Careful with that podcast tuning dial: you might end up having to make impactful choices on a haunted island full of spooooooooky ghosts! This week, Oren and Bunny nerd out over the Oxenfree games – both because we just wanted to talk about the game, but also because it’s an interesting exploration of how branching narratives work in practice. Which choices do you make, and how much do they matter? More importantly, who is the best NPC to take with you, and why is it Nona?

Show Notes

Transcript

Generously transcribed by Elizabeth. Volunteer to transcribe a podcast.

Chris: You are listening to the Mythcreant podcast with your hosts Oren Ashkenazi and Bunny

[opening theme]

Oren: And welcome everyone to another episode of the Mythcreants podcast. I’m Oren, and today with me is Bunny.

Bunny: Hi. It’s me.

Oren: It’s just the two of us. We’re giving Chris a break, especially ’cause we keep getting weird radio signals from… ghosts?

Bunny: Oh wow. I didn’t realize we were recording this over the radio.

Oren: Yeah, I know. It’s real creepy. We gotta do a fun little radio tuning game.

Bunny: [spookily] Woooo.

Oren: Because the only other controls are to walk around. There’s not even a jump button.

Bunny: No, you gotta walk around and look for the little circle, and then you can interact with something. You can push a thing with your back. You can push a dumpster with your back. In fact, I’m pushing a dumpster with my back right now. So there.

Oren: Really? Oh, exciting. Very good. So today we are talking about the video game Oxenfree because it is a game about branching narratives, at least to some extent, and I find that interesting. We will probably also talk about Oxenfree Two at least a little bit. I don’t know if we’ll have time to get to it in detail because we only have half an hour. But spoilers for both of those games. They’re both quite good, so if you haven’t played them and you care about spoilers, I’d recommend going to play them first.

Bunny: Yeah, go play them, especially the first one.

Oren: So first, Oxenfree. The basic premise is that you’re a teen. You go to an island to do a fun teen party and then spooky stuff with ghosts, radios, and time starts happening when you’re there.

Bunny: Yeah, you show up and the party is really sad, but then the ghosts come in, and a spooky triangle shows up and everything gets weird.

Oren: Yeah. They save you from an awkward party, I think is really the thing we should be thanking these ghosts for.

Bunny: Yeah, that’s the thesis of the game. If you have an awkward party, summon submarine ghosts. They might possess you, but it’ll be interesting.

Oren: And as we were hinting at, the gameplay is very minimal. You walk around in a 2D environment. This is not a fighting game, or a 3D adventuring game, or Dark Souls. It’s very basic in what you can actually do.

Bunny: A gorgeous 2D environment, don’t get me wrong. You go left to right and you go right to left and you walk. Do you walk, man? Do you walk? Get walking. Get steps in.

Oren: There are cars, but you’re not allowed to use them. In the second game you get a car, but it’s broken.

Bunny: It’s broken when you get there and you have a whole conversation about how you can’t fix it, so get walking.

Oren: It’s impossible to fix this car. No one in this town has the Lyft app.

Bunny: No. You get to walk along a highway. There aren’t cars there either.

Oren: Yeah. I have so many questions about that highway.

Bunny: Yeah. Camina isn’t even, like an island, right? Where is it?

Oren: Because the first game, you’re on the island, but on the second game, you’re on the town next to the island. That’s like somewhere on northwest Oregon. So the first kinds of choices that you make in this game are dialogue options you’re gonna pick, including none.

Bunny: Yeah, that’s a cool addition because some dialogue games, you have to pick one of them. They won’t go away unless you pick one of them. And in Oxenfree you can be completely silent, except for one, the crucial end of the game decision that you have to make. That’s the only one that you have to speak for. And admittedly, Alex, when you interact with the environment, Alex or Riley will be like, that’s an interesting thing, or, gosh, I’m gonna jump this fence. The dialogue is better than that. I don’t remember any of the specific ones. But they will speak when you interact with things. But you do have the option of going through almost the entire game silently.

