Looks like this time, the world of Jak and Daxter is well and truly saved. I doubt we’ll need to revisit them again anytime soon.

However, that doesn’t mean we’re done with Naughty Dog. After all, we still have the final adventure of the Nathan Drake trilogy left in Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

Credit where it’s due, this is a strong opening sequence for the game, getting us straight into an action sequence with enough underlying intrigue that we’re going to want to keep playing to figure out what’s going on behind the scenes. Between the deal, the new shady antagonists, and the tension of how Drake and Sully will survive despite clearly being shot and left for dead, there are plenty of hooks to draw the player’s interest.

And while the tailing mission that follows, where we play as Teen Drake, slows down the pace a bit, it’s thankfully not too long before we’re back at it. The more important thing it does is establish the relationship between Drake and Sully. In general, Uncharted 3 focuses much more on their dynamic compared to previous games, where Sully takes a backseat to Elena and Chloe. We’re always had the idea that the two of them are close partners and associates, but that was the extent of what we knew until this game.

Thankfully, their characters are given enough time to develop. The problem is that a lot of the characters surrounding them, including and especially our big villains, are not. As we progress through the game, you’ll start to understand what I mean.

We’ve beaten Jak 3 for one and all, so let’s take a minute to discuss it before we finally wrap things up.

Like I said, next time we start Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception. Please look forward to it.

This is it. The final battle awaits us as we storm the Dark Maker ship to make sure Errol doesn’t awaken the cargo before we blast it to pieces.

As always, the fate of the planet is in our hands!

Fortunately for us, the Dark Maker’s strongest, most apocalyptic weapon amounts to nothing in comparison to… conventional firearms! Specifically, our ever-dependable Beam Reflexor and its incredible ability to crowd-control our enemies. Just ignore the fact that the driving section in the middle of the fight took me a few tries.

I admit that part of me is surprised nothing in the last round ever mandates the use of our eco powers. I never took out Dark Jak, and Light Jak only made a few appearances to heal us between phases in the last part of the fight. At least the platforming section at the start has us use our wings to glide a few times.

There is beauty in the way this is structured too. We begin with a platforming challenge, then a vehicle section in the wasteland, followed by the last combat sequence. All one after the other, making use of each of the big three mechanical pillars.

As for the reveal that “Jak is Mar. THE Mar!”, I’ve said enough about that during this stream and the post-game discussion that will be posted tomorrow. Overall, Jak 3 is still probably the best game in the trilogy, even if that shows off exactly why the other mascot platformers like Sly and Ratchet left him in the dust.

Next week, we start Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception.

Get ready, my friends. This is the part where all of the big late-game plot twists for Jak 3 are revealed.

And a lot of them don’t make any sense.

Honestly, the plot twist that the Precursors are ottsels is probably the part of this series of reveals that makes the most sense. It’s the rest of it that stretches credulity, with Damas and Jak not knowing their obvious relation to each other, and the idea that the Precursors were ready and willing to pull a fast one on Jak and turn him into an ottsel before he realized what was happening to him. It’s a lot of strange behavior from characters who should have the facilities to know better.

But none of this is game-breaking, thankfully. These were just part of the growing pains that came from taking storytelling in video games more seriously. Clearly, the Naughty Dog of later console generations learned much from their earlier attempts in this one, as we’ll doubtlessly uncover when we return to the Uncharted games next week.

For now, stay tuned for the finale of Jak 3.

In this episode, two of the worst gimmicks in Jak 3 make their presence known. Fortunately, both of them have the good sense to make their segments short so that we don’t grow overly tired of them.

Someone in chat compared that turret/vehicle escort mission to the Alchemist from Spyro 2, in the way that both of them take the most obtuse, unnecessarily long routes they possibly can to get to their final destination. I’ve never agreed more vigorously with somebody in my life. As for the Dark Titan section in the ship, I didn’t like using that machine in Jak II, and I especially don’t like using it now.

At least after those missions, we get a solid platforming level with light combat to break things up. I’m still not sure why Errol is so gung-ho about killing everyone, but I guess he was always a psychopath so it doesn’t matter.

