Uploaded February 2026 | Updated September 2026, 1 hour ago
Some years ago, I made a video about the parallels between the story of Razputin Aquato from Psychonauts -- and history's infamous real-life Rasputin, as well as how the game uses that to make a point about swimming in games.
Since then, the game has seen a sequel, Psychonauts 2, come out: one that takes Grigori Rasputin's story and quite directly folds it into the story. So, I thought I would do an updated version of that video that instead looks at the second game... and what it has to say about the power of myths and stories.
Note: You don't need to watch the first video to understand this one! This recaps the main points from there. On the flipside, the first video still has specific observations about the first game I don't revisit for this one. My focus here is Psychonauts 2.
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Follow me or support the channel if you're able!
-- Patreon: patreon.com/SolidArf
-- Buy Me a Coffee: ko-fi.com/solidarf
-- BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/solidarf.bsky.social
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Selected References:
- Anderson, C. H. (2016, December 27). What Really Happened during the Murder of Rasputin, Russia’s “Mad Monk”? Smithsonian Magazine. smithsonianmag.com/history/what-really-happened-during-murder-rasputin-russia-mad-monk-180961572
- Byard, R.W. (2025) The death of Rasputin—A forensic evaluation. Forensic Sci Med Pathol 21, 492–501. doi.org/10.1007/s12024-024-00793-9
- Esqueda, A. (2022). The Art of Psychonauts 2. iam8bit.
- Girma, E. (2020, January 7). The mysterious life and death of Rasputin - Eden Girma. TED-Ed, YouTube. youtu.be/4dEf1ep3O9I?si=GzKh0PH5oY8fMbUt
- Maria F. Montoya, Hannah Qiao, Prasanth Sasikumar, Don Samitha Elvitigala, Sarah Jane Pell, Suranga Nanayakkara, and Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller. 2024. Exploring an Extended Reality Floatation Tank Experience to Reduce the Fear of Being in Water. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 1004, 1–17.
- Norman, A. (2024, February 27). Was lion tamer Maria Rasputin really the daughter of Russia’s “Mad monk”? All That’s Interesting. allthatsinteresting.com/maria-rasputin
- Roche, L., Cunningham, I., Rolland, C., Fayaubost, R., & Maire, S. (2022). Reducing fear of water and aquaphobia through 360 degree video use? Frontiers in Education, 7.
- Tembekar, S., Modak, R., and Patil, S. P. (2019). Tackling aquaphobia using Virtual Reality. Int. J. Adv. Res. Ideas innov. Technol. 5, 693–695.
- Totilo, S. (2009, July 2). Sink or swim? the game designer’s Conundrum. Kotaku. kotaku.com/sink-or-swim-the-game-designers-conundrum-5306343
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BEHIND THE SCENES:
- I decided against making a follow-up when Psychonauts 2 initially released, since I felt like the parallel spoke for itself. Five years later, though, I still haven't seen much discussion of it - and there have been a lot more shows and movies adapting Rasputin in the time since. So I felt, now, I had enough new things to say.
- A friend of mine said it was a crime I didn't talk about Anastasia the first time. Correcting that now, this one's for you
Some years ago, I made a video about the parallels between the story of Razputin Aquato from Psychonauts -- and history's infamous real-life Rasputin, as well as how the game uses that to make a point about swimming in games.
Since then, the game has seen a sequel, Psychonauts 2, come out: one that takes Grigori Rasputin's story and quite directly folds it into the story. So, I thought I would do an updated version of that video that instead looks at the second game... and what it has to say about the power of myths and stories.
Note: You don't need to watch the first video to understand this one! This recaps the main points from there. On the flipside, the first video still has specific observations about the first game I don't revisit for this one. My focus here is Psychonauts 2.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Follow me or support the channel if you're able!
-- Patreon: patreon.com/SolidArf
-- Buy Me a Coffee: ko-fi.com/solidarf
-- BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/solidarf.bsky.social
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Selected References:
- Anderson, C. H. (2016, December 27). What Really Happened during the Murder of Rasputin, Russia’s “Mad Monk”? Smithsonian Magazine. smithsonianmag.com/history/what-really-happened-during-murder-rasputin-russia-mad-monk-180961572
- Byard, R.W. (2025) The death of Rasputin—A forensic evaluation. Forensic Sci Med Pathol 21, 492–501. doi.org/10.1007/s12024-024-00793-9
- Esqueda, A. (2022). The Art of Psychonauts 2. iam8bit.
- Girma, E. (2020, January 7). The mysterious life and death of Rasputin - Eden Girma. TED-Ed, YouTube. youtu.be/4dEf1ep3O9I?si=GzKh0PH5oY8fMbUt
- Maria F. Montoya, Hannah Qiao, Prasanth Sasikumar, Don Samitha Elvitigala, Sarah Jane Pell, Suranga Nanayakkara, and Florian ‘Floyd’ Mueller. 2024. Exploring an Extended Reality Floatation Tank Experience to Reduce the Fear of Being in Water. In Proceedings of the 2024 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '24). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 1004, 1–17.
- Norman, A. (2024, February 27). Was lion tamer Maria Rasputin really the daughter of Russia’s “Mad monk”? All That’s Interesting. allthatsinteresting.com/maria-rasputin
- Roche, L., Cunningham, I., Rolland, C., Fayaubost, R., & Maire, S. (2022). Reducing fear of water and aquaphobia through 360 degree video use? Frontiers in Education, 7.
- Tembekar, S., Modak, R., and Patil, S. P. (2019). Tackling aquaphobia using Virtual Reality. Int. J. Adv. Res. Ideas innov. Technol. 5, 693–695.
- Totilo, S. (2009, July 2). Sink or swim? the game designer’s Conundrum. Kotaku. kotaku.com/sink-or-swim-the-game-designers-conundrum-5306343
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
BEHIND THE SCENES:
- I decided against making a follow-up when Psychonauts 2 initially released, since I felt like the parallel spoke for itself. Five years later, though, I still haven't seen much discussion of it - and there have been a lot more shows and movies adapting Rasputin in the time since. So I felt, now, I had enough new things to say.
- A friend of mine said it was a crime I didn't talk about Anastasia the first time. Correcting that now, this one's for you
