Maligula Is NOT A Villain

Comments · 708

• EL

  @elinogales · 4 years ago · pinned

  This is truly amazing, and I really loved how you went about this. A spectacular follow-up video for what was an already remarkable telling of the events in Psychonauts 2!<br>Phenomenal video! Psychonauts 2 especially feels like a love letter to mental health, it&apos;s approach makes what some people would think the &quot;villain&quot; to be someone more sorrowful and a person that is troubled and needs help.<br><br>My math teacher from 8th grade (who was the former SSR teacher) had said this phrase; &quot;This is no such thing as bad people, just people who made bad choices.&quot;<br>In a sense, that also doesn&apos;t make Gristle Malik a villain either, he made bad decisions yes, and things could&apos;ve ended very poorly for everyone because of it. Yet, he&apos;s not someone to blame...<br><br>Psychonauts 2 does an excellent presentation that nobody is bad, after all, we all have something that made us think/behave this way in our minds.<br><br>Again, really incredible video!

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• JE

  @jeremytung1632 · 4 years ago

  The fact that Gristol/Nick was able to hide all that from an entire organization of psychics is actually pretty impressive.

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• SO

  @SoicAngellis · 4 years ago

  God, that &quot;Is that really.. is that really how I look in your mind?..&quot; hits hard

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• BR

  @brub1738 · 4 years ago

  I think this quote fits maligula well &quot;just because a character is a antagonist doesn&apos;t mean they are a villain&quot;

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• DA

  @Dafawfulizer · 4 years ago

  On one hand, the idea of the being something sinister with Otto has plenty of evidence, especially considering when you go into the minds of the psychic 6, none of them have anything nice to say about him. Cassie thinks he&apos;s not really that smart, Helmut kind of ignores him, he&apos;s a source of anxiety in Compton&apos;s mind, and he represents the other Psychonauts ignoring Bob in his mind. <br><br>However, I think painting him as a villain is a bit unfair. Most of these depictions are probably just due to him being a bit more cold and distant than the others, kind of like Sasha, who he gets along quite well with. Plus, it&apos;s not like he forced anyone to use the astralathe, nor did he lie about what it did, Ford likely would have mentioned it if he did. Even Bob and Cassie subconsciously keeping people from the machine is less an indictment of Otto and more just a fear of the machine after what it did to Lucy. Plus, if Otto did all this so he could sell mini-astralathes, why is he only floating the idea now, 20 years after the original was created.<br><br>There&apos;s an argument to be made that Otto doesn&apos;t take nearly as much responsibility for his actions as he should but calling him evil or the true villain of psychonauts 2 is a bit much.

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• EN

  @Enigma2Me · 4 years ago (edited)

  I kinda like to think Otto is basically a dysfunctional parallel of Sasha&apos;s mindscape; outwardly extremely controlled, but done in a way that&apos;s less healthy than Sasha&apos;s method, even if it&apos;s not evident right now, is in reality in danger of causing problems for him once he can&apos;t control the problem anymore.<br>He basically detaches himself from the pain of the past via his machinery and inventions, but it&apos;s still there.<br><br>And given his statement about the astrolathe, who&apos;s to say he didn&apos;t end up using it on himself to make himself more detached from that pain? It&apos;s not like it was unusable for the entirety of the time between the breaking up of the Psychic Six and the present day.

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• TA

  @taywhit2593 · 3 years ago

  Interesting detail about Fatherland Follies: you fight every enemy in the game ACCEPT Regrets. Judges? yes. Panic attacks? Plenty. Doubts? A few. But that man doesn’t have a single regret in his mind.

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• KO

  @Koopsy64 · 4 years ago

  &quot;Naaah not much, it was all Ford&apos;s fault&quot;<br><br>I honestly had a feeling when I first met Otto that he would be my favorite of the Psychic Six.... and he did end up being my favorite.

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• ST

  @StarMechV · 4 years ago (edited)

  Can we appreciate the small lil&apos; fact that, as far as I remember, the Doubt enemies NEVER show up in Gristol/Nick&apos;s mind? It&apos;s the only enemy type that doesn&apos;t show up. Regrets DO show up but as the video explains, his regrets come from a selfish place like thinking his father wasn&apos;t ruthless enough. Meanwhile, he never DOUBTS himself of his plan or actions due to his endless narcissism.<br><br>This also goes to all enemy types in that mind. Enemies never show up patrolling or poping up to attack Raz until either him or Lily step off the designated ride, showing how sure of himself Nick is that he WANTS people to admire his line of thought; He is THAT full of himself. At first I found it odd that Panic Atatcks show up when Gristol/Nick is suppose to be so full of himself, but that specific enemy only appears in the level in one specific combat arena: The one shaped like angry grulovian protesters.<br><br>Heck, the emotional baggage is also a great little detail in the level! You always find the bags all across the Ride&apos;s setpieces, but never the tags. All of the tags are usually hidden inside these black deep pockets of darkness Raz has to break into and sue Mental Conenction to reach, really far away from the Amusement Ride that Gristol/Nick created in his mind. So basically, he likes to show off his emotional turmoil, probably as a way to allow himself to feel a victim, but he is deliberately hindering the progress of ever resolving that emotional baggage.<br><br>A lot of people like to show off the Milkman Conspiracy as THE greatest Psychonauts example of story and themes melding with gameplay and level design, but after playing Psychonauts 2 I&apos;d put Fatherland Follies , and Bob&apos;s Bottles, right up with it in the high echelon of brilliant levelmaking in the franchise.

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• HE

  @henryapplebottom7231 · 4 years ago

  Something that I find funny, is how&quot;nick from the mail room&quot; sounds like a scooby-doo reveal. But actually makes sense.

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• AU

  @augustobs24 · 4 years ago

  Something I love about Maligula&apos;s fight is that, if you find a moment to use clairvoyance on her, you realize she sees you as a lice with protest signs. Lucrecia is so far gone that she actually sees other people as insects. <br><br>I think it is obvious to everyone who played Hairdresser Ford&apos;s &nbsp;mental world that the lice you &quot;wash&quot; away end up being a metaphor for all the people Maligula killed in Grulovia, and how Ford goes from saying &quot;that was just an accident, right?&quot; to realizing she killed peaceful protesters. I just found it so impactful to realize that was not a metaphor... that she ACTUALLY saw people as just lice, that she fell so deep into the heart of darkness to cope with the guilt of killing her sister that she just dehumanized everyone.

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• SN

  @SnaksiXD · 4 years ago

  I can&apos;t stress enough how cool it was that the battle between Maligula and The Psychic Six happened 20 years ago specifically.<br>It gives the scene of Ford calling down Raz after the reveal a second meaning.<br>&quot;Tim, you&apos;re telling me that you&apos;ve been keeping this secret for 20 fucking years ever since the first game???&quot;

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