time no longer has any meaning. “He basically
has the ability to form time to his perception
of it,” Schafer explains. “Which, in practical
terms, means you get to slow things down in
the world.” And so we use it on a rapidly-
spinning fan to leap between its blades while
one of those flying fish becomes a stepping
stone to a distant platform.
The light (whose real identity is a secret)
has spent so long alone that he’s initially
confused by this sight. “Is that a fish? I think
it’s a fish! Or a bus?” it says, adding as we
step off, “Well, you rode on it so I guess it’s
a bus.” His chatterbox commentary makes
the journey even more enjoyable, not least
because Schafer’s lines are being delivered by
the inimitable Jack Black. This marks their
third time working together after Brütal
Legend and Broken Age, and it’s a collaboration
that continues to strike comedic gold. “I know
what this is! A blender, right?” he chirps as
you approach a spotlight. Then, as you turn
it towards a prism to create a rainbow bridge,
realisation sets in. “Oh no, you’re right, it’s
a lamp.” Then, after a perfectly-judged beat:
“A lamp for making drinks.”
If it’s a revelatory experience for both
player and mystery light ball, for the latter it
all becomes a bit too much too soon. And
when Raz tells him not to panic, it’s the worst
thing he could have said. The word triggers
the physical manifestation of a panic attack, a
jagged, jittery creature appearing that skitters
about inside a large arena. It’s Raz’s job to
take it down, and we do it without too much
trouble, slowing its rapid movements with
our newfound skill before smacking it around
and repeating until it’s gone. Panic over.
Amid the relative calm of the rest of the
stage, it feels – as it should – like an
anomaly, a sudden and dramatic burst of
nervy activity when you least expect it. It
comes on, in other words, just like a real panic
attack. It’s a reminder, too, that the original
Psychonauts was examining mental health
issues long before it became de rigueur to
speak more openly about them. “I mean,
I don’t think we did everything perfectly and
I think we’ve learned a lot since 2004,”
Schafer says. “But our instinct was definitely
not to make fun of mental illness. The whole
thing about Psychonauts is that you’ll meet
somebody who’s doing something negative:
they’re behaving badly, they’re being really
aggressive, they’re acting like a jerk and you
don’t know what’s going on. And the
tendency is to write them off as an enemy,
but in Psychonauts you go into their brain, and
you find what’s going wrong in there, you find
out that they’re wrestling with this traumatic
memory or this demon in their mind,HEAD TRIP