IGN: You've described Psychonauts as taking the best elements of both console and PC adventure games. What will that mean for gamers?
Tim Schafer: The thing I've always thought was fun about PC graphic adventures was the story and the characters. Plus I love console adventure games and I think the two have a lot to teach each other. Graphic adventures kind of stopped trying to innovate, especially their interfaces. People are always pretty happy with just pointing and clicking to get around an adventure game. Once you play a console game like The Legend of Zelda or even something like the original Tomb Raider or Mario 64, I was thinking PC adventure games had better watch out, because these are adventure games. Just really really simple adventure games. And as they get more complicated and more adult in the storyline, they're going to have everything PC adventure games have and they're going to be super easy to play. And so it's kind of weird, because adventure games are sort of gone, yet they've moved on at the same time. All of the stuff that was cool about adventure games has made it into almost every kind of game now. There's more and more epic storylines. There's not a lot of deep believable characters yet, but I think that will come.
I think people are already tired of playing another console game where you just have to pick up 100 X's. And then the next level it's like, okay, what am I doing now? Go pick up 100 more, but this time they're in lava! There have been a lot of fun games that have been made like that, but eventually people are going to want something deeper. They're going to want a reason to solve these levels where you're executing some sort of story or you're getting some sort of feel for the characters. In Psychonauts, you literally get to know what's going on in the heads of the characters, so you'll care about them. Certain characters have problems and you'll want to help them out. By the time you reach the end you'll see how certain characters have changed.
IGN: So Psychonauts is not about collection?
TS: I like to have everything that's fun about console games and everything that's fun about graphic adventures.
And I do like collecting stuff. But I want to know why I'm collecting and I want it to payoff. I don't want to have to do it like I have to vacuum my house, like it's all over the floor and I have to pick it up. I want it to be meaningful, that you're picking up stuff. Some people just throw a story in to a game because they actually just want to be writing movies or something like that. Just laying out these long grinding cut scenes. That's not what I want to do. I want the story to emotionally grab people so they'll be driven to finish the levels so they can see all of the stuff they're emotionally invested in.
IGN: The art of the various levels is closely tied to each of the characters that represent them. Describe how the characters and their worlds work.
TS: Raz is the kid who's a natural born psychic. He has the ability to hear people's thoughts and move small objects with his mind. He wants to get his training so he can become a Psychonaut one day. Psychonauts are this super secret agency who do their espionage using mental powers. That's all he wants to do with his life, so there's this camp he goes to in order to train but it's like a camp for kids with merit badges and things like that. The kids work on their merit badges in various things like telekinesis and levitation. Raz wants to be a Psychonaut. He doesn't really want to be a circus performer so he represses all of that down but eventually you have to help him deal with that.
The levels are the characters and the characters are the levels. Each character you meet sort of serves as portal to another world. So you meet the character who thinks he's Napoleon Bonaparte and you go into his head and he is Napoleon Bonaparte and you're in France and you have to fight the battle of Waterloo. ( 
) You meet the character who is a painter and all he does is paint on black velvet. You go in his head and the world is in black velvet. You go in their heads and see what their mental demons are and what they're up against in their own minds and when you come out you have a different understanding of them. Maybe you've changed them by fighting their mental demons in a boss battle. By helping them face some hidden repressed thought in their own heads it's sort of like you're this internal mental therapist working with these people
