The Hidden Message of Oxenfree (Oxenfree Story Breakdown)

what's up everyone Nick mo here and it's finally time time to return to the island and discover the true meaning of oxen-free released over a year ago in early 2016 oxen-free is a mysterious game full of choices and the consequences of these choices are at the core of what makes oxen-free such an interesting experience the game starts off as your average teenage thriller complete with a cast of awkward young characters trapped on an island after a party gone wrong but the setting and these teenage tropes are only surface deep what's really at play here goes far beyond the high school lives of our cast of characters and today we are going to discuss what lies beyond but first as is tradition I must warn you we are about to spoil nearly everything about oxen-free and it really is an awesome game so if you have any interest in finishing oxen-free pause this video and take a trip out to Edwards Island just don't say I didn't warn you oxen-free centers around a high school-age girl named Alex who's off to Edwards Island a local tourist hotspot in her hometown and she's there for an overnight highschool beach party after a bit of truth or dare and a little underage drinking things begin to go terribly wrong as they usually do in teenage horror movies right away I want to make sure you understand just how important Alex is to the world of oxen-free without Alex there is no mystery there are no multiple dimensions and there is only a group of teenagers partying on the beach it is Alex who's holding the radio in the cave which forever changes the lives of everyone involved through her incident in the caves Alex unknowingly stumbles into a mystery decades in the making this mystery eventually pulls in everyone on the island as the entire group experiences time looping paranormal activity if you'll as if they're living the same night over and over again and because Alex realizes she is somewhat to blame for unleashing this phenomenon on her friends she takes it upon herself to save them to get them off the island but there's a problem here alex is a teenager and she's not exactly the hero type regardless of what dialogues you choose it's clear that Alex has a troubled past and isn't the most trusting person in the world she tends to make decisions recklessly without completely thinking them through but then again she's a teenager so while we can give her a pass on her reckless behavior it's her hostility that's a bit more concerning in a critical bit of exposition we learned that Alex comes from a household with divorced parents and making things more desperate we learned that the divorce occurred because neither parent knew how to cope with the loss of their child Alex's older brother Michael and it's not just Alex's parents Alex herself seems to be greatly affected by her brother's passing as a sibling would be expected to feel but it goes further Alex feels partly responsible for Michael's death as he drowned in front of her as she was unable to save him at the time of his tragic passing Michael did have a girlfriend Clarissa who's also on the island and clearly holds a grudge against Alex for Michael's death Alex is acutely aware of this grudge and she's openly hostile towards Clarissa Alex's mother eventually did remarry which is where Jonas comes into the picture Jonas is Alex's new stepbrother and has only just met Alex when she invites him to come out to Edwards Island for the party rounding out our cast is Alex's lifelong friend Wren and his love interest Notah both of whom are interesting characters but failed to shift the story in a meaningful way in many ways Wren and Nona are like innocent bystanders they aren't directly involved in the conflict between Clarissa and Alex and they don't exist because of Michael's death like Jonas does yet their lives are at risk just like everyone else now there is one last important character in our task and she's recently deceased as we learn from Wren early on Maggie Adler was the longest-living Edwards Island resident and she lived alone for decades while at first her passing just seems to be a bit of spooky foreshadowing dedicated players who collect all the Abner letters scattered around the island will understand just how important Maggie was to the event of oxen-free Maggie worked on Edwards Island when it was still an active military installation and worked in the watch tower the gang frequent during the game one fateful day as she was on Lookout she heard a garbled distress signal and issued a false attack order to all ships in the area this resulted in the USS Walter Roy firing upon a beer mental Navy submarine known as the USS kanaloa Adler's mistake took the lives of all 85 crew members and 12 passengers on board the kanaloa and the US government quickly moved to cover up the attack and while Adler passed away a few days before Alex and the rest of the crew arrived on the island it's clear that Maggie Adler carried the guilt of the Kanaloa disaster with her for her entire life back in the president Alex continues her journey across the island to save her friends experiencing more and more terrifying paranormal activity time will randomly shift and Alex finds herself reliving her past as if it's actually happening and while she thinks that these are just hallucinations it turns out that time itself is breaking and she really is stepping back in time she's even able to speak to her brother Michael before he passed things only get more strange from there as Alex encounters ghost-like specters who we discovered to be the crew of the sunken USS Kanaloa it is assumed that the experimental nuclear reactor inside the Kanaloa didn't kill everyone on board but rather tore a hole in time and space transplanting the crew to another dimension a purgatory like existence for all eternity this establishes their evil motives they want to escape their endless existence and seek revenge on the living world and it's up to Alex to stop them now that you understand what's at stake here you need to realize that Alex is just like Maggie Adler Maggie never intended to harm anyone when the Kanaloa sunk and yet she carries that guilt with her