I headcanon Precursors as a species all having one main genotype, but a very wide array of phenotypes to account for all the different planets and environments they end up in.
Wilder environment, need for speed and being small enough to hide? Ottsel, Muse, or bird shape. Muse Precursor: sheer evil 🤣
More sentient species around? Copycat shapes that don't always work out identically.
because the adorable water buffalo/goat Proto Jak should not be forgotten I am now pretending that's a young Precursor who didn't mimic hu'mens super well and Absolutely Does Not Care
I usually imagine them as monotremes so that both the ottsels and the Precursor egg make sense without getting into a life cycle as complicated and inefficient as a Xenomorph's (I love them, but why is there even a franchise, xenomorph propagation is so inefficient they should've gone extinct by the second movie I swear)
But,
Hear me out,
If some of them were also pseudo-marsupials.
Like Australian possums, and sugar gliders, and koalas, except young hatch from eggs.
Because first of all, arboreal ottsels sound both cute and menacing.
Second, baby ottsel hanging onto its parent's back in a tree and doing the Judgmental Baby Face at someone.
Also!
What if the true root of the Precursor/Hora Quan conflict didn't originate as some cataclysmic battle of good and evil, but merely two similar species competing for resources?
Metalheads all belong to one hive, presumably all the same genotype, but have an extremely diverse set of phenotypes. They hatch from eggs. More than one of them can take the appearance of other species in order to camouflage.
What if the earliest form of the feud boiled down to
"i need this eco to lay my eggs and hatch my hive"
"No, *I* need this eco to lay my eggs and feed my children"
The Hora Quan have the advantage of a hive mentality, but the Precursors have the advantage of time energy.
Actually I really like the idea of their species functioning extremely similarly. It's just that one set is techno-organic, and the other is more like eco-organic. Which...is...deeply unfortunate when the former species consumes eco.
Also still emotional about the Baby Precursor in Jak 2 (no I am not accepting that as a "hologram", it contradicts what was already established by Kor and the Tomb).
This thing is the first young member of their species in centuries, has some level of hive memory of their people, generations of knowledge, and the very first thing they do is try to comfort Jak. There are scholars there that revere them as a deity, studied them their whole life, and the only thing the Precursor cares about is telling Jak "there's still light in you, it's going to be okay" 😭
Hi there! Quick question, I'm on a little J&D binge and I noticed in another post you said that you don't believe in the Ottsel/Precursor reveal.. tbh that always pissed me off a little so I'd love to know what your take/headcanon is on it!
the in-universe/canon-compliant explanation: there was a brief exchange during the ‘reveal’ scene where one of the ottsels is like ‘yes of course we're all-powerful precursor gods’ and another replies ‘wait we are??’ which (imo) suggests that they're fakers– especially taken alongside the fact that the ‘reveal’ came completely out of nowhere and was never so much as hinted at in the previous games (none of the precursor robots/statues/idols look remotely like an ottsel, and we see actual living ‘dark maker’ enemies who are supposed to be corrupted precursors and who also look nothing like ottsels– even though Daxter became an ottsel after falling into dark eco, which pretty soundly contradicts the idea that ottsels are ‘normal’ precursors).
there's just..... no actual canon Proof that ottsels = precursors. they claimed to be, and happened to have access to some fancy tech (which can be easily found in the ruins all over the world, and the human characters have also been shown using salvaged precursor items, so the use of tech itself means nothing here). but yeah, not all characters are reliable sources of accurate information, and I find it far more plausible that the ottsels just straight up lied.
from a meta standpoint: the development & production of jak3 were super rushed, and while the writing has a few good moments there's also a ton of weird out-of-nowhere elements that were obviously just thrown in without any forethought (see also: Keira's non-presence, Ashelin being turned into the booty prize instead, the failure to include a scene where Jak actually decides to go back to Haven after specifically saying he doesn't want to, etc). and when it comes to the ottsels in particular, ND had a vested interest in wanting to keep Dax as an ottsel at that point (he's their main ‘mascot’ character) so the whole ottsel/precursor reveal just feels like a sloppy attempt to retroactively justify all of that, since it clearly wasn't planned from the start of the series.
