Psychonauts 2

  • Want to keep track of this thread?
    Accounts can bookmark posts, watch threads for updates, and jump back to where you stopped reading.
    Create account
Liquid Marlon said:
I'm at the start of the game and was confused by them saying "Dr. Loboto's lair" when talking about the events of Rhombus of Ruin, I chalked this up to a mess up on the writing team's part or something like that.

But later down the line, we learn that it was in fact his lair and that he was the creator of the fish people. This feels like a retcon to me because it seemed that he was only hired by the fish people to do the job and we never really see his interest in creating life before the flashback in Psychonauts 2, I guess maybe Sheegor but she's an igor and they aren't normally the creations of their masters.

If it is a real retcon then it was only really done so the plot could go forward but tbh it's not a too big one, I just noticed it and found it interesting enough to bring up.
Click to expand...
Okay, I was wrong, Dr. Loboto did experiment on Linda and in the same way he did to the fish people in the sequel.

I missed the Memory Vault and never took the time to find it until now so that's my bad.

Linda:
Linda.png


The fish people:
fish people.png


Anyways on the note of revisiting the first game, I just beat Psychonauts 2 and man was it underwhelming.
Truman Zanotto's mind could have surpassed the Meat Circus and I thought it was going to be, at least before I got to the end.

The idea of Gristol Malik was really interesting, a stuck-up prince that didn't care that hundreds of people died at the hands of Maligula but instead how he was cheated out of becoming the new king something that he contributes to the Psychonauts' battle with Maligula.
After the fitting event of his father’s passing, Gristol decided to infiltrate the Psychonauts now because he’s not a psychic he had to become a mail sorter.

It’s interesting how Nick (aka Gristol) was the best bet we had for the mole but because his brain was removed we didn’t put any further thought into it.
After learning that his brain has been in Truman’s body for the entirety of the events of the game so it now makes scenes why Nick’s brainless body was meant to be mailed to Truman.

It was such a cool twist but alas it had to be thrown out of the window by how they made Gristol so stupid which I know it was on purpose but it still ruined his potential as an antagonist.

The biggest problem is how easy it was to get into his real mind, all we needed to do was destroy a statue of Truman and we’re inside what should be a heavily guarded area.
It doesn’t help that Gristol doesn’t try at all to stop us nor does he have a real plan when we finally get to him.

It would have been cool if the ride abruptly stopped and the cardboard cut-out villagers became alive and attacked us that would be interesting but the only enemies we fight are ones we saw before.

That’s actually a bigger problem for the game, it’s like what happened to the SpongeBob movie game but that game had a reason to reuse enemies.

Okay, I get why they made it this way, it’s because they personify different attributes of the mind like Regret, Doubt and etc. Now I’m not saying I don’t like these enemies I’m just saying that it’s shame they are really the only enemies in the game. Note: they personified so many mental aspects but never brought back the “Personal Demons” nor the “Nightmares” (which were really underutilized I may add) from the first game for some reason. I remember Dr. Loboto’s mind having some exclusive Wind up teeth enemies but that’s really it.

Now in the first game there were a lot more of mind-exclusive enemies ranging from monster plants to demon bunnies but all while still having Censors (and Personal Demons) and this helped make the words feel unique.
Now I should bring up how this only became a real problem later in the game with Cassie/Bob’s mind, both of their bosses relied heavily on enemies and that was part of the reason why I didn’t like the boss as much. It got worse with the enemy rush in Nona’s mind, sure it was cool to see the Panic Attacks again but the whole thing just felt like a chore to get through.

Anyways I brought up how Gristol didn’t have a real plan when you came face to face with him, I was really hoping there would be a cool final boss with like a creepy Truman puppet but that never happened and instead he tied up Raz for a little bit and got his ass kicked by Lilly.

Afterwards when they leave his mind he doesn’t even try to defend his cover and just sits there saying nothing until Maligula returns and he becomes a joke of character worshiping her only for him to get stuck in her water tornado in the end.
They could have done a lot more with him but they went the comedy route instead of the sinister route which makes it worse because it wasn’t even funny.

