Psychonauts 2 is a 2021 platform game developed by Double Fine and published by Xbox Game Studios. The game was announced at The Game Awards 2015 ceremony, and released on August 25, 2021 for PlayStation 4, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S, and on May 24, 2022 for Linux and macOS.
Like the game's predecessor, the player controls Raz, a young acrobat who is training to become a Psychonaut, a member of an international task force that uses their psychic abilities to stop those that perform nefarious deeds with their own psychic forces. Within Psychonauts 2, which directly follows the events of the interstitial virtual reality game, Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin (2017), the Psychonauts try to learn who was really behind the capture of their leader, unveiling a deep mystery surrounding the organization's founding and Raz's family history. To uncover the mystery, Raz enters the mindscapes of various characters to discover clues. Within these mindscapes, Raz can perform a variety of new and returning psychic abilities that allow him to maneuver through their often-twisted minds and battle the mental creatures they produce.
The original Psychonauts, released in 2005, was met with critical praise, but failed to sell well and was considered a commercial failure for several years after its first release. Double Fine and game director Tim Schafer had expressed the desire to create a sequel to Psychonauts, but the financial demand of developing the game stalled any serious attempt for several years. Double Fine regained the intellectual property to Psychonauts from Majesco in 2011, allowing them to rerelease the game on modern platforms, which saw strong sales and increased demand from players for a sequel. Double Fine sought to acquire part of its financial capital to fund the developments of Psychonauts 2 through a crowd-funding and investment drive through Fig, launched simultaneously with the game's announcement. The campaign raised nearly by the beginning of 2016. While Psychonauts 2 was initially to be published by Starbreeze Studios under a publishing-only deal, Starbreeze fell into bankruptcy in 2018. By 2019, Microsoft acquired Double Fine as part of Xbox Games Studios as well as securing the publishing rights from Starbreeze. This acquisition allowed Double Fine to complete the game as envisioned, rather than dropping the planned content.
Upon release, Psychonauts 2 received generally positive reviews from critics, with many feeling it lived up to the quality of its predecessor. Praise was directed at its platforming, level design, visuals, writing, and tone, while criticism fell on aspects of the gameplay and the boss battles.
Gameplay
Psychonauts 2 is a single player platform game played in a third-person view. The player controls Razputin "Raz" Aquato, a ten-year-old child runaway of a circus acrobat family, who possesses powerful psychic abilities that allow him to delve into the minds of others. Raz is a new graduate of the Psychonauts, an agency of psychic spies. His acrobatic skills are used to deftly navigate environments in the game; he can run, jump, scale walls and platforms, and slide along rails, but cannot swim due to a family curse. Raz hones his abilities into an array of psychic powers that allow him to use pyrokinesis, levitation, telekenesis and so on. Several powers return from the original game, with additions such as Mental Connection, which Raz uses to tether between floating points. Up to four powers can be assigned at once, and are swapped out via a pop-up interface.
Each of the game's levels exist in their respective character's consciousness. Levels often require completion of a goal to resolve the character's psychological issues. Environmental design in each level gives insight into the character's life experience and mental state. In one level, Raz enters the mind of a character crippled by alcoholism. The level design alludes to the character's struggles, with beer bottles used as set pieces. Another character develops a gambling addiction; their level is set in a warped casino-hospital amalgam. Combat foes in the levels are typically personifications of mental phenomena. Censors attack Raz with stamps, flying Regrets drop weights, and Enablers buff other enemies' health and attacks. In fights, Raz combines his abilities with melee attacks and dodges. When Raz falls through a level or depletes his health, he respawns at a checkpoint. Several levels culminate in a boss battle.
When not progressing the story, Raz can explore the four distinct hubs of a large overworld. He begins in the Motherlobe, a corporate building used as the Psychonauts' headquarters. Later, he can explore the surrounding areas: an open Quarry, the wooded Questionable Area? and the Green Needle Gulch swampland. Raz can interact with many of the world's characters, and complete side activities and scavenger hunts. Completed levels may be revisited. Across the levels and hubs, Raz amasses several collectible items, such as Figments, Memory Vaults and Nuggets of Wisdom. Some items, such as PSI Cards, increase Raz's rank and unlock ability upgrades. In-game currency can be spent on Pins, which provide passive gameplay effects such as health kits, and other items.
Synopsis
Setting Psychonauts 2 is set in a fictional, alternate world in which psychic powers exist thanks to the fictional element Psitanium - a substance brought to the planet by several meteors. The Psychonauts are an international espionage agency focused on psychic peacekeeping, scientific research of the human mind, and the development of psychic-based technologies.
