Naughty Dog has today confirmed it still has no desire to return to Jak & Daxter, although it is a case of ‘never say never’ for the popular platforming duo.
During a presentation on the history of the Uncharted series at EGX 2015 earlier in Birmingham, Naughty Dog community strategist Arne Meyer was asked by an audience member about the Jak & Daxter ‘reboot’ that was explored by game directors Neil Druckmann and Bruce Straley prior to starting development on what went on to become The Last of Us, and if there is a chance the studio may return to the franchise in the future.
Meyer responded by echoing the comments of his colleague Josh Scherr at the start of the year, although gave fans a brief glimmer of hope by saying the studio would ‘re-evaluate’ their decision to work on more realistic games in the future:
“If you look at the concept art, Jak kind of looks weird ‘anthromorphised’ and realistic, and we knew that as a studio we were pushing towards grounded or more realistic games; this stylised realism concept – and Jak didn’t really fit into that direction that we were headed. So that’s why we ended up scrapping it at that point. Again, I will say ‘never say never’, but our studio right now is really focused on doing more realistic or grounded games. We’ll always re-evaluate it because I know people are always asking us about it, but it’s not the direction the studio is at right now.”