If you forced me to name a favorite video
game of all time, it would be tough, but more often than not I think Iâd say Ratchet & Clank:
Up Your Arsenal. This, perhaps more than any other, is the
game of my childhood, a title that Iâve beaten well over 100 full times. There was a time where I would come home from
school, my homework already done for the day, and I would sit down and do a full playthrough
before I went to sleep. A game that took the explosive stakes of its
predecessor and ramped up the intensity even more, with sprawling battlefields, a complete
story with more on the line and a menacing, all-time great villain - every single thing
that Ratchet & Clank 3 did, I loved...as a kid. But when I look at Ratchet 3 today, do I still
feel the same way? Are all the things that the younger me adored
the same things I seek out with a Ratchet game 15 years later with a different perspective? Or, in Insomniacâs pursuit of perfecting
their ultimate vision for this trilogy, did they maybe push a bit too close to the sun,
losing some of what made the first two games tick and shifting towards level designs and
styles that I actually didnât care much for in future titles? And after dozens of hours of research and
conducting interviews with developers, speaking on their time with this culmination of the
Ratchet trilogy, uncovering previously-unreleased info about its cut content and development
issues, can I today reconcile my love and nostalgia for this game with the sky-high
expectations and heavy workload of making three full titles in three years, a pressure
that drove so many Insomniac employees to leave within a few years of this gameâs
release? This is often considered the best game in
the Ratchet & Clank franchise, and as I said, itâs probably my most coveted game of all
time. But as weâve gone through already with the
first two games, I donât make exceptions, weâre going to break down this game and
its development, and put it together again, raising it up and letting the light shine
even on those dark crevices. This is Ratchet & Clank 3: Up Your Arsenal. The story of Ratchet & Clank 3 begins in much
the same way that the development story behind the game does. After saving two galaxies in two years, our
heroes are, well heroes, theyâre celebrities, theyâre household names. Ratchet is enjoying the high life in the duoâs
Megacorp apartment, while Clankâs a movie and holovision star now which is pretty cool,
donning a suit and fighting criminal masterminds on screen as Secret Agent Clank. And the fame certainly hasnât gone to the
sidekickâs head at all. When Ratchet flips the channel, he finds that
his old home planet Veldin is under attack by an alien Tyhrranoid army under the command
of the evil Dr. Nefarious. Now, hopefully our world doesnât have a
Dr. Nefarious or alien invasion, although I wouldnât complain about a Secret Agent
Clank show. Behind the scenes, a third Ratchet game was
a foregone conclusion well before the second game was finished, and Insomniac was enjoying
the limelight as one of the foremost and most respected studios in the industry. Going Commando had been developed in less
than a year, a game that was 150% larger than the original according to Insomniac, and as
pre-production began on what would become Ratchet 3, an outline was crafted for a game
that would be 150% larger than that. The studioâs upper brass seemed to know
before Going Commandoâs release that it would be their highest-rated game to date,
and they were already itching to top it. So, Insomniac underwent another hiring spree,
now reaching nearly 120 developers that would be dedicated to just this project. All the while, a smaller separate team was
already designing ahead for what would three years later become the PlayStation 3 launch
title, Resistance: Fall of Man, having to stab in the dark and guess what that systemâs
hardware specs would even look like, and in the background work also began on an in-house
level designing tool to facilitate better coordination between level designers and programmers. Many of these new hires, some fresh out of
college, were huge fans of the first Ratchet & Clank game, brought in to work on Ratchet
3 before 2 had even been released or at least before they could have a chance to play that
game for themselves. But what does a game 150% larger than the
massive Ratchet & Clank 2 even look like? Well to start, Up Your Arsenal technically
wasnât a one team project, it was two, because early on it was decided that Ratchet 3 would
be Insomniacâs first online game, featuring a full multiplayer mode that Sony could use
to market the new PlayStation 2 broadband adapter for the original PS2 model, as well
as the new Slim PS2 that included broadband support natively. With none of Ratchet 3âs systems in place
yet, the multiplayer was developed separately from the main campaign using weapons from
the first two games, and later roped back into the main concoction. And that multiplayer also needed to work both
with four-player splitscreen offline as well as two-player splitscreen online, which required
a complete rework of just about everything that Insomniac had ever done. Additionally, following Insomniacâs narrative
struggles in the first two games, it brought on its first dedicated writer, Brad Santos,
to weave a wider, more cohesive, and more coherent tale that would pay equal respect
to the first two games and wrap up the trilogy. And feeling like there was little left to
do in the Bogon Galaxy, Insomniac, like our heroes, decided to come back home, to revisit
many levels from Ratchet 1 and build a larger world. A game that was only slated to have about
an hour of cinematics and cutscenes, lining up with the first two games, Up Your Arsenal
ended up with over 100 minutes of these cutscenes, biting off far more than initially intended
thanks to a more involved script. Incidentally, biting off more than intended
as far as animation goes is kind of an Insomniac staple at this point, with the studio frequently
underestimating how much time, effort, and money the cutscene work will take, which can
sometimes lead to a bit of corner-cutting. To reiterate, this team in three years had
tripled in size from 40 to 120+, having made two games in back to back years; it was now
working on two games simultaneously, one on next gen hardware that hadnât yet been finalized,
and the other a two-team project featuring the completely untested water of PS2 multiplayer;
and despite Ratchet 2 already cutting it pretty close to the deadline, Insomniac yet again
only gave itself a year to make an even larger game whose scope continued to increase even
midway through production. Full-steam ahead is a massive understatement,
it might even be a bit weak to describe the projectâs goals as âinsane.â And thatâs not me editorializing, Insomniacâs
Chief Creative Officer Brian Hastings said as much in the gameâs Post-Mortem, saying
âWe knew we were taking on the most ambitious project we had ever attempted, and we began
to think we had bitten off a little too much this time around.â And yet, when Up Your Arsenal released a week
ahead of schedule somehow, it blew away everybody. Ratchet 3 to this day is Insomniacâs highest-rated
game thanks to all of that dedicated work, thanks to having a designated storywriter
so that the writing didnât take a rushed backseat to the more important stuff, thanks
to its incredible suite of features, larger battlefields, more vehicles, its array of
side characters, thanks to Insomniacâs hiring of a dozen more QA testers, thanks to an unprecedented
9 play-tests and focus tests, and thanks to the unified efforts of everybody at the studio,
determined to get this game right no matter what it took. Also known as crunch. Thatâs not my word choice, thatâs again
Brian Hastings. The animation team crunched to finish the
much more packed 100 minutes of cinematics, because everybody had underestimated the screenplay
and nobody timed it all out. The new hires were effectively crunched in
their training process and thrown right into the fire, because Up Your Arsenal quickly
fell behind schedule. Insomniac outsourced the online lobby system
to another studio because theyâd kept putting it off to work on more important features. That part is because Insomniac dedicated just
one programmer at first to work on the multiplayer, who they then pulled off of the online for
a bit to help make sure Going Commando didnât get delayed, youâre probably noticing a
pattern here. This game was a lot, and even a few weeks
before it went Gold, just like so many games before and since throughout the industry,
nobody inside the studio was really sure whether it would come together or if itâd be an
absolute unmitigated disaster. Iâve spoken to a number of developers that
worked on Ratchet & Clank 3 about their time on the project - some programmers, some designers,
each with a wholly unique experience that Iâll share with you in their own words,
to the best of my ability. What I can say right now in my own words,
based on these interviews as well as the rest of my research and more importantly by playing
the game for the 100-somethingth time is that I donât look at again, probably my favorite
game ever the same way anymore. But thatâs not because of comments or allegations
of crunch, itâs not because Insomniac is secretly some evil corporation - to the contrary,
it seems clear to me that theyâve learned many lessons thanks to these early Ratchet
projects and that today they likely take better care of their employees than most of the rest
of the industry. If they didnât, we would know by now. The reason I think my opinion on the game
has shifted a bit is because thanks to this pursuit of bigger, better, and more, and because
everybody was so fully invested in making this project work, even if it meant staying
late or cutting some optional content or any number of compromises, nobody really had the
chance to step back and wonder if it was all the right kind of âmore.â Even as a kid it was unfathomable that this
game could be made in a year, and thatâs because it was an unfathomable feat. But playing it as an adult, as much as I loved
the story, as much as I loved the weapons and the upgrades and all of the rest of the
things weâll be digging into, it starts to homogenize, we lose many of the branching
pathways that planets would give you. We lose the platforming or puzzle sections
that broke up the combat, because platforming was a dirty word in the mid-2000s. And although I loved the insanely polished
gameplay and combat, I think Insomniac took Up Your Arsenal a little too much in that
direction. Unlike with my retrospectives on Ratchet & Clank
1 and 2, I canât walk you down memory lane planet by planet, interweaving discussion
of new mechanics with analysis the level design and story beats, because almost every level
is a linear combat encounter. Many of the things I would praise in this
game, I already did in Going Commando. So instead, weâll work through the gameâs
fantastic story, mostly planet by planet as Iâve done before, and weâll talk about
the journey that led to this game coming together, against all odds, weâll talk about those
compromises that were made to get to whatâs considered the pinnacle of the franchise,
and weâll talk about why Iâve started to look at it a bit differently today. When Ratchet and Clank land on Veldin, our
heroes meet the new Galactic Rangers, an elite group of robot troopers currently tasked with
