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Naughty Dog Almost Made A New Jak And Daxter

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Loudninja

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Following the success of Uncharted 2, Sony wanted to license out the game’s engine to make more great-looking blockbusters, but, due to technological factors, Naughty Dog ended up being the only studio that could actually use it. The game’s warm reception also brought up the inevitable side effect of competitors trying to poach the talented team. Thus, Naughty Dog proposed creating a second team to in order release more games using their engine and Sony agreed instantly. It also opened up new promotional opportunities for talented staffers and helped keep the headhunters at bay.

The thumbs-up from Sony meant the brain storming process could begin, and one of the first ideas was to return to Naughty Dog’s PlayStation 2 duo. “We’d all talked about it in interviews with fans asking ‘When’s the next Jak and Daxter?’ says Wells. “I don’t know if this is going to make them happy or sad, but we did explore the idea fairly extensively.”

Naughty Dog wanted to find a way to apply elements from Uncharted 2’s award-winning game design to Jak and Daxter. The team experimented with implementing Uncharted-style narrative techniques and rendering Jak and Daxter in the same realistic style seen in the company’s gorgeous PS3 games. According to Wells, the new project would be a departure from slapstick, comic book-tone of previous games. But before full-blown work could begin on the game Naughty Dog would have to create new, more realistic versions of the titular heroes.

“We dug around trying to find the core of Jak and Daxter,” says creative director for The Last of Us, Neil Druckmann. “Who are the characters? We had to reboot it essentially. Every time we got excited about an idea we’d take a step back and look at it and be like ‘It’s not Jak and Daxter, are we just slapping the name on it for marketing reasons?’”

The lighthearted Daxter proved to make the transition from wacky hijinks to a more grounded experience particularly difficult.

“There’s a lot of baggage that comes with Daxter,” says The Last of Us director Bruce Straley. “If he’s not lighthearted and slapsticky and fun then he’s not Daxter to the fans. We were thinking what if he’s mute? What if he’s this? We had all these ideas that made Daxter interesting, but then we’re still trying to be creative within that box of ‘I have this rodent on my shoulder.’”
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http://www.gameinformer.com/b/featu...hty-dog-almost-made-a-new-jak-and-daxter.aspx

More in the link.
 
Even if you don't like the series, you have to be very intrigued as to how that game would end up looking visually.
 
I'm glad they didn't. The Jak games were always aimless platformers lacking a focus. Ultimately, Jak 2 and 3 followed the typical sandbox game formula of presenting an open environment with mission dispensers scattered about.

I simply never found the games all that engaging. I didn't consider Naughty Dog a truly AAA studio until they delivered Uncharted 2, to be honest, though the first Uncharted was a jump in the right direction.

I'm still uncertain as to why people have such fond memories of J&D. The character designs aren't exactly brilliant, the platforming itself was generally a bit simple, and the games too open and unfocused for their own good.

I'm not opposed to ND trying their hand at another platformer, to be honest, but I would hope they'd deliver something different once again. We don't need another Jak style game and I think they'd be better off leaving those characters behind.

I'm a HUGE fan of platformers, by the way, so it's not that I don't want more of them. I simply found that, as far as the genre goes, Jak and Daxter were extremely uninspired (gameplay wise).
 
Devs thinking too much yet again.
They should just make games and tack on stories and graphics after. Especially in the case of a Jak and Daxter. It would have been more interesting for me instead of the "The Last of Us" wich is a bit too "ala mode" for the hipster me.
 
That almost sounds as nightmarish as that "realistic mario". Glad they abandoned that look. Would love to see images of that though, pretty please Arne? :P

Maybe when they have the power on the next generation of consoles to make incredibly expressive cartoony characters we'll see a new Jak game. Don't go for realism, go completely the other way. Make an outlandish world with beautifully exaggerated visuals. But above all, make it an open one. I don't want a tightly scripted Jak game.
 
What I don't get, is why the first few things that came to their mind were "reboot", "new story" and "realistic look". I kinda like the same thing that happened after they released the first Jak game and because GTAIII was the bomb and sold to everyone and their mother; they shoehorned elements from GTA to Jak.

For the kind of game Jak is (a platformer with action/adventure elements); they need to step back an if anything do what Nintendo does with Mario games: forget about a story and character development, and just focus on the game. If they want to add a good story to it, then add one along the way. But is like they were designing Jak 4 around the story and look, rather than the gameplay..which is what they should've thought of first, rather than if making Daxter mute would piss off fans.
 
We dug around trying to find the core of Jak and Daxter,” says creative director for The Last of Us, Neil Druckmann. “Who are the characters?"
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This sounds like the kind of crazy that let to Jak 2 and 3.
 
