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Unraveling the mystery of 'Dee', a character Google's AI swears really exists in Oxenfree II

Adventures in a search term feedback loop inventing a whole new character with their own backstory and motivations

Key art for Oxenfree II: Lost Signals

Note: This post contains spoilers for Oxenfree II; I do my best to avoid serious stuff in what I've written but given the nature of this piece, incorrect materials provided by Google's results and screenshots as part of the investigation inadvertently spoil actual game events, so proceed at your own risk

Backstory - one of my kids has been working on 100%ing Oxenfree II. And I mean like, really 100%ing it - countless replays, restarts, keeping track of ending variations in a notebook, etc. We played the first game together one year for Halloween when sickness prevented going out to do traditional Halloween stuff and so this franchise has become an important game in our household. (The Oxenfree games and Into the Breach are load-bearing in terms of keeping our family Netflix subscription active lmfao)

I'm actively going to do my best to keep this spoiler-light in terms of what I say but this will probably be your final warning in terms of what the google screenshots show

In the game, you occasionally communicate with different characters using a walkie-talkie; each of them get in touch using specific walkie channels that over the course of the story you get to know pretty clearly.

So my kid noticed that in all of their playthroughs there was a certain channel on the walkie that was never active and decided (despite never having looked up anything about the game before) to do a search to find out what was going on with this empty channel knowing that they likely couldn't be spoiled on anything because as mentioned, they've done the work.

And yet, Google's search results confidently provided them with information about a character they'd not encountered yet, Dee.

Now this is surprising for two reasons; one, they have (and I can't stress this enough) played the SHIT out of this game in every conceivable way - but secondly and probably more importantly:

Google's AI made this character up

There is no 'Dee' in Oxenfree II

Al Overview In Oxenfree Il: Lost Signals, Dee is a young, mysterious radio enthusiast and hacker who communicates with protagonist Riley Poverly over the radio. Dee hacks into Riley's walkie-talkie and offers cryptic and unsettling information, providing an additional layer of mystery to the game's paranormal events. e Who is Dee? • Initially appearing as an unidentified ??? contact on the walkie-talkie, Dee is a young tech-savy character who is initially perceived as a friendly, but somewhat strange, voice. • Dee is a radio enthusiast who is interested in the paranormal signals plaguing the town of Camena. • Dee hacks into the walkie-talkie to communicate with Riley and provide cryptic clues about the game's events, often before they happen. e Dee's role in the story • As the game progresses, Dee's messages become more unsettling, sometimes seeming to come from the future or from a different reality. • Dee's presence adds to the growing sense of unease and paranormal activity experienced by Riley. • Ultimately, Dee is revealed to be a key player in the events of Oxenfree II, with a deeper connection to the game's central mystery than initially appears. Dee's radio frequency • Dee's communications with Riley are received on the walkie-talkie, not the portable radio, on channel 9. Oh. Oh ok.

Everything in this screenshot from a real Google Search result is completely made up by the search engine's "AI" bot.

Now by itself this isn't super surprising because generative "AI" as it exists right now is a misinformation machine built to emulate the confidence and mediocrity of the tech bros who made it, which is to say it's often gonna be wrong yet disproportionately loud and confident, and that would be quaint if the technology weren't ultimately being used for surveillance, violence and labor replacement at the cost of our environment and society's cognitive abilities - but that's a whole other thing.

(As a sidenote I highly recommend you read Anthony Moser's "I'm an AI Hater" over at the Frame Shop. I couldn't have expressed my feelings any better than he did.)

Anyway - Night School did some really fun ARG stuff with both Oxenfree games so there was initially this seed of plausibility that Dee was actually a character related to that ecosystem somehow; this lead to further questions to the search about them: Where do you meet Dee? How do you contact Dee? Well - Google doesn't understand the concept of "been caught in a lie" so it just keeps going.

Al Overview You do not physically meet Dee in Oxenfree Il: Lost Signals, but you can communicate with her through the walkie-talkie. Dee is one of several secondary characters who will call you on the radio throughout the game. e How to receive calls from Dee To stay in contact with all of your radio contacts, including Dee, you must be proactive in using your walkie-talkie. A good practice is to open your walkie-talkie menu and check all channels each time you finish a main story beat or enter a new area. Here is a general timeline for receiving communications from Dee: 1. After planting the first transmitter at Camber Cape, you and Jacob are tasked with planting the remaining three. 2. After acquiring your climbing gear, check your radio channels as you travel to begin placing the transmitters at Tootega Falls, Charity Point, or Garland. This is when you are most likely to receive a call from Dee. 3. Continue to check your channels consistently as you progress through the night. Dee will often comment on your progress or current location, so tuning in regularly will ensure you hear her. What in the actual fuck

If you've not played the game, well first of all, I told you there'd be spoilers why are you here!! but secondly - these instructions are incongruous at best because they reference parts of the game out of sequence and read more like a "I heard if you collect all of the 1/35 soldier items in FF7 you can get Aerith in your party in Disc 3" playground rumors.

A key thing to know about Google's AI search results is that each of the points in both of the above screenshots have link icons on them that are supposed to be for citing their sources - but instead of websites or reviews or walk-through articles, all of them point to a batch of random YouTube letsplays of the game, the most interesting of which is this:

Screenshot of three 'referenced' youtube videos for the search summary; one of them is a video entitled 'Dee Plays Oxenfree (Part 1) MEETING THE CREW' from the channel 'DeesDoodles' Oh shit wait we found Dee? WE FOUND DEE??

A Youtuber named DeesDoodles comes up numerous times as part of the 'sources' for the AI claims which lead us to think something said in one of these videos either got misheard by the AI's crawler OR there's some theorizing happening on behalf the content creator that gets mistaken for fact.

However the videos linked from DeesDoodles are always about the original Oxenfree and not the sequel, and the timestamps on the videos it points to as the citing source are random. The one in the above screenshot is DeesDoodles rehashing the content warning from the Night School Studio official trailer for the first Oxenfree about how the game may contain disturbing elements.

That's it.

In fact, the wild thing is that DeesDoodles talks VERY LITTLE throughout the linked videos because they said they did not want to overstep the game's dialog (even if they felt the characters talked too much).

So this YouTube Dee has (probably) nothing to do with it.

Ok So where are we at then

While looking into this and digging further, we found the search results say less and less about Dee if you haven't already been told about Dee, but double down if you have. If you ask Google yourself "How to meet Dee in Oxenfree II" you might get either something bogus like this:

how to meet dee in oxenfree lI To meet Dee in Oxenfree II, you need to progress through the main story until you place the first transmitter at Charity Point. The encounter happens as part of a surreal, non-interactive sequence that follows this event. This is getting out of hand

(which is wrong, sure, but cites only one article; a Godisageek complete walkthrough that doesn't mention a 'Dee' at any point)

OR you may get this type of result:

who is Dee in Oxenfree lI In Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, Dee is a deceased teenage member of the Parentage cult, who has become a lingering, mask-wearing apparition trapped in a time loop along with her fellow members, Charlie and Violet. Here's more about Dee: • A troubled history: Before her death, Dee was a troubled teenager with a difficult home life. She joined the Parentage cult because it offered her a sense of belonging, and she believed its leader, Olivia, could bring back her dead parents. • The Parentage cult: Along with Olivia, Charlie, and Violet, Dee was one of the teens on Edwards Island who caused the catastrophic interdimensional rift in the game's backstory. This is the same event that entrapped Alex and her friends in the original Oxenfree. • A ghost in the loop: After the rift, Dee became one of the OH COOL NOW SHE'S DEAD

A completely new fictional history about this character is generated, conflating it with others who actually exist in the story and contradicting things the search has already told you about them.

OR! You might get really lucky and have the AI tell you that you're an idiot for thinking there's a character named Dee in the game:

who is Dee in Oxenfree II In Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, Dee is not a character. Your confusion may come from a misremembering of the first game, Oxenfree, which features several characters with single-syllable names. The main characters in Oxenfree II are: • Riley Poverly: The protagonist, a 30-something environmental researcher who returns to her hometown of Camena. • Jacob Summers: Riley's old high-school acquaintance, who is also doing some research in the area. • Olivia: A young woman and leader of a mysterious group called Parentage, who antagonizes Riley throughout the game. This is hilarious given that there are seven named characters in Oxenfree and only one of them has a single-syllable name (Ren)

Which makes sense as again, AI search's use has been 100% correlated to cognitive decline. "Of course you remember things wrong you stupid idiot! And not because we told you otherwise in a different tab."

It can even get worse though because one of the results mentioned a specific walkie frequency that Dee uses which if you've played the game you'll know is usually the one used by the character Maria - and when asking about Maria in that line of questioning, you get presented with this gem:

Al Mode All Images Forums Short videos Videos News More - Al Overview Maria is not a character in Oxenfree II: Lost Signals. The character you are likely thinking of is Dee, who, like Maria, is a radio DJ and a side character with a romantic subplot. Dee also features prominently in a side mission where the player character, Riley, can choose to intervene in her relationship issues. There is no character named Maria in Oxenfree //. Maria is a character in the first game, Oxenfree, where she is also a radio DJ. The confusion likely stems from the fact that both games feature a radio DJ character with a similar name and story role. • In Oxenfree, Maria is the radio DJ of the Camena High School radio station, where she interviews local personalities and broadcasts her own thoughts and opinions. She is a minor character, but her broadcasts can provide additional context and background information for the player. e In Oxenfree II: Lost Signals, Dee takes on the radio DJ role. She also runs a radio show from the high school and discusses her romantic life with a boy named Charlie. The player can contact Dee through the radio and help her with her relationship problems. The confusion between Maria and Dee is a common mistake for players familiar with both games. Did Dee Swimfan Maria or

It confidently tells you, you lowly buffoon, that Maria is not in Oxenfree II, you're thinking of Dee! Then says it's a common mistake for people to mix these two up and falsely suggests that Maria is actually in the first Oxenfree game (she's not).

The links for each of these point to random youtube letsplays that do not even remotely try to corroborate this information. It's just loudly wrong and pointing at nonsense to say it's verified.

So the moral of the story is AI search is bad, right

Well yea, we all knew that - but the more important takeaway is that I was able to turn this into a teaching moment about showing them how to turn off AI search results. Simple Google is a nice browser extension, but you can always go into your browser's config and add &udm=14 to your search string options, that changes the default so any time you use the browser's search engine and it's set to Google, it'll display the 'Web' tab on Google only and disregards all the AI snippets.

(You can also just not use Google! But I know your mileage may vary)

At the end of it all, I like the idea of a ghost in the machine inventing a random character while you're trying to look up completionist stuff - a legitimately interesting use case, but not at the cost of what these AI companies are actually doing to our planet and society. Grok, Siri, Cortana, Gemini and yes, Dee, can all go fuck off.

#MSD plays games #ai #ned ludd was right #night school studios #oxenfree #oxenfree II