Zodi Plays: Psychonauts (This One Time, At ESPer Camp...)

[LaZodiac]

How's about some Psychonauts to start off your day?

Zodi Plays: Psychonauts [13] The Milk

Video Length: 23:55

Starting us off today, we quickly get the second to last scavenger hunt item back in the campground; an old miner's skull that we need the Shield power to obtain. I'm not a big fan of this since it's pretty unintuitive, but given the other scavenger hunt items have required using our powers this one needing one makes a degree of sense as well. You just gotta figure it out.

Now for the real meat and potatoes of the episode. Heading up to the asylum, it seems our route into the place is actually blocked by the night watchman. Though judging from his scribbles and his ranting, he should be on the other side of this gate. Without many options at our disposal, we throw out Sasha's psychic portal to invade his mind. At first everything feels relatively normal, and then we find the Clairvoyance merit badge in his fridge, which helps him see the world like he does. It seems the Milkman is missig, maybe dead, and Boyd won't help us out until we find the Milkman. So, we step out into the rest of his mind.

Outside the mental confines of his home we find a level with some of the best representations of what it would actually be like to be within someone else's mental world. Welcome, to the Milkman Conspiracy. A simple sleepy suburb, but eyes are hidden everywhere, watching us. The figments are mostly just regular, ordinary people and things, but enough of them hide cameras or are actually sinister if you look closely that it's actually off putting. There are black cars in every driveway, and secret agents clearly pretending to be other people milling about being suspicious. It is in my opinion this stage, where the game actually truly begins. The first three were tutorials, made by psychonauts to help you out. Fish town is fish town. Here we have our first look into someone's actual psyche. Unfortunately, mechanically, it's not super great. It's the most Adventeure Game-y of them all, having us run around solving relatively simple puzzles to obtain items that will let us pass by the agents, all to make our way to the graveyard so we can find the book that tells us where the Milkman is.

Helping us with this is the Clairvoyance power, which is my favorite power in the game. With it, we can see 2D representations of what the target of our Clairvoyance thinks of Raz. These are often some of the funnier jokes this game has, like the weird brain slugs that transport things around seeing Raz as a package. The effect is amplified in the Milkman Conspiracy since just holding say, a pair of hedge trimmers makes us look like a completely different person. It's fun, relatively flavorful, and shows just how unfortunately warped Boyd's mind is. So long as you have the most basic of appearance signals, you are a gardener, or a plumber, or a road crew worker.

All that aside, it's not time I talked about the thing that makes me so negative about this part of the game. My past time playing this game, the first time I played this game, I had to use the keyboard and mouse controls. This was the first real mark against the game, since the keyboard controls are abjectly terrible. But things where, for the most part, fine. I got the cobweb duster, got the dowsing rod, got a ton of arrowheads and spent them all, it was all good and cool. Then I got to Boyd's level. Starting with the Milkman Conspiracy, every level has at least one mental cobweb that is explicitly in your way and MUST be collected to pass. Unfortunately, the game has a rather severe glitch where, at random, without any indication and without any obvious triggers (which is to say, it can happen at random) the Cobweb Duster can just vanish from your inventory forever. You have to go buy it back from the camp store. Now, given my arrowhead count currently this isn't that big a deal. Back when I first played I had basically run the store dry buying as much as I could, buying a ton of cores and such, and I had run out of Deep Arrowheads to find. Which meant I needed to grind up the arrowheads in the camp, one at a time, to get all 800 I needed to buy the Cobweb Duster again so I could actually continue on with the level.

Adding insult to injury, this game features ye olde classic cheat codes. One of which is to get max arrowheads. Unfortunately, the PC version had those removed for no reason. Now, as of last year or so, Psychonauts was updated to have achievements and to reduce the difficulty of one of the levels later down the line...but they didn't fix the cobweb duster glitch or put cheat codes back in as a failsafe against this glitch. Which can still happen, by the way, and guess what? There is a point of new return in this game. And if you pass it and your cobweb duster vanishes, you're basically out of luck. Hope you had a prior save! So yeah, this incident incredibly soured my opinion of the game, and given the Milkman Conspiracy is kinda tedious to play and a little too long (and other things we'll get into next time and in the videos to come) this last segment killed my enthusiasm for the game almost entirely.

All that aside this run has made me like the game a lot more. Hope you all enjoyed this silly, ranty video. See you guys next time for more milk.

[DataNinja]

Spoiler: I am an forumite poster. I like making posts.

Show

...when you have collectables right in the middle of the path, I might suggest re-evaluating how many 'collectables' you have, Game.

I see we've also been recolouring our powers.

I'm liking this neighbourhood, from the looks of it. Takes something, well, ordinary, and puts an unnatural twist (heh) on it.

