Psychonauts 2 Director Took A Extra “Considerate Strategy” To Sequel’s Psychological Well being Points

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 wished to study from the method of the sport’s predecessor to match as we speak’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 Nice 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 Workforce Progressed With The Cultural Shift Towards Psychological Well being In Thoughts

Throughout Develop: Brighton 2024 (Thanks GamesRadar), Double Nice 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, referring to the sport’s skill to design ranges in a “exact opposite” solution to shooters and different motion video games.

Spafford recollected Schafer’s sentiment that “Raz ought to all the time go away 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. “If you’re taking part in 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 dirt, the whole lot’s been destroyed,” Spafford recalled Schafer stating.

Talking on Raz’s plight within the recreation, Spafford stated “You are serving to clear different folks’s emotional baggage, eliminating undesirable ideas. You are therapeutic folks, and the sport is about therapeutic, however Raz is not fixing folks.” The communications director thought the unique Psychonauts recreation may have been extra delicate towards psychological well being, notably referring to the characters saved behind asylum tape, and this reflection drastically 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 a minimum of this time we may go into the undertaking fascinated about these items forward of time,” Spafford stated. The event workforce believed “it was essential to take a extra considerate method” to psychological well being with “the purpose to maintain issues lighthearted with out making gentle of very actual points”.

Double Nice would go on to “take inventory” and study 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 nasty individual, and so we had been very cautious to not fall into that entice in Psychonauts 2.”

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