We’ve gotten our bearing in Haven City, met some of the big players in the battle over its future, and started working with some of them to make big moves.

Let’s keep up the pace!

Something that only occurred to me when I was writing this, is that there’s an interesting side effect of having all of these important story bits crammed into such compact cutscenes. When I first played Jak II, I recall not knowing what was going on for most of the game, having much of the text and subtext fly right over my head. Part of that was because I was roughly ten years old when this game came out, but the other part was that if you’re not paying attention, it’s easy to lose important information that will become relevant later on.

Sure, I had a general idea of the key details, but if you asked me then when the Baron’s motivations were or what the political landscape of Haven City was, I wouldn’t know how to answer those questions.

I know them now because I’ve played Jak II countless times, but back then was an entirely different story.

Since we’re going through all the trouble of replaying the original Uncharted trilogy on stream, it only seems right to go further back and play some of their earlier experimentation with stories and games coming together with Jak II.

If you’re curious about what happened between the development cycles of The Precursor Legacy and Jak II, to explain the shift in tone and gameplay that the series went through, the answer is GTA 3, which more or less pioneered and popularized the urban open world that Rockstar’s signature series is known for the world over.

Whether this was chasing the trends or simply following the dev team’s energy is impossible to say. Whatever the case was, it’s a truism of that era in game development that sequels sell, almost regardless of whether the original game sold well. If I had to guess, I would assume that’s why this is a Jak and Daxter game rather than a new IP.

I posited a what-if, at the end of my run with The Precursor Legacy, where instead of this they kept the tone and feel of the original game. Part of me is still interested in the hypothetical, but honestly, if this is what they were interested in making, and I have no reason to suspect it isn’t, we’re better off with Jak II than with a company that feels locked into a style that they don’t have interest in.

We continue to talk about the troubles with Naughty Dog as they sell themselves in the bonus features of Uncharted: Drake’s Fortune.

And next week, we use the Way Back Machine to play Jak 2: Renegade!

We’ve saved the day by preventing a supernatural bio-weapon from leaving an Uncharted island. Chris Redfield would be proud.

And with all that pesky business out of the way, we have the chance to view some of the extra content available to us. Let’s do that while reflecting on it in the context of what we know about Naughty Dog in modern times.

It’s strange to watch these little promotional videos disguised as behind-the-scenes features about Naughty Dog in 2023, knowing all we know about their crunch culture.

The features themselves are all surface level, but thankfully I’m learned enough about the industry to fill in the gaps that were left by the lack of detail in these shorts.

That takes care of the hard missions in this chapter of my campaign. Now, let’s take it easy for a spell.

And definitely not panic. Nope. Definitely not doing that.

I was genuinely surprised that I managed to get away with a double murder in front of all the guards and kitchen staff. Feels like I cheated but in a good way.

The campaign continues!

This treasure we’ve all been searching for turns out to be a biological weapon that turns people into ravenous mutant zombies.

Yeah… We should probably stop the evil British dude from taking it off the island.

At least the terrible final boss has the decency not to take too long. Once stream chat had the decency to remind me what its gimmick was, we were wrapped up in the span of a few minutes.

While Drake’s Fortune appeals strongly to my sense of nostalgia, there’s no denying that it’s more a rough proof-of-concept than anything else. That’s not necessarily anyone’s fault. It was a new console generation, with new hardware and a new franchise.

A lot of the criticisms people had about that game, even the one about killing an uncomfortably high number of ethnic minorities, are addressed in the sequel. Rather than dive straight into it, I’ll take a brief detour back to the PS2 era, to Naughty Dog’s earlier work with the Jak and Daxter franchise in Jak 2.

But first, we have extras to look at, next time.

We’ve finally made it inside the treasure vault, even if poor Sully had to get left behind. The treasure is within sight. I wonder… What other dangers are left to guard it?

This chapter sets up something of a tradition that will be a throughline for the Uncharted franchise going forward. Though all of the games will take inspiration from myths and legends about real-life explorers, Naughty Dog adds a supernatural element to each tale, taking creative liberties to tell their own exaggerated version of it for their fiction.

As an adult, these monsters don’t frighten me at all. Back when I first played this game in the late 2000s, these guys scared the ever-living daylights out of me. I was awful at fighting them because I kept panicking.

But it turns out that nazi zombies are as inept and stupid as regular nazis.

The second Showdown is complete, and we’re onto the next Syndicate on our list. Let’s make some waves in the criminal underworld.

If I had any criticism of Freelancer mode as it currently exists, it’s the in-game economy that IO is intending to foster basically doesn’t exist.

By completing optional and prestige objectives, we get the currency of this mode, Mercers. Unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much of note worth getting with them. Even in this new mode, bringing in a big assault rifle or shotgun to a Hitman map feels like a big mistake. Spending money on them feels like an even bigger one.

Unfortunately, since I have a way of consistently getting silenced weaponry, I also don’t have anything else to spend my money on. It just lingers on the top right of my screen, begging to be spent. If anything, I’ve gotten better at relying on as little as possible aside from one silenced gun and a ton of tools I can find in the home base.

It’s an odd system, and I don’t know if it meshes well with the Hitman mechanics we know and love.

At last, the trio is back together. Nathan, Elena, and Sully. And at last, we’re finally back on the trail of the lost statue of El Dorado.

The hunt continues!

I’m so used to AAA games taking 20+ hours that I’m still a little surprised that we’re almost 80% through the campaign after only 4 hours. At this rate, we’ll be finished next week with time to spare to look over some of the extras and behind-the-scenes footage.

That’s the stuff I love sifting through, so I’m excited for next time!

Our old pal Sully is still alive! But why is he working for the bad guys? Let’s find out!

It’s easy to criticize Naughty Dog for the cinematic quality of their games and how it fails to truly capture what the medium is capable of, but one thing I will give credit to this style is the way it helps the natural chemistry between actors shine through.

Instead of recording their lines in a voice recording booth, the actors are set up in motion capture suits and act out the performance on a stage, where their mannerisms and voice are recorded for use in the game. Since all of the actors, and the writing team, are together in the same room, they have the capacity to work together in a way other more traditional video game recording setups don’t allow. What that does is add a layer of authenticity to the characters that can’t be recreated any other way.

As critical as I can be of their style, I can’t deny that there are strengths to it as well, this being chief among them.