| Sasha Nein |
–Sasha Nein
Sasha Nein is a famous German psychonaut agent partnered with Milla Vodello. He is staffed at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp and is known for conducting science experiments of questionable moral status.
Personality[]
–Character blurb from the original Psychonauts website.
Sasha is an intelligent, down to earth, curious scientist interested in studying the full potential of the human mind. To Sasha, being a Psychonaut means exploring the mysterious universe of the human mind. The ultimate quest for self-awareness and enlightenment. Being a man of science, Sasha openly despises pseudoscience, which includes necromancy.
Appearance[]
Sasha's is a tall, thin man with pale green skin. His lips are a pale orange, his short hair and eyes are both black, and he has four fingers on each hand. He is seven feet and two inches tall.
Sasha's outfits in Psychonauts and Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin are identical, considering the latter's story takes place immediately after the former. The outfit consists of a fitted Sacramento suit with a striped turtleneck sweater underneath. The sweater has horizontal stripes colored pecan and flaxen. Sasha also wears dark green leather gloves and dark green shoes. He sports bright orange tinted glasses with square frames.
Sasha's main outfit in Psychonauts 2 has him wearing a white lab coat, brown slacks, and a different turtleneck sweater. This sweater has horizontal stripes colored gray, orange, and flaxen. He has cinnamon colored rubber gloves that reach his elbows, and matching cinnamon rubber boots. Instead of orange tinted glasses, he wears orange tinted goggles.
Background[]
Shortly after he ran away from home and, some years and lots of unaccounted vicissitudes later he ended up being a Psychonaut with Milla Vodello as his partner.”
–Old Psychopedia description
Sasha was born in Germany to a humble shoe repairman and his wife.[1] However, his mother died while Sasha was still a toddler. As soon as he could talk, Sasha pestered his father constantly for stories about his mother, asking him what she was like, but his father was too heartbroken and to talk about it. This was incredibly frustrating to Sasha. Maybe it was by shear force of will, born out of an intense desire to know his mother, but Sasha eventually broke through—psychically. He was able to mentally penetrate his incommunicative father's mind and see his memories of Sasha's mother for himself. This turned out to be a big mistake, as he discovered a naughty memory of his own mother. Seeing as he was at a young age, this event disturbed Sasha enough to run away from his home.
Sasha then became an emotionally withdrawn, mainly venting his feelings through his Psi-Blasts. Eventually, Sasha joined the Psychonauts, where he was paired up with Camilla Vodello. Upon meeting her, Sasha mispronounced her name as "Ca-Mee-Yah", which she thought was cute, and didn't have the heart to correct him. She eventually got used to the name, and started going by "Milla" for short. They went on extravagant missions together, such as saving the president, international espionage, and even defusing a nuclear bomb, and the two eventually developed feelings for each other. Eventually, Sasha became a counselor at Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp along with Milla and Coach Oleander, where Sasha and Milla secretly took missions from Ford Cruller.
Story[]
Psychonauts[]
Sasha works as a camp counselor to the campers at Whispering Rock. He can be found inside his lab after basic braining and before Lili's kidnapping. He spends time most of his time at his secret lab, with access to vast quantities of psitanium, and a plethora of the best kind of research subjects: children. Young psychics have the most pure gifts, and they are invaluable when it comes to researching psychic development. He hopes to discover why some people are psychic and some are not. It's Sasha's belief that all people could be psychic if they could just find some way to make contact with the collective unconscious. Once he is captured by Coach Oleander, he is de-brained and kept under surveillance by Dr. Loboto. Once re-brained, he will aid Milla and Raz in breaking Lili's torture chair restraints. He attempts to fight Oleander's Brain Tank, but is overpowered and knocked unconscious alongside Milla and Ford. After the battle, he leaves the camp with the rest of the Whispering Rock Psychonaut crew to rescue Truman Zanotto from the Rhombus of Ruin.
Psychonauts in the Rhombus Of Ruin[]
Directly after the ending of Psychonauts, Sasha is seen riding on the jet heading to the Rhombus Of Ruin. After crashing and landing in the Rhombus, Sasha is thrown into a hallucination due to the psilirium deposit beneath him. His hallucination consists of him believing he has met aliens and attempting to communicate with them. Raz frees him from his hallucination by playing a phonograph record of a song his mother used to sing.
Psychonauts 2[]
Sasha continues to serve as a mentor to Raz, alongside Milla, Coach, and Hollis. Once the crew arrives at the Motherlobe, Sasha takes Dr. Loboto to his office for further interrogation. He later joins the interns and Hollis on the casino mission to the Lady Luctopus Casino. After the mission, he returns to probing Loboto. Later, he goes with the rest of the major Psychonauts figureheads to confront Nick, but is caught in Maligula's water vortex, along with the rest of the figureheads. After Maligula's defeat, he can be found relaxing with Milla in the Astral Lanes Bowling Alley. They talk about getting ready to head back to Whispering Rock Psychic Summer Camp.
Psychic Abilities[]
- Telekinesis - Uses it to smoke cigarettes.
- Marksmanship - Taught the power to Raz. His Psi-blast color is blue.
- Levitation - He floats off the platform after giving Raz the button in Psychonauts.
- Mind Reading - He can be seen reading his father's mind for memories of his mother in his memory vault, Sasha's Second Sight.
- Telepathy - In Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, Sasha can speak to Raz telepathically.
- PSI-energy transfer - In Psychonauts in the Rhombus of Ruin, Sasha is able to partially transfer his PSI energy to Raz.
- Astral Projection: Sasha can astral project into minds using a psycho portal or a brain tumbler.
Relationships[]
Razputin Aquato[]
Razputin Aquato is Sasha's pupil. Sasha sees Raz as a younger version of himself and hopes to help him on his path to become an experienced Psychonaut.
