Fixman had written the original movie script (a big budget affair starring Sly Stallone, John Goodman and Rosario Dawson), but it had been changed so much by Hollywood writers and execs that the lore was no longer compatible and making a game of the movie proved difficult.
The Ratchet and Clank movie and the perils of Hollywood script doctorsįollowing sequels hit a lull, before the spectacular Ratchet and Clank on PS4 (2015), a ‘re-imagination’ of the series referred to internally as ‘the game of the movie based on the game’. The arch villain had escaped just before impact, it turned out (“Not my most elegant solution”, said Fixman). Never ring a bell if there’s chance a publisher may want it un-rung, noted Fixman, who had to ret-con Dr. “Maybe it was a flesh wound?”, replied the Sony exec. “We just flew that dude into a space station!” said Fixman. Typically, the desire for sequels led to Sony asking Insomniac to resurrect their arch villain a few years later. Mindful of a spectacular send off, they smashed Dr Nefarious into his own space station, which duly exploded. Nefarious in A Crack in Time, which they thought was their last R&C game. Insomniac continued to learn the hard way after killing off series’ favourite Dr. "That was the fastest 'no' ever", he admitted. All 4 One's original subtitle was 4 Play, Insomniac revealed, which was unsurprisingly rejected, before writer T.J. The Ratchet and Clank series developed a love for mischievous pun subtitles, from Up Your Arsenal to Quest for Booty. The team, wisely, dialled back their ambitions (but would revisit them later in the series), after one team member began his contribution to an ideas meeting by writing ‘Technology is evil’ on a wipe board. Giddy with PS3’s new technical horizons, the team wanted to make a CG-style animated movie, including procedurally generated planets and open space exploration. The leap to new console hardware on PS3, with Ratchet and Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, was another gamble that almost disrupted the game’s core appeal. Insomniac took the lesson, doubling down on the ‘Franchise DNA’ to inform later entries in the series. One critic billed the game as ‘soulless gun porn’. Insomniac had become obsessed by Halo, and unwisely decided to ‘go dark’, losing Ratchet’s core appeal – and sidelining Clank almost entirely. The challenge of creating a fourth game, and a desire to innovate, led to one of the worst-received Ratchet games ever: Ratchet Deadlocked. The difficult fourth game… and how losing its way allowed Ratchet to better define its appeal What allowed Ratchet and Clank to endure where other failed? Insomniac felt Ratchet and Clank survived since the game evolved from a platformer with shooting, to a shooter with platforming. As time wore on, games with mascots (like Sonic, Spyro, Gex, Dr Muto, Bubsy etc) started to wane in popularity. Namely, to develop your heroes and their relationships, since if the audience doesn’t care about them, they won’t care about your world. This taught the studio a valuable lesson that they’ve upheld to this day, which could be attributed to the failure of so many other games to create characters. The original Ratchet and Clank was a success, although Insomniac reflected Ratchet was ‘kind of a jerk’ and toned back the sarcasm for later games.
Insomniac president Ted Price cancelled the 'girl with the stick' project leading to the development of Ratchet and Clank. An experimental entry in the series like All 4 One deviated a little too far from core values, Insomniac reflected, but the studio never lost their appetite for taking risks, having defined the core of what made their games tick. After a number of sequels, Insomniac created brand values that each game needed to hit. If a weapon wasn’t a 10/10 on one aspect, it didn’t get used – leading to iconic guns such as the Groovitron, which released a glitter ball causing enemy characters to dance.
For Ratchet and Clank: Tools of Destruction the team established three criteria for new weapons: Comedic, Strategic and Spectacle. The team designed 60 guns for PS2’s original Ratchet and Clank in 2002, but later discovered that weapons needed a strategic use for players to engage with them. Insomniac improvised the early games, with little attention to the game’s lore or unspoken brand rules. Creative officer Brian Hastings created a design document for the art of crate stacking.