It depends on the hedge. Some have a lot less dense branches and stuff, but a proper (and well-established) one is pretty solid, just because there's no room to squeeze in between anywhere.

[LaZodiac]

Starting from when we got the colourizer I've been changing the orb colour to match the level, actually. So yes, nice catch

[Ebon_Drake]

Huh, hadn't heard of that glitch. That really does suck. I'd expected your complaint to just be that there's a point where you can't progress without having the cobweb duster and you'd had to grind for it in the dark with pyro-cougars around, but that is a legit beef against the game so fair enough.

Honestly, you're better off not using Levitation much in the Milkman Conspiracy anyway. It's far too easy to go flying off into the void and die. That was one aspect of it I didn't like, particularly since Sasha's mind had handled screwy geometry so well. In any case, it really does pay to be methodical in going through Boyd's level to make sure you get all the figments. I made the same mistake of shortcutting and then losing track of which houses I'd been in. It doesn't help that it's another case where the bright palette means the figments tend to blend in.

One interesting thing about the emotional baggage is that while all the minds have the same five items, they do have unique crying sounds that correspond with the mind you're in. It's a neat little touch that makes them slightly more notable.

I didn't have trouble figuring out the solution to the post office keypad puzzle, but I did have a bizarre amount of trouble in actually using the keypad. I'm not sure if it's how I mapped the controls, but for some reason the button I had to use to press the numbers on it was jump?! Despite the fact that there's a perfectly good interact button in the game and at least four other better potential options than the jump key. I cycled through literally every other button that the game uses and wracked my brain trying to think what else it could be before I eventually thought "oh hey, what about jump?" Stupid keypad.

I've now completed the game and 100%'d the achievements, which is the first time I've actually bothered doing that. And I did it all with keyboard and mouse too . Using a controller would probably be easier, but the only real trouble I had with K+M was completing the punching challenge in Basic Braining.

[smuchmuch]

(Well I think adventure games are great, especialy Grim Fandango, so I'm totaly willng to strike you pon that hill you are so willing to die on.
....I just need to find a weapon which I will no doubt make out of wooden sticks, duct tape an an old shrimp fork which a old man in peru will hav given me in echage for a metal detector whch isfounf in....)

That said the gameplay on the milkman conspiracy is not it's greatest point I'll grant it, inventory maageent in this game is more of a chore than anything else. And you misremember dear lady, devoid of combat ? I whish It has one of the most annoying mini boss in the entire game.

No what stals the sow here are the visual of course, but also sounds. The agents steal the show, there's something almost hypnotic in listening just how many lines they have all in that deadpan tone, the nonsensical animation with their respective and Boyd's semi randomly generated ramblings.

Plus fun with cairvoyance

It's pretty much the poster boy level for this game and most people favorite level. To me, it's the second as I prefer the one right after.

[Coidzor]

In my experience, the best place to grind for arrowheads isn't in the camp, but instead in a place, such as Sasha's Lab, where there are a lot of breakables. Actually, I think the number of breakables increase starting with Lungfishopolis and the next 4 worlds after that. Lungfishopolis would be perfect for grinding extra arrowheads if not for the awkward slowdown effect, come to think of it.

In the interest of fairness, here is my attempts at picking apart what the fish's mental world is like and why. The lungfish running around town are the actual mental image of the fish's self, split into tiny pieces and sedated by the artifice of the mind control implants. The revolutionaries, terrible at it though they may be, are the parts of Linda's brain that won't give up the fight. The Navy are all aspects of this mind control device, defenses attached to it that create psionic constructs within the mental world to combat would be attackers. As for why the mental world itself has memories of a time before the mind control, I have absolutely nothing. Especially given the other memory vault does show the actual reality of our fishy friend. But hey, at least I tried to explain it. That's more than the game can say.

The real question is... where did Linda get a teevee before she was kidnapped by Coach Oleander?

And is it perhaps Linda's love of television which has imprinted upon the brainless campers after she returned their bodies to the campground?

[LaZodiac]

It's time to deliver the milk.

Zodi Plays: Psychonauts [14] Cookies

Video Length: 26:57

Starting off this episode, we solve the hedge maze finally. This one is...annoying. It's very simple of course, you just find a crow feather (which we already have in the real world) and use Clairvoyance on it near those crows in the maze and...that opens up the gate to the flowers we need to become a grieving widow. It's probably the most Adventure Game-y scenario we have to deal with in this game, because it really doesn't make any sense. But it's okay, because now we can sneak into the graveyard! Within the graveyard we find that the Milkman's body isn't here, and instead we find a book. The book ultimately contains nothing, but it's FROM the book depository, so now we know where to go. And by that I mean we're going to the post office. This bit is of course finicky as it's hard to get the Clairvoyance to hit the target. It's not that bad though. Once we're inside, we find a spooky dark room that hides the Plunger, which we need to get to the book depository. Nothing can stop us now!

