Once upon a time, Jak and Daxter was a major franchise for not just thePlayStationbrand, but Naughty Dog as well.
Before the days ofUnchartedandThe Last of Us, the studio was known for theJak and Daxtertrilogy on the PlayStation 2, as well as the Crash Bandicoot series on PS1. While they’ve, for the most part, since moved on, aside from a Crash Bandicoot cameo in Uncharted 4, fans have always been wondering if they’ll ever see the legendary series again.
Crash fans got their wish a few years back when Toys For Bob developedCrash Bandicoot 4: It’s About Time. Despite Naughty Dog passing the torch, it was still a fantastic platformer worthy of the Crash franchise and one that lived up to its legacy.
Jak and Daxter fans, however, are still (impatiently) waiting, though there’s a possible sliver of hope if you’re willing to believe it.
Some Fans Believe That Santa Monica Studio’s Next Game Is Jak and Daxter
A few months ago, Jason Schreier reported in theResetEra forumsthat Santa Monica, which recently worked on God of War 2018 and God of War: Ragnarok, isn’t working on a new IP. Instead, their current project is an old IP that is being updated to feel like one.
On its own, that’s an exciting prospect to see one of the best development teams in the PlayStation family giving a new spin on a beloved IP. So, where do Jak and Daxter fit in? There are so many old, beloved IPs in Sony’s library that it could be any of them (looking at you, Sly Cooper).
Enter this old Tweet from Cory Barlog, as spotted byReddit users, from 2021: “I’m making a Last of Us game, only with Jak and Daxter as the main characters.”
Now, on the surface, there’s almost no chance that this is actually happening, but as people in the thread point out, Barlog tends to tease stuff in this manner. People in the thread are even pointing out that trying to mature Jak and Daxter in a similar manner to God of War doesn’t make sense. Here’s the thing, though: this wouldn’t be the first time a developer tried to do just that.
In 2012,then Naughty Dog Co-President Evan Wells spoke with Game Informer magazineabout the demand for a new Jak and Daxter game, especially following the success of the Uncharted series.
“We did explore the idea fairly extensively,” Wells said about developing a new Jak and Daxter game. He continued:
Something that we talked about early on was, ‘Let’s go back and apply what we’ve learned on the Uncharted games to Jak and Daxter.’ It’s one of the franchises that’s near and dear to us, and, in all honesty, we’d like to somehow honor…
But as we started exploring this and looking at ways we could evolve the game and apply the same narrative techniques that we had leveraged to good effect in the Uncharted series and bring the technology forward and allow us to render in a more realistic style like we were able to do in Uncharted, all the ideas just started to feel like they were going so far away from what made Jak and Daxter Jak and Daxter.
The idea that Santa Monica could be doing a retooling of Jak and Daxter doesn’t seem so far-fetched now, even if it’s (probably) not happening. Still fun to hope, though!
