Because holy fuck y’all am I excited about this oh my god it’s a new Oxenfree game in the year of our lord 2021 and I want it now. All of the information I’m about to give to you has been gleaned from the new Indie World Showcase trailer that was on the recent Nintendo Direct (though I watched it on Youtube), and is simply speculation on what the next game has in store. None of this could be canon, or all of this could be canon, I have no idea! That’s what makes it fun. It also got long, so I unfortunately have to put this under a read more.
For starters, we know based off of the video description in Youtube that this game is set five years after the original OXENFREE, with an (assumedly) entirely new cast of characters. The player character, Riley, is the one we see the most of in this trailer. But I’m going to list things as they come in order of appearance, along with images, so the first thing we have is:
These strange masked people, sitting by a campfire. From what I can tell, it looks like two females and one male, but I could be wrong. Their masks are white, half-white and half-black, and a 1/3 majority black with a crescent of white. I think this has to do with the next clip we see in the trailer, with the moon glitching out and turning from full to half-and-half:
Although there may not be a connection at all. For a second point, I think that Riley will probably be an adult, based on the voice that speaks to her over the radio later on in the trailer. More importantly, I think she may be a meteorologist, thanks to the line, “I need a weather report on the clouds over Edwards Island?” and the first appearance of her walking up toward a broken light house, seen here:
It’s just after that we see who I think will be her companion for the game, like Jonas was to Alex, that for now I’m calling Hard-Hat man. I say this because he looks like he’s wearing a hard hat with a light built in, and I think he may be an electrician, from the line “Residents of Camena have reported strange interruptions in their radio broadcasts-” before cutting out. You can see the two of them pictured on a cliff below:
I also think that most of this game will take place in Camena itself, rather than Edwards Island, or perhaps in both locations. This is due to the very obvious clips right after this zoomed-in image of Riley and Hard-Hat man, where you can see Edwards Island to their left, and what is presumably the Sunken to their right.
As a side note, I think that Hard-Hat man is going to be the “coward” of this game, or at least the reasonable one as said by my friend. The final image that I want to bring attention to is during what I believe is Riley “tuning into the source” like Alex did, except this time, she’s tuning into the source in Camena:
If you pay close attention, you can clearly see that the radio waves are physically cutting through things now. They have a greater bearing on the real world than they ever did before. One line has chopped entirely through both a solid rock and a tree, not only that, but set the tree on fire. It’s an entirely new ballpark of power here, folks. That ends the images part of this, but I do have an idea as to why Riley could be so interested in Edwards Island, based on nothing but my own hubris and what I think would be interesting.
Consider this: Riley is one of Alex’s old classmates who wasn’t able to make it to the “bash on the beach,” and ever since Alex went missing in the loop, she’s been trying to search for her. For five years, she hasn’t had any luck, until tonight. Another one of my friends, @onewhoturns, suggested the idea that Jonas could be with her looking for the girl he barely remembers. I don’t know how Hard-Hat man will fit into the story, but his body language in the trailers makes me think he may not know Riley well, or that he prioritizes his safety over everything else.
I think the loop has grown past Edwards Island now, and into Camena. It’s backed up by a line in the original game, too- “And we will grow. And we will engulf.”
But, this is all speculation. If you have any other ideas, please please tell me about them in the notes of this post. I’m dying to talk more about Lost Signals, and I can’t wait to see what Night School Studio has in store for us next.