stopping the Tyhrranoid invaders. Okay ânewâ might be a bit of a stretch,
it turns out theyâve been around for a while and were just nowhere to be found during the
events of Ratchet 1. Also, âEliteâ may have been a stretch,
I guess Ratchet is their commanding officer now. Whatever, they gave us two guns, so Iâll
consider it an enlistment bonus. One of the things youâll quickly discover
in Up Your Arsenal is that these Tyhrranoids make up the majority of the gameâs enemies,
a contrast from the first two games where most planets had their own unique creatures
for Ratchet and Clank to fight. This was a dual effort to tie the story together
with a unifying foe, an evolution of Thugs-4-Less in Going Commando, as well as a way to save
time and resources that could be better spent on other features instead of designing enemies
youâll only see once. Even as it was, a few Tyhrranoid enemy designs
were already cut because of a lack of resources. Throughout the game weâll see four ranks
of these aliens, with their strength indicated by their number of eyes. The little one-eyed grunts will only take
a wrench hit or two, while the four-eyed generals will need a lot more firepower. And more firepower is Up Your Arsenalâs
specialty, as the name would imply. Although there are actually fewer weapons
here than in Going Commando, 20 compared to 24, every weapon in Ratchet 3 can be upgraded
to level 5 instead of just once. We start out on Veldin with the Shock Blaster
shotgun and the Nitro Launcher bomb...uh, launcher. And the game takes no time at all giving you
access to more weapons - by level 2 weâll already have a third of the weapons unlocked
and by the end of Act 1, weâll be able to purchase 15 of the 20. Whether weâll have the money, thatâs a
different story. In case throwing weapons at you doesnât
give you confidence in the gameâs ability to raise the stakes, after Ratchet fights
his way through Tyhrranoid mechs and fighter ships, blasting through his old neighborhood
and even into the wreckage of his garage home from Ratchet 1, youâll rendezvous with another
Galactic Ranger squadron and lead them on a HALO jump deep into enemy territory. Within five minutes of picking up the controller,
youâre jumping out of the back of a dropship and freefalling with your own militia past
enemy missiles, itâs a complete adrenaline rush. Now, something I rarely see discussed is that
itâs never actually explained why Nefarious is attacking Veldin. Even though Ratchet just happened to land
right by his old house, it doesnât appear that this Dr. Nefarious, whoever he is, is
concerned with our hero at all. Veldin throughout the series is described
as a worthless backwater planet, itâs obviously just a convenient excuse to get our heroes
back home. Just kinda interesting. This second stage of Veldinâs invasion gives
us a primer for one of Up Your Arsenalâs key gimmicks, the sprawling battlefield arenas
that weâll be frequenting throughout the game. These function as a great technical showcase,
solid worldbuilding, and another smart optimization move, allowing the gameâs designers to repurpose
many of the large multiplayer maps across multiple missions featuring these Galactic
Rangers battling the Doctorâs Tyhrranoid army. While this area specifically isnât reused
elsewhere, itâs just a taste of whatâs to come. After driving off the Tyhrranoid invaders,
Ratchet and Clank are put into contact with the Galactic President, Bill Clinton. You heard me. Alright this cutscene has got to be the most
densely-packed with humor in the entire franchise, itâs not even two minutes long and it leaves
me in stitches. Weâve got Bill Clinton being a fan of the
fictional Secret Agent Clank character, somehow not remembering Clank or his âchauffeurâ
Ratchet as the two that saved the galaxy two years ago likely during his term in office,
the whole âsidekick gets all the spotlight and praiseâ bit with Ratchet being blown
off is always a great shtick especially when Clank just leans into it, the Presidentâs
top-secret report on the only man to face Nefarious and survive is an exaggerated, made-for-TV
history channel documentary, and barely 10 minutes into this game we get a dick joke,
followed by the President insisting that whoever this jackoff is, theyâre the only person
that can possibly save the galaxy...in front of the two guys that have saved two galaxies
in two years, including this one. Itâs just, A+, this is why you hire a writer. As we move into the first proper level in
the game, this jungle on planet Florana, we run into some of the usual third-game syndrome
that tends to hit so many iconic franchises. The first game introduces everything and stumbles
in a few spots, the second game fixes almost everything up and sets the tone going forward,
and the third game tends to struggle to introduce many new features that donât end up feeling
like gimmicks. In this case, Insomniac had been struggling
to think of new, meaningful types of crates that could complement the regular crates,
ammo crates, nanotech, and explosive crates that had all been here since game 1, and the
metal crates that were in 1 but barely used in 2. The two new ideas are pretty gimmicky timed
powerups that only last 30 seconds. We have the Inferno crate, which makes Ratchet
temporarily invincible and allows you to kill enemies in one hit with your wrench; and the
Jackpot crate, which grants you a 2x Bolt multiplier similar to the multiplier you get
in Challenge Mode in Going Commando onward, except here you canât increase it past 2x
by killing enemies, and it isnât taken away from you for taking damage. Neither is really used more than a handful
of times or to really meaningfully impact gameplay much, but they were cool enough ideas
to be included, and that was enough for Ted Price to buy a case of beer for the person
that thought them up. There was early on a third new crate type
that would permanently level up your weakest weapon by one level, but that actually took
away from playing the game so that was cut pretty early, and honestly thatâs for the
best since I usually avoid even the Inferno crates, since using them means youâre wasting
enemy experience you could be earning for your weapons. Florana gives us access to two new weapons
in the shop, our standard blaster weapon which is just kind of a blaster, and the plasma
whip, which has a much more interesting story. While playing around during pre-production,
programmer Tony Garcia wanted to design an enemy that used a whip with realistic animations,
inspired by Soul Caliburâs Ivy. However, to save the already-swamped animators
time, he developed a whip that was coded to flow and react dynamically based on enemy
and player positioning, although it didnât react realistically due to hardware limitations. But after the work that went in, and based
on how impressive the whip looked when tested on the Chainblade boss from Ratchet 2, it
was instead implemented as a really cool weapon for the player to use. Funnily enough, realistic whip physics were
then tested by the team working on Insomniacâs PlayStation 3 engine, and somehow that was
reworked back into this game on weaker hardware as an enemy weapon. So two whips made it into Up Your Arsenal
that reacted differently to their environments, and later in the first PS3 Ratchet game, a
whip weapon was included again, but that one didnât revisit either of these dynamic styles,
instead being hand-animated and ending up rather boring. Funny how that worked out. After fighting through the dense jungle, or
just skipping the level with a well-placed jump, Ratchet and Clank run into a dense character. If the blurry silhouette wasnât clear enough,
the former hero that weâre looking for is none other than Captain Qwark, driven so insane
by his two consecutive failures at the hands of our duo, or maybe just the crotchetizer
tests, that heâs secluded himself to a life as a the leader of a monkey tribe. That life includes bestiality. In his simian haze, Qwark makes the duo trek
through the path of death, and then fights them head-on, becoming submissive once defeated
as he sees Ratchet as his new leader. With Ratchet, Clank, Qwark, and his monkey
companion Skrunch all crammed into the tiny ship, the group heads to the Starship Phoenix,
the first proper hub world in the Ratchet franchise. The Phoenix addresses many of the smaller
issues that Going Commando had, for one giving you a reliable location where you can purchase
armor upgrades at any point in the game, rather than sprinkling only a couple vendors on specific
planets. Itâs also home to a virtual reality arena
where you can gain experience for your weapons and health, an onboard video game system that
weâll talk about later, and the Gadgetron weapons vendor on this command ship lets you
try before you buy, which is really cool. But even cooler, this vendor lets you scan
your memory card for a Ratchet & Clank 1 save file, and if youâve got a save from after
you spoke to the Gadgetron President in that game, youâll be given a permanent 10% employee
discount, just as he promised youâd be eligible for after two years. Donât you just love continuity? After many missions youâll travel back to
the Pheonix as a way of debriefing both Ratchet and Clank as well as the player, giving you
a place to anchor yourself to the story, and most importantly for the more imaginative
younger players, giving you a place to connect more with all of the gameâs side characters. Some of the Galactic Rangers are patrolling
the shipâs deck, different characters will occasionally chime in over the intercom, and
a bit later in the game, weâll be able to just hang out on the bridge and listen to
flavor dialogue where different crew members make small talk. Itâs these little pieces of worldbuilding
that made me absolutely fall in love with this game back when I first played it, even
more than the first two. Even if they were throwaway lines and even
if this is a basic hub, it added an extra sense of place that got me wondering what
other stories could be told about Ratchet and Clankâs expeditions as Galactic Rangers. Itâs the kind of home base that lends itself
incredibly well to a serialized cartoon series, a good opening and closing location to serve
to reset after every adventure, when I was 9 or 10 I wanted a model of the Phoenix, I
wanted action figures to play with and act out my own dumb Ratchet & Clank adventures,
hell I even sent Sony a letter at the time, suggesting they make a toy line out of this
game and its sequel Ratchet Deadlocked, thinking of all of the possibilities. One of Sony Computer Entertainmentâs representatives
even indulged some dumb kid and wrote me back, politely declining the idea of course, before
making an action figure line a couple years later anyway. Iâm not saying they took my idea or anything
obviously, Iâm sure they got a few dozen letters just like mine, but I am saying that
if they did take my idea theyâd have made some banginâ Starship Phoenix and customizable
Annihilation Nation or Dreadzone playsets, and they never did. Cowards. Shortly after landing on the Phoenix, Qwark
and Skrunch are placed into the starshipâs convenient zoo enclosure, and Ratchet and
Clank prepare to formally meet the Phoenixâs captain, Sasha, but when they enter the bridge
they find Sasha responding to a distress signal from President Clinton...who happens to be
her father. Which makes Ratchetâs earlier comment a
little awkward. Dr. Nefariousâs troops have invaded the
