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Psychonauts 2 was deliberately designed to be the opposite of an action game or a shooter, in that the protagonist Raz must leave each level in a better state than when he entered it.
Speaking at Develop: Brighton 2024, Double Fine’s marketing and communications director James Spafford recalled how Tim Schafer, the studio’s co-founder and director of Psychonauts 2, talked to him about his approach to spirits in the sequel. Schafer said that Psychonauts 2’s levels should be “the exact opposite” of what happens in a shooter.
“When you play an FPS or an action game, guns are flying, bullets are flying, there are explosions everywhere, and when the game is over, the whole level has been decimated, there’s just rubble and dust, everything has been destroyed,” Schafer said, according to Spafford. Psychonauts 2 is the opposite of that, in the sense that “Raz should always leave the minds in a better state and in a better state than when he went in,” Schafer said.
“You help other people get rid of their emotional baggage, get rid of their unwanted thoughts. You heal people, and the game is there to heal them, but Raz doesn’t fix people,” Spafford continued, referring to protagonist Raz’s overarching mission whenever he enters the minds of other characters in Psychonauts 2.
Spafford also touched on the original Psychonauts, which featured characters with mental health issues locked away in asylum-like areas. The Double Fine executive said this was an aspect of the original game that could have been handled better, and ultimately led the Psychonauts studio to better address mental health issues when creating Psychonauts 2.
“Cultural awareness of mental health issues had grown significantly since the last game, and we knew we would eventually explore these relationships again, but at least this time we could approach the project with these things in mind in advance. It was important to take a more thoughtful approach. The goal is to keep things light without making light of very real issues,” Spafford said.
The developer added that Double Fine would “take stock” and see what they learned while creating Psychonauts, and apply it to the sequel. “In Psychonauts 1, we established that everyone was redeemable, they could just deal with problems. Having mental health issues doesn’t make you a bad person, and so we were very careful not to fall into that trap in Psychonauts 2,” Spafford continued.
Spafford also discussed working with Take This and the benefits of having testers from a mental health foundation play Psychonauts 2 before its release. These testers are responsible for the in-game warning screen that players are presented with upon starting the game, indicating that the game would address topics such as “addiction, post-traumatic stress disorder, panic attacks, anxiety and delusions.”
The Double Fine executive also talked about how Special Effect players then provided feedback and improved Psychonauts 2’s warning screen, even after launch. A line about how the Double Fine sequel could be dangerous for people with dental phobia was later added, for example, which ultimately led to a stronger and better message for those jumping into the game.
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