How Free Will Ruined Oxenfree For Me
Disclaimer: this is a spoiler-filled article talking about my experience with Oxenfree and its overall narrative. Although I do not touch on the ending, I do speak about various topics, important plot points from near the beginning, and details that players might want to uncover themselves. It’s also worth noting that this article has mentions of suicide beyond this point.
Recently, my wife picked up and played through the entirety of Oxenfree in about a day. After several laughs, cackles, jumps, and screaming at me to look away from her screen whenever I mildly turned my head, she reached the credits screen and turned to me with one idea in mind: getting me to play it.
My wife and I have a level of co-dependency that many a therapist may have called "unhealthy", but despite this, we pretty much try to do everything together. After letting her experience Oxenfree by herself, it was finally my turn to take part in the narrative that shook the world (an exaggeration) back in 2016 and experience it for myself.
And I hated it.
Oxenfree is a game about a group of teenagers who are going to Edwards Island because of an anomaly with a radio that lets you hear forbidden and hidden stations that connect to ghosts. Taking control of Alex throughout the narrative, you will interact with four characters: Ren, the protagonist's best friend; Jonas, Alex's new step-brother after the loss of her blood relative, Michael; Clarissa, Michael's significant other; and Nona, Ren's love interest.
Of course, you can anticipate various cringey dialogues expected of teenagers and obviously dense choices, all of which I loved. I'm a sucker for playing the dumb protagonist in a horror film, and although Oxenfree didn't quite give me a dumb protagonist (because Alex is surprisingly intelligent), her friend group is less so. Dealing with their decisions and suffering the consequences offered me a great opportunity to experience a narrative that didn't force me into the dumb role, but instead, the one reluctant friend who was forced to tag along with everyone else's dumb ideas.
Oxenfree's story was unfolding very nicely for me: Jonas went into the cave to check out a strange glowing light, Ren was too high to be a functioning human being, Nona and Clarissa had JUST fought with Alex, so it was up to me — the innocent protagonist — to help Jonas from being the first character to die in the movie. I followed him into the creepy cave, told him very clearly I didn't want to be there, and I was forced to anyway because the exit collapsed and I used my radio to free an almighty poltergeist from World War II that slowly ate away at our souls and tried to resurrect themselves by stealing our bodies. Just your typical senior prank.
It all started going downhill pretty shortly after that, however. Waking up in a strange tower, I was given an ultimatum: help Clarissa, the girl who had recently blamed me for the death of my brother in an innocent game of Truth or Slap, or help Ren, who was just scared and completely — and utterly — safe. As the intelligent one of the group, I figured I would help Clarissa, get help if I could, and then gather everyone and get out of Dodge.
Now, I can only assume that Night School Studio intended for you to care more for Ren's whiny antics and save him first because he's your best friend despite being completely safe. But because I opted to save Clarissa first, my narrative started getting a bit... disjointed. After going to the military base and succeeding to find the gym that she was stuck in, I was forced into a time loop in which Clarissa only lost her mind more and ultimately culminated in her suicide, only to get up again and disappear.
This terrifying encounter sets the tone for the upcoming hauntings. If I pushed Clarissa to suicide, what will Ren do to me after I so — outrageously — called him out on lying during Truth or Slap? Will I be the victim? My suspense lasted only about a couple of minutes before I started my hike to Ren's location, and both Jonas and Alex just... forgot about Clarissa's The Exorcist moment.
Jonas started treating Alex like an uncomfortable stepbrother should, and our entire bonding experience over Clarissa jumping out of the window was invalidated by uncomfortable teenage interactions. The hike was quickly over as I dauntingly jumped over a precipice (which Jonas commented on awkwardly... again), and we reached Ren. This was the moment where my betrayal of our best-friend pact would fall, and my metaphorical backstab of telling everyone that he liked Nona would become a literal backstab.
Unfortunately, Oxenfree showed its hand too early, and instead, Ren's childish outburst (although understandable, I was being a horrible best friend to him) was likely the scariest thing that happened in the woods. His possession sequence was anticlimactic after having witnessed suicide through various means, and instead it turned something that should have been an eerie buildup into a terrifying introduction to the full power of the Sunken into... less so? It's not as scary to deal with an angry Ren who does barely anything after you've witnessed Clarissa do the unthinkable — twice — and still walk away.
The pacing thenceforth didn't feel as comfortable. Jonas and Ren argue over seemingly nothing, I end up taking Jonas with me to accompany me through my quests, and at the end, Ren decides to interrupt at the very end — you know, when all of our souls are being devoured by the Sunken and we are literally minutes from death — to tell me that we are no longer best friends.
WHAT?
He actually takes a stop, interrupts me from heading straight into a poltergeist-infested bunker to put myself at risk with my stupid little radio, stares me dead in the eye, and says, "You know, Alex, you've changed ever since we came to this island". He interrupts me in a life-or-death situation, moments away from everyone being consumed by an almighty entity that is seemingly unstoppable, to basically tell me that we just aren't friends anymore?
Look, I get it — I was a crappy best friend. I told everyone that you liked Nona (maybe stupidly hoping that she would reciprocate the feelings?), didn't save you first because I was trying to get us rescued, and nagged you for getting high a second time amidst a CRISIS. But no, you are TOTALLY right, Ren, YOU UN-BEST-FRIENDING ME CAN'T WAIT UNTIL I SAVE US ALL. In the end, I was hoping that the Sunken would take him and Clarissa. While you're at it, take Nona, too! In fact, just take all of us and end my suffering.
It's at this point I would like to mention that I am exaggerating my hot, fiery passion a smidge for the sake of comedy. Jokes aside, I — unfortunately — drew the short end of the stick as soon as I decided to try to save Clarissa first. Although I understand the desire to allow the player to have the agency to control parts of the narrative, it shouldn't have been up to me — as the player — to go out of my way and face a stronger version of the Sunken. After dealing with everything in the military base, the disconnection from the characters was palpable, and I wish that Night School Studio had forced me to save Ren first over feeling the tonality shift that saving Clarissa first caused.
If you take anything from this article — aside from the fact that I am a shoddy best friend and will choose survival over your comfort as long as I think you're safe — it's that if you do decide to play Oxenfree, save Ren first. It really enriches the experience when the game has a proper pacing, and it was clearly intended to avoid Clarissa, if not just because the game never gives you an amicable dialogue choice with her, ever. Biased much?
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