Maggie Adler's Supernatural Background Will Be Explored More in 'OXENFREE II'

Spoiler alert: This article contains spoilers about OXENFREE.

Following up on the short yet wonderfully mind-bending narrative adventure OXENFREE released in 2016, its sequel OXENFREE II: Lost Signals carries the torch.

Set five years after the prequel, the adventurous Riley Poverly returns to her coastal hometown of Camena to investigate unnatural radio signals that can influence supernatural activities.

In the middle of all this, a cult group called Parentage intends to open a new dimensional portal not unlike the one unintentionally formed in OXENFREE, and it's up to Riley to figure out their aim and stop them.

Developer Night School Studios has made OXENFREE II follow a different main character, but there are plenty of nods to the first game. Maggie Adler is just as significant in the sequel as in the first, but if you're a newcomer, you might be wondering who she is in the first place.

Before the events of OXENFREE, Maggie Adler was a communications officer during World War II who resided on Edwards Island during her service. That island was the setting for the prequel and is where she discovered supernatural transmissions coming from the crew of the sunken USS Kanaloa submarine with her friend Anna Shea.

Going deeper into their investigation, Maggie and Anna learned that the crew never died and were separated from their dimensional existence by the implosion of the sub's nuclear reactor.

They sought to reverse and free the soldiers but were overpowered by the Sunken, a hive of hostile ghost spirits introduced in OXENFREE. Anna was absorbed into the rift entrapping the soldiers, and Maggie fled in horror.

For the rest of her life, Maggie would stay on Edwards Island to defend others from messing with the Kanaloa crew, attempting to bar tourists by federally protecting the land. Unfortunately, a tourist company had set up shop on Edwards Island in 1975, and Maggie died three days before OXENFREE started.

Players learn all of this from the letters Maggie wrote, each scattered across Edwards Island in the first game.

Night School Studios aims to explore Maggie's later life and her expertise in code breaking and ciphers in OXENFREE II. According to the studio's YouTube video about the character, she understood the island was full of coded transmissions and hidden secrets, which will be defined further throughout the sequel.

If you want to dive deeper into the story, playing the first game wouldn't hurt to pick up the pieces about Maggie and the history of various phenomena to enjoy OXENFREE II a tad more than you would as a standalone title.

OXENFREE II: Lost Signals is now available on PC, Switch, PlayStation, and through Netflix.