Oren: You can get a cheeto for that, I guess. Although I could never play the game that way. It makes, it’s too creepy, just never saying anything.

Bunny: Aawkward. Even the radio ghosts can’t save you from that awkwardness.

Oren: Of course, I have to give the games’ writers and actors credit for making the dialogue sound very natural no matter which option you pick.

Bunny: Oh yeah, for sure. If anyone is looking for a great case study in how to write naturalistic dialogue that doesn’t have stereotypes and it doesn’t feel easy, like the author was just recording something, like it’s all got very strong characterization that it does very well. This is a good case study if you want to look at how to write good dialogue or how to voice act, but that’s not so much Mythcreant’s wheelhouse.

Oren: Yeah, I was just thinking about how in a lot of games there are instances where you’ll pick a dialogue option and it feels like that wasn’t the one you were supposed to pick. And the response that the person gives feels like it was supposed to be for the other dialogue option, and I never felt that way in the Oxenfree games. I thought that they just made it a really good job of seamlessly integrating what you say and then how there’s a response, and it just felt like it always made sense.

Bunny: I’ll say that, I think I mentioned this in a different podcast, that Alex would often be meaner than I was trying to make her be.

Oren: Yeah.

Bunny: I would choose what I thought was the nicest option and she’d just spit out some sarcastic response and I was like, [indignant] Alex!

Oren: No, Alex has sick burns to hand out. You don’t control Alex. You can just nudge Alex in different directions.

Bunny: That’s true. Alex controls you.

Oren: And of course, with many of these dialogue options, there’s always the question of does this dialogue option matter? And the answer is sometimes yes, sometimes no. Most of the time, no. But occasionally, yes.

Bunny: Yeah, most of the ways in which it matters is the way it affects your relationships, and I don’t know enough about the mechanics behind the game to know what sorts of tally systems are going on.

Oren: There’s some kind of scoring happening, but it’s in general, if you want to be friends with an NPC, you say nice things to them. And if you, then I think the other big one that’s determined by your dialogue choices is whether or not Nona and Ren get together at the end, which is always tough for me because I do not like Ren as an NPC. I just find him really irritating. But him and Nona getting together is clearly the good ending. They’re supposed to be happier together. So I’m always really torn about that. Guys, I don’t actually think you’re good together, but the game is telling me you are.

Bunny: Yeah… There’s also like one big event, which which can ruin one of your relationships, which actually happened to me the first time I played it through. I ruined my relationship with Jonas because I decided not to take him from the tower when we have to break off and leave two of the characters in the tower. Apparently the good way to do it is to leave Ren and Nona together because-

Oren: No, I refuse.

Bunny: They like each other or something. And then you take Jonas and your bestest step buddies.

Oren: No, Jonas can deal. I wanna hang out with Nona.

Bunny: I know. The real question here is why can’t Alex date Nona? They would be better together.

Oren: Not allowed, sadly. But he, but like dating aside, look Jonas, I spend most of the game hanging out with you. Okay? I finally get a chance to hang out with another MPC. That’s not Ren. I’m gonna take it.

Bunny: You can have other friends, Jonas. I was salty about that. I was like, okay, so I chose Nona over you one time, and I get the ending where we’re estranged. Thanks.

Oren: I’m pretty sure you can make up for that because I always picked Nona, all three of my play throughs. I’ve picked Nona and I have also always managed to get a good relation with Jonas.

Bunny: Okay. Maybe I was just being too mean to him earlier in the game. I don’t know.

Oren: I think a big one is actually whether or not you let him talk to his mom ghost.

Bunny: Oh, yeah.

Oren: Which is weird because that’s, again, one of the issues with branching games that they have sometimes, which is designer moon logic, because that does not seem like the right choice.

Bunny: It seems highly sketch, I gotta say.

