I forgot I'm a weirdo.

[grinninfoole]

On the tweeted advice of Delaney King, I tried out the video game Oxenfree (from Night School studios) on Stoic's PS4. I enjoyed it, and I wound up playing it several times through, but I did so in part because I mistook the underlying assumptions of the game design, which leads me to reflect on how this has been a life-long pattern for me.

 

In the game, you play Alex, one of five teenagers having an all night beach party on a small island in the Pacific Northwest. The small radio you brought along picks up some weird signals at the mouth of a cave, when all of a sudden you open a rift in space-time and release the beings lurking on the other side. Now you have to find your friends, solve the mystery, and fix the problem before dawn, or none of you will see the sun rise

The art is stylized and effective, the music and sound design are catchy and atmospheric, and the characters engaging real. I'm told that this style of game is often referred to as a 'walking simulator', in that one walks around a various settings and interacting with the environment. There's no danger of slipping and falling, no precise button combos one must master, and no fighting.  What one mostly does is talk to people by choosing which of 2 or 3 dialogue options you want, and tuning into things with the radio. Over the course of the evening, one's choices determine your relationships with the other characters and which of you, if any, survive. 

I don't plan to reveal the full story of Oxenfree in this post, but I shan't avoid spoilers after this paragraph to say my piece.  If you're curious, try it yourself. It came out in 2016, is widely available, inexpensive, and will only take about 4 hours to play through. You can also check out the soundtrack on YouTube.

Anyway, at the end of the game, Alex is on the morning ferry returning with her friends, and she reflects on how their lives and relationships all changed on that fateful night... before the screen glitches and Alex loops back to the night before, and the game starts all over again, if you want. Basically, the Ghosts, as Alex calls them, are displaced in time and Alex winds up stuck in a time loop in order to save her friends, over and over and over. One YouTube critic aptly referenced Camus's discussion of the myth of Sisyphus.  

Trying again, seeing how one's choices determined who was on that ferry in the morning and what they thought of Alex, appeals to many people, not just me, so it's hardly surprising that the game was quite popular. Also, one can choose an option at the end of a play through for Alex to have some memory of previous iterations, which changes some game scenes and interactions with the Ghosts.

What I didn't know was that the version of the game I played was revised edition of 2023, which made a few small changes. First, it added the 'you and the ghosts know you've done this before' option, tweaking a few scenes from the original game, basically adding some bonus scenes. It did not change the fundamental structure of the game, which is that it takes place from twilight to dawn on Edwards Island. The manner of repetition changes if one wishes, but it's 90% the same regardless. Coming to the game as I did, with no knowledge of it beyond its name, I had no idea how expansive a game world to expect. Had I played the original version, I think it would have been clearer to me that Oxenfree is a marvelous little drama (that even preserves Aristotelian unities), and not a sprawling open world.

Which matters because, second, the designers added audio chatter. See, as one runs around the island, there are some clearly marked points at which one should turn on the radio to gain information or to deal with the Ghosts. One can, however, simply run around with the radio on the entire time, sweeping the dial to catch whatever signals are out there.

And there are some wild things going on... somewhere. At various points on the island, at various frequencies, one can hear some people who sound a lot like Alex and her friends discussing strange phenomena, experimental results, close calls with danger, and interact like young people in crisis who are desperate for connection. And poetically alarming phrases like "Blood from the sky makes the planet shine" grab my attention. All of which led me to play through several times, trying to figure out how to unlock what seemed like a hidden second phase of the game.

After I failed a few times, I admitted defeat and checked fan sites and some YouTube vids to figure out what I, as someone who gave up playing video games twenty years ago, was missing. But I couldn't find the next part of the game because there isn't one. What I was hearing were clips from Night School Studio's new release, Oxenfree 2: Lost Signal, which is set 5 years later with new characters.  They just added some snippets to the original game as Easter eggs, fun in-jokes for any fans who might play through the original for old time's sake after picking up the new one.

I do not write any of this as a complaint–no harm=no foul, obviously. But it reminds me of other artistic interactions in my life, like the time in college I stayed up way too late watching an unevenly acted critique of the deep cynicism and sexism of professional country music that was airing on Cinemax, trying to figure out why it seemed to set up scenes like a porn film, but not have any sex. It wasn't until the next day that I realized that it was a porn film that had been thoroughly expurgated. I remember being baffled why 'skinemax' would show a movie like that, and then remove all the sex and nudity.

More recently, there was the Godzilla film with Bryan Cranston that used some music from 2001 in the trailer, getting me excited for a monster movie that was truly swinging for the filmmaking fences; alas, not so much.

Then there was my years long fixation on the early 2000s revival of Battlestar Galactica. I was completely hooked from the opening scene, and I was deeply invested in the characters and plot, trying to figure not only where the plot was going, but also the larger implications of this fictive world.  Ron Moore and his team were raising some interesting questions about what it would mean to actually confront a sapient alien species, to interact with inscrutable transcendent intelligences that nevertheless gave a shit about our grubby human lives, and maybe even share some profound insights on life and identity. The first two seasons were tightly plotted, superbly executed, and teased lots more to come; after all, as the opening credits assured us, "They have a plan."

As seasons 3 and 4 made abundantly and bitterly clear, they did not. Unlike most people, I'm still mad about it 15 years later. It seems clear that I am unusually attuned to responding to stories, and that I can find far more depth in something than anyone intended, simply by misunderstanding the creator's assumptions in making it.  All of which brings me to a new big question in my life: am I autistic?

 

Comments

[millari]

Whoa, your last line packed a punch I did not see coming. Interesting question that I'll address in a minute.

The art is stylized and effective, the music and sound design are catchy and atmospheric, and the characters engaging real. I'm told that this style of game is often referred to as a 'walking simulator', in that one walks around a various settings and interacting with the environment. There's no danger of slipping and falling, no precise button combos one must master, and no fighting. What one mostly does is talk to people by choosing which of 2 or 3 dialogue options you want, and tuning into things with the radio. Over the course of the evening, one's choices determine your relationships with the other characters and which of you, if any, survive.

I, too, have not played video games in 20 years. Really, the last game I remember playing (other than Garageband with friends) was Goldeneye, so that tells you how long it's been. However, I did watch Angy's brother-in-law playing "Fallout" about a year ago, and your description above really reminds me of that experience. I guess it's also a walking simulator game. I remember being surprised at how it was so much more about interactions and the consequences of one's choices. It seemed more durably interesting than the shoot-em-up/fight/destroy while running through levels video games I knew from my younger days.

More recently, there was the Godzilla film with Bryan Cranston that used some music from 2001 in the trailer, getting me excited for a monster movie that was truly swinging for the filmmaking fences; alas, not so much.

I never saw the trailer for the Bryan Cranston "Godzilla," but I remember being pretty bewildered and disappointed with the movie despite having few expectations (except Bryan Cranston is awesome). However, seeing the trailer now after the fact, I can see how it was a triumph of editing and scoring over substance. Someone knew what they had to work with and decided that the best option was to show as little dialogue as possible to avoid audiences detecting how bad the movie was.

I almost admire how whoever put together that trailer managed to make "Godzilla" look like it was going to be a pensive, intelligent, dark take on a franchise that had become pretty much exclusively known for over-the-top, id-pleasing spectacle. If I had seen that trailer, I would have been pretty intrigued to see the film and expecting something much better than what we got.

As for the question, are you autistic? Hm, I'm no expert or even a dilettante, so not a good source, but I can remember from our time together that you did tend to be rather literal in your thinking sometimes I used to think for a long while that it was you messing with me or being a smart-aleck or something until you told me enough times that your genuine mental response to a question like "You know what?" was "No, I don't."

I do suspect that you grew up with some neurodivergent tendencies that could be autism, could be ADHD-related, a combination of both, and/or being raised in the family you had, which developed a lot of routine and ritual to cope with a lot of tension in the household.

Some behavioral tendencies you have that I've noticed over the years that could be some kind of neurodivergency at work:

Being overwhelmed emotionally and shutting down in the face of being given too many choices.

Having trouble regulating anger, frustration, or annoyance and projecting it outward at others or inanimate objects, sometimes intensely.

Reading people and situations in unexpected ways.

And, yes, reading more layers into creative content and strangers' motivations than may have been intended. (Although with BSG, I think there was genuine complexity and nuance at first. You were far from the only one with high expectations of that show that were dashed.)

If you are indeed autistic, then you should be proud of yourself for having figured out how to compensate for the challenging ways in which you were hardwired and connect so strongly to so many people in your life.