Minds I'd Like To See In Psychonauts 2

 Oh my god, I love Psychonauts.

 But so much digital ink has been spilt describing the myriad of ways in which it is amazing, and why the Meat Circus is the most diabolical level known to man, that me going on about why I like it isn't going to be particularly helpful.

 So instead, I'm going to talk about some minds that Doug and I came up with that we think would be awesome in a Psychonauts game.

The Year Three Thousand

 Who lives in a mind like this.

 A marine biologist or Busted fan.

 'But Reecey!' I hear those of you who are my age, my nationality or bothered to watch the music video until the chorus started, 'Raz can't go in that mind! The curse! He's cursed to die in water, remember?'

 And now the rest of you are going 'oooh, now I get it. Yeah, they're right. How would that work?'

 The nature of the curse is that even dream representations of water can hurt and kill Raz and other members of his family. (My theory for this is that the curse only works because they're all psychic and are actually killing themselves with their psychic powers.)

 Now, the underwater world I'm proposing would be one not too dissimilar to the one in Alice: Madness Returns, or that one bit in the Bedknobs and Broomsticks Disney movie. The water is clearly there, but it's also totally breathable.

 So the ghostly curse hands would still form, but would be entirely ineffectual at actually hurting Raz. I'm just imagining the hands following Raz around all level and flailing uselessly at him during cutscenes.

 I was thinking that a hard sci-fi mind would be nice, so it may as well be this one.

 Year Three Thousand is a great song and I will hear no different.

 Fairy Tale Land

 

 Who lives in a mind like this?

 Either a little girl or a serious tough guy.

Preferably voiced by Ving Rhames.

 Just your standard fairy tale conglomerate world with hungry wolves, houses made out of gingerbread, Sugar Plum Fairies, cursed princesses and the like.

 The basic goal that Doug and I came up with for this world is that Raz needs to solve a murder mystery.

 A goal that is made difficult to the point of absurdity by the fact that the people of this world are all happy cannibals.

 Oh, they never state outright that they're cannibals, but all of their food is suspiciously people shaped, like sandwiches with fingers poking out.

 So what would make the murder that Raz is trying to solve special?

 Well, nothing really. The victim is just some dude or dudette killed in a somewhat ridiculous fairy tale manner.

 So, how would it be resolved? Probably by accident.

 Chilling and ridiculous are the name of the game here folks.

 A World of Glass Houses

 Who lives in a mind like this?

 A teacher.

 The population of this world would be made of of stones.

 Just stones that hover slightly off the ground and speak only in clichés and clichéd 'sage' advice.

 The goal of this world would be related to a school, where the teacher would be the only human resident. Their mind being full of stone people would reflect their attitude towards their students.

 Genre Shift City

 Who lives in a mind like that?

 Someone burdened by guilt.

"Guilt is a magical emotion!"

 The general point of this world would be to take ridiculous adventure platformer protagonist Raz and stick him in a ridiculous survival horror game for twenty minutes or so.

 As there's a genre shift, it necessitates that he would have to lose access to his psychic powers for a short time. Which would be mildly frustrating if done incorrectly, but at the same time, there would doubtlessly be a point where he gets all his powers back and can just rampage through the fog and the darkness, smashing themed monstrosities as he goes.

 I'd like this to be something of a Fred Bonaparte mind, which in this case means that the person in question would be racked by guilt over something incredibly and ridiculously minor.

 Unlike Minds

 Who lives in a mind like this?

 Someone with a split personality.

Kind of like this, only cooler.

 This mind would be a couple of different minds, complete with different themes, and would involve hopping between them.

 Ideally, it would be a situation where you need to go through all the minds concurrently. In order to to continue through one world you'd need to complete tasks or collect items from another one.

 My preference would be for there to be no indication that any particular mind was 'the real one', so the boss battle would need to take place in all of the minds.

 Milla's Mind (Again)

 I want more of her backstory, dammit.

 So there, that's what I'd like to see in Psychonauts 2. Or, rather, what I'd put into Psychonauts 2 if I got half the chance.

 What would you guys like to see in Psychonauts 2? If you have any ideas you think are cool, feel free to share them in the comments!