Jax 2 screens

Hands-on Impressions by Gamespot! Enjoy

http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/action/jak2/news_6023378.html

Sony and Naughty Dog unveil the sequel to the PlayStation 2 platformer Jak and Daxter.


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At a press event earlier this month Sony took the wraps off of the sequel to Jak and Daxter, the Naughty Dog-developed platformer for the PlayStation 2 released in 2001. The game, slated to ship Fall 2003 and simply called Jak 2, has been in development at Naughty Dog\'s Southern California offices for the past two years. We had a chance to hear from the Naughty Dog crew and check out an early build of the game that features a darker look, tighter gameplay, and the next generation of Naughty\'s Dog\'s impressive graphics engine.

The game\'s story initially picks up just after the ending of Jak and Daxter as the pair investigates a strange energy portal which propels them 500 years into the future. Unfortunately the future isn\'t the fun place you\'d think it would be after the events of the first game. Jak is promptly attacked and captured by a mysterious group that puts him in prison. Daxter, in true form, saves his own furry butt and avoids being caught. The game then jumps ahead two years and follows Jak\'s Daxter-aided prison break. Apparently it\'s taken the furry chatterbox that long to get round to springing his friend. During the break we get a taste of what life in prison, and two years worth of unpleasant scientific experimentation, has done to young Jak as he transforms into a Dark Jak, a feral incarnation that feeds on dark eco. Following the prison break, the pair meets an old man, who fills them in on current events, and a mysterious young boy in his care. Apparently the future, in a rather unsurprising revelation given Jak\'s experiences so far, kind of sucks as a whole. The people are ruled by a shadowy figure called Baron Praxis, who was responsible for the experimentation done to Jak during his prison stay, and a mechanical menace called the metal heads looms over everyone. An underground resistance has formed to combat the Baron\'s rule and figure out a way to keep safe from the metal heads. But, whereas most platform heroes would nobly plan to help out the locals with their various problems, Jak is pretty unfazed and remains focused on two simple goals: revenge on the Baron for the two years of experimentation and imprisonment, and a return ticket to his time.

Now if the game\'s story sounds like a bit of a departure from the tone of the previous one, it is. Although the game\'s rating has yet to be finalized, Jak 2\'s darker tone and more mature approach to storytelling will likely make it the first T rated release in Naughty Dog\'s game catalog in quite some time. Jak 2 features a darker tone that is reflected in every aspect of the game. Jak\'s character model has been redesigned and sports a sleeker look. The various characters you\'ll encounter in the game, both good and bad, feature a mature design that skews older. Along the same lines, the world you\'ll be exploring will feature a darker tone overall and have a far colder feel to it. While many of the environments in the game will be much colder and more sterile than the ones in the previous game, even the more organic locales will be far less inviting thanks to a color palette that leans towards a darker look overall.

While Jak 2\'s darker look is conveyed by the game\'s more mature designs and darker color scheme, Naughty Dog\'s impressive graphics engine pumps out a rich visual experience that blows the original Jak and Daxter completely out of the water. Thanks to a combination of Naughty Dog\'s own tinkering and some shared technology courtesy of its collaboration with Insomniac, Jak 2\'s graphics look as though they may well set new standards on the PlayStation 2. Characters in the game are incredibly detailed and made up of 10-15,000 polygons and move much more fluidly than in the original game. The massive environments in the game, which are much larger than those found in the original game, sport a higher level of detail and a host of new special effects such as lighting and a subtle but impressive technique to simulate eye moisture to name just a few. Couple all of the above with cleverly streamed loading to provide a seamless experience and you have a title that is shaping up to be quite a showcase for the PlayStation 2.

As far as gameplay goes, Jak 2 sticks closely with what worked in the original game and tweaks what didn\'t. Jak\'s core moves set has come over intact and has been beefed up with the addition of unique weapons and vehicles. Jak 2 will arm you with four guns that you can upgrade over the course of your adventures. You\'ll also be able to ride a hoverboard that will be integral to some segments in the game and a nice option to use in others. You\'ll also be able to make use of local vehicles for transportation if you\'re in a pinch. Jak\'s Dark Jak incarnation also adds a new element to the game thanks to its powerful attacks and invulnerability effect.

