mask: All of the Parentage kids wear these, as seems to be the cult custom.
• Distress Call: You can attempt to make a distress call to the local ranger department. Whether or not they believe you or just hang up on you immediately depends on your dialogue options. Conversely, you get a few distress calls of your own, which lead into side quests that open up new contacts.
• Downer Ending: Any of the endings can become this if you're on poor enough terms with the other characters. For example, if you don't befriend Olivia and don't let her enter the portal, she'll end up being despised by her friends and more alone than she's ever been.
• Eldritch Location: "Planetshine", the dimensional breach that the Sunken as well as Alex and her friends are trapped in.
  • One of the sidequest characters, Nick, is a sailor cruising around Edwards Island, and if you check in with him periodically he'll report that the portal is doing some strange things to the ocean.
• Everyone Has Standards: Regardless of her personal issues with Olivia, Violet is likely to be angry at Riley for essentially condemning Olivia to a Fate Worse than Death if they choose to sacrifice her at the end of the game.
• Freudian Excuse: The reason why Olivia is so desperate to open the portals and free the Sunken is because she lost her parents in a plane crash a few years ago, and she believes that the portals allow her a chance to either bring them back or at least remain with them forever.
• The Friend Nobody Likes: Olivia's friendship with Violet and Charlie seems tenuous at best, and both can be turned against her should Riley be sufficiently kind to them. The other kids at Camena High don't think much of her either, if Maria's view of her is anything to go by.
• Growing Up Sucks: Nick the sailor is regretful about the adventurous life he yearned in his youth, but never got to live. He bitterly remarks that the curse of growing older is the loss of opportunities and possibilities which seem endless when you're young. Riley can remedy this at the end of his quest arc by instructing him on how to open a portal to waters unknown, which he'll disappear into forever.
• Hard Truth Aesop: Some people aren't well-suited to be parents simply because they're doomed to repeat their own parents' mistakes. Riley had a difficult relationship with her father, who never got over her mother's departure. She's also two months pregnant with a son named Rex, and she dreads that she'll mess things up with him the same way her dad did with her. At the end of the game, Alex reveals to her that things indeed end poorly with Rex no matter what she does. The best Riley can do is remain stuck between dimensions to prevent Rex from ever being born, perpetually repeating a happy would-be moment with him in his childhood.
• Heroic Sacrifice: Riley can sacrifice her chance at a proper future to save Alex (and her friends), Olivia, and Jacob from being trapped in the Sunken’s world forever. She benefits from it in a way, however, as she gets to live in the peaceful moment with her son Rex for all eternity.
• Jerkass: Olivia is extremely unlikeable and bullies her friends, who will turn on her if the players make the right decisions. She is also the catalyst for the entire plot of the game, as she communed with the Sunken in order to be reunited with her parents and live out her happiest moment with them for all eternity, fully aware that she would be sacrificing the lives of everyone in Camena in the process.
• Lotus-Eater Machine: Revealed to be the fate of anyone who gets pulled into the Sunken’s world. They are locked into a specific memory that they have the most connection to, without realizing they’re trapped in that memory, for all eternity.
• Mystery Cult: Parentage has this reputation; they're ultra-secretive and their rituals and customs seem strange to outsiders, giving them a local reputation as a bunch of kooks who dance naked in the forest. As it turns out, they're not much more than a harmless group of hippy-dippies obsessed with astrology and yoga. Interestingly, their practices were much more violent in the past but mellowed out over the centuries.
• Place Beyond Time: All of the main characters find themselves here after pushing back the Sunken from entering the physical world. The portal can only be closed one way, requiring one person to stay behind forever to ensure safe passage for the others.
• Point of No Return: Toward the end of the game, the player takes a boat to Edwards Island. Jacob suggests finishing up any outstanding business in Camena before doing this.
• Pregnant Badass: Riley is two months pregnant at the start of the game. Throughout the game, the temporal glitches involuntarily make her to travel into the future, where she sees that she will have a son named Rex.