Oren: All of the ghosts that you’ve met so far have been at best amoral, and at worse outright evil, and they’re all trying to steal your bodies. And the implication is that being a ghost, which is apparently very rare in this setting, just messes you up over time, and you become more and more hostile, and less and less caring about other people.

Bunny: And also the mom wasn’t on the submarine. What’s she doing here?

Oren: Yeah, it definitely feels like a trick by the ghosts. And even if it’s real, it feels like the mom is probably gonna be just as evil, because why would the mom be special? It seems like this happens to all the ghosts. In the second game, it even seems to be happening to the ghost of Alex.

Bunny: Yeah.

Oren: She seems to be evil now, although she’s less evil than the submarine ghosts because she hasn’t been dead as long. But she’s still definitely more selfish than she was in the first game.

Bunny: I have some issues with how they handled Alex in the second game, but I thought the first game did pretty well with its ghosts except for the Jonas mom, because that definitely seemed like a trick, and also it showed up like right before the conclusion of the game. So it just was like, Jonas, you can’t come with me. Shuffle Jonas off to his own side quest.

Oren: It’s definitely a thing where I let him do it because it seemed like that’s what I’m supposed to do, but in my own head I was like, this is an obviously a terrible idea.

Bunny: Yeah.

Oren: And then there are a few other choices that affect your ending a bit. There are some interesting flashbacks that turn out to be actual time skips where you can change the outcome and make Alex’s brother be alive or not.

Bunny: I only recently found that out. With me trying to be all nice and enjoy my time with my brother, I was like, go do your thing. And I only realized later, I put together that you’re supposed to realize that him leaving is what led to his death. So I haven’t actually saved Michael yet because I haven’t played the game since I learned that.

Oren: Yeah, saving Michael is a fun little Easter egg. I do- it would’ve been really nice if saving Michael made the next loop different. Speaking of which, this is the big ending, which is that no matter what happens at the end of the game, the game suddenly starts again. And it is implied that you are now doing the same events another time because you’re stuck in a time loop. And Alex starts to imply that she can remember previous time loops, although that does max out after a while, the game doesn’t have infinite content. But at least your second and third play throughs have some minor differences to indicate that you’ve done this before. And it would have been really nice if saving your brother made it so that he was alive in the next loop.

Bunny: Yeah, no, that’s actually a really good idea.

Oren: Yeah, and I get that they can’t, like, they have limited resources, so this isn’t even necessarily the thing that I’m saying they should have done this, it just would’ve been cool. Gimme the DLC, gimme the Brother is Alive DLC. I’ll pay for that.

Bunny: That would’ve been like, I did actually, I wanted to talk about like how to fix the loop ending, which didn’t bother me as much as it bothered you, I think just because I thought it was cool, that built-in reason to replay the game, Also, it seems to be responding to the fact that you’ve played it before and I thought that was cool, but having an actual way to escape the loop and every time you go through it learning new things or remembering more or whatever, that would’ve been cool.

Oren: [sighs] The loop was… Just, it was a really bummer ending for me. It’s implied that there’s no way to escape. You can tell your past self to just not go to the island, and that maybe breaks the loop. The game’s kind of vague about whether it breaks the loop or not. It’s a non-canon ending though, because in the second game, you are still in the loop. As a result, I felt really sad at the end. I was not really hyped for the next game, even though I love the first game.

Bunny: Yeah, that’s fair.

Oren: And the different loops were not different enough. Recently I played Armored Core VI, which has a similar concept where you’re supposed to play the game several times, and when you do, you unlock new content each time until you get to the true ending. But Armored Core VI had an advantage in that first, Armored Core VI is a combat game. It has a lot of mech fighting, so I’m not just watching the same story again. I’m also having action scenes that entertain while I’m doing that. But even then, even in the story, events are different in a way that the story events in the loops of Oxenfree just aren’t. They’re pretty much the same.

Bunny: Oxenfree should have had a level where you beat up the radio ghosts, is what I’m hearing.

