Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy

Ah yes, the good old days.

The debut game of the widely loved Jak and Daxter series.

In this first game, the Heroic Mime Jak and his buddy Daxter travel to the mysterious Misty Island, against the advice of the wise Green Eco Sage Samos. Not long after arriving, Daxter winds up getting knocked into a well of Dark Eco - but instead of being instantly vaporized, he is instead transformed into a creature called an ottsel - much to his chagrin. Thus Jak and he set off to find a way to reverse the transformation. Unbeknownst to them that their quest will lead them to much bigger problems.

This game could be seen as the PlayStation 2's answer to Super Mario 64 (as well as taking a few cues from The Legend of Zelda)–what with the strong emphasis on Collect-a-Thon, run and jump platforming, bright, and lively art, endearing characters, and fun levels and puzzles. Then everything changed in the sequel...

Tropes used in Jak and Daxter: The Precursor Legacy include:

• Actor Allusion - During the final boss fight, Gol—voiced by Dee Snider—sometimes cries, "We're not going to take it!"
• All Your Colors Combined: Done with the four main eco colors at the end of the game.
• Exclusively Evil: The Lurkers. In the sequel, it turns out they're not evil; just aggressive, easily misled and not terribly bright.
• Applied Phlebotinum: Eco.
• Arcadia: Sandover Village.
• Atlantis: The Lost Precursor City.
• Big Bad Duumvirate: Gol and Maia.
• Big Good: Samos.
• Baleful Polymorph: Daxter.
• Bankruptcy Barrel: The Gambler in Rock Village is wearing one of these.
• Blackout Basement: Spider Cave.
• Border Patrol: The Lurker Shark.
• Boss Arena Idiocy: If Gol and Maia would just remove that pesky Blue Eco Launcher from the Silo, it would make it so much easier to kill Jak and Daxter.
• Bragging Rights Reward: Getting all of the Precursor Orbs in the game.
• Bubblegloop Swamp: Boggy Swamp.
• Chokepoint Geography: You have to pass through Fire Canyon, Mountain Pass and Lava Tube to reach Rock Village, Volcano Crater and Gol and Maia's Citadel respectively.
• Convection, Schmonvection: Fire Canyon, although how far it's played straight depends on what's on it.
• Cool Bike: Keira's Zoomer bike.
• Cue the Sun: The final boss fight takes place just before dawn. The sun rises during the ending sequence.
• Death Mountain/Slippy-Slidey Ice World: Snowy Mountain.
• Deserted Island: Misty Island, though, it's not that deserted. It's filled with Lurkers.
• The Dev Team Thinks of Everything: It's perfectly possible, once you've unlocked the Blue Eco Vent for Sentinel Beach, to use that to reach a cannon, shoot the pelican in its nest and kill it - leaving nothing but the power cell it swallowed in place.
  • After beating the game, Keira will find a gigantic door and says it needs 100 power cells to open. If you've already gotten that many, Daxter will say so.
• Did Not Do the Bloody Research: 'Them buggers' has become a famous example. Didn't hinder the game getting a 3+ age rating.
• Early Installment Weirdness: If you've played the sequels prior to playing this first game, you might be surprised at how light-hearted and simplistic it is compared to what the series became down the road...
• Eleventh-Hour Superpower: The Light Eco in the final fight.
• Eternal Engine: Gol and Maia's Citadel.
• Game Breaking Bug: Thankfully averted by the Naughty Dog development team. A glitch can occur in the Precursor Basin on some versions of the game, making it impossible to win the Zoomer race. Thankfully, they made it so that there are 101 Power Cells in the game, and only 100 are needed for the good ending.
• Goggles Do Nothing: Averted. If you hit triangle, Jak will pull his goggles down to give you a first person view. This comes in handy when you come across the yellow eco, which allows Jak to shoot fireballs, as you can aim them.
• Green Hill Zone: Sandover Village.
• Great Offscreen War: It's Implied over the course of the game that Gol and Maya are sending lurker troops to towns over night and ransacking villages for artifacts and eco. Near the end of the game Kira mentions that they are becoming more and more aggresive now that they are close to their goal. However you will never see any of this as most of your adventure is in abandoned ruins and nearby areas outside of town, and in Rock Village you get there after it happens
• Grimy Water: In Boggy Swamp.
• Hub Level: Three of them.
• Humongous Mecha: The Precursor robots.
• Insurmountable Waist-Height Fence: A good few of these appear at some point in the game.
  • Namely the Fire Canyon and Lava Tube. You need to power up the Zoomer's heatshield to be able to pass through each area.
  • When you get to the Rock Village, you can't proceed to the Mountain Pass because a lurker called Klaww has thrown a flaming boulder in the way.
  • The ocean itself can count for this. Jak can swim safely in shallow water, but he if tries to go out into the ocean, a Lurker Shark will jump out and eat him.
• Jerkass: Samos is frequently one to Daxter.
• Jungle Japes: Forbidden Jungle.
• Large Ham: Daxter, along with the Sages and the Rock Village warrior.
• Lethal Lava Land: Three, actually. The first is Fire Canyon, the second is Volcanic Crater, and the third is Lava Tube.
• Lost Superweapon: The Precursor Robot, which Gol and Maia spend most of the game unearthing and repairing.
• Limit Break: The Light Eco Jak uses in the final fight.
• Mad Eco Sage's Hot Daughter: Keira.
• Mars Needs Women: Although Daxter has an excuse, being that he used to be human.
• Mix and Match Critter: Plenty of them throughout the game.
• Noob Cave: Geyser Rock at the start of the game.
• No One Could Survive That: Gol and Maia's demise. Samos even flat out states that they probably didn't survive. That being said, they haven't reappeared in any of the sequels, outside of a cameo Gol gets during one of Daxter's dream sequences in his self-titled game.
• Ooh, Me Accent's Slipping: Maia does this so often it's hard to tell what her accent is.
• Palmtree Panic: Sentinel Beach, of course.
• Power-Up: Jak can use Eco (a source of natural energy) to either heal or briefly obtain certain powers.
  • Healing Potion: Green Eco comes in both small and large balls. Small ones heal Jak by one (it takes fifty to refill an entire section), larger and rarer ones will refill an entire section of Jak's health.
  • Playing with Fire: Jak can shoot fireballs from the palms of his hands when he's powered up with Yellow Eco.
  • Sequel Hook: At the end of the game the Red Sage mentions that Keira could very well become the replacement for Gol, however this is never mentioned again until The Lost Frontier.
  • Super Speed: Jak gets a boost of speed whenever he uses Blue Eco
    • He can also power up ancient precursor artifacts once he gets close enough.
  • Super Strength: Jak's attack power is doubled whenever he gets charged up with Red Eco.
  • Averted with Dark Eco, if Jak touches it, he'll be injured; if he's submerged, he'll die instantly.
• Precursor(s): The name of the mysterious, seemingly extinct race in the game.
• Precision F-Strike: In the opening, Daxter says something about "precursor crap". The game got an E rating in the US and a 3+ rating in the UK. Other than the word "bugger" there's no other cursing in the game.
• Psycho Serum: Dark Eco.
• Red Eyes, Take Warning: In a sense, Jak when he uses the Light Eco to blow up Gol and Maia's robot - his entire body is wreathed in shimmering white light except the red lens on his goggles and his blue irises, which makes the Three-Point Landing and resultant Kubrick Stare he pulls just before blowing the robot apart in one shot more striking.
• Rising Conflict: A quest to help Daxter return to his former self becomes a quest to stop the Big Bad Duumvirate from bringing about The End of the World as We Know It.
• Sequel Hook: The device our heroes find at the end of the game.
• Shout-Out: A plant enemy that was present in Naughty Dog's previous series, Crash Bandicoot, appears as a harmless houseplant in Samos' hut.
• Steampunk: Some elements of it exist in the game.
• Super Not-Drowning Skills: Jak can swim in most water and can dive underneath the surface without being timed. He will, however, rise up automatically after a set amount of time. If he caught below an object that prevent the automatic surfacing, he'll drown when the time runs out instead.
• Tactical Suicide Boss: Klaww. If he didn't do the move where he prepares the huge boulder, he'd be nigh-invincible.^[1]
  • The Dark Eco Plant extends its leaves for no apparent reason every time you kill its minions, allowing Jak to climb on them and punch the boss in the chin.
• Take Your Time: It doesn't matter what you go off and do after the robot is activated, it won't be able to open the vat until you get there.
• Underwater Ruins: The Lost Precursor City.
• Un Evil Laugh: Parodied in Gol's outtakes.
• Vader Breath: Obviously all that Dark Eco experimentation couldn't have been good for Gol's lungs.

1. ↑ You need to shoot him while he's preparing it so he'll drop it on his head.