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Ahead of the release next week of OXENFREE II: Lost Signals, developer Night School Studio has been busy with a “tape series” of videos detailing the behind-the-scenes development of the anticipated sci-fi thriller. The latest, entitled “The Complexity of Choice”, the developers explain the thought process behind the dialogue mechanics in OXENFREE II: Lost Signals, and how the addition of the walkie-talkie communication system further evolves the mechanics from the original OXENFREE.

The video features Night School Studio studio director Sean Krankel and Night School Studio leader writer Adam Hines, who pose the question, “If communication as a whole is the way that all of society intermingles in the way that stories are conveyed, then can we make communication a really interesting method of playing a game?” For OXENFREE II, the goal was to create a “naturalistic dialogue system” that gives the player the freedom to talk the way they want to.

“It means that if you and I are talking right now,” said Krankel, “that if I don’t choose to say anything, you need to react and be like ‘Well, that’s weird. Why are you not talking right now?’.” The developers started out with a rule that Alex (the main protagonist of the game) can only speak if the player completes the button press, which creates situations where the main characters need to be giving critical information. So the team had to come up with ways  to force the player to actually choose willingly to give that information. “So it’s fun to try and get them in situations to force that,” explained Hines.

Set five years after the events of the first game, OXENFREE II follows the story of Riley Poverly, an environmental researcher who returns to her hometown Camena to investigate unnaturally occurring radio frequency signals causing disturbances in electronic equipment. She soon discovers a long history of ghostly happenings on the nearby Edwards Island and becomes entangled in a frightening, supernatural mystery.

OXENFREE II: Lost Signals will arrive arrive July 12 on PC via Steam, PlayStation 5 and PlayStation 4, the Nintendo Switch, and on Netflix’s games service.

You can check out the previous entries in the tapes series by visiting Night School Studio’s Youtube page.