Oren: In a giant mech. [laughter]

Bunny: Yeah. It turns out the tower, it’s actually a giant mech, because it just steps out of the ground and Alex goes and punches him.

Oren: I’ll play that version. How much for that DLC?

Bunny: There’s that part in the second one where she’s talking, the characters are on the tower and Maggie Adler’s friend shows up and becomes giant for two seconds.

Oren: Yeah, that happened. Oh man. The scavenger hunt is a really interesting quasi-choice.

Bunny: Yeah, I like the scavenger hunt.

Oren: The first game I missed that was a thing. I just didn’t understand what it was when I got it, so I just didn’t do it. And nothing is different if you don’t do it right. Again, the endings don’t change. Your main actions don’t change, but you as the player have very little idea what’s going on if you don’t do the scavenger hunt and find all the notes.

Bunny: That’s funny. I didn’t actually – I’m just a sucker for lore, so of course I did it. I’ve done that every single time I went through. But thinking about it since then, I think you’re right that it would be a bit disorienting to not have that context.

Oren: Yeah, it’s just odd like this. My second play through is definitely my favorite because my second playthrough, I knew more what I was doing. I did all the stuff, I got all the extras, and I had the most fun doing it. The third play through was a little bit out of obligation because I wanted to get the technically escape the loop option, which in itself is disappointing, because what you’re basically doing is saying, actually we’re not going to have any of the character development that happens on the island. So Alex is just gonna be a different person.

Bunny: I mean, obviously they couldn’t have done this, but wouldn’t it have been cool if once you found, that you kept playing and there was an entirely different game going on. It becomes Life is Strange or something.

Oren: If only they had infinite resources while making this game.

Bunny: If only.

Oren: Yeah, of course. This is the, just because I know someone’s gonna bring it up in comments somewhere, I know this is the promise that various large language model advocates are making for games, and let’s just say I’m skeptical of how that would work.

Bunny: If infinite resources means large language models, then no. Then I object, actually. Give me my limited Oxenfree, thank you very much.

Oren: Doesn’t seem as enticing anymore. You gotta leave us wanting some more, apparently is the answer.

Bunny: Yeah. And boy, it did leave me wanting more.

Oren: Yeah, it did. And then Oxenfree Two came out, which I also really liked.

Bunny: Yeah, Oxenfree Two was fun. I’ve admittedly only played it once, and I’m now on break and therefore separated from my computer with all the games on it. So a lot of this is just me recalling. This is gonna be a lot of my first impressions, I’ll put it that way.

Oren: I certainly didn’t really feel the need to replay it. I’ve replayed Oxenfree One, mostly because the first time I missed some important stuff that I wish I hadn’t. I would’ve liked the game more if I’d seen that the first time. So the second playthrough was just to get that stuff. And then the third time it was because it had been a while and I wanted to replay it before I played Lost Signals. That’s Oxenfree Two – Lost Signals. So that’s the only reason I played Oxenfree One multiple times. I don’t usually replay games that much, whereas Oxenfree Two feels like a very complete experience. Like the first time I did not really feel the need to play it again.

Bunny: Yeah, I think I feel the same way. I’ve replayed that first game quite a lot. The first time I played it was on a really long trip and my dad needed the iPad I was playing it on, which I did not take offense to, not at all. [Oren chuckles] And then I played it more, and then I went back to it this summer, both to play it again before the sequel release and also because I was doing a project on it. And then I played Oxenfree Two and I was like, hmm, good experience. And I went on to other things.

Oren: Yeah. And Oxenfree Two is much bigger, which is neat. There’s a lot more to explore. I think you have a jump button in Oxenfree Two.

Bunny: Can you jump on command though, or is it still that you have to-?

Oren: Specific places where you’re allowed to jump. They also gave you more minigames in Oxenfree Two.

Bunny: Oh my gosh. The minigames.

Oren: [laughing] There’s so many minigames.

Bunny: So the first time you were spinning the thingy to make the music play right, like that was the main minigame.

