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Psychonauts 2

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The goofy Erik Wolpaw endorsement in the video won me over. I am an easy target.

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The goofy Erik Wolpaw endorsement in the video won me over. I am an easy target.

 

Gabe Newell's career change to become a crowdfunding pitch video guest star (see also Clang) instead of head of a games company is weird, but it seems to be what he enjoys.

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I didn't know that was a thing he's done more than once! Weird.

I just really like Erik Wolpaw's writing. I went into the video with a lot of mixed emotions about yet-another-double-fine-crowd-funding-venture, and I still kinda feel mixed emotions (seeing those tweets from JP does a lot to muddle my enthusiasm). But the possibility of another Schaefer-Wolpaw writing collab is just too enticing.

Also, I share everyone's envy of Tim's phone case. I have a pretty low quality Grim Fandango fanart phone case that I got when looking for something like what Tim has and finding nothing.

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I used the term lightning in a bottle because I think it's very, very difficulty to recapture the same whimsy in a sequel.  Video game sequels often improve mechanically, but rarely improve in terms of narrative, tone or character.  Mechanics aren't what made the original special. The only sequel we have out of DF is Costume Quest 2, and it's fine, but mostly forgettable.  It's just more, but more is usually less charming than the original.  I guess I'm expecting the likelihood that a Psychonauts 2 ends up more like CQ2 and less like Psychonauts 1. 

 

I'd be much more enthusiastic about a Brutal Legend sequel, because it is a game that mechanically I think has a lot of room to grow and improve. 

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I used the term lightning in a bottle because I think it's very, very difficulty to recapture the same whimsy in a sequel.  Video game sequels often improve mechanically, but rarely improve in terms of narrative, tone or character.  Mechanics aren't what made the original special. The only sequel we have out of DF is Costume Quest 2, and it's fine, but mostly forgettable.  It's just more, but more is usually less charming than the original.  I guess I'm expecting the likelihood that a Psychonauts 2 ends up more like CQ2 and less like Psychonauts 1. 

 

I'd be much more enthusiastic about a Brutal Legend sequel, because it is a game that mechanically I think has a lot of room to grow and improve. 

 

I don't know if I agree with this, because some of my favorites are sequels because of narrative improvements! Monkey Island 2, Baldur's Gate 2, Mass Effect 2, Neverwinter Nights 2 (and MOTB which is kind of spiritual PST 2).

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Those are all adventure games and rpgs, though, which are the game genres that most depend on the quality of their story to carry them. The quality of an adventure game is arguably more dependent on story and presentation than on any "gamey" element (I do say arguably, don't fight me on this). That's just plain untrue of the type of game Psychonauts is.

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And I think when you consider the thousands of video game sequels, those represent the data points well outside the norm, not within it.  Two of those examples also come from Bioware, and one from Obsidian (which I think Obsidian is a dev one can make an argument for excels at improving on narrative/character).  That's rarefied company.  I think that kind of reinforces how difficult it is to improve (or even match) narrative in sequels in games. 

 

Mostly I'm arguing for keeping my own enthusiasm in check.  I'd rather have my expectations set low for this than too high. 

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Those are all adventure games and rpgs, though, which are the game genres that most depend on the quality of their story to carry them. The quality of an adventure game is arguably more dependent on story and presentation than on any "gamey" element (I do say arguably, don't fight me on this). That's just plain untrue of the type of game Psychonauts is.

 

I don't know if I agree with that.  Psychonauts is particularly story-driven in a way that isn't true of most platformers, and I'm unconvinced there's a "type" you can compare it against.  Which of course is what makes it special.  It embeds story in the gameplay itself at times, like when you drop down the sewer in the black velvet level and find it filled with high school bleachers.

 

I enjoy that the whole "the story is great but the gameplay isn't" canard is still in full force, but I've never really agreed with it.  Gameplay is more than a control scheme, and the controls were rock solid anyway.

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I also don't agree with the "story is great but the gameplay isn't" crit of Psychonauts; I think the game was great for much more than just its writing (one or two iffy levels notwithstanding) and no amount of clever ideas and snappy dialog could carry the game if it wasn't fun to play as Raz.

 

This is what I kinda meant to say: MI2 improved on MI1 by looking better, sounding better, and by having an even better narrative than its predecessor. I don't think improving only those three elements will be enough to make Psychonauts 2 great.

...that said, I'm kinda being a devil's advocate here. I dunno how good of a platformer Doublefine can make in 2015 but I have no reason to believe they'll be shitty at it.

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And I think when you consider the thousands of video game sequels, those represent the data points well outside the norm, not within it.  Two of those examples also come from Bioware, and one from Obsidian (which I think Obsidian is a dev one can make an argument for excels at improving on narrative/character).  That's rarefied company.  I think that kind of reinforces how difficult it is to improve (or even match) narrative in sequels in games. 

 

Mostly I'm arguing for keeping my own enthusiasm in check.  I'd rather have my expectations set low for this than too high. 

 

Haha, understood, and in that sense I totally agree with what you're saying! I think I failed to make the connection that I think DF is one of those rarefied companies that can realize those improvements.

