Despite a lack of gameplay footage available for Psychonauts 2, Double Fine Productions has finally decided to offer us a glimpse of some form of the game in action. The company recently posted a new Fig update containing three behind-the-scenes videos. The first video has Tim Schafer and Zak McClendon (Psychonauts 2’s Project Lead) playing through a stunning Unreal Engine 4 rendition of the iconic Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp.
The area was mainly created as an art test, aimed at visualizing how Psychonauts 2 might look like on current generation hardware. Although, it also reveals the considerable amount of work done on the main character’s animations and abilities. Most of this is thanks to The Molasses Flood, who have been working closely with Double Fine Productions, prototyping various parts of the game.
Mindbending mechanics
Even without the benefit of nostalgia for the original Psychonauts, what’s currently on display looks incredibly polished and smooth. Maybe because of the camp’s inherent playground feel, the area seems to be the perfect place for playing around with new mechanics. Some of these new moves were even shown in the video, such as Raz throwing psychic knives or projecting several clones of himself.
Also, there’s this totally awesome video walkthrough describing the creation of the levitation ball animation used in the prototype.
Now, before you get your hopes up too high, I should mention that none of this is expected to go into the game. While playing through the prototype, Tim and Zak specified that this might be the only time we get to see this area. Still, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a “Whispering Rock Remastered” DLC show up at some point.
Unreal Engine 4 eye-candy aside, the update offers two additional videos; one focuses on lead environment artist Geoff Soulis, while the other offers a short documentary describing the days prior to Psychonauts 2‘s Fig launch. Both videos were stitched together by 2 Player Productions, who were also responsible for the Double Fine Adventure documentary series focusing on Broken Age.
