Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy, 20 years later

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In 1996, ‘Crash Bandicoot’ was released on the PlayStation. It went on to become a household name for the company, sold over 6 million copies and spawned 2 sequels including a racing game. Naughty Dog was the company that developed the series and their success had instantly become well known around the world.

Before Crash, they were finding it difficult to make games that would perform financially and critically well. Three years later, after finding success with Crash, Jason Rubin & Andy Gavin decided to sell the series to Universal. They were ready to introduce something new for the upcoming PlayStation 2.

The PlayStation 2 was a perfect home for Naughty Dog's next game
Picture taken by Denise Jans on Unsplash

Development started in 1999 under the name ‘Project Y’. Both Gavin & Rubin decided to make a new character to signal the company’s change of direction.

There would be free movement of the camera, a feature that the Crash games did not have because of its fixed camera. This would be inspired by the release of ‘Super Mario 64’, which inspired Naughty Dog take notes from the instant classic.

However, the biggest pull factor was that there would be no loading time and the whole game would be situated in one big island with many locations to freely go to.

The project was getting so ambitious, they even hired animators from Disney and Nickelodeon to help with animating characters as dynamic and realistic, while keeping the cartooniness throughout.

    20 years later and still eye-catching!

During development, artwork was nearing completion and the developers were discussing about who would be the main characters. Originally, in concept arts, Jak was more beast-like and Daxter was originally designed as a rodent-like creature.

Animators, would redraw Jak as a humanoid with long ears and Daxter as an Ottsel (a combination of an Otter and Weasel). The designs were inspired a comic book series named ‘Battle Chasers’, written by Joe Madureira.

The Music was composed and produced by Josh Mancell and Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo. And lastly, ‘Project Y’ was officially changed to ‘Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy’.

Trailer of Jak & Daxter: The Precursor Legacy
Video from RazielDante1

The main storyline involves Jak and Daxter at a secret lair, only for the latter to fall into Dark Eco, transforming him into an Ottsel. Samos, their guide, tells them that they would need to go on an adventure around the island to change Daxter back to normal. However, it turns out that the person that could do that is Gol; the Dark Eco turned him into a maniacal villain.

Throughout the adventure, they collect precursor orbs and power cells scattered through the game to progress through many levels ranging from beaches, jungles, swamps, snowy mountains and many more while beating up enemies along the way.

Powers include blue eco, that makes Jak run faster and attract orbs; yellow eco, allowing Jak to shoot balls of fire and red eco, increasing Jak’s strength.

The game includes three bosses. A carnivorous plant, a huge cyborg and a gargantuan robot, controlled by Gol and his assistant. It’s up to the player to defeat the villains and save the world from tyrannical rulings.

Jak and Daxter was revealed at E3 2001 and was released on the 3rd of December 2001 with a European release 4 days later. The game was met with overwhelmingly positive reviews from a lot of major websites and magazines.

Reviewers lauded the storyline, characters, combat, writing, absence of loading times, level design and many more features. However, criticisms included the repetitiveness of action and the over saturation of collecting items throughout the game.

The game would go on to sell over 4.2 million copies and Naughty Dog would go on to make two more sequels to the series in 2003 and 2004 respectively. After that, the company would go on to develop new games that would go on to become franchises including ‘Uncharted’ and ‘The Last of Us’.

Jak and Daxter fans at an American convention
Photo taken by Gage Skidmore on Flickr

And here we are now, it’s been 20 years since the game came out. Many people still call the game a masterpiece and believe the game was way ahead of its time. One game store owner in Worcester had this to say. “After Jak & Daxter, video games were never the same” he says unsurely, “One day they’ll be back for more”. 

A customer, also in the shop, chimed in with interest and talked about how he was close to not buying the game; “It was either Jak or Crash. I’m glad I chose right” he says with delight.

Overall, Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy is an important game both for the PlayStation and Naughty Dog as it introduced more linear open world games from other developers, it made the duo mascots for the PlayStation with others such as Crash and Spyro, it allowed other game developers to make more adventurous games in the style of Jak and Daxter and it achieved so much way ahead of other games that were released during the early 2000s.

Who knows if the duo will ever return for more adventures? 

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