Psychonauts Wiki

Contents.PlotPsychonauts follows the player-character Razputin Aquato (voiced by Richard Horvitz), a young boy gifted with psychic abilities who runs away from the circus to try to sneak into a summer camp for those with similar powers to become a 'Psychonaut', a spy with psychic abilities.He later finds that someone is stealing people's brains in the camp, turning the people into mindless people who only say 'TV!'

Psychopedia is a collaborative wiki about the Psychonauts series that anyone can edit. It was created in September 2006 and currently has 294 articles. Characters Meet an eclectic cast of campers, lunatics, and secret agents., Locations Explore a world from the mind of Tim Shafer., Mental Worlds. Psychonauts is an adventure-platformer video game developed by Tim Schafer and Double Fine Studios released in 2005. The game stars a boy-psychic, Raz, who escapes from his family's circus to.

.: June 22, 2005.: February 10, 2006Mode(s)Psychonauts is a developed by that first released in 2005. The game was initially published by for, and; helped with the PlayStation 2 port. In 2011, Double Fine acquired the rights for the title, allowing the company to republish the title with updates for modern gaming systems and ports for and.Psychonauts follows the player-character Raz (voiced by ), a young boy gifted with psychic abilities who runs away from the circus to try to sneak into a summer camp for those with similar powers to become a 'Psychonaut', a spy with psychic abilities. He finds that there is a sinister plot occurring at the camp that only he can stop. The game is centered on exploring the strange and imaginative minds of various characters that Raz encounters as a Psychonaut-in-training/'Psycadet' to help them overcome their fears or memories of their past, so as to gain their help and progress in the game. Raz gains use of several psychic abilities during the game that are used for both attacking foes and solving puzzles.Psychonauts was based on an abandoned concept that had during the development of, which he expanded out into a full game through his then new company Double Fine. The game was initially backed by 's as a premiere title for the, but several internal and external issues led to difficulties for Double Fine in meeting various milestones and responding to testing feedback.

Following Fries' departure in 2004, Microsoft dropped the publishing rights, making the game's future unclear. Double Fine was able to secure as a publisher a few months later allowing them to complete the game after four and a half years of development.Despite being well received, Psychonauts did not sell well with only about 100,000 retail units sold at the time of release, leading to severe financial loss for Majesco and their departure from the video game market; the title was considered a. Psychonauts since has earned a number of industry awards and gained a.

Following the acquisition of the game, Double Fine's republishing capabilities and support for modern platforms has allowed them to offer the game through, and the company has reported that their own sales of the game have far exceeded what was initially sold on its original release, with cumulative sales of nearly 1.7 million as of December 2015. A sequel, was announced at in December 2015 and is planned for a 2020 release. Contents.Gameplay Psychonauts is a that incorporates various elements. The player controls the main character Raz in a third-person, three-dimensional view, helping Raz to uncover a mystery at the Psychonauts training camp. Raz begins with basic movement abilities such as running and jumping, but as the game progresses, Raz gains additional psychic powers such as,. These abilities allow the player to explore more of the camp as well as fight off enemies.

These powers can either be awarded by completing certain story missions, gaining psi ranks during the game, or by purchasing them with hidden scattered around the camp. Powers can be improved — such as more damaging pyrokinesis or longer periods of invisibility — through gaining additional psi ranks. The player can assign three of these powers to their controller or keyboard for quick use, but all earned powers are available at any time through a selection screen.The game includes both the 'real world' of the camp and its surroundings, as well as a number of 'mental worlds' which exist in the consciousness of the game's various characters. The mental worlds have wildly differing art and level design aesthetics, but generally have a specific goal that Raz must complete to help resolve a psychological issue a character may have, allowing the game's plot to progress. Within the mental worlds are that react negatively to Raz's presence and will attack him.

There are also various collectibles within the mental worlds, including 'figments' of the character's imagination which help increase Raz's psi ranking, ' which can be sorted by finding tags and bringing them to the baggage, and 'memory vaults' which can unlock a short series of slides providing extra information on that character's backstory. Most of these worlds culminate in a battle that fully resolves the character's emotional distress and advance the story. The player is able to revisit any of these worlds after completing them to locate any additional collectibles they may have missed.