In terms of its structure, Jak 2 features some radical, and welcome, changes to its predecessor. The game will offer a less linear experience overall. Although the game\'s main narrative will require certain linear elements to tell the game\'s story, you\'ll find those instances limited to key points in the game. The rest of the time, you\'ll be exploring a number of open-ended options as you make your way through the game. You\'ll still have a mission-based structure in the game but the amount of collection you\'ll be doing in the game has been seriously cut back and simplified. Mandatory collection in the game is limited to one item; other items you\'ll find are optional. You\'ll also find a broader degree of freedom in the game thanks to the number of options open to you via the vehicles and weapons you\'ll be able to use.

Audio in the game is coming together pretty well. Gamers unnerved by Jak\'s near homicidal silence in the first game will find him to be one chatty dude in Jak 2. Unfortunately, given his desire for revenge and time spent in prison, he\'s not exactly a very happy guy. Daxter, on the other hand, is still his chatty self although thankfully he\'s far more tolerable in this outing. Thanks to the game\'s T rating the furry critter will be spouting some saucy one-liners that would have been impossible to do in an E rated game.

Based on our time with the game we have to say we\'re quite impressed by the promising state Jak 2 is in. The game handles great, moves smoothly, and has some pretty polished gameplay. There are a few rough spots, mostly focusing on the camera and some framerate issues, but nothing that can\'t be fixed by the game\'s anticipated fall release. Look for more on Jak 2 in the coming weeks.

[Bobs_Hardware]

Seriously, ffs



Is that bump-mapping?  It sure ****ing looks like it.

Is that bump-mapping? It sure ****ing looks like it.

Yeah, it could be. What ever it is, it sure looks very promising. It\'d be easier to judge if we had in-game video footage...

Enjoy (Interview with Jason Rubin at GameSpy)

http://www.gamespy.com/interviews/march03/jak2/index.shtml

GameSpy: Jak II is graphically stunning. How difficult was it to coax such great performance out of the PS2 hardware?

Jason Rubin: We\'re always pushing the hardware. It\'s always hard no matter what system it is, no matter what we\'re doing. The nice thing about Jak II is the fact that since we already had a base engine, we weren\'t struggling to get gameplay up. The gameplay immediately came up under the old engine. At that point we could just improve. We could do more smaller special effects like lightning, distortions, the lens flares and glows that you see all over. The icing, as opposed to what we had to do in Jak & Daxter, which was just get a game up. So it really was nice to be able to do the more detail work this time around as opposed to the vital engine stuff that we had to do last game.
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GameSpy: So, a lot of the stuff from the first engine\'s come back for this second-generation engine?

Jason Rubin: Yes. Everything from the first engine game back, some parts were rewritten and improved, and then additional engines like the lightning you saw and then the glows that are happening everywhere. We have more glows onscreen than just about anyone else I\'ve ever seen -- stuff like that was additionally added on to the engine that was already there.

GameSpy: Why do you think other studios have trouble getting such performance out of the PS2?

Jason Rubin: The big advantage that Naughty Dog has is that Sony backs Naughty Dog with a huge amount of resources that we can spend on programming talent. We have a lot more programmers than most studios can afford; we have better programmers than a lot of studios can afford. It\'s not a level playing field in video games. There\'s smaller teams, there\'s bigger teams, there\'s publishers that help you out more, there\'s publishers that help you out less. Additionally, we have the advantage that we get to share technology across all of Sony\'s internal studios. Mark of Kri\'s sound tool is now our sound tool. The stuff that Zipper Interactive was doing with progressive scan, they sent us the code for it. And Insomniac which isn\'t even owned by Sony, and Naughty Dog share engine code back and forth. A lot of teams have an, "If it wasn\'t done here, we don\'t want it" attitude -- the programmers want to do it themselves. We have a, "If we can get it in the game, get it in the game" attitude. We don\'t care who did it ... so long as it\'s up for grabs, we\'ll take it. That gives us a great advantage.

GameSpy: Could you see having a possible future side business of licensing your technology to other developers?

Jason Rubin: I don\'t know whether we\'d ever license our technology to other development groups outside of Sony that involves a lot of maintenance and support and things like that that would probably cut into us making games. But we already share internally in Sony, and as we go forward and systems get more difficult, I can see Sony internally sharing more. It\'ll be harder and harder to make games in the future. This is not the pinnacle of difficulty, this is just the ramp-up toward the next generation and the generation after that, so I think you\'ll see a lot more sharing between companies.

GameSpy: Jak & Daxter ran at 60 fps, and Jak II will run at 60. Is there a certain design philosophy behind this?

Jason Rubin: The most important thing about running at a good framerate is that your button input is read at the framerate you\'re running. So when you\'re running at 30 frames per second, your character has the ability to change what he\'s doing 30 times per second. If you\'re 60 frames per second he has literally double the input, which is effectively saying he\'s twice as controllable. You have much more detail in what you\'re doing. Certain games do okay at low framerates, I tend to really steer away from slow framerate. I think as a company culture we don\'t like slow framerate games, so we always try to peg it at 60. There will be times because of the open nature of the game where if there\'s enough guys -- you can run away from guys and they\'ll keep chasing you -- so if you keep running you\'ll keep getting more and more guys around you and eventually it\'ll get to the point where the system slows down. So it is possible to run at 30 frames, but we try to maintain 60 as much as we can. I think especially in the character action genre that is an absolute necessity.

GameSpy: What is the single greatest improvement in Jak II?

Jason Rubin: That\'s a hard question to answer...

GameSpy: Just one.

Jason Rubin: I think the single most important thing that we\'ve done with this game is that we\'ve allowed the player to use all of the mechanics that we give them on all of the levels all of the time. So you can use all of Jak I\'s moveset, the guns, interangeably at any given time, the hoverboard, the Dark Jak moveset ... it\'s all around, all the time. It\'s not like you can only use Dark Jak in certain levels and only use the gun in other levels and things like that. We allow you an absolutely massive moveset by layering all those things on top of each other, and make the game truly integrated as opposed to a bunch of stuff strung together where we setup a puzzle, give you a solution, and let you go through it. We setup a puzzle, give you multiple solutions, and let you go through it. And that I think is the single most important differentiation between us and all other games out there.

Ratchet & Clank started to show some of that, we were really excited by it, but you still only could use your skate boots on the rail ... the rail boots, I don\'t remember what they were called. You could only use your magnetic boots in the magnetic area, so while you could change some of your guns you couldn\'t change everything all the time. We allow you to pull out your board in the most ridiculous situations in the world and use it, and if it kills you then you won\'t do it again. We really do allow you to do a lot more of that interchangeability and I think that\'s the single biggest improvement, and gamers will recognize that.

GameSpy: So do you think it\'s fair to say that while your story is linear, your gameplay is non-linear in a sense, because you have multiple ways to conquer the objectives...

Jason Rubin: Yes, exactly. The game overall feels less constrained even though from a story standpoint it\'s far more constrained. Having said that, there are still branches in the story. Sometimes you have two or three, maybe even four options that you can do at any given time. But it\'s not as open as Jak & Daxter; most people play through the game one time. If you play through the game one time it\'s always linear, right? Because you\'re always choosing one specific path. It only becomes non-linear if you go back and play a second time and decide to play it in a different order.

GameSpy: What are your top three platform games of all time?

Jason Rubin: Let\'s see ... that\'s a difficult one. I was absolutely addicted to the first Donkey Kong Country. I really thought that the way they setup their gameplay -- which was the foundation for Crash Bandicoot really, more than Mario was -- was stunning. I liked a bunch of the Marios, I don\'t really remember which one I liked most. It\'s been a while and they all blur together. And I was a real big fan of the first Sonic.

