It’s good to have E3 back in 2021, especially as we keep getting amazing treats such as the new gameplay trailer for Psychonauts 2, which came package with a release date announcement, as well. We still have a few months to wait before Psychonauts 2 gets released on August 25th, but the gameplay trailer gives us a lot to chew on.

Some familiar faces return in the new trailer, which also reveals more about the Psychonaut’s headquarters, the game’s plot, and the challenges Raz will have to face inside the minds of other people. Of course, we couldn’t help but go frame by frame to try to get more clues about Psychonauts 2. So we’ll break down the trailer from start to finish in 20 images that tell us what to expect from Double Fine’s long-awaited sequel.

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Are you ready to explore the vast mindscape of Psychonauts 2? Then let’s enter this brain door together!

Psychonaut 2’s new trailer opens with a detailed view of the Motherlobe, Psychonaut’s headquarters, properly shaped like a brain. The scene shows us Raz's arrival at the headquarters, as our fierce protagonist is filled with wonder when he sees the building emerging from behind some clouds. The plane that’s taking Raz to the headquarters is piloted by Sasha Nein, the German agent Raz meets on the Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp during the events of the first game.

We soon get a look inside the Psychonaut’s headquarters as Raz uses his Psi-Powers to float into the place. It’s a nice detail that Raz still uses his famous backpack, with all the badges we’ve collected in Psychonauts. The Psychonaut’s headquarters is not only a place for agents to wait for the next missions but also a place of study, where the brain and its powers get dissected so that the Psychonauts can be better equipped to save the world from psi-menaces. There’s a new professor figure presented in the trailer, telling us how “the mind is the final frontier of humanity”. And we will explore it!

Raz will keep using mind doors to get inside other people’s brains as the sequel embraces all the campiness of the first game by staying true to its design choices. Psychonauts 2 looks amazing and is unquestionably superior to the first game in terms of graphics, but from the colors to the visual elements that are used, it’s clear that the sequel has the same energy as Psychonauts. Great news!

It couldn’t be a gameplay trailer without gameplay. The first aspect of Psychonauts 2 gameplay we get to see is the combat, as Raz unites with Sasha to fight an army of vicious living teeth. Raz blasts the teeth with his psi-powers and even uses telekinesis to put some giant teeth inside some giant gums. We can’t ever say Psychonauts is not a creative franchise! During the teeth attack, we can also see the Figments are back. There are some teeth and other figures formed only by colored lines in the background. These are Figments, manifestations of a mind’s imagination that served as collectibles in the first game.

The combat section of the gameplay trailer also presents some of the bosses we’ll fight in Psychonauts 2. There’s a dragon-like creature that spits fire in Raz’s direction while our hero tries to stay afloat on a door during a storm at sea. Can’t wait to beat this big boy!

We also get a quick peek at a hospital level, as Raz floats around before an emergency room entry while blasting away at a creature that stands over an ambulance. We get to see more of this hospital level later in the trailer, but we’ll get there.

The combat section of the trailer brings back a Censor, this time bigger and bulkier. The Censors were regular enemies during the first game, the mind’s natural defenses against thoughts that don’t belong. Psychonauts agents have to deal with Censors constantly, as the minds they enter try to defend themselves against any kind of disruption. It looks like Psychonauts 2 might feature a Censor boss, armed with a menacing pair of brass knuckles.

There’s also a judge boss, armed with a huge gavel, featured in the trailer. We can’t tell yet if the Judge is related to the Censors but it would certainly be a good fit, as both characters are connected to the idea of order and law enforcement. Maybe some high-level Psychonauts agents learned to control their Censors and can make them more powerful than the Censors inside regular people’s minds.

As exploration is also a central part of the Psychonauts franchise, the new trailer presents us with some of the new mind levels Raz gets to visit in the sequel. We have a mind inspired by a garden, filled with flowers and plants. We also have a level with nautical themes, with a lonely sand island lost in the vastitude of the sea and a giant green bottle with a message inside. The fire-breathing boss we saw earlier in the trailer seems to come from this nautical level.

The pinball section we see in the trailer is definitely related to the emergency room we saw earlier. If we take a closer look at the pinball machine, we can see a lot of lights shaped as med pills, and even a med pill Figment laying around. The new levels also include a mind so fixated with mail that it creates a huge robotic postman. In this level, Raz has to jump over flying mail, while a whirlwind of paper gets burned by a huge pyre at the center of it. It’s amazing that Psychonauts 2 is committed to having diversified gameplay, one of the many reasons the first game is one of the most beloved 3D platformers of all time.

Psychonauts 2 brings back another fan-favorite character, as Brazilian agent Camilla "Milla" Vodello keeps guiding Raz through his studies on the mind. Milla was also a part of the Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp, helping Raz to control his psi-powers before he could truly become a Psychonaut.

The last section of the Psychonauts 2 gameplay trailer focuses on Raz’s acrobatic skills, as our hero jumps around and uses ropes to propel himself. Raz’s background as a child who was raised in a circus was a central element in the first game, and it’s nice to see his acrobatic skills are also a huge part of the sequel. The acrobatic section also reveals a level where Raz runs over a huge bowling ball to hit bowling pins, another gameplay section that brings more diversity to the game.

The evil dentist Dr. Caligosto Loboto, D.D.S. is also back, after tormenting Raz both in Psychonauts and Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin. That means the combat with the teeth army probably happens inside Dr. Caligosto’s mind. The villain is being held inside the Motherlobe since the ending of Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, but so far we don’t know if he’ll once again be the main villain or only another recurring character in Raz’s next adventure.

Psychonauts became a cult classic for its creativity, gameplay variety, unique art style, and a narrative that deals with repressed memories, trauma, and the complexities of the human mind. Psychonauts 2 new trailer checks all the same right boxes. August 25th couldn’t get here faster.

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