Oxenfree: Who Is Maggie Adler?

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• Who Is Maggie Adler?

• Researching The USS Kanaloa

Oxenfree is a video game filled with mystery and supernatural happenings, all happening within Edwards Island and the research of Maggie Adler. You’ll have to help Alex and friends traverse these strange lands as time starts to work in strange ways and nothing is what it seems.

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Yet even if you finished the game, since it has multiple endings you might not have all the answers. Or maybe you just weren’t paying attention; we’ve all been there. The biggest question of all revolves around the identity of Maggie Adler herself, since unraveling that answers nearly all you might wonder about the first Oxenfree.

Who Is Maggie Adler?

Maggie Adler was the longest living resident of Edwards Island, and was also its only permanent resident. Recently deceased, you won’t encounter her in game, but you’ll find plenty of her notes and research about the strange radio signals found in the island caves.

She grew up in Mane with her friend Anna Shea, far from the island setting of the game. She was recruited into the army as a communications officer, with her skills catching the attention of her superiors, who tasked her with the job of code maker.

Code makers develop secret messages for the government, so they can hide plenty of secrets, something that made Maggie uncomfortable.

When on duty at Harden Tower, she intercepted an odd transmission that suddenly cut off. Thinking it was an attempt to jam the radar, she signaled the nearby ships to scout and fire on the source, all according to regulations. The USS Walter Roy responded to Maggie’s warning and opened fire.

The source was the USS Kanaloa’s nuclear reactor, although neither Maggie nor the USS Walter Roy realized it was an allied vessel. This ended with the sinking of the USS Kanaloa and the presumed death of all crew and passengers.

Researching The USS Kanaloa

Distraught by her actions, Maggie investigated the strange signal she had mistaken for an enemy transmission, realizing that it was still being emitted. Anna joined Maggie in her investigations, and together they discovered that the crew of the Kanaloa hadn't died, but were trapped in a different dimension.

It’s believed that Maggie and Anna were more than friends, although it isn’t confirmed anywhere in the game.

In their attempts to free the crew from their dimensional shackles, they tuned into a temporal tear inside a cave at Beacon Beach (within Edwards Island), and successfully communicated with some of the crew. Yet this proved quite dangerous, since the crew was desperate to get out and overwhelmed them.

Maggie managed to escape, but Anna wasn’t so lucky; she ended up being absorbed by the anomaly affecting the crew and was trapped alongside them. This, as expected, had an impact on Maggie’s state of mind, leaving her with an overpowering feeling of guilt.

She spent the rest of her life on Edwards Island, doing her best to stop others from suffering the fate Anna had. To this effect, she tried to appeal to the federal government to make the land an unfit place for tourism, although she failed to do so in the long run. At the very least, she kept the incidents to a minimum for as long as she lived.

Oxenfree II delves into the life of Maggie and her relationships with people while living on the island. The different letters you can find talk about her relationship with the island residents, but little is added in terms of what she did with her life. She could never let go of her regret about Anna's fate, so naturally she's stuck in her way of thinking.

Her relationship with Jacob is of note, as he's one of the main characters in the game and the one that knew Maggie best. He helped her be more at peace with her choices, and she wishes for him to be able to let go of things in his own life.

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