LOL, they snuck in some "wokeness" late in Psychonauts 2

Just for the record, I am NOT one of those people that is anti anything new in gaming such as LGBT stuff being thrust into storylines. I honestly do not care. I do however dislike it when games try to turn the entire game into some sort of public re-education session about gender-roles and sexuality. I think you can ask Bioware how that worked out for them.

I do notice when these things happen in games though because they do seem a bit out of place when the come through. The Sweet Baby Inc conspiracy theory of paying developers to put this sort of content into games may or may not be true but again, I do not care. If a game is good I do not care if the characters are into girls or boys, I just want it to be a good game. I think most normal gamers are like this as well.

In Physchonauts 2, there wasn't really much of an opportunity for them to throw any "woke" into the game because the characters in the game for the most part don't even appear to be completely human. It is a magical world that takes place inside of people's psyches and it is your job as an agent to get into people's heads and sort them out with their "emotional baggage." There isn't really a lot of of opportunity for anyone to put some sort of social-engineering lesson in there so I was kind of surprised when really late in the game, I think it is around 75% of the way complete, that something that may tick off the more sensitive people out there, happens.

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I don't even remember why it is that we end up needing to interact with Bob Zanatto, I think it has something to do with his gardening skills. You find him trying to grow things (in his mind, this is) but to no avail because he is too troubled by something to make that happen. It is our job as a Psychonaut agent to figure it out and fix it.

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Of all the levels in the game that I have encountered thus far this is my least favorite and it has nothing at all to do with the gayness. That doesn't even become evident until you are nearly all the way through with the level. I don't like the level because it involves sailing from island to island and like many other games, water in Psychonauts 2, kills you. So much of your platforming doesn't just involve getting set back a bit, you get pulled under by vines and sent back a ways.

Bob's psyche is riddled with issues of alcoholism and this is evidenced by the very clever landscape where the things you are jumping on are disheveled plants surrounded by dirty memories of kitchens overflowing with dishes and other trash and all around there are empty bottles.

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Everything has a run down feel to it in an environment that you can imagine was at some point very lush and wonderful. I suppose this is a good example of the life of someone who gave up because of some traumatic event and all that they had built up to that point goes to crap because they just bury their sadness in a bottle every day, all day. I know a few people that are like this in real life, actually. We probably all do.

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We can tell by some of the dialogue that we are given and some of the slideshow reels that we find that Bob's life kind of fell apart after the death of his mother and how his own wedding was ruined by his alcoholism that as far as I can tell, was brought on my the untimely death of his mom. It's all quite tragic really and is a rather good representation of mental health and how important it is in our real lives. As we as players are leading up to the wedding we probably all were thinking about who is this woman and when are we going to get to see an apparition of her?

Well, as it turns out, and this isn't revealed until you are walking down a dark hallway leading to a wedding alter, that Bob was getting married to another man.

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This was a very touching part of the entire game. The music and sentiment is absolutely perfect and I was walking slowly so I wouldn't skip any of it and this is good that I didn't try because as it turns out the run controls are disabled during this part so that you don't miss any of the dialogue. It's quite beautiful actually. It was just a bit shocking to see the above dialogue when it was spoken because there is no indication of that being the case up to that point.

Again, I did NOT have a problem with this and I only included the word "woke" in my title to get attention. I guess you could say that I found it a bit amusing that they waited so late in the game to feature this perhaps as a way of weeding out the inevitable negative comments that would come their way from people who didn't even play the game.

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To the people out there that would be outraged about this being part of the story all I can say is that I kind of feel bad for you. It's a lovely and heartwarming part of the entire story and it's not like there is a makeout scene that happens to "corrupt your kids."

I don't know how much of the game I have left but I think it cannot be very much. This game has been a wonderful addition to my library and I thoroughly have enjoyed playing it.

In case you didn't see my other writeups though be warned that this is a very casual game and I wouldn't really consider it even remotely difficult. I enjoy games like this when I just want to relax and not be faced with tremendous difficulty when hanging out on the sofa. I highly recommend that you at least have a look at it if you are a PS-Plus member, because it is free as part of your subscription.