galactic capital on planet Marcadia, breaching the Presidential compound, and the good doctor
releases a warning shot to the galaxy, and what a perfect introduction to this character. In his transmission, Nefarious announces his
plans to decimate every organic life form in the galaxy, as a part of his goal to head
a robot uprising. And heâs even got his butler Lawrence doing
sign language interpretation for any deaf robots out there, what a nice guy. With at least a bit of an idea of who theyâre
up against now, our heroes rush to the capital city to meet up with the Galactic Rangers
and secure the capital. Although the first level Florana was a split
from Up Your Arsenalâs high-octane Tyhrranoid-fighting introduction, a sort of cooldown to allow
for some necessary exposition, Marcadia reaffirms that whether the pace is fast or slow, Ratchet
3âs level design is taking a drastic shift from the first two games. Rather than separating different gameplay
focuses into distinct pathways, Insomniac began chaining them together in a linear sequence,
effectively taking their design philosophy for just the final levels of the first two
games and implementing that across almost every level. On Veldin, we fought through two phases of
invasion back to back; on Florana, we made our way through the jungle, and then walked
the PATH OF DEATH, before our boss battle against Qwark; and here on Marcadia, weâll
be fighting through the capital city, before taking on our first series of sprawling Ranger
Battlefield missions, and then finally culminating in a puzzle section inside the Presidential
Compound. With a few exceptions, every level in Ratchet
3 is chained together in this linear fashion, and even those exceptions depend on what your
meaning of the word âbranchâ is. Two of those branches are optional series
of Battlefield missions that only unlock after youâve finished the main level, one of them
is the crystal hunting excursion that returns from Going Commando, again unlocked only after
youâve finished the level, leaving three levels that actually have multiple branched
paths. For comparison, Ratchet 1 and 2 each only
had four or five levels that didnât have multiple separate paths. I say all this to highlight one of the larger
sticking points with Up Your Arsenal: While so many fans adore it for being that complete
package that both Ratchet 1 and 2 struggled to be at points, others lament that this gameâs
great story and gameplay improvements came at the cost of, to them, that irreplaceable
feeling of exploration and variety that made Ratchet, Ratchet. You cannot go wrong with any of these games,
but over time Up Your Arsenalâs popularity has wavered a little bit because of its linearity. Me personally? I jump back and forth, because I did love
that almost light-Metroid approach that Ratchet 1 and 2 had at times, I loved how Going Commando
was able to raise every single stake except for maybe the main villain - and I love that
Up Your Arsenal raises its stakes in a very different way, including that main villain. While the vast majority of levels may be linear,
that theyâre broken up into these little segments enhances each levelâs feeling of
importance, it makes shorter levels feel bigger, better, and more meaningful to the overall
story, and not just because of the occasional extra loading screen to mask that the levels
were too big to be contained in just 32 megabytes of memory. Letâs take Marcadia for example, the initial
linear rush through the city only lasts a brisk five minutes, bookended by quick cutscenes
featuring the Rangers. Youâll have just enough time to test out
the returning Suck Cannon or the new Infector weapon that turns enemies against one another
- both weapons you can buy starting when you reach the Starship Phoenix - or maybe youâll
use the time to level up one of your current weapons once, but otherwise this is a quick
in-and-out string of fights. After that, youâll only spend about ten
minutes clearing the Presidential Compound in the gameâs first series of Galactic Ranger
missions, with this whole set of missions reusing this one little oval courtyard that
happens to double as a map in the multiplayer. You wonât really notice the repetition though
because the missions mask it well, whether youâre being thrown into a turret and destroying
waves of dropships, running back and forth across the battlefield clearing Tyhrranoids,
staying close to some Rangers making repairs, or running back and forth again across this
little map, but this time blasting more ânoids with the Rangersâ help, turning Bolt cranks
to activate the perimeter defenses. Between the mission variety and the Rangersâ
funny combat dialogue and anecdotes, these ten minutes blow right by, and before you
know it youâll be meeting with the President, and
then moving into the Planetary Defense Center to restore the cityâs shield system, where
youâre given the new Refractor Gadget. With many of the Insomniac designersâ ideas
exhausted by the back-to-back of the first two games, designer Mike Stout turned to a
tried-and-true inspiration: Zelda. The Refractorâs gimmick was directly inspired
by the Legend of Zeldaâs Mirror Shield, allowing you to redirect laser beams including
some enemy attacks, and Iâd argue its Zelda inspiration is part of what makes it one of
the better gadgets in the series. I mean after all, if youâre gonna take,
take from the best, right? The Refractor sections are simple to grasp,
quick to execute, impossible to mess up since the puzzles only work one way, and yet they
still make the player feel like theyâve actually done something, even if that something
is just moving a beam of light slightly. And once youâve completed all of the puzzles,
youâre rewarded yet again with another cutscene, the fourth one in just this level, where Ratchet
and Clank run into Big Al for the first time since Ratchet 1, the latter giving the duo
a Qwark vid-comic that might be just the key to jog Ape-Qwarkâs memory. By funneling the level design together in
this way, yes, we lost some planetary exploration, but we gained a more focused mission structure
that better fit the plot, and it helped us gain a plot whose quality wasnât a common
point of debate like with the first two games. No matter which game is your favorite of this
trilogy, itâs just about unanimous that this gameâs story earns high marks. And with cutscenes acting as semicolons just
about every time the game jumps from one section to the next within a level, you can see both
how these raised stakes bring the best out of the levels...and why the animators struggled
to finish all the cinematics on time. And whatâs perhaps more interesting is that
Up Your Arsenal despite aiming for a shooter-platforming balance, lost much of that platforming focus. This was the point at which Insomniac felt
it had really hit its stride and where the studio had discovered exactly what made a
great Ratchet title. This so-called Ratchet checklist would be
tweaked and tuned over time, but internally this was the first time the game featured
the full checklist, including a well-written buddy story, ensuring that Captain Qwark was
included from the outset, focusing on these vibrant worlds, and of course that trademark
whimsical Douglas Adams inspired humor. For those of you that are too young to recall
that name, Douglas Adams was the second US President. But other focuses of this little internal
checklist include weapons that were both creative and strategic, an attempt that is clear here
with weapons such as the Infector, but maybe not a successful attempt since the more strategic
weapons tend to be outclassed immediately. And while a shooter-platforming balance was
touted as a key ingredient in the Ratchet formula, Up Your Arsenal is undeniably more
of a shooter than a platformer in almost all of its main levels - really, the main platforming
weâll see in most levels is in the form of the strafing side-jumps to dodge and duck
between enemy fire. That is, thatâs the most platforming we
get in the main game, but thereâs an entire platforming game within a game in Ratchet
3: That Captain Qwark Vid-Comic we just received. While Qwark was an early focus of Up Your
Arsenal to avoid another last-minute rewrite like Going Commando, the gameplay of Qwarkâs
vid-comics ran into some notable struggles. In addition to acting as another way to forward
the story and give us backstory about Qwark, Nefarious, and their early battles, these
sections are the main chunk of gameplay variety that Up Your Arsenal sees besides the Ranger
missions. Initially conceptualized as their own Mega
Man X-styled side game focusing on Qwark, and later lumped into Ratchet 3 as a game
within a game, with bits of backtracking, puzzles, and four different weapons that Qwark
could swap between as if he was a little mini-Ratchet himself, these 2D sidescrollers ended up going
through a major redesign due to their over-ambitious scope. As Insomniac had run into in Going Commando
with its space combat and racing, designing a minigame that feels true to the world of
the larger game can require the same amount of work and polish as designing an entirely
separate game itself - and considering that there was also an entire multiplayer mode
being designed separately from Ratchet 3 as it was, as well as new versions of racing
and space combat being ground-up redesigned from Going Commando, and those Ranger missions
that required weeks of work to put together thanks to a ground-up rework of the gameâs
enemy pathfinding, at a certain point itâs not feasible. It also helped that the gameâs target audience,
kids aged 10 or younger, first off by and large wouldnât even know what Mega Man X
was at the time, and that some of these kids apparently struggled during focus tests with
the subpar original designs of the 2D platformer gameplay. Remember that sidescroller gameplay on consoles
had been dwindling during the early 3D era, and that the Nintendo DS came out after this
game; even with the great sales of the Game Boy and GBA, there were more kids that hadnât
played many sidescrollers than had, and on top of that given this gameâs constant struggle
with development timelines, it just wasnât possible to rework the original gameplay design
in a more user-friendly way without going well out of scope. In the gameâs secret Insomniac Museum showcasing
cut content from Ratchet 3, you can find the much harder original version of this first
Vid-Comic, with multiple branching pathways that you needed to explore to unlock the main
path forward - and you can find another cut Vid-Comic level that was much heavier on the
platforming, the original test level for this gameplay approach. Both of these are frankly not really all that
fun, even a seasoned platforming fan could run into trouble on these, and since it wouldnât
have been smart to lock progress to a secondary game mode with which many kids would struggle,
the gameplay was dialed back into a far more basic platformer. With a slimmed-down version of Ratchetâs
main gameplay, Insomniac ensured that players could easily transition back and forth between
these Qwark vid-comics and the main attraction, and Insomniac worked in further incentives
so that players would look at these Vid-Comics as a positive instead of just another side
gimmick. Each Vid-Comic has a Skill Point challenging
you to beat it in under a certain time limit for example, and somehow the Vid-Comics pay
you real Bolts for beating them - or as I like to call it, a reverse microtransaction. If you collect all 100 of the Qwark tokens
sprinkled throughout each Comic, youâll get a Titanium Bolt for your troubles, which
in this game are used to buy different skins for Ratchet. With far more forgiving checkpoints than the
rest of Up Your Arsenal, youâll never have to worry about dying or losing the tokens
youâve collected thus far. And if you find the hidden Green Qwark token
in these levels, youâll gain a permanent health increase that tracks across each episode
of the Vid-Comics, encouraging at least a little bit of exploration, even if it wasnât
nearly as much as originally scoped out. These were some of my favorite parts of Ratchet
3 growing up, because they were just the perfect bit of variety sprinkled in at just the right
story beats - and since this is the most platforming that the game had and I love me some solid
platforming and collecting, it scratched the itch enough that when I was younger I never
really thought about how combat-heavy the main game was compared to the first two games. Plus, with such ridiculously exaggerated,
Qwarked-up stories that even the Vid-Comic narrator scoffed at, they fed well into the
rest of the gameâs humor. This first Vid-Comic for example opens with
Qwark supposedly fighting off a spaceship full of robotic pirate ghosts, a plot so asinine
that the narrator refuses to read it, I mean who would actually make that? But, somehow this dumb plot is enough to jog
monkey-Qwarkâs memories in the real world, and soon enough heâs back to his old self...for
better or worse. In fact, in the time it takes Ratchet and
Clank to fight through a death course and some arena battles for the hit game show Annihilation
Nation, Qwarkâs already cleaned himself up, heâs rewritten his own personal history
so that instead of going insane he was actually âprotecting wildlife,â and with President
Clintonâs blessing heâs taken over the war on Nefarious. Annihilation Nation is Up Your Arsenalâs
main arena, a destination that like the Phoenix weâll come back to a couple times as the
plot necessitates. In this case, Ratchet and Clank head there
to obtain the Tyhrra-Guise gadget, an updated Hologuise from Ratchet 1 that instead changes
Ratchetâs appearance to that of one of Nefariousâs alien henchmen, convenient for those high-stakes
break-ins. While theyâre here, they can also grab the
second Qwark vid-comic which isnât needed to progress the story, and complete a number
of extra challenges to earn bolts and experience. Along with the VR arena I mentioned earlier,
these two feature in total about twice as many missions as the arenas from Going Commando,
although a good chunk of these are death courses rather than regular arena fights. The death courses are half-Wipeout styled
platforming obstacle courses, and half fighting against robot gladiators along the way. They all follow similar paths with slightly
changed parts, but on top of the sleazy game show vibe they give off with cameras flying
in your face and the fake suspense of being forced to go through door number 1 or 2, theyâre
different enough and spread out enough that theyâre a fun distraction. And, again, more jumping to balance out all
the shooting is a plus with this game so Iâll take âem. The regular arena challenges are great too,
with new round types thatâll pop up like the sleeper round in which Ratchet is constantly
losing health, or one where youâre forced to randomly change weapons. Annihilation Nation is also home to two new
bosses, one a tag team fight against a brother and sister duo, with the sister using that
physics-based whip I mentioned earlier, and another against a brain in a jar controlling
a flaming scorpion tank. By the time you first head to this arena,
youâll already have eight weapons either available for purchase or already in your
arsenal, and by the time you come back a few levels from now, thatâll be up to 13; since
Up Your Arsenal is really forward with unlocking weapons but simultaneously really stingy with
its weapon prices, itâs best to to clear out the arena as soon as you can, because
otherwise youâll be playing catch-up the entire game both with bolts and weaker weapons,
and with fewer Bolts youâll be forced to wait on buying the upgraded Armor sets, and
with fewer combat encounters youâll be leveling up Ratchetâs health less - essentially,
the arena is expected to be part of your playtime here, not just a bonus like in Ratchet 2. Even with the 10% Gadgetron employee discount,
I usually canât afford the Spitting Hydra until after a few challenges, even though
itâs available for purchase as soon as you get to Level 2, and once you get to the arena
youâll have to spend 54 to 60 thousand more if you want the Agents of Doom, an upgraded
version of Ratchet 1âs Glove of Doom. And trust me, you want the Agents of Doom,
because as they upgrade they unlock shoulder-mounted laser cannons and eventually explode in a
nuclear eruption when they charge into enemies. The Annihilation Nation arena is incidentally
the main place youâll end up using the Inferno Crate, since youâll be invincible while
in Inferno mode, and this giant invincible disco-ball turret thing is a pain in the arsenal. Once you decide youâre done with that detour,
you can head back to the Starship Phoenix, where Qwark establishes a new super-group
of elite soldiers, the Q-Force. And by âelite,â I mean Ratchet and Clank
who do all the work, plus Qwark, Helga, and Al who pretty much only ever sit there, Sasha
and pro hoverboarder Skidd McMarxx who actually help out a couple times, and Skrunch the monkey,
whoâs somehow the most helpful one besides Ratchet and Clank themselves. Essentially, it all sounds like a Ratchet
& Clank fanfiction, bringing back in a bunch of characters from the first game and throwing
them together in a ragtag group for no reason, which kid me loved, and well actually adult
me loves this too, because itâs all just played so well that it works. Qwark unveils the first of his brilliant crayon-drawn
infiltration plans, and from there Ratchet and Clank head to Nefariousâs underwater
base on planet Aquatos, where players get to deal with an escort mission. Fellow Q-Forcer Skidd decides to show up and
help the duo by hacking into parts of the baseâs mainframe, but since heâs such
a wuss youâve gotta defeat every nearby enemy before heâll move forward. Well, at least he doesnât take damage. One touch I love about this level is that
most of the enemies youâll fight are the Amoeboid monsters that make their first appearance
since Ratchet 1. This wonât make much sense at first, but
if you play the second Qwark vid-comic, youâll find out that Nefarious created the Amoeboid
monsters during his first attack on the galaxy, and that he happened to be responsible for
the infestation you fought through in Blackwater City the first game. Itâs an awesome little double-punch of lore
that rewards you for putting the dots together. After escorting Skidd through the first part
of the base - featuring, fun fact, the only underwater swimming sections in the entire
game, which is probably fair, since I donât know what else you can do with swimming sections
after the first two games - he runs off when he gets frightened by Slim Cognito - yâknow,
the guy from Going Commando that sold you weapon mods. Apparently he fled his old galaxy after selling
a...uh, well, you know what Iâll let him tell you. But hey, heâs offering us some of our old
Megacorp guns from Going Commando so a saleâs a sale - and if you have a Going Commando
save file, heâll give you them for free! For now we can get the Miniturret Glove and
the Lava Gun, and a couple times near the end of the game heâll call Ratchet back
to let him know he can buy some new weapons that âfell off of a truck:â the Bouncer,
Plasma Coil, and Shield Charger. Hearing that the Bouncer and Plasma Coil are
back is good news, but the better news is that unlike the weapons that were carried
over from Ratchet 1 into 2, these guns were rebalanced with Up Your Arsenal in mind, so
theyâre actually useful. While I still love the Bouncer and I actually
think the Plasma Coil is better in this game than in Going Commando, the Lava Gun is the
most noteworthy of these, as itâs a little note from Insomniac saying âhey we listened,
sorry.â In Going Commando, it upgraded to the Meteor
Gun, and completely changed the basic utility of the weapon, but here it will instead evolve
into the Liquid Nitrogen Gun at Level 5, still spewing the same liquid spray as the Lava
Gun, but instead freezing enemies solid. The Miniturrets when upgraded will begin teleporting
to follow you, and theyâll start shooting at crates when no enemies are nearby, which
are both great upgrades to keep them useful, although they did get a bit of a nerf damage-wise
compared to the previous game. The Shield Charger...well, you actually canât
get that until the last level of the game, so itâs not really that useful until Challenge
Mode. After putting it in Slim Cognitoâs slot,
Ratchet and Clank split up and work together in one of the coolest sections of the game,
as we jump back and forth between the two as they help one another break into Nefariousâs
inner chamber. Not only is this probably the best Clank section
in the PS2 saga of Ratchet games, itâs Iâd argue the best one all the way until 2009,
in part thanks to Clankâs new banana gun, which he can use to lure Skrunch the monkey
onto switches or to distract enemies from Clank. Skrunch is a great way to spice up what would
otherwise be the same old gameplay that we exhausted in Ratchets 1 and 2 using the returning
Gadgebots. Again, nobody really had any great idea of
what to do with Clank at this point. Skrunch isnât actually the reason that this
section works so well though, in my opinion; instead itâs the stakes behind the Clank
gameplay. As Clank works his way through the upper path,
weâll jump back down to the lower path and take control of Ratchet, who uses his new
Tyhrra-Guise to blend in with the little aliens and talk his way past the gates in their language,
Tyhrranese...which is just burps and farts. Naturally. The Tyhrra-Guise minigame, like the Clank
gameplay, isnât really that great on its own, this is just an average little rhythm
minigame thatâs saved by the hilarious written dialogue between the Tyhrranoids and Ratchet. Seriously, somehow writer Brad Santos was
able to sneak in a line about Amoeboids Gone Wild, including the line âyou wonât believe
what those slimy coeds will do when the cameras are rolling.â I cannot believe that line made it through. But somehow, the sum of these two decent-at-best
parts works to become a greater whole. Maybe itâs because what would otherwise
feel like two pointless stealth sections has a direct purpose - we see Ratchet get the
Tyhrranoids to raise a bridge so that Clank can advance, and we see Clank unlock gates
for Ratchet to get through - AND unlike a similar back and forth section in Ratchet
2, we see this teamwork all in real-time, as the camera pans between our two heroes,
who finally kind of feel like equals during this section. Itâs one of the few times in the entire
Ratchet series that we get to have Clank working side-by-side with Ratchet rather than being
just a backpack or going off on his own, and itâs just about the only time it happens
outside of the co-op games. As a result, itâs far and away the most
important that Clank feels in the series, again probably until 2009. Well, 2008 if we count the Secret Agent Clank
