After releasing a 22-hour documentary final February on the making of Psychonauts 2, Double Positive and a pair of Participant Productions are again with a shock last episode that covers the sport’s reception, how the group recovered afterward, and what would possibly come subsequent for the Microsoft-owned studio.
From the soar, it is a way more bittersweet affair than you would possibly anticipate given Psychonauts 2’s extraordinarily optimistic reception. Contributor Matthew Citadel gave the long-awaited platformer an 89% rating in our assessment again in 2021, writing that it was “a wonderful return to one in all gaming’s most ingenious and empathic universes.”
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However the sport’s improvement was an extended and troublesome one, as chronicled within the first 22 hours of PsychOdyssey documentary launched final 12 months, and this last episode is a considerably haunted by artistic conflicts and employees departures that occurred throughout Psychonauts 2’s lengthy gestation. There’s additionally an extended part about how employees crunched on the venture, and the way even a studio run with good intentions and a collaborative work tradition can tacitly incentivize or encourage its builders to tackle unsustainable workloads.
It is hardly all doom and gloom although: Builders at Double Positive notice that Psychonauts 2 skilled fewer employees departures than different initiatives prior to now, and there is a sense that everybody, from the rank-and-file to studio management, needs to be taught from Psychonauts 2 and be certain that Double Positive’s future improvement cycles are much less fraught.
And we have gotten the slightest of peeks at what Double Positive’s future would possibly entail: Amongst a collection of smaller-scale video games at the moment being labored on, firm founder Tim Schafer has been engaged on a brand new prototype with a small group, although it stays an open query whether or not it will likely be in the end pursued as a full sport.