• Ripple-Effect-Proof Memory: While the events of Camena are implied to have repeated several times due to Alex and Olivia's influence prior to the events of the story, Riley gains this ability at the start of the game, as does Jacob later. This is also true for the main characters at the end of the game, as Riley, Jacob, Olivia, Alex, and Olivia's friends remember everything that happened even after Camena returns to normal. Evelyn and Alex's friends are the only characters who do not remember anything in the end, which Alex believes is for the best in the latter case.
• Sadistic Choice: At the end of the game, the player is presented with one; in order to permanently close the door to the Sunken's world, the player/Riley must either sacrifice herself, Jacob (if he came along and didn't befriend Riley), or Olivia by having them seal the portal from the other side using the radio. This will forever trap whoever volunteered in the Sunken's dimension, forcing them to live out a single moment in their history for all of eternity, aware that they are trapped but unable to escape. There are drawbacks to sacrificing each character; Riley is pregnant, and while her relationship with her son is bound to fail, sacrificing her will mean she will never have the chance to make things right between them. For Jacob, he will be abandoning his dog, and while sealing the portal will give him the ultimate chance to make his life meaningful, he will be deprived of any other meaningful options in the real world. And, while Olivia practically begs the player to let her go so she can be with her parents forever, she's still just an irrational kid who hasn't dealt with her grief over their deaths.
• Sudden Sequel Heel Syndrome: Alex reveals that she attempted many times to do to Riley what the Sunken attempted to do to her and her friends after they became stuck in the Sunken's world in the original games ending, which was swapping bodies so that she and her friends could escape being trapped in a time loop on Edwards Island for all eternity. However, toward the end of the game, Alex reveals that she’s remorseful for her actions and that the Sunken are the real enemies. She even tries to stop Olivia from helping them.
• Surprise Pregnancy: Multiple characters.
  • Maria speculates that Charlie wasn't planned by his parents, especially since his only other sibling is a grown adult.
  • One Adler letter reveals that Olivia was this for her parents.
  • Seems to be the case with Riley and her future son Rex; regardless of her feelings about the whole thing she's seemingly decided to keep it.
• The Not-Love Interest: Riley and Jacob collaborate throughout the game, though it is never implied that they are developing feelings for each other beyond friendship, and even that is entirely dependent on whether the player has Riley befriend or alienate Jacob. As well, halfway through the game, Riley informs Jacob that she is two months pregnant with an unnamed man's child, with whom we hear her talking on the phone in a voice-only flashback. After hearing the news, he awkwardly congratulates her on after having it suddenly sprung on him and asks how she feels about it.
• This Is Unforgivable!: Riley has the option to smash Olivia's radio to prevent her from opening more portals. The others specifically note that if she does this, Olivia will never forgive her for it.
  Olivia: No one will care when you die.
• Took a Level in Badass: The Sunken. Thanks to Olivia's portal, they’ve managed to extend their influence past Maggie Adler’s precautions, allowing them to reach the landmass of Camena. In this, they’ve also grown tremendously in strength. While the previous game had them unable to possess people until near the very end, they demonstrate this skill from the prologue. They’ve also managed to upgrade their ability to shift reality and demonstrate this skill in order to Prevent Riley from taking the radio from Oliva when they reach the Community Center.
• Vague Age: Both Riley and Jacob are heavily implied to be in their thirties, making them about twice the ages of the main characters from the first game. Maria and the Parentage kids poke fun at this, comically overestimating Riley's age as a Running Gag.
• Victory-Guided Amnesia: After being freed at the end of the game, Alex is the only one of her group of friends who remembers anything at all from both games — the trip to Edwards Island, getting stuck, spending an uncountable amount of time as ghosts looking for a way out, and helping Riley. The rest are oblivious, seemingly thinking no time has passed at all between six years ago and now.