Btw I want to bring up how everything just works out in the end like there were contrivances before with how Raz got hold of Helmut’s brain out of all the other potential brains but I feel it was too easy for Lilly to get Truman’s brain.

I presume she talked to Dr. Loboto (or well, threatened him) to find her father's brain but still it felt way too easy and I don’t know why Gristol didn’t even try to make it a harder task to perform.
Now you could say he’s cocky and stupid but still when he was in Truman’s body it felt like he was a lot smarter, I guess they just didn’t know what to do with them in the end.

Anyways you might be wondering what I thought of the final boss well it was pretty mediocre.
I was thrown off by the appearances of the interns but because Sam was the first person to show up I thought she just used a whale or something to get in but they all were there so I don’t know.

Either way, their inclusion didn’t really feel as grand as they probably wanted us to feel like we don’t really know that much about them and there was already a part in the Lady Luctopus and there it wasn’t that well executed either.

Anyways the boss itself was fine nothing special but fine, the new snake enemies were just kind of there, they didn’t get an introduction card and only showed up for the boss (like I really wish Maligula’s was more of a real level than just small part at the beginning and then the boss) but they at least are exclusive mind enemies.
The giant dream team-styled boss was something I guess, it could have been a lot more than it was tho.
I think the reason why the ending fight felt me feeling so empty is that the big twist with Nick was already said and over with and Maligula wasn’t all that interesting.

It would have worked a lot better if they saved Truman’s mind for after the Maligula and actually made Gristol a real threat.
The reason why I know that would have worked better is that that’s what they did in the first game and that’s the reason why the Meat Circus worked as well as it.
If the game ended at Coach’s brain tank then the ending would have been as unsatisfying as its sequel’s ending.
You see the first game had an obvious “twist” and that was that Coach was evil but it had another twist being Coach’s backstory that had small hints at the start that was missed because we didn’t have all the context.

Here they did the same thing with Nona (aka Maligula) and Nick which had the chance had the chance to surpass what the first game did but they dropped the ball when it came to it.

And that sums up Psychonauts 2 pretty well, it had the chance to surpass the first game in so many ways like how you can upgrade your powers, you can buy new trinkets along with other stuff, and how the story was bigger than the first game but none of that matters if the game is super easy and a not as compelling story
 
Last edited:
loved the game despite the gay shit

But I agree with some of the critiques in this thread that the new characters, despite having more story importance, didn’t really grab me as much as Sasha, milla, and the asylum residents from the first game. I’m trying to figure out why that is, maybe because with the P1 characters they were more of a mystery before you go into their minds, and their minds were mostly entirely about themselves, not their relationships to others.

usually expanding on interpersonal relationships actually makes a character stronger, but in P2 it felt like we were just seeing the same characters over and over in each mind, just with different interpretations due to that mind’s outlook. Normally, id love that idea, since how a person sees another is an interesting part of their character, but it got a bit old to have this same group of old folks be the focus. Since the relationships were so emphasized, the actual characters of each person werent given time to shine.
EG; we didn’t see much of Ford’s story outside of his relationship with Lucy, Nor did we learn much about the gay dudes outside their basic hobbies and them being with each other.

I just really liked in P1 how each mind were like a complete unknown. You were really exploring into new spaces that you may not have been expecting. And they weren’t completely reliant on other characters—they stood on their own.
Milla‘s mind had a memory involving her adventures with Sasha, but most of her mind isn’t focused on that, it’s about her first and foremost.

While Cassie’s mind isn’t the best, I do like that it mostly focuses on her. Same with Hollis.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
So apperantly there's a puzzle with a typewriter and it censors "harmful" words?
Click to expand...
Yes. First thing I tried typing was "nigger" and it outputted "ni####." It also censors "fag" and "fuck" though I didn't try anything else.

What this tells you though is that somewhere in the psychonauts 2 source code, there's a big list of naughty words. Some developer at Double Fine got paid to write the word nigger, and that's pretty funny.

It's probably encoded in rot-13 or something though unfortunately, so those pesky words aren't directly out in the open.
 
