January 2018 Playthrough - Oxenfree

[russlyman]

I’ll see about getting this on my Switch


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[Wempster]

I thought I had put myself on for playing this month, but I must have forgot.  Anyways I just finished Oxenfree. Looking forward to the discussions.

[MustyHobbit]

Hi Playcast and RFGen in general -

I just started Oxenfree last night (got to the radio tower) and expect I'll finish it at some point this week (I'll keep myself away from spoilers until then).  
Glad to see you selected this one - got it with Games with Gold a while back (as I'm sure a few others did, too) and I've been looking for a good, short game to go between bigger RPGs.

[singlebanana]

Hi Playcast and RFGen in general -

I just started Oxenfree last night (got to the radio tower) and expect I'll finish it at some point this week (I'll keep myself away from spoilers until then. 
Glad to see you selected this one - got it with Games with Gold a while back (as I'm sure a few others did, too) and I've been looking for a good, short game to go between bigger RPGs.

Hey Musty!  Welcome to the site and thank you for joining us this month. Excited to hear your thoughts on the game.

[MustyHobbit]

I finished it up last night, and really enjoyed it.  Glad Microsoft made it a GWG and I'm glad you guys chose it for a playthrough. 

Love the vibe - wish I would have tried to be a little nicer to everyone, but at least a new connection was made. 

I tend to like the games that compare your choices against the audience.  I didn't see a ton of discussion yet on those choices, but if there are others who start sharing theirs, I'll do the same. 

[singlebanana]

I finished it up last night, and really enjoyed it.  Glad Microsoft made it a GWG and I'm glad you guys chose it for a playthrough. 

Love the vibe - wish I would have tried to be a little nicer to everyone, but at least a new connection was made. 

I tend to like the games that compare your choices against the audience.  I didn't see a ton of discussion yet on those choices, but if there are others who start sharing theirs, I'll do the same. 

Yes! Please start us off Musty. We are beyond the date to be concerned with spoilers.

[MustyHobbit]

Here's how things landed in the end:
Ren and Nona = now a couple
Clarissa = absolutely hates me
Jacob = kept my distance, but we're on good terms.

I'm happy that R&N got together - even if only on a temporary basis.  Clarissa was brutal to me from the start, but I wasn't overly crude to her, so I'm surprised it led to her outright hating me.  Jacob was a little more nuanced - I didn't feel like I was pushing him away, but at least we're on good terms as step-siblings.

Also - I ended up getting advice from Pam and Major Nelson at 2 of the "mirrors" (I missed who the first one was).

I went to Ren first, then Clarissa - did anyone go in the opposite order?  Curious what happened as a result.

[GrayGhost81]

Not sure who this Jacob fella is, but don't worry, Rich called him Jona on the show. Agree that the Ren and Nona relationship was cute, they even nailed the feeling of new couple annoyingness when they're broadcasting on the PA together.

It's really hard on your first playthrough to be nice to Clarissa. On the second playthrough I felt more empathy for all of the characters and role-played Alex as ultra-polite to everyone.

There's gotta be some dialogue differences, but I went to Ren the first time and Clarissa the second time and there are no major plot differences. 

[MustyHobbit]

Yeah, my bad - it's Jonah.  Rookie mistake. 

[Wempster]

Did anyone sell out Clarissa to the aliens?

[alatinolawyer]

Hey guys, so happy to have played this game the same month as you all. I played on the Switch and picked it up when it was on sale for $5. I had a lot of fun playing this game.

Wempster, I was very tempted to sell out Clarissa, but alas, I was worried I'd get a unsatisfying ending so I went all in on saving everyone.

Was anyone else confused that while most gamers easily refer to the antagonists as aliens, the characters themselves repeatedly use the term ghost?

One other question I had was the significance of the pop up box that would have the head of a character while someone was talking. Was that to signify a bonding moment between who was talking and who the character was that was depicted in the box? Did I miss something?

HD rumble made the radio tuning pretty intense on my Switch. Was I the only one who chose to bring Ren with me from the comm tower to look for Marie Adler's boat keys? I know he had just confessed to being high of pot brownies, but I'd had enough of being with Jona up until that point and wanted to have a different companion. Man, was Jona a whiny dweeb afterward.

[singlebanana]

Thanks for playing alatinolawyer!  We actually recorded our podcast for the game this past Sunday, so unfortunately you won't get a mention....

So yeah, to follow with Musty's question regarding choices, mine were as follows:
1. Ren & Nona - together
2. Clarissa - boy, I tried to be nice....but alas
3. Jonas - I was really nice to him, but didn't take him with me when venturing from the tower meet-up. So I ended on good terms with him, but we didn't get tight.

Seems like I probably had the same ending as Musty.

I went to Clarissa instead or Ren first.  At the time I was trying to be nice and foster that relationship and Ren had kind of annoyed me with the drug use, so I felt much less sympathy for him. 

One other question I had was the significance of the pop up box that would have the head of a character while someone was talking. Was that to signify a bonding moment between who was talking and who the character was that was depicted in the box? Did I miss something?

HD rumble made the radio tuning pretty intense on my Switch. Was I the only one who chose to bring Ren with me from the comm tower to look for Marie Adler's boat keys? I know he had just confessed to being high of pot brownies, but I'd had enough of being with Jona up until that point and wanted to have a different companion. Man, was Jona a whiny dweeb afterward.

Yeah, I have no idea about the faces coming up on the speech bubble and was wondering the same thing. In some games, someone's portrait coming up means that your relationship is either improving or degrading, typically depending on whether the expression is happy or sad.  The face icon in this game is always happy and I made some speech choices that I wouldn't necessarily consider relationship improving and saw it pop up.  Who knows?  Maybe it was just there to give some direction as far as who you were speaking with or to give those dull bubbles a little flavor.

Something that I neglected to mention in the podcast is how I like that the speech bubbles for each character are color coded. Not that I ever had an trouble telling who was speaking, since the voice acting was so good, but it was a neat feature that I think many games could implement to make them better.

And yes, the rumble feature for the radio was great.  I played the Limited Run Games version on my PS4 and it also included this feature.

Yeah, my bad - it's Jonah.  Rookie mistake. 

Ha ha!  Funny enough, we almost named our third kid Jonas, but one of our fears was that people would call him Jonah.  So yeah, maybe this validates our decision.

[Pam]

For my latest playthrough...
1. Ren & Nona - not together, no matter how hard I tried
2. Clarissa - I was awful right back to her. But I didn't give her to the ghosts, even though I really wanted to.
3. Jonas - I was always nice to Jonas and generally brought him with me. When him and Ren fought I'd generally tell them both to chill out rather than side with one of them

I read that with certain decisions you could get your brother back - did anyone manage that?

People keep talking about seeing people from their friends like in their games. I didn't see this in my original playthrough on PC or my recent one on XBox. I'm trying to figure out if that's a function of my bad memory, or if I was just the first on my friends like to play it on either platform? I could have sworn I just saw another Jasyla talking to me.

[singlebanana]

I read that with certain decisions you could get your brother back - did anyone manage that?

People keep talking about seeing people from their friends like in their games. I didn't see this in my original playthrough on PC or my recent one on XBox. I'm trying to figure out if that's a function of my bad memory, or if I was just the first on my friends like to play it on either platform? I could have sworn I just saw another Jasyla talking to me.

I did not get Michael back, but we do discuss how you can accomplish this on the show.

Never heard that about seeing people from your friend's list, but that is just weird enough for this game that it might be true...

[MustyHobbit]

I managed to "record that" when it did, so I'll post a screengrab when I get a chance.