Headscratchers / Psychonauts 2

• The Psychic Six's confrontation with Maligula was said to have happened twenty years before the events of the game, but that doesn't look like it tracks with the characters' ages. We don't know how old any of them are to the year, but Ford referred to himself as "young," while Augustus looked like he was Razputin's age. Yet the former looks like he's in his sixties or seventies, the latter in his early forties, and Lucy in her seventies or even eighties. Some of the Psychic Six look like they could be in their forties and fifties, but for everyone else it's hard to buy that twenty year mark.
  • A little handwave-y as an explanation, but to be fair, it's also never explicitly stated just how long the Psychic Six (or rather, Seven) were conducting their research before Lucrecia returned to Grulovia and subsequently became Maligula, nor is it stated how long that process took either. It could have easily ranged anywhere from a couple years to another twenty in total.
    • The timeline in question begins when the Psychic Six confront Maligula, though. Ford says he was young when he fought Maligula, and Augustus was a child when the battle was over. It's been twenty years since the battle with Maligula, not since the Psychic since formed or since Lucrecia went to Grulovia.
  • The Psychic Six, as well as Augustus and Lucy, may actually be Younger Than They Look. The affects of stress on aging are well documented, and with the huge amounts of stress everyone went through during and throughout the 20 years after the battle it would make sense that they would wind up looking older than they actually are.
  • Alternately, they're actually older than they look in the flashbacks—the elder adults could be a very young-looking early-to-mid fifties, making them push sixty or seventy in the present day. Augustus could simply be runty due to, say, poor diet and living conditions in Grulovia, and actually be a very small twelve year old when Maligula was defeated (putting him in his early thirties).
    • This variant is much closer to truth since one of cut voice lines says that Ford is now 75, which makes him 55 during Deluge

• Not to disrespect Hollis as a Psychonaut, but why was she chosen as a judge in Compton's mind? Ford, Otto, and even to a lesser extent Truman, all make sense as friends and fellow agents. Compton's known Ford and Otto for over twenty years and was friends with Truman's uncles for almost the same time. Where does Hollis fit in?
  • There's no timeline for when Hollis joined the organization vs when Compton left it. Could be she questioned some of his judgments when she was a new recruit and grew to surpass him, so he assumed she looked down on him.
  • Or since she goes to the psychoisolation chamber for migraines, and there's only one cell that we can see, she spends time with Compton on a semi-regular basis, and because of her cold demeanor and his anxiety he assumes she's judging him for not being as good a leader as her.

• Why did Ford seem to have forgotten about Helmut's brain after he'd manipulated Lucy and Augustus' memories even before he shattered his own mind? He could have come up with a reason how he'd found it.
  • According to a memory vault Ford had the brain with him when he used the Astralathe on himself, so he hadn't forgotten about it. It seems likely that Ford forgetting about it (as well as his general condition) was him either losing or never having control over the process.

• Even before he infiltrated the Psychonauts, Gristol Malik seems to have already known that Lucy is alive and that Ford hid her, otherwise his whole plan wouldn't make sense. But how did he find out that she's alive? It seems only the Psychic Six were in on the secret, and nothing indicates they told anyone else about it. "Fatherland Follies" seems to imply he got the information about Lucy from his father, but it's not explained where his father got it from.
  • Well what makes more sense for a sane but stupid and unimaginably selfish person with a self-serving memory? To admit to attempting to use necromancy to revive a long dead psychic only to find her grave empty when he robbed the place and then figured out what must have actually happened to her afterward or to make up a glorious story of a death bed confession. I'm going with the latter, the story of his father is a self-aggrandizing lie he thought up to use in the history books when his original plan of stealing her corpse failed.
  • Didn't Maligula have some kind of grave made for her? If the Delugionists believed her to still be alive, they could have easily opened the tomb and found it missing a body. As for how Gristol knew Ford had Lucy, the Fatherland Follies narration explained that explicitly: because she was such a great "hero of the people," if they hadn't heard from her it must mean she had been captured/imprisoned by enemies of the state, i.e. Ford and the Psychonauts. Gristol didn't know about the Maligula-Lucy connection, just that Maligula was alive and most likely held prisoner by those who "defeated" her.

• At the beginning of the game it's implied that the Delugionists are a sort of cult-like group trying to bring back Maligula and that the Psychonauts have been watching them for a while, but by the end it seems like Gristol is the only person that has any reason to want her back. Was he the leader of some larger group that's still lurking in the shadows? Or was he alone the whole time and somehow just made it look like it was an organization?
  • Well, he easily has the resources to do all that by himself.

