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You may also use this place to return to some of the minds you’ve already visited - Sasha Nein.
Emotional Baggage, Mental Figures, Figments and backstories to tell. |
Sasha's Shooting Gallery is a level in Psychonauts. It takes place within Sasha Nein's mental world.
Description[]
Sasha Nein's mind is clean and controlled, and has an austere, industrial aesthetic reminiscent of the Bauhaus architectural movement and related styles. All that is immediately visible inside is a dark, space-like void with vague geometric patterns and clouds resembling nebulas in the distance, and a single white cube, inside of which all of Sasha's mental affairs are neatly organized. The entire level takes place on this one cube, which has its own gravity so that Razputin is able to walk on each side.
Sasha himself can produce items from the cube at will while inside his mind, as well as appear and disappear into hatches appearing from nowhere that lead to an orange void. In Psychonauts, Sasha allows Razputin to use his mind as a shooting range to practice his Marksmanship, by producing a machine that repeatedly spawns Censors. It's possible that campers are regularly trained here, similar to Coach Oleander and Milla's classes.
Once Razputin overloads Sasha's censor outlets, large structures representing memories from his youth pop out of the cube, one side at a time.
Points of Interest[]
- The Crib: an area that pops out of one side of the main cube. Its main structure resembles an enormous child's bed with a worn-looking mattress, flanked by large floating toy blocks of various shapes and a large baby bottle. It represents some of Sasha's earliest memories.
- The Pillars: an area that pops out of one side of the main cube. It consists of several tall pillars with glowing platforms at their tops, some floating platforms, and a very large mobile. It represents some of Sasha's earliest memories.
- The Shoe Boxes: an area that pops out of one side of the main cube. It's made up of a large upside-down shoe in the middle that can be reached using a ladder, surrounded by stacks of shoe polish and a huge tower of shoe boxes labeled "Nein". The shoe polish is connected to the shoe boxes by way of a yellow tape measure that acts as a rail for Raz to grind across. This area represents Sasha's memories of working at his father's cobbling workshop as a child.
- The Generator: an area that pops out of one side of the main cube. It consists of a single industrial-looking construction made of rusted metal, with a path that spirals to the top and surrounded by four supports that spit fire. While this part of Sasha's background is not brought up anywhere in-game, this area seems to hint at a job at some sort of industrial plant Sasha may have had after leaving his father.
In Psychonauts[]
When Raz joins Sasha in his lab for testing using the Brain Tumbler, he encounters a vision of a yellow-eyed creature inside his own mind that he cannot proceed past. To fight it off, Sasha offers to teach the boy how to PSI-blast. Razputin must first get a learner's permit from Ford Cruller, however, before he is allowed to enter Sasha's mind and take part in a private lesson.
General view of the Shoe Boxes location.
Once inside Sasha's mindscape, Sasha explains how the PSI-Blast is performed and instructs Raz to practice firing and locking on, first on stationary targets—a set of Tiffany lamps he produces from the cube—then on his own Censors. He conjures up a lever that Raz can use to increase the difficulty level of the exercise, and tells him he should have enough practice to earn the real Marksmanship badge in about three weeks of this sort of training. He then promptly leaves Raz unsupervised.
Raz, eager to become a Psychonaut before his father comes to the camp to take him back home, turns up the lever to its highest setting and then tries to push it even further, accidentally breaking it. This causes Sasha's censor outlets to spawn endless amounts of Censors, as structures representing childhood memories of Sasha's pop out of place on one side of the typically neatly organized cube. Sasha, seemingly in a panic, comes back and instructs Raz to climb up the structures and shoot down the open censor valves, before diving out of sight again to keep things under control elsewhere. Raz repeats this process four times on different structures that pop out of different sides of the cube each time.
After shutting down the last valve, Sasha returns to lecture Raz about the lesson he's learned today, but trying to shut down all censor valves and keep everything completely under control has now resulted in a build-up of censor energy. The Censors merge to form the Mega Censor, a hulking mass of flesh intent on stamping Raz out of Sasha's mind, who bursts out of the white cube and rushes toward Raz and Sasha. Sasha pushes Raz out of harm's way before the Mega Censor can smash him, taking the hit himself, but the agent gets stuck to the bottom of its stamp in the process. Raz must defeat the Mega Censor by once again shooting the Censor valves that deploy more Censors, which heal the Mega Censor. Once the valves are closed, Raz is able to damage the Mega Censor itself until it finally collapses. Once it is defeated, Nein gives Raz his full Marksmanship badge, on the promise they never discuss the event again.
Upon returning to Sasha's Shooting Gallery via the Brain Tumbler, but before Sasha is kidnapped, he explains that the censor leaks were all part of a planned exercise to teach Raz more efficiently. The Mega Censor, however, was not part of the plan. Sasha does not appear in his mind after his kidnapping. If Raz returns, the disembodied voice of Nein will ask what's going on, notably dazed and uncertain of his current situation. Raz suggests keeping his mental activity up by shooting some more Censors, which Nein agrees to.
Collectibles[]
Figments[]
Sasha's Shooting Gallery contains 69 figments, which is the smallest amount of any mind in Psychonauts. Depending on the side of the cube they're found on, they are mostly themed around early childhood or manual labor. For a list of figments and their locations, see the unofficial Psychonauts figment guide.
Figments of Interest[]
Among Sasha's figments, some that stand out include:
- People constructing his childhood mobile, perhaps highlighting Sasha's keen awareness of the people involved in manual labor.
- Several abstract renditions of a mother and father figure. The mother is dead on the floor with a flower growing out of her in one figment.
- Various figments of roaches assisting with cobbling, an indication that Sasha and his father lived in poor conditions.
Emotional Baggage[]
- Purse
- Bag: On a high platform in the second leak.
- Tag: On the first glowing disk in the second leak.
- Dufflebag
- Bag: Behind the bed.
- Tag: On top of the bed.
- Hatbox
- Bag: On top of the bed headboard.
- Tag: On a block floating over the bed pillow.
- Steamer Trunk
- Bag: In the third leak next to the top of a ladder.
- Tag: In the center of the third leak.
- Suitcase
- Bag: On top of the tower in the fourth leak.
- Tag: On the first platforms in the fourth leak.
Mental Cobwebs[]
- Next to the bed under an arch block.
- Behind the bed under an arch.
- Behind a stack of boxes in the third leak.
- On the third leak stack of boxes.
- At the base of one of the fire steps on the fourth leak.
Memory Vaults[]
- Sasha's First Loss: On the giant crib.
- Sasha's Second Sight: next to the two towers of giant shoeshine.
Raz running away from a hoard of Stamping Censors.
Enemies[]
NPCs[]
- Emotional Baggage
- Memory Vaults
- Sasha Nein (Through the entirety of the level)
Trivia[]
- Despite being largely themed around Censors, one type of Censor does not appear in Sasha's Shooting Gallery: the Strongarm Censors.
- Sasha's mind is the first Raz visits to contain Censors. Sasha informs you that they are present in any sane mind, which foreshadows that something might be up with Oleander, as he has none during Basic Braining.
- Raz moves around the cube the same way he moves around the big brain in the the title screen.
- The floating mobiles in "The Pillars" are similar to kinetic art created by Alexander Calder.
- Much of the design of Sasha's mind was directly inspired by Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis.