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 via the hostel creatures manifested by the characters the acrobat encounters. Addressing psychological well being points, the platformer’s sequel wished to be taught from the strategy of the sport’s predecessor to match at present’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 Positive and in partnership with 2 Participant Productions to doc all the journey. Just lately, the title’s communications director offered extra perception into the thought course of.
Psychonauts 2 Group Progressed With The Cultural Shift Towards Psychological Well being In Thoughts
Throughout Develop: Brighton 2024 (Thanks GamesRadar), Double Positive advertising and marketing and communications director, James Spafford, spoke about studio co-founder and Psychonauts 2 director Tim Schafer’s strategy to psychological well being points within the sequel, referring to the sport’s potential to design ranges in a “exact opposite” method to shooters and different motion video games.
Spafford recollected Schafer’s sentiment that “Raz ought to at all times 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 all places, and by the point the spherical is over the entire degree has been decimated, there’s rubble and mud, every part’s been destroyed,” Spafford recalled Schafer stating.
Talking on Raz’s plight within the recreation, Spafford stated “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 might have been extra delicate towards psychological well being, significantly referring to the characters saved behind asylum tape, and this reflection tremendously influenced the sequel’s strategy to the topic.
“Cultural consciousness of psychological well being points had progressed considerably for the reason that final recreation, and we knew that we would find yourself exploring these relations once more, however at the very least this time we might go into the challenge occupied with these items forward of time,” Spafford stated. The event group believed “it was vital to take a extra considerate strategy” to psychological well being with “the goal to maintain issues lighthearted with out making mild of very actual points”.
Double Positive 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 only could be coping with issues.” Spafford continued, “Having psychological well being points would not make you a foul particular person, and so we have been very cautious to not fall into that entice in Psychonauts 2.”
