The characters in it psychonauts 2 always talk to me. They make suggestions, give hints and do strong implications.
I first noticed these vocal lines, called player nudges, when I was stuck in a platformer puzzle early in the game – at least I thought it was a platformer puzzler. It turned out to be “Use that blaster power you literally just picked up, you big idiot”. I realized that when the main character, Raz, helpfully thought out loud that he really wanted to “destroy” the enemies I was helplessly tossing around.
It w as an incident where the game felt clever and prescient, like it understood the flawed reasoning I was using and wanted to help me.
But at other times psychonauts 2The nudges up drove me insane. In a midgame boss fight against a bunch of puking goats (just… watch the video. Or don’t.) I saw almost every character nagging me with voice lines about my performance, although as far as I know I didn’t anything wrong.
In the video above, I wanted to explore how those lines of speech made me feel and how I saw cues used in other video games such as: There is no game: wrong dimension, an incredibly clever puzzle game that uses both nudges and a big red clue button that gives the player up to three unique clues.
Try it and if not subscribed to Polygon on YouTube, please do!
