Developer : Insomniac Games
Release date : 2002
Synopsis :
Ratchet & Clank is a series of action platformer and third-person shooter video games. The franchise was created and developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation consoles, such as PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5, with the exclusion of Size Matters and Secret Agent Clank, which were developed by High Impact Games for the PlayStation Portable. The series is exclusive to Sony platforms and the intellectual property is owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment. An animated feature film adaptation was released on April 29, 2016.
The games take place in a science fiction setting and follow the adventures of Ratchet (a feline humanoid known as a Lombax, who is a mechanic) and Clank (a diminutive, sentient Zoni “defective” robot) as they travel through the universe, saving it from evil forces that consistently threaten it. The series is noted for its inclusion of many exotic, unique and over-the-top weapons and gadgets, a concept that Insomniac Games has expanded into their other games.
Following the development of Spyro: Year of the Dragon, the third installment of the Spyro series, Insomniac Games wanted to move into a new intellectual property, since the Spyro series was owned by Universal Interactive Studios. With the PlayStation 2 recently announced in 2000, Insomniac began to prototype ideas for games on this new console. One, called Monster Knight, never got past the prototyping stage, while a second, called Girl with a Stick and aimed to be a mashup of The Legend of Zelda and Tomb Raider series, had about six months of development work before Insomniac’s CEO, Ted Price, decided to cancel it as “the team wasn’t feeling it”, according to director Brian Allgeier. Now in 2001 and struggling with ideas, Chief Creative Officer Brian Hasting proposed the idea of “an alien that travels from planet to planet, collecting weapons and gadgets”, an idea inspired from Spaceman Spiff from Calvin & Hobbes and from Marvin the Martian. This idea inspired the team since it would allow them to create new worlds and characters to develop. Artists sketched a number of concepts for this alien character, which was originally reptilian, but ended up as a new species they called a “Lombax”, a name Price had come up with. Along with this character they named Ratchet, they gave him a robotic companion, Clank. Originally developed as a childlike version of the Star Wars character C-3PO, they later decided that Ratchet and Clank should work instead like a buddy cop film, and made Clank an equal to Ratchet.
The first game Ratchet & Clank, released in 2002, was successful. In planning the second, they revamped Ratchet’s character, as they felt the first game portrayed him as a jerk, according to writer TJ Fixman, and softened the character to make him more relatable, at that point hiring James Arnold Taylor to voice the character (Ratchet’s behavior toward Clank in Tools of Destruction when speaking about the existence of the Zoni and the risks posed by the Dimesionator could be a hint or reference to the character in the first game). They spent more time on developing interesting weapons to make the combat as enjoyable as the platforming sections of the game. Both the sequel Going Commando and the following game Up Your Arsenal were well-received and considered commercial successes. Allgeier considered that these games had success because they were continually evolving the series to match the current climate in video games, where mascot-driven games had fallen out of favor, and the company had adopted an “adapt or die” mentality for each title. The “adapt or die” approach was used for the fourth title, Ratchet: Deadlocked (2005), as they made the title darker and more combat-oriented given the popularity of the Halo and Grand Theft Auto series. While the game was well received, this approach was not met well by players, as it veered too much from the buddy cop concept, lacked the exploration of previous games and comedy in the writing. The balance between keeping to the “DNA” of a Ratchet & Clank game against the “adapt or die” mantra would continue to be a struggle throughout Insomniac’s development of the series.
Insomniac was asked to help create one of the launch titles for the PlayStation 3, Resistance: Fall of Man (2006). The company used this title to acclimate itself to the new hardware, and did not push the capabilities of the game engine. With this title under wraps, Insomniac was then able to consider how to approach the fifth Ratchet & Clank game, knowing how to work the PlayStation 3 hardware with the aim to make a game that played like an animated movie. Insomniac brought on Fixman to write for the series at this point; one of Fixman’s first goals was to take disjointed mythology from the first four games and flesh out the characters more to give them a stronger backstory. This led to the three Future games, the first being Tools of Destruction (2007), which brought the series back to what players had latched onto and met with praise, outside of its cliffhanger ending. However, between this and having to drop a planned co-operative element from Tools of Destruction, Insomniac wanted to produce a new title quickly for Sony to avoid some of these concerns, and came up with the more experimental Quest for Booty (2008), a shorter title that played with gameplay elements not previously used in the series, like conversation trees. Quest for Booty helped Insomniac to determine where they wanted to take the series next, and planned for the next game, A Crack in Time (2009) to be the last game in the series, designed to include all the elements they knew players wanted in a Ratchet & Clank game.
A Crack in Time was successful, and Sony had put pressure on Insomniac to continue the series, though by this time, the developers had fatigue with the series. Knowing that Sony was wary about the impact of mobile gaming which were drawing players away from family-oriented titles, Insomniac experimented with various concepts for the next few games. All 4 One (2011) was a fully co-operative shooter, which dropped some of the platforming elements from the series. Full Frontal Assault (2012) added tower defense elements to the basic gameplay. Finally, Insomniac developed Into the Nexus (2013) as a return to the core elements of the series, but was considered to be a shorter title. Sony and Insomniac agreed at this point to put the series on hold.
Sony started to plan for the 2016 film adaption of the first game; by nature, the screenplay of the film deviated in several areas from the story of the first game. As Sony wanted a companion game, Insomniac worked to create a re-imagining of the first game, informed by the changes made for the film’s screenplay.
Alongside Insomniac’s development, the series has included two spin-off games developed by High Impact Games designed for the PlayStation Portable, Size Matters (2007) and Secret Agent Clank (2008).
The next game developed, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart (2021), was revealed at the 2020 PS5 Future of Gaming event on June 11, 2020. The title was developed exclusively for PlayStation 5.
Source : Wikipedia