Last edited:
The Silver Shroud said:
loved the game despite the gay shit

But I agree with some of the critiques in this thread that the new characters, despite having more story importance, didn’t really grab me as much as Sasha, milla, and the asylum residents from the first game. I’m trying to figure out why that is, maybe because with the P1 characters they were more of a mystery before you go into their minds, and their minds were mostly entirely about themselves, not their relationships to others.
Click to expand...
The reason the characters don't stand out is because they all generally have the same mental health issue.

Every single character in the new game has trauma and is dealing with trauma. In contrast, in the first game, you had Boyd, with Schizophrenia. You had Gloria, with Bipolar. You had Fred Bonaparte, who... I don't know, had the ghost of Napoleon in his head yelling at him, which calls on some ideas of attachment and parenting that you see in psychodynamics.

Point is, the range of mental health conditions in the first game was pretty wide. You also had people like Sasha and Milla, who had healthy minds that didn't need any fixing, and it was interesting to see the unique ways that they dealt with their own minds. It showed how there isn't one way a healthy mind looks like, it's rather the way a person approaches the intricacies and oddities of their mind that makes them healthy/stable or not.

Whereas the second game approaches the topic of trauma almost exlcusively (in fact, I don't think it seriously broaches any other mental health construct). It handles this topic really well, and in my opinion needed the time that it took to approach the scope of what it wanted to say about trauma properly, I don't think any time was wasted. But as a part of reaching for what it wanted to accomplish with it's detailed story around trauma, it had to give up those stark differences you saw in the characters from the first game. In my opinion, it's a fine trade off, I think they made up for it well with what they traded it for. But I can absolutely understand being dissapointed in there being less of a variety between the characters in the new game.

The only new fairly seperate topic they covered was sensory overload, which you see in PSI King's level, which also happens to be probably my favourite level in the game
 
Last edited:
Anstiv said:
The reason the characters don't stand out is because they all generally have the same mental health issue.

Every single character in the new game has trauma and is dealing with trauma. In contrast, in the first game, you had Boyd, with Schizophrenia. You had Gloria, with Bipolar. You had Fred Bonaparte, who... I don't know, had the ghost of Napoleon in his head yelling at him, which calls on some ideas of attachment and parenting that you see in psychodynamics.

Point is, the range of mental health conditions in the first game was pretty wide. You also had people like Sasha and Milla, who had healthy minds that didn't need any fixing, and it was interesting to see the unique ways that they dealt with their own minds. It showed how there isn't one way a healthy mind looks like, it's rather the way a person approaches the intricacies and oddities of their mind that makes them healthy/stable or not.

Whereas the second game approaches the topic of trauma almost exlcusively (in fact, I don't think it seriously broaches any other mental health construct). It handles this topic really well, and in my opinion needed the time that it took to approach the scope of what it wanted to say about trauma properly, I don't think any time was wasted. But as a part of reaching for what it wanted to accomplish with it's detailed story around trauma, it had to give up those stark differences you saw in the characters from the first game. In my opinion, it's a fine trade off, I think they made up for it well with what they traded it for. But I can absolutely understand being dissapointed in there being less of a variety between the characters in the new game.

The only new fairly seperate topic they covered was sensory overload, which you see in PSI King's level, which also happens to be probably my favourite level in the game
Click to expand...
That's pretty ironic when you think about how mental health is pushed as way of self identification in "current year", yet the only thing people actually care about is regular trauma.
 
wtfNeedSignUp said:
That's pretty ironic when you think about how mental health is pushed as way of self identification in "current year", yet the only thing people actually care about is regular trauma.
Click to expand...
Having something like a BPD card is trendy, its not something the terminally online want to see as an "actual issue" they have to somehow "overcome".
Its something you have to "accept" and demand "support" for instead. Preferably money.
 
Dreamer said:
Having something like a BPD card is trendy, its not something the terminally online want to see as an "actual issue" they have to somehow "overcome".
Its something you have to "accept" and demand "support" for instead. Preferably money.
Click to expand...
Yeah, BPD is the disorder of crazy women and social justice. You'll never see it considered as a bad thing by them, despite it being a horribly toxic and harmful disorder, that's just the nature of BPD, they fully endorse their actions (egosyntonic). It makes treating BPd very difficult. The egotism in BPD is also exactly that which you see in social justice.