Oren: Yeah, I still don’t know how to do the waveform minigame. I’ve played through the whole game and every time the waveform game came up, I would just randomly fiddle with the controls until it eventually solved itself.

Bunny: Yeah, there’s not really any method to it. You get on there and you spin the thingy until it becomes not a sine wave, and then you have to align the thingy with another thingy, and it’s all very abstract, and I’m not sure what I’m actually doing in the game.

Oren: I had no concept of what the relationship was between the commands I was entering and the thing that was happening on the screen.

Bunny: Yeah, and I get why they did it. Like, they want it to feel more consequential. You’ve earned what you’re getting from this, but I’m not sure that was the completely right way to go about it because the story also can’t advance until you do the minigame.

Oren: Yeah. The minigame with the radio in the first game, which is still there in the second game, where you basically tune a radio to access a plot point, is fine.

Bunny: Yes. It’s okay.

Oren: There’s nothing really to write home about, but it works. Whereas the one in Two is like, this is certainly more complicated. I don’t think I would say it’s any better.

Bunny: It did feel, well, I don’t know. It was definitely different from the first one. I don’t know if it was more or less tedious. I didn’t mind the tuning thing. It was just spinning a dial back and forth. But this one, you actually gotta hope the sine wave cooperates.

Oren: Yeah. Come on, sine wave. Help me out here. Oxenfree Two also had some interesting choices around the walkie-talkies that you have.

Bunny: I did like what they did with the walkie-talkies.

Oren: Yeah, I enjoyed the walkie-talkies quite a bit because you end up with a walkie-talkie first, and at first I thought that was gonna be your only tool for the game. It gave me this weird impression. In the first game you had the slow buildup to the radio, and then the second one was like, no, here, use the walkie-talkie. You don’t have to tune it. We did that for you.

Bunny: The second game really just throws you right in. It’s like you get to the island, you get a little bit about Riley. Riley meets Jacob in his broken-down car. You start walking and then boom, the spooky triangle is here and you’re doing spooky things and everything’s just gone wild and there are ghosts everywhere, and you gotta deal with it.

Oren: Yeah, the supernatural heats up much faster in the second game, which I think is fine. You already played the first game. You know what’s happening.

Bunny: I kept reading reviews that were like, it can stand on its own. And I was like, it’d be very hard to parse this game if you had completely no knowledge of the first one.

Oren: You would have no idea who Alex is if you played this without having played Oxenfree One. And Alex is a really important character in Oxenfree Two.

Bunny: Maybe too important. That was one of my critiques of it, is that first of all, they didn’t know what to do with the non-Alex characters from the first game.

Oren: They were around.

Bunny: When it ended, I guess they just don’t remember it, even though it’s been five years. What are they gonna experience once they walk off screen?

Oren: Yeah. About that, who knows?

Bunny: But then Alex shows up in a kind of confusing twist where there’s actually been two sets of ghosts.

Oren: Yeah.

Bunny: And it’s not clear who was doing what. I’d have to play it again with that in mind, I think. But I remember I was talking to you on the Discord about that, and you thought it was just Alex the entire time when you were playing it, and I don’t think it was. It’s also the submarine ghosts.

Oren: Yeah, they’re still hanging around.

Bunny: And then Alex shows up and then Riley gets led around by Alex for a while, and Alex seems a bit more like the main character in some scenes. That was – well, I love Alex – a bit annoying.

Oren: Yeah, that’s interesting. I don’t remember thinking about that as an issue. My main problem with that section was I was just so bummed out by it because I was already sad at the way the first game ended, and then in the second game it was like, my hero from the first game had turned evil because she didn’t wanna be dead and was trying to take over someone else’s body. And the game strongly suggested that there was no way around this because in the first game, you tried to help the ghosts from the submarine and it’s like, nope, sorry. There’s no way to do it.

And so in the second game, I just assumed that was still true because I have no in character reason to think otherwise. And I was so sad that I stopped and I looked up the ending to assure myself that no, there is a way out. You just have to get there. And then I finished the game and had more fun, but if the internet didn’t exist, I probably wouldn’t have finished that game. I probably would’ve just stopped.

Bunny: Oh no, they’re not gonna leave our girl trapped like that.

Oren: They might. They did it the first time.

Bunny: That’s true’s. I mean, that’s one of the awkward things about doing sequels to interactive narratives is again, limited resources. You have to canonize one of the endings and remaining in the loop is the dominant ending.

Oren: Which makes sense. That’s fine. That part I don’t mind. It’s just that one game already ended on a really sad note, and it’s not like they knew for sure they were gonna be able to make a sequel when that happened. So they were clearly okay with ending the game that way, which made me have to seriously consider they might do it again.

Bunny: Yeah, that’s fair.

Oren: And it turned out that wasn’t the case and I was very grateful, but it was tough. I was emotionally very attached to those characters and it was a rough ride with the idea that they might just be stuck as ghosts forever.

Bunny: No, maybe that’s the curse of Oxenfree, is the characters are too well written.

Oren: Yeah. They build up a lot of attachment except for Ren. Ren can stay in oblivion forever I guess.

Bunny: Maybe if the ghosts had taken over Ren instead of Clarissa, just leave Ren in the void.

Oren: Which is weird because objectively Clarissa is…

Bunny: Clarissa’s a jerk.

Oren: Clarissa is pretty awful. But I didn’t dislike Clarissa the same way I disliked Ren. I dunno, call me a hypocrite, but I found her more interesting.

Bunny: She was, I think it’s because you were annoyed at Ren, and Clarissa you were angry at.

Oren: There were also just a few scenes where, I don’t know, maybe this wasn’t even intentional, but it felt like Ren seemed like he felt entitled to Alex’s affections. I wouldn’t even say if it was romantic exactly, but Ren definitely gave me really strong ‘you owe me because we’re such good friends’ vibes, which is always weird for an NPC. I don’t know. It’s like, I’ve never met you before, Ren. I don’t know what’s happening here.

Bunny: Yeah, that’s true. I will say I think the first game was better served by establishing that these characters already have relationships, then the second game was by having Jacob and Riley be complete strangers.

Oren: They do share a lot of personal details for complete strangers.

Bunny: Yeah, I think they should have had maybe they’re cousins or something, some connection. I think that the Jonas and Alex connection was well done because they’re getting to know each other, but they also already know each other.

Oren: Yeah. They have a connection. Whereas with Jacob in the second game, it’s like, yeah, he’s a guy that I met.

Bunny: Yeah, he is a cool dude. He’s got a nice hat.

Oren: You bond really fast when you’re putting up radio transmitters.

Bunny: It’s the best team building activity.

Oren: But I mentioned that there are some walkie talkie choices in the second game, which I find really interesting. There’s park ranger and boat guy.

Bunny: Boat guy!

Oren: I don’t remember boat guy’s name, but in retrospect, it’s funny because you can convince the park ranger to not die, but is again, that’s one of those developer moon logic problems where what the actual choice is, you’re convincing her whether or not to go out and do her rounds when it’s storming. And sure that sounds dangerous, but also, she was gonna do that for a reason, right? What if someone needed help? And so it feels kind of weird that convincing her to stay in is just the right choice and there are no consequences to that.

Bunny: Yeah, they probably could have made a different dilemma. Also, I think she was gay, which is cool.

Oren: That is cool. Appreciate that. So I’m glad I made it so she didn’t die.

Bunny: Yeah, it’s good when she doesn’t die.

Oren: But I did look up the answer because again, I hate game developer moon logic. I have trouble following these things. Boat guy was more straightforward, because with him you can convince him to sail his boat into a big dimensional portal.

Bunny: I don’t think I had him do that. What happens when he does that?

