Jak And Daxter: Naughty Dog Leads And Other PlayStation Devs Reflect On The Precursor Legacy’s 20th Anniversary

Jak and Daxter – The Precursor Legacy is a Naughty Dog-developed platformer. It’s now been twenty years since its release. Sony has collected some thoughts and reflections from Naughty Dog engineers and other PlayStation Studios leaders to mark the occasion. 

Hitting PlayStation 2 on December 3, 2001, The Precursor Legacy is officially 20 years old, and as noted by Sony Interactive Entertainment content communications manager, Tim Turi, who wrote today’s PlayStation Blog post, it marks an interesting point for Naughty Dog. Naughty dog is most well-known today for Uncharted and The Last of Us. But before that, Jak and Daxter were their bread and butter. This series was developed by the studio after the bout of Crash Bandicoot. 

Evan Wells, co-president of Naughty Dog, recalled how difficult it was to design an open world in The Precursor. 

“The biggest thing I learned was the challenge of designing an open world game without using load times,” Wells writes. “We set out from the start to design a world and not levels like we were used to coming from Crash, and we made it a rule that if you could see it, you could walk (or boat or fly) to it and that when you reached a building or cave that you could go inside and that the inside would have to fit within the space that the exterior could support. It wasn’t easy.” 

Charlotte Francis, senior technical art at Naughty dog, stated that the physics of The Precursor Legacy was among the most thrilling aspects of designing the game. 

“I remember being really excited about the physics that had been added to the rope bridge by the programmers, because we had rope bridges on Crash Bandicoot, but they did not have physics on them,” Francis said. “We were jumping up and down on the bridge and marveling about how it reacted to Jak jumping on it.” 

Bend Studio engineering manager Darren Chisum said Jak and Daxter broke a lot of ground, citing that the graphics were “top-of-the-line at the time” and that the game “allowed you to play through very large areas without loading screens,” something we might take for granted today. Insomniac Games quality assurance analyst, Heather Finley, said they recall their grandmother owning a console just so her grandkids could play The Precursor Legacy. 

“I will forever remember how hard it was, as a kid, to cross the Volcanic Crater on the A-Grav Zoomer or how hard it was to catch 200 pounds of fish for that darn fisherman,” Finley said. “It was the first game that I truly considered a favorite of mine. I even mentioned Jak and Daxter when I was interviewing for Insomniac because it had such a huge impact on my life and love for games.” 

This story explains why Naughty Dog has not been working on Jak or Daxter’s new Jak/Daxter despite rumors to the contrary. 

What were your experiences with Jak and Daxter games? What is your favorite one? Comment below to let us know which one is your favorite!