Here's something. One word stories. One-word stories? One Word Stories! Anyway, Jacob has been walking through the darkness for quite a while and it's starting to get to him. The mood starts to get to him, the atmosphere, oppressive and enclosing. So he suggests to his friend Riley: let's play one-word stories? Each of us says a word in turn, and then the words make the story.
They play for one round - a silly kind of sentence emerges - and it makes him feel better. And this gets at the heart of Oxenfree 2 for me, I think. On one hand, there's that dizzying complexity going on behind the scenes, because as Jacob's friend Riley, you get to choose which word to say, which in turn must impact which word Jacob then chooses as a response. I close my eyes at that and see the decision tree branching out, its bright leaves filling the space above my head. What a thing! A marvel.
And then on the other hand - what a lovely bit of observation. Someone who is self-aware enough to know that a game is what they need to calm them down, to orient them. A game which - I asked - is inevitably plucked from a developer's own experiences, so the plaiting of life and fiction continues.