• So if the curse is/was all in the mind, does this mean that every member of Raz's family is psychic to some extent? If not, then what would happen if one of the non-psychic Aquatos tried swimming?
  • The curse may be all in the mind, but that doesn't necessarily mean everyone experiences it the same. Raz sees a giant hand made of water dragging him into the depths because his fear manifests itself as hydrokinesis—his family, however, may just feel extremely terrified whenever around a large enough body of water, because they had always been told they'd die in the water. If anybody without psychic abilities tries to swim, there is no hydrokinesis to pull them down—post-game, they might still be wary of water, but no longer afraid to try swimming in shallower stuff.

• How could Gristol pass off Truman's Thinkerprint access to Raz. Presumably, the brain in the suitcase was how he managed to get into areas with a high level of clearance, but how is he able to transfer that access to Raz?
  • Maybe the mental waves the scanner recognises can be replicated by a small device, which is what Gristol gave Raz. Kind of a psychic version of how RFID chips work.
  • He didn’t give him Truman’s Thinkerprint. He gave him full clearance to the whole Motherlobe, and the system says Truman’s name like how Ford’s transport system calls Raz by Ford’s name because only Truman should be able to access it.

• About the part where Raz ends up messing with Hollis' head, he was sort of peer pressured into doing it and displayed visible hesitation at it at a few points during the level. Why did he never think to at least mention that to Hollis or anyone else? He's not the only one at fault.
  • He feels guilty and personally responsible, and doesn't want to shift blame.
  • The only thing the other interns pressured Raz into doing was changing Hollis's mind about allowing them onto the casino mission. Giving her a gambling addiction in the process was all on Raz.
    • That's all Raz was trying to do too. The gambling addiction was an accident, not intended by anyone. It's most likely that he feels responsible since he's the one who actually did it. If he hadn't caved to peer pressure it wouldn't have happened.

• Why doesn't Gristol Malik have a Grulovian accent?
  • Obviously he could have faked his non-native accent in the real world, but even in his own mental world, shouldn't he have the accent of his homeland?
    • Nona speaks English with an accent because it’s not her native language and she never became completely fluent. Gristol was a child when Grulovia fell and presumably grew up in exile somewhere English-speaking.

• How did Gristol ever infiltrate the Psychonauts? The guy is such a huge narcissist, but also had a clarity of mind to infiltrate as a low-level mailroom clerk. Also, in his Nick Johnson persona, he's really well-liked by coworkers. No one saw any red flags? Do the Psychonauts not have a HR system or were they so afraid of a being accused of discrimination because 'Nick' was not psychic? It paints a picture of shocking incompetence here. Also, he somehow managed to cow Dr Loboto, so that he's mentally blocked from talking about him. How does Gristol, a non-psychic place a psychic mental block on Dr. Loboto? The whole thing defies belief.
  • The Psychonauts didn't see "being well-liked by coworkers" as a red flag, understandably. As for the psychic block, perhaps it happened back in Rhombus of Ruin, but it never came up because Gristol wasn't a factor/didn't exist in the narrative at the time.
    • 'Being liked by coworkers' isn't a red flag, but the fact that Gristol is such an incredible narcissist should've made it extremely difficult to slip into the position of a mailroom clerk, an extremely low level position, and to be so well liked as a coworker, defies belief.
  • Both questions could be explained by him being the son of a dictator. Fascists tend to have their own ways of guaranteeing compliance, which could have been used on Loboto. The family would also probably have some rudimentary training in mental defenses to prevent being manipulated by psychics, explaining how Nick could mask his true intentions.

• Why does Augustus seem to be significantly weaker as a psychic in this game than the first game lets on? At the end of the first game, he was able to protect himself into Raz's mind without the use of a Psycho-Portal, which no character before or since has evidently done. Also, he gave Raz the power to become a giant, much like Lucrecia does at the end of the second game. But then in the Questionable Area he struggles to even ignite a pinecone, when pyrokinesis was the first power that Raz learned, and he set much larger objects on fire during his lesson.
  • Maybe it's easier to affect mental powers in the mental world, and maybe the power to instil power onto others is less to do with the person in general but the receiver's opinion of that person. It is easier to get "charged" if you see them in a position of power to give you that power to begin with for example.
  • In the latter case he's just doing the activity for fun, whereas in the climax of the first game Augustus was trying to help save his son who was in mortal danger. The adrenaline, fear, and high motivation could've greatly enhanced his abilities in the moment. Remember too that it took him quite a while to actually break into Raz's mind, as he can be seen trying to break through from the beginning of the Meat Circus, taking him til Raz reaches the final boss to actually succeed. The giant projection Augustus helps create could also have been largely helped by the fact that he had just reconciled with Raz and dispelled the baggage Raz had thinking his father hated him. With that burden lifted and getting love and encouragement from the person he was most afraid of until then, Raz's confidence and connection to Augustus would've been at an all time high, allowing them to both combine powers at the peak of his mental well-being.

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