Naughty Dog explored new Jak & Daxter before starting The Last of Us

The Last of Us is Naughty Dog's first new property since Uncharted: Drake's Fortune launched in 2007, but the developer first considered returning to its Jak and Daxter series, co-president Evan Wells revealed in a recent interview.

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The Last of Us is Naughty Dog's first new property since Uncharted: Drake's Fortune launched in 2007, but the developer first considered returning to its Jak and Daxter series. In a recent interview, co-president Evan Wells revealed that the team looked at the idea "fairly extensively," but couldn't quite make it work.

"Something that we talked about early on was, 'Lets go back and apply what we've learned with the Uncharted games to Jak & Daxter,'" Evans said.

"It's one of the franchises that's near and dear to us, and, in all honesty, we'd like to somehow honor," Wells told Game Informer magazine (transcribed by VG247).

As the existence of action-y survival-ish horror The Last of Us clearly shows, it didn't pan out.

"Even if we felt like we're going to give the fans another Jak & Daxter, we felt we weren't going to give them the game that they wanted. We would end up limiting the direction that the company had this passion for while simultaneously not creating the game that fans wanted. We just realized we were going to just do everybody a disservice."

Still, J&D fans will get to relive the glory days this week, when HD revamps of the first three games in the series arrive on PlayStation 3 in the Jak and Daxter Collection.

[Story image from the J&D Collection]

From The Chatty
  • reply
    February 6, 2012 7:30 AM

    Alice O'Connor posted a new article, Naughty Dog explored new Jak & Daxter before starting The Last of Us.

    The Last of Us is Naughty Dog's first new property since Uncharted: Drake's Fortune launched in 2007, but the developer first considered returning to its Jak and Daxter series, co-president Evan Wells revealed in a recent interview.

    • reply
      February 6, 2012 7:41 AM

      Awww, I would have preferred the Jak and Daxter game.

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        February 6, 2012 7:48 AM

        You are terrible get off my island. You really want sequel 5 in a series versus something new? Seriously?

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          February 6, 2012 7:50 AM

          Absolutely, I loved Jax and Daxter (1). Had such wonderful platforming and looked fantastic. The weapons play in 2/3 I could have done without.

          Gimme more Jax and Daxter.

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          February 6, 2012 7:51 AM

          Last of Us doesnt feel that "new" but i get wut u mean

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        February 6, 2012 8:11 AM

        I want both personally, I really enjoy JD so a pimped out new one on the PS3 would be awesome.

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          February 6, 2012 8:23 AM

          they probably saw the sales of Ratchet and clank and said thx but no thx

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            February 6, 2012 8:50 AM

            Probably :(

            Shame the last one is really good, yes there is no save point(my only beef really) and its more like a old school Mario side scroller in the sense that its very tight in the gameplay controllers and lvl layout and not open worldee. Shame so many compared it to past RC games and not for what it was. I thought it may have been the best platformer of 2011 it played very well they did a real great job on it.

            Eh I suppose that's how the industry goes some like it some hate it and its all about the numbers :( shame I would of liked a JD

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      February 6, 2012 7:48 AM

      Well it is good to know that they might one day complete the Jak and Daxter story line.

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      February 6, 2012 8:35 AM

      Personally, I would have gone for Uncharted Racing to keep with the tradition of 3 games proper and then the racing (Banjo, Jak, Uncharted...sigh)

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