Fantabulous Game Idea #1685

There are so many games deserving of an expansion of their ideas, not a sequel but simply expanding the ideal that runs through the game, and one of the most worthy is Psychonauts. Being able to go inside people’s heads and see a world representing their mind is a concept that has intrigued me for a long time, dating back to when I first played the game and probably a little from reading old Uncanny X-Men issues (particularly #161).  Taking just the explorable minds from Psychonauts and putting it in a realistic (possibly modern day) setting could make quite a game I feel, if it is done properly of course.

Psychonauts itself is a brilliant game (albeit with flaws) however it is strongly tied to a script, and I think any game that features explorable psychologies would also need to be scripted.  Would it be possible to randomly generate minds whilst still tying them together into relationships?  Maybe if the game was concentrated on a single town it would be possible to completely script everything, it would still be a big undertaking but possible.  You see the thing is, the idea I have is a game where you can enter anyone’s mind, even if they are not part of the main cast.  But not where you just find random worlds, something that ties people and events together.  Go to the Launderette and you will find a woman in love, find the man however and you find that he is dating multiple people at once.  To take a Psychonauts twist, all the women in his head could have the bodies of swimwear models but where the head should be there is just a sign such as ‘Launderette’, ‘Single Mother’, ‘Judge’.  When it comes to events, one of the tasks could be to wipe the minds of everyone involved in a certain event?

The first idea I had that sparked this post was regarding the level select screen for Psychonauts, now in a more realistic [sic] world you wouldn’t be able to simply access people’s minds like this, there would almost certainly be range limitations.  However, a similar area could be used for accessing memories.  They could either take the form of simple videos or even explorable areas, they couldn’t be interactive but they could take the form of a normal 3D game world complete with people and objects, possibly even with time controls.  This would be used to either refresh the players memory or to re-explore an area after new information had been obtained, possibly even using fallibility as mentioned in my previous article.  You could even take things one step further, buildings would be typical models but the textures might only fit around the sides that could be seen at the time the memory was created.  If you were to look at things from another angle you would just see plain blocks denoting the fact that you don’t remember what it looked like.  This wasn’t my original thought however, my idea was to allow the player to ‘mod’ the memory viewing screen in-game.  The game could start, as Psychonauts, with some form of training.  As the instructor introduced the memory screen he/she could day something like ‘I’ve created a basic area in your mind for a specific task, as you grow and develop your powers you too will gain the ability to create or modify areas in your mind.’.  How complex this would be I’m not sure, it could be something simple like The Sims or it could even involve a 3D editor.

Every character should have a base psychology, this could be simple as most stereotypes or could be based on a problem they have (the entire cast of Psychonauts).  This psychology should have a large effect in their general behaviour, whilst I’m sure we all dream of the day when AI can carry out general day-to-day functions without a set script, whilst still being believable, I don’t see that happening for a long time yet.  But I also wouldn’t want to see it as simple as Psychonauts (I’m referring to this a lot aren’t I), where they wander around a small area waiting for a trigger to set the events into play.  Some sort of schedule, go to work, randomly carry out three tasks, go to shops, pick-up food, go home, go to bed, with several events per day heavily scripted should do a good enough job. There are a lot of ways this could be affected by simple changes to their behaviour.

As you can probably tell, all of this would require a massive amount of coordination and thought to implement, this game doesn’t need top-of-the-line graphics though and the interactions (particularly ‘real-world’) could be kept fairly simple so I don’t see why a game couldn’t be developed with this sort of focus.  I may just be dreaming however, Psychonauts is a brilliant game (have I said that already?) but the focus is on the story, the game aspect of the psychology is very limited, so I still feel there is a game we aren’t playing somewhere in there.  All we need is someone to make it.

Main image from here.