Psychonauts 2 developer Double Fine has confirmed that the upcoming platformer will have an invincibility mode as part of its suite of accessibility options, because “All people should be able to enjoy games.”
The accessibility feature was revealed in a tweet that was rather nicely set up for the Double Fine social media team by the Xbox social media team, who had tweeted that “Beating the game on the lowest difficulty is still beating the game.”
If you beat Psychonauts 2 with the invincibility toggle on, you still beat P2. https://t.co/OinBv1nuNr
— Double Fine (@DoubleFine) July 9, 2021
As a medium of entertainment, Double Fine say that “All people should be able to enjoy games. All ages, all possible needs. It’s an ongoing and important process for our industry and a challenge we need to met. End of the day? We want you to have fun, to laugh, to experience a story that affects you. On whatever terms you want.”
Additionally, enabling accessibility options will not affect a player’s ability to earn achievements. It’s just one of a range of options that includes colourblind modes, combat adjustments and more. These were outlined in a recent video from the studio.
They went on to go all sassy at certain corners of the gaming community that gatekeep around playing a game on a high difficulty.
“‘Uh, excuse me I beat Sword Guy Serious Time on a no hit hard mode and if [you] didn’t do that I don’t respect you’. And like, can you even comment on things if you’re not diamond six rank in Shooty McBlam? I don’t think so.’ Cool bud. You’re soooo cool!”
Having been in development for half a decade, Psychonauts 2 is coming out on 25th August for Xbox Series X|S, Xbox One, PlayStation 4 and PC. The game was announced all the way back in 2015, as double Fine kicked off a crowdfunding campaign. Double Fine was then acquired by Microsoft in June 2019, who also picked up the publishing rights to the game, but there were quick reassurances made that Double Fine would still release the game on PlayStation 4 and honour the preferences of backers. The only added perk that Microsoft chose to retain is that the new generation version will be exclusive for Xbox Series X|S.
The game was originally intended to release in 2019, but was delayed multiple times, first to 2020 and then to 2021. The 24th August release date was finally confirmed at E3 last month.
Source: Twitter
Starman
It is strange how cheats here mostly phased out of games, and it’s nice to see them returning, albeit under the guise of accessibility. Expect it won’t be long until EA and Activision announce accessibility DLC’s.
Andrewww
That’s a great move, it’s a just shame accessibility needs soo much time to become mainstream, and this is still the exception. I think it should be a mandatory requirement for all those that apply for funding, tax cuts, etc., that would speed things up towards professional content production quite a bit.