Coach Oleander[]
Coach Oleander is Sasha's colleague. Along with Milla Vodello and Ford Cruller, they work together as a tight-nit team of powerful psychics. Sasha doesn't seem to hold as much respect for Coach as he does for Milla and Ford, as he immediately abandons Coach once he's de-brained in the aftermath of the Thorney Tower's explosion.
Sheegor[]
Sheegor is Sasha's lab assistant who currently resides at Whispering Rock. Sasha invited her to become his assistant upon noticing her experience with handling human brains.
Sasha's mother[]
Not much is known about Sasha's relationship with his mother because of her death during Sasha's infancy. She is seen happily playing with him in his memories.
Lars Nein[]
Not much is known about Sasha's relationship with his father, however his father appears cold and distant in Sasha's memories. Sasha grew up with his father after his mother passed away. His father taught Sasha how to be a professional shoe cobbler to continue the family business. After reading his mind in search of memories of his mother, Sasha encountered vivid memories of his father having sex with her. Disturbed, he left the household to live on his own as a young man.
Ford Cruller[]
Sasha holds lots of respect for Ford Cruller. Along with Milla Vodello and Coach Oleander, they work together as a tight-nit team of powerful psychics
Milla Vodello[]
Milla is Sasha's colleague and love interest. They have gone on exciting adventures together - such as defusing a nuclear bomb, catching criminals, and even rescuing the president's brain.
The Campers[]
Sasha often invites the campers to train with him in his underground lab using his brain tumbler, although most get scared of the experiments and quickly leave.
Otto Mentallis[]
Otto is a colleague of Sasha's. The two seem to get along quite well due to their mutual dedication to scientific progress.
Sasha's Mind[]
- Main article: Sasha's Shooting Gallery
Sasha's mind is a large white cube drawing inspiration from the sharp, monochrome 1960s brutalism/minimalism aesthetic popular in mid-century German gothic design (as opposed to Milla's 1960's British psychedelic mod leanings). Sasha says that he can manage to keep his mind under control. Hidden inside the cube are various parts of Sasha's mind, each section hinting about his life (like the large bed and crib about his mother and the shoeboxes and tape-measurer about his father), shown when Raz sets the dial that releases the Censors to the highest setting. After fighting the Mega Censor, Sasha gives Raz his Marksmanship badge, telling him that they will never speak of what happened in his mind again. Upon re-entering the mind, it is revealed that the censor leak was in actuality a set-up to train Raz to be a successful marksman.
Trivia[]
- Sasha's hit animation in Psychonauts is different than other character's. He goes completely stiff and rocks back and forth.
- "Nein" is German for "No," which is likely a play on the large quantity of Censors in his mind.
- In early test builds of the games (before the final voice lines are recorded) Sasha is always voiced by Dave Russell, a character artist at Double Fine who also made his model.
- In the German version of the game, Sasha has an Austrian accent.
- Sasha harbors a passionate hatred towards Tiffany lamps, finding them so tacky he can't look directly at them. He uses them as target practice during Marksmanship training, as they are "something hideous and horrible, something so disgusting that it simply must die."
- Tim and Scott later state that the reason he hates such lamps is because, as seen in the Memory Vault "Sasha's First Loss", his mom died right next to a similar lamp.
- Sasha does, however, keep a Tiffany lamp in his office at the Motherlobe, possibly the very same one that used to belong to his mother.
- If the player uses Clairvoyance on Sasha, he can be seen to perceive Raz as a small version of himself. This implies that he sees a good deal of himself in Raz.
- His glasses actually change size slightly with his expression.
- The music in his Shooting Gallery is a remix of Mozart's "Eine Kleine Nachtmusik."
- Sasha has had 'The Nein family haircut' since he was born. (Shown in a memory vault.)
- The character's name may be a reference to Alexander Shulgin (nicknamed "Sasha"), a chemist known as a pioneer of psychonautics and for researching the use of psychedelics in psychotherapy.
- He smokes cigarettes, as seen in the cutscene when he approaches Raz for advanced training.
- This is also proven in Sasha's Shooting gallery during the Mega Censor fight. When Raz is stamped a few times, Sasha asks Raz if he could reach into his pocket and pull out his cigarettes for him.
- If you use Telekinesis on him, he will respond by saying "Yes, now release!" Or "Impressive. Now release."
- If Raz keeps getting Sasha hurt by the mega censor repeatedly, there's a line where he mentions an aunt, "Aunt Bernie." This could just be deluded babbling induced from the Mega Censor trying to paradoxically censor Sasha out of his own mind.
- Sasha unsuccefully tried to take the gold record with him when he escaped from the Rhombus of Ruin.
- In the German translation of Psychonauts his surname is spelled "Nain" instead of "Nein". The giant shoe boxes in Sasha's Shooting Gallery are also changed to say "Nain" with the the 'a' being purple colored.
- Sasha keeps the flashing keyboards inside his office on "demo mode" for ambiance.
- In Psychonauts 2, Razputin's certificates for PSI-Punch and Levitation are signed by Coach Oleander and Milla, respectively. The Psi-blast certificate, however, is signed by Ford Cruller, not Sasha. This may be because Sasha does not have the direct authority to teach children such a dangerous offensive ability. Raz also had to ask Ford for a Marksmanship learner's permit before being allowed to take the course.
- According to one of the Psychonauts DoubleFine playthrough live streams, Sasha and Milla carpool together to Whispering Rock.
- According to Hollis, Sasha used to wear socks with sandals to work until she managed, with great effort, to talk him out of it.
- In his Psychonauts 2 model, Sasha can be seen wearing what appears to be black eyeliner.
References/Notes[]
- ↑ Mentioned on a DoubleFine Twitch stream by Erik Robertson.