This was the era of video games where we still didn’t take plot and story too seriously, so it’s important to not be too harshly critical when plot points don’t make sense. The gameplay of the PS2-era platformers always took priority.

Thankfully, Jak 3 plays well enough that it can overcome all of the shortcomings of the story.

Looks like the Precursor monks aren’t above asking us for help. Fortunately, we’re still the heroes we were back in Haven City.

So despite how rude they’ve been, you better believe we’ll bail them out.

This combat encounter against the Dark Markers was more than a little eye-opening. In theory, with vents of Dark and Light Eco allowing us to make extreme use of our powers, it would be wiser to save ammo and rely on Dark Bomb/Blast to eradicate our enemies.

In practice, the Beam Reflexor is such a powerful weapon, and the Dark Makers drop so much ammo for our guns, that it genuinely doesn’t matter how much eco we have access to. The gun is just one of the best things we have access to at any given point in time. Not only is it putting out a ton of damage, but it also staggers and stun-locks most enemies with repeated refractions.

Consider this is a gun mod we earned in the first two hours of the game, and it’s carrying us even as we approach the finale, it’s unreal how powerful it is compared to every else we can do in combat. Even when we have unlimited Dark Eco, it’s just no question.

I suppose it’s time we met the other major antagonist face-to-face.

Just don’t expect me to be interested in him.

I can’t pretend that I remotely care about Errol. He was a lame rival character in Jak 2, and despite all of his upgrades, he’s even less interesting here. He’s lucky that we don’t need anything more than a crazy robot man because he’s got the charisma of wet cardboard.

On that note, we should be wrapping up next week at the rate we’re going. We’re out of Act 2 and starting Act 3. See you next time for the finale of Jak 3.

In this episode, I both spoil a big twist in the endgame of Jak 3 in order to explain a thought that just occurred to me: One that made me question much of what we learn in the late game.

To reiterate here what I said in the video, Sig is a spy for Damas, who was working in Haven City in order to find Damas’s lost child. We will later learn that his child is the heir to the throne we protected in the first, who turned out to be a younger Jak.

In other words, Jak is the child that Sig was supposedly looking for, a fact that Sig should know since he was part of the team and would have likely had the story explained to him. And if Sig knows that, and he was working for Damas, Damas should know that. But the end game reveals that Damas never knew that Jak was his son, despite all the foreshadowing to the contrary.

Either Sig is a terrible spy, or he just neglected to tell his boss the thing he was supposed to figure out.

We’re finished all of our chores in Haven City, so let’s return to the wasteland to see what our “fellow” outcasts are doing.

Just don’t let them know we’ve been let back into the city.

Thinking about it now, it’s strange that the topic of Jak’s return and readmission into the city never comes up again as a plot point. Doubly so since that’s what brought us to Spargas in the first place. I don’t think Damas would mind, but it feels like a topic the should come up in conversation.

And as we’ll get to next time, there’s another topic that should have come up at some point, but clearly didn’t. We’ll talk more about it next time.

Remember what they said when we were banished to the wasteland for life? They told us that the council was too powerful. There was nothing they could do.

I want you to keep that in mind as you watch this episode.

Everyone who has done a retrospective on Jak 3 has already pointed out how the council goes from being “too powerful” to something Ashlin can just dissolve suddenly and without warning, but that’s just because it’s one of those things that one starts to notice when replaying the game with fresh eyes.

It’s not that there isn’t a plausible explanation for it that one could concoct. I’m sure there are ways for a political body to lose that much influence so rapidly. The problem is that there’s no build-up. One minute, Vegar has the authority to banish Jak, and the next he’s immediately stripped of all power.

While this ultimately doesn’t matter because our story is largely just an excuse to justify the gameplay scenarios we’re given, Vegar’s machinations are the inciting incident that set the entire plot into motion. He is one of our major antagonists, but in one fell swoop he loses his place as a genuine threat. Considering who the other major antagonist is, that means no one is doing much heavy lifting to keep our interest in the story going.

But he’ll get to him later.