Although rumours have continued to persist over the past couple of years about Sony potentially re-acquiring and reviving the Crash Bandicoot franchise, it looks like if it does ever happen, it’ll be without original creator, Naughty Dog.
In an in-depth interview with Game Informer about the history of animation at Naughty Dog, Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End writer and longtime lead animator Josh Scherr was asked if the studio misses the cartoony, stylised era of the Crash Bandicoot and Jak & Daxter series. He replied: “No, I don’t, because we’ve got an amazing team of people making some really expressive performances with our current stable of realistic characters. I mean, animating the stylised stuff is a lot of fun, but the stories that we’re trying to tell right now are a little bit more grounded and a little bit more grown up than they were back in the Jak and Daxter days.”
When questioned on whether this was due to the case of the staff at Naughty Dog simply getting older and more mature, he admitted: “I think that’s part of it. I think that it’s also dictated by what the market wants, too. You know, that was a lot of what our decision was bounded by and based on when moving from Jak and Daxter to something more like Uncharted. And it’s also what we’re interested in, too.”
Scherr added that although Uncharted has a few “elements that are a little bit crazy”, they’re still essentially grounded in the real world; and, with the studio having “kind of moved into this new realm”, he doesn’t see them changing their approach any time soon.
Would you like to see the return of Jak & Daxter and/or Crash Bandicoot? Or is Naughty Dog right; has gaming irreversibly moved on into an era of realism and grounded storytelling? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.
