“PS5 Is the Least Constrained Hardware We’ve Ever Worked On”: Ratchet and Clank Rift Apart Game Director

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Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is billed as Sony’s big PS5 exclusive for the first half of 2021. To some, Insomniac’s latest may appear to be just a better looking version of 2016’s excellent Ratchet and Clank for the PS4, however there’s a whole lot more to it. IGN India spoke to Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart game director Mike Daly to find out.

When it came to making Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, Insomniac knew it had the franchise’s legacy to consider. “We knew for gameplay, that there was a couple of core elements of the Ratchet DNA that we wanted to preserve,” says Daly. “Fortunately, we have a lot of successful examples to look back on from the past.”

It was crucial for the team to focus on the game’s diverse and novel arsenal, so a lot of attention was placed on this aspect of it. “[A] majority of time spent in gameplay is in combat,” he says. “So we want every single weapon to be possible to be a favorite, it's got to be a 10 in some way.”

The ‘some way’ Daly is referring to is three parameters the studio looks at when designing weapons for Ratchet and Clank games—spectacle, strategy, and humour. If the team feels a weapon is a 10 out of 10 in any of these categories, it makes it to the game. In addition to this, Insomniac wanted to keep gameplay fresh as often as it could.

Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Gameplay Explained

What we saw during a hands-off preview session stays true to this. It had Ratchet as well as new protagonist Rivet engage in a host of missions that had a heady mix of combat and platforming with a few on-rails sections as well as traversal.

“But we knew also we want mini-games, we need exotic traversal, we need specialty combat in some places as well,” he says. “The game basically takes you on this parade of different types of gameplay that's very diverse and sort of always changing.”

This extends to gameplay mechanics as well. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart goes beyond being your standard action-platformer.

“This is an RPG lite game so doing well at core gameplay actions is always validated with simple rewards,” he says. “So whether that's sort of finding hidden objects in the world or gaining weapon experience points, there's a lot to earn that just boost the fun of everything you do.”

How Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart’s Traversal Borrows from Spider-Man and Sunset Overdrive

On the topic of gameplay, recent Insomniac titles like Spider-Man and Sunset Overdrive showcased the studio’s talent at building superlative moment-to-moment traversal where simply moving across the game world felt empowering. It’s something Daly and the team is aware of. Nonetheless, they aren’t forgetting what makes the Ratchet series unique.

“We have a great moment to moment gameplay template in the form of Ratchet and Clank 2016, which we all loved, I thought was great,” he opines. “We thought if we can take the weapons further than we've ever taken them — strategically, functionally, and in terms of feedback, all that translates directly to moment to moment enjoyment, and particularly for the weapons with the new layer of feedback, the use of the adaptive triggers. Those help a ton in that regard.”

That said, you can expect some influences from Sunset Overdrive and the Spider-Man games to trickle into Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.

“Given our experience with Sunset Overdrive and Spider-Man, both of which have bigger traversal moves that chain together even more, we took some of that into Rift Apart,” he says. “We realised that by being able to mix in a dash and add more nuance to the hover boots, and giving you a few more things that you can do with your slingshot, then you can give Ratchet a little bit more of that creative, freeform traversal notion that people love so much in the other games.”

Designing Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart’s Story

With so much going on from a gameplay perspective, it made us wonder how Insomniac manages story-telling. The preview showed off some interesting cut-scenes, divulging bits and pieces of Rivet’s backstory and the world she inhabits.

“We don't want always the players to have sort of like white knuckle controller intensity throughout the whole thing, even if it is mixed between traversal, mini-games, mounts, and combat, we need some slow-paced segments,” he says. “And so we build in sort of low intensity parts of the level where we can have banter and conversations that enhance the story and give depth to our characters. And we use cinematics sort of as a pace-setter and a reward for getting through the tough gameplay segments.”

In addition to this, story-telling is necessary to allow for a sense of structure and flow to the proceedings while ensuring that the gameplay complements Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart’s ongoing narrative. “For instance using tough traversal setups for the arrival of enemies to punctuate what's going on in the plot is made for more effective storytelling and for more satisfying gameplay,” he says.

PS5 Means More to Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart than Better Visuals

Through the preview sessions, Insomniac’s developers seemed super-enthused to work on the PS5. Usually, studios tend to talk about how they circumvented hardware constraints on consoles to make better games. For Daly and his team though, this wasn’t exactly the case.

“Game development is always constrained,” he says. “But one of the reasons we are so excited to work exclusively on PS5 is because it is the least constrained hardware we've ever worked on. The new features of the console give us opportunities to take our games further than we've taken it before.”

Interestingly, he points to some of its more bespoke features rather than the obvious bump in visual and processing improvements that you’d expect from a generational leap in console hardware.

“And now that I've had experience working with a super fast hard drive 3D spatial audio and controller haptics and adaptive triggers, I would see the lack of those things as much more of a constraint than anything that the console gives us,” he says. That said, Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart will ship with two modes allowing for 30fps and 60fps gameplay options.

Obtaining Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart PS5 Platinum Trophy Won’t Waste Your Time

Much like recent Sony first-party exclusives such as Ghost of Tsushima and Marvel’s Spider-Man: Miles Morales, you can expect Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart’s Platinum trophy to be achievable.

“I can say our trophy design for this game is again, pretty permissive,” he says. “You can achieve it on one playthrough though, you need to be pretty thorough in how you approach the game. So if you've explored the nooks and crannies, if you've engaged with the upgrade systems, then you can get it without an inordinate amount of time invested. I know that this sort of breaks with some of the games of the distant past where we always wanted some crazy stretch trophy that had you doing a bunch of work.”

This doesn’t mean that the hardcore crowd looking to get more out of the game have been ignored as Daly outlined what they could expect.

“If you are the type of player who just really embraces the game and loves it, we are going to make it possible to get the Platinum without wasting your time,” he says. “Now we know that some players really want to go much further than that, and much deeper into the game. And so, as with past Ratchet games, we've got a challenge mode that lets you start from the beginning of the story again, but with your complete leveled up hero and arsenal, and a handful of gadgets.”

Furthermore, expect a steeper progression curve and a host of difficulty settings for challenge mode.

“And so if you really want to play the game, challenge mode is for you more so than the Platinum trophy,” he says. “It basically lets you play a much more steeper progression curve over the course of the game. And we also offer a wide variety of difficulty settings. So as the hardcore player, I think you are going to get a lot of satisfaction out of the hardest difficulty settings, which have a pretty high skill ceiling.”

It’ll be interesting to see how Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is received. Thankfully we won’t have to wait too long to find out. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart launches on June 11 on PS5.

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MysticGrapefruit on May 12nd, 2021 at 16:58 UTC »

I'm really glad all the first impressions of this gen of consoles have been positive in terms of performance (in regards to price, etc). Wasn't the hardware of the PS4 already dated at release?

Benphyre on May 12nd, 2021 at 16:18 UTC »

“PS5 is the hardest console ever to get our hands on” - Gamers

Vastatz on May 12nd, 2021 at 16:13 UTC »

Devs said the same thing when talking about the ps2