In Psychonauts, the player-character Razputin "Raz" Aquato is a young acrobat fascinated by the Psychonauts, but shunned by his family who fear his psychic abilities. He runs away and infiltrates Whispering Rock summer camp, a training facility for young Psychonaut recruits. While there, he helps to foil a plan by the demented Dr. Loboto and misguided Coach Oleander to steal the brains of his fellow campers and the Psychonaut agents Sasha Nein and Milla Vodello, while befriending Psychonauts founder Ford Cruller and Lili Zanotto, the daughter of the Grand Head of the Psychonauts, Truman Zanotto. Raz's father, Augustus, comes to accept Raz's goal of being a Psychonaut, revealing his own weak psychic abilities. Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin follows immediately from the end of Psychonauts, where Raz joins Sasha, Milla, Coach and Lili to rescue Truman from being captured by Dr. Loboto.
Characters In addition to returning characters from the previous games, Psychonauts 2 introduces the other founding members of the Psychonauts alongside Ford Cruller, known as the Psychic Six: Otto Mentallis, chief inventor who assists Nein and provides new psychic equipment; Compton Boole, who pioneered telepathy with animals; Bob Zanotto, uncle to Truman Zanotto and capable of communicating with plant life; Helmut Fullbear, Bob's husband and a psychic actor whose body was lost and his brain was kept in a jar for over 20 years, making him lose his five senses; and Cassie O'Pia, an author of the self-help book "Mindswarm" who is lost in a multiple personality disorder.
Additional Psychonauts staff at their headquarters, the Motherlobe, include Hollis Forsythe, Second Head of the Psychonauts, Nick Johnsmith, the only non-psychic member of the Psychonauts who works in the mailroom section, and a group of interns training to become agents. These interns include Samantha "Sam" Boole, elder sister of Dogen and granddaughter to Compton who can communicate with animals like her family; Adam Gette, the African-British keeper of the Psychonauts' history board who telekinetically powers yo-yos as a weapon; Morris Martinez, a radio aficionado who travels around via levitating wheelchair; Gisu Nerumen, an engineering ward to Otto and levitating skateboarder; Norma Natividad, a shrewd manipulator and talented pyrokinetic; and Lizzie Natividad, Norma's cryokinetic and moody younger sister.
Raz's family beyond Augustus are also introduced, including Augustus' wife and Raz's mother Donatella, older siblings Dion and Frazie, younger siblings Mirtala and Queepie, and their Nona, mother to Augustus.
Plot After capturing Loboto and recovering Truman's comatose body, Raz joins the other Psychonauts inside Loboto's mind to learn his co-conspirator's identity, but they find his psyche secured against their efforts. However, Raz sees a vision of a woman whom Sasha identifies as Maligula, a cruel hydrokinetic who flooded and destroyed the nation of Grulovia's capital. Maligula was believed killed by the Psychic Six, but her followers, the Deluginists, have looked to necromancy to resurrect her. The senior agents suspect a double agent within the Psychonauts aided Loboto in kidnapping Truman.
At the Motherlobe, Hollis assigns Raz to work as an intern in the mail room under Nick. Raz finds Nick's brainless body and a key to a room at the Lady Luctopus Casino. During a training exercise, Raz uses his powers to convince Hollis to bring the interns on the mission. However, he inadvertently causes her to develop a gambling addiction and is forced to battle an incarnation of Lady Luctopus herself inside Hollis' mind to undo this to get the mission back on track. Inside the room, Raz finds evidence of the Deluginists and a slip of paper indicating Lili as the double agent.
Raz shows Lili the paper he found, but she refuses to believe it and runs off. To Raz's surprise, Truman reveals he is faking his coma and urges Raz to bring Ford Cruller to the Motherlobe and reconstitute his split personalities, as he holds the secret behind Maligula. Raz does so, along the way helping the other Psychic Six members with their mental traumas that developed after their fight with Maligula. Once Ford is whole, he explains that Maligula is actually Lucrecia "Lucy" Mux (née Galochio), the previously unknown seventh member of the Psychic Six, (once known as the "Psychic Seven") and Raz's grandaunt, who was in a romantic relationship with Ford after the death of her husband Gelsin. Lucy returned to Grulovia to quell an uprising, but under its leader Gzar Theodore Malik's abusive treatment, Lucy created the Maligula personality as a fight-or-flight response. However, Maligula went berserk and flooded the country, killing peaceful protestors led by her own sister Marona ''Nona'' Aquato and the latter's husband Lazarus ''Lazlo'' and forcing the Gzar and his family into exile. The Psychic Six defeated Maligula, but Ford secretly spared her life and used one of Otto's inventions, the Astralathe, a device that makes permanent alterations to the mind, to bury the Maligula personality deep inside Lucy's mind and make her believe she was Marona. Ford also altered the memories of Marona's son Augustus to accept Lucrecia as his mother. Finally, Ford used the Astralathe to split his own mind to forget about Lucy as he mourned for her. Raz, horrified by the revelation, runs off to warn his family, but Ford warns that the family's memories will unravel and they might attack her, triggering the Maligula personality in the process.