3D, if you want to go into more recently, I loved Mario 64 but I wasn\'t wild about Sunshine. I didn\'t think that they had added enough to Sunshine to make it really that different. And I liked Spyro ... 2 the best of the Spyros. I really liked Spyro 2.

GameSpy: A lot of those games are old -- this is really a classic genre. Why do you think platforming has seen a resurgence lately?

Jason Rubin: As a new system starts, these games ... different games take different amounts of work. A game like ATV though it\'s a brilliant game is much more constrained than a character action game. You make the ATV mechanic, you make the human on top of it mechanic, you make your levels, you\'re done. You don\'t have to do as much as we do for a game like Jak & Daxter, with a seamless world with different vehicle types, the enemy AI. The AI is much simpler in a racing game. I know this because we did Crash Team Racing, which is a much more constrained game. So it takes a while to design a new character and on a new system to get an engine powerful enough to show all this stuff.

One of the reasons I don\'t like a lot of the recent games is that people have decided that the character action genre is a specific type of game and they\'re not pushing the limits. Look at a game like Ty. It\'s just not exciting. It\'s old news. I don\'t like fuzzy characters anymore. I don\'t like animals with attitude anymore. It\'s been done, it\'s old, we\'re moving on, we\'re doing something new now. Personally, if I see a game that looks like a Nintendo 64 or PlayStation game in high-res, I\'m not excited by it. What could we do now that we couldn\'t do then? Jak II. And Jak I, too. And Ratchet is another good example of a game you couldn\'t do on the previous console, it just didn\'t have the power to do it. You could have done Ty. You could have done Sly Cooper, which is a good game, but to me it\'s a little old-generation with new graphics. Fixed movement through the worlds, very very straightforward gameplay. I like the game a lot, but it doesn\'t excite me the same way because it sort of hearkens back. Blinx was interesting, but it didn\'t come together quite right.

GameSpy: I ... didn\'t like Blinx.

Jason Rubin: Yeah, interesting idea though. At least they tried something new, gotta give them credit for that. They tried something that was truly original, it just didn\'t quite come together well.
GameSpy: Along those lines, where do you see the genre going in the future?
Jason Rubin: It\'s an interesting question. I think that the genre has to expand beyond simple levels and simple tasks, and that\'s what we\'re trying to do here. We\'re trying to create a story more like a Metal Gear, although it took 1,500 messages on message boards to figure out what Metal Gear\'s plot really was. But Metal Gear does have at least a story going with it. We\'re trying for something along the lines of the Onimushas or the Devil May Crys or something where you have that kind of story going along with it. And we\'re also trying to add a little of the excitement you get out of Grand Theft Auto being able to do things different ways. Throw on top of that the Tony Hawk ability to grind and just sort of have fun with the environments you\'re in, and the other stuff that we also throw in from other little games here and there and hopefully bring the genre into more of a world and less of a game with levels that are just set out there. So you feel like you\'re really in an environment as opposed to playing a game.

GameSpy: So you\'re navigating an environment and encountering challenges that grow naturally out of that environment.

Jason Rubin: Exactly. And there\'s things going on in the environment, plot points that are sending you in specific directions. But if you go somewhere else there\'s still a world there and there\'s still stuff going on. That\'s kind of what we\'re trying to do.

GameSpy: Do you see Naughty Dog remaining at the forefront of platform game development in the future?
 
Jason Rubin: It\'s hard to say what we\'ll do. At the end of every game we try to figure out what we want to do next, and at some point that may not be a character action game -- no promises. I think we\'ll continue to try to push forward whatever genre we work in. We try at this point to lead as opposed to follow, and I say that knowing that back in the days we were doing Way of the Warrior we were in a lot of ways ripping off everybody else. But I think now what we\'re doing with Jak II, we\'re actually pushing the genre as opposed to pulling along behind.

GameSpy: What were some of the new ideas that Mr. Yasuhara brought to the development process?

