Although Double Fine recently completed a successful crowdfunding campaign for Psychonauts 2, the developer doesn’t anticipate that the game will actually be released until 2018. But fear not — this is the era of old games on new consoles — and the original Psychonauts will be the latest game to follow this trend when it launches on PlayStation 4.
According to Double Fine community manager James Spafford, Psychonauts, which originally launched in 2005, will make its way to the PlayStation 4 this spring. There is no mention of any graphical re-touching or other enhancements, and many early PlayStation users were curious as to whether this would be a remaster or a straight PS2 to PS4 port. Thus far, Spafford has not responded, but the screenshots released with the announcement suggest the latter.
In addition, Double Fine mastermind Tim Schafer recently spilled a few new story details on the sequel in a recent Reddit AMA, revealing that protagonist Raz now has a girlfriend and once again confirming that the game will require much more than the initial Fig crowdfunding campaign delivered; the Psychonauts PS4 port is likely another source of funding.
“The story for Psychonauts 2 is something I wanted to do back when Psychonauts was released,” Schafer says. “In the intervening years I’ve been keeping a document of ideas going, with new mental worlds and story ideas going in as I think of them.” With 11 years worth of ideas, this just might be Double Fine’s magnum opus.
Schafer also took the time to express his frustrations with Activision, and particularly Activision-Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick, who claimed he had “missed every milestone” on the cult game Brütal Legend. Though Schafer has publicly battled with Kotick in the past, he reiterated that the game has a score in the 80s on aggregate site Metacritic and that he has “many milestone approval documents from Vivendi” that prove Kotick incorrect.
Whatever the case may be, Double Fine has certainly been busy since developing the Jack Black vehicle. Broken Age, which was also crowdfunded, was a charming throwback to classic adventure games, and the upcoming Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin will be hitting PlayStation VR later this year.