game. And speaking of Agent Clank, it helps Clank
even more that these sections feel like actual stealth sections that could take place in
his fictional films and shows, it almost feels like his Agent Clank character maybe helped
him out a little bit in training for moments like these. It may not have trained him, though for the
revelation at the end of this level: That Dr. Nefarious is the biggest Secret Agent
Clank fan in the galaxy. With some encrypted coordinates now in hand,
the duo heads back to the Phoenix, or if youâd like to take a detour, they spend some time
hunting for Sewer Crystals to sell to the Plumber. If youâre wondering what Sewer Crystals
are, they-the-...theyâre poo. In an attempt to bring back the crystal hunting
from Going Commando, while also saving resources, the crystals are thrown into a series of indistinguishable
sewer tunnels, where the only enemies are Amoeboids, and Big Amoeboids. At 2,000 Bolts per turd, Iâd call it a good
way to earn Bolts, but where Going Commandoâs crystal sections were invigorating changes
of pace thanks to their wider level design, in a game full of wider Battlefields this
is an uncharacteristically claustrophobic slog, to the point that even finding your
way to the central sewer line which will bring you back to the start of the area can take
far longer than it needs to. Weâll call this another casualty of time
and resources, although part of it is that one of the areaâs designers immediately
pawned it off to somebody else when he realized it wasnât gonna turn out well. Following Qwarkâs next hairbrained plan,
Ratchet and Clank join the Galactic Rangers on a fight through the Tyhrranoid home planet,
Tyhrannosis. With a name like that and such a similar red-brown
color scheme, Sony should count itself lucky that it didnât receive any letters from
Lucasfilm. This is easily the most experimental planet
in Up Your Arsenal, beginning with a HALO drop deep into a Tyhrranoid mortar encampment
before opening up into an almost Haloesque battlefield, where youâll drive a machine-gun-mounted
buggy across the wide map to take down four enemy bases. Itâs such an oddly refreshing breakaway
from anything Ratchet had attempted prior, and itâs successfully able to simulate this
huge planetwide conflict even though the only friendly soldier youâll run into is Skrunch,
who mans the buggyâs machine gun. Each of the four bases spread across the map
open up their own unique combat encounters, ensuring that none of the four feel like retreaded
ground, and once the massive anti-air turrets at all four bases are destroyed, the Galactic
Ranger dropship can move in to take this invasion to phase 3 of 4. Inside the Tyhrranoid hive, we get the single
most Zelda boss fight in the entire Ratchet franchise, and it just so happens to be one
of my favorites too. I mean, right down to the Tyhrranoid Queenâs
introduction it feels like a love letter to Ocarina of Timeâs Gohma, all we need is
the bossâs name to pop up as text and for this thingâs weakness to be her eyes. Obviously fighting it isnât going to be
a Zelda affair, but thanks to the arenaâs grid structure and her attacks, sheâll be
a very pattern-focused fight, as youâre pumping her full of lead while constantly
backing up and jumping to dodge her sweep attacks. When youâve dealt enough damage, like any
good Zelda fight, the Queen breaks into her second phase, but first we pan away from Ratchet
and into the perspective of one of her eyes, still controlling our hero as he flees her
missile barrage from her point of view. Again this sort of thing when I was younger? Mindblowing! And after a harder second phase in a more
open arena, with no pillars for you to use to hide from the Queenâs machine gun attacks,
youâll finally defeat her...only for Qwark to take all the credit and public adulation,
of course. Thereâs still work to do here on Tyhrranosis
if you want some extra Bolts, as the Rangers are invading the Kavu Island combination Tyhrranoid
base and multiplayer map. This string of missions acts as a basic primer
for one of Ratchet 3âs multiplayer modes, taking you from your allied base all the way
around the crescent map to destroy the disco ball turret things that protect the enemy
base. Along the way youâll even get to try out
the new Hovership, and as a treat youâll get to fight these homing launchers that fire
missiles directly up into the air, offscreen so that you canât see them coming back down
to hit you. With no fair way to dodge their attacks, this
missile launcher was the second recipient of the Snowbeast Award, which youâll recall
from my Going Commando retrospective is the tongue-in-cheek reward given out within the
studio for the worst feature that shipped as part of an Insomniac game that year. It probably says a lot that even when it comes
to these Ranger missions, the big new gameplay gimmick that was meant to carry Up Your Arsenal
a bit, Iâm not talking a ton about the gameâs combat itself, because anything I could say
Iâd already exhausted just by saying âitâs Going Commando but a bit better.â For one thatâs a massive testament to how
amazing Going Commando is, that the best they could do and whatâs often called the best
Ratchet game is âmore of that one.â But itâs also a testament to Up Your Arsenalâs
unique position behind the scenes. According to programmer Tony Garcia, who had
worked in quality assurance on Ratchet 1 and as a programmer on Going Commando and Up Your
Arsenal: âOne of the things about Ratchet 3 that
was very interesting was that the team working on Ratchet 3 was pretty young in a lot of
areas. I don't have the numbers, exactly, and while
there were a lot of veterans on the team, I do believe that we probably had more very
new to the industry types working on that game than we had on the previous projects. In addition, because we were now working on
the third game in the franchise, we were also breaking some interesting new ground in that
people who were coming on board the team were coming in as previous fans of the franchise,
which wasn't something that had been possible on 1 (obviously) or 2 since it turned around
so quickly.â With a team made up of not only less experienced
workers, many fresh out of college, but also of fans of the Ratchet franchise already,
fans that again keep in mind likely couldnât have played much if any of 2 before theyâd
been hired to work on 3, it feels to me that the team was put into a bit of a unique situation,
where the current Insomniacs knew exactly the game they wanted to make - a bigger and
better Going Commando - while the new blood was working on the sequel to the sequel of
the game theyâd loved, working with the people that had made that game leading by
example, without having fully played the game that bridged the two. To draw a comparison, this would be like a
college student who played and loved The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, getting hired to
work on Majoraâs Mask just a few months later, even though they hadnât even gotten
past the kid Link part of Ocarina yet - except remember that I noted earlier that the onboarding
process for new hires was greatly accelerated thanks to Up Your Arsenal almost immediately
running behind schedule, so now that college fan doesnât even get a full, proper training
before being thrown into the fire. Sprinkle in a bit of the design team running
out of many interesting ideas for new gadgets or puzzles, and you start leaning even more
into the third-person shooter side of the game than I think was already intended to
begin with. And this is compounded by the fact that a
small handful of senior Insomniacs had already moved onto early work for Resistance, leaving
current programmers to mentor the new junior programmers. According to one programmer I spoke to, nobody
at Insomniac ever told them this was the plan, it was just assumed that by seating new blood
next to the old guard that thereâd be some mentoring. In practice, this meant according to this
programmer that they had to keep answering questions while fighting to get their own
work done on a continually shrinking timeline. Already, itâs pretty clear to anybody listening
that the weight of the project may have been cracking some foundations, and as tends to
happen, developers started cutting tiny corners wherever possible to save time or resources. And if this all wasnât enough to doom a
game, thereâs another wrench here too: At one point early on in the project, one of
the companyâs most senior programmers, Ricardo Rodiguez, suddenly left Insomniac, leaving
a large hole in his absence and surprising many of the former Insomniacs with whom I
spoke. Although I wasnât able to discern the reason
he suddenly left, due to some sort of legal issue or settlement surrounding his departure,
I suspect that his departure may have been part of the reason that the game fell behind
earlier on in development. Before he left Insomniac, Rodriguez according
to one ex-Insomniac I spoke to seemed like he might have been scouting for talent, and
in 2004 he founded High Impact Games, a developer that would end up hiring many former Insomniacs,
and the company that produced the two PlayStation Portable Ratchet titles, using many of the
ideas that were left on the cutting room floor during Rodriguezâs time at Insomniac. Rodriguez at High Impact was supposedly adamantly
opposed to crunching or unrealistic development timelines - so could he have been trying to
take a chunk of the studio with him to greener pastures out of frustration with management? I canât say definitively of course, but
thatâs a theory Iâve had. And letâs peel back even more than that,
near the start of this retrospective I mentioned that it was during Up Your Arsenalâs development
that an in-house level editing tool named Luna was also being worked on, as well as
a separate scripting tool programmed in the Lua programming language, that wonât get
confusing. Both of these were attempts to make it easier
for designers to implement their designs directly into the game themselves. These according to every programmer I spoke
to were NOT incorporated into Up Your Arsenalâs development, and instead a designer would
work closely with a programmer to bring their designs to life, just as had been done in
the previous two games. I would say that from the outside looking
in, this sounds like a great way to play the telephone game back and forth, but I donât
have to say that. Programmer Tim Trzepacz, who worked on Ratchets
1 through 3 and had a pedigree running back to the Sega Genesis days, told me that the
back and forth between programmer and designer was very inefficient. Trzepacz had tried multiple times to optimize
this during his time across the trilogy, to make the tools more powerful so that designers
could fine tune on their own, or even to make the programming work more intuitive for designers
that maybe were less experienced coders, but that these efforts went ignored or worse by
upper staff. Instead, from Ratchets 1-3 at least, and my
understanding is that Deadlocked was designed this way as well, the Insomniac workflow included
a designer providing the work to a programmer, with some designers collaborating more and
making it a fruitful back and forth flow, and others dictating their designs and then
figuratively or literally hovering over a programmerâs shoulder as the latter placed
every object in a level one by one. If you were a junior programmer, you might
be doing more of that grunt work of placing the level objects, all while still learning
