I think we were able to push each other to achieve more. Crash sort of established that we wanted to do very platform-y, character driven games. And when we saw the Playstation 2 hardware, it sort of pushed us to try something, moving a little bit away from the big-headed furry mascot character. It was slightly more human but still fantastic, though.
Jak was an elf. He still had certainly exaggerated features. He’s humanoid and animated like a human would. Had a voice and could talk. We were sort of pushing ourselves to start to tell deeper stories and grander adventures. So it was really the technology and being able to really increase the fidelity of the image we were able to create, that drove us to create Jak & Daxter.
It’s funny, you mentioned that some of the qualities that people would cite now for Uncharted, in terms of the voice acting and the animation, things that are kind of cinematic in nature. It seems that even going back to the launch of the PS1, you were looking forward to those possibilities. Is that something that you felt like Sony was better at delivering by virtue of maybe their entertainment company mega-corporation background?
Yeah, I do. And I think that probably has a lot to do with it. But I think Sony in general is a company, and particularly Sony Computer Entertainment, is just amazingly supportive of creative endeavors, and they, I think as a publisher, take risks in areas that I just don’t think you see elsewhere. They really support the artist. It’s just a great company to be partnered with. Just because you see a lot of other people being more risk-averse, and they’re treating game development like product development, and not lot like an entertainment industry. So it’s a very different vibe that I think Sony has that allows them to create these amazing entertainment experiences.
Do you think that kind of risk averse-attitude is more on the publishers’ side, the platform-holders’ side? Can you give a specific example of another company that you feel like was maybe a little bit less daring?
Well, I’m not going to sling mud. But, just look at–as we are jumping forward to the Playstation 3 era–I don’t think you could find another publisher out there whether they’re a first-party platform holder or a third party publisher that would have a portfolio as diverse as games like Heavy Rain, and Flower, along with big blockbusters like Uncharted and God of War.NI mean, these kinds of games just would never get green-lighted in other studios.