The ambition of The Nomad Soul was to offer a combination of classic action-adventure game, Quake III-like FPS phases and Tekken-inspired fighting scenes. Needless to say, it didn’t meet these noble objectives, but at least the game engine was impressive for the time and David Bowie did some of the songs. The combat part wasn’t that good, but the FPS sections were absolutely terrible. So, the game structure forced the player to alternate between adventure and shooting. Likewise, the big idea in the game was that the player (the nomad soul) could take possession of the bodies of some of the characters he met. Some of these characters were much more powerful than others and some were well-hidden but worth the hunt. And, at some point of the storyline, the player had to possess an arbitrary character, meaning that their previous host had to die... All of those efforts in vain.

Inversely, in Jak and Daxter, each section of the game was unlocked using "power cells". Each of the many mini-games in each section would allow the player to earn one cell. These games were very diverse, and the gameplay of some of them may not appeal to all players... so the fantastic idea was that it was possible to progress without having earned all the cells, i.e. without having beaten all the mini-games of one section. And because it was always possible to go back to earlier sections, the player could choose to try to get more cells for, say, section 1, in order to unlock section 4. That design let the player focus on what they liked in the game, as opposed to have to endure each and every little section of the game.

Games are a space of freedom. By designing the rules that govern their universe, game makers already restrict the potential freedom of their players. Forcing them into one restrictive behaviour is contrary to that idea of freedom, and can be incredibly frustrating.