And there’s quite a bit of space to fill. It still features a well-built dialogue system that opens the door for impactful choices that shape the story and even introduces a walkie-talkie that makes sure players can always fill dead air via conversations with far-off NPCs. Oxenfree II follows that same structure, struggling to find something for players to do with their hands. I’m not sure I would have missed much of anything had it been presented in a traditional visual novel format. It was the kind of feature that wowed game development nerds like myself at the time, but the slow walk-and-talk gameplay wasn’t too engaging. Its primary contribution to the medium was a neat dialogue trick that would allow conversations to unfold more naturally, with characters picking up thoughts later if they were interrupted during conversation (it would beat God of War to that same system by a couple of years). When the first Oxenfree launched in 2016, it already felt a little thin when it came to interactivity. While its narrative has stuck with me since playing through it, I’m also left with a lingering question: Does it really benefit from being a video game? Stick with them, though, and you’ll find a validating story about how we’re never really done growing up. There are moments early on where Lost Signals may feel like it’s aimlessly wandering, much like Riley and Jacob as they climb up cliff sides in pursuit of intangible radio signals. ![]() It’s a refreshing portrait of a woman lost in her thirties, brought to life with a nuanced voice performance from Liz Saydah. There’s honesty and maturity to that story, picking away at a kind of lasting ennui that a lot of coming-of-age media tends to chalk up to teenage hormones. It’s that moment where Lost Signals really comes together, revealing a more grounded interrogation of what it actually means to grow up. A character posits that she’s not unlike Camena’s lost sailors, stuck in a sort of stasis, never moving forwards. In a climactic scene late in the story, Riley grapples with the fact that her life, spent crammed in a small apartment, has ground to a halt. The more the night progresses, the more insight we gain into Riley’s life outside of Camena … which isn’t exactly progressing in the way she’d hoped. Though the supernatural story is the main hook, Lost Signals takes its time when getting to what really makes it work. That creepy narrative gets a boost from a handful of eerie visual sequences that infuse it with just enough light jump scares to keep me tuned in the whole way through. Over the course of one night, I was sucked in by the tale of missing sailors and a cult looking to tear reality apart in order to commune with ghosts. Riley learns the weird, engrossing history of Camena which intersects with the series’ first game, while still telling a fairly self-contained tale. On a surface level, Lost Signals is a solid campfire ghost story just like its predecessor. It’s a refreshing portrait of a woman lost in her thirties, brought to life with a nuanced voice performance … That easy task quickly goes awry when a triangular portal appears in the sky and the duo starts hopping through time. Riley teams up with another researcher, Jacob, to seek out some high ground, plant a few tech doodads, and gather some data. At first, it all seems like a normal research operation. The four- to five-hour tale centers around Riley, a thirty-something-year-old tasked with placing transmitters around the quaint coastal town of Camena, Oregon in the dead of night. If the original Oxenfree was a coming-of-age story, Lost Signals is more of a midlife crisis. The sequel does find itself struggling with its own identity crisis though, as tedious interactivity leaves me wondering if the studio’s heart is more in movies or TV than video games. Oxenfree II: Lost Signals is another narrative hit for Night School, delivering a slow-burn story that expertly weaves together supernatural horror with an introspective story of self-discovery. Over the course of one eerie night, Riley won’t just confront the ghosts of missing sailors but come to terms with the fact that her own life is similarly lost at sea. Though that sets off a supernatural story that isn’t far off in tone from Stranger Things (fitting considering Netflix owns Night School now), there’s something far more grounded nestled between the static. ![]() ![]() Set five years after the events of its predecessor, the narrative adventure sequel stars a researcher named Riley who returns to her hometown of Camena to study an unusual series of electromagnetic interferences. That tension is at the heart of Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, Night School Studio’s worthy sequel to its 2016 breakout hit Oxenfree.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |