But the bigger question is, after ToD what ever happened to the Wall Kick move, and swimming?
Well you had swimming in QfB, and the parrot is a bird maybe he was in a cage in the back somewhere.
Yea well after QFB then. QFB was hardly any different from ToD anyway. Basically we've been three games without swimming and wall kicking.
I think some of this is because they used a new game engine for ACiT, there was lots of stuff from TOD they were going to carry over but they couldn't port from one game to the other and didn't have the programming time to rebuild the models, animation etc. (Insomniac Museum, yes I read the stuff and some of it stuck)
As for the parrot - same problem maybe? Otherwise maybe it was a feathery pest and the smuggler ditched it
A new game engine? No, even for Resistance they just modify the existing one (apparently, seems preposterous I know) however as we could all plainly see heaps of models were significantly improved, and the look of the game drastically improved. So they could easily just tweak the bird a little and throw him in, maybe even if he remained completely still, but obviously they decided to take him out either because they didn't like him (which is just crazy) or because they saw no need for him to be there, he really needs to be in actual cinematics so the camera could zoom into him while he interrupted the Smuggler and Ratchet. Clearly the smuggler is not given any special treatment in ACiT, and they probably weren't prepared to do a special camera for him.
That's just my guess, really I don't actually know, but then again no one else knows, I'm just throwing the most likely reasons out there.