Except for a Nightmare, of course. The remnant of an abandoned plot line, for some reason Boyd still has Nightmare fights in his brain. And boy, what fights they are. I'm trying to be more positive but they're really just not good at all. Their only real attack that I've encountered is their grab, which is unavoidable if you're actually trying to deal damage to them in a timely fashion. Otherwise they just move around the battlefield in faux menace. Once you've hit them enough they break open, spewing out inner rage which you can grab with your TK and throw into it to finish it off. But what if you don't have enough rank to HAVE TK? I don't know! As far as I know you either get enough to have TK or you're stuck fighting the boss forever.

With the Nightmare out of the way we can now head to the book depot. It's not that hard to get there, though the sniper segment can be tricky if you're not careful. Also tricky, getting the game to register that you're hitting Clairvoyance so you can use the helicopter helmet we find the way the game WANTS us too. This bit was actually super annoying, as I hope you can tell from how I'm mashing the button after a point. But we finally get it, and it reveals the location of the Milkman! So now all we need to do is go there and get into the building. After we get into another Nightmare fight woo boy.

Now that we're actually AT the main rainbow squirt building, we have to get inside. And...this is a very difficult part, which took me FOREVER. In order to get into there, the game WANTS you to shoot the child with your PSI Blast. But this is actually impossible given the set up of the area and how fast she zooms away if you get spotted. The other way you get in is by being invisible and sneaking past her, but she can see you if you're invisible (as has been shown earlier in this video or last one, I think) so she will just run back and close the door! Now, it occurred to me while editing that you could PROBABLY drop down from the roof to get inside, but it really doesn't feel like there's enough time to do that. But, finally, we do it...and we are rewarded with a really bad bossfight. The way her two attacks work, it's very difficult to actually get in a hit. She throws her Gods Eye shuriken thing at the exact intervals that the cookie bomb explodes, meaning that to avoid one implicitly means getting hit by the other, like 80% of the time. The way you hurt her is by punching her, which is often just not viable, or using TK to throw the cookie bombs at her, which is also basically not viable half of the time. After we beat her up enough, she makes the entire arena go into the dark, meaning the only way we can progress is by using the Gods Eye she dropped to Clairvoyance into her head. But as I've shown you, the game is unreliable about actually making that WORK. Even when you do get it to work, you're now doing this exact same boss pattern with all these stupidly timed attacks, but from her perspective so it's harder. This is a REALLY hard boss, which makes no sense given this levels anti-focus on combat. This is a puzzle level, it shouldn't have a boss fight in the traditional sense.

But whatever. We beat the Den Mother, releasing the Milkman! Boyd proceeds to uh...blow up everything. The rainbow squirts hiding his aggressive tendencies and programming, the agents trying to find them to squash that programming, the censors that are here to help out. Everything. Everything will be bathed in the off white colour of door to door milk. We're the hero! With all that said and done, we finish collecting all of Boyd's brain stuff. Hope you all enjoyed, I'll see you guys next time for...another stage that is sorta infamous.

------

So, how does one go about psychoanalyzing Boyd? Well, it's clear he's got paranoid delusions, brought on by a mix of him losing multiple jobs and his own personal problems (some of the figments show a worker getting drunk and are located in pretty clear hiding spots, making it obvious that Boyd has not been fired for NO reason, at least). The poor guy finally snaps and makes molotov cocktails out of some milk and blows up the mall he was working at, and is sent to the insane asylum...where he's programmed by Oleander to serve as his watchmen. And as we saw once we killed the Den Mother and triggered his programming, his other function is to destroy the Asylum and everyone in it to hide what Oleander is doing. Devious.

I actually quite like how the game presents Boyd's various conspiracy theories. Mentally, it turns out those agents are just factors of his own mind and while they ARE making him think things are all connected and out to get him, they're working with the censors of his mind to remove the programming. Even though his thoughts are full of crazed, wild imaginings, even his brain can tell what is and isn't a foreign entity in his mind. It's cool because we never actually fight or see censors until that scene, since we're such a small problem in the grand scheme of things. Too bad that it seems Oleander planned for this, and the trigger of Boyd's Milkman persona is the programming being attacked mentally. This is how you do this by the way, you don't just stick buildings and a Jet Jaguar reference into an island chain and populate it with fish people and say it's mental programming, you have to actually do it with nuance since at the mental level that's all you have.

The nightmares even make sense to be here, though I feel (and still feel honestly) that they're massive wastes of time and make Milla's nightmares feel less unique due to just being copies of it. Boyd's nightmares being flame based makes sense given his trauma, but if you're gonna shove in two stupid nightmare fights make him more thematic and don't just rip off one of the only things I really REALLY like about this game. So yeah, that's Boyd's mind, a paranoid psyche that is literally fighting itself in a twisted suburbia. I really like it.

[DataNinja]

Ick. Bad boss design. The only way to attack it lets it occasionally unavoidably damage you?

Huh... is it just me, or does the Milkman look like Boyd?

So... there's no difference between those two nightmares?

There was also that agent using the flowers as a golf club. So, yes, they're not the best at their job.
(Regardless, I still find it all hilarious.)

To be fair, if you headed back along the lines right now, you'd have to come back this way anyways to continue, so it's really not increasing the number of trips. (Granted, I'm sure you'll be doing it during clean-up instead...)
Oh, nevermind. You did it now.

Welp. Okay then. Kaboom.

[Xondoure]

Just reading through! A few things to note, because while I certainly agree Psychonauts is a flawed game I think you all are being a tad on the harsh side. First off: comparing it to Mario Sunshine is not a fair statement, because the size and budget of the development teams are not comparable. Psychonauts was made with limited time and money and it shows.

In defense of figments and too many damn collectibles, the game is not actually all that long and as such is one of the few that I have actually bothered to 100% complete. That said, I feel your pain. I remember fruitless deaths trying to get the last figments out of the saw room in the Coaches head.

Finally: Lungfishopolis vs. Boyd the Milkman and mental programming. The difference in how these things express is one of methods. The lungfish literally has a chip in its head forcing it to do the coaches bidding. That's why the Coach's control of the Lungfish is represented by Lungfishopolis, a lungfish military, and of course the radio tower. Boyd is the result of a person who after performing grand arson was abused at an insane asylum for years and is desperately trying to pick up the pieces of his scattered mind. The coach only had to tap into preexisting psychosis to turn Boyd into his pawn. The absence of a literal mind control chip is what separates those situations.

Edit: on bad boss design, IIRC it was hard but I don't think you have to get hit to hurt the troop master? IDK, been a while

[Ebon_Drake]

Just shoot the boss, ya big dummy! Same goes for the nightmares.

Agree that getting through the door to the Rainbow Squirt hideout is terribad and took me ages. It is better if you've got upgraded invisibility, so don't have to worry so much about the timer running out. I don't think the squirt can actually see through it, but she only stands outside for a ridiculously short amount of time so it's really hard to then jump over her. I did try jumping onto the roof and then dropping down behind the squirt, but the roof overhangs and the squirt barely steps past it so it's either impossible or extremely hard. I never thought of shooting her, but Invisibilty plus Psi Blast would probably be the best solution.

[LaZodiac]

Just reading through! A few things to note, because while I certainly agree Psychonauts is a flawed game I think you all are being a tad on the harsh side. First off: comparing it to Mario Sunshine is not a fair statement, because the size and budget of the development teams are not comparable. Psychonauts was made with limited time and money and it shows.

In defense of figments and too many damn collectibles, the game is not actually all that long and as such is one of the few that I have actually bothered to 100% complete. That said, I feel your pain. I remember fruitless deaths trying to get the last figments out of the saw room in the Coaches head.

Finally: Lungfishopolis vs. Boyd the Milkman and mental programming. The difference in how these things express is one of methods. The lungfish literally has a chip in its head forcing it to do the coaches bidding. That's why the Coach's control of the Lungfish is represented by Lungfishopolis, a lungfish military, and of course the radio tower. Boyd is the result of a person who after performing grand arson was abused at an insane asylum for years and is desperately trying to pick up the pieces of his scattered mind. The coach only had to tap into preexisting psychosis to turn Boyd into his pawn. The absence of a literal mind control chip is what separates those situations.

Edit: on bad boss design, IIRC it was hard but I don't think you have to get hit to hurt the troop master? IDK, been a while

I also compare it to Sly Cooper, which is far more comparable. I admit that yeah, it's not fair, but it's worth thinking at least. I am trying to be less negative in my commentary from this point on, it's just hard due to my prior experience with the game.

I get that, I just think that for Lungfishopolis it just leads to an otherwise not enjoyable level, whereas in Milk it leads to a good level.

Just shoot the boss, ya big dummy! Same goes for the nightmares.

Agree that getting through the door to the Rainbow Squirt hideout is terribad and took me ages. It is better if you've got upgraded invisibility, so don't have to worry so much about the timer running out. I don't think the squirt can actually see through it, but she only stands outside for a ridiculously short amount of time so it's really hard to then jump over her. I did try jumping onto the roof and then dropping down behind the squirt, but the roof overhangs and the squirt barely steps past it so it's either impossible or extremely hard. I never thought of shooting her, but Invisibilty plus Psi Blast would probably be the best solution.

I swear I've tried that before and it doesn't work. My bad, then, though that doesn't work for Den Mother for the game reasons the rest of the ways you have to fight her don't. As far as I can tell anyway.