what youâre supposed to be doing from a more senior programmer, whoâs also potentially
dealing with a designer over their shoulder for the work theyâre doing. If a designerâs work...well, didnât work
that well, they could go back to the drawing board and try to work together, or, as was
allegedly sometimes the case, they could dig their heels in and make things harder for
their programming partner. And none of this is factoring in the art and
animation teams, still crunching away at cinematics and level art and sometimes spilling over
into discussions of whether it would be possible or worth it to, say, add proper lip syncing
to the Q-Force dialogue on the bridge that only a percentage of players would ever see. As can happen in any workplace, occasionally
arguments got heated within the studio, but thankfully it doesnât sound like they ever
boiled over TOO much. Those animators were probably also counting
themselves lucky that there was never a plan to include the Rainbow Afrolizer as a functional
weapon in this game. Instead it made it into Act 2âs first cutscene
as a little reference; once Ratchet and Clank have returned to the Phoenix, and with Ratchet
regaling his fight with the Queen Tyhrranoid, Dr. Nefarious and Lawrence breach the ship
with a hologram transmission. After Dr. Nefarious gloats at how informidable
the Q-Force looks and then reveals that like President Clinton he, too, thinks that Agent
Clank is a real Secret Agent, the transmission is traced back to planet Daxx, named after
some loud-mouthed rat creature. This planet as Nefariousâs weapons facility
had been home to many diabolical tests, including a device that forced a rainbow afro onto the
targetâs head, and forced them to dance uncontrollably. Donât worry, Iâm sure weâll never see
a dancing weapon again. Daxx is one of the few levels in Up Your Arsenal
that evokes its predecessorsâ branching paths, which may be in part because this level
was another product of a crunched timeframe. The planetâs designer, Colin Munson, ended
up in a situation where he had to map out the design for three or four levels all in
one five-week timeframe, when traditionally each level would take five weeks on its own. With his time more focused on other levels,
he decided to more or less copy homework from one of Going Commandoâs most internally-praised
levels, Dobbo. The similarities are clear, between the similar
enemy designs and even some chunks of the level really evoking Ratchet 2âs testing
facility. Ironically, despite this being an intentionally
half-assed level, this one earned him the most praise over the ones heâd prioritized. Fate can be cruel. Thereâs not much I can say about Daxx as
a result. Itâs a good place to use the new Holoshield
launcher that unlocked in the previous level, thanks to the amount of enemy fire all funneled
at you from one direction, but the Holoshield isnât as useful as Iâd like in this game
as it takes a really long time to earn experience from absorbing enemy attacks. Thereâs a neat platforming section where
youâre running and using your new Hypershot gadget to avoid this attack ship destroying
the ground below you, and the boss fight against it is neat. But otherwise, both in terms of design and
story, Daxx has always felt a little bit fillery to me. One of the three routes is just a path to
the Charge Boots, the path through the facility leads to you learning that the reason you
came here, the plans for Nefariousâs secret superweapon - the Biobliterator - were actually
moved to the next planet, and after defeating the attack ship on the third planet, youâre
told to go right back to Annihilation Nation to progress. The saving grace of this level is, of course,
one of the best and dumbest cutscenes in the entire series, featuring robot popstar Courtney
Gears. Iâve realized over time that any time I
stop playing Up Your Arsenal, itâs right around this string of levels in Act 2. All of my old saves stopped not long after
Daxx on one of the subsequent two or three levels, I think because the game starts to
stretch a bit thin here, and weâve seen almost everything itâs going to have to
offer besides story. Right around now youâll have access to 75%
or more of the gameâs weapons, and only one of the remaining few is an all-new style
of gun. As Iâve already said, Iâve beaten this
game a hundred times, so if I want my fill of Up Your Arsenal, it makes sense that I
might only play the stellar first act and get out in a couple hours before it starts
to get stale. But even still, when I think back, this is
always where I stopped after I first completed the game. Which is even more interesting since one of
the two story forks here is one of my favorite levels in the game! That would be the Obani Moons, a two-in-one
level featuring both of the spherical mini-worlds that appear in Ratchet 3, custom gravity and
all. The first is a really quick-but-fun Refractor
section where we relink a series of satellites, following the laser as it arcs across the
curved horizon, followed by a full-scale Ratchet level mapped onto one of these spherical moons. This is exactly what I wanted out of the spherical
gravity when I played Ratchet 2, to see a level with proper combat encounters against
more than just a couple basic enemies, and this delivers and then some. Even if the neverending combat is starting
to drag the gameâs pace a bit, I always try to make it at least to the end of this
level just because itâs a personal favorite of mine - at least until it ends, because
we hit a wall. With the third of this trio of moons protected
by a forcefield, and Skidd for some reason here trying to break in with a crowbar, we
have no choice but to leave for now. Across the way down the other story fork,
we head to the arena, where Clank offers to book Courtney Gears in an episode of the Agent
Clank show, and then we go to the Agent Clank set and play a level in the character of the
Secret Agent, with a director yelling at us and all. We even get a Giant Clank fight which...yeah,
thereâs a reason we never see Giant Clank again after this in the Insomniac Ratchet
games, the gimmickâs already run dry. However, Courtney Gears is actually in cahoots
with Dr. Nefarious, and maybe in bed with him? Imagine those two going at it, gross. Ratchet, meanwhile, is at his trailer waiting
for Clank to finish shooting, completely oblivious to his friendâs capture. The ensuing fight with the Tyhrranoids that
invade the set because of course they do is fine, the level gimmick of working through
a bunch of Hollywood lots and warehouses is an awesome vibe, but itâs again just kind
of more combat, with a few of the Hacker gadget puzzles to break up the shooting. At the very least, I do like the Hacker, itâs
a more involved gadget than the ones featured in previous games, even if itâs clearly
just Tempest. Hey, I didnât know what Tempest was at the
time so I was fine with it. But even though this level is far and away
where Iâve stopped playing Up Your Arsenal the most, itâs home to my favorite weapon
in the game, the Rift Inducer, which fires out a black hole that sucks enemies up. The ability to fire multiple of these rifts
at once and watch as they warp space and time, inching ever closer to one another, before
combining into an even bigger black hole is just so cool, and watching enemies flail as
they circle the drain, man itâs such an incredible set and forget weapon that I never
forget it, I end up staring at the carnage and chuckling. Iâm a healthy adult, donât look at me
like that. But donât forget, this whole Courtney Gears
saga has been a slight detour from our main goal, even if it did loop back in thanks to
Nefarious grinding Gears. Nope, still gross. At the end of the level, Ratchet finds Clank,
whoâs acting a little bit...different, but hey Clank somehow found Nefariousâs exact
location and escaped I guess. We wonât get to find Nefarious yet though
because of course, weâve got another detour to go on, itâs been a whole hour without
some Ranger missions. The Rangers are under siege in Blackwater
City, which on paper sounds like a great way to revisit one of Ratchet 1âs best levels,
but in practice itâs just a random multiplayer map thatâs Blackwater City in name only. After saving the Rangersâ behinds yet again
in a handful of missions, one of the rangers gives Ratchet a pair of gravity boots, because
I guess Ratchet was in such a rush at the start of the game that he didnât pack his
bags. Good thing this game doesnât have any Grind
Boot tracks, or else heâd have been screwed. At the very least, this is the dumbest lead
up to the New Item jingle in the trilogy, I love it for that alone. Depending on your playstyle, you might tackle
this Blackwater City fight a bit earlier, I usually do it in this order because Blackwater
City is easily the least enjoyable of the Ranger side ventures, clearly the one most
shoehorned in as padding. Like with most of these Ranger missions, itâs
just short enough that I donât mind it too much in the moment, but when I step back to
look at it more critically, these little âjust short enoughâ moments add up enough to lead
to me tuning out here so often. Not every multiplayer map needed to be brought
into the single-player, and the thing is, they actually did know this, because 6 of
the 10 maps were multiplayer-only, including a callback to Ratchet 1âs planet Hoven that
I almost expect to find out was originally meant for the campaign too. While weâre on the subject, nowâs as good
a time as any to talk about Ratchet 3âs online mode. As I mentioned earlier, Up Your Arsenal was
one of the first PS2 games to feature online multiplayer through the PS2âs broadband
adapter. With no real idea of what online design would
entail, the multiplayer component of Up Your Arsenal was put together by a small, separate
team that rapidly fluctuated in size, starting with just one programmer and a couple designers,
and ending with a much larger crew. At one point, the multiplayer beta tests were
pushed up a month from July to June 2004, because the studio realized that theyâd
have no time to implement changes and consider feedback in the few weeks before they had
to start printing discs. Half of Insomniacâs 16 QA testers ended
up working full-time on the online mode, all while nobody was even sure what the multiplayerâs
player base would look like. Iâd venture to guess that the vast majority
of people that bought Ratchet 3 maybe played a couple rounds of the splitscreen multiplayer,
but never got to or cared enough to bring the game online. But the thing thatâs worth noting is that
while today so many players look at the multiplayer and wonder âman why would they even spend
their time on that? Just make the single-player larger!â - myself
included until recently - if you look at the context, Ratchet 3âs multiplayer is historic. I checked just about every single console
game that had released up until this point and by my count, itâs only the third console
game, ever, to feature simultaneous split-screen and online play, meaning that you can play
with a buddy on your couch, while also online with 6 other players. You might be thinking one of those first two
was Halo, but Ratchet 3âs release date being pushed up a week actually means that it was
released a week before Halo 2, and thus Halo 2âs multiplayer. Star Wars Battlefront beat both of them by
a few weeks, and before that the first console game that I could find with split screen online
