I know people joke about how the Psychic Six/Seven needed to see therapists, and they do, but I wonder if they realize that they're also themselves essentially very, very, very eccentric therapists. I wonder how much the obligations that came with that, the need to be the stable party who takes care of other people, someone who gives help rather than receives it, caused them to shun other Psychonauts and therapists until things got so bad that a literal child had to get involved.
I love cassie's reaction to you your proposal to look inside of her mind. She is so glad and positive about it. It seems popping in and out of eachother's minds was a regular practic for them, she even mentiones , that her last check-up was performed by ford. They seemed to help eachother be in shape , untill they drove apart.
The bit about the NPCs can best be demonstrated by this: Name a camper at Whispering Rock, and a fan of the first game will likely be able to tell you a good bit about them. Name an intern other than Sam, and a fan of the second game might have to ask you which one that is. Some of the minor NPCs you can find wandering the Motherlobe have more interesting character arcs than the interns.
I dunno. I obviously can't speak for everyone, but as a massive fan of the first game who's played it around 10 times or so to completion since it came out, including once right after beating Psychonauts 2 when it first came out, I'm honestly not certain I could tell you much about either the campers or the interns. Like, just off the top of my head as I'm writing this I remember Bobby's name, Lilly...and that's it. From the interns I remember Sam (natch) and...well Lilly. I can't even clearly remember Sam's brother's name, and he got a fair bit of focus in the first game. I also don't really recall any of the campers getting much of an arc (except Lilly). You're also not the only person I've seen have this opinion, so it could very well be me, but I can't help but think nostalgia has a lot to do with it as well.
@@anosmibell6473 I'll freely admit that both nostalgia and simply the fact that the first game has been around for so much longer contribute to that. But I also believe it's generally true regardless.
@@anosmibell6473 Dogen Bobby Kitty Nils Quentin Vernon Pheobe JT Chloe the cowboy one the two cheery ones aaaaaand OH Maloof and Mikhail, Benny, then sailor boy and invisible girl How'd we do fam
WAIT IT'S CHOPS I remember now I can see the comment getting likes but I remember them all, and I know for a fact they all have arcs, trust me, it's not just nostalgia, those kids are golden. We see Maloof become a Mafia Don in 5 acts, pure genius.
I kind of wish Psychonauts 2 had included a level revisiting Raz's mind, the way we did in the original game. It's understandable, but given the game's themes and what you've pointed out about the parallels between Raz and Gristol Malik, it seems a waste not to confront it. Alas, that's not the game that exists. Black Velvetopia's still the best level in the first game, though.
Though funny, it felt very wrong that Gristol's mind is of some lunatic childish narcisist, his plan involved infiltrating a secret agency with people who hear thoughts and feel emotions (like Milla scanning the world). How???? Also, how did the manage to give that phobia to lobotto? Did he hire a second psychic for that???
I mean, other than Gloria, all the minds at the Asylum are pretty iconic and a blast to spend time in. ... Can't say that for any of Psychonauts 2's minds. They just don't feel as fun to be in.
@@OtterloopB Yeah that's understandable. Gloria's mission wasn't all that fun but I really enjoyed her character and story, wish they did more with it tbh
My biggest issue with PsychoNauts 2 (and the interns, specifically) is so small but holds such weight in my mind. It's that new sign that gets added to "The History of the PsychoNauts" at the end of the game. "The Heroic Interns" or whatever it's called. I'll explain. It is very clear that sign on display was left blank so that it could be filled in after finishing the game's story. The fact that it is part of a display that details the history of the PsychoNauts gives it importance within the world the game takes place in. The fact that it is clearly meant to be filled in after the story is completed gives it importance to the player. This sign was always meant to depict a symbol that represents the entirety of the player's journey through this game. An image the player can go back to that will call upon the events of this new game. The sign should've been of the Psychic 6. The Psychic 6, Raz, and Lucy. That's what this game was about. That's what the player will always remember. Those are the characters this game took time to develop and had the player form relationships with. The interns were flat, static, annoying characters that barely have any importance on the plot, form no real connection to Raz or Lucy, and are just generally unpleasant to interact with throughout the entire game. I get that they could be seen as realistic teenagers, and there is no need for them to apologize for their treatment of Raz.... SO LONG AS they are treated as the background characters they were written as. But instead the game seems to think they are more important than they actually are. It annoys me greatly and I am relieved to find out I am not the only person that thinks this way. TL;DR The Interns were written as annoying background characters, but were treated as main characters and stole attention away from the characters that were actually developed.
I don't know, they're not forcing them in. If anything, the problem is that they don't do enough with the interns. Also, keep in mind that there is a section for the Psychic 6 that gets corrected in the post-game to include Lucy as well, as the Psychic 7.
I actually forgot about this comment. I agree with you and never claimed the interns were forced into the story. I wish more was done with them to justify their existence at all. Having actual development for the characters would've made them so much more tolerable and might've made them pleasant to interact with. My main issue is that, as written, all the interns (except Sam) and really annoying.
The interns, to me, mostly felt like the tutorial brigade. They show up in the beginning as a minor obstacle, you win (most of) them over at the climax of the second level, and then their purpose in their narrative is done, allowing them (sans Norma) to fade into the background. Norma showing up again to betray you is fine, since it's plenty foreshadowed, but after that, their chapter is well and truly closed. They don't need to be any more than that (even if some extra conversations on the hub world would have been nice). The first act antagonists showing up in the finale feels silly. It has all the gravitas of a hypothetical version of the final battle of Psychonauts 1, where instead of Augustus showing up and cashing in all of his narrative build-up, it would have been Kitty and Franke riding in on a giant friendship bracelet while triumphantly yelling "All right Raz, it's time we pay you back for those arrowheads you gave us on the bridge!" It's especially egregious since having the Psychic Six show up instead would have allowed them to earn redemption for themselves and move past their old failure, which would have been a really nice capstone on their character development. I honestly thought, with all of them being present in the room prior, that's what was being set up. As it is, it feels a bit like that group was robbed of their narrative climax.
Great video about a great game! I'm glad you mentioned the whole Romanov symbolism, I loved the Gristol twist but it also left a weird feeling in the back of my mind due to the whole... innocent royal children being murdered thing. It's a complicated, sad topic that left framing Gristol as potentially irredeemable as a bit off-key. But like you said, within the context of the game world it works well. It obviously wasn't intended as a 1-for-1 comparison anyway.
Thank you! In a way I'm glad I was able to air those thoughts to give myself some closure, knowing others were at least aware why i'd feel so conflicted. Overall it's my favourite level in the game, there's nowhere else I can go to play anything like it.
I'm not saying it's wrong to make that connection, but I don't think it's really warranted? Don't get me wrong, the game is clearly drawing parallels, but I don't think it's actually trying to SAY something about the Romanov children? I'm not wording it a well as I want to, and I'm sorry for that.
@@Sperium3000 Oh yeah I don’t think Tim was actually trying to say bad things about the Romanov kids or anything, it’s just a story beat that maybe should have been handled a little bit differently to avoid unintended implications.
I'm not sure that Gristol was framed as irredeemable? More like he refuses to buy into the fact that something needs to change about him. Because that's where all therapy begins, with self-reflection. And I don't think Gristol is incapable of self-reflection, because that would actually make him irredeemable, just that he doesn't want to. Because he's built up his own victimization and narrative about what happened so much that if he lets go of even a tiny bit of it, if he stops that theme park ride from moving, then he has nothing else to grasp onto. I think a key part that might have been glossed over about Gristol's mental world is that it very heavily implies that Gristol is aware, on some level, that his whole narrative and delusion is self-enforced. Like, the fact that you can alter that small section about his family fleeing and their "suffering" so easily, changing the order of events and so on to solve the puzzle, seems very indicative of that to me anyway. I do agree that a redemption arc for Gristol, even one that only begins his journey towards better mental health, would be incredibly interesting to see play out.
My biggest grip was that by the end of it all, the interns and raz all became juniors when I feel like Raz is definitely deserving of a higher placement due to saving the world twice already practically by himself and because out of everyone he has the most experience being a psychonaut
Story about relying on each other: Has the main character constantly, comically thrust into saving the entire world on his own while everyone else throws him a shovel to help him dig. Constantly has all the other professional psychonauts fail to do their jobs so that the Gary Stue mc can save the world, again. Exposition dumps even more pontifications about morality throughout. Reaction: "Wow, this is a masterpiece, but I would prefer if its story had better moral implications in its historical parallels of Tsarist Russia." I weep
Funny that crows on a train in Hat and Time look, talk, and act in similar fashion as milkman's spies. I'm sure it was an intentional homage to Psychonauts!
Jonas Kaerlev - The creator of Hat in Time - has actually brought this up in a multitude of interviews. He's a very outspoken fan of Psychonauts, & he included a number of references to Psychonauts within the game (the CAW Agents being probably the most obvious homage). B-Mask actually specifically brings this up in his Hat in Time video (it's actually how I first found his channel, & is easily one of my favorite videos from him), but to paraphrase a point he talks about in that video, the CAW Agents essentially miss the point on what made the G-Men so effective, making them fall flat from both a comedic & storytelling perspective.
For me it was pacing of how raz reacted to everything was just steamrolled, the second batch of kids wasn't well integrated to the world, the mind world's were great,the main world need to be some relandscape. I just wished we could had seen more from his family.
Tbh, after the plot twist, I got the vibe he was bottling things up and throwing himself into his work, so to speak. If that was the case, I could see it being a cool future plotline in a psychonauts 3.
You’ve worded everything I’ve been feeling after I first played Psychonauts 2. I enjoyed the game, but the experience felt almost too compact and the ending felt so abrupt. I didn’t think I cared about the Raz and Lilly storyline until Psychonauts 2 when they barely interacted. I keep comparing the interns to the campers. I loved the way they fleshed out the campers by placing them around the map and having you overhear their conversations between each other. They also did a lot of unique things like Chloe testing a paper airplane, Nils spying through a peephole, Bobby torturing a fish, etc. They defined themselves through their actions. I felt like the interns were always just in the Motherlobe talking and doing very little else. There’s nothing particularly terrible about them, but they’re hard to remember when thinking about Psychonauts as a whole. I kinda feel that way with almost every character introduced in Psychonauts 2, but I only just started my second playthrough. I’ve grown to like Psychonauts 2 a lot more with my second playthrough. It has a lot to like and the levels do a great job in terms of design. However, Psychonauts 1 will probably always top its sequel imo. Psychonauts 1 was much more experimental to me, certainly not as polished, but I didn’t care as much about that when I experienced all the fascinating ideas and the wonderful details Edit 2: I also found the ending for the villain strange too. It seemed a little messed up that Milla and Sasha were so comfortable and joking about the idea of doing unethical experiments on a prisoner, and when talking to Nick in his cell, his dialogue shows that he sees the Psychonauts as an unfair and authoritarian agency. The unethical operations of the modern Psychonauts are not explored at all, and I think it’s strange that the franchise approaches the issue from such a one dimensional viewpoint. It makes more sense now that I’ve seen the brief history lesson for the context behind this part of the game, but still rubs me the wrong way.
I was disappointed by the lack of character growth based on world state compared to the first game. I was really hoping we'd get to know the campers a bit more and we'd see them get closer to and grow to respect Raz and the lack of Lilly and Raz specifically and Raz's family felt a little lacking. A lot like you, Psychonauts is everything I'm in to, from it's macabre edges to its adventure game trappings to its aesthetic, partly because Psychonauts was my introduction to a lot of those things. I played it at launch when I was eight and it was the first thing I ever encountered that made me want to make THINGS. Art, music, stories, anything as long as I could capture that spark Psychonauts made me feel. I love the game and I feel so vindicated that almost seventeen years of waiting was mostly worth it, but I really wanted more after the credits. I felt a little weird at the end having that feeling, like I was being a little greedy, but even though I love the game I ultimately can't help but want another game that gives me more and pushes things in ways that first game did. I don't think I'll ever get that, but I can't help but want it.
1:02:25 - fun fact: napoleon’s great nephew, jerome bonaparte moved to the us and started a linage of american bonapartes that as far as i can tell goes onto this day, meaning were going to enter the psychonauts timeline any day now
My god. My GOD, B-Mask. This video was phenomenal. I would have never considered some of the things you did when you discussed the final act. And I am totally where you are with that last conversation Raz has with his dad. I think it really suggests that some of Raz’s attitudes you mention towards *REDACTED* is something Raz has to let simmer in the back of his mind too. Really your video just cemented for me how much I loved, and how affected I was by, and how grateful I am for soooo much of what Psychonauts 2 was doing.
I think the biggest surprise for me was how great the story was. I wasn't expecting for it really hit me in the feels in the way it did, especially with the twist and the delivery of the line "I lost her Rasputin". There is just this mix of emotions welling up inside where I was incredibly disgusted with what was done to this family but at the same time understood why it was done in context. It's nice to see Rasputin fully reconciled with his entire family after so many years since the first game since He and Augustus finally got a chance to start understanding eachother near the end. And that score too. Some movie quality tracks for sure. By the end I really want to see whats next. How can Psy3 go bigger? Where can it go from here? Are water levels and swimming a possibility now for levels? Dunno, guess we'll have to see after they're done with that new project and I'm confident Brutal Legend 2 will be made before Psy3 (Not that I'd be complaining).
while i don't think he would swim (maybe a world you can swim in to start with this growth?) maybe he can finally use his levitation bubble on the water surface (for a limited time since that thought/worry might be there)
@@Silver_wind_1987_ well maybe swimming could be a post game reward so that way we can have real world obstacle courses (with the water still being a reset for messing up) without having to make everything SUPER big/tall to compensate for that "lost" on every course. but i do like that from boat to ball to swim idea
I sympathize with loving the first game, but not quite loving this one, and that made this video really cathartic. I'd been feeling conflicted about this game ever since I finished it, and while asking for even more in certain areas is unreasonable, as you implied, I think the points you brought up in the 'Critical thinking' chapter are nevertheless quite strong, and they helped me figure out why I felt underwhelmed in the end, especially when it comes to the climax. It ain't no asylum and meat circus, that's for sure. On the other hand, there are many ideas and details you highlighted which I either didn't notice or didn't quite process on my playthrough. I thought I was being slow and diligent, but maybe I was still moving a bit too fast to pick up on all the distinct merit of the game. Possibly also a bit dismissive of some themes that didn't resonate with me. To summarize, this video helped me lay a lot of my problems with the game to rest, and made me appreciate it more as well. For that much - thank you, B- Mask!
I think an easy solve for the games issue with the interns is to have them join you in the minds that aren’t ford or Lucrecia , maybe even adding minds like Augustus and Otto. Sam could’ve come to help Compton, Lizzie to Cassie, Lilly to Bob, Norma to Augustus.
I think the biggest difference for me was how the story and mechanics were structured. In the first game, it felt like a mystery you were solving, like an actual SPY. The second game felt more like a superhero story kinda? Its hard for me to explain, im not a writer, but I think other people will understand what im trying to get at. Like a platformer/point&click game. Psychonauts 2 is more like a Platformer/action game in the way everything is presented. You arent using deduction to solve a puzzle, your mostly just moving forward to the end of the story. You solve PUZZLES but you arent putting the pieces together. Your getting a new ability, then using those as basically a key to get to the next part. Its really hard to explain because they're so close to being the same thing, but not exactly. Like cousins of each other.
B, you really outdid yourself with the "Jigsaw Puzzle vs Rubix Cube" analogy there. Never have I ever heard of an analogy so eloquent, unique, and insightful all in one! Bravo, B, bravo.
My biggest and really only "Minor" complaint was that the new PSI abilities didn't really have a SUPER useful "Exploration" potential. Yeah there's a few. The logs in the Mystery Zone, Slipping into mail slots as paper Raz. But that's ALL they are. They're "keys" to certain locks. And not much else. Combat it pretty much always going to handled the same way.
Holy fucking SHIT B-Mask you knocked it out of the park with this one, my brain is filled and I can appreciate this story in even more ways then I could before, let's hope we do get a Psychonauts 3 lmao cause this world is so large and has so much to it, still, very glad Double Fine's taking a break first. Man though, what a video, really had my jaw agape at points with the conclusions you came to that I didn't
God I love this channel. Psychonauts 2 felt a bit, flat(?) compared to the energy of the first game, and I just can’t put my finger on why. Visually it’s just as creative, tons of effort went into making the mechanics actually have better feedback and everything, but we’re still missing something. My personal feeling is that the summer camp vibe of the original is what made it so special. The kids were grounded by their flaws, and the adults were all larger than life heroes to them, despite being messes themselves. It feels like everything that happened in the camp happened internally, from characters you already knew. As an agent, anything could happen, but the experience feels remarkably less personal, despite exploring a lot about Raz’s backstory. Still, love you for turning these gears over in my head, and for the reminder that it was still a great game even if it was a little disappointing
Thanks so much! I've been surprised how many people felt the same way (or felt I didn't go far enough!) so I'm glad I was able to offer that a voice, while still expressing the ways it deeply affected me for the better. I see exactly where you're coming from on the first game, really interesting getting to read other people's unique takes like this.
I would posit one contributing factor is that they were being more "safe" and consulted "consultants" like anita sarkeesian, meaning they sawed off any rough edges that might've made for a more "uncomfortable" experience in some places when dealing with the subject of mentally broken people like the first game.
"Raz, there's no such thing as magic curses, PLEESE! This is science." In a world where people lift things, blast things, mind bend, astral project, etc. with their brains, among other crazy phenomena. Honestly it does feel like it would've been better if the curse couldve just been left a curse, especially if they do another game.
Bro, what are you talking about?? The "curse" was never real, even in the first game. It was always a fobia of water because Raz believes their family was cursed to die in water. I always interpreted it as it just being in Raz's head.
I loved this game, I REALLY loved it. It had some changes, some understandable [certain powers not returning] but also, some changes still weird. It had some issues, I won't deny those [it feels like the Interns aren't as fleshed out as the campers and they sort of vanish from the plot for most of it.] But I love the sequel, it was pretty much worth the wait and was an amazing experience.
I just gotta say I’ve been through a lot of shit over the years and I don’t mean to be parasocial or anything but your vids have helped me through a lot. I have CPTSD and this one reminded me of some important stuff the other week. Keep being you
I feel that P's levels being as diverse and experimental as they are is in itself an integral part of the games's identity so 2's lesser emphasis on that front hurts it plenty, especially seeing as to how the greater leap in technology could've helped push the envelope in terms of just how diverse the levels could've been.
In my experience it's difficult to hold flaws against a piece of media that shows it was made with love and care. It can be easy to create unfortunate implications when expressing complex ideas in increasing complex ways but I see the empathy and wanting for the audience to understand mental health better. I think most people who played it did and that's most important to me
This was a fantastic video, I have very similar feelings towards this game, I think objectively, it's the better game out of the two. I can easily recommend this one to friends, it's tight, creative and masterful..... but I miss the disjointed wacky charm of the first game and how so much love was put into every inch of it so you can always experience something new on revisits. I get a lot of people struggle with the first one but I hope that people fall in love with the excellent characters and style and storytelling enough in the second one to want to pick up the first one again and be able to look past some of the problems (clunky combat and handling etc) and really appreciate it for what it is.
Your videos are so great! Thank you so much for covering the themes of the both games and how they explore our minds and reflect our reality. I am Russian, and the plot has hit home really hard... especially now( But I am happy to know that world is still filled with beautiful people and great works of art - these games and your essays are definitely those ✨
After 100%ing the game, I felt like the game was missing something. Unlocking no cooldowns was neat, but there was no reason to use it as there was nothing left to discover, let alone most enemy encounters no longer spawn once dealt with. The game lacked hidden zones and easter eggs for the most part. You're correct on things feeling a bit too linear. After that I ended up cheating and using jump cheats to see if I could find anything extra outside the map and could only find a loading box outside the brain hub, and that was it. Which is neat, I guess. a Developer left fun text on it. Learned a bit how they designed their loading zones and where they hid interiors, how they dealt with distant terrain and whatnot. Because of this linear nature, it just feels like there's no replay-ability to the game. I feel as though it'll be the same experience every time. And I loved the game, but for me, it's just a one show pony. Unless they come out with DLC, of course.
You hit on a lot of what I felt when I was playing this. While I did enjoy it a solid amount, especially as it got further into things, I couldn't help but feel the same points of contention that you illustrated. I also missed the more scrungy look of the first game, where everyone looked off and semi-surreal. In this game, they scaled that back majorly and made the characters much "cuter," with only the occasional quirk or irregularity (sometimes they almost came across more like plush toys than crafted models). I also definitely noticed a change in the vibe and humor, with it losing a lot of the more "meaner" aspects that gave the original game a certain bite (no more "squirrel roast dinner," I suppose). I figured some of this might be a reflection of how things have changed since the 2000s, maybe most folks wouldn't really want that sort of thing in a game like this anymore, I don't know. Anyway, I'm glad you covered this, especially after your great video on the first one, which I very much appreciated. It's good to have you back, though I'm sorry you've had to go through so much recently.
These are my primary issues. 2 just feels so...SANITIZED...compared to 1. Like, I remember so many of the jokes from 1, but most of the jokes in 2 have completely left me. (Considering Tim Schafer has said they consulted lots of people to make the humor more "inclusive", i feel that might have impacted the humor of 2. I'm not against "inclusive" humor, just don't take out the humor of an established series to make it bland.) The overly cute aesthetic bothers me too, since you're going from a dirty, grungy looking world to what looks so clean and, again, sanitized compared to 1. It just...doesn't have the same feel of 1. I just can't rank 2 above it.
Great video. The problem I have with Gristol's mind is that, while it serves its narrative function, I think is the most torturous part of the game to "play" through. The whole mind felt like one large unskippable cutscene that spoonfeeds you the lore in the most boring way possible. The "It's a Small World" aspect gets tiresome really quickly after the first room. Also, while it makes sense for Gristol wanting to bring back Maligula, I wish that there was more to Maligula/Lucy/Nona in terms of her relation to Raz and what that meant to him. I feel like Psychonauts 2 has a very well-constructed story, but as you said yourself, is more about Ford than it is about Raz. We don't get to explore Raz's mind at any point in this story, which I feel is a largely missed opportunity to connect him more to the narrative emotionally. As far as I was concerned, Raz was just sort of thrown into the Maligula plot without any real stakes. Yes, we learn that Lucy is Raz's "fake grandma," but not much is expanded upon with either that or the explanation of the water "curse" as you also addressed. In Psychonauts 1, there's freaking tanks with brains in them that are being created by the dude that somehow mixed his brain with your brain. We don't really get that level of connection between protagonist and antagonist or sense of potential destruction in the "real world" of Psychonauts 2, aside from that giant whirlpool at the very end. It was difficult for me to stay invested in the Maligula story after hearing it being retold in countless ways without seeing firsthand the kind of destruction she was doing, as well as how she was connected to Raz aside from her being distantly related. It felt sort of tacked on to me. In short, I love both games. But I get the feeling I'll be coming back to 1 a lot more because of how the story is constructed as well as how that interacts with the gameplay.
Im so so so disapointed no one in the writers rooms piped up and said "maybe we should do a whole theme park" or something like that with the "History of Grulovia" ride being at the end or even a cutscene.
On one hand, I think it's a bit refreshing to have a villain to defeat in Psychonauts that is irredeemable. It's in line with Raz's disillusionment with the Psychonauts and the ideals he has about "fixing people" like the asylum inmates that get shot down after messing up in Hollis' mind. It's a hard lesson to learn that sometimes certain people cannot be rehabilitated, and deserve punishment. You can't help everyone, especially when they aren't willing to take it. But I think that's only part of the issue. Gristol's affected just as much by the central event of the game as every other mind you enter, it's just that his particular upbringing turns his coping mechanisms to manipulation and a narcissistic personality, whereas the Psychic 6/7 deflect the blame almost entirely on themselves. In a way, they're really not so different, just people dealing with intense trauma in different ways. I think it's important that a line is drawn between the aggressive and non-aggressive coping mechanisms, but I think it goes a bit too far in making Gristol completely unsalvageable as a person. I don't know exactly how to reconcile that with my feelings about enjoying having an awful villain, but I think approaching him from the point of view as a person with whom you should try to empathize, which is what the point of these games tends to be, writing him off as forever bad is kind of dangerous. It's true, narcissists hurt people and it's not the responsibility of people in their lives to try to "fix" them. Same can be said about plenty other serious disorders. But this portrayal doesn't really show much of how he got to that point, or offer much hope for him in the future. There's this amazing scene in his level, where you more or less relive a traumatic memory of his attempted assassination by a crowd of protestors and get thrust into a huge, dangerous battle that sort of comes close to saying something, but the rest of the level takes great strides to paint his experiences as exaggerated and pathetic instead of pointing out what underlying problems might have led to them. We've actually made progress in treating things like Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which up until the past decade or two were thought to be incurable, to the point where some are able to build healthy relationships and develop empathy. For Psychonauts, which is normally really, really good at showing personal growth in all of its characters, it just seems kind of antithetical? I think maybe the message that should have been communicated was "it is not your responsibility to fix or help this person, but they are not beyond help if they learn to seek it out." It's kind of a hard thing to accept but treating bad people like monsters only keeps them that way, and allows them to keep hurting other people. Jesus I did not mean to turn this into a ramble.
No need to apologise- what you just went through is a great example of my own quandary in trying to word my feelings around the character and the approach taken.
I feel tim was burnt out and couldn't really challenge his own bias at that point, story wise, gristol trying to bring back maligula was a huge red flag, so for the in-world characters to spare their own sanity they took the easy way out and just kept him in his mental prison, there's some nuance there but not enough for it to be the traditional psychonauts experience
So glad to see you making videos again! You're one of the best video essayists on the platform! Psychonauts holds a real special place in my heart, and I'm always glad to hear people more eloquent than I am explain what makes it special, flaws and all
Man its shit like this is why im a patreon. Im not much into background stuff, and i dont really understand discord, but im happy to fund someone putting out really good stuff like this (and getting better at it as you go). Might have to re-watch a couple of times, because this is so dense I dont think i got it all. But that is an easy thing to do with your videos. Thanks B-mask
For me, the one thing that made it feel off was the lack of stylization in the over world and background characters. There’s a deformation of sorts in all the original characters but the inters felt too normal and the background characters looked like muppets from Sesame Street.
THEY DO LOOK LIKE SESAME STREET CHARACTERS. Literally, my first time playing the game, I just kinda stared at the character designs and went "Why do they look like sesame street puppets"
One thing at this point I don’t like about the series is Raz simply does not get his respect. Like look at his feats at what he was able to overcome. I mean in the 2nd game alone he fixes all the psychic six (seven technically, which is something literally the six couldn’t do in regards to fixing Lucy) he fixed Ford, something that literally NO OTHER physic was able to do up until that point, and he defeated Maligula (sure not by himself but mostly) the most powerful physic threat known up until this point. This is the same Raz who was said to have weak physic energy at the beginning of the game by the casino scanners. Sure you can say they did that for the gag, but the game consistently does no give him his respect. I believe the agents (Sasha, Milla, and even Coach) know just how powerful he is or rather his potential is, but the game constantly downplays him. He should quite literally be seen as an absolute prodigy who undergoes unique training at this point, not a junior psychonaut or whatever it is they have ALL the interns at the end. Edit: I’d go as far as to say Raz as an adult would be like a god compared to everyone else
It's great to see you back B-Mask! I hope you're doing well in these scary times- When I saw my first playthrough of Psychonauts 2, I felt as if it would go on forever but it was much more shorter than I thought. Time crunch is real, and the fact that they didn't crunch at all is a triumph, even though it resulted in Psychonauts 2 having some holes that you shed light on.
I'm imagining an intro mission for the third game could be Sasha putting Raz through the Brain Tumbler in an experiment to try to help him gain more conscious control over the Hand of Galoccio, which would both serve as a recap of the events of Psychonauts 2 and give us a glimpse at some of Raz's own personal issues that the plot could address, and maybe *then* maybe by the end after Raz and his own relationships and personal demons get some attention/development/closure as needed, we could see him using Hydrokinesis in a final boss fight taking place in realspace as opposed to inside someone's mind.
As great as that and any hypothetical would be, it doesn't replace the phantom of its perfect place in 2 for me. I can live with it, but it will always be missed in that moment.
Psychonauts 2 is weird, because while I think I enjoyed it, it sort of feels so different in both tone and story than the first. Something clearly being lost in the transition. It feels softer, almost as if it is aiming for a younger demographic, hell I'd even say it was less funny. It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination. But it's sort of missing something that makes me go back to 1 over it.
The first game felt like a fun, edgy early 2000s Nick cartoon, while this one felt more like a current-day adventure Disney cartoon (Like Amphibia or something). Not a bad thing, but a little bit of the edgy charm is lost.
I think it was better to leave a lot of that edginess behind since the first game was sometimes insensitive to the mental problems of its charachters. The humor in 2 comes far more from connecting with the characters opposed to at their expense.
"Softer" and for a younger audience couldn't be any more wrong. The first game aimed for kids or teens and the sequel aimed for adults because it's an impossible sequel to a game that literally came out 15 years ago
A mindscape heavy game should have more of a character driven plot with all the characters having a fully realized backstory that might not be added to the game
I really do not like Adam, because he's set up to be one of the coolest interns, only for me to forget he exists during 80% of the game. And I dislike Gisu's design the most, because she looks way too "normal" compared to the others, lacking that distinct, wonderfully ugly, lumpy look that og Psychonauts is known for, like she could be plopped into another game with a similar style and not stand out.
As usual all the other comments have said pretty much everything I could about how amazing this analysis is, so I'll just tack on that I love when you do those little music videos at the end of these kind of things - they're always so good!
Ok but that sequence of scenes put together to a piano rendition of Once Upon a December was beautiful. Great choice! I agree about the interns. While they're unique and interesting characters to some degree, they really aren't as fleshed out as the campers in the first game, which is a real shame. I like how this game portrays relationships as helpful, but never as a cure. Love doesn't fix all, but it sure helps. I haven't seen anyone address Raz's delusions, which I think was a fascinating take! A great rundown, worth the watch!
So, rewatching this after a year. Man I still love this video. So glad we had your take on the whole game, maybe it got to double fine and they will reach you to take some notes on the next entry (?) One can dream.
How perfect, I’m making a Raz cosplay for Anime Detour 2022, so this is the perfect video to keep my drive going. Thank you for your analysis, you did a great job highlighting the fine points and weaknesses of Psychonauts 2. This and the original are two of my all time favorite games, warts and all.
4:20 I just noticed Sasha has his hand out, but no cigarette in it. Probably because he's like the only smoking character in a PG-7 game ever, they removed it from the trailer.
Happy to have ya back B. Been a long fan of your stuff since I discovered your Sly Cooper Retrospective, and out of curiosity watched all your other stuff. Glad you're doing better and can't wait to see a Jak & Daxter video in the future, whenever that happens.
If you'd like to see an interview of the guy at 10:48 who created that book, I say look up "Artefacts - The Man who created the Stinky Cheese man." It's a very wholesome interview.
While I certainly agree that it was one of the things hit on a little weakly, I will say that the Golochio Curse is something I half-way suspected the nature of just from Psychonauts 1. The way that the hand was almost helpful until you bounced that third time is...too suspicious. Maybe it'll be fodder for Psychonauts 3. Maybe give a 4-6 year time skip (Raz and Lili being 15 or 16 would make their kiddie crushing either have time to mellow out and become "just friends" or actually develop into something more of a teenaged romance), and one of the things the other new recruits still raz Raz about is that he hasn't gotten over his psychosomatic fear of water. Maybe he's gotten a couple of ways to work with it, but he's still not controlling it. And this is where he starts confronting these things in himself. Maybe only a 1-year or 2-year time skip works better for that. Enough time to settle in, but still be rough and raw around the edges.
As someone who just beat both games I've decided to rewatch your psychonauts videos now that I have far more context and can fully understand the arguments you present. It's not the first time watching this video, in fact this is what originally got me interested in psychonauts all the way back in 2021, but I couldn't get to experiencing both games until now. So even if it's three years later I gotta say you did a fantastic job both in analizing the game and showing your love for it, which again, is what led me to eventually playing the games myself! More information on the game's development came out after its release, and I need to fact check this, but I read the whole third act was reworked, originally it taking place in Grulovia, as you suggested, with Malik stealing a battle mech Oleander had built with water powers to find Maligula, which Ford in this version hid somewhere in her home country, and Raz needing to enter Augustus' mind to defeat the psychic curse implanted on the family, so he'd be able to fight the aquatic robot without the curse to die in water making it impossible. Given how much that idea goes against the current third act, I think it's fair to assume Lucrecia in this version of the plot would be unrelated to Nona, and would play the whole backstory of the Galochio family cursing the Aquatos straight instead of revealing the Galochio family is the original Aquatos family and the curse being only something in Raz's head. While I do think there are some interesting ideas there, I feel like it would remove a lot of the personal stakes the plot had build up, having Raz confront the curse not as Maligula herself, but as Malik trying to revive her, would feel a bit detached, I could be entirely wrong about this original pitch, I'll admit, for all I know Maligula would've still been the final boss and the only difference would be that we'd get a level based on Augustus' mind and a Malik boss fight before the climax played mostly the same (except for the emotional weight of Maligula being Nona, which would be a loss on my book, especially since by then they wouldnt even be able to rely on Raz beating the curse for the climax of the final battle, as he'd have done that already). With that in mind, if I had to pick one of the two ideas, I'm glad we got this one instead, the first one feels too straightforward and basic for the kind of game Psychonauts 2 is. I agree with the point you and almost everyone in the comments made however, the psychic six should've been there instead of the interns. It feels as if they were trying to setup a plot about the third generation of Psychonauts fixing the mistakes the first did and the second weren't even aware of, but fumbled it by not involving the interns at any point in the main plot. As you said, it does feel like they created too many characters and didn't seem to know how to fully utilize them all, which is a shame, the idea of Raz and a ragtag team of young Psychonauts in training unveiling a conspiracy the adults fail to solve and helping solve the one thing the original psychonauts couldn't solve feels like a natural evolution of the plot of the original game. Raz no longer being the odd one out, having allies which maybe don't agree with him at first, but slowly decide to work on their shared goal, and finally fixing the biggest failure in psychonauts history, while stopping a conspiracy to end the group from the inside feels perfect for a scaled up sequel. However as you said, focus on what we got instead of what we wish we could have. And honestly what we got was great, as much as I talked about stuff that bothered me and what I would preferred instead, I feel like the other 95% of the game is so well crafted that when I'm there playing the game, I don't even realize nor think about this stuff, it's only now that I'm done that my mind wanders into what could've been better and what wasn't meant to be.I prefer this over the first game, mostly because of the narrative itself feeling better paced and the gameplay feeling fully realized this time, but I won't deny the original's charm, in my eyes, this is a better game, but Psychonauts 1 is a game I don't think could be made today, it's a relic from almost two decades ago, and I see no reason to not celebrate it as such. (Also I think they had a similar idea to you with Raz using the hands of Galochio against Maligula, just couldn't implement it properly, as in the cutscene right before the final fight, when the Aquatos launch Raz, the hands that form in the watery tornado don't try to stop him, instead they break his fall and launch him directly at Nona right at the angle he needed to throw the door and project into her mind, implying he was in full control of them at that point.)
I'm well aware now of the dev's original intentions, but it's not that they were trying to defeat the real curse or that Lucrecia wasn't Maligula- it was still a delusion, just one deep in his fathers mind, with Nona still secretly Lucrecia, and I have to be honest, reading the plans in the art book made me go oh, of course, that feels like the most complete version of this story. I have a very short follow up on the cards to discuss exactly this, in fact. I do appreciate what you're saying about the sequel and as you can tell I mostly feel the same, but I'm unconvinced it is better paced than the first or that the first feels like a relic. I'm always struck by how tight Psy 1 feels, how incredibly lean and well presented the narrative is with everything feeling necessary- there's no sudden jarring points in the structure or narrative like the stealth bit in the casino or the rushed use of the wider cast precisely because it's so much more measured, and able to get its story out in a not only more efficient but also equally complex manner with soooo much inferred. I think, if we look at it as a relic, we don't learn what's still useful, how following that game's pointers is still to our benefit, and I think it might just be my personal mission, after so many games actively fighting against their original instincts and everyone so quick to reject everything about the past, to maintain the effect of the originals quality with audiences.
@@BMask Oooh, yeah that extra plotline makes more sense as an addition then, from the way I read it (which was second hand information instead directly from the art book, so my mistake there) it sounded like they completely reworked the third act, hence why I assumed it changed the plot twist in said act, since I didn't see how it'd fit the current climax. Looking forward to that followup! Glad I got into the series just in time for it! And I made a mistake in using the word ''relic'' here (this is what I get for trying to write down my thoughts at 4 am), I didn't mean it to infer the first game is old and obsolete, on the contrary! My point was that the original is an incredible work of art that's still impressive to this day, something I dont think could be made today, at least not without losing some of its identity, hence why I said it should be celebrated as such. I should've said ''gem'' instead of relic, my bad there. As for the pacing, I feel like my biggest issue with the first game is just that while the game never loses track of it's themes of exploring the human mind, I felt like the Asylum, while artistically and creatively the strongest part of the game, it's also a point where the narrative takes a bit of a backseat until you beat the four stages, and then it's already endgame. That's why I think the plot in 2 is better paced, don't get me wrong, as I said before, I think it has its own share of problems in place of that, but when seeing the story structure from a distance, I do feel like 2 is a bit more focused with its narrative (which in itself can be seen as a problem given so many characters in the cast end up taking a backseat once said narrative kicks into gear).
@@ratcicleking I think what you have to ask yourself is, do you want a video game, or a movie? In a movie it would make sense to cut out the asylum- but in a game, narratively, it makes a lot more sense to explore Raz as a character through these less connected situations that better inform his character, and put him on the path towards the deeply complex issue of wanting to save his father and Oleander. It does a lot of things through that a lot less clumsily than the sequel- I still think it's baffling how, over 15 years ago, they figured out how to use that to better pace out their finale, in a way the sequel just never quite rises to. I do love Psy 2 quite a bit, and I'm glad I feel conflicted on it, I think that's intentional- I just find it difficult to let go of what definitely feels like a dropped ball on the story structure, and if nobody else is going to hold onto that, then I think I need to make sure someone who Double Fine has some eyes on is doing so, to avoid full complacency. I love what they have here and I'd like to think, should they ever get to a sequel, they'll nail it even harder.
My Thoughts on Psychonauts 1: A great Plattformer with decent Overworlds, great Mind-Levels (especially the Milkman Conspiracy), Side-Quests, Comedy, good Soundtracks, mixed Boss-Fights, unique PSI-Powers (for the most Part) bad Combat with the most rushed Climax i´ve ever seen. My Thoughts on Psychonauts 2: A 9.?/10 Sequel with better Overworlds, better Mind-Levels, darker Tone, better Boss-Fights, returning & new PSI-Powers, better Side-Quests and one of the best Storys in Video Game History.
Finally finished the game. Playing 2 I never felt as frustrated compared to 1 but also never as satisfied until the end until I started to reflect. The first game sparks all the right places of the artist within me, I love it unconditionally even if I have to admit it has much difficulty articulating the wealth of creative ideas into fun gameplay that were due to the inexperience and lack of time and resources at the time. 2 feels like a very mature compromise that streamlines everything whilst miraculously never feeling like it’s selling out. There’s a genuineness to the changes that reflected what a more direct way to tell the story and keeping its core identity in tact. I will miss the minds with their own internal logic and rules, but I don’t know if I want to live in a world where i don’t engage with art any longer because it never meets my expectations. I hope there is a 3 some day, but if this does end up being the last one, then I’ll take it as a great companion piece.
I will say I don't feel, as I tried to express here, that I found aspects disengaged me because it doesn't meet expectations- I agree that it's a compromise, and one that doesn't feel any lesser for the choices it makes, the game is very much a masterpiece of its own- but I see how it feels incomplete within its own airtight shape in a way I don't think is true of the original, and that's very much taking it on the terms of what was in front of me. Having now read the behind the scenes book on the game, the things I instinctively felt were missing were, apparently, very much planned, whereas the cut concepts from the original are things I didn't feel the absence of as I played.
@@BMask I agree with everything you said. I was mostly trying to articulate my feelings that identified with your "it's not you it's me" comments that may have come off as more disagreeable than I intended, story of my life. Anyways! I'll check out that book as my curiosity won't be satisfied until I know everything there is to know about every creative choice that was made. Great work as always!
@@PrimatePunk Not a problem! Was more probing honestly, always hard to read intent on my part so I apologise if I gave a bad impression, but totally see what you mean. I also highly recommend the book- I actually would like to talk more about it on the channel as I think it's a masterpiece as well, maybe the best video game art book i've read in years.
I could never put my feelings about this game quit into words, I... Couldn't help but feel... dissapointed it was an unshakable feeling and I thought maiby there is something wrong with me, but the magic from the first game just wasn't quit there, the witty dialog was limited the interns were sidelined unlike the Campers in the first game Raz wasn't... Idk just not really himself The levels were creative, the combat was more fun, the story was way more engaging then the first one like it was quite brilliant actually it was emotional it was quit Frankly deserving to be game of the year 2021 I even loved it in some way I think my dissapointment is far more personal and can be traced back to what engaged me about the first game in the first place Idk it's just good to know I'm not alone with these confusing feelings about a series I love so dearly But yeah i cant hate it like you said i love it, does any of this make Sense?
@@alchemistofsteel8099 ETF at least resembled the original show's humor more than PN2's did for 1. I can't tell you more than 2 funny jokes in 2, but I could tell you multiple in 1.
I came in here with my pitchfork raised, only to grow confused at all the praise you gave to the game. But when you got to the points that didn't quite hit the mark for you, it... kinda made sense? I get where you're saying, and some details I didn't even consider! Overall a really great video about a game series I adore. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about it!
51:39 I mean in the memoreis we see the Gzar did seem to only want them rained, on, neither Lucretia nor the Gzar seemed to anticipate days and days of protest-disrupting rain causing the dam to burst. He's still a thug though.
Tysm for saying what I've been trying to articulate!! It's a FANTASTIC game! But the Aquatos and interns were sadly underutilized, and the ending felt oddly unsatisfying, even if the game itself is still amazing! All extremely well put!
The one thing I really liked about this game is a certain plot twist that apparently happened 20 years ago. The fact that upon finding this out, Raz questioning how this has been kept a secret for so long really makes it feel like the fans talking to Tim. How something like this has been foreshadowed in the first game as if it was his plan along. To Tim, everything happened in a day, while we had to wait 20 years to see the payoff.
I haven't played this one.. yet, but that didn't keep me from crying for joy at the vicarious witnessing of it. Yes indeed, there is "Psychonauts", and there is EVERYTHING else. 👊
The fact it wasn't a thinly veiled nitpick video sent me for a spin. The comment made it seem like it, the title did too. Yet at the end of the day it turns out I actually have more issues with the game than you do - and yet I felt defensive about it at the outset. Fascianting.
Psychonauts is my favorite game I've literally been waiting more than half my life for a sequel that I never thought would come. I'm so excited to play it. That being said I'll be watching this video another day
I hope psychonauts 3 deals with bpd, there's a game called No Straight Roads, which has a doublefine feel in which you fight a boss, a woman named Nadia (EVE) who has intense abandonment issues/bpd and her theme is sick as fuck. IT feels the devs understood the intensity
Technically BPD was a theme for Gloria's mind, hence the mood-swithing lamp, but it always felt too ham-fisted of a metaphor for this particular disorder; EVE's level is way better in that regard due to the eloquence of it. NSR is a great game, definitely has a lot of PN vibes.
I think Psychonauts 2 turned out too polished and kinda vanilla - for example trying to be trippy, but choosing too harmless and stereotypical representations of that. Psychedelia should be more confusing or even shocking, but they only showed the happy flower power part of it. Characters are a bit too bland and one-dimensional. You go inside their heads and flip a switch to turn them good agian. Lucretia is a little confused after the big fight, but is she really mourning the atrocities she has committed? In general I think the writing from Tim Schafer was very good here: A story about the traumata and fate of the flower power generation, about how their experimentalism and desire for the transgression of the boundaries of society ultimately failed due to political reality. But the game didn't address these issues directly enough, perhaps because they got caught up in the lighthearted, kid-friendly atmosphere and wanted to protect players from the seriousness of their own themes. I hope the series will continue and double fine maybe even finds the courage to do a Psychonauts for adults.
Great video. The one thing that popped to mind that I didn't hear when analyzing your feelings, when looking at the first game vs this one, is what your age was when you played it. Movies, music, games, etc that we experience in key formative years are always going to be more mind blowing and have much higher emotional resonance than anything that comes in the next few decades. That isn't to dismiss any criticisms, it is just that it is something those of us who have been through a few more cycles fully recognize the repeating patterns in comments (like many here) that praise something from their teenage years that is the same or possibly notably worse than what they are complaining about a decade or two later.
This was very briefly addressed at 49:12 I was late to Psychonauts at around age 15 or so but it really clicked with me. Absolutely factored that in and always have with what I enjoy, and still finding many new things that surpass what I enjoyed from that time. Have never played the Nostalgia game, too many things I made my whole personality that I can't get behind at all now for that to be true and I made sure to say so.
@@BMask Thanks for the reply! I don't think it is a "nostalgia game" for many folks, or at least not for younger 20-something folks who don't realize what their feelings are grounded in, as that would imply conscious dissection of why they feel the way they do vs. The things I see in comments are often more grounded in emotion that folks haven't analyzed. That section you mention highlights that you have replayed and thought more deeply about the merits of the game than likely almost everyone to comment about the first vs second. Sadly, it doesn't however change the fact that nothing will have the same emotional resonance at your age now going forward. Late 20's and early 30's is when you start to notice most (not all) things will start to feel repetitive and derivative as you see the echos of things you've experienced before. You'll still appreciate craftsmanship and love things but nothing will/can make the same heights of emotional impact as things prior to mid 20's. Again, not intending to discount your take or analysis. Just more a comment (after reading a number of other comments) about how this is topic that is worth going into whenever looking at older vs current games for folks watching to think about when thinking about their own reactions.
@@curtisbme I know you don't mean to be condescending, but I have a feeling these assumptions, like everything I've experienced in life so far, will still be challenged. I'm not quite so ready to assume any absolutes when it comes to my feelings on anything going forward. It certainly hasn't always been the case going back.
I'm sorry to say, I have not played Psychonauts 2. I haven't even played the first after the video you made about it. But damn it if I didn't just need some B-Mask goodness back in my life again. This is my opinion, but it seems like in recent years so many video essays have become so much more cynical. Perhaps not always in their opinions, but certainly in their approach. This is not to demean some fellows for their grind, but more that it is always refreshing to see a truly genuine take. Intermitted with a hand-made analogy and punctuated with an AMV without a single drop of irony. It's clear that your videos always deal with what you love, what you might want to love, what you are willing to learn more about, or all three. Again, not harshing the grind, but your videos have continued to charm me since your Venture Bros bit came up on my feed. Sincerely glad to have you back. In full form no less, complete with a fish people. I eagerly anticipate your next video. In the meantime I guess I will have to finally play Psychonauts, then 2, then watch these videos again.
I just finished it last night and throughly enjoyed it from start to finish. I was a little disappointed that there wasn't a level quite as iconic as The Milkman Conspiracy but the tighter interwoven levels of The Six was a wonderful direction. Taken as a more episodic perspective I'd call this game a great mid or season finale before moving into a new arc.
Great video and well worth the wait! I very much view the first and second game as two different entities where the first was a quirky cult hit and the second is a more emotionally driven game. The "History" chapter of the video was very interesting and loved hearing the treads/insight from it. Keep up the great work!
For me, one of the best parts of the game was the numerous points where they used non-Euclidean spaces. Violating all reason, while inside an innately unreasonable place, was perfect, even if it almost gave me a headache.
I have to disagree with you about your take on the russian history. I understand why it feels weird not to kill the maliks, since they did die in real life, but killing the maliks and having one child secretly survive plays into the myth of anastasia which is a lot more used in propaganda. They had a choice in what story they wanted to emphasise if they wanted gristol as a villain, and choosing to keep the family alive to emphasise the theme of "don't trust the government, you are not immune to propaganda and all institutions have flaws" works a lot better in my opinion. The loud commentary on america, health care, the prison system etc is outside the scope of this excellent video, but it works much better with living maliks than yet another anastasia remaster. Also, give me playable lilli in psychonauts 3, either coop mode or a lilli section with more combat and restricted movement p le a s e
I think you can present the exact same point by acknowledging how it hurts even those who propagated it beyond simply losing their power. What makes it evil is that there are no winners in the end, not that the perpetrator always benefits, which is why I'm not asking for 'another Anastasia remaster'. That too would belie the use of the myth.
The most ambitious sequel about a sequel
I know people joke about how the Psychic Six/Seven needed to see therapists, and they do, but I wonder if they realize that they're also themselves essentially very, very, very eccentric therapists. I wonder how much the obligations that came with that, the need to be the stable party who takes care of other people, someone who gives help rather than receives it, caused them to shun other Psychonauts and therapists until things got so bad that a literal child had to get involved.
Yeah. That aspect of the story gets better the more you read into it.
I love cassie's reaction to you your proposal to look inside of her mind.
She is so glad and positive about it.
It seems popping in and out of eachother's minds was a regular practic for them, she even mentiones , that her last check-up was performed by ford.
They seemed to help eachother be in shape , untill they drove apart.
I don't think mental health therapists exist in the Psychonauts world. As you said, the psychic 6/7 would be the closest thing.
The bit about the NPCs can best be demonstrated by this: Name a camper at Whispering Rock, and a fan of the first game will likely be able to tell you a good bit about them. Name an intern other than Sam, and a fan of the second game might have to ask you which one that is. Some of the minor NPCs you can find wandering the Motherlobe have more interesting character arcs than the interns.
I feel like them all working together for the first adventure made them and their quirks more memorable to me.
Speaking on Psychonauts 2 naturally.
I dunno. I obviously can't speak for everyone, but as a massive fan of the first game who's played it around 10 times or so to completion since it came out, including once right after beating Psychonauts 2 when it first came out, I'm honestly not certain I could tell you much about either the campers or the interns. Like, just off the top of my head as I'm writing this I remember Bobby's name, Lilly...and that's it. From the interns I remember Sam (natch) and...well Lilly. I can't even clearly remember Sam's brother's name, and he got a fair bit of focus in the first game. I also don't really recall any of the campers getting much of an arc (except Lilly). You're also not the only person I've seen have this opinion, so it could very well be me, but I can't help but think nostalgia has a lot to do with it as well.
@@anosmibell6473 I'll freely admit that both nostalgia and simply the fact that the first game has been around for so much longer contribute to that. But I also believe it's generally true regardless.
@@anosmibell6473 Dogen Bobby Kitty Nils Quentin Vernon Pheobe JT Chloe the cowboy one the two cheery ones aaaaaand OH Maloof and Mikhail, Benny, then sailor boy and invisible girl
How'd we do fam
WAIT IT'S CHOPS I remember now
I can see the comment getting likes but I remember them all, and I know for a fact they all have arcs, trust me, it's not just nostalgia, those kids are golden. We see Maloof become a Mafia Don in 5 acts, pure genius.
I kind of wish Psychonauts 2 had included a level revisiting Raz's mind, the way we did in the original game. It's understandable, but given the game's themes and what you've pointed out about the parallels between Raz and Gristol Malik, it seems a waste not to confront it. Alas, that's not the game that exists.
Black Velvetopia's still the best level in the first game, though.
Though funny, it felt very wrong that Gristol's mind is of some lunatic childish narcisist, his plan involved infiltrating a secret agency with people who hear thoughts and feel emotions (like Milla scanning the world). How???? Also, how did the manage to give that phobia to lobotto? Did he hire a second psychic for that???
I mean, other than Gloria, all the minds at the Asylum are pretty iconic and a blast to spend time in.
... Can't say that for any of Psychonauts 2's minds. They just don't feel as fun to be in.
@@OtterloopB Yeah that's understandable. Gloria's mission wasn't all that fun but I really enjoyed her character and story, wish they did more with it tbh
My biggest issue with PsychoNauts 2 (and the interns, specifically) is so small but holds such weight in my mind.
It's that new sign that gets added to "The History of the PsychoNauts" at the end of the game. "The Heroic Interns" or whatever it's called. I'll explain.
It is very clear that sign on display was left blank so that it could be filled in after finishing the game's story. The fact that it is part of a display that details the history of the PsychoNauts gives it importance within the world the game takes place in. The fact that it is clearly meant to be filled in after the story is completed gives it importance to the player. This sign was always meant to depict a symbol that represents the entirety of the player's journey through this game. An image the player can go back to that will call upon the events of this new game.
The sign should've been of the Psychic 6. The Psychic 6, Raz, and Lucy. That's what this game was about. That's what the player will always remember. Those are the characters this game took time to develop and had the player form relationships with.
The interns were flat, static, annoying characters that barely have any importance on the plot, form no real connection to Raz or Lucy, and are just generally unpleasant to interact with throughout the entire game. I get that they could be seen as realistic teenagers, and there is no need for them to apologize for their treatment of Raz.... SO LONG AS they are treated as the background characters they were written as. But instead the game seems to think they are more important than they actually are. It annoys me greatly and I am relieved to find out I am not the only person that thinks this way.
TL;DR The Interns were written as annoying background characters, but were treated as main characters and stole attention away from the characters that were actually developed.
You are very smart to have made an observation like that's not been able to come together in a coherent way for me
My observation would be like "the interns are ugly as fuck" lol, there's psychonauts stylization and there's the interns
I don't know, they're not forcing them in. If anything, the problem is that they don't do enough with the interns. Also, keep in mind that there is a section for the Psychic 6 that gets corrected in the post-game to include Lucy as well, as the Psychic 7.
I actually forgot about this comment.
I agree with you and never claimed the interns were forced into the story. I wish more was done with them to justify their existence at all. Having actual development for the characters would've made them so much more tolerable and might've made them pleasant to interact with. My main issue is that, as written, all the interns (except Sam) and really annoying.
I saw Sam show up at the final boss and thought, "Please let it only be her!" And then the rest of the interns showed up.
The interns, to me, mostly felt like the tutorial brigade. They show up in the beginning as a minor obstacle, you win (most of) them over at the climax of the second level, and then their purpose in their narrative is done, allowing them (sans Norma) to fade into the background. Norma showing up again to betray you is fine, since it's plenty foreshadowed, but after that, their chapter is well and truly closed. They don't need to be any more than that (even if some extra conversations on the hub world would have been nice).
The first act antagonists showing up in the finale feels silly. It has all the gravitas of a hypothetical version of the final battle of Psychonauts 1, where instead of Augustus showing up and cashing in all of his narrative build-up, it would have been Kitty and Franke riding in on a giant friendship bracelet while triumphantly yelling "All right Raz, it's time we pay you back for those arrowheads you gave us on the bridge!"
It's especially egregious since having the Psychic Six show up instead would have allowed them to earn redemption for themselves and move past their old failure, which would have been a really nice capstone on their character development. I honestly thought, with all of them being present in the room prior, that's what was being set up. As it is, it feels a bit like that group was robbed of their narrative climax.
Very good breakdown of exactly why it feels off, couldn't agree more,
Great video about a great game! I'm glad you mentioned the whole Romanov symbolism, I loved the Gristol twist but it also left a weird feeling in the back of my mind due to the whole... innocent royal children being murdered thing. It's a complicated, sad topic that left framing Gristol as potentially irredeemable as a bit off-key. But like you said, within the context of the game world it works well. It obviously wasn't intended as a 1-for-1 comparison anyway.
Thank you! In a way I'm glad I was able to air those thoughts to give myself some closure, knowing others were at least aware why i'd feel so conflicted. Overall it's my favourite level in the game, there's nowhere else I can go to play anything like it.
So a Psychonauts 3 Gristol redemption ark: from narcissism to empathy?
I'm not saying it's wrong to make that connection, but I don't think it's really warranted? Don't get me wrong, the game is clearly drawing parallels, but I don't think it's actually trying to SAY something about the Romanov children? I'm not wording it a well as I want to, and I'm sorry for that.
@@Sperium3000 Oh yeah I don’t think Tim was actually trying to say bad things about the Romanov kids or anything, it’s just a story beat that maybe should have been handled a little bit differently to avoid unintended implications.
I'm not sure that Gristol was framed as irredeemable? More like he refuses to buy into the fact that something needs to change about him. Because that's where all therapy begins, with self-reflection. And I don't think Gristol is incapable of self-reflection, because that would actually make him irredeemable, just that he doesn't want to. Because he's built up his own victimization and narrative about what happened so much that if he lets go of even a tiny bit of it, if he stops that theme park ride from moving, then he has nothing else to grasp onto.
I think a key part that might have been glossed over about Gristol's mental world is that it very heavily implies that Gristol is aware, on some level, that his whole narrative and delusion is self-enforced. Like, the fact that you can alter that small section about his family fleeing and their "suffering" so easily, changing the order of events and so on to solve the puzzle, seems very indicative of that to me anyway.
I do agree that a redemption arc for Gristol, even one that only begins his journey towards better mental health, would be incredibly interesting to see play out.
My biggest grip was that by the end of it all, the interns and raz all became juniors when I feel like Raz is definitely deserving of a higher placement due to saving the world twice already practically by himself and because out of everyone he has the most experience being a psychonaut
Story about relying on each other: Has the main character constantly, comically thrust into saving the entire world on his own while everyone else throws him a shovel to help him dig. Constantly has all the other professional psychonauts fail to do their jobs so that the Gary Stue mc can save the world, again.
Exposition dumps even more pontifications about morality throughout. Reaction: "Wow, this is a masterpiece, but I would prefer if its story had better moral implications in its historical parallels of Tsarist Russia."
I weep
@@novusnescio3234 That is certainly an opinion
Funny that crows on a train in Hat and Time look, talk, and act in similar fashion as milkman's spies. I'm sure it was an intentional homage to Psychonauts!
Jonas Kaerlev - The creator of Hat in Time - has actually brought this up in a multitude of interviews. He's a very outspoken fan of Psychonauts, & he included a number of references to Psychonauts within the game (the CAW Agents being probably the most obvious homage).
B-Mask actually specifically brings this up in his Hat in Time video (it's actually how I first found his channel, & is easily one of my favorite videos from him), but to paraphrase a point he talks about in that video, the CAW Agents essentially miss the point on what made the G-Men so effective, making them fall flat from both a comedic & storytelling perspective.
For me it was pacing of how raz reacted to everything was just steamrolled, the second batch of kids wasn't well integrated to the world, the mind world's were great,the main world need to be some relandscape. I just wished we could had seen more from his family.
Tbh, after the plot twist, I got the vibe he was bottling things up and throwing himself into his work, so to speak. If that was the case, I could see it being a cool future plotline in a psychonauts 3.
You’ve worded everything I’ve been feeling after I first played Psychonauts 2. I enjoyed the game, but the experience felt almost too compact and the ending felt so abrupt. I didn’t think I cared about the Raz and Lilly storyline until Psychonauts 2 when they barely interacted.
I keep comparing the interns to the campers. I loved the way they fleshed out the campers by placing them around the map and having you overhear their conversations between each other. They also did a lot of unique things like Chloe testing a paper airplane, Nils spying through a peephole, Bobby torturing a fish, etc. They defined themselves through their actions. I felt like the interns were always just in the Motherlobe talking and doing very little else. There’s nothing particularly terrible about them, but they’re hard to remember when thinking about Psychonauts as a whole. I kinda feel that way with almost every character introduced in Psychonauts 2, but I only just started my second playthrough.
I’ve grown to like Psychonauts 2 a lot more with my second playthrough. It has a lot to like and the levels do a great job in terms of design. However, Psychonauts 1 will probably always top its sequel imo. Psychonauts 1 was much more experimental to me, certainly not as polished, but I didn’t care as much about that when I experienced all the fascinating ideas and the wonderful details
Edit 2: I also found the ending for the villain strange too. It seemed a little messed up that Milla and Sasha were so comfortable and joking about the idea of doing unethical experiments on a prisoner, and when talking to Nick in his cell, his dialogue shows that he sees the Psychonauts as an unfair and authoritarian agency. The unethical operations of the modern Psychonauts are not explored at all, and I think it’s strange that the franchise approaches the issue from such a one dimensional viewpoint. It makes more sense now that I’ve seen the brief history lesson for the context behind this part of the game, but still rubs me the wrong way.
I was disappointed by the lack of character growth based on world state compared to the first game. I was really hoping we'd get to know the campers a bit more and we'd see them get closer to and grow to respect Raz and the lack of Lilly and Raz specifically and Raz's family felt a little lacking.
A lot like you, Psychonauts is everything I'm in to, from it's macabre edges to its adventure game trappings to its aesthetic, partly because Psychonauts was my introduction to a lot of those things. I played it at launch when I was eight and it was the first thing I ever encountered that made me want to make THINGS. Art, music, stories, anything as long as I could capture that spark Psychonauts made me feel.
I love the game and I feel so vindicated that almost seventeen years of waiting was mostly worth it, but I really wanted more after the credits. I felt a little weird at the end having that feeling, like I was being a little greedy, but even though I love the game I ultimately can't help but want another game that gives me more and pushes things in ways that first game did. I don't think I'll ever get that, but I can't help but want it.
OK but that Drag Me Down AMV at the end is everything I could've ever wanted. EVER.
1:02:25 - fun fact: napoleon’s great nephew, jerome bonaparte moved to the us and started a linage of american bonapartes that as far as i can tell goes onto this day, meaning were going to enter the psychonauts timeline any day now
Honestly kinda seems like psychonauts takes place in the past you don't see any hint of modern technology minus the jet
Its because its fucking amazing. Such a richly designed, vibrant and fun world. I forgot games could have colours.
My god. My GOD, B-Mask. This video was phenomenal. I would have never considered some of the things you did when you discussed the final act.
And I am totally where you are with that last conversation Raz has with his dad. I think it really suggests that some of Raz’s attitudes you mention towards *REDACTED* is something Raz has to let simmer in the back of his mind too.
Really your video just cemented for me how much I loved, and how affected I was by, and how grateful I am for soooo much of what Psychonauts 2 was doing.
I think the biggest surprise for me was how great the story was. I wasn't expecting for it really hit me in the feels in the way it did, especially with the twist and the delivery of the line "I lost her Rasputin". There is just this mix of emotions welling up inside where I was incredibly disgusted with what was done to this family but at the same time understood why it was done in context. It's nice to see Rasputin fully reconciled with his entire family after so many years since the first game since He and Augustus finally got a chance to start understanding eachother near the end. And that score too. Some movie quality tracks for sure.
By the end I really want to see whats next. How can Psy3 go bigger? Where can it go from here? Are water levels and swimming a possibility now for levels?
Dunno, guess we'll have to see after they're done with that new project and I'm confident Brutal Legend 2 will be made before Psy3 (Not that I'd be complaining).
while i don't think he would swim (maybe a world you can swim in to start with this growth?) maybe he can finally use his levitation bubble on the water surface (for a limited time since that thought/worry might be there)
@@Silver_wind_1987_ well maybe swimming could be a post game reward so that way we can have real world obstacle courses (with the water still being a reset for messing up) without having to make everything SUPER big/tall to compensate for that "lost" on every course.
but i do like that from boat to ball to swim idea
I sympathize with loving the first game, but not quite loving this one, and that made this video really cathartic.
I'd been feeling conflicted about this game ever since I finished it, and while asking for even more in certain areas is unreasonable, as you implied, I think the points you brought up in the 'Critical thinking' chapter are nevertheless quite strong, and they helped me figure out why I felt underwhelmed in the end, especially when it comes to the climax. It ain't no asylum and meat circus, that's for sure.
On the other hand, there are many ideas and details you highlighted which I either didn't notice or didn't quite process on my playthrough. I thought I was being slow and diligent, but maybe I was still moving a bit too fast to pick up on all the distinct merit of the game. Possibly also a bit dismissive of some themes that didn't resonate with me.
To summarize, this video helped me lay a lot of my problems with the game to rest, and made me appreciate it more as well.
For that much - thank you, B- Mask!
I think an easy solve for the games issue with the interns is to have them join you in the minds that aren’t ford or Lucrecia , maybe even adding minds like Augustus and Otto. Sam could’ve come to help Compton, Lizzie to Cassie, Lilly to Bob, Norma to Augustus.
54:05 I can’t believe it took me this long to realize that’s why his alias is Nick!
I think the biggest difference for me was how the story and mechanics were structured. In the first game, it felt like a mystery you were solving, like an actual SPY. The second game felt more like a superhero story kinda? Its hard for me to explain, im not a writer, but I think other people will understand what im trying to get at. Like a platformer/point&click game. Psychonauts 2 is more like a Platformer/action game in the way everything is presented. You arent using deduction to solve a puzzle, your mostly just moving forward to the end of the story. You solve PUZZLES but you arent putting the pieces together. Your getting a new ability, then using those as basically a key to get to the next part. Its really hard to explain because they're so close to being the same thing, but not exactly. Like cousins of each other.
Man. You have put into words everything I've felt about this game
B, you really outdid yourself with the "Jigsaw Puzzle vs Rubix Cube" analogy there. Never have I ever heard of an analogy so eloquent, unique, and insightful all in one! Bravo, B, bravo.
My biggest and really only "Minor" complaint was that the new PSI abilities didn't really have a SUPER useful "Exploration" potential. Yeah there's a few. The logs in the Mystery Zone, Slipping into mail slots as paper Raz. But that's ALL they are. They're "keys" to certain locks. And not much else. Combat it pretty much always going to handled the same way.
Holy fucking SHIT B-Mask you knocked it out of the park with this one, my brain is filled and I can appreciate this story in even more ways then I could before, let's hope we do get a Psychonauts 3 lmao cause this world is so large and has so much to it, still, very glad Double Fine's taking a break first. Man though, what a video, really had my jaw agape at points with the conclusions you came to that I didn't
God I love this channel.
Psychonauts 2 felt a bit, flat(?) compared to the energy of the first game, and I just can’t put my finger on why. Visually it’s just as creative, tons of effort went into making the mechanics actually have better feedback and everything, but we’re still missing something.
My personal feeling is that the summer camp vibe of the original is what made it so special. The kids were grounded by their flaws, and the adults were all larger than life heroes to them, despite being messes themselves. It feels like everything that happened in the camp happened internally, from characters you already knew. As an agent, anything could happen, but the experience feels remarkably less personal, despite exploring a lot about Raz’s backstory.
Still, love you for turning these gears over in my head, and for the reminder that it was still a great game even if it was a little disappointing
Thanks so much! I've been surprised how many people felt the same way (or felt I didn't go far enough!) so I'm glad I was able to offer that a voice, while still expressing the ways it deeply affected me for the better. I see exactly where you're coming from on the first game, really interesting getting to read other people's unique takes like this.
@@BMask thanks for the response man, and looking forward to whatever weird shit you want to talk about for an hour next time
I would posit one contributing factor is that they were being more "safe" and consulted "consultants" like anita sarkeesian, meaning they sawed off any rough edges that might've made for a more "uncomfortable" experience in some places when dealing with the subject of mentally broken people like the first game.
"Raz, there's no such thing as magic curses, PLEESE! This is science."
In a world where people lift things, blast things, mind bend, astral project, etc. with their brains, among other crazy phenomena. Honestly it does feel like it would've been better if the curse couldve just been left a curse, especially if they do another game.
Bro, what are you talking about?? The "curse" was never real, even in the first game. It was always a fobia of water because Raz believes their family was cursed to die in water. I always interpreted it as it just being in Raz's head.
Man, you dont know how happy i am to see a new video from you, i really, REALLY like your content
I loved this game, I REALLY loved it. It had some changes, some understandable [certain powers not returning] but also, some changes still weird. It had some issues, I won't deny those [it feels like the Interns aren't as fleshed out as the campers and they sort of vanish from the plot for most of it.]
But I love the sequel, it was pretty much worth the wait and was an amazing experience.
I just gotta say I’ve been through a lot of shit over the years and I don’t mean to be parasocial or anything but your vids have helped me through a lot. I have CPTSD and this one reminded me of some important stuff the other week. Keep being you
Always wonderful to hear I can be of help - and seeing comments like this helps me, too. Thank you.
I feel that P's levels being as diverse and experimental as they are is in itself an integral part of the games's identity so 2's lesser emphasis on that front hurts it plenty, especially seeing as to how the greater leap in technology could've helped push the envelope in terms of just how diverse the levels could've been.
psychonauts 3: raz finally goes to therapy
In my experience it's difficult to hold flaws against a piece of media that shows it was made with love and care. It can be easy to create unfortunate implications when expressing complex ideas in increasing complex ways but I see the empathy and wanting for the audience to understand mental health better. I think most people who played it did and that's most important to me
I'm so happy how good and worthy of a sequel Psychonauts 2 was. I would LOVE an animated series.
This just reminded me that I desperately need to play this game. Thanks!
This was a fantastic video, I have very similar feelings towards this game, I think objectively, it's the better game out of the two. I can easily recommend this one to friends, it's tight, creative and masterful..... but I miss the disjointed wacky charm of the first game and how so much love was put into every inch of it so you can always experience something new on revisits. I get a lot of people struggle with the first one but I hope that people fall in love with the excellent characters and style and storytelling enough in the second one to want to pick up the first one again and be able to look past some of the problems (clunky combat and handling etc) and really appreciate it for what it is.
Your videos are so great!
Thank you so much for covering the themes of the both games and how they explore our minds and reflect our reality.
I am Russian, and the plot has hit home really hard... especially now(
But I am happy to know that world is still filled with beautiful people and great works of art - these games and your essays are definitely those ✨
After 100%ing the game, I felt like the game was missing something. Unlocking no cooldowns was neat, but there was no reason to use it as there was nothing left to discover, let alone most enemy encounters no longer spawn once dealt with. The game lacked hidden zones and easter eggs for the most part. You're correct on things feeling a bit too linear. After that I ended up cheating and using jump cheats to see if I could find anything extra outside the map and could only find a loading box outside the brain hub, and that was it. Which is neat, I guess. a Developer left fun text on it. Learned a bit how they designed their loading zones and where they hid interiors, how they dealt with distant terrain and whatnot.
Because of this linear nature, it just feels like there's no replay-ability to the game. I feel as though it'll be the same experience every time. And I loved the game, but for me, it's just a one show pony. Unless they come out with DLC, of course.
You hit on a lot of what I felt when I was playing this. While I did enjoy it a solid amount, especially as it got further into things, I couldn't help but feel the same points of contention that you illustrated. I also missed the more scrungy look of the first game, where everyone looked off and semi-surreal. In this game, they scaled that back majorly and made the characters much "cuter," with only the occasional quirk or irregularity (sometimes they almost came across more like plush toys than crafted models). I also definitely noticed a change in the vibe and humor, with it losing a lot of the more "meaner" aspects that gave the original game a certain bite (no more "squirrel roast dinner," I suppose). I figured some of this might be a reflection of how things have changed since the 2000s, maybe most folks wouldn't really want that sort of thing in a game like this anymore, I don't know. Anyway, I'm glad you covered this, especially after your great video on the first one, which I very much appreciated. It's good to have you back, though I'm sorry you've had to go through so much recently.
These are my primary issues. 2 just feels so...SANITIZED...compared to 1. Like, I remember so many of the jokes from 1, but most of the jokes in 2 have completely left me. (Considering Tim Schafer has said they consulted lots of people to make the humor more "inclusive", i feel that might have impacted the humor of 2. I'm not against "inclusive" humor, just don't take out the humor of an established series to make it bland.) The overly cute aesthetic bothers me too, since you're going from a dirty, grungy looking world to what looks so clean and, again, sanitized compared to 1. It just...doesn't have the same feel of 1. I just can't rank 2 above it.
Great video. The problem I have with Gristol's mind is that, while it serves its narrative function, I think is the most torturous part of the game to "play" through. The whole mind felt like one large unskippable cutscene that spoonfeeds you the lore in the most boring way possible. The "It's a Small World" aspect gets tiresome really quickly after the first room. Also, while it makes sense for Gristol wanting to bring back Maligula, I wish that there was more to Maligula/Lucy/Nona in terms of her relation to Raz and what that meant to him.
I feel like Psychonauts 2 has a very well-constructed story, but as you said yourself, is more about Ford than it is about Raz. We don't get to explore Raz's mind at any point in this story, which I feel is a largely missed opportunity to connect him more to the narrative emotionally. As far as I was concerned, Raz was just sort of thrown into the Maligula plot without any real stakes. Yes, we learn that Lucy is Raz's "fake grandma," but not much is expanded upon with either that or the explanation of the water "curse" as you also addressed.
In Psychonauts 1, there's freaking tanks with brains in them that are being created by the dude that somehow mixed his brain with your brain. We don't really get that level of connection between protagonist and antagonist or sense of potential destruction in the "real world" of Psychonauts 2, aside from that giant whirlpool at the very end. It was difficult for me to stay invested in the Maligula story after hearing it being retold in countless ways without seeing firsthand the kind of destruction she was doing, as well as how she was connected to Raz aside from her being distantly related. It felt sort of tacked on to me.
In short, I love both games. But I get the feeling I'll be coming back to 1 a lot more because of how the story is constructed as well as how that interacts with the gameplay.
Im so so so disapointed no one in the writers rooms piped up and said "maybe we should do a whole theme park" or something like that with the "History of Grulovia" ride being at the end or even a cutscene.
On one hand, I think it's a bit refreshing to have a villain to defeat in Psychonauts that is irredeemable. It's in line with Raz's disillusionment with the Psychonauts and the ideals he has about "fixing people" like the asylum inmates that get shot down after messing up in Hollis' mind. It's a hard lesson to learn that sometimes certain people cannot be rehabilitated, and deserve punishment. You can't help everyone, especially when they aren't willing to take it. But I think that's only part of the issue. Gristol's affected just as much by the central event of the game as every other mind you enter, it's just that his particular upbringing turns his coping mechanisms to manipulation and a narcissistic personality, whereas the Psychic 6/7 deflect the blame almost entirely on themselves. In a way, they're really not so different, just people dealing with intense trauma in different ways.
I think it's important that a line is drawn between the aggressive and non-aggressive coping mechanisms, but I think it goes a bit too far in making Gristol completely unsalvageable as a person. I don't know exactly how to reconcile that with my feelings about enjoying having an awful villain, but I think approaching him from the point of view as a person with whom you should try to empathize, which is what the point of these games tends to be, writing him off as forever bad is kind of dangerous. It's true, narcissists hurt people and it's not the responsibility of people in their lives to try to "fix" them. Same can be said about plenty other serious disorders. But this portrayal doesn't really show much of how he got to that point, or offer much hope for him in the future. There's this amazing scene in his level, where you more or less relive a traumatic memory of his attempted assassination by a crowd of protestors and get thrust into a huge, dangerous battle that sort of comes close to saying something, but the rest of the level takes great strides to paint his experiences as exaggerated and pathetic instead of pointing out what underlying problems might have led to them. We've actually made progress in treating things like Narcissistic Personality Disorder, which up until the past decade or two were thought to be incurable, to the point where some are able to build healthy relationships and develop empathy. For Psychonauts, which is normally really, really good at showing personal growth in all of its characters, it just seems kind of antithetical? I think maybe the message that should have been communicated was "it is not your responsibility to fix or help this person, but they are not beyond help if they learn to seek it out." It's kind of a hard thing to accept but treating bad people like monsters only keeps them that way, and allows them to keep hurting other people. Jesus I did not mean to turn this into a ramble.
No need to apologise- what you just went through is a great example of my own quandary in trying to word my feelings around the character and the approach taken.
I feel tim was burnt out and couldn't really challenge his own bias at that point, story wise, gristol trying to bring back maligula was a huge red flag, so for the in-world characters to spare their own sanity they took the easy way out and just kept him in his mental prison, there's some nuance there but not enough for it to be the traditional psychonauts experience
So glad to see you making videos again! You're one of the best video essayists on the platform! Psychonauts holds a real special place in my heart, and I'm always glad to hear people more eloquent than I am explain what makes it special, flaws and all
Man its shit like this is why im a patreon. Im not much into background stuff, and i dont really understand discord, but im happy to fund someone putting out really good stuff like this (and getting better at it as you go).
Might have to re-watch a couple of times, because this is so dense I dont think i got it all. But that is an easy thing to do with your videos.
Thanks B-mask
For me, the one thing that made it feel off was the lack of stylization in the over world and background characters. There’s a deformation of sorts in all the original characters but the inters felt too normal and the background characters looked like muppets from Sesame Street.
THEY DO LOOK LIKE SESAME STREET CHARACTERS. Literally, my first time playing the game, I just kinda stared at the character designs and went "Why do they look like sesame street puppets"
This is a TREMENDOUS analysis. Truly truly great job.
One thing at this point I don’t like about the series is Raz simply does not get his respect. Like look at his feats at what he was able to overcome. I mean in the 2nd game alone he fixes all the psychic six (seven technically, which is something literally the six couldn’t do in regards to fixing Lucy) he fixed Ford, something that literally NO OTHER physic was able to do up until that point, and he defeated Maligula (sure not by himself but mostly) the most powerful physic threat known up until this point. This is the same Raz who was said to have weak physic energy at the beginning of the game by the casino scanners. Sure you can say they did that for the gag, but the game consistently does no give him his respect. I believe the agents (Sasha, Milla, and even Coach) know just how powerful he is or rather his potential is, but the game constantly downplays him. He should quite literally be seen as an absolute prodigy who undergoes unique training at this point, not a junior psychonaut or whatever it is they have ALL the interns at the end.
Edit: I’d go as far as to say Raz as an adult would be like a god compared to everyone else
It's great to see you back B-Mask! I hope you're doing well in these scary times-
When I saw my first playthrough of Psychonauts 2, I felt as if it would go on forever but it was much more shorter than I thought. Time crunch is real, and the fact that they didn't crunch at all is a triumph, even though it resulted in Psychonauts 2 having some holes that you shed light on.
I feel like Gristol feels shallow because Otto's been fucking with his mind to make him the big loud fallguy.
I'm imagining an intro mission for the third game could be Sasha putting Raz through the Brain Tumbler in an experiment to try to help him gain more conscious control over the Hand of Galoccio, which would both serve as a recap of the events of Psychonauts 2 and give us a glimpse at some of Raz's own personal issues that the plot could address, and maybe *then* maybe by the end after Raz and his own relationships and personal demons get some attention/development/closure as needed, we could see him using Hydrokinesis in a final boss fight taking place in realspace as opposed to inside someone's mind.
As great as that and any hypothetical would be, it doesn't replace the phantom of its perfect place in 2 for me. I can live with it, but it will always be missed in that moment.
I'm not *disappointed* that there isn't more...
But I *want* more. And that's a good place for a game.
B-Mask, bravo. This has given me enough to think about for... years. Thank you so much. Well done
Its really interesting seeing this perspective after watching the giant documentary they just released
Psychonauts 2 is weird, because while I think I enjoyed it, it sort of feels so different in both tone and story than the first. Something clearly being lost in the transition. It feels softer, almost as if it is aiming for a younger demographic, hell I'd even say it was less funny.
It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination. But it's sort of missing something that makes me go back to 1 over it.
The first game felt like a fun, edgy early 2000s Nick cartoon, while this one felt more like a current-day adventure Disney cartoon (Like Amphibia or something). Not a bad thing, but a little bit of the edgy charm is lost.
I think it was better to leave a lot of that edginess behind since the first game was sometimes insensitive to the mental problems of its charachters. The humor in 2 comes far more from connecting with the characters opposed to at their expense.
"Softer" and for a younger audience couldn't be any more wrong. The first game aimed for kids or teens and the sequel aimed for adults because it's an impossible sequel to a game that literally came out 15 years ago
Yes because Raz grew up during the game
The edginess is gone and they're taking mental issues with more empathy
@@InkRose agreed
But I prefer the second one as it's more than just an improvement of the first game
A mindscape heavy game should have more of a character driven plot with all the characters having a fully realized backstory that might not be added to the game
I'm always very surprised by how pleasant to listen to you are (in addition to making deep, toughtful and interesting content) I'm glad you're back
I really do not like Adam, because he's set up to be one of the coolest interns, only for me to forget he exists during 80% of the game. And I dislike Gisu's design the most, because she looks way too "normal" compared to the others, lacking that distinct, wonderfully ugly, lumpy look that og Psychonauts is known for, like she could be plopped into another game with a similar style and not stand out.
As usual all the other comments have said pretty much everything I could about how amazing this analysis is, so I'll just tack on that I love when you do those little music videos at the end of these kind of things - they're always so good!
Ok but that sequence of scenes put together to a piano rendition of Once Upon a December was beautiful. Great choice!
I agree about the interns. While they're unique and interesting characters to some degree, they really aren't as fleshed out as the campers in the first game, which is a real shame.
I like how this game portrays relationships as helpful, but never as a cure. Love doesn't fix all, but it sure helps.
I haven't seen anyone address Raz's delusions, which I think was a fascinating take! A great rundown, worth the watch!
So, rewatching this after a year. Man I still love this video. So glad we had your take on the whole game, maybe it got to double fine and they will reach you to take some notes on the next entry (?) One can dream.
How perfect, I’m making a Raz cosplay for Anime Detour 2022, so this is the perfect video to keep my drive going. Thank you for your analysis, you did a great job highlighting the fine points and weaknesses of Psychonauts 2. This and the original are two of my all time favorite games, warts and all.
Aw, you'd make one sick Razputin!!
i’m so starved of psychonauts content i’m rewatching videos like this 💔
amazing video dude! It's wonderfully structured and the ending was *so* powerful!
4:20 I just noticed Sasha has his hand out, but no cigarette in it. Probably because he's like the only smoking character in a PG-7 game ever, they removed it from the trailer.
Psychonauts 2 is rated T
@@melodymcdaniel9268 It's PEGI 7 dude
@@harryshuman9637 We're both right, just talking about different systems I guess lol. I initially assumed you were talking about the ESRB rating
Happy to have ya back B. Been a long fan of your stuff since I discovered your Sly Cooper Retrospective, and out of curiosity watched all your other stuff. Glad you're doing better and can't wait to see a Jak & Daxter video in the future, whenever that happens.
Thank you so much- and don't worry, I do have plans to get a Jak video together sooner rather than later.
If you'd like to see an interview of the guy at 10:48 who created that book, I say look up "Artefacts - The Man who created the Stinky Cheese man." It's a very wholesome interview.
While I certainly agree that it was one of the things hit on a little weakly, I will say that the Golochio Curse is something I half-way suspected the nature of just from Psychonauts 1. The way that the hand was almost helpful until you bounced that third time is...too suspicious.
Maybe it'll be fodder for Psychonauts 3. Maybe give a 4-6 year time skip (Raz and Lili being 15 or 16 would make their kiddie crushing either have time to mellow out and become "just friends" or actually develop into something more of a teenaged romance), and one of the things the other new recruits still raz Raz about is that he hasn't gotten over his psychosomatic fear of water. Maybe he's gotten a couple of ways to work with it, but he's still not controlling it. And this is where he starts confronting these things in himself.
Maybe only a 1-year or 2-year time skip works better for that. Enough time to settle in, but still be rough and raw around the edges.
As someone who just beat both games I've decided to rewatch your psychonauts videos now that I have far more context and can fully understand the arguments you present.
It's not the first time watching this video, in fact this is what originally got me interested in psychonauts all the way back in 2021, but I couldn't get to experiencing both games until now. So even if it's three years later I gotta say you did a fantastic job both in analizing the game and showing your love for it, which again, is what led me to eventually playing the games myself!
More information on the game's development came out after its release, and I need to fact check this, but I read the whole third act was reworked, originally it taking place in Grulovia, as you suggested, with Malik stealing a battle mech Oleander had built with water powers to find Maligula, which Ford in this version hid somewhere in her home country, and Raz needing to enter Augustus' mind to defeat the psychic curse implanted on the family, so he'd be able to fight the aquatic robot without the curse to die in water making it impossible. Given how much that idea goes against the current third act, I think it's fair to assume Lucrecia in this version of the plot would be unrelated to Nona, and would play the whole backstory of the Galochio family cursing the Aquatos straight instead of revealing the Galochio family is the original Aquatos family and the curse being only something in Raz's head.
While I do think there are some interesting ideas there, I feel like it would remove a lot of the personal stakes the plot had build up, having Raz confront the curse not as Maligula herself, but as Malik trying to revive her, would feel a bit detached, I could be entirely wrong about this original pitch, I'll admit, for all I know Maligula would've still been the final boss and the only difference would be that we'd get a level based on Augustus' mind and a Malik boss fight before the climax played mostly the same (except for the emotional weight of Maligula being Nona, which would be a loss on my book, especially since by then they wouldnt even be able to rely on Raz beating the curse for the climax of the final battle, as he'd have done that already). With that in mind, if I had to pick one of the two ideas, I'm glad we got this one instead, the first one feels too straightforward and basic for the kind of game Psychonauts 2 is.
I agree with the point you and almost everyone in the comments made however, the psychic six should've been there instead of the interns. It feels as if they were trying to setup a plot about the third generation of Psychonauts fixing the mistakes the first did and the second weren't even aware of, but fumbled it by not involving the interns at any point in the main plot. As you said, it does feel like they created too many characters and didn't seem to know how to fully utilize them all, which is a shame, the idea of Raz and a ragtag team of young Psychonauts in training unveiling a conspiracy the adults fail to solve and helping solve the one thing the original psychonauts couldn't solve feels like a natural evolution of the plot of the original game. Raz no longer being the odd one out, having allies which maybe don't agree with him at first, but slowly decide to work on their shared goal, and finally fixing the biggest failure in psychonauts history, while stopping a conspiracy to end the group from the inside feels perfect for a scaled up sequel. However as you said, focus on what we got instead of what we wish we could have.
And honestly what we got was great, as much as I talked about stuff that bothered me and what I would preferred instead, I feel like the other 95% of the game is so well crafted that when I'm there playing the game, I don't even realize nor think about this stuff, it's only now that I'm done that my mind wanders into what could've been better and what wasn't meant to be.I prefer this over the first game, mostly because of the narrative itself feeling better paced and the gameplay feeling fully realized this time, but I won't deny the original's charm, in my eyes, this is a better game, but Psychonauts 1 is a game I don't think could be made today, it's a relic from almost two decades ago, and I see no reason to not celebrate it as such.
(Also I think they had a similar idea to you with Raz using the hands of Galochio against Maligula, just couldn't implement it properly, as in the cutscene right before the final fight, when the Aquatos launch Raz, the hands that form in the watery tornado don't try to stop him, instead they break his fall and launch him directly at Nona right at the angle he needed to throw the door and project into her mind, implying he was in full control of them at that point.)
I'm well aware now of the dev's original intentions, but it's not that they were trying to defeat the real curse or that Lucrecia wasn't Maligula- it was still a delusion, just one deep in his fathers mind, with Nona still secretly Lucrecia, and I have to be honest, reading the plans in the art book made me go oh, of course, that feels like the most complete version of this story. I have a very short follow up on the cards to discuss exactly this, in fact.
I do appreciate what you're saying about the sequel and as you can tell I mostly feel the same, but I'm unconvinced it is better paced than the first or that the first feels like a relic. I'm always struck by how tight Psy 1 feels, how incredibly lean and well presented the narrative is with everything feeling necessary- there's no sudden jarring points in the structure or narrative like the stealth bit in the casino or the rushed use of the wider cast precisely because it's so much more measured, and able to get its story out in a not only more efficient but also equally complex manner with soooo much inferred. I think, if we look at it as a relic, we don't learn what's still useful, how following that game's pointers is still to our benefit, and I think it might just be my personal mission, after so many games actively fighting against their original instincts and everyone so quick to reject everything about the past, to maintain the effect of the originals quality with audiences.
@@BMask Oooh, yeah that extra plotline makes more sense as an addition then, from the way I read it (which was second hand information instead directly from the art book, so my mistake there) it sounded like they completely reworked the third act, hence why I assumed it changed the plot twist in said act, since I didn't see how it'd fit the current climax. Looking forward to that followup! Glad I got into the series just in time for it!
And I made a mistake in using the word ''relic'' here (this is what I get for trying to write down my thoughts at 4 am), I didn't mean it to infer the first game is old and obsolete, on the contrary! My point was that the original is an incredible work of art that's still impressive to this day, something I dont think could be made today, at least not without losing some of its identity, hence why I said it should be celebrated as such. I should've said ''gem'' instead of relic, my bad there.