Jason Rubin: He brings a real openness to do kind of ... wacky stuff that we never would have done. We were much more structured than he is. There\'s this one thing that he put in the game in one of the levels that we haven\'t shown yet that reminds me of Yasuhara\'s style. We have a hoverboard, right? So he created a tube to go through that has holes in the sides of it and it rotates. And it\'s a simple thing, but it requires some pretty complex timing to get through. And it\'s just something we never would have done, because we never pushed. It required Andy, as a programmer, to totally redo the way board was done, because it meant that the board had to handle the rotating pipe that you\'re going through. But it was cool. It\'s visually simple, easy to understand what you need to do, but with very complex gameplay. That\'s the kind of thing he does. That\'s what he did with Sonic.

Visually it\'s very easy to see what you have to do, but it has complex gameplay. He\'s really, really good at that stuff. And he\'s really good at just kind of creating little mini-universes where things are kind of interesting in themselves. He did this one area where you have these floating boxes and it\'s a puzzle. And you just have to hit the boxes in exactly the right direction at the right time to open it up and create a path. That stuff is his hallmark. He does all that stuff.

GameSpy: You touched on physics a bit when talking about the rotating pipe. Do you think enhanced or better physics will be a large part of future platform games?

Jason Rubin: Yes and no. The vehicles in our city are physics-based. The hoverboard is not physics-based, because it plays better as a classic hack, which is what Jak\'s movement is too. Jak is not physics-based, Jak is a hack. When you try to create a physics-based character, you end up losing the control that you have when you do a hack and allow, for example, the character to leap off the ground in the same frame that you hit the button. When you do a physics model he has to recoil and jump and that ruins the gameplay, because it takes too long and you have to think too far ahead.
GameSpy: In the early 1990\'s you made a game called Rings of Power that a rather risque Easter egg. Do you think that would fly today?
Jason Rubin: Yes, I think it would fly today, but I don\'t think we would do it. We\'ve grown up. We were 18 years old when we put that in and we did it because we thought it was cool at the time. I have new responsibilities as the president of a company owned by Sony. I don\'t really have a problem and I don\'t regret putting it in, but it\'s not the kind of thing that a company of 45 people with a multi-million dollar budget tends to do. It\'s the kind of thing that a couple kids sitting in their den do when they\'re 18 years old.

GameSpy: Who does your hair? It\'s ... fabulous.

Jason Rubin: I do it, what are you... Actually I haven\'t had a haircut in two months.

GameSpy: Oh, you ... you\'re dispelling the magic now.

Jason Rubin: It\'s true, I don\'t cut it.

[MPTheory]

Wow... I see a legacy beginning.  This will be a must buy for me.

Sweeeeeeeeeeeeeet!!! )

Looks better and better.
Me lowsy ND!

Thx for the interview Phil.

[nO-One]

I don\'t like the green goatee

Oh shit son!!!!!! Nicon gets goosebumps the size of Britney Spears\' tetas

WOW  those pics look amazing..... see there now gonna have weopons in it ala rachet and clank style..... looks very impressive, im suddenely a lot more intrested in it

Is that bump-mapping? It sure ****ing looks like it.

No, it isn\'t.

Originally posted by Nu

No, it isn\'t.

And you know this how?

Bump Mapping takes advantage of lighting to create the effect of bumps with shadows. That is nothing more than a texture that gives the illusion of height. You know, the basics of 2D drawing to make things appear 3D.

This is Bump Mapping. Even if it was subtle, you\'d notice a big difference with that floor.

Originally posted by Living-In-Clip
Who cares? The first game was gorgeous, but at the same time it was nothing but a run-of the mill platformer - and not a very good one at that.

lic, do you even like video games?

list some that you actually like! Im personally sick of your negative opinion Jak & daxter was a great game. Like i have said before- if you have a negative opinion on the game stfu and dont post in the corresponding thread.

... Spudz, if it wasn\'t for the fact that myself and several million other gamers shared the same opinion as LIC, I would be assissting your flame with a bucket of gasoline. The first game wasn\'t all that great. It failed to deliver in a lot of areas.

The second game appears to be addressing these problems though. Very good...