was Tribes: Aerial Assault, which mind you came out before the PS2âs broadband adapter
so you were playing that with a 56k modem. So while you might question at first why so
much time and so many resources were dedicated to making essentially a separate game that
only 5% of players may have even played, it was more than worth trying, because thereâs
a universe out there where Up Your Arsenal is the big breakthrough in console online
multiplayer instead of Halo 2, and thatâs just incredible to think about, even more-so
when you remember that Ratchet 1 came out a year after Halo 1, and here this third game
is out right before Halo 2, beating it to the punch. Itâs a shame that so many of us didnât
get to try the online much when it was active on PS2, because the main Siege mode is really
cool, and the fast-paced Ratchet gameplay translated into a PVP battle is a sight to
behold. In Siege Mode, youâll work with your team
to capture a series of nodes across the map, by defeating the defense turrets and turning
a Bolt crank. Once a node is yours, you can spawn there
upon death, and more importantly, it brings you closer to the enemyâs base. Each team has a slightly different base in
terms of defenses, but both have these giant disco gatling gun turrets as their main defense. Once you make it into the enemy baseâs interior,
you have to destroy the power core to win the mode. All the while you can find the nine weapons
spread around the map, all but three of which are weapons reused from 1 and Going Commando,
since the multiplayer was developed ahead of and separately from the main game, before
3âs weapons were even designed. By killing enemy players, the weapons will
even level up just like the main game, and the buggy and hovership are available in some
maps too, with each allowing for a driver and a passenger to help shoot at or bomb enemies. Gadgets like the Hypershot and Gravity Boots
are available for swinging across gaps or walking on magnet paths to flank enemies,
and the Hypershot especially is useful since some parts of maps are destructible. Itâs incredible how ahead of its time the
multiplayer was, at one point there was even a planned killstreak that would drop in a
giant mech to wreak havoc on the enemy team. It was cut because the PS2 just couldnât
handle the extra strain, but Ratchet 3 came close to beating Titanfall to the punch by
over a decade. Iâm just saying put Ratchet in Apex Legends
thank you. I was fortunate enough to play some rounds
back on the PS3 port before those servers went down, and although it was a bit different
thanks to a number of bugs and exploits being tweaked or removed, and although I wasnât
great since only 50 people really played the game still and they were all folks who played
the game since the PS2 days, Siege mode was still a blast. Not many modes since have captured the lengthy
back and forth wars of attrition, probably for good reason, but still. After all of these detours, we can finally
return to that third Obani moon - yeah, remember that? - where after a short and sweet gravity-based
section that even calls back to Ratchet 1, weâll find that Courtney Gears has kidnapped
Skidd and turned him into a robot, on the set of her music video about committing genocide
against all organic life. Well, hey, at least thatâs good brand synergy. After Ratchet takes down Ms. Gears, the now-robot
Skidd is transported safely back to the Phoenix, and Ratchet and Clank rendezvous with Qwark
near the last known location of Nefariousâs ship. Itâs a trap. This gameâs already copping so much from
Star Wars so Iâm allowed to do it too. Somehow Qwark gets past all of the security
and leaves it for us to fight because, hey, more combat is always nice, but as Clank foreshadows,
this ship is actually set by Nefarious to self-destruct. Qwark stays behind to try and retrieve something
important and Ratchet waits as long as he can, but with time running out, Clank ejects
their escape shuttle, leaving the villain-turned-villain-turned-hero to die in Nefariousâs trap. After a somber funeral on
the Phoenix, Big Al gives Ratchet the fourth and final episode of the Qwark Vid-Comic,
which Ratchet plays to get an idea of where Nefarious might attack next: Metropolis. Actually, itâs kind of funny, because Al
immediately pops up with a cranky help desk reminder to play the Vid-Comic, not 30 seconds
after sobbing when giving it to you. Jeez, dude, Iâm going Iâm going. For as weak as this act can be thanks to all
of the back and forth runaround and the maybe-kinda-sorta starting to stagnate combat, Metropolis brings
us into Act 3 with a bang. For one, rather than drag out the reveal that
Clank has been brainwashed or something, we get a cutscene on the way to the city that
shows Nefarious revealing to the real Clank that Ratchetâs been none the wiser while
working with a Nefarious-built evil imposter named Klunk. Thatâs a good start, but even better is
that unlike Blackwater City, Metropolis is a full, proper level, and more importantly
it looks and feels like the same city that defined the energy of Ratchet 1 and really
the entire franchise. And after invoking that feeling of being right
back at home, in a classic level, Ratchet 3 jolts your system early into the level when
Nefarious unveils the Biobliterator: A giant Death Star that turns the entire planetâs
population into subservient robots. All however many billion creatures, even the
Tyhrranoids that already worked for the Doctor, instantly under his dominion. Nefarious isnât just another Drek, who happens
to end up one planet ahead of Ratchet and Clank; heâs not a Qwark, who has a plan
but tends to stumble the whole way with execution - heâs been actively leading them astray
from the moment he first appeared, feeding them into his traps, even if those traps fail
somehow. Itâs sinister, and itâs even more of a
gut punch that Nefarious actually succeeds. And after you get to this Biobliterator scene,
every Tyhrranoid youâll see from here on is a robot, even if you go back to previous
planets to clean up Titanium Bolts. Although thatâs such a small touch, swapping
the enemy textures quickly after a certain triggering point in the story proved a monumental
effort, to the point that the PS2 discs had to be printed with some of this data on the
innermost part of the disc; otherwise, the game wouldnât load everything fast enough
between planets. This
is another one of those hacky tricks and smart corner cuts that made this game work despite
pushing the PS2 past its limits, and itâs these platform-specific tricks that would
prove troublesome later. Itâs probably about time to pull that bandaid
off and talk about the Ratchet & Clank Collection, a PS3 port of the original trilogy of PS2
Ratchet titles, developed by a studio named Idol Minds. The studio not long after this project adopted
the working name Deck Nine and is now at the helm of the Life is Strange series. Thanks to so many of these little cheats that
Insomniac worked with constantly on this trilogy, Ratchetâs always been a bit of a pain to
work with unless you were using an actual PS2. Even playing Ratchet & Clank via hardware
emulation, using a PS2 disc on a fat PS3, caused problems, emulating them was awful
until relatively recently, and even then there are some issues with shadows on some games. A best-case scenario would have made these
games a pain to remaster, but this dozen-or-so member port team had nothing close to the
best-case. Insomniacâs archiving process, just by virtue
of its crazy development schedule, hadnât been that great during the PS2 days, meaning
that to begin with Idol Minds had to rebuild much of the trilogyâs asset database from
the ground-up. Since these sorts of HD Collection ports arenât
exactly well-budgeted, and since Sony supposedly at this time had a weird policy about what
a remasterâs developers were permitted to change from the source, Idol Minds was left
a bit handcuffed. On top of that, somebody at Sony Computer
Entertainment wanted Idol Minds to rebuild Ratchet 3âs multiplayer with a new online
server structure. And to top that all off, despite an initial
Fall 2012 release date in mind, for reasons that have never been given, Sony bumped the
Collectionâs release date up in Europe only to June, cropping 2-3 months of potential
polish work. Keep in mind that none of this is factoring
in the downloadable version of both the whole Collection, and each game individually, which
would require slightly different tweaks to account for all of those little tricks Insomniac
used - three games on a Blu-Ray all canât share the same spot at the innermost part
of a disc to load more quickly, but Idol Minds could allocate data in a different way when
a game was bought separately on PSN. The things that made these games work on PS2
are exactly the same things that led to the ports sometimes being broken, and itâs a
miracle that Idol Minds was able to keep the damage mostly to cosmetics. The end result is that Ratchet 1 more or less
came over totally fine since it had the most time that went into it; Going Commando ended
up with a couple issues such as the weird oversized floating helmet during cutscenes,
but is fine enough; and Up Your Arsenal got the worst of the trilogy, both thanks to the
multiplayer requirement and the shorter timeframe. Which, I guess is fitting given that that
sentence could also describe the PS2 version of Ratchet 3. Now, Iâd love to give you some firsthand
verification of this or the direct story of why these ports struggled so much, but sadly
the team at Idol Minds responsible for this port comprised fewer than a dozen people,
and theyâre all just about ghosts. After hours of searching every lead I could
find, only one of them even had any online presence at all, and any attempts I had to
contact these developers or the studio directly were met with silence. So until somebody can reach these folks, my
decade-long research to try and get answers about this portâs issues comes down to a
combination of my own recollection of the release date fiasco, and the suppositions
of a couple former Insomniacs - I actually remember first finding Mike Stout and Tony
Garciaâs developer letâs plays back in 2012 when I was first doing some of this research,
so in a weird way this rough port is heavily responsible for this retrospective being so
thorough. Funnily enough, if not for these ports, rough
as they may be, and without Idol Minds having done the legwork to rebuild Insomniacâs
archive for Ratchet 1, Insomniac may likely not have been able to reuse the exact level
meshes in 2016âs reimagining of that game - which means THAT game wouldâve looked
much different too if not for the HD Collection, but weâll talk about that when we get to
that game. Moving back to Metropolis here, this tends
to be one of the more challenging levels in the game, as the new robot Tyhrranoids take
more damage because of that built-in armor, and pack more of a punch because...robot bullets? Itâs a huge leap tonally from the rest of
the game thus far too, with the Biobliterator looming in the horizon, floating around as
it presumably converts more of the city into robots. For once, you really feel like Ratchet and
Clank failed, like you failed. You really have to earn your victory on this
one, but when you do, we get another one-two punch of awesome boss and awesome callback. On the very same trains that acted as a setpiece
in the first Ratchet & Clank, youâll take on Giant Klunk, because of course Nefarious