As for the pacing, I feel like my biggest issue with the first game is just that while the game never loses track of it's themes of exploring the human mind, I felt like the Asylum, while artistically and creatively the strongest part of the game, it's also a point where the narrative takes a bit of a backseat until you beat the four stages, and then it's already endgame. That's why I think the plot in 2 is better paced, don't get me wrong, as I said before, I think it has its own share of problems in place of that, but when seeing the story structure from a distance, I do feel like 2 is a bit more focused with its narrative (which in itself can be seen as a problem given so many characters in the cast end up taking a backseat once said narrative kicks into gear).
@@ratcicleking I think what you have to ask yourself is, do you want a video game, or a movie? In a movie it would make sense to cut out the asylum- but in a game, narratively, it makes a lot more sense to explore Raz as a character through these less connected situations that better inform his character, and put him on the path towards the deeply complex issue of wanting to save his father and Oleander. It does a lot of things through that a lot less clumsily than the sequel- I still think it's baffling how, over 15 years ago, they figured out how to use that to better pace out their finale, in a way the sequel just never quite rises to.
I do love Psy 2 quite a bit, and I'm glad I feel conflicted on it, I think that's intentional- I just find it difficult to let go of what definitely feels like a dropped ball on the story structure, and if nobody else is going to hold onto that, then I think I need to make sure someone who Double Fine has some eyes on is doing so, to avoid full complacency. I love what they have here and I'd like to think, should they ever get to a sequel, they'll nail it even harder.
My Thoughts on Psychonauts 1: A great Plattformer with decent Overworlds, great Mind-Levels (especially the Milkman Conspiracy), Side-Quests, Comedy, good Soundtracks, mixed Boss-Fights, unique PSI-Powers (for the most Part) bad Combat with the most rushed Climax i´ve ever seen.
My Thoughts on Psychonauts 2: A 9.?/10 Sequel with better Overworlds, better Mind-Levels, darker Tone, better Boss-Fights, returning & new PSI-Powers, better Side-Quests and one of the best Storys in Video Game History.
Grulovia the Musical has some Happy Happy Joy Joy vibes.
Finally finished the game. Playing 2 I never felt as frustrated compared to 1 but also never as satisfied until the end until I started to reflect.
The first game sparks all the right places of the artist within me, I love it unconditionally even if I have to admit it has much difficulty articulating the wealth of creative ideas into fun gameplay that were due to the inexperience and lack of time and resources at the time.
2 feels like a very mature compromise that streamlines everything whilst miraculously never feeling like it’s selling out. There’s a genuineness to the changes that reflected what a more direct way to tell the story and keeping its core identity in tact. I will miss the minds with their own internal logic and rules, but I don’t know if I want to live in a world where i don’t engage with art any longer because it never meets my expectations. I hope there is a 3 some day, but if this does end up being the last one, then I’ll take it as a great companion piece.
I will say I don't feel, as I tried to express here, that I found aspects disengaged me because it doesn't meet expectations- I agree that it's a compromise, and one that doesn't feel any lesser for the choices it makes, the game is very much a masterpiece of its own- but I see how it feels incomplete within its own airtight shape in a way I don't think is true of the original, and that's very much taking it on the terms of what was in front of me. Having now read the behind the scenes book on the game, the things I instinctively felt were missing were, apparently, very much planned, whereas the cut concepts from the original are things I didn't feel the absence of as I played.
@@BMask I agree with everything you said. I was mostly trying to articulate my feelings that identified with your "it's not you it's me" comments that may have come off as more disagreeable than I intended, story of my life. Anyways! I'll check out that book as my curiosity won't be satisfied until I know everything there is to know about every creative choice that was made.
Great work as always!
@@PrimatePunk Not a problem! Was more probing honestly, always hard to read intent on my part so I apologise if I gave a bad impression, but totally see what you mean.
I also highly recommend the book- I actually would like to talk more about it on the channel as I think it's a masterpiece as well, maybe the best video game art book i've read in years.
I could never put my feelings about this game quit into words, I... Couldn't help but feel... dissapointed it was an unshakable feeling and I thought maiby there is something wrong with me, but the magic from the first game just wasn't quit there, the witty dialog was limited the interns were sidelined unlike the Campers in the first game Raz wasn't... Idk just not really himself
The levels were creative, the combat was more fun, the story was way more engaging then the first one like it was quite brilliant actually it was emotional it was quit Frankly deserving to be game of the year 2021 I even loved it in some way
I think my dissapointment is far more personal and can be traced back to what engaged me about the first game in the first place
Idk it's just good to know I'm not alone with these confusing feelings about a series I love so dearly
But yeah i cant hate it like you said i love it, does any of this make Sense?
Most of the he issues you described are my problems with enter the florpus
@@alchemistofsteel8099 ETF at least resembled the original show's humor more than PN2's did for 1. I can't tell you more than 2 funny jokes in 2, but I could tell you multiple in 1.
27:36 I am the milkman. My milk is delicious
I came in here with my pitchfork raised, only to grow confused at all the praise you gave to the game. But when you got to the points that didn't quite hit the mark for you, it... kinda made sense?
I get where you're saying, and some details I didn't even consider!
Overall a really great video about a game series I adore. Thank you for sharing your thoughts about it!
51:39 I mean in the memoreis we see the Gzar did seem to only want them rained, on, neither Lucretia nor the Gzar seemed to anticipate days and days of protest-disrupting rain causing the dam to burst. He's still a thug though.
Tysm for saying what I've been trying to articulate!! It's a FANTASTIC game! But the Aquatos and interns were sadly underutilized, and the ending felt oddly unsatisfying, even if the game itself is still amazing! All extremely well put!
That little music video at the end is so cool!
The one thing I really liked about this game is a certain plot twist that apparently happened 20 years ago. The fact that upon finding this out, Raz questioning how this has been kept a secret for so long really makes it feel like the fans talking to Tim. How something like this has been foreshadowed in the first game as if it was his plan along. To Tim, everything happened in a day, while we had to wait 20 years to see the payoff.
That twist is giving Revenge of The Sith
Babe, wake up:
New B-Mask just dropped!
I still can't believe the preg raz opening easter egg is real
Shouldve been pregnant lucy
This game compels you to improve your life aswell, so just for that its a must have
I haven't played this one.. yet, but that didn't keep me from crying for joy at the vicarious witnessing of it. Yes indeed, there is "Psychonauts", and there is EVERYTHING else. 👊
Agree with most of the points, only thing I wish they had was maybe one level of someone’s mind that wasn’t so serious
The Sensorium was my favorite level. Even though it introduced my least favorite enemy, the Panic Attack. Quick bastard...
Rubix cube merch when?
Psychonauts 2 should have had the subtitle of :Water pits and midlevel cutscenes. Still 100%'d it.
The fact it wasn't a thinly veiled nitpick video sent me for a spin. The comment made it seem like it, the title did too. Yet at the end of the day it turns out I actually have more issues with the game than you do - and yet I felt defensive about it at the outset. Fascianting.
Psychonauts is my favorite game I've literally been waiting more than half my life for a sequel that I never thought would come. I'm so excited to play it. That being said I'll be watching this video another day
I hope psychonauts 3 deals with bpd, there's a game called No Straight Roads, which has a doublefine feel in which you fight a boss, a woman named Nadia (EVE) who has intense abandonment issues/bpd and her theme is sick as fuck. IT feels the devs understood the intensity
Technically BPD was a theme for Gloria's mind, hence the mood-swithing lamp, but it always felt too ham-fisted of a metaphor for this particular disorder; EVE's level is way better in that regard due to the eloquence of it.
NSR is a great game, definitely has a lot of PN vibes.
the brief mention of the stinky cheese man just unlocked a vault of memories
The first half was perfect. The second half was rushed.
HURRY UP WITH THAT CLOWN MAKEUP
I think Psychonauts 2 turned out too polished and kinda vanilla - for example trying to be trippy, but choosing too harmless and stereotypical representations of that. Psychedelia should be more confusing or even shocking, but they only showed the happy flower power part of it.
Characters are a bit too bland and one-dimensional. You go inside their heads and flip a switch to turn them good agian. Lucretia is a little confused after the big fight, but is she really mourning the atrocities she has committed?
In general I think the writing from Tim Schafer was very good here:
A story about the traumata and fate of the flower power generation, about how their experimentalism and desire for the transgression of the boundaries of society ultimately failed due to political reality. But the game didn't address these issues directly enough, perhaps because they got caught up in the lighthearted, kid-friendly atmosphere and wanted to protect players from the seriousness of their own themes.
I hope the series will continue and double fine maybe even finds the courage to do a Psychonauts for adults.
Great video. The one thing that popped to mind that I didn't hear when analyzing your feelings, when looking at the first game vs this one, is what your age was when you played it. Movies, music, games, etc that we experience in key formative years are always going to be more mind blowing and have much higher emotional resonance than anything that comes in the next few decades.
That isn't to dismiss any criticisms, it is just that it is something those of us who have been through a few more cycles fully recognize the repeating patterns in comments (like many here) that praise something from their teenage years that is the same or possibly notably worse than what they are complaining about a decade or two later.
This was very briefly addressed at 49:12
I was late to Psychonauts at around age 15 or so but it really clicked with me. Absolutely factored that in and always have with what I enjoy, and still finding many new things that surpass what I enjoyed from that time. Have never played the Nostalgia game, too many things I made my whole personality that I can't get behind at all now for that to be true and I made sure to say so.
@@BMask Thanks for the reply! I don't think it is a "nostalgia game" for many folks, or at least not for younger 20-something folks who don't realize what their feelings are grounded in, as that would imply conscious dissection of why they feel the way they do vs. The things I see in comments are often more grounded in emotion that folks haven't analyzed.
That section you mention highlights that you have replayed and thought more deeply about the merits of the game than likely almost everyone to comment about the first vs second. Sadly, it doesn't however change the fact that nothing will have the same emotional resonance at your age now going forward. Late 20's and early 30's is when you start to notice most (not all) things will start to feel repetitive and derivative as you see the echos of things you've experienced before. You'll still appreciate craftsmanship and love things but nothing will/can make the same heights of emotional impact as things prior to mid 20's.
Again, not intending to discount your take or analysis. Just more a comment (after reading a number of other comments) about how this is topic that is worth going into whenever looking at older vs current games for folks watching to think about when thinking about their own reactions.
@@curtisbme I know you don't mean to be condescending, but I have a feeling these assumptions, like everything I've experienced in life so far, will still be challenged. I'm not quite so ready to assume any absolutes when it comes to my feelings on anything going forward. It certainly hasn't always been the case going back.
I'm sorry to say, I have not played Psychonauts 2. I haven't even played the first after the video you made about it. But damn it if I didn't just need some B-Mask goodness back in my life again. This is my opinion, but it seems like in recent years so many video essays have become so much more cynical. Perhaps not always in their opinions, but certainly in their approach. This is not to demean some fellows for their grind, but more that it is always refreshing to see a truly genuine take. Intermitted with a hand-made analogy and punctuated with an AMV without a single drop of irony. It's clear that your videos always deal with what you love, what you might want to love, what you are willing to learn more about, or all three. Again, not harshing the grind, but your videos have continued to charm me since your Venture Bros bit came up on my feed. Sincerely glad to have you back. In full form no less, complete with a fish people. I eagerly anticipate your next video. In the meantime I guess I will have to finally play Psychonauts, then 2, then watch these videos again.
I just finished it last night and throughly enjoyed it from start to finish. I was a little disappointed that there wasn't a level quite as iconic as The Milkman Conspiracy but the tighter interwoven levels of The Six was a wonderful direction.
Taken as a more episodic perspective I'd call this game a great mid or season finale before moving into a new arc.
Great video and well worth the wait! I very much view the first and second game as two different entities where the first was a quirky cult hit and the second is a more emotionally driven game. The "History" chapter of the video was very interesting and loved hearing the treads/insight from it. Keep up the great work!
Why is J Dilla in the special thanks section of the credits? Someone on the team had a bomb taste in music
For me, one of the best parts of the game was the numerous points where they used non-Euclidean spaces. Violating all reason, while inside an innately unreasonable place, was perfect, even if it almost gave me a headache.
What a time to put the last part out.
I have to disagree with you about your take on the russian history. I understand why it feels weird not to kill the maliks, since they did die in real life, but killing the maliks and having one child secretly survive plays into the myth of anastasia which is a lot more used in propaganda. They had a choice in what story they wanted to emphasise if they wanted gristol as a villain, and choosing to keep the family alive to emphasise the theme of "don't trust the government, you are not immune to propaganda and all institutions have flaws" works a lot better in my opinion. The loud commentary on america, health care, the prison system etc is outside the scope of this excellent video, but it works much better with living maliks than yet another anastasia remaster.
Also, give me playable lilli in psychonauts 3, either coop mode or a lilli section with more combat and restricted movement p le a s e
I think you can present the exact same point by acknowledging how it hurts even those who propagated it beyond simply losing their power. What makes it evil is that there are no winners in the end, not that the perpetrator always benefits, which is why I'm not asking for 'another Anastasia remaster'. That too would belie the use of the myth.