 

Also, I also agree with Udvarnocky about the gameplay being part of the narrative. So much of the charm is in the level concepts, and I believe they can continue to deliver that.

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I enjoy that the whole "the story is great but the gameplay isn't" canard is still in full force, but I've never really agreed with it.  Gameplay is more than a control scheme, and the controls were rock solid anyway.

 

Yes! I played it like a year ago and thought the gameplay was great. 

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I'm holding off on backing this unless they need the help to cross the finish line because I'm only really interested in the console version and it seems that is only available as an add on cost to pledging for the pc version.

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To be clear, I'm not critical of the mechanics of Psychonauts at all, I think it was a pretty damn good 3D platformer (of which we have lots of bad examples to show how hard that can be), and it incorporated it's themes/stories into gameplay and level design in a way that was uncommon at the time.  Environmental Storytelling wasn't even a buzzphrase yet when it came out.  I just think it's not the mechanics that made it special, not that they were poor or substandard in any way.

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Some disjointed thoughts, typed out for the second time because my initial post seems to have been lost into the ether:

 

I was somewhat hesitant about the prospect of Psychonauts 2 because I assumed Erik Wolpaw couldn't be involved. And now he is. And I am excited.

 

Is it just me or is Raz's HD face creepy as fuck? He looks like an elderly man dressed up as a little child. Lily looks wierd too, but not quite as much.

 

Also, I find it wierd that there are a whole bunch of extras on the Fig page, with little information to explain what they're like. The one that stood out to me was the Psychonauts themed View-Master, which was described as follows:

 

In Psychonauts, the darkest deepest memories of the minds you've delved into are kept in memory vaults, inside of which are reels of images based on old View-Master reels. We'll take those in-game reels and make them into real world reels. For reals!

It sounds like a cute idea and the sort of thing that I'd like to have gathering dust on my memorabilia shelf. But without seeing photos and judging whether it's going to be a cool design or just a basic View-Master with a sticker applied, I'm not going to pay a not-inconsiderable sum to add it on.

 

Tim replied to my question as follows, but I'm going to hold off for now.

 

EDIT: How do I embed tweets on this damned site?

https://twitter.com/TimOfLegend/status/672845451498926081?ref_src=twsrc^tfw

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I'm wondering what the hub world of Psychonauts 2 will be?  Is it that island in the trailer?  The fact that the original game had the summer camp thing going on was such a big part of its identity and appeal (at least for me).  I hope Double Fine can come up with a comparatively fun hook now that Raz has presumably joined the actual agency of psychic espionage.

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A summer camp is such an awesome environment for a video game, and I think there's a lot of room to explore more video game experiences in that space. I'm particularly infatuated with the idea of a Prison Architect-esque Scout Camp Builder game. But the setting would also lend itself well to an RPG, or any genre that can support a large cast of interesting secondary characters to interact with.

 

But I guess that's all kinda off-topic. 

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A summer camp is such an awesome environment for a video game, and I think there's a lot of room to explore more video game experiences in that space. I'm particularly infatuated with the idea of a Prison Architect-esque Scout Camp Builder game. But the setting would also lend itself well to an RPG, or any genre that can support a large cast of interesting secondary characters to interact with.
 
But I guess that's all kinda off-topic. 

 

I think too few games really double down on just exploring a small, finite space.  The camp worked great.  Costume Quest also limited its action to just a few neighborhoods around the kids' house.  I'd rather have a neighborhood than a city, a camp than a forest. 

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I feel that way too, absolutely. I'm probably being painfully unoriginal by bringing up Warren Spector's endlessly quoted "one city block" concept, but that scale at that detail is still super seductive to me.

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I will back it but Psychonauts 2 is not my favorite Tim Schafer game by far. Perhaps this can someday lead to the fabled Brutal Legend 2?

 

No, we'll have none of that. First Full Throttle 2, then maybe a Brutal Legend 2.

 

I'm backing Psychonauts 2. I've had so much fun playing the first one a couple of times (3 or 4 times I guess). As long as there's no Meat Circus debacle.

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There's no reason for a Full Throttle 2, it ends in a pretty bow. Plus they'd have to secure the rights to a sequel from Lucas, which so far they have only for remakes. Brutal Legend 2 has all of the story and most if not all of the concept done for the second game, it was cut in half for release. The sequel was nearly secure in funding at some point.

 

The even omit almost all of the unused ideas for Brutal Legend from the art book just in case they get around to the sequel, they don't want to spoil anything. You can tell when finishing the first game how rushed the story is and how much the characters didn't get a chance to be explored.

Is it just me or is Raz's HD face creepy as fuck? He looks like an elderly man dressed up as a little child. Lily looks wierd too, but not quite as much.

 

He's always been pretty ugly while the concept art was much cuter. Would be nice for them to take another shot at his model.


Kind of wish the sequel just jettisoned Raz and we took turns playing as Milla and Sasha. However I sort of felt maybe the trailer was hinting at not just playing Raz?

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There's no reason for a Full Throttle 2, it ends in a pretty bow. Plus they'd have to secure the rights to a sequel from Lucas...

 

Genuine ignorance here: is there some entity (man or company) with the name "Lucas" that still owns some of these properties? Or is it all Disney now?

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