Psychonauts’ Comeback Is A Good Sign For Jak

thegamer.com:

The last Jak and Daxter game launched in 2009 with The Lost Frontier. To put things into perspective, that was the year Bitcoin was founded, placing down the first domino of crypto controversy; the USA’s first Black president was elected, Barack Obama; Grindr launched; Sweden legalised gay marriage, and Tiger Woods hung up the golf clubs, taking Jak down with him. It might not seem all that long ago, but 2009 was a year of historical landmarks - and Grindr. Looking back, it’s also the year we can safely say Jak was put to bed. It’s not quite up to par, but it’s still heartbreaking.

Naughty Dog, the studio behind Jak and Daxter, has said that it would like to return to the series. However, the last two times it tried to do that, the concepts became Uncharted and The Last of Us and the series was left behind. The studio’s inkling toward a maturer tone had been evident as far back as Jak 2, paving the way for hit after hit, setting the foundation for one of PlayStation's premium blockbuster studios, but that desire for a maturer tone was at odds with its renown for developing 3D platformers.

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Jak was itself a spiritual successor to Crash Bandicoot much like Ratchet & Clank was with Spyro the Dragon, but none of those are dead in the water like the Jak and Daxter series. Spyro continued in Skylanders, Crash has a sequel, a cart game, and spin-offs, while Ratchet & Clank got a re-imagining in 2016 and a direct sequel in 2021. The Lost Frontier’s release in 2009, meanwhile, was for the PSP and it was primarily made by High Impact Games, not Naughty Dog. It was based on scrapped ideas for Jak 4 and plenty of original concepts, but it proved