Oren: Yeah, no, he goes to a portal, and godspeed boat guy. I dunno what you’re seeing on the other side. But have a good time man.

Bunny: Live your best life, boat guy. Say hi to the ghosts.

Oren: I told him it was okay to go and do that because, you know, nobody can charge you boat taxes on the other side.

Bunny: This is true.

Oren: So we’re near half an hour. We should definitely talk about the main difference between the end of the two games, at least mechanically, is that the end of the first game, there is a choice, but it’s not strictly a different, here are your three endings. It’s more like the ghosts have made you an offer, are you gonna take it or not?

Bunny: Yeah, I found that a whole lot more interesting than whether you pick one, two, or three.

Oren: Yeah. Again, I didn’t mind the ending so much, just again because I didn’t want bad things to happen to these characters, and this was a way for fewer bad things to happen, so I was more okay with it. But yeah, I agree. It was certainly much, it felt much more natural in the first game.

Bunny: And then the first game, you could also influence the ghosts if you’d read the letters and learned more about them. You could bargain with them and get them to release Clarissa on their own, which was just a lot more engaging, I think.

Oren: That’s cool. I actually, I guess I didn’t realize that was a thing. I think that’s what happened in my games. Interesting.

Bunny: You can call the name, you can name one of the crew members, and that makes them start remembering themselves and they let you go.

Oren: Whereas in the second one, there’s a very clearly a pick your ending moment where the narrative kind of stops. And there was definitely some foreshadowing that you would’ve to pick someone to go through the portal, but it wasn’t very strong. Whereas with the first game, it was very obvious, you’re gonna have to make a choice, do you bargain with the ghosts or not? Whereas in the second game, it was a little bit like, all right, here’s the ending. Pick which one you want. So it was definitely less immersive.

Bunny: And it did feel like there was an obvious choice in that one of the characters wants to go through the portal.

Oren: Yeah, you’re supposed to feel more hesitant about that because she’s a teenager, but at this point it’s like, whatever. She wants to go, that’s fine. She can go live in holodeck dimension, I guess was the implication.

Bunny: Yeah. Another ghost parents thing, I’m not sure how that works.

Oren: I think the idea is that she’s gonna be reliving a stretch of time with her parents forever, is what I think it was.

Bunny: Oh, okay. I guess I didn’t pick up on that.

Oren: Whatever. I don’t really like this character. This character was really obnoxious for the entire game. I know I’m supposed to feel bad for her because she has dead parents, but it just didn’t quite click. So for me that was a pretty obvious choice.

Bunny: Yeah. I didn’t love her either. And I will say, I wanted the cult to be more. I wanted more cult. I’ll just say that.

Oren: There’s a weird bait and switch where you thought there was a cool cult on the island and it turned out that they were nothing. They were just hippies.

Bunny: Astrologer neopagans. Not actually a ghost cult.

Oren: And it’s like, oh, the thing turned out to be less interesting than we thought.

Bunny: Yeah, never a good twist when it turns out to be less interesting.

Oren: Okay. I think that will be it for our discussion of Oxenfree, unless the time loop resets and we have to do this all again.

Bunny: Oh, no. Better just listen to it again, or you’ll be stuck. Gotta wait for part two.

Oren: Or send yourself a message to not listen to it in the first place.

Bunny: Yeah, and just never go on Mythcreants ever.

Oren: If you found this to be an interesting time loop to go through forever and ever, you can support us on Patreon, which will help us continue to put you through the Mythcreants time loop. You just go to patreon.com/mythcreants. And before we go, I wanna thank a few of our existing patrons. First, there’s Callie MacLeod. Then there’s Ayman Jaber. He’s an urban fantasy writer and a connoisseur of Marvel. And finally, there’s Kathy Ferguson, who’s a professor of political theory in Star Trek. We will talk to you next week.

[closing theme]

Chris: This has been the Mythcreant podcast. Opening and closing theme, The Princess who Saved Herself by Jonathan Coulton.

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