If you’ve watched the previous two videos
I did on Jak 1 and Jak II, my love and admiration of this series is pretty obvious. Since I am someone who loves Jak 1 and Jak
II, you might expect my thoughts on Jak 3 to be more of the same, since it seems you
either love the whole series, or just certain parts of it. However, Jak 3 is not the same to me. Despite having played Jak 3 several times
in the near 20 years since it’s release back in 2004, my playthroughs of it as an
adult have only made me look at this one as more of a disappointment compared to the first
two. Now let me make myself clear, I don’t hate
Jak 3, I don’t think it sucks or anything. It’s just that I thought Jaks 1 and II came
together in really satisfying ways. Different ways between the two of them, but
satisfying in both cases, to where I enjoy replaying both of those games whenever I feel
a revisit is in order. Jak 3 is one I will replay because “well…I
just replayed 1 and II, I might as well play 3.” Then I walk away thinking…yeah, it’s alright,
I guess..but is a total mess when looking at it as a package. And that is, again, coming from someone who
thought Jaks 1 and II were both excellent games in their own ways. There isn’t even that much history to go
over in regards to the development of Jak 3, or at least, in ways that are relevant
to the discussion at hand. The history behind Jak 1 and II gets me interested
in exploring it because of how those stories of the evolving gaming culture impacted this
series harder than any other. Something so obvious because it changed so
much from it’s first entry to it’s second. So I spent a long time in those videos exploring
why Jak 1 was so well crafted, only to be met with a less enthusiastic audience response
than other games at the time, leading to Jak II being the way it was. For Jak 3, they knew they were sticking with
the story, characters and gameplay structure of Jak II and wanted to add onto the existing
moveset for Jak to make it feel like a full sequel, and also improve upon the criticism
that they had gotten after releasing Jak II. And that’s what they did, shipping the game
just one year after Jak II, compared to the 2 years of concentrated development that both
Jak 1 and Jak II had gotten. Suffice it to say, I think this video will
thankfully be much shorter than my video on Jak II last week, just focusing instead on
Jak 3 as a whole, what I think it gets right, where I think it misses the mark and giving
my theory as to why that is. So, let’s not waste anymore time and get
into Jak 3. The story begins in the Desert as Jak has
been banished to the Wasteland for life, as Daxter and Pecker protest…I always got a
chuckle out of that. Daxter and Pecker decide to join Jak in his
exile from Haven City as the game cuts between their march through the desert and flashbacks
that show how we got to this point. Despite killing Kor at the end of Jak II,
some of the Metalheads survived and are continuing their assault on the City, but the new Freedom
League led by Jak and company have to fight on two fronts as the Metal Heads have taken
over one side of the city, but on the other, Krimson Guard death bots are being mass produced. So they are fighting a losing battle. Jak’s name is being dragged through the
mud as he is accused of being an accessory to letting the Metal Heads into the city…which…technically
is true as Jak’s missions for Krew throughout Jak II, while a means to an end to help the
Underground get intel, where also the things that ultimately allowed Krew to get The Metalheads
into the city to wreak havoc. So, by a vote from the Ground Council, led
by a guy named Count Vegar, Jak is banished. But he is found by a group of Wastelanders
living in a sanctuary city called Spargus, ruled by Damas. Pecker being his new adviser, while Jak and
Daxter have to prove themselves to the people of Spargus through combat and various desert
expeditions. Setting up the first act of Jak 3, and this
is where the problems begin. The pacing in Jak 3 is really messy. You start the game off in a tutorial with
basic platforming and combat, but then you have to…ride a Lizard to catch 6 rats, play
a mini game where you have to press the buttons that correspond with the ones on the screen,
do tutorials on how to drive, race in the car, collect artifacts with that car, do a
leaper lizard race with the local monks, battle desert MetalHeads in a vehicle, battle in
the arena again, more content with Leaper Lizards and then after an hour of gameplay,
the player finally gets access to a mission with raw, unfiltered Jak and Daxter platforming,
which was the thing you came to play. When in Jak II, the first mission, yeah, was
a tutorial, but it felt like it was part of the experience as you escaped captivity. Then your first several missions are all core
gameplay. The first mission in Jak II that I’d argue
was a mini game that had nothing to do with core gameplay was when Jak and Daxter got
sent to the Drill Platform for the first time to destroy the Metalhead eggs, which didn’t
come up until an hour and 45 minutes into the game. Even then, that mission still had combat and
platforming. Like I said, the platforming action that I
think defines J&D, isn’t playable until an hour into the game. Now, you could say that driving and such are
the core gameplay mechanics of Jak 3. But in that case, I just think this is a downgrade
from Jak’s 1 and II. While they did have mini games and driving,
they were verifiable side portions of the game. Jak 3 blurs the line much more. Driving missions don’t bother me, but then
when it’s back to back to back with leaper lizards and such…yeah, the first act of
the game is really boring. Once you actually get into the platforming
content of Jak 3, I think it’s enjoyable, but then after 2 good levels, you then do
more of this stuff…like searching for survivors in the desert and…driving this one large
vehicle through a nearby Metalhead Nest and the worst of all, shooting down targets with
a turret. The first act just sets the stage poorly for
Jak 3 because you are met with a host of mini games that obscure the focus on the game. That’s not to say it’s all terrible. I think the driving missions, as soon as you
get access to a ride with guns on it, are fun. The Metalhead Hunt mission has these cool
camera angles for when you get hit where the car goes flying. It’s cool to see how in depth the physics
are for these desert vehicles because this is back when devs talked about designing elements
like that from scratch. I always enjoy using the Dune Hopper vehicle
which can jump really high into the air, combined with the boost turbos you get, and you will
see some serious height and distance. I think all these vehicles are appealing from
a design perspective too. I never actually thought about this before
playing Jak 3 for this video, but I am pretty sure this game is the first time we ever see
a vehicle move on wheels in the Jak series. We saw the Lurkers use balloons in Jak 1,
while the zoomer could hover a bit and had a propeller in front. But Jak II was much more futuristic with it’s
flying cars and racing pods. It goes to show that the wastelanders are
making due with scraps. having less futuristic technology than Jak
1, while still being cool nonetheless. It’s all pretty neat, but again…in the
first hour of the game you only play as Jak to fight in the arena twice, otherwise it’s
a sea of things that were considered…side content in the last two games. First impressions do matter, and one of the
reasons why I don’t go back to Jak 3 often is because I just remember the fact that the
game’s first two hours have a lot of side content tossed onto your lap when the first
act should be the time to get me excited to keep playing more of the game. I do get that most of these are mechanics
the player will use later in the game, so it’s better to have a soft introduction
earlier in the game before the big test, but I just think it could have been spaced out
better because the first two hours feels really bogged down by mini games and tutorialization. It also isn’t great because the story wants
the return to Haven City to feel grand, after having spent a lot of time getting to know
the people of Spargus City in the desert, the main thing the game was advertised around…however,
by the time you begin the quest to re-enter the city…two hours into the game, I haven’t
done much in the way of fun gameplay so my attitude, instead of thinking…I am just
like…yeah take me back. You don’t feel like you’ve been here a
long time at all because I am still getting into the game by the time you return to Haven
City. But at least, things get a lot better once
you do. Starting with this long mission in the mines
to get back into the City, a boss fight against a fully functioning Precursor Robot, not like
the modded one from Jak 1’s final boss…and then once you get topside, the content gets
a lot more interesting. Making this as good a time as any to mention
the fact that there are plenty of things I really like about Jak 3. Those things being major and minor. So let’s look at them. In terms of quality of life features, I appreciate
the fact that menus all scroll much faster in Jak 3 than they did in Jak II, this just
improves the pace of the game if you plan on changing a setting or visiting the secrets
menu from gameplay. Graphically, Jak 3 is working off the same
standard as Jak II, widescreen, progressive scan, no load screens, cutscene models…all
the stuff you’ve come to expect from the Jak series is here and accounted for in Jak
3. Although the game still suffers from the same
performance issues that affected Jak II with screen tearing and frame drops. Frame drops might actually be worse in Jak
3 because of how much more action is on the screen. But I won’t give the game too much crap
because for PS2 standards, Jak 3 is loaded with content. I mean, you have two massive hub worlds. The sprawling Wastelands and the ruins of
Haven City. You don’t see all of the City you did in
Jak II, but most of it. Pulling off all that with the dev time this
game had while keeping the bar of visuals as high as they did is a feat in and of itself. Now when talking about the actual gameplay,
Jak 3 improves upon elements from Jak II in numerous ways. First of which being the streamlined travel. The fact that players would spend a long time
in Jak II just going from place to place was one of the biggest criticisms Naughty Dog
took to heart when designing Jak 3. So instead, the game places missions very
close to one another so that you don’t have to spend several minutes going from place
to place. For example, when in the port in the second
act, all the missions are right here in this area, or they are in Haven Forest which is
like 90 seconds away from the Port Base. In addition to that, Jak II also had you complete
a mission, but then drive back to the quest giver so you could get another one. This still happens a few times in Jak 3, but
a lot of the time, you will finish a mission and then a character will get on the communicator
and say the next mission is this, go do it. Like how Samos just tells you to go to Haven
Forest for a mission, and then when that is done, Torn will say ‘Jinx is waiting for
you outside for the next mission’. This keeps the pace of the game going and
contributes to why Jak 3 is shorter than Jak II by about an hour. I’d imagine designing the game like this
also saves ND time on the amount of cutscenes they’d have to animate, since half the missions
in the game don’t have a cutscene that triggers them, you just go do them. Mechanically, Jak 3 adds things that are quality
additions. The Jetboard was great in Jak II, giving you
a satisfying bit of extra speed with some visual flair thrown on top. It’s pretty much exactly the same in Jak
3, but you’d want to use it more in this game because of the fact that you now get
this charged jump and ground based attack so that you don’t fear whipping it out in
the middle of a platforming combat mission. Dark Jak was almost useless in Jak II because
of the fact that you had to drain the full bar of Dark Eco in order to tap into Dark
Jak, it just made Dark Jak something you wouldn’t want to use unless the situation seriously
demanded it like you were low on health in an enemy rush or a boss fight, where your
other weapons still do the job just fine. Jak 3 is a 100% improvement in this aspect
because the transformation now works more like the Devil Trigger in Devil May Cry. The circular part of the gauge must be filled
before you can be Dark Jak, but once you have transformed, you can transform back in an
instant with the press of a button. So since the stakes don’t have to be as
high to him, Dark Jak’s old moves like the bomb or the electric spin are more useful,
and I also got use out of the new move where you toss beams across the screen. To balance out Dark Jak, this game also allows
you to tap into Light Eco to become Light Jak, the yang to Dark Jak’s yin. Dark Jak allows you to tear through enemies
with vicious attacks, and so Light Jak is built around defense and mobility as you learn
various moves throughout the game like the Light Jak Shield, the Time Stop, the Self
Heal and these Light Wings you use to reach places you otherwise couldn’t. I actually don’t use Light Jak much throughout
my playthroughs of this game, and that’s not because there’s anything wrong with
the form itself, in a vacuum these are all fine abilities, but…well…I guess I will
save the rest of that for later and just stick to the things I like in Jak 3. The game massively improves upon the completion
aspect. Jak II had over 200 Precursor Orbs, but they
didn’t really contribute anything meaningful to the game. In Jak 3, there are 600 of the things and
while you do still use them for concept art, level select and behind the scenes material
like Jak II, they serve a much bigger role in the core gameplay loop as you find them
all throughout the areas and can go to the Secrets Menu and spend them on things like
new vehicles to drive in the desert with their own stats and weapons, nifty enhancements
like Dark Jak’s attacks homing in on enemies, the Jetboard going really fast in the desert
and best of all, upgrades to the functionality of your weapons like ammo efficiency and rate
of fire increases and so on. With rewards tied to your gameplay, I feel
more incentive to spend time looking for Precursor Orbs during the campaign, whether that be
through the challenges that Jak II had, which you now spend your MetalHead Skull Gems on,
or just by doing Jetboard challenges in the hub worlds that reward you with a surplus
of orbs. Lastly, there is the soundtrack. I haven’t really mentioned it up to this
point, but I find the music in the Jak games to be pretty underrated. I highlighted the various moods Josh Mancell
pulled off in Jak 1, but this also carried over in Jak II, even with it’s completely
different direction. Jak II also had dynamic music, where tracks
would be altered if you were walking, fighting, shooting, driving or jet boarding. That’s not in Jak 3, but I figured I’d
mention it since I forgot to do it in the Jak II video. The music in Jak II and 3 was done by Josh
Mancell in the gameplay, but they also got a fellow named Larry Hopkins to score the
cutscenes to add a more cinematic quality to the music, compared to games like Jak 1,
where the cutscenes just keep playing level music in the background, and I’d say it
was successful effort. But as for Jak 3, the in-game music, I find,
is memorable and atmospheric, so I often listen to it when doing other projects on my computer
like thumbnails for videos and such. I have actually used Jak 3 music in several
videos in the past because I find it’s vibe so easy to work into videos about other topics. I just used Subterranean, the theme of the
Forest and Sewers in my Resident Evil 2 video from a few months back, to use an example. But there are plenty of examples of other
tracks I like listening to from Jak 3. I mentioned earlier that the platforming action
in the second act of Jak 3 was an improvement over the start of the game, and it is…and
I’d like to use that as a thing I enjoy about Jak 3, but this is where we get back
into the problems. In terms of the raw platforming, Jak 3 has
a lot of fun moments. The first visit to the Precursor Temple in
the desert sees you climbing up the tower by jumping between crumbling platforms and
swinging between poles. With Jak’s entire moveset still being in
Jak 3, it’s still fun to roll jump off ledges and land and high jump, or uppercut off ledges
and transition into a spin. Jak just feels great to play as and that has
remained true throughout the entire trilogy. I can speak to numerous levels that are fun
to play in like the Sewers, The Forest, the War Factory, the Mines, all of the levels
with platforming as a central element are satisfying to play from the mechanics alone. However, what I enjoyed a lot about Jak was
the seamless platforming and combat mix. But I can’t say I fully enjoy the main levels
and missions of Jak 3 because this game is one of the most broken combat systems I have
ever experienced. Jak II had only four weapons, nothing compared
to the roster you’d see from it’s sister series, Ratchet and Clank. However, less is more in this case. I thought Jak’s four guns in Jak II were
really well balanced around each other for reasons I stated in my video on that game. In Jak 3, The Scatter Gun, The Blaster, The
Vulcan Fury and The Peacemaker are all still in the game and work the same as they did
in II, so in theory the balance should still be intact. But things get screwed up the moment Jak 3
introduces additional modes upon the four weapons you have. Each of the four weapons will receive two
new modes before the game is over, giving the game a total of 12 guns. I get it, they wanted to go big or go home. But if you are going to have all these weapons,
you have to design enemies around that fact. You have to design the weapons to work in
tandem. But they didn’t. The first upgrade to The Blaster alone breaks
the game. You get the Beam Reflexor early on which causes
Blaster shots to ricochet off of walls. This makes it so that in combat, you barely
have to try with this thing equipped, you just jump, spin, and shoot the beam reflexor
and watch the sparks fly. In the arena, you can see I am barely doing
anything and yet, the enemy total is drastically going down. This even dampens platforming levels. In the mines, you are supposed to shoot these
targets to give the dynamite a path to reach the door while under a time limit, but with
the Beam Reflexor, the shots may just travel so far all over the screen that it will hit
all the targets after a few tries, ending the mission way before it is actually supposed
to end. It’s just funny, this strat gets people
killed in Jak II, but in 3, it truly allows the combat to almost play itself. One weapon this OP is bad enough, but then
you get the Gyro Burster which, upon being fired, will send a mini UFO into the air that
spreads Blaster shots all over the screen with laser-like precision in hitting the enemies. When using the Gyro Burster and The Beam Reflexor
together, no combat scenario stands a chance against you. Another utterly broken weapon is The Plasmite
RPG, the third level for the Scatter Gun. This one tosses a grenade in front of you
that decimates any enemy it comes into contact with, including the shields of the ultra powerful
Dark Makers you fight at the end of the game. You get the Plasmite RPG before the first
level of the Peacemaker, but it makes the Peacemaker completely obsolete because it
doesn’t need to be charged up and tears through enemies just the same. With almost the same amount of shots, but
with much more frequent ammo drops because Red ammo is never in short supply compared
to Dark Ammo. The same issue applies to the Blaster’s
upgraded weapons, yellow ammo is so common that abusing the Beam Reflexor is very easy
to do. But even if you do run out of ammo for the
Scatter Gun or the Blaster, it’s no problem, just grab the Arm Wielder which spews electricity
all over the screen, or the Needle Lazer which homes in on every enemy, out of that too? Well, you still have the Peacemaker and it’s
upgrades, the Mass Inverter which reverses gravity, making every enemy in it’s range
utterly helpless. Or the SuperNova which is just a screen nuke. If that wasn’t enough for you, you still
have Dark Jak and Light Jak at your disposal as well. The perfect example of how Jak 3 is just not
balanced well can be seen in the Stadium Ruins level. I ran in with the Plasmite RPG and the Gyro
Burster and blew every enemy away before they knew what hit them. Then I tried it again with the Vulcan Fury
weapons and did the same thing. Then I tried it with Light Jak who, I remind…can
make himself completely impervious to damage. While also having the power to heal and slow
down time. Then turning into Dark Jak and unleashing
his screen nuke powers. Jak 3 is just not a challenging game, and
that’s because the player is showered in a sea of ultra powerful killing machines. As I said, the enemies are not designed with
this in mind because they don’t feel like a threat. This can be satisfying, like The War Factory
level where you just tear through all the enemies in this one man raid, and then find
this vehicle to tear through doors with being the cherry on top of a good level. But I don’t want to feel this powerful throughout
the entire game. Even in the third act when the Dark Makers
reach the Earth. The player can’t be stopped, The Plasmite
RPG will tear away their shields, Dark Jak will destroy them in no time, and so will
all your other options. I get that they got a lot of heat for Jak
II being as difficult as it was, but this is a comedic overreaction. I don’t even mind that Jak 3 has way more
checkpoints than Jak II…in fact, if they left it at that, it would have been a quality
improvement in the difficulty balancing since losing all your progress in a mission for
the tiniest slip up was too far. But really, it’s just the stale combat that
does Jak 3 in for me. You have so many weapons of mass destruction
in your arsenal that combat is not fun to play anymore. I never die from combat situations in Jak
3 because the enemies stand no chance against me. And even when it gets dicey, I can heal all
my health with Light Jak. Even with all my experience, an enemy rush
in Jak II still manages to be tense to me because you have to play your cards right
to succeed in that game. But not Jak 3, this is definitely one of the
most unbalanced combat skewed in the player’s favor I have ever seen. It just makes it difficult to enjoy what’s
worth enjoying in the game when it’s systems are not carefully considered. I enjoyed the second act the most because
it was the part where the game focused on combat and platforming for several missions
straight. Even if the combat isn’t good in Jak 3. It’s still one of the better parts of the
game. But then, in the final hours of gameplay,
the game just goes off the rails with the mini games. Like raiding the Metal Head Nest a second
time with Sig in this giant tank. Followed by a mission where you shoot the
cannon in that tank while Sig drives, aiming at Metalheads for no lie…five minutes straight. Of just holding down the shoot button. There is no overheating mechanic or anything,
you just point and shoot at the targets that move very slowly where there are only 2 or
3 things you need to shoot on screen at once, it goes on for an eternity. One of the main attractions for the end game
is the raid on the KG War Factory that hangs in the sky. To get there, you need to grab something from
the Power Station where Daxter must enter a computer and play this…Pac-Man type game? It’s not full on Pac-Man, but it’s clearly
evoking that imagery. And you know, some kind of homage to an older
era of game could be interesting in a game that knows what it’s trying to do, like
say…the Qwark 2D platforming levels of Ratchet and Clank 3, but when Jak 3 is forcing the
players through this entourage of completely random game modes and mechanics that have
nothing to do with Jak and Daxter, this just becomes part of the white noise. Defending Spargus from the Dark Makers isn’t
an all out assault on the enemies, of course not, it’s…a rail shooting mini game that
goes on for several minutes. Jak linking up with the Dark Maker ship for
the first time sees you taking control of the Mech Suit from Jak II that I already didn’t
like as you, with no checkpoints, must reach the end of this hall. I spent almost 10 minutes on that because
I died towards the end. After that, you have to raid Erol’s ground
base and to do that you must do another rail shooting mini game protecting Torn and his
bombs that lasts for 6 minutes where you just point and hold down the shoot button…this
really wears me down, it’s just so boring, especially after all these other missions. Also, Sig just appears in this mission out
of nowhere. Ashlyn tells Jak and Daxter they need to defend
Torn and Jinx and then in the mission, Sig is just there too with no explanation as he
had nothing to do with the plot in Haven City before this point and really…doesn’t after
this mission either. He doesn’t do anything in this mission besides
give you the supernova gun. Which Jinx easily could’ve done, or just
not have Jinx and have Sig instead. Things like that are the only ones catching
my mind because otherwise the gameplay is just this for six minutes. Things don’t happen for no reason in Jak
and Daxter, that’s been a staple of the series since the first game so..yeah, another
thing against Jak 3. Of course, I am not saying you play all these
mini games back to back, but we already went over the fact that Jak 3’s combat greatly
brings down the main gameplay…especially this late in the game when you have most of
the weapons. So by the end, I am just really bored with
the game. And it doesn’t help that the last nail in
the coffin that cements Jak 3 as the worst game in the trilogy is the fact that the story
is just a mess. For starters, the plot is very unfocused. At the beginning of the video, I said you
arrived in Spargus, you are getting to meet these new faces, and then you are tossed back
into Haven City to continue that conflict. So therefore, new characters like Kleiver
just don’t leave much of an impression, he doesn’t get any screen time besides being
the reason you have to go on pointless missions. He doesn’t get the screen time to be anything
else. But dividing up the screen time is a game
wide issue. By the end of Jak II, the core cast of characters
is pretty large, and now we add a few ones to the roster. Every character in Jak II played a role in
the overall story and it all came together in a satisfying way. In Jak 3, you can’t just…not have Keira
for example, be in the game without people wondering why she wasn’t in it. But then you have the flip side problem of
Keira just being there, doing and saying almost nothing from start to finish. Onin is another example of a character who
served a purpose in Jak II, who is just…there in Jak 3. Hell, I’d even say Sig doesn’t add anything
to the story either. We learn that he was a spy in Jak II trying
to find Damas’ son but got caught up in working for Krew. But as a character, his role in the story
is often confusing. Like I said, he just shows up at one of the
last missions with no prior context whatsoever. So first, you have the fact that there are
too many characters with not enough to do in the plot, just dropping in and out of the
story as they please. But then we just don’t get enough development
for the actual important stuff. I like Damas, he’s kind of a hard case at
first, but warms up to Jak as the game goes on. I just think it’s a little forced that they
make sure to mention that Jak doesn’t know his dad…something that never came up before
despite it being a clearly sore subject, and then later it’s mentioned that Damas lost
his son in Haven City. I just think the bond between Jak and Damas
would be better if he was allowed more screen time, but that’s the cost of the game going
so quickly between Spargus and Haven City. One of the biggest issues I have with this
plot is how there is no clear villain for the first 3 hours or so of the game. Count Vegar banishes Jak to the Wasteland,
but…this guy is no main villain, he doesn’t have an army or powers or anything. So he doesn’t feel like a threat, especially
since he’s getting mocked in so many cutscenes. But then, it’s revealed that Erol is the
main antagonist of Jak 3 and this always felt like such an asspull. Erol was a rival to Jak in Jak II, something
I barely went into last time, but he died at the end of the game by driving himself
into barrels of Dark Eco in an attempt to kill Jak. But now, he got revived as a cyborg and is
now a super hammy Metal Gear boss who is controlling…the metalheads and…the KG robots and is communicating
with the dark makers and is leading the charge on their attack on Earth? I say it as a question, because I really have
no idea what’s going on in this plot half the time. It just confuses me more than anything else. Especially since Erol and Vegar have nothing
to do with each other. Vegar was the one who attacked the palace
at the beginning of the game to gain access to something in the Catacombs to stop the
Dark Makers himself, but Erol is the one instigating the war. It’s not like Jak II where you are caught
between two warring factions that you have to fight against, it’s just Vegar’s a
guy who needs to be stopped, and Erol is up to something completely different. But luckily, Vegar is stopped pretty easily. In one of the weirdest scenes in the game,
Ashlyn just…dissolves the council that got Jak banished, but at the beginning of the
game, she was saying that couldn’t be done. I guess she hadn’t thought of just…firing
the council, yet. The writing of this game just feels like it’s
being made up on the spot, when the previous game just felt so tightly written to build
up to the grandest moments. To close this book, I think one of the worst
elements of the plot is how inconsistent the tone is in Jak 3. I said last time that I found Jak 1 and II
to both be funny games in terms of witty dialogue and physical humor, but Jak 3 made a much
more concerted effort to have this…Ratchet and Clank styled humor and I think it’s
just not that funny. There are some good lines and moments in Jak
3, but largely it’s all going in one ear and out the other when I replay this game. Then, serious moments don’t get much time
in the sun either. Like when Jak refuses to return to Haven City
with Ashlyn, he then just does the mission immediately after. Okay, he got his mind changed with Ashylin’s
last words to him, maybe, but it just feels rushed. No greater example of tonal whiplash in Jak
3 than the two most important cutscenes in the game. Damas comes to Jak’s rescue when the duo
is cornered by some Dark Maker machines and we get a final mission with him after the
whole game of building their relationship, but after the task is accomplished, the car
gets hit by a bomb that flips it over and mortally wounds Damas as he asks Jak to find
his son, Mar, the youngest heir of Mar, as Damas himself was once the leader of Haven
City but was betrayed and banished by Praxis, leading to Jak II’s status quo. Jak immediately realizes that he is Damas’
son, and getting separated from Damas is how Jak’s younger self came to be in the care
of the Underground in Jak II. But before Jak can say anything, Damas dies
and Count Vegar, who just appears out of nowhere, reveals that he knew it all along and wanted
to tap into Jak’s special powers for himself, before Jak got found by The Shadow, and mocking
that Damas never knew Jak was his son. Getting Jak and Daxter fired up for a confrontation
with Vegar…but of course we first have to play a mini game, and then we go from this
dramatic death scene, to the reveal that the Precursors are actually ottsels, the species
Daxter is. A scene played for laughs, which I really
don’t care about either way. It’s not like finding out who the Precursors
were mattered to me in the previous games, but they choose to make this reveal as comedic
as possible, with full on fourth wall breaking gags and again, Ratchet styled humor about
how they should’ve gone with a backup hero. It’s just not that funny to me. It’s nice that they try to tie the whole
trilogy together by explaining that since they made Eco, it contains their essence which
is why Daxter turned into one of them in Jak 1…but the real problem is that this comedic
apex of the story is right next to the dramatic apex of the plot. The writing in this game is just all over
the place. Setting up for a climax that just doesn’t
land the way it’s supposed to. I, for starters, don’t care about the Dark
Makers. They are former precursors who got corrupted
by Dark Eco and now destroy planets…will Earth be next?!?!?! No, Jak’s arsenal is far too loaded for
that to happen, they can’t touch me! So, I am not afraid of them. And then, Erol is the final boss, this character
who still, even by the finale just feels like such a tacked on afterthought that you are
still wondering why they even decided to bring him back, of all characters, to be the climactic
final enemy of the Jak trilogy. Doesn’t help that the first part of the
final boss is really annoying as you need to shoot these targets on the terraformers
legs, but whenever you get down to the last one, it always takes forever to shoot it. Then the second phase is laughably broken…in
your favor, like all the rest of the combat in the game. But hey, at least this shot of Jak and Daxter
walking through the sand looked pretty cool. And…I almost forgot about that! This game rewrote the fact that Keira was
Jak’s love interest in favor of Ashlin, who was presumed to be Torn’s before…so..yeah
that was a weird thing they did in Jak 3 that came out of nowhere and goes nowhere as well. But then we get the ending where Daxter finally
gets that pair of pants he’s been waiting for, and the Precursors invite Jak on a tour
through the universe, where it’s then implied that Jak was the real Mar, his own ancestor
and created Haven City and all that and then went back in time to this very moment, but
I choose to not think that’s the case because making Jak the real Mar just makes him…a
little…too important for my liking, but that’s just me. I just assume that he changed his mind and
pulled a Batman exit and appears here, just in time for the ending shot. Jak 3 is an interesting game to me. After all the complaining I just did, I might
as well rip the bandaid off and say…I don’t hate Jak 3. It’s like I said at the beginning, it’s
not some unplayable mess…not that this is where the bar should be, but I am just saying. It didn’t kill the series or some melodramatic
line like that. It’s a finished, polished product with the
same elements I enjoy from the previous games. I just think Jak 3, in so many ways, did not
live up to it’s potential. The game just doesn’t feel inspired to me. It obviously had it’s inspirations like
Mad Max or this Rockstar game called Smuggler’s Run on PS2. However, my point is that Jak 1 and II had
a history to them that I thought was worth exploring. The things that inspired those games, the
culture of the video game industry that affected those two games. To me, Jak 3 just feels like Jak II, but with
more stuff in it, made with the intent to address the issues people had with that game. That’s not a terrible goal, I understand,
it’s just that in execution, it just makes Jak 3 feel kinda bland. Being pulled in too many different directions. It wants to be the epic finale of the Jak
trilogy, it also wants to be this funny game, it wants to have all these crazy weapons and
powers…but with the game not doing the work to make the enemies scale with your weapons,
it makes the combat a breeze, and with writing this all over the place, it fails at almost
everything it set out to do. Toss in a bunch of mini games and that’s
Jak 3. I don’t think it sucks, I just don’t think
it’s really that great either. I can play this any old day of the week if
I felt so inclined, it’s just one of those games where I can play it, it’s just that
I’d prefer not to…like I’m Bartelby the fuckin’ Scrivener over here. It’s a C Tier game for me, which as I defined
in a previous video, is a game that is okay at the end of the day, just not one you’d
be clamoring to revisit. A lot of folks in the audience really love
Jak 3, and that’s fine. I get it, it’s just that I think the game
could have been a lot better if different choices were made in regards to it’s focus
and difficulty design. I mentioned at the beginning that there wasn’t
much to tell about the history and context of Jak 3, but I merely meant that as, not
much that would matter for my opinion on the game. What I did find interesting in the research
phase of this video, was Naughty Dog reflecting on their history in an interview with IGN
from 2019. There they confirmed what the design bible
already said, that Jak 3 was setting out to address the criticisms Jak II had received,
but I also learned something I didn’t know. What I did know was that following Jak 3,
Andy Gavin and Jason Rubin, the co-founders of Naughty Dog, had left the company. Jason Rubin felt burnt out and tied down by
being the head of this company and wanting to explore other avenues in the industry,
which he is still doing to this day. Jak X: Combat Racing was the first title Naughty
Dog did entirely without the founders, but the surprising part was that they already
knew they weren’t going to be around much longer when Jak II was coming out. So, the development of Jak 3 was also about
facilitating a smooth transition from the original leadership to the Evan Wells and
co leadership that we know today that properly began with Jak X, leading into the Uncharted
era. This is pure speculation on my end, again
pure speculation…I am thinking…that if the main thing Naughty Dog was trying to achieve
in 2004 was smoothly changing leadership…then maybe that explains why Jak 3 is the way it
is. Just add more stuff to the game. That, to me, explains why the combat is so
unbalanced and filled to the brim with mini games. The game was made in a year, was most likely
rushed, and while they said the leadership change was smooth and effective, I do wonder
if the actual game being made at the time fell by the wayside? I guess there is no way for me to know, but
that theory does explain it for me. But again, it’s not like the game is bad,
I just think it’s kind of a mess. Having said all that, that covers the Jak
trilogy. Something that…as a whole, I will always
have fondness for, even if I don’t think Jak 3 sticks the landing. But luckily, this wasn’t the last Jak game
on PS2, or even the last Jak game done by Naughty Dog, because next week, we are covering
the legendary…Jak X: Combat Racing. So until then, I will say what I always do. Thank you all for watching and I will see
you next time.