everywhere she goes likewise Alex never thought her brother Michael would die in front of her when she asked him to go swimming one last time again it was an accident and yet she carries the guilt Maggie Adler even lost another friend in her attempts to research the cave with Anna being consumed by the specters and now Alex is following in Maggie's footsteps by putting her friends at risk by reopening the anomaly in the cave but unlike Maggie Alex still has a shot at making things right she can still save her friends and get them off the island this is the climax of oxen free faced with guilt Alex can finally overcome her past and stronger she is no longer a bystander and she dives in head first to save her friends she's even willing to sacrifice herself or others to save the group and after a heroic final stand it seems that there's light at the end of the tunnel no matter what you choose to do your friends will be going home safely on the ferry the next morning if she was sacrificed Clarissa may no longer exist and the crew will have no memory of her your choices can impact whether Ren and Nona end up together or apart and depending on what choices you made during your time travels Alex's brother Michael may still be alive and Jonas might have never became Alex's stepbrother if you played oxen free you know that there are many different ways for this game to end and all of which are dependent on what choices you made while on the island there is no true ending and there is no real ending the ending you receive is a reflection of how your version of Alex handled the crisis on Edwards Island and if you finish the game you'll know that just before the game ends there's one final glitch and we can hear Alex acting as if nothing ever happened as she begins talking about heading back to the island with Wren all over again and when we reach the title screen we are greeted with a continued timeline option which confirms our fears that Alex is stuck in a time loop and is doomed to repeat the same night over and over again but this this right here this is where the nature of oxygen-free begins to reveal itself to us by continuing the timeline we know full and well what's coming we know of the horrors and we know of the outcomes and yet we proceed why because we now know just how powerful our choices are we discover that our choices can stir romance between friends or save the marriages of parents and quite literally bring the dead back to life and so we are free to continue the timeline over and over we can save Michael or we can let him drown we can bond with Jonas so that he's like a new brother to Alex or we can let him go we can become obsessed and perfect our choices and save Michael remain close friends with Jonas save Clarissa and have a near perfect ending everyone involved with one big problem Alex is still trapped in the loop alex is still doomed to repeat the night over and over again faced with this reality just how perfect can any of these endings be no matter what we choose we must give something up every choice has a consequence and to me that's what oxen-free is truly about it's a game about making choices and living with the consequences of these choices the truth is no ending is perfect the game only ends when you found an ending that satisfies you and you walk away for me I found peace in this ending here where Alex and her friends receive an eerie warning about Edwards Island over her radio and they decide the very last minute to change their plans and never go to the island sure Clarissa and Nona are still on Edwards Island at the beach but without Alex's radio the anomaly will never happen and they'll be able to return home safely in this scenario we don't know if Michael is dead or alive but we do know that Alex still has Wren and Jonas it's just unclear if Jonas is a stepbrother or just a friend and though this is my personal preferred ending to oxen-free I know that in the back of my mind some version of Alex has just sacrificed herself to keep this version of Alex from ever going to the island for this version of Alex to have a happy ending some parallel version of Alex must be trapped you can't have both for every choice there is a consequence ending a game like oxen-free is a complicated and messy process some characters are going to lose a lot more than others and that's okay that's entirely the point when we first complete the game we as players struggle to accept our ending we believe that there's some way that we can go back to the island and fix things we believe that there's some way to change the past and to find a perfect ending but it's just not possible life doesn't always give us happy endings we must learn to live with the consequences of our choices the same way Alex did during her time on the island we must find our own ending this is option free it's a game about choices it's a game about understanding that we must live with the consequences of our actions and no matter how difficult our past was we must learn to walk away to move on and to grow stronger part of growing up is learning that the real world isn't full of perfect endings only the endings we create still with me thank you all so much for watching please do let me know your thoughts on oxen-free these theories are purely my own and I'd love to know what you guys think of the game I hope you enjoyed the video and if you'd like to see more in depth breakdowns just like this one I've got a whole playlist full of them for you to check out this is Nick MO thanks again and I will catch you in the next video [Music]

Channel: NIKMOE

Views: 295,225

Keywords: oxenfree game, oxenfree endings, oxenfree alex, oxenfree meaning, oxenfree, story, explained, oxenfree ending, ending explained, characters, mystery, Oxenfree explained, Breakdown, Symbols, video games, oxenfree secrets, oxenfree theory, documentary, Hidden Message, NIKMOE, Oxenfree on Xbox, Xbox, PS4, Oxenfree Story Explained, Mystery Games, New Mystery Games, Xbox Free Games, Oxenfree Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch Indie Games, Oxenfree Switch, Nintendo Switch

Id: GcOSgy0bQHk

Length: 11min 36sec (696 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 24 2017