Revisiting Psychonauts 2, The interns were the biggest missed potential in the game. They either come off as annoying jerks or underutilized. The only one I tolerated was sam boole here, dogen’s sister. We have context on Sam’s behavior and possible backstory compared to the others, who I think should’ve been fleshed out more too. Like how did they discover their own psychic abilities? What were their own lives outside the mother lobe like? Did they have their own issues and inner demons?
Still, there should’ve been more interactions between them and Raz that tie into the main story and go through character growth as you progress through the game of the same quality as the campers in the first game.

And the interns being absent for most of the story only to show up at the final boss battle like they’re fundamentally important also felt wrong to me.
I don’t know if production at double fine was short on time or something at the time, but I think it could’ve been solved easily by having some cutscenes in between major parts of the game showing what the interns were up to, like a Cartoon’s Main and side plots are disconnected at first but become connected and relevant to each other later on. Plot-wise, the interns would have been sent to find Dr. loboto after he escaped. Once they catch him and get him to tell everything he knows about maligula, the interns are shocked and realize why Raz had been running back and forth all this time, ask Hollis where Raz is, they find Raz and now have a reason for helping him. That would’ve been a much better pay off.

Afterwards in the post-game, we would get a cutscene where the interns catch up to Raz and apologize for giving him a hard time when he arrived. Norma was hesitant at first, but stepped forward and apologized to Raz as well. Raz accepts their apology and high fives and fist bumps all around.