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Mraagvpeine posted:I get the feeling that when we do enter more minds further on in the game, Raz is definitely going to pull another Edgar and almost kill someone, again. I'm certain Hollis's Mental World is Raz pulling another Edgar because we have Hollis herself underestimating both Raz's abilities, understandable since they just met, as well as the fragility of her own mind, which is far more careless given not only what we saw in the first game but her own history, while Raz underestimated the potential butterfly effect of his actions. As jackass-ish as she is, Norma was completely right to question the safety of leaving stray Ideas where they could be hosed with. And of course there's Sam, a character who knows from experience just how dangerous a Psychic can be on accident even without the looming threat of Maligula. Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 21:16 on Feb 23, 2022 |
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Feb 22, 2022 23:01
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I was listening to the numerous mental connections at the end and in "Germs <--> Disgust" Hollis mentions hand sanitizer. When do these games take place again?
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Feb 22, 2022 23:47
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Mraagvpeine posted:I was listening to the numerous mental connections at the end and in "Germs <--> Disgust" Hollis mentions hand sanitizer. When do these games take place again? A vague-ish 70s-ish time period I'd guess, but there's a couple anachronisms that sort of throw that into question. And also all the campers in 1 had Myspace pages! The real answer is: does it matter? It's in the timeless northwest where hokey tourist tat and campgrounds never change after decades. The 70s to 80s is probably the most generally accurate, since it's 20 years after Maligula's defeat and that was generally in the 50s-60s based on the few flashes of how things looked we get to see.
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Feb 23, 2022 03:25
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In the first game, what Razputin did in Boyd's mind was the most irresponsible thing he did in the whole game. He went into Boyd’s mind because he wanted something from Boyd rather than because he wanted to help him, he made changes to accomplish his goal without thinking of how they would affect the man, and it was only through sheer luck that nobody was hurt. Actually, scratch that, it was only because Boyd was strong enough to fight against the trigger Raz accidentally activated until his friends had left the asylum. Raz could have taken a lesson from that about the importance of only making changes in people's minds to help them rather than to help yourself, but he didn't. Therefore, he repeated that mistake in Hollis' mind, and once again people are in danger, but this time he has to try to fix what he broke. All this to say: Raz is such a good protagonist. He's kind and brave and would never intentionally hurt someone, but he's also arrogant and thinks he knows better than everyone, and now for the second time he has accidentally hurt someone by being careless. Hopefully this time he learns his lesson. EDIT: I mixed up Edgar and Boyd’s names. Ariong fucked around with this message at 21:36 on Feb 23, 2022 |
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Feb 23, 2022 07:32
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quote:Edgar do you guys mean Boyd
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Feb 23, 2022 07:51
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yeah i think that's boyd, edgar was the bull painter
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Feb 23, 2022 08:11
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I'd say it's easier to say "Raz influenced The Milkman to do something more destructive outside his mental holding pattern".
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Feb 23, 2022 09:18
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Have you people really had me thinking I missed something huge in the first game because an artist's failed high school romance gave him an anger complex and I didn't understand why that was a life-or-death matter?
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Feb 23, 2022 11:50
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God dammit guys I thought this was a Rhombus of Ruin thing that hadn't been recapped.
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Feb 23, 2022 19:08
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Those Bad Idea enemies look like evil Memory Vaults.
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Feb 23, 2022 20:29
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Kinu Nishimura posted:yeah i think that's boyd, edgar was the bull painter No, Boyd was Raz not realizing that the Milkman he and Boyd were looking for was created by Oleander as an insurance policy and setting off the tripwire the Coach placed for when he was ready to burn the asylum down. Edgar was Raz thinking he could reunite Edgar with the Dancer to get a painting and accidentally putting Edgar’s life in danger because the Matador saw Edgar as a bull to be slain. Now Ariong was describing Boyd as the Milkman, not Edgar but both technically qualify as Raz making a near fatal mistake. Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 21:27 on Feb 23, 2022 |
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Feb 23, 2022 21:23
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Hwurmp posted:do you guys mean Boyd Oh yeah, I mixed up their names. I’ll go back and fix that. Chimera-gui posted:l It’s true that Razputin did make a mistake in Edgar’s mind, but the difference is that unlike with Boyd, he was actually trying to help Edgar (albeit not for totally altrustic reasons) and when he discovered that was he was doing was actually making Edgar’s condition worse, he immediately changed course and made things better. Ariong fucked around with this message at 21:34 on Feb 23, 2022 |
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Feb 23, 2022 21:30
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To be fair to Raz though, Boyd’s own mind was itself looking for the Milkman, as symbolized by the G-Men and Boyd himself, and the Mental World’s structure meant the only way Raz could have stopped the domino effect of Oleander’s tripwire was by destroying the Milkman himself which the game does not allow. Raz had no reason to believe that the Milkman was anyone but the guy who could unlock the asylum let alone an arsonist. In Edgar meanwhile, we have the Dalmatian all but telling Raz that Lampita was the cheerleader who dumped Edgar meaning that bringing Edgar, Lampita and Dingo together was probably not going to go well for Edgar. And by the time we got to Black Velvetopia, Raz should have already known to be more careful because of the Milkman Conspiracy.
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Feb 23, 2022 22:25
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i think the point is that psychonauts 1 had a recurring element that psychonauts 2 puts to more thorough use and personally i think that is very cool of it
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Feb 23, 2022 22:41
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Chimera-gui posted:Raz had no reason to believe that the Milkman was anyone but the guy who could unlock the asylum let alone an arsonist. Which he got by taking the word of a conspiracy theorist who was also an arsonist. Raz spent most of the first game going along with whatever mental construct he found himself in, with the exception of Sasha's Shooting Gallery, in which disobedience was an intended part of the experience. Hollis's mind is the first time I feel like we've really seen Raz messing with stuff he wasn't supposed to mess with, beyond the things that were obviously causing problems that he needed to deal with. Chimera-gui posted:In Edgar meanwhile, we have the Dalmatian all but telling Raz that Lampita was the cheerleader who dumped Edgar meaning that bringing Edgar, Lampita and Dingo together was probably not going to go well for Edgar. Edgar had built himself a little sanctuary outside the occupied portion of his mind where he was forever separated from the ideal of his love, because the keys to reaching her were guarded by the fears of his past. The entire point of the adventure was that it was all a fabrication built from a petty grudge that Edgar could only overcome by confronting it. Dingo and Lampita meant nothing - both the prisoner and the bull were Edgar himself. It's not really clear what would happen if the matador defeated Edgar within his own mind, from a narrative perspective, due to the default game mechanic of "you go back into the mind and try again," but not even this game proposes fatal consequences for messing around in someone's mind.
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Feb 23, 2022 23:55
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Nidoking posted:Which he got by taking the word of a conspiracy theorist who was also an arsonist. Again though Raz had no reason to believe that Boyd was an arsonist until after he had not only already gone into Boyd's mind but had gotten the Vault that showed Boyd committing arson, bare in mind that the Vaults are not only themselves technically optional collectibles but both Vaults here were to the side of objective areas meaning it's possible to skip over them altogether. Now the rest of what you said is absolutely true but the games not proposing fatal consequences for messing around in someone's mind is more gameplay vs story segregation since this was the point in game development where failure states that forced restarting the game from the beginning and/or last save point before the conditions of the failure state would be met were simply not allowed. It's the same reason why extra lives became unnecessary, there was no point to have game overs anymore since there was no monetary incentive for forcing restarts like there was in the arcades. Basically we never saw the consequences of Raz failing to save Edgar because the game doesn't actually allow Raz to fail saving Edgar in the first place, same with Boyd not being allowed to kill Fred and Edgar before Raz can confront Loboto.
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Feb 24, 2022 02:05
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whitehelm posted:Those Bad Idea enemies look like evil Memory Vaults. That's a good point, tho I do wonder if that is truly coincidental.
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Feb 24, 2022 12:07
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Anaxite fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Apr 30, 2022 |
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Feb 24, 2022 21:16
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Hm, isn't it possible to make a third (wrong) connection in those backrooms where you unrig the games?
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Feb 25, 2022 19:16
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Carbon dioxide posted:Hm, isn't it possible to make a third (wrong) connection in those backrooms where you unrig the games? The range of Mental Connection is just enough to make the right connection without being able to make the wrong one.
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Feb 25, 2022 20:57
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 The range limit is just tight enough. I believe I got them all (and had to make a spreadsheet)!
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Feb 25, 2022 20:58
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I feel like the Mental Connection mechanic is one of the most disappointing missed opportunities in this game. It's fine as a movement mechanic, and its combat applications are... existent, I suppose. There's one situation where it's the best ability and all but one where it's not. But the ability to connect ideas is fascinating, and we've seen about the extent of it. There will be some words, and connecting one specific pair enables progress. Within seconds of seeing the words, Raz will tell the player which pair that is. Some of the voice lines associated with other pairs are amusing, but none of them have any purpose. This is terribly limited in scope. I imagine so many possibilities for manipulating ideas. Even something simple, similar to the mood mechanic from Gloria's Theater, could be really effective. You might be able to connect RISK to DELIGHT and all of the enemies would become more aggressive, or RISK to DISGUST and all the enemies would disappear. Maybe there's a bookcase in your way, and connecting LEARNING to DULL would turn it into a video game console you can walk right past. The connections could modify someone's external behavior as part of a puzzle solution or an optional objective, rather than specific plot triggers. There could be any degree of challenge, at all, in figuring out how to use them effectively, at some point. I don't even think we see Hollis hiding her feelings at any point before we "fix" that. Oh well. Grappling hook is good at grappling, I guess. The figments in the Pillinko machine are interesting, though. I think it's the only case in either game where it becomes impossible to return to a place where there are figments, and even before I knew that, I still went through it dozens of times trying to collect them all before winning, because I didn't want to have to remember to return later. Fortunately, any figments you leave there will appear in other places in Hollis's mind. You might just run across a figment in an area you'd already looked and wonder how you could possibly have missed it.
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Feb 25, 2022 21:34
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mental connection is actually by far the most busted ability in the game in combat if you get a specific badge funnily enough
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Feb 25, 2022 22:05
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Nidoking posted:Mental Connection It would make for a cool game on its own! Double Fine could play around and make a small Psychonauts game that was built around connecting thoughts. Heck, the jumping around is similar to what they did in Rhombus of Ruin
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Feb 26, 2022 19:01
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Mental Connection is... Kinda strange, in that it acts like a grappling hook mechanic, but instead to edges universally, it's to specific anchor points. It feels somewhat like a... Gimmicky way of traversal as opposed it being a 'natural' way of increasing Raz's movement range - just my opinion, tho.
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Feb 27, 2022 16:25
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Yeah, you could see it as kinda gimmicky. It's one more tool in the toolbox against enemies, one more way to get from point A to point B, and one more way to gate certain pickups. It's honestly not bad! Even if it's just for flavor, it breaks up some of the traversal. Anyhow, let's finish up Hollis. 
Anaxite fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Apr 30, 2022 |
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Feb 27, 2022 20:27
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I think there's a certain irony in stating that burning down posters doesn't give you anything, then proceeding not to burn the poster that has a Nugget of Wisdom hidden behind it. Which has me wondering what irony would look like as a Psychonauts enemy. Probably some kind of mirror that blocks your path, but only hurts you if you attack it. There are also a few points in this video where the humble Psi-Blast makes things much easier. While you can only destroy Lady Lucktopus's tentacles with bombs, the covers can be destroyed just by shooting them, which saves you some time while you're waiting for the bombs to show up. The Psi-detectors in the casino also won't detect anything outside their cones of vision, so you can destroy most of them and have nothing to worry about. The end of the level is a surprisingly mature reaction from Hollis. Up to this point, she's felt strict to a fault, and certainly seemed to want to keep Razputin at the fringe's of the Psychonauts' business. Now, he's demonstrated a knack for chaos, and while he's learned the right lesson and proven himself capable of fixing his messes, he's also stepped over pretty much every line there is before getting to that point. I grasp the hypocrisy inherent in the situation if she did just kick him out of the intern program after doing the same thing she'd done, but she also wasn't a Psychonaut (or even an intern) when she did it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. It was just a surprise, and really changed my view of her character.
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Feb 28, 2022 00:23
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Nidoking posted:The end of the level is a surprisingly mature reaction from Hollis. Up to this point, she's felt strict to a fault, and certainly seemed to want to keep Razputin at the fringe's of the Psychonauts' business. Now, he's demonstrated a knack for chaos, and while he's learned the right lesson and proven himself capable of fixing his messes, he's also stepped over pretty much every line there is before getting to that point. I grasp the hypocrisy inherent in the situation if she did just kick him out of the intern program after doing the same thing she'd done, but she also wasn't a Psychonaut (or even an intern) when she did it. I'm not saying there's anything wrong with it. It was just a surprise, and really changed my view of her character. I think part of it is an acknowledgment that she not only underestimated Raz but overestimated the robustness of her own mind, she's realizing "Maybe that old loon Kruller was right about this kid". Up until now, she treated Raz as a joke but now that she's seen how capable of havoc he is she realizes that she has to respect him as much as Oleander, Sasha and Milla do.
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Feb 28, 2022 04:06
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Anaxite posted:
Yeah - I agree with this, for sure.
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Feb 28, 2022 11:03
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Nidoking posted:I think there's a certain irony in stating that burning down posters doesn't give you anything, then proceeding not to burn the poster that has a Nugget of Wisdom hidden behind it. Which has me wondering what irony would look like as a Psychonauts enemy. Probably some kind of mirror that blocks your path, but only hurts you if you attack it. You know, I never gave Psi Blast much of a thought, but it's good that there are a few ways to speed up the ending segments. Looks like both Hollis and the casino really do need to upgrade their security... or maybe the mind was a metaphor for the casino  Stuff like Hollis's behavior is kinda why she's one of my favorite characters, at least as the stoic and serious type. She's not perfect and acknowledges it, she also gives Raz a deserved hard time for a few things, and you can also see that she cares for what's going on around her. She's got the weight of an organization on her shoulders and really is doing the best she can.
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Feb 28, 2022 12:45
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The speedrun strategy for the Luctopus fight is to blast off the cover and then get Raz stuck behind the tentacle so she spits the bomb directly into her own weak point.
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Feb 28, 2022 18:59
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Ariong posted:The speedrun strategy for the Luctopus fight is to blast off the cover and then get Raz stuck behind the tentacle so she spits the bomb directly into her own weak point. Talk about your self-destructive compulsions!
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Mar 1, 2022 13:23
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Gambling: not even once!
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Mar 1, 2022 15:25
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Razputin up to his old meddling ways. Making a woman into Marge Simpson style gambling addict is wrong Raz!
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Mar 4, 2022 17:56
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Okay, okay, we're no longer gonna break our mentor's brain and make her do horribly evil, illegal things. We are gonna explore though.
Anaxite fucked around with this message at 20:48 on Mar 4, 2022 |
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Mar 4, 2022 20:45
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Yeah the conversations with Hollis, Sasha and Camilla are why we won't be connecting Thoughts that aren't empty outside of Hollis's mind going forward.
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Mar 5, 2022 00:44
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Wait, is that how Ford was giving Raz hints in Psychonauts 1, by teleporting out of his head?
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Mar 5, 2022 02:37
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I think so, that was it seems his big psych trick, teleporting.
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Mar 5, 2022 03:04
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Ford's physical body remained in his Sanctuary, which was the only place he was sane. But his mind hitched a ride inside Raz's head, and he'd pop out whenever he smelled bacon.
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Mar 5, 2022 03:33
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Neither game ever actually explains how it works. The entire explanation in Psychonauts 1 was that Ford somehow made himself into a "psychic stowaway" inside Raz's head, and that is also the entire explanation in Psychonauts 2. There are many plausible explanations as to what that actually means, but it turns out the real explanation is that he was literally just using his teleportation to physically pop out of Raz's ear, which is very funny.
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Mar 5, 2022 05:13
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