Jak II/The Shadow

This page covers a sequence of missions for the Underground which you get after defeating the baron in his palace. You finally get to meet the Underground's mysterious leader, the Shadow.

Mission: Shuttle Underground Fighters

 * Location: Haven City (slums)

Follow the dagger icon to Underground HQ and go in.


 * Cutscene: Mission start
 * You find Torn with Kor and the kid from the beginning of the game. Torn is angry that you somehow stirred up the KG and you have to admit that you might have set off an alarm or two at the palace. You mention that Praxis is planning to doublecross the Metal Heads and Kor seems very interested in this, adding that the Metal Heads may be preparing to attack. You also ask why Torn didn't mention that Ashelin is the Baron's daughter, but Torn only says that since it's your fault the KG are on the alert, it's your job to help fix it. He wants you to shuttle 5 Underground fighters from where they're stranded in the city to 5 safehouse locations.

The basic mechanics are actually pretty simple, follow a green circle to either a pickup or delivery location, stop the zoomer to let the passenger in or out, then go on to the next circle. But there are a few details that you need to master if you're going to complete this mission.

First, this is a timed mission but the way the timer works is a bit unusual. You have one minute to pick up the first fighter, then one minute plus whatever time you didn't use for the pickup to make the delivery. So you have two minutes total for pickup and delivery but you can't spend more than one minute on the pickup. After you make a delivery the timer resets so the next pickup and delivery cycle works the same way.

The KG goes into alert mode when you make the first pickup, in fact it seems to be a kind of high alert since they will try to ram your vehicle and shoot at you more than usual. So drive on the lower level as much as possible. In the last delivery you have to go into the water slums and driving in the lower level isn't practical there, so switch to the upper level when you get there and do your best to avoid traffic.

As with the Collect Money for Krew mission, you shouldn't run out of time unless you seriously miscalculate your route or your vehicle is destroyed, so don't drive so fast that you run into walls or other traffic and damage your vehicle; the KG will do enough damage to it without your help. The last pickup and delivery seem to take the longest so if you do run out of time it will probably be on that run. Also as with the collection mission, keep an eye on the condition of your zoomer and keep an eye out for fresh ones if it starts to smoke. Switch zoomers on the pickup legs since you don't have to worry about getting your passenger to the switch as well.

The one=seat zoomers won't work at all for this mission since there simply isn't enough room for a passenger. The slightly larger model might work in theory but it's still to fragile to be very useful here. So use either the wide-body model or the twin-hull model, the first one if there's a choice.

You're most vulnerable in this mission when you're making a pickup, since your vehicle is standing still waiting for your passenger to get in while any nearby KG can attack at will. So it's critical to speed up this process if you can. To do this you have to notice something that seems like common sense but you may not be paying attention to it. Unlike real life, whichever side you get in your vehicle becomes the driver's side and the other side becomes the passenger's side. Like real life, your passenger will only get in on the passenger side. So when you make your pickups, remember which side you're on and park the zoomer so the passenger side door is right in front of the passenger. This should stop the awkward "passenger dance" where you're trying to turn the zoomer so that passenger will get in quickly but the passenger fails to get the message and circles the zoomer in the wrong direction. For the first two pickups you 'll probably want to have your passenger get in on the right, which means that you need to get into the zoomer on the left when you get in outside the Underground HQ. It's tempting to get in on the right at the start since that's which side you're on, but the investment of a few extra steps to go around the zoomer at the start will pay off in the long run.

Mission: Protect Site in Dead Town

 * Location: Dead Town
 * Reward: Vulcan Barrel (start)

Follow the dagger icon to Underground HQ and go in.
 * Cutscene: Mission start
 * Torn says that Metal Heads have moved into Dead Town. The last time that happened there were people there, but the Baron left them to die; it was the Shadow that saved them. There is a sacred site there and you must protect it from the Metal Heads. Torn gives you the Vulcan Barrel weapon mod to help you.