![]() ![]() And none of those are words that just float around on the screen. Oxenfree’s multiple outcomes roll out from the numerous discussions you have with them throughout the game, in which you choose totally organic responses to frame Alex as someone who is understanding, forgiving, skeptical, or spiteful. The elegant adventure is driven not only by the unsettling sounds emanating from your radio, but by the tension growing between Alex and her chatty teen friends: the new step-brother, the earnest airhead, the spiteful drama queen, etc. In Oxenfree, you co-inhabit the head of Alex, a teenage girl marooned in mystery on an eerie, antique island - seemingly one state over from Twin Peaks. ![]() Players have been trained to wait and look for the outlines to appear, blind to the coloring inside. The outcomes have gotten so big, divergent, extravagant and in-your-face that a singular endpoint in a game claiming to be about choice is seen as a betrayal, even if a billion permutations precede it. ![]() Go left to make it rain prozac-infused puppies, go right for the reign of eternal eldritch horror from which none shall ever escape. Epic games have made galactic commodities of choices, planting them in the road like neon signs that can be seen from space. If these choices strike you as weightless and insignificant, it’s probably because you’re peering at them through the lens of video games - some telescope on a far-off planet pointed back here at our teensy little decisions on Earth. You interject only at key moments as a god-like guest author, chiming in on important subjects like how Henry deals with an attempted mugging, and what kind of dog he gets with his wife, Julia. Without so much as a photograph in mind you spend just a few minutes learning about Henry, the man you’re about to play as a fire lookout in a Wyoming forest. You flip through the opening moments of Firewatch, a new first-person thriller from developer Campo Santo, like you’re speed-reading through someone’s biography. ![]()
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