[smuchmuch]

Technically the intent of the maze door puzzle is not that you just have to look at it with crow eyes for it to open.
It is that it opens when you pass hrough the little door but close when you go through it again, somethig you can only realise only through clairvoyance as it give you a view of both doors, so you have to jump over the little door. (Mid yo haven't tried to jsut jump over the small door wihout uing lairvoance to see if it works) You just solve the puzzle by accient because you like bouncing around a lot.

I swear I've tried that before and it doesn't work. My bad, then, though that doesn't work for Den Mother for the game reasons the rest of the ways you have to fight her don't. As far as I can tell anyway.

You can shoot the nightmares and you can shoot the den mother, even when looking through her POV. However the targeting detection is kinda wonky so you still need to get fairly close to hit reliably (at the bottom of the stairs at least) and since those are two fights were you need to move a lot to avoid being hit, it's fairly annoying.
That said, you most certainly can do it an it is technicaly possible to do this fight without being hurt with shield and TK.

Also It is not an oversight that you need telekinesis to fight the nightmare mnii boss because it is not possible to get to the nighmare mini boss without having the telekinesis badge.
This is in fact why the whole mandatory cobweb' duster is here in this level. There is a mandatory cobweb right in the post office before this fight. You can't buy the cobweb duster from the main lodge until you reach psy rank 20 which, is exactly when you get telekinesis and already got pyrokinesis.

Kinda wish the final level had looked a little more like the original concepts fromt he primal memories.

The nightmares even make sense to be here, though I feel (and still feel honestly) that they're massive wastes of time and make Milla's nightmares feel less unique due to just being copies of it.

In truth this is because they oriinaly were meant to be Mila's nightmare. (and I don't jsut mean the model resused)
While it does make sense enough in the version of the game as it is, according to the psyhonauts wiki,this fight is an artifact from an abandoned storyline where Mila's nightmares would have escaped her mind and infected other people's.

Finally: Lungfishopolis vs. Boyd the Milkman and mental programming. The difference in how these things express is one of methods. The lungfish literally has a chip in its head forcing it to do the coaches bidding. That's why the Coach's control of the Lungfish is represented by Lungfishopolis, a lungfish military, and of course the radio tower. Boyd is the result of a person who after performing grand arson was abused at an insane asylum for years and is desperately trying to pick up the pieces of his scattered mind. The coach only had to tap into preexisting psychosis to turn Boyd into his pawn. The absence of a literal mind control chip is what separates those situations.

Pretty much.

[LaZodiac]

You can't buy the cobweb duster from the main lodge until you reach psy rank 20 which, is exactly when you get telekinesis and already got pyrokinesis.

RIGHT. I entirely forgot that's a thing. I'll give the game that, yeah.

[Coidzor]

Funnily enough, I had the opposite problem. I immediately forgot about the Shield during the Book Depository sequence and apparently just blindly lucked my way into the Rainbow Squirt HQ accidentally after deciding to lead with invisibility on my first try.

Also accidentally solved the Hedge "Maze" just because I like to bounce around when there's no reason to refrain from doing so.

[LaZodiac]

Today is a surprisingly important episode of Psychonauts.

Zodi Plays: Psychonauts [15] All The World's A Stage

Video Length: 24:15

In this episode, we finally finish off the scavenger hunt, getting another achievement and a couple PSI Cadet ranks in the process. We also finally learn Cruller's secret, and learn what the purpose of finding those brains is (beyond just helping our technical friends). After that we make our way to the next stage! It's Gloria von Gouten, a semi famous actress who's star has pretty clearly burnt out considering her current location. And her mental world is, on reflection, probably one of the best in terms of symbolism. But we'll get into that later, though rest assured a lot of it will become clear as we play.

The conceit of Gloria's Stage is that we've got to stop The Phantom within her mind so her inner muse can shine forth. But with a nasty inner critic and a production obsessed with the traumatic and dramatic moments of her life, it'll be tough to work our way through it. We need to find plays that'll play out on set for us, and we need to navigate between sets and moods to influence what, where, and how everything plays out. Each set is a different memory, with the mood changing which memory the stage is being used for. It's really well put together...on paper at least. In practice this is KIND OF annoying, especially since the bad mood has a ton of really annoying enemies. Since this stage is just one singular stage that changes sets, all the figments are mostly hidden here which is both a blessing and a curse. But honestly, after making SMART use of Pyrokinesis and being able to play this area with a controller instead of a keyboard, this stage has come off way better than it did my first time playing it. That's kind of weird, honestly, since I went into this dreading it because I used to hate this level.

But yeah, that'll be it for today. There isn't a LOT to talk about Gloria's Stage, but there also is if you catch my drift. I'm just gonna wait to mention most of it. All I can really specify is, get help if things are going badly for you. It's important. Sorry if this came out of nowhere but I feel it's important!

[DataNinja]

Wouldn't it be better to deliver them as you get them? Since it said delivering them increases your mental health potential. Or is that just a final reward for all of them?

...so, for helping get the star of the show back together, Raz would be the star of the show?

I must admit... the 'bad acting' and the music for the play kinda, well, I'll say I'm not the biggest fan. So, interested in the story it has to tell, but, yeah... hopefully it doesn't overstay its welcome too much.

[LaZodiac]

Wouldn't it be better to deliver them as you get them? Since it said delivering them increases your mental health potential. Or is that just a final reward for all of them?

...so, for helping get the star of the show back together, Raz would be the star of the show?

I must admit... the 'bad acting' and the music for the play kinda, well, I'll say I'm not the biggest fan. So, interested in the story it has to tell, but, yeah... hopefully it doesn't overstay its welcome too much.

To say returning all the brains at once gets you a special reward is...technically true. We'll cover that later

[DataNinja]

To say returning all the brains at once gets you a special reward is...technically true. We'll cover that later

Ah, alright. Makes sense.

[Ebon_Drake]

Yeah, Gloria's Theatre would be my pick for the game's worst level aside from That One Level. It's a shame, because I actually quite like the way the spotlight mechanic is used to reflect Gloria's bipolar condition in-mind and it also goes to a lot of effort to tell us Gloria's story. In theory, it could have been a great level. Unfortunately though, the deliberately bad acting and the music on the happy side are so very grating. The back-and-forth aspect and the puzzle navigation are also frustrating. Gloria outside her mind is also... not ideal since the writers conflated bipolar with having violent mood swings.

Wasn't aware there was some added benefit for not rebraining the children as you go. I'm intrigued!

[Knight9910]

So... one thing I find kind of interesting is how some items in the mental worlds are... "real" and some are just figments, and a lot of times it's the same sorts of items.

Like how in Lungfishopolis, there are solid buildings and there are "just figment" buildings. And now in the actress lady's head there are actual imaginary people like the critic and the stage producer, and then there are "just figments" people like the audience members.

It makes me wonder why some of these items are more solidly imagined then others.

In Gloria's case, maybe the reason why the producer and critic are real is because they hold more significance to her, while she never really thinks that hard about the audience.

It's also interesting to me how some of the imaginary people seem to have solid anatomies while others have Rayman anatomies.

[smuchmuch]

Ah Gloria theater , actualy one of my favorite level of this game. At least definitively th best of meof he the set of three levels to come.

Mother's Basement made a video about it (HUGE SPOILERS for this level though) and I agree with most points give or take some nitpicks.

Gloria outside her mind is also... not ideal since the writers conflated bipolar with having violent mood swings.

Bipolar psychosis however is a thing, farily rare and marginal, thank god but notheless tit does exist.
Given that when we find Gloria she's talking to potted plants and she thinks she's in the middle of a perfomance, it's clear she 's in the middle of a delusional phase when w et her. And the way she speak to Raz as soon a she's out of the 'spotlight' makes it clear she sees him has someone she'd hold rightfull resentement over.

Not saying it's a great representation of bipolar disorder but on reflection it does hold a little better than I previously though when I first played this game.

[Eurus]

You know, I actually wondered if Gloria was more PTSD than bipolar. Although it seems more likely that she's just a badly written bipolar.

[Xondoure]

I feel like Gloria has borderline personality disorder coupled with childhood ptsd, and added onto abuse and neglect suffered at the hands of this clearly-not-okay insane asylum. BPD explains the rapid mood swings and detachment from reality much better than bipolar disorder.

[LaZodiac]

Okay, lets do us a Psychonauts.

Zodi Plays: Psychonauts [16] That's Showbiz

Video Length: 30:17

Last time, we started Gloria's Stage. Today, we continue, making use of the mood matrix and the plays to get further into Gloria's psyche. There really isn't much for me to say HERE, because I kinda stumble my way into the solution to all the puzzles almost immediately, minimizing the difficulty of getting through this stage by quite a lot. We also manage to see basically every memory scene we need to see, making it PRETTY clear what happened to cause Gloria to fall apart. Eventually, we get a hold of the play for the escape from Hagatha Home, which lets us get the balloon to come down for us, lifting us up to the rafters.

In the rafters, we find the Phantom! Chasing him down the catwalks, finding figments, baggage, and the last memory vault along the way, we encounter more than a few really bad platforming glitches, but overall have a decent time. We flash the Phantom in the face with some light, scaring him off, but all that really does is set us up for a rather annoying boss fight that feels entirely tacked on vs the Critic, who is surprise surprise the Phantom. The fight is super annoying, his attacks having far too much homing and the air vent you need to ride up to the rafters being too thin is NOT helping matters. Luckily, he's not TOO hard, just annoying and tedious like most boss fights in this game. But yeah, after crushing her inner critic we have...more or less helped Gloria, I suppose? She gives us her Emmy award, and we leave it off there for today. Hope you enjoyed!

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So, Gloria's Stage is probably the best in terms of sheer symbolism. Gloria's life was the stage in it's entirety, and as such it occupies her mind without end. The figments of her mind are all various stage stuff, with the best use of figments of course being the audience. The stage itself replays traumatic (and happy) memories in repeat, over and over again, obsessed with those moments that refined her. Sadly, the whole bipolar mood switching thing is handled incredibly badly, so while it makes for an interesting mechanic for a level, writing wise it's pretty offensive and bad. Still, it's...it's workable, I suppose. Gloria is the only person with an actual real mental condition and it's really not that surprising it's written poorly. That ASIDE, the actual symbolism of the stage and all that's going on is really good. The inner fight between your personal critic and your muse, your negative and positive, it's expressed really well here. It's important to note that unlike say Boyd's "Den Mother" keeping his mind control trigger hidden, we don't KILL the Critic. We just reduce the unhealthy amount of noise he's throwing Gloria's way. In that sense, I do like this level.

[smuchmuch]

The fight is super annoying, his attacks having far too much homing and the air vent you need to ride up to the rafters being too thin is NOT helping matters.

Yes he leads his shots quite well (they don't home per se as far as I can tell, they are straight shots, he just shoot where you are going to be instead of where you are, half the time)
Yes on the catwalks, you get sandbags dropped on you when you get detected by a beam of light.
And right at the start of the level, you are presented with a "puzzle' where you have to use invisibility to get through a door.
Kind of like the game was trying to tell you something here

(And yes, I tested it, it works, he won't shot if eh can't see you. And t works on other enemies on the level as well. Making it a good way to get away from the big censors on the catwalks so you can blast them from afar or light them on fire or avoid the annoying fire dogs)

As of being long and tedious.. to each their own, I suppose. Personally I liked it and would take it any day over 'vodoo Simon says'. It likely did help that while I usualy really dislike an anemy throwing one liners at my character in vide games, here I found it kind of funny.

[Ebon_Drake]

That lousy mailboat took me ages to figure out. The first time I tried to ride it out, I somehow fell off as it scrolled away and so assumed it was a timed platforming challenge. I kept trying to springboard off the treasure chest to reach the visible script and portal at the higher platform. I eventually got the solution through dumb luck after way too much trial-and-error.

At the risk of repeating myself, just shoot the dang bats! The ricocheting psi blast kills em dead. You can also use shield to hold off the buzzsaw enemies and then hit them when they stop, but yeah I found friendly fire was the easiest solution for them anyway.

I quite liked the rafters section too, although I always struggle to remember it when I think of Gloria's level. Shield is decently effective at stopping the sandbags, although they go on long enough that it's pretty close-run. I also found shield was decent against the burly censors as long as you can get into the right rhythm with it. I didn't think Jasper was too bad as a boss, but hoo boy the floating mechanic does not work well while under fire.

For anyone watching who's not familiar with the game, there is actually a reason why we wanted Gloria's award beyond it being shiny. All will become clear next time.

I'm not sure what you mean by Gloria being the only one with a real mental condition?

Spoiler: Spoilers for the next few levels

Show

Fred has a cartoon version of Dissociative Identity Disorder and Edgar is billed as having OCD with his compulsion to draw the bullfight, although I'd just put him as straight-up obsessive. They're also both rather depressed. We'll obviously get your thoughts on them over the next few videos. There's also Boyd and his paranoia, plus there's presumably a reason why Crispin was in the asylum but we never see it.

[LaZodiac]

Yes he leads his shots quite well (they don't home per se as far as I can tell, they are straight shots, he just shoot where you are going to be instead of where you are, half the time)
Yes on the catwalks, you get sandbags dropped on you when you get detected by a beam of light.
And right at the start of the level, you are presented with a "puzzle' where you have to use invisibility to get through a door.
Kind of like the game was trying to tell you something here

(And yes, I tested it, it works, he won't shot if eh can't see you. And t works on other enemies on the level as well. Making it a good way to get away from the big censors on the catwalks so you can blast them from afar or light them on fire or avoid the annoying fire dogs)

As of being long and tedious.. to each their own, I suppose. Personally I liked it and would take it any day over 'vodoo Simon says'. It likely did help that while I usualy really dislike an anemy throwing one liners at my character in vide games, here I found it kind of funny.

I mean you had to pick the worst boss from that game to make the comparison but I mean eh, that's fine. To each their own! It's entirely fair.

That lousy mailboat took me ages to figure out. The first time I tried to ride it out, I somehow fell off as it scrolled away and so assumed it was a timed platforming challenge. I kept trying to springboard off the treasure chest to reach the visible script and portal at the higher platform. I eventually got the solution through dumb luck after way too much trial-and-error.

At the risk of repeating myself, just shoot the dang bats! The ricocheting psi blast kills em dead. You can also use shield to hold off the buzzsaw enemies and then hit them when they stop, but yeah I found friendly fire was the easiest solution for them anyway.

I quite liked the rafters section too, although I always struggle to remember it when I think of Gloria's level. Shield is decently effective at stopping the sandbags, although they go on long enough that it's pretty close-run. I also found shield was decent against the burly censors as long as you can get into the right rhythm with it. I didn't think Jasper was too bad as a boss, but hoo boy the floating mechanic does not work well while under fire.

For anyone watching who's not familiar with the game, there is actually a reason why we wanted Gloria's award beyond it being shiny. All will become clear next time.

I'm not sure what you mean by Gloria being the only one with a real mental condition?

Spoiler: Spoilers for the next few levels

Show

Fred has a cartoon version of Dissociative Identity Disorder and Edgar is billed as having OCD with his compulsion to draw the bullfight, although I'd just put him as straight-up obsessive. They're also both rather depressed. We'll obviously get your thoughts on them over the next few videos. There's also Boyd and his paranoia, plus there's presumably a reason why Crispin was in the asylum but we never see it.

I am bad at remembering to use the PSI Blasts. Rest assured, I'll make used of em.

Concerning the spoilers:

Spoiler

Show

yeah that's not how any of that works to a degree where I don't feel comfortable saying it's accurate in the slightest. And the last one of those isn't actually OCD he's just got anger issues that express themselves in an interesting way, which is still very wrong but at least reasonable compared to the genetic memory of Napoleon Bonaparte. I'll touch on this stuff later.

[DataNinja]

Does the shield power protect you from the falling sandbags?

And could you invisibility through the spotlights?

Postscript: Apparently yes, given the other comments.

So that was... a chapter. They certainly aren't afraid to pull punches. (Granted, Mila's nightmares rather showed that, too, but this is rather more explicit.)

[Coidzor]

Jasper's tracking adds almost a modicum of challenge until you figure out exactly how wide your zig-zag pattern should be.

Definitely more entertaining than the repeated Nightmare boss fights.

[smuchmuch]

I mean you had to pick the worst boss from that game to make the comparison but I mean eh, that's fine. To each their own! It's entirely fair.

I would have compared it to the Mughsot because of a certan similarity between 'turn herojector on 3 time o make him snerale and 'turn all the mirrors three time to melt his guns' but Mugshot does offers quite a bit of cover during his fight and the three phases have a different layout so fair enough.

Also not to spoil or anything but to avoid some future frustration... the invsibility trick, it works for a certain game of catch. Should make a certain level a litte easier.

I'm not sure what you mean by Gloria being the only one with a real mental condition?

Spoiler: Spoilers for the next few levels

Show

Fred has a cartoon version of Dissociative Identity Disorder and Edgar is billed as having OCD with his compulsion to draw the bullfight, although I'd just put him as straight-up obsessive. They're also both rather depressed. We'll obviously get your thoughts on them over the next few videos. There's also Boyd and his paranoia, plus there's presumably a reason why Crispin was in the asylum but we never see it.

Spoiler

Show

Fred does not have DID.
Fred is just, I think, writen because they wanted to have someone based on the old steretype/joke that there's alway someone in an ainsane asylium who think they are Napoleon or Julius caesar. And that's it.
The whole 'genetic memory' is a poor justification of it.

That said the stereotype Fred is derived from does itself comes from sometihng that had a basis in reality particularly last centuy in Europe (even if t's frequency was eagerted). Namely a form of grandiose delusion were people indentified and modeled themselves after historical figures up to the point that sense of identity could get blurred.

But Fred himself is a joke and the whole level is IMO the worst in the game. (That awfull awfull platforming and frament collecion.. even worse than Mila's race for god sake. And eew fake rench accents. Oh go, so bad.) And easily the one who feel the least like a mental world. AT leas Lunsfshopolis, I could see where the imagery was and how i related but Fed.. eh. Zodi can tear this one apart.

Edgar is a little harder to place, he has anger issues (its the whole point of'El Odio) and some difficultymoing on' but he did build this whole other persona and history over the 'real' events, so there'sdefinitivel some serious escapism oin thee as well, to the poin whre one hs to wonder if h's not a geunely delusional.


Of course if one wants to take the lore of the game in account, thee is he convenient excuses hat the asylium is stil ubilt near Psytanium' which make, accrding to Ford 'unstable people more unstable' (a covenient excuse for lazy writting, you say ? Eh maaybe but then again I alway felt from the tone of the game from the start that nothing about it shuld be taken too seriously.)