Psychonauts Wiki
Register
Advertisement


Milkman Conspiracy

Go to the graveyard! Dig him up! Oh, you’ll find something all right, but it’s neither man nor milk.

Boyd Cooper

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, albeit one where the roads are impossibly twisted on themselves. The world includes features such as a graveyard, a post office, and a book depository, each attached to different streets snaking around in 3D space that are connected here and there by way of power lines and sewer systems, but are otherwise suspended in midair, entirely separate from one another. While gravity does not need to work as normal in mental worlds, it is particularly unusual in this one, pulling one to the closest floor regardless of its orientation in space.

Additionally, the other most notable feature of this world is its obsessive focus on surveillance, owing to Boyd's paranoia. 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 perspective, to imply once again that he's being watched. Finally, the world is populated only by Rainbow Squirts—suspicious little girls selling cookies—and G-Men, tall figures in trench coats who use everyday items as flimsy disguises to blend in as they look for someone they call the Milkman.

This level relies heavily on inventory items while being very light on combat, as Raz needs to collect the same kinds of items the G-Men hold to blend in with them and infiltrate the areas they guard, so he can gain access to more of the world.

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.
  • 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 the man is contemplating a disorderly collection of newspaper articles with satisfaction. 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 easily see the connections on the board through Boyd's eyes, and understand that the Milkman is supposed 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 populate the area, guarding certain zones by pretending to be regular civilians and arresting Raz for questioning unless he carries the same item they do so he can blend in with them. 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. At the same time, 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 past the sewer workers. 
    • Tag: Slide across the powerlines near the first phone worker to reach a park. The tag is located on the island.
  • Dufflebag
    • Bag: Behind the graveyard, outside the fence.
    • Tag: Inside the house with a spy car near the post office.
  • Purse
    • Bag: Inside the house guarded by the hedge clipper G-men.
    • Tag: On the roof of the house to the left of the Road Crew.

Mental Cobwebs[]

The Neighborhood - 4 Cobwebs[]

  1. This cobweb is blocking the front door to the third house.
  2. Past the sewer workers, there is a house on the left with the cobweb blocking the garage.
  3. On a house just before you reach the post office. The cobweb is blocking the front door.
  4. Inside the doorway at the post office. Collecting this cobweb is mandatory to progress through the level.

Book Depository - 1 Cobweb[]

  1. This cobweb blocks the door to the book depository. Collecting this cobweb is again mandatory to progress.

Memory Vaults[]

  • Boyd: Fired Again! - On the grassy knoll immediately left of the graveyard.
  • Boyd: Hired Again! - In a playground area that can be reached by following the phone lines immediately past the road worker G-Men. Raz needs the phone item to get to this area.

Enemies[]

  • G-Men
  • Censors
  • Nightmare(s) (Boss)
  • Den Mother (Boss)

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.
    • Additionally, 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, and therefore has difficulty suppressing thoughts that might seem unreasonable or dangerous to most other people. When Censors do appear, they are not strong enough to stop the Milkman persona.
    • The G-Men seem to partially take over the role of the missing censors, and are certainly allied with them. Whether this means G-Men could be a type of Censor is unclear.
  • 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.
  • The cry of each Emotional Baggage in this mental world sounds more like nervous laughter than crying.
  • 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 game 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.
  • Various games have been compared to "Milkman Conspiracy," including Jazzpunk, We Happy Few, and Super Mario Galaxy.
  • Boyd's mind featuring a book depository, as well as the building having a sniper inside it, is a clear reference to the assassination of American president John F. Kennedy in 1963, an event that gave rise to one of the most well-known theories of government conspiracy. However, the idea that the assassin fired from the book depository is not part of any such theory, but rather the American government's official explanation of the murder.

External Links[]

Advertisement