But above all, make it an open one. I don't want a tightly scripted Jak game.
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The best platformers are almost all "tightly scripted". What exactly makes an open world a good choice for a platformer?

Open worlds tend to get in the way of the best level designs. I don't think Super Mario World would have benefited from a massive open area that required you to run around looking for levels rather than selecting them on a map.

The hub world in Mario 64 was tight and limited in scope, but even that detracted a bit. The awful hub in Mario Galaxy was a detriment to that experience as well. A sandbox world requires the developer to restrain themselves when it comes to creating challenges and I just don't like it.
 
Trying to make it realistic was probably what killed it from the start. Awful idea.

Those renders they've done for the HD Collection are really nice; if they had made a PS3 Jak game with models like that, it probably would have been able to survive longer into development.
 
dark10x said:
The best platformers are almost all "tightly scripted". What exactly makes an open world a good choice for a platformer?

Open worlds tend to get in the way of the best level designs. I don't think Super Mario World would have benefited from a massive open area that required you to run around looking for levels rather than selecting them on a map.

The hub world in Mario 64 was tight and limited in scope, but even that detracted a bit. The awful hub in Mario Galaxy was a detriment to that experience as well. A sandbox world requires the developer to restrain themselves when it comes to creating challenges and I just don't like it.
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It's actually what I loved about Jak 1. Seeing something off in the distance and thinking "I'm probably going to go there" was incredible at the time.
 
They realized any new Jak they made would be compared to the perfection that was Jak 2 and would inevitably fall short.

It's better to let the series RIP and focus on a PS4 Uncharted or even something new.
 
V_Ben said:
That almost sounds as nightmarish as that "realistic mario". Glad they abandoned that look. Would love to see images of that though, pretty please Arne? :P
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I can't find it anymore, but ND did release a PS3 tech demo that had "realistic" Jak-style characters in it. This was before they unveiled Uncharted for the PS3. IGN's page for the story gives you an error when you click on the video link now.

fernoca said:
What I don't get, is why the first few things that came to their mind were "reboot", "new story" and "realistic look". I kinda like the same thing that happened after they released the first Jak game and because GTAIII was the bomb and sold to everyone and their mother; they shoehorned elements from GTA to Jak.
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Years ago Evan said that they didn't have any interest in making a prettier version of the PS2 Jak games. They'd want to do something different if they made a new game for the PS3.
 
Though the games were great fun, I have no particular affection for the Jak characters and universe, so I'm not heartbroken. I'd rather ND just start up a brand new platforming series. Which I know they're not going to do.
 
I would rather they move on, thankfully they have. I'd hope come the next gen that second team could be the more experimental of the two, in gameplay and story ideas.
 
This is actually kinda interesting. They couldn't make a J&D game for this gen without making it more "realistic". But surely, with a cartoon cell-shaded type graphic style, you could make a fantastic J&D. Sly Cooper looks good.
 
Derrick01 said:
perfection
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Jak 2
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tumblr_lefsw3JOBX1qf8yek.gif
 
This is so stupid, what they need to do is so obvious that I don't know why they haven't done it already.

Sony needs to buy the Crash Bandicoot franchise, and ND needs to do another game; make it the official mascot. This should have been done in the PS1/2 years, but maybe it's too logical. What do you want more, a new Jak game or a new CB game by ND? The answer is too obvious.
 
dark10x said:
I'm glad they didn't. The Jak games were always aimless platformers lacking a focus. Ultimately, Jak 2 and 3 followed the typical sandbox game formula of presenting an open environment with mission dispensers scattered about.

I simply never found the games all that engaging. I didn't consider Naughty Dog a truly AAA studio until they delivered Uncharted 2, to be honest, though the first Uncharted was a jump in the right direction.

I'm still uncertain as to why people have such fond memories of J&D. The character designs aren't exactly brilliant, the platforming itself was generally a bit simple, and the games too open and unfocused for their own good.

I'm not opposed to ND trying their hand at another platformer, to be honest, but I would hope they'd deliver something different once again. We don't need another Jak style game and I think they'd be better off leaving those characters behind.

I'm a HUGE fan of platformers, by the way, so it's not that I don't want more of them. I simply found that, as far as the genre goes, Jak and Daxter were extremely uninspired (gameplay wise).
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So you don't like it? Good! Doesn't change the fact that others liked it and that the three Jak games are great games.
 
V_Ben said:
It's actually what I loved about Jak 1. Seeing something off in the distance and thinking "I'm probably going to go there" was incredible at the time.
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That's the thing, it SEEMED like it should have been incredible at the time (and technically it was), but after playing through the game, I realized that it was detrimental to the experience.

I used to love the idea of having a massive world to explore, but now that we have such things, I value a well designed experience more than aimless wandering. That doesn't necessarily mean scripting either.

Jak 1 was simply too aimless and once you got over the technology (which really was mind blowing), you were left with a pretty simplistic platformer that never really stretched its legs. It was a fetch quest, basically, with little in the way of great platforming along the way.

It was from an era still confused as to what made Mario 64 tick. Mario 64 revolved around collecting stars, but ultimately, those stars were just end points to a level not arbitrary items strewn about. You could have to complete a series of challenges to reach the end of the level which then marked your completion with a star.

With Jak it was simply about wandering around looking for power cells. In general, these power cells were not placed in particularly inventive locations. You simply wander around and find them scattered about. It was about collecting objects, not playing levels. As subtle as the difference may seem, it has a huge impact on the experience.

There were no real beats to the gameplay. Everything was always consistent, the music was always incidental, and the challenge rarely delivered. You just ran around in this world collecting power cells. That's about it.

So you don't like it? Good! Doesn't change the fact that others liked it and that the three Jak games are great games.
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I don't hate it, however (despite my issues with it). I would like to see ND take another shot at a platformer, but I don't think there is anything special to Jak and Daxter worth continuing.
 
The Uncharted team is the team that made those Jak games. So there's still a chance that they'll develop a new game in that series. You'll just have to hope that they're interested in doing something like that. It's clear that the TLoU team just wanted to develop a realistic game, so Jak didn't fit anywhere in that.
 
manueldelalas said:
This is so stupid, what they need to do is so obvious that I don't know why they haven't done it already.

Sony needs to buy the Crash Bandicoot franchise, and ND needs to do another game; make it the official mascot. This should have been done in the PS1/2 years, but maybe it's too logical. What do you want more, a new Jak game or a new CB game by ND? The answer is too obvious.
Click to expand...

Obviously jak and daxter you mean.
 
SolidSnakex said:
Years ago Evan said that they didn't have any interest in making a prettier version of the PS2 Jak games. They'd want to do something different if they made a new game for the PS3.
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Exactly. But it seems that their aim is/was mostly focused on the look and story, rather than the game. At least based on that interview.

If they wanted to make something different, they should've taken a look at recent-similar games like the New/Galaxy-Mario games, Ratchet, etc. and see what should be improved and what should be done to make their game different; rather than what is described which sounds as if it was Uncharted, with a blonde main character and possibly a mute-animal sidekick.
 
As much as they've blabbed on about being a franchise per console dev, they've certainly talked a lot about Jak coming back. Here's hoping that this gen or the next, that becomes the case.

No offence, but I'd much rather see a Jak 4 come to fruition than The Last Of Us. As good as the latter looks.

Also, what's realistic about a man being able to maintain a grip on freezing cold mountain ledges and sustaining multiple bullet wounds to the face?
 
Played every Sony published ND game except UC3 and for me Jak 2 remains the pinnacle of ND's achievement in gaming. Such a masterful game and brought so much enjoyment for me during the PS2 years.

Hope they do make one again, but I'm alright with them trying to make a new IP. I just hope the gameplay holds up for that game.
 
Naughty Dog wanted to find a way to apply elements from Uncharted 2Â’s award-winning game design to Jak and Daxter. The team experimented with implementing Uncharted-style narrative techniques and rendering Jak and Daxter in the same realistic style seen in the companyÂ’s gorgeous PS3 games. According to Wells, the new project would be a departure from slapstick, comic book-tone of previous games. But before full-blown work could begin on the game Naughty Dog would have to create new, more realistic versions of the titular heroes.

“We dug around trying to find the core of Jak and Daxter,” says creative director for The Last of Us, Neil Druckmann. “Who are the characters? We had to reboot it essentially. Every time we got excited about an idea we’d take a step back and look at it and be like ‘It’s not Jak and Daxter, are we just slapping the name on it for marketing reasons?’”
Click to expand...

Alright. I can get on board with a reboot. The existing canon is already too bogged down in itself, and none of the story is really good enough to justify salvaging anyway. The gameplay is the reason they should bring the series back. Do the Zelda thing, where you keep the names of some places like Sandover Village and Haven City, characters like Jak, Daxter, Samos, and Keira, and concepts like eco and hoverbikes, but set it all in a new story that doesn't have anything to do with the originals.

I can get on board with taking some of the story and setpiece stuff they learned from the Uncharted games. I can also get on board with toning down the cartoony, slapstick tone of the originals. But realistic? Come on, that's completely the wrong direction to go. It can still be a cartoon without being a slapstick cartoon.

The lighthearted Daxter proved to make the transition from wacky hijinks to a more grounded experience particularly difficult.

“There’s a lot of baggage that comes with Daxter,” says The Last of Us director Bruce Straley. “If he’s not lighthearted and slapsticky and fun then he’s not Daxter to the fans. We were thinking what if he’s mute? What if he’s this? We had all these ideas that made Daxter interesting, but then we’re still trying to be creative within that box of ‘I have this rodent on my shoulder.’”
Click to expand...

Keep him the sarcastic and jokey sidekick, but less exaggerated and slapstick and with a less annoying voice actor. There, done.
 
SolidSnakex said:
The Uncharted team is the team that made those Jak games. So there's still a chance that they'll develop a new game in that series. You'll just have to hope that they're interested in doing something like that. It's clear that the TLoU team just wanted to develop a realistic game, so Jak didn't fit anywhere in that.
Click to expand...

That is unfortunate, two teams, both creating games with realistic graphics. I actually liked what Insomniac was doing by releasinig Resistance and R&C alternately. They both looked so different from eachother, one was a grim, more realistic looking shooter, they other a cartoony, colourful platformer. TLoU and Uncharted both looks the same to me, same rendering technique and colours.
 
I haven't played any Jak games so I have no input on them making a new Jak game, but when I read this:
The team experimented with implementing Uncharted-style narrative techniques and rendering Jak and Daxter in the same realistic style seen in the company’s gorgeous PS3 games. According to Wells, the new project would be a departure from slapstick, comic book-tone of previous games
Click to expand...

All I can think is:
spSiE.gif
ALERT ALERT VERY BAD IDEA
 
fernoca said:
Exactly. But it seems that their aim is/was mostly focused on the look and story, rather than the game. At least based on that interview.
Click to expand...

I just think the problem was that the TLoU team clearly wanted to do something very different than Jak. They were basically going to be "stuck" with the game if they had to develop it rather than it being something that they really had a passion to develop. That's why it was better for them to create a new IP.

The Uncharted team is the best hope for Jak fans right now. They may be at the point where they want to take a break from the series. Jak would be a chance for them to do something completely different.
 
They basically were looking at making DmC...sorry JAK AND DAXTER GRITTY REBOOT.

Yeah, probably best to move on to a new IP, though I don't see why they couldn't have just stuck with the slapstick cartoon route we're so used to. Ratchet & Clank transitioned well on to current generation consoles. I'm sure taking another punt on the same route for J&D could be good, whilst still applying a cinematic feel to it that they want.

I still hope they go back to Jak & Daxter though as they have the tools for the job, though not necessarily the ideas at this moment in time, going by their brainstorming.
 
I do want a new Jak&Daxter game, but only if has actual gameplay resembling the the old games. If it´s Uncharted gameplay and a grittier setting, then I don´t care about it at all. The appeal of the games aren´t the story....
 
From what I understand, it's not that they want to make a realistic no matter what. But it's the only option for them to take advantage of their awesome Uncharted technology. If they make a game like Jak with cartoony characters, they would have to build a build a brand new engine to take fully advantage of the hardware. I hope that Last of Us will be more opened and replayable than Uncharted though. I don't mind some 10 hours rollercoaster, but I like meaty games too.
 
KevinCow said:
Alright. I can get on board with a reboot. The existing canon is already too bogged down in itself, and none of the story is really good enough to justify salvaging anyway. The gameplay is the reason they should bring the series back. Do the Zelda thing, where you keep the names of some places like Sandover Village and Haven City, characters like Jak, Daxter, Samos, and Keira, and concepts like eco and hoverbikes, but set it all in a new story that doesn't have anything to do with the originals.
Click to expand...

This is where I think the Ratchet games on PS2 succeeded where Jak failed. Each Ratchet game after the first felt like its own self-contained adventure, they didn't worry too much about keeping an overarching narrative over them all. It wasn't until the Ratchet & Clank Future games on PS3 that they started building something bigger, but even then the games were pretty loosely connected except for Clank disappearing at the beginning of the first game and that being followed up on for the two sequels.
 
SolidSnakex said:
I can't find it anymore, but ND did release a PS3 tech demo that had "realistic" Jak-style characters in it. This was before they unveiled Uncharted for the PS3. IGN's page for the story gives you an error when you click on the video link now.

Years ago Evan said that they didn't have any interest in making a prettier version of the PS2 Jak games. They'd want to do something different if they made a new game for the PS3.
Click to expand...
waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat
 
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