Cuts for Jak

Jak 3 BtS

*Note: these are just some scattered thoughts which I decided were surface level tangents not central enough to include in the video. They only got one editing pass and aren’t supposed to have any flow. The first sentence or two, with the ellipsis, is a part of the finished video, which these paragraphs followed in the original script. Here’s a link to the video script so you can ctrl+f the ellipses bits for extra context if you need it* http://pastebin.com/iZ9inxsd

… That’s a fair few genres there, but Jak 3 starts out innocently enough with a movement tutorial similar to the one in Jak 2. There’s also some gun combat right off the bat - Jak 3 won’t stray from Jak 2’s formula anywhere near as much as 2 did from 1… However, I think the two games serve to illustrate how tutorials can feel condescending when teaching a player.
In Jak 2, the tutorial level was just that – a level. It was strictly linear, and placed increasingly more difficult obstacles in the player’s way. The game flashed up button prompts for each move required to progress. With each obstacle the player overcame, the designers could then rightly assume the player had learned the move in question and could then build the rest of the game with this knowledge guaranteed. If you removed the button prompts, it would inconspicuously fit with the rest of the game’s levels, slotting in at the bottom of the difficulty curve.
Button prompts aren’t inherently condescending. The buttons on a controller are arbitrary until a designer gives them meaning, so, even if you’ve played a lot of platformers and know that X usually jumps, it’s reasonable for a designer to confirm that, yes, this arbitrary cross-shaped icon does indeed correlate to an upwards movement for no particularly logical reason. If a game takes control away from the player while a button prompt is on-screen, that’s when it can start to feel condescending. If I can read “Press X to jump” in a quarter of a second and the prompt pauses gameplay for five seconds, even that’s a noticeable halt to my momentum.
Jak 2 and 3 are pretty good about this. The prompts can be on screen for a while longer than they need to be, but they don’t stop momentum, so, if you’re practiced enough, outrunning the prompts can even be kinda entertaining.
Jak 3 stumbles by asking the player to collect floating orbs as they progress through the tutorial. As I said, once a move has been introduced, and the player has conquered an obstacle that requires that move to progress, the designer can assume that move has been learnt. Collecting these orbs teaches nothing except reinforcing how to move with the stick – an odd thing for the game to worry about when it doesn’t have a prompt to teach this in the first place. Since the tutorial is extremely linear, the game doesn’t need these orbs to ‘check’ if the player has landed on each platform successfully -reaching the end of the entire tutorial is proof enough.
Jak 3’s first level is by no means the most patronising tutorial out there – far from it – but it goes to show how a small change to the player’s objectives can make a tutorial feel more condescending – remove the button prompts here, and it would still feel like a movement tutorial.

…As the first proper platforming level in the game, though, that’s to be expected, and the simplicity isn’t an issue… yet…
The one new addition here would be Daxter, who is finally fully playable. He got chased by a boulder in Jak 2, but I didn’t bring it up at the time because I found it had all the same strengths and problems as the chases in Crash 2. He’s a sort of Crash Bandicoot reference here again, with a few short grate climbing sections out of Crash 2 and 3. These are as good as they were then, but the rest of his gameplay is the same as Jak’s – a couple of enemies to spinkick, a couple of bottomless pits to jump over. It’s nothing Jak couldn’t have done himself, but it’s in no way harmful either, and I’m sure it serviced a few fans.
I didn’t bring up that we never got to play as Daxter in the Jak 1 video, because I don’t think a developer should try to force in gameplay variety. Jak 1 had enough level gimmicks as it was, and I certainly don’t think Jak 2 needed any more sets of mechanics. I love Daxter, but trying to force him into Jak 1 as playable just because he’s there, not because there was a relevant, justifiable gameplay idea, would have been thinking about gameplay variety backwards.

*This next one just complicated the point. It was the result of arguing with myself far beyond what was necessary*
… After the slomo is activated, the player has access to their usual platforming moveset, but now they can think about platforming with a different mindset. This could just as easily be platforms which slowly crumble on their own; the slo mo is just an example…
I suppose you could call this gimmick a new mechanic too, but it’s a sub-mechanic, it integrates with an existing one. There’s a much clearer divide between regular platforming and pac-man, compared to regular platforming and platforming in slow-mo.

*A couple more observations that were never going to go in the script but I thought were worth putting out there somewhere*
The… umm… ‘Daxter twist’ (no spoilers) is one of my favourite twists in gaming history. I think Jak 3’s writing is a step down from Jak 2, and some of its other twists are ham-fisted as hell, but the Daxter twist is brilliant and hilarious. I love how there’s nothing in the series to contradict it – doubtless Daxter came first, and the twist probably wasn’t even considered until Jak 3 rolled around, but since Jak 1 and 2 don’t contradict it, you can almost convince yourself that Naughty Dog had it all planned out the whole time.

I have all the same problems with Light Jak flight as with Light Jak slomo, although there’s a key difference. Yes, there could totally have been platforming challenges based around chaining together shooting, regular jumping and flying, so it’s absolutely another missed opportunity. If memory serves it’s used a total of twice outside the precursor temple, and only twice even within the temple.
The difference is that it’s kind of separated from the rest of the mechanics similarly to a minigame. You’re either flying or not flying – you can’t fly and punch, fly and shoot, fly and platform. You can do all those things while slomo is active. It’s an additional mechanic which is added to Jak’s basic moveset, but doesn’t interact with any of the other parts of said moveset. The only thing that can really be done with this is have you flap over various sizes of gap between regular platforming and combat bits. It certainly makes me think about missed opportunities, but there are fewer possible opportunities missed. It’s used well for a couple of open-world precursor orbs, but I said my piece on side content being better than the main game in the video.




Also I’m not gonna analyse it but Daxter is totally better than Jak 2 or 3 and you should absolutely play it :)