The Milkman Conspiracy is a level in Psychonauts. It takes place inside the mental world of Boyd Cooper.
Description[]
The Milkman Conspiracy resembles a 1950s suburban American neighborhood where the roads are impossibly twisted on themselves. There are areas suspended in midair, entirely separate from one another.
Cameras can be seen and heard everywhere: in mailboxes, trash cans, birdbaths and lawn flamingos in addition to the unconcealed regular security cameras. Every other window has eyes shiftily peering through the blinds, and drones fly overhead to observe the area. Many of the houses in the neighborhood can be entered, but most are largely empty. When Raz does enter them, the camera takes on an odd overhead view.
Points of Interest[]
- Boyd's House: The inner Boyd's base of operations inside his own mind. He ponders his conspiracy board here as he does out in the real world, while hiding out from all of the observers outside.
- Graveyard: The neighborhood's graveyard has a mausoleum for the Milkman, though it's actually empty. The graveyard is also riddled with G-Men guarding it, pretending to be grieving widows.
- Post Office: The local post office. Raz can find the plunger here, but its dark back room, navigable only by using Clairvoyance to see through the night-vision camera above, also stores some more suspicious items, such as an air-dropped bomb, a naval mine, and several coffins.
- Nightmare’s World: What looks to be a small hellish-like arena with fire on the corners, cave entrances that leads nowhere and lots of cracks on the ground with a orange color; presumably implying that a pool lava is inside.
- Book Depository: An area that can only be reached through the sewer system. The book depository is crawling with G-Men posing as assassins, as well as housing one actual assassin who's picking them off. One of the helicopters surveilling the area passes straight through the building's first story.
- Den Mother's House: One house separate from all the others located past the book depository and accessible only via the power lines. This is the headquarters for the Rainbow Squirts, and it's where their Den Mother protects the Milkman's secret underground real mausoleum.
In Psychonauts[]
On his quest to stop Coach Oleander's plot for world domination, Razputin crosses Lake Oblongata and arrives at the gates of the old Thorney Towers Home for the Disturbed, which are unfortunately locked. Next to the gate is Boyd Cooper, a man dressed as a security guard, who is talking to himself as he draws a conspiracy board on the walls around the gate. Raz asks Boyd to open the gate so he save his friends, but Boyd dismisses him, blurting out that "The Milkman holds the key" and that he is not the Milkman, he is the guard. Raz, seeing no other solution, dives into Cooper's mind using his Psycho-Portal.
Raz appears inside of Boyd's house, where Boyd is contemplating a disorderly collection of newspaper articles. When Raz makes it apparent that he cannot see the meaning of Boyd's conspiracy board, he is told to check the fridge. Inside, Raz finds the merit badge that unlocks the Clairvoyance PSI-Power. By using it on Boyd, Razputin is able to see the connections on the board through Boyd's eyes, and understand that the Milkman is dead. Boyd, however, is not convinced this is true. He urges Razputin to go to the graveyard for himself and verify the truth. Only now does a door to the outside neighborhood appear.
As soon as Razputin steps outside, he is treated to a twisted version of a suburban neighborhood crawling with cameras. G-men guard zones by pretending to be regular civilians. The first item Raz collects is a stop sign, so he can bypass the G-Men posing as road workers. To enter the graveyard, he must also find flowers, to pretend to be a grieving widow. Raz also encounters Rainbow Squirts on the neighborhood streets, little girls of a local girl scout troop selling cookies who follow him around and whisper constantly behind his back. Once inside the graveyard, Raz finds the Milkman's mausoleum, burns some thorns blocking it using Pyrokinesis, and picks up a book he finds inside. This causes him to put down the flowers and be immediately apprehended by the G-Men.
When Razputin is released, he wakes up back inside Boyd's house, where Boyd informs him the book he found was crucial to unearthing the conspiracy. With some rather confusing logic, Boyd tells Raz to go to the book depository, where the book came from. He tells Raz to go through the sewers, hands him a rifle to blend in with the assassins in that area, then throws him outside. To reach the sewers, however, Raz also needs a plunger, which he can find inside the post office. Raz uses Clairvoyance to figure out the security code to open the post office, clears a Mental Cobweb using the Cobweb Duster, then uses Clairvoyance again on a camera with night vision to navigate the dark back room of the post office and obtain the plunger. Upon exiting the post office, Raz is pulled into the ground by a Nightmare he must then fight, but once he defeats it, he can pass through the sewers to reach the book depository.
At the book depository, a sniper is taking out G-men posing as assassins in front of the building. Raz approaches, blocking their shots with his Shield, and once inside finds a Rainbow Squirt is the one carrying out the shootings. The Squirt jumps out of the window immediately and blows up several more G-Men who come to investigate with an exploding box of cookies. Raz obtains the phone so he can climb the phone lines to the next area, as well as the helicopter helmet which allows him to use Clairvoyance on the pilot flying over the entire area and confirm the location of the Milkman. After leaving the book depository, Raz must then fight another Nightmare identical to the first one.
Raz uses the phone lines to access the house where the Milkman is being kept, and infiltrates it to find the Rainbow Squirts' headquarters, as well as their Den Mother. The entire group begins to recite the "Rainbow Squirts' Pledge of Purpose", until they realize the G-Men have surrounded the house and brought in two cars filled with an impossible number of Censors. The Den Mother orders the Rainbow Squirts to protect the building and jumps through a secret passage to the Milkman's true hiding place behind her ironing board. Raz pursues her, and the two do battle.
After the Den Mother's defeat, the Milkman is awoken. He floats up to the surface, pulls out a basket of milk bottle Molotov cocktails, and proceeds to blow up the G-Men and Censors. The intense face-off knocks Raz out of Boyd's mind and back into the real world, where Boyd assumes the persona of the Milkman. He opens the gate, but also grabs a basket of Molotov cocktails, and gets into position to burn down the asylum once he gets the right signal, where he repeats some stock phrases and cannot be deterred no matter what Raz tries.
Upon revisiting the Milkman Conspiracy, the level is still largely the same as it was before, except that the Milkman is still standing outside the Den Mother's house, throwing Molotovs at Censors that spawn from one of the cars to come after him. If Raz speaks to the Milkman, he explains that "his employer commissioned him to deliver this milk to whitewash what went on here", so that no evidence would be left of the plot to take over the world.
Collectibles[]
Figments[]
The Milkman Conspiracy contains 213 figments, most of which represent regular neighborhood people and objects. For a list of figments and their locations, see the unofficial Psychonauts figment guide.
Figments of Interest[]
Among Boyd's figments, some that stand out include:
- A burglar stealing a television from one of the neighborhood houses.
- People and dogs with radar dishes surveilling the area.
- Several figments of zombies climbing out of graves in the graveyard.
Emotional Baggage[]
- Steamer trunk
- Bag: Behind the book repository.
- Tag: Behind the house with the Rainbow Squirt selling cookies.
- Suitcase
- Bag: Inside the post office.
- Tag: In the backyard of the house with the hedge clipper G-men.
- Hatbox
- Bag: Behind a cobweb in the garage of the house after the sewer.
- Tag: The tag is on ann island connected to power lines.
- Dufflebag
- Bag: Behind the graveyard and outside the fence.
- Tag: Inside the house next to the post office.
- Purse
- Bag: Inside a house with hedge clipper G-men.
- Tag: near the road crew.
Mental Cobwebs[]
The Neighborhood - 4 Cobwebs[]
- On the third house.
- Near the sewer workers in front of a garage .
- On a house next to the post office.
- Inside the doorway at the post office. Collecting this cobweb is mandatory to progress through the level.
Book Depository - 1 Cobweb[]
- This cobweb is outside the book depository. Collecting this cobweb is again mandatory to progress.
Memory Vaults[]
- Boyd: Fired Again! - To the left of the cemetery.
- Boyd: Hired Again! - In the island playground connected to power lines.
Enemies[]
- Censors
- Den Mother (Boss Fight)
- G-Men
- Nightmare (Mid-Boss Fight)
- Rainbow Squirts
NPCs[]
- Crow
- G-Men
- Hidden Cameras
- Squirrel Camera
- Fire Hydrant Camera
- Mailbox Camera
- Plastic Flamingo Camera
- Bush Camera
- Rainbow Squirts
Trivia[]
- "The Milkman Conspiracy" has received generally very positive reception, and is considered a fan favourite level in Psychonauts as well as one of the greatest examples of game environments being used for storytelling.
- The Memory Vault "Boyd: Hired Again!" explains that Coach Oleander hypnotized Boyd to guard the asylum, and to burn it down in case something went awry. The Den Mother has a similar color palette to Kochamara, which might suggest that it was Oleander who introduced her into Boyd's mind to keep the Milkman persona safe until such an occasion might arise.
- If the player enters Boyd's mind without Telekinesis, a sign will pop up warning the player the level cannot be completed without it.
- If the player does not have a cobweb duster, a sign will pop up warning the player that some areas will be inaccessible without it.
- Boyd does not have Censors in most parts of his mind.
- If the player attempts to use Pyrokinesis on the crow in the puzzle maze, it will die. The player will be unable to use Clairvoyance on the Crow Feather to solve the maze puzzle. If the player leaves Boyd's mind and comes back, the crow will reappear.
- The wanted posters in the post office are identical to the wanted video screens in Ford's Sanctuary and at the Motherlobe in Psychonauts 2.
- While Invisibility is technically required to get past the front door of the Den Mother's house, this can be bypassed by using Marksmanship while facing the door, which will place Raz's head through the wall and above the trigger that opens it.
- Although most censors break into positive mental health or disappear when killed, not all of them do in the Milkman Conspiracy. If Raz returns to the level once it has been completed, the bodies of dead censors can be found littered around the Den Mothers' house.
- The interior of Boyd's house was inspired by the office of paranoid mathematician John Nash from the film A Beautiful Mind.
External Links[]
- Milkman Conspiracy Wikipedia Page: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milkman_Conspiracy