Psychonauts 2 Director Took A More “Thoughtful Approach” To Sequel’s Mental Health Issues

The platform recreation Psychonauts 2 was designed to be a paradox in some respects, erupting as an motion recreation however carrying a gentler theme of therapeutic at its core as protagonist Raz battles by means of the hostel creatures manifested by the characters the acrobat encounters. Addressing psychological well being points, the platformer’s sequel needed to be taught from the method of the sport’s predecessor to match immediately’s cultural consciousness of the matter.

As with every videogame, the event behind the sequel was thorough, a lot in order that it warranted the 32-episode documentary collection, PsychOdyssey, launched by Double Fantastic and in partnership with 2 Participant Productions to doc all the journey. Lately, the title’s communications director supplied extra perception into the thought course of.

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Psychonauts 2 Workforce Progressed With The Cultural Shift Towards Psychological Well being In Thoughts

Throughout Develop: Brighton 2024 (Thanks GamesRadar), Double Fantastic advertising and communications director, James Spafford, spoke about studio co-founder and Psychonauts 2 director Tim Schafer’s method to psychological well being points within the sequel, pertaining to the sport’s capacity to design ranges in a “exact opposite” technique to shooters and different motion video games.

Spafford recollected Schafer’s sentiment that “Raz ought to all the time depart minds in a greater form and a greater situation than when he entered them,” which is the precise reverse of what an motion recreation does. “Whenever you’re enjoying an FPS or an motion recreation, weapons are blazing, bullets are flying, there are explosions in every single place, and by the point the spherical is over the entire stage has been decimated, there’s rubble and mud, the whole lot’s been destroyed,” Spafford recalled Schafer stating.

Talking on Raz’s plight within the recreation, Spafford mentioned “You are serving to clear different individuals’s emotional baggage, eliminating undesirable ideas. You are therapeutic individuals, and the sport is about therapeutic, however Raz is not fixing individuals.” The communications director thought the unique Psychonauts recreation may have been extra delicate towards psychological well being, notably referring to the characters stored behind asylum tape, and this reflection significantly influenced the sequel’s method to the topic.

“Cultural consciousness of psychological well being points had progressed considerably for the reason that final recreation, and we knew that we might find yourself exploring these relations once more, however at the very least this time we may go into the venture fascinated about these things forward of time,” Spafford mentioned. The event workforce believed “it was necessary to take a extra considerate method” to psychological well being with “the intention to maintain issues lighthearted with out making gentle of very actual points”.

Double Fantastic would go on to “take inventory” and be taught from the primary Psychonauts recreation to enhance these delicate areas within the sequel. “In Psychonauts 1 we might established that everybody was redeemable, they simply is perhaps coping with issues.” Spafford continued, “Having psychological well being points does not make you a nasty individual, and so we had been very cautious to not fall into that entice in Psychonauts 2.”

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