The International House of Mojo

I think it's really interesting you guys are developing Psychonauts 2 and Rhombus of Ruin simultaneously. I was curious about the extent to which those two have influenced each other, and how you're working on making them fit together, given that Rhombus of Ruin bridges the gap between the first and second full games.

Schafer: The main thing is that I've had a storyline for the whole experience in my head for ten years. Before Psychonauts had finished, I had this whole idea for what would happen in Psychonauts as Raz is delving into his past, his family, and the curse, and all these things. So in my head, it's one long, continuous story, and I'm working on both projects so I am able to make sure they all flow well together. But within that story structure, the Rhombus team can do things that make sense for VR and have it be really different in that way but still plug in the story beats.

Dawson: From a tech and visual development point of view, it's also been very useful for us. Rhombus of Ruin is coming out before Psychonauts 2, so obviously it accelerates our development to try to get that out. Seeing what the characters look like brought up to a modern engine with modern rendering, physically-based lighting, and subsurface scattering on their faces. Psychonauts 1 came out in, what was it? 2005? So obviously tech has improved a lot since then. We're using Unreal 4 Engine now as a studio, for both projects. With this game, we're pushing our character look development. That's been a great push for both projects, with our animation team and character team. Tech-wise getting us up and running. This is our first Unreal 4 project.