have an idea why it’s been five years and
counting since development started, and the
finish line is still a little way off yet. It’s not
the first time a Psychonauts game has
undergone a change of publisher – ironically,
it was Microsoft, which dropped the original,
that came to the rescue this time – and it
seems the appeal of making a sequel made
Schafer forget just how much trouble the first
game was. “After Broken Age, I was like, ‘I want
to do a big game again, I want to make a big
world again,’ and now I remember how hard
that is,” he laughs. “Every level has to feel
really fresh and that we’re doing something
interesting. That’s the hardest part. A level
might work, it might be functional, but if it
has a certain ho-humness about it, it’s back
to the drawing board and that’s often what
takes the most time.”
Still, he says it’s to his team’s credit that
he’s struggling to come up with a single
example of being told any of his ideas has
been unachievable: in fact several, he says,
went straight from that early document intothe game. Some elements have been mixed
up – Schafer’s note cards were scrambled and
rearranged until specific combinations
jumped out – but even the most ambitious
ideas have somehow come to fruition. “We
always dream big,” Johnstone says. “And then
we try to figure out a way to represent an idea
in some way. Maybe we don’t get it on that
first pass, but we work it out creatively and
people are like, ‘Oh my gosh, we’re really
going to do that?’” Titre-Montgomery nods.
“We start with the moonshot, as they say in
startup language, and figure out how we do it
with the technology we have. How do we
balance the emotional moments of this while
trying to tackle production and timing and
resource schedules?” Problem by problem, she
says, it’s been a team effort to work it all out.
“One of the best things about this game is
that I’m the most creatively challenged I’ve
ever been in my career,” she says.
Which isn’t to say that Double Fine
doesn’t appreciate the art of trimming the fat.
“Editing – good editing – lets you focus on
what’s important in the game,” Schafer says.
Is that why the cutscenes are kept so brisk?
Much of the storytelling here is done on thefly, through exchanges between Raz and
Black’s character, while any cinematics feel
short and snappy. Schafer suddenly beams
with delight: “It’s great to hear that because
I’m always sensitive about having too many
cutscenes.” Where does that come from? It
goes back, he says, to watching the very first
playtest of The Secret Of Monkey Island. “It
was text-only. So they’d read one line of
dialogue, two lines, three lines, and every
time after the third line of dialogue had gone
by, I’d see their finger tapping the mouse like
this: ta-tap, ta-tap, ta-tap, ta-tap. I was like:
Oh my god, they’re getting antsy. So that’s
why I’m always trying to keep them as short
as possible.” The dream, he says, is to have
a seamless flow between action and
cutscenes, and here he cites an unexpected
influence: “You know, like the big games like
Uncharted do really well.”
We’re sure Schafer’s publisher won’t mind
too much that he picked a PlayStation
exclusive; indeed, just as we’re discussing
editing, he praises them for letting him adda feature back in that was otherwise certain to
be cut. “At a certain point, the finiteness of
the money was very much in our face,” he
says. “Boss fights were last on our schedule,
and they were kind of disappearing from the
game.” Then the acquisition happened, and
Microsoft asked him a question. “They said
‘What would you do if it wasn’t for fear?’” he
laughs. Those extra resources meant that
Double Fine could “finish the game in the
style that it was meant to be finished in”,
Schafer says. “For me, that meant putting
the bosses back in.”
Those of us old enough to recall the first
game’s encounters are unlikely to begrudge
Double Fine extra time to push Psychonauts 2
across the finish line – after 15 years, we’re
happy to wait a little longer. But we still can’t
escape the sting of frustration when the
‘Thanks for playing!’ message pops up as Raz
gets his hands on Vision Quest’s violin.
“What did you think?” Schafer asks. We
confirm that it ranks low on the ho-humness
scale; we just wish there was more of it to
play right now. He leans back in his chair,
a broad grin spreading across his face. “Well,
then,” he says. “Mission accomplished.” Q“EVERY LEVEL HAS TO FEEL REALLY
FRESH AND THAT WE’RE DOING
SOMETHING INTERESTING”
HEAD TRIP