made sure to give him a giant form. The fight isnât exactly hard per se, since
heâs mostly just throwing the same bombs with shockwaves that most bosses in this series
have had, but itâs a system-pushing sight to behold as Giant Klunk flies between the
front and back of the parallel trains, with the city flying by behind you. During moments like these especially, man,
you canât get better than this with a Ratchet game. And even once youâve saved Clank and destroyed
Klunk, that feeling of failure still lingers, because Nefariousâs plan completely succeeded
- Klunk was disposable, the entire city of Metropolis is in shambles, Captain Qwark is
dead, itâs about as bleak as Ratchet can get. Whoa wait, did Ratchet just say that being
a robot is worse than being dead...to a robot? Goddamn, that somehow made it worse. You can take out some of your frustration
by helping the Rangers clear Metropolis of robo-Tyhrranoids after this, if youâd like,
but otherwise all you can do is admit defeat and regroup at the Phoenix. And yâknow what, credit again to writer
Brad Santos, because the game makes sure to straddle the line between the situationâs
gravity, and bringing in a little levity. These are still really weird jokes to make
four years after the guy left office, but I guess when youâve been working nonstop
for 3 straight years cranking out games, some references are bound to date themselves a
bit. Aside from the usual jokes though, Ratchet
3 tends to keep this darker tone for the entire third act up until the conclusion, almost
harkening back to Ratchet 1 a bit. Sadly, the rush also does show a little bit
here, and it can take away a little from one of 3âs shining achievements: Its ability
to conclude Captain Qwarkâs character arc. Naturally, itâs been obvious that Qwarkâs
not actually dead, since yâknow, heâs in almost every game since, but for a brief
moment in 2004, there was a chance, you could actually believe it. That moment lasts no more than like an hour
though because it only takes two planets to discover that Qwarkâs alive. After Metropolis and with Nefariousâs whereabouts
yet again unknown, Sasha, now back in control of the Starship Phoenix, sends Ratchet to
the crash site to look for any evidence of whatever Qwark was looking for on Nefariousâs
ship. Nobody thought to look for survivors or anything
earlier? Jeez. The bright side is that this plot point might
take longer for some players to discover than others, because fighting through the shipâs
wreckage can be a nightmare if you donât know whatâs coming. If your weapons or health are underleveled,
or if you havenât purchased one of the more recent sets of armor back at the Phoenix,
you can expect a lot of deaths, and a lot of spawning right back at the start of the
level. By this point though, you should have more
than enough of your weapons leveled up to max or at least close, and even though using
a maxed out weapon is sort of wasting experience you could be gaining with another one, youâll
definitely want to abuse your Level 5s here. At least this difficulty spike is understandable
with respect to the story - after all, Nefarious packed the ship full of troopers to kill Ratchet,
Clank, and Qwark. Well, not Clank since he had Clank, but I
guess he was alright with Klunk being collateral. It makes for a unique level aesthetically
too, so even though I used to hate this level as a kid, itâs grown on me over time. And, if you look carefully enough when exploring
the destroyed hull of Nefariousâs cruiser, youâll find the Nano-pak, a really neat
piece of gear that stores extra Nanotech that you might pick up when youâre full on health,
and dispenses it if youâre ever close to death. While Ratchet and Clank do actually find that
Qwark was looking for something, an encrypted data disk specifically, they also find his
boot tracks in the dirt, and they discover that he escaped and took a cab...somewhere. But before we can find out whatâs on the
disk, the Rangers need help one final time, this time on planet Aridia, another throwback
to Ratchet 1. If you didnât know any better, youâd think
this was meant to be the final game in the series, with how much love it throws back
at the first two! Aridia also unlocks our final weapon in the
main game, the Qwack-o-Ray, the gameâs morph weapon which turns enemies into ducks. Later it turns some foes into bigger ducks
thatâll fly around you and divebomb into enemies, and the rest of the ducks will shoot
out fiery exploding eggs, Kazooie eat your heart out. After trekking through multiple missions on
yet another multiplayer map, including one where youâre tasked with assassinating several
Tyhrranoid generals which is pretty brutal messaging for a Ratchet game, the Rangers
reward you with this gameâs token last-minute gadget thatâs only used once, the Warp Pad. Another casualty of time, the Warp Pad was
initially a glove-based gadget that would let you teleport anywhere you could throw
a Warp Point. So, imagine Ratchet 1âs Bomb Glove, except
anywhere you could throw a Bomb, you could teleport. Since the idea wouldâve been easy to work
into the game, everybody involved put it off for a while, and then realized oh dear god
wait, can you imagine how easy itâd be for any player to break the game or get out of
bounds and soft lock themselves, and if Sony finds any sort of out-of-bounds softlocks
they wonât let us release the game until itâs fixed? So, instead the Warp Pad was cut back in scope
immensely and can only be activated on specific Warp Points, of which there are only a couple,
and only on our next level, Qwarkâs secret hideout, which Ratchet and Clank discover
thanks to a secret fifth Qwark Vid-Comic. Qwark's hideout is mainly notable as one of
the few multi-path levels, with the optional path giving you a Gadgetron PDA, fitting considering
Qwarkâs side gig as a PDA salesman - and because it has the third and final Clank section
of the game. Conveniently, Skrunch the monkey is hiding
in a briefcase in the middle of this random asteroid, too, because Clank wouldnât have
gotten far without him. The level itself is another one Iâll chalk
up as just fine, itâs mostly combat as usual, this time against hundreds of terminator-styled
Qwark robots. The main reason to push through is that at
the end we get the catalyst to what Iâd argue is Qwarkâs final piece of development
in the series. Even though heâs been in almost every game
since, often prominently, he gets pretty badly flanderized after Up Your Arsenal, and thatâs
a shame but it does make sense. One of the strongest facets of Ratchet 3 is
that it pays off the fact that this trilogy, at first completely unintentionally, is more
of a story arc for the Captain than itâs been for our titular heroes. When we first meet him in Ratchet 1, heâs
a past his prime wash-up trying to cling to any money train he can; in Going Commando,
heâs so driven by his need to be that hero, by his need for the fame and adulation, and
maybe a bit by revenge, that heâll rig a galactic crisis just to save it; and in Up
Your Arsenal, when heâs had the chance to truly redeem himself, he comes so close to
that redemption, only to tuck his tail when his life is in danger. Weâve seen Ratchet go from idolizing him
as a younger kid to making his lifeâs goal revenge on Qwark, to laughing him off as some
buffoon, to in some small way trusting and maybe even respecting Qwark in this game. And many players will feel the same way - yeah
heâs obviously the actual villain of Ratchet 2, and thatâs a bit inexcusable for the
character, but when push comes to shove here in 3, he does the right thing. His horrible plans somehow end up working
perfectly and theyâre always spot-on even if theyâre drawn in crayon. The Q-Force he picked is actually a pretty
competent squad despite looking ragtag. And even though he recognized his mortality
and fled from it, he actually was trying to help save the galaxy in the moments before
Nefariousâs ship self destructed. So for him to turn away from everything heâd
done, from all that progress he made, that actually hurts, not just the characters, but
us a little bit too. Itâs in this moment that weâre a little
bit of both Ratchet AND Clank, frustrated that yet again Qwarkâs awful narcissism
would bring him to do the wrong thing, but because this is a kidâs game, confident
that at the end of the day, Qwark will come around and as Clank says, be the hero that
heâs always wanted to be. For now weâve gotta leave Qwark alone, because
weâve got more pressing matters. When Ratchet gets to his ship, he finds out
the Phoenix is under attack and the crew is in danger. What ensues is another kind of harrowing level,
where we fight our way with a handful of Rangers through our home base, our safe haven, to
rescue our friends. If the game was going to have a hub, it had
to have a hub defense mission, and this is some perfect execution. Except Iâm not sure why they went with the
robot ninjas, that feels a bit...off. Itâs a shame, then, that what WOULD have
ensued on this level was meant to include a space combat level, where Ratchet would
dogfight his way around the Phoenix Star Fox style, taking down enemy dropships and robots
trying to breach the outer hull. However, space combat for reasons that to
date havenât been fully explained were cut entirely from the game. Todayâs the day to change that, because
I spoke with the programmer tasked with working on the space levels. Considering space combat was featured in both
of the first two games in some capacity - its absence here is pretty loud, and thereâs
absolutely a bit of a hole left behind when the game aiming to be bigger than its predecessor
had to crop back multiple features present in that predecessor. This game after all features almost everything
that the previous games did, as part of the goal of being bigger and better - we have
spherical worlds with their own custom gravity, Giant Clank is here, thereâs even a spot
in the Phoenix where you can purchase ship upgrades. Itâs limited to only colors and aesthetics,
but that the cosmetic store made it into the game without the accompanying gameplay has
always been odd to me. And even though almost every other piece of
cut content from Ratchet 3 made it into the gameâs Insomniac Museum, including the scrapped
racetrack in a semi-playable state, the space combat was never even mentioned. Thatâs in part because, according to designer
Mike Stout, the space gameplay never made it past the devkit, and thus never made it
onto any of early builds nor the 1700 discs that had been burned during Up Your Arsenalâs
development. It was at least playable, but it was early
enough into development that it never had proper art made or implemented. Stout, who Iâd like to note was not responsible
for designing the space levels in 3, recalled to me that these sections were meant to be
similar to the on-rails Star Foxesque sections that later appeared in the PS3âs Ratchet
& Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, and this sounds similar to the concept that programmer
Tim Trzepacz described to me, as the programmer tasked with bringing Ratchet 3âs space combat
together. Trzepacz described a style where you would
be âchasing a string of enemy ships through an asteroid belt in a circle,â and later,
a design where youâd be flying above and around the Starship Phoenix, fighting off
attackers during the ambush later in the game. When I showed Trzepacz a clip of the Tools
of Destruction space gameplