Take a break, guys

Before Naughty Dog settled on its upcoming survival horror PlayStation 3 exclusive, The Last Of Us, the Uncharted developer strongly considered working on a new entry in the acclaimed Jak & Daxter series.

Naughty Dog co-president Evan Wells explained:

We’d all talked about it in interviews with fans asking, ‘Where’s the next Jak & Daxter?’ I don’t know if this is going to make them happy or sad, but we did explore the idea fairly extensively.

Something that we talked about early on was, ‘Lets go back and apply what we’ve learned with the Uncharted games to Jak & Daxter.’ It’s one of the franchises that’s near and dear to us, and, in all honesty, we’d like to somehow honour.

But the exploration talks eventually broke down:

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 realised we were going to just do everybody a disservice. So at that point, the conversations started to move in a new direction.

Wells continued that there’s a possibility the Uncharted team could move onto a new Jak & Daxter – but we’re not holding our breath.

Naughty Dog’s got a long history and I think it’s got a long future, so to say we’ll never go back is kind of crazy. But right now, we’ve got this new IP that we’re definitely going to be supporting. I guess there’s a possibility the Uncharted team could move on to Jak & Daxter. It’s still up in the air, but I wouldn’t think that’s going to happen because I think we’d run into all of the same problems with that team that we did with this team.

Thankfully fans of the platforming series can get their fill later this month, when the Jak & Daxter Collection drops onto retail shelves. We know it’s not quite the same as a new entry, but there’s only so much Daxter a person can take.

We’re secretly happy that Naughty Dog’s trying something new, even if we wouldn’t mind a return to the Jak series in the far-flung future.

[source vg247.com]