Raz is given some items early in the game, one that allows him to leave any mental world at any time, and another that can provide hints about what to do next or how to defeat certain enemies.Raz can take damage from psychically empowered creatures around the camp at night, or by censors in the mental worlds; due to a curse placed on his family, Raz is also vulnerable to water. If Raz's health is drained, he is respawned at the most-recent checkpoint. However, this can only be done so many times while Raz is within a mental world, indicated by the number of remaining; if these are expended through respawning, Raz is ejected from the character's mind and must re-enter to make another attempt. Health and additional projections can be collected throughout the levels, or purchased at the camp store.Plot Setting The story is set in fictional Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, a remote US government training facility under the guise of a children's. Centuries ago the area was hit by a meteor made of psitanium (a that can grant psychic powers or strengthen existing powers), creating a huge crater. The psitanium affected the local wildlife, giving them limited psychic powers, such as bears with the ability to attack with claws and with.

The Native Americans of the area called psitanium 'whispering rock', which they used to build arrowheads. When settlers began inhabiting the region, the psychoactive properties of the meteor slowly drove them insane.

An was built to house the afflicted, but within fifteen years, the asylum had more residents than the town did and the founder committed suicide by throwing himself from the asylum's tower. The government relocated the remaining inhabitants and flooded the crater to prevent further settlement, creating what is now Lake. The asylum still stands, but has fallen into disrepair.The government took advantage of the psitanium deposit to set up a training camp for Psychonauts, a group of agents gifted with psychic abilities by the psitanium used to help defeat evil-doers. The training ground is disguised as a summer camp for young children, but in reality helps the children to hone their abilities and to train them to be Psychonauts themselves.

Due to this, only those recruited by the Psychonauts are allowed into the camp.Characters. Group photo of Whispering Rock campers and Ford CrullerThe protagonist and playable character of the game is Razputin 'Raz' Aquato, the son of a family of performers, who runs away from the circus to become a Psychonaut, despite his father's wishes. His family is cursed to die in water, and a large hand attempts to submerge Raz whenever he approaches any significantly deep water. When at camp, Raz meets four of the Psychonauts that run the camp: the cool and calculating Sasha Nein (voice actor ), the fun-loving Milla Vodello, the regimental Agent/Coach Morceau Oleander (voice actor ), and the aged, Ford Cruller, said by Raz to have been the greatest leader the Psychonauts ever had, until a past psychic duel shattered Ford's psyche and left him with, also known as a split personality. Only when he is near the large concentration of Psitanium does his psyche come together enough to form his real personality. During his time at camp, Raz meets several of the other gifted children including Lili Zanotto, the daughter of the Grand Head of the Psychonauts, with whom he falls in love; and Dogen Boole, a boy who goes around with a hat to prevent his abilities from causing anyone's head to explode. Raz also meets ex-residents of the insane asylum including ex- Dr.

Loboto; as well as Boyd Cooper, a former milkman that holds a number of government conspiracy theories; Fred Bonaparte, an asylum inmate being possessed by the ghost of his ancestor, Napoleon Bonaparte, Gloria Van Gouten, a former actress driven insane by a family tragedy, Edgar Teglee, a painter whose girlfriend cheated on him, and Linda, the gigantic that protects the asylum from campgoers.Story Raz, having fled from the circus, tries to sneak into the camp, but is caught by the Psychonauts. They agree to let him stay until his parents arrive, but refuse to let him take part in any activities. However, they do allow him to take part in Coach Oleander's 'Basic Braining' course, which he easily passes.

Impressed, Sasha invites Raz to take part in an experiment to determine the extent of his abilities. During the experiment, Raz comes across a vision of Dr. Loboto extracting Dogen's brain, but is unable to intervene.

Raz eventually realizes that the vision is true after finding Dogen without a brain, but the Psychonauts refuse to believe him. After receiving additional training from Milla, Raz learns that Dr. Loboto is working on behalf of Coach Oleander, who intends to harvest the campers' brains to power an army of psychic death tanks. Lili is soon abducted as well, and with both Sasha and Milla missing, Raz takes it upon himself to infiltrate the abandoned where she was taken. Ford gives him a piece of which he can use to contact Ford at any time, and tasks him with retrieving the stolen brains so that he can return them to the campers.Raz frees the mutated lungfish Linda from Oleander's control, and she takes him safely across the lake. At the asylum, Raz helps the inmates overcome their illnesses, and they help him access the upper levels of the asylum, where Loboto has set up his lab. He frees Lili and restores Sasha and Milla's minds, allowing them to confront Oleander.

The inmates subsequently burn down the asylum, allowing Oleander to transfer his brain to a giant tank. Raz defeats him, but when he approaches the tank, it releases a cloud of sneezing powder, causing him to sneeze his brain out.

Raz uses his telekinesis to place his brain inside the tank, merging it with Oleander's.Inside, Raz discovers that Oleander's evil springs from his childhood fear of his father, who ran a butcher shop, being amplified by the psitanium. At the same time, Raz's own father appears and the two dads join forces. However, he turns out to be an imposter, with Raz's real father appearing and using his own psychic abilities to fix his son's tangled mind and beat the personal demons. At the camp's closing ceremony, Ford presents him with a uniform and welcomes him into the Psychonauts.

Raz prepares to leave camp with his father, but word arrives that the Grand Head of the Psychonauts—Lili's father, Truman Zanotto—has been kidnapped. Thus Raz and the Psychonauts fly off on their new mission.Development Psychonauts was the debut title for Double Fine Productions, a development studio that founded after leaving following their decision to exit the market. Schafer's initial studio hires included several others that worked alongside him on.The for Psychonauts was originally conceived during the development of, where Tim Schafer envisioned a sequence where the protagonist Ben goes under a -induced. While this was eventually ejected from the original game (for not being family friendly enough), Schafer kept the idea and eventually developed it into Psychonauts.

While still working at LucasArts, Tim Schafer decided to use the name 'Raz' for a main character because he liked the nickname of the LucasArts animator,. When Mavlian joined Double Fine, there was increased confusion between the character and the animator. The game's associate producer, Camilla Fossen, suggested the name 'Rasputin'. As a compromise, Double Fine's lawyer suggested the trademarkable name 'Razputin', which was used for the game.Most of the game's dialog and script was written by Schafer and, who at the time was a columnist for the website. After establishing the game's main characters, Schafer undertook his own exercise to write out how the characters would see themselves and the other characters' on a social media site similar to, which Schafer was a fan of at the time and from where he met his wife-to-be. This helped him to solidify the characters in his own head prior to writing the game's dialog, as well as providing a means of introducing the characters to the rest of the development team.

To help flesh out character dialog outside of cut scenes, Schafer developed an approach that used dozens of spoken lines by a character that could be stitched together in a random manner by the game as to reduce apparent repetition; such stitching included elements like vocal pauses and coughs that made the dialog sound more natural. Schafer used the camp and woods setting as a natural place that children would want to wander and explore. 'The Milkman Conspiracy' level, where a 1950s suburban setting is presented in a twisted reality based on the mind of a conspiracy theorist, is one of Psychonauts 's most famous levels.The game's mental worlds were generally a result of an idea presented by Schafer to the team, flesh out through concept art and gameplay concepts around the idea, and then executed into the game with the asset and gameplay developers, so each world had its own unique identity. One of the game's most famous levels is 'The Milkman Conspiracy', which takes place in the mind of Boyd, one of the patients at the mental hospital who is obsessed with. Schafer had been interested in knowing what went on inside the minds of those that believed in conspiracy theories, inspired by watching as a child.

During a Double Fine dinner event, someone had uttered the line 'I am the milkman, my milk is delicious.' , which led Schafer to create the idea of Boyd, a milkman bent on conspiracy theories. Schafer then worked out a web of conspiracy theories, wanting the level to be a maze-like structure around those, tying that in to Boyd's backstory as a person who had been fired from many different jobs, partially inspired by a homeless person that Double Fine occasionally paid to help clean their office front. Schaefer had wanted the 1950s suburban vibe to the level as it would fit in with the spy theme from the same period. Artist Scott Campbell fleshed out these ideas, along with the featureless modeled after the characters. Came up with the idea of vaulting the suburban setting into vertical spaces as to create a maze-like effect, which inspired the level designers and gameplay developers to create a level where the local gravity would change for Raz, thus allowing him to move across the warped setting that was created. The level's unique gameplay aspect, where Raz would need to give specific G-men a proper object as in, was from gameplay developer Erik Robson as a means to take advantage of the inventory feature that they had given Raz.

Schafer had wanted Wolpaw to write the lines for the G-men, but as he was too busy, Schafer ended up writing these himself.The art design crew included background artist Peter Chan and cartoonist Scott Campbell., best known for his portrayal of Zim in the cult favorite, provides the voice of Raz, the game's protagonist. Initially the team tried to bring in children to provide the voices for the main cast, similar to cartoons, but struggled with their lack of acting experience.

Schafer had selected Horvitz based on his audition tapes and ability to provide a wide range of vocal intonations on the spot, providing them with numerous takes to work with. Raz was originally conceived as an suffering from mental imbalance and multiple personalities.

Tim Schafer killed the idea because he strongly believes in games being 'wish fulfillments,' guessing that not many people fantasize about being an insane ostrich.Double Fine created a number of internal tools and processes to help with the development of the game, as outlined by executive producer Caroline Esmurdoc. With the focus of the game on Raz as the playable character within a platformer game, the team created the 'Raz Action Status Meeting' (RASM). These were held bi-weekly with each meeting focusing on one specific movement or action that Raz had, reviewing how the character controlled and the visual feedback from that so that the overall combination of moves felt appropriate.

With extensive use of the scripting language, they created their own internal Lua nicknamed Dougie, after a homeless man near their offices they had befriended, that helped to normalize their debugging processes and enable third-party tools to interact with the name. With a large number of planned, Double Fine took the time to create a cutscene editor so that the scriptwriters could work directly with the models and environments already created by the programmers without requiring the programmer's direct participation. For level design, though they had initially relied on the idea of simply placing various triggers throughout a level to create an event, the resulting Lua code was large and bulky with potential for future error. They assigned eight of the game programmers to assist the level developers to trim this code, and instituted an internal testing department to overlook the stability of the whole game which had grown beyond what they could do internally. Initially this was formed from unpaid volunteers they solicited on Double Fine's web site, but following the signing of the Majesco publication deal in 2004, they were able to commit full-time staff to this team.

Development and publishing difficulties Esmurdoc described the development of Psychonauts as difficult due to various setbacks, compounded by the new studio's lack of experience in how to manage those setbacks. The game's initial development began in 2001 during the. Due to the cost of office space at that time, Double Fine had established an office in an inexpensive warehouse in San Francisco that initially fit their development needs. By 2003, they had come to realize the area they were in was not safe or readily accommodating, slowing down their development. With the collapse of the dot-com bubble, they were able to secure better office space, though this further delayed production.

Schafer was also handling many of the duties for both the studio and the development of the game. Though some of the routine business tasks were offloaded to other studio heads, Schafer brought Esmurdoc onto the project in 2004 to help produce the game while he could focus on the creative side.The intent to allow all developers to have artistic freedom with the game created some internal strife in the team, particularly in the level design; they had initially scoped that level designers would create the basic parts of a level - main paths, scripted events, and the level's general design, while the artists would build out the world from that. As development progressed, they determined that the artists should be the ones constructing the level geometry, which the level designers resented. Subsequently, levels that were generated were not to the expected standards due to conflicts in the toolsets they used and Schafer's inability to oversee the process while handling the other duties of the studio. Main articles: andA sequel to Psychonauts has been of great detail of interest to Schafer, as well as to fans of the game and the gaming press. Schafer had pitched the idea to publishers but most felt the game too strange to take up. During the campaign for Double Fine's in February 2012, Schafer commented on the development costs of a sequel over social media, leading to a potential interest in backing by, at the time the owner of.

Though Persson ultimately did not fund this, interactions between him and Double Fine revealed the possibility of several interested investors to help.In mid-2015, Schafer along with other industry leaders launched, a crowd-sourced platform for video games that included the option for accredited investors to invest in the offered campaigns. Later, at the 2015 in December, Schafer announced their plans to work on Psychonauts 2, using Fig to raise the $3.3 million needed to complete the game, with an anticipated release in 2018. The campaign succeeded on January 6, 2016. The sequel will see the return of Richard Horvitz and Nikki Rapp as the voices of Raz and Lili respectively, along with Wolpaw for writing, Chan and Campbell for art, and McConnell for music.Additionally, Double Fine has developed a VR title called for use on,.

Released in 2017, it serves as a standalone chapter to tie the original game and its sequel, based on Raz and the other Psychonauts rescuing Truman Zanotto. Appearance in other media The character Raz has made appearances in other games, including as a massive -like mountain sculpture in, and on a cardboard cutout within. Raz also appeared in a downloadable content package as a playable character for. References.

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You see, son.it's just no good! I hate to be so blunt, but.you have the insanity.of a manatee! / Dogen: I know. People are always saying that.

What do you think's wrong with my brain, doctor? / Doctor Loboto: How should I know, I'm a dentist. But here's what I do know: if a tooth is bad, you pull it!. Double Fine Productions. Level/area: Whispering Rock. Razputin: Dogen! Are you okay?

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