Psychoscope

"The Psychoscope was a breakthrough. Apart from Neuromods, it's the most important tech on Talos I."

- January

The Psychoscope is a piece of technology developed by Morgan Yu to aid in the process of studying the Typhon organisms, and which allows Morgan to research more alien type Neuromods by scanning the aliens.

Appearance
The Psychoscope is a helmet-like contraption which mounts a single-tube sensor with twin eyepieces, which can slide down to cover the user's eyes or push up onto their forehead when not in use. From the user's perspective, when the device is in operating position they see through a circular lens with a number of small spikes constantly moving around the perimeter, with laser-like lines forming between them. The system's HUD can highlight scanning targets and provides data regarding their identity, strengths and weaknesses.

Function
The Psychoscope replaces the zoom function that Morgan previously had access to: using the zoom button after acquiring it will instead bring up the Psychoscope overlay. As long as Morgan is wearing the Psychoscope, any organism that they encounter and have not yet fully studied is scanned and data on them is added to a Research Database. Only living creatures and non-destroyed machines can be scanned. Once enough data has been accumulated for a specific organism, a new Alien type neuromod is made available to unlock.

The Psychoscope also has its own series of Chipsets which mostly focus on improving psi powers or providing elemental resistances, though there are some other useful abilities such as being able to detect Mimics while they are still disguised and improving the Psychoscope's scan speed.

Equipping the Psychoscope does have the disadvantage of disabling access to the weapon wheel, since the control to pull it up is used to zoom the Psychoscope in and out. it also prevents the use of the flashlight, though the Psychoscope has its own night-vision-like effect to compensate for this. In addition, by default the Psychoscope cannot detect concealed Mimics or Poltergeists that are not currently attacking.

In story terms the Psychoscope is also said to protect the user from being controlled by a Telepath, though since Morgan cannot encounter a Telepath before getting the device, this is more of a gameplay conceit for explaining why the player does not have to worry about this.

Location
The Psychoscope is found on a corpse in the lowest level of Psychotronics. It is required to enter the main lab area.

In Mooncrash, the Psychoscope can be found in Riley Yu's office on Pytheas Labs.

Trivia

 * In early concept art, the Psychoscope was a fairly simple pair of twin-lens goggles. This was later changed to a single-tube setup resembling a futuristic version of the American AN/PVS-7 night vision goggles.