You'd never see BPD represented in Psychonauts. Doing so would be directly hurtful to most believers in social justice as it would highlight their harmful behaviour, and any attempts to cover that behaviour up would be misrepresenting the disorder, so they just don't touch it at all.
 
The interns aren’t the best developed characters, with Sam arguably being their most standout example from her group that is interesting.

Norma on the other hand is the worst, even without her being a bully and mostly because of how retarded she is in deducting who the Mole truly was.

Also, after the Casino Mission there are indeed cutscenes for Morris. Gisu, and Adam but you need to go to their specific areas:A treehouse in the Quarry, and the Atrium next to a cluster of screens.
 
Anstiv said:
You had Fred Bonaparte, who... I don't know, had the ghost of Napoleon in his head yelling at him,
Click to expand...
Gaming University made a "The Psychology of Psychonauts" video on Fred's mind not too long ago, it didn't change my mind about it being the weakest level in the game but it's still very interesting.
His Psychonauts videos are pretty good so far but his clipping mic is annoying at times and some of the example images he uses can be kind of weird.

Btw I forseen when he gets to Psychonauts 2, the videos will become less interesting because of the limited covered topics of the game but who knows.
 
Liquid Marlon said:
Gaming University made a "The Psychology of Psychonauts" video on Fred's mind not too long ago, it didn't change my mind about it being the weakest level in the game but it's still very interesting.
Click to expand...
I liked Fred's mind. The setting was nice and it had an unique twist.

I think the reason people dislike Fred is because his 'mental issue' is the least grounded in reality and comes off as a parody/mockery.
 
Definitely agree that there was a problem with lack of variety in terms of mental stuff the game dealt with, and think the things they did deal with should have been more focused on. Bobs level would have been much more interesting if it focused purely on the alcoholism instead of adding the relationship stuff and having it take up the most of the second half of the level. I say that as someone who thinks the stuff between him and psi king was actually a somewhat interesting idea for a mental world. Having a level focused on a power or gimmick of "separating" things forcefully might have been a cool idea for a character who is suffering from separation anxiety or something of the sort, maybe a woman who lost her baby or had a miscarriage. Would fit right in with the expected darkness of a Psychonauts game.
 
WaltherPPGAY said:
Yes. Generally I like casinos in games and I quite enjoyed the puzzle levels in Psychonauts 1, but this one felt pretty terrible.

I didn't mind the aesthetics, but thematically it felt forced and in a pure mechanical design sense it was a poorly paced slog. Felt like the worst level in the game to me. Also the backstory you uncover is hilariously terrible, something it shares with the second worst level the library.

Things pick up afterwords, but never to the level of the first game. I would say the cooking and trio levels come closest overall, with the bottle one being the closest in a purely thematic/aesthetic sense.
Click to expand...
I found the sensory overload level to be my personal favorite
 
My favourite thing about this thread is all the ideas people have been coming up with for things they would have wanted to see in the game; all the different ideas for how they would represent different psychological ideas. It's really cool. Not sure how to explain it, but I just find it really cool how creative people get with that kind of thing.
 
Last edited:
Anstiv said:
My favourite thing about this thread is all the ideas peoole have been coming up with for things they would have wanted to see in the game; all the different ideas for how they would represent different psychological ideas. It's really cool. Not sure how to explain it, but I just find it really cool how creative people get with that kind of thing.
Click to expand...
Just goes to show how great the game’s story/concept is. I know a third game isn’t likely but there’s plenty of potential for one.
 
The Silver Shroud said:
Just goes to show how great the game’s story/concept is. I know a third game isn’t likely but there’s plenty of potential for one.
Click to expand...
Yeah, the game basically answered every single loose thread from the first game and it closed itself up pretty well in the end at that, which is something I at least respect.

I think we could maybe see some spin-off games in the future but a third game or even really a DLC is out of the question at least for a while.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom