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During Nidoking's LP of the first Psychonauts, it was noted that a Psychonaut following actual procedure wouldn't be clumsily bumbling through the persons mind with potentially disastrous consequences like Raz (the kid was trained as an acrobat, not in psychology) nor would they knowingly manipulate the person with malicious intent like Oleander and here we see Sasha Nein construct a fabricated world to peacefully coax the truth out of Loboto as subtly as much as game allows since we as the audience needed to be clued in to what our heroes were doing.
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Feb 11, 2022 00:49
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 20:18 |
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Hell, Linda could be considered the first example of true modification of a person's mind compared to the office since, unlike with Oleander and Linda, Sasha wasn't trying to control Loboto but instead convince him to reveal his boss's identity voluntarily and it's implied that Loboto would willingly cooperate if his boss hadn't instilled fear in him through the image of Maligula. As Loboto said, he's trying to protect himself. As the original game demonstrated with Edgar, it is fully possible to construct a mental world to hide a painful truth as Black Velvetopia was a complete confabulation in response to the former being dumped and subsequently losing a match. Even Milla's Dance Party was constructed as a way to move on from her trauma by wrapping herself in things she enjoys like partying, dance and television though unlike Edgar, she isn't trying to completely and strictly repress her nightmares either but instead only sections it off from the camp kids as she believes that it would be irresponsible to let her young students be exposed to her trauma and even then there is a clear door to said cage. Recall Sasha's warning about completely suppressing things like censor energy, it's implied that he learned to release rather than repress completely so the implication is that Milla recognizes this as well and thus would be more willing to explain her grief/trauma to another adult such as a therapist. Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 08:11 on Feb 11, 2022 |
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Feb 11, 2022 07:57
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Chronische posted:I really dislike the interns. They are all much meaner than even the bully from the first game, and have no real redeeming qualities in my opinion. Just arrogant jerks from beginning to end! To be fair, Bobby was supposed to be completely outclassed by Raz to show just how toothless he really was as a bully whereas the interns are meant to actually be on par with if not better than Raz to show that Raz's talent is not enough anymore and thus why he needs to be trained to properly utilize his abilities. Raz may have been the true strongman at Camp Whispering Rock but now he's the underdog that no one but Lili, Ford, Sasha, Milla and Oleander respects. Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 06:40 on Feb 16, 2022 |
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Feb 16, 2022 06:34
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Nidoking posted:I have a feeling that if Oleander were more respected as a Psychonaut, he wouldn't have developed megalomania.
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Feb 16, 2022 20:49
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Chronische posted:They are hardly 'on par' with him, since he not only does all the work in THIS game too (noticing things they should have noticed ages ago), but he has learned more in a few days than they have in however long they've been interns. They're just arrogant and, frankly, stupid jerks. Has he though? With the exception of Clairvoyance and Psi Blast, literally everything Raz starts the game with is something at least one of the interns is not only confirmed to already have but is likely more proficient in than Raz (Levitation, Telekinesis, Astral Projection and Pyrokinesis). As for Raz doing all the work keep in mind that not only is that technically a gameplay conceit, bare in mind that even the adult Psychonauts didn't catch the things I assume you're referring to even though they should have even before the interns, but we'll see that unlike with Sasha and Milla last game Raz isn't the only one investigating the mole situation.
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Feb 17, 2022 03:47
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Yeah not counting the main villain, Norma is gonna be our recurring antagonist going forward just as Bobby Zilch was in the first game since she's looking for the mole too and, unfortunately, Raz is at the top of her list of suspects.
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Feb 18, 2022 22:45
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I do like that how Hollis remarks "Oh, you think the human mind is safe?" Even before we start this Mental World, we know that psychics can royally gently caress up a person's mind thanks to not only Oleander conditioning both Linda and Boyd but also because Raz's own bumbling both unleashed the product of the latter's conditioning as well as nearly got the aforementioned Edgar killed. The former doing an example of loving up someone's mind out of malice while the latter as well as this are examples of doing so out of ignorance and/or clumsiness. I also like that Sam is the first to realize "Oh gently caress me, this can only end very badly" Like she's the only one who doesn't directly goad you into changing Hollis's mind but rather asks you to not kill her mind.
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Feb 22, 2022 02:38
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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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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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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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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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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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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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For those wondering why Oleander is afraid of his father, there is a semi-canon backstory for the first game though I'm going use spoiler tags since it gets pretty hosed up: Oleander was reportedly the youngest of three brothers though he saw himself as being just as big and strong as his older brothers. One day, his father saw him playing with a bunny. Though Oleander wasn't in trouble, his father advised him not to get attached to the rabbit as it was the runt of of the litter meaning it couldn't be sold for meat or fur and was thus considered useless: Incapable of doing anything but sucking up feed and is therefore to be slaughtered and fed to the pigs. Out of fear of being seen as the runt like Mr. Bunny, Oleander worked harder than his brothers doing three times the chores and doubling his study time. At school he demonstrated a level of discipline unheard of for his age, scheduling his time with a chart system, asked teachers for extra credit work, did every extracurricular activity available, started clubs, organized guest speakers, ran for class president & treasurer, and graduated top of his class meaning he could have gone to the college of his choice had he not attempted to join the military. The reason he tried to join the military was due to his father, Butch, being a former Marine and so by joining, Oleander could prove that he wasn't worthless in his father's eyes. Unfortunately as we saw in the game itself he was rejected by every branch, due to his height, who told him the same thing: "Not big enough. Can't drive a tank. Can't jump over a foxhole. Can't do nothing but suck down rations." After this, he was recruted by the Psychonauts however they did not deploy him due to the aggressive tendencies he developed as a maladaptive coping mechanism. This came to a head when, as Coach of Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, he received news that his father had passed away which coupled with his prolonged exposure to Psitanium caused something to snap. Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 07:51 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 07:46
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Gaming University made a video on the Meat Circus where he described Oleander’s backstory from the Li-Po Backstory Document: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYjxHCL1irs He did note that said backstory should be treated as semi-canon at best but given what we saw in the game itself, I do think that the backstory lines up with what was confirmed (Oleander’s father killed a rabbit in front of him and he was rejected by the military) quite well and fits the themes of the Meat Circus itself.
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Mar 17, 2022 19:30
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EDIT: Ariong explains it better than I could below. Gaming University also referenced it in his video on the Milkman Conspiracy. Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Mar 17, 2022 |
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Mar 17, 2022 21:49
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Ariong posted:EDIT: That being said, you really don't need any of the extra stuff from the Li-Po document to understand what's going on in the Meat Circus. The mental vault you find there is sufficient. Oh absolutely, while the context it provides does help better connect the Memory Vaults The Big Top from the Meat Circus and Oleander's Shame from Basic Braining; it is not required to understand either which, coupled with the dubious canonicity of the LiPo document itself, was why I used spoiler tags even though the backstory itself is completely unrelated to Psychonauts 2.
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Mar 18, 2022 05:07
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I honestly love the Mental Processes chosen to be enemies, honestly some of my favorite enemy designs in any game. Talking about the Mental World itself: If Hollis was a nod to Edgar and Boyd, Compton is comparable to Fred Bonaparte as Compton's low confidence has led to him also having learned helplessness hence why Raz is helping him.
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Mar 21, 2022 04:45
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Miz Kriss posted:Cassie's demise I think you mean Helmut as Cassie is very much alive, she just went into isolation like Compton hence why he goes off to find her once he gets a confidence boost.
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Mar 25, 2022 18:29
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Nidoking posted:Another option would be to have written Compton's character to be more in line with the mind they had planned. If he were more obviously competitive, like maybe there were background chatter about how people hated bowling with him because he got too obsessed with the score, the contest theme would be more topical. Or if he were obsessed with food (but ideally not just fat - maybe the kitchen lady mentions that she hates having to prepare his meals so perfectly), then the food angle would make much more sense. It doesn't need to be in our faces the whole time, but there are so many ways to make his mind seem more relevant without making any sweeping changes to anything. I think the issue is that because Compton spends the first two Mental World's worth of gameplay in Psychoisolation, we have to extrapolate his personality based on the two people who'd presumably know him best: His granddaughter Sam and his intern Lizzie. Since Sam is shown cooking, maybe there should've been a dialogue option with her where she talks about him having a love of cooking that got passed down to her. Maybe have that be why Oleander tells her to make him pancakes, she's made them before using the proper Mother Lobe kitchen and he enjoyed them.
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Mar 27, 2022 07:56
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Or hell, I wouldn't be against the idea that Compton was the one who taught Sam's mother before he went into isolation if they weren't going to have him teach Sam directly.
Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Mar 28, 2022 |
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Mar 28, 2022 01:37
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So much like Gloria’s Theater, Waterloo World and Black Velvetopia; Compton's Cookout and PSI King's Sensorium are unlocked and completed independently of each other. And while you do have to complete both to progress the story, they don't require a specific order of completion; again like aforementioned Mental Worlds from the first game. Rigged Death Trap posted:And thats what this entire level is, a big ol' love letter to psychedelic prog rock Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 05:05 on Mar 29, 2022 |
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Mar 29, 2022 04:38
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And yeah, the ending cutscene in the real world was why I asked for Anaxite's permission before noting how Compton's Cookout and PSI King's Sensorium worked in relation to each other in the overworld.
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Apr 5, 2022 09:17
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Yeah I very purposely held back on saying too much before the third video of Sensorium because I was asked to but Jack Black as Helmut Fullbear was inspired. Jack and Robin Williams are two of the few celebrities that I think work really well as voice actors, especially for characters that clearly written for them like Po and Eddie Riggs for Jack or Batty Koda and the Genie for Williams. They have an energy to them that makes it so that even when the character has to be somber, they are not lifeless. EDIT: Fun Fact: Jack was in a Pitfall commercial when he was a kid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ncRnqCfmMmU Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Feb 9, 2023 |
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Apr 5, 2022 19:41
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Welcome to Ford's Fractured Mind. I mentioned before that the aforementioned Compton's Cookout and Psi King's Sensorium are structured to not require completion of each other to access either and this collection of Mental Worlds is why since both are required to access two of these Mental Worlds as Anaxite noted in video. This also makes this multi-Mental World analogous to the aforementioned Thorny Towers trio of Mental Worlds since like Cookout and Sensorium, there isn't a required order to these to the point you can do Cookout and Sensorium between segments of Fractured Mind. In fact, I'm almost certain the game expects you to do this hence why Ford has a prominent role in both Cookout and Sensorium. Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Apr 25, 2022 |
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Apr 25, 2022 03:43
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And this is why Anaxite did that collection video before tackling the Fractured Minds of Ford Cruller.
Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 08:35 on Apr 29, 2022 |
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Apr 28, 2022 19:40
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As you can probably guess given the past two sets of Mental Worlds, the Mental Worlds of Bob and Cassie can be completed in either order.
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May 9, 2022 12:14
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Annoying little gremlins though they may be to deal with, we have one of my favorite enemies as a concept: the Enabler who represents the reinforcement of negative emotions or thoughts and whose name refers to a person who encourages negative if not outright self-destructive behavior which makes them seem like an odd little critter to encounter running rampant in the mind of the seemingly stable Cassie as opposed to Bob whose behavior is very unquestionably negative and self-destructive in nature. I also like that Cassie is the most receptive to Raz entering her mind, presumably to contrast with Bob. Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 19:54 on May 17, 2022 |
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May 12, 2022 02:38
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So you noticed that Archetype Lucy mentioned Galochio as one of her names. Recall that Raz's dad mentioned that it was the Galochio family, and specifically Maligula herself, who purportedly cursed the Aquatos in the first place before Cruller confirmed that the curse was not real and that he believed he needed to instill a fear of water in her to prevent her from rediscovering her specialty: Hydrokinesis. Now to be clear: Hydrokinesis is not exclusive to Lucy as Lizzie Natividad uses hydrokinesis in tandem with her specialty of cryokinesis in contrast her with her pyrokinetic sister, Norma. Lucy however is the most important user of this power which, naturally, begs the question of where her power came from since psychic powers are typically inherited from at least one of user's own parents.
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May 15, 2022 10:04
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Carbon dioxide posted:Do we know anything about psychics before the original psychonauts? I kinda assumed they were the first to seriously investigate their skills and whatever came before them was barely known and mostly uncontrolled. They likely were though there is at least one family of implied psychics that purportedly predates the Psychic Seven: the Galochio family aka Lucy and Marona’s parents.
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May 15, 2022 19:02
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You’re not far off for thinking that Cassie is from Hong Kong as the wiki claims that she grew up in Shanghai though I don’t what evidence, if any, there is to support this. And what’s interesting is that Cassie is shown to have a fondness for the Enabler during the boss fight. And no, Pyrokenisis has no effect on the healthy vines.
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May 17, 2022 20:49
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Now that we've met the last regular enemy, I want to talk about the enemies in greater detail to understand why I think theming them around mental processes was brilliant in terms of visual storytelling:
 Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 16:59 on May 24, 2022 |
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May 23, 2022 00:46
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Chronische posted:I did enjoy the more personalized enemies in Psychonauts 1, but most of them weren't especially dangerous or thematic. Still: Lungfishopolis is beyond iconic, and also not a human mind, so it's great to have differences there! Does make it a lot easier to keep the theme of a mind (and escalate combat encounters) by having enemies be from a more restricted list, at least. I feel like outside Lungfishopolis, the only non-boss personalized enemies that really worked were the G-Men and only because they were the most thematically fitting for their mental world not only in design but in how they operated because they weren't something you could fight directly. The actors in Gloria's Theater never made sense as actual enemies since you could still talk to them and their function as actual actors meant you couldn't kill them off for good despite their hostility, meaning it would've made more sense that they wouldn't actively attack Raz until the Jasper fight where he was calling them to attack, while the armored snail cannon and mangled rabbit abomination were more annoying than dangerous and only tangentially fitted with Waterloo World and Meat Circus on the purely surface level. Plus the mental processes chosen to be enemies are so ubiquitous that they could easily fit within the mental worlds of the first game such as Enablers for Boyd, Bad Mood for Edgar, and Judge, Doubt & Regret for Gloria. quote:They didn't even have the deadly wildlife from 1 in the overworld! But I suppose the Psychonauts wouldn't allow telekinetic bears or pyrokinetic pumas wander around so close to the Motherlobe.
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May 23, 2022 07:39
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Mraagvpeine posted:Do you think the Nightmares in Boyd's level could have been replaced with Panic Attacks? I would not be surprised if Panic Attack was designed to replace Nightmare going forward for two reasons:
Chimera-gui fucked around with this message at 07:07 on Feb 9, 2023 |
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May 24, 2022 00:27
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Yeah, his isolation and especially alcoholism did not do him any favors. In fact it was confirmed last video and by the earlier conversation with Camilla that Truman fired him due to the latter putting people's lives at risk.
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May 27, 2022 00:48
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I believe the Moth is a manifestation of Bob's alcoholism, a maladaptive coping mechanism to his pain which he was trying to protect himself from by not feeling anything. That's why the Moth claimed it was trying to protect Bob by shielding him while also blinding him to the negative effect it was having on him to led to the aforementioned intervention gone wrong between him and Truman. That's also why the fight ends with Bob removing the moth from his eyes, effectively erasing the drat bug's existence.
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May 29, 2022 00:33
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I didn’t include this creature when I wrote about the enemies since not only are they not aggressive but unlike the first game, you will never encounter them during your first run through a Mental World in 2 so let’s have a look at them now:
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May 31, 2022 20:55
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Oh boy, this is going to hurt. Before that though it's nice to see Bob, the character who should be pissed off with Lucy the most (recall that the Bad Mood you encountered at the wedding had its heart cage of Ford and Lucy's table, implying lingering resentment), be the first the hug her showing just what Raz had done for him. We've also got our first implanted mental construct since Loboto's Labyrinth and third overall including Lungfishopolis though chronologically this is the earliest of the three.
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Jun 7, 2022 02:20
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Miz Kriss posted:Why do I have the feeling Nona knows more than what she’s letting on? Keep in mind that Linda and Loboto both fought against the constructs implanted their minds. Ford may have had the Astralathe to reinforce the flea circus construct but we've seen how easy it is to dismantle implanted constructs. Conversely however, Black Velvetopia and Milla's Dance Party showed that a mind can also maintain a constructed world as a means to either suppress or move on from trauma.
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Jun 8, 2022 06:20
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| # ¿ May 19, 2024 20:18 |
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In Norma's defense, she hasn't realized exactly how badly she's screwed up. That aside as I implied in my last post, Lucy was fully aware that the Flea Circus was a construct implanted in her mind but instead of resisting/dismantling the construct as Linda and Loboto had; she chose to maintain it since like Edgar and Camilla, she found the constructed reality comfortable and wanted to protect that comfort/joy from Maligula. And speaking of Maligula: Her name may be derived from the Latin "mal" meaning to "evil" or "bad", the infamous Roman emperor Caligula, and amygdala: the primary structure of the brain responsible for fight or flight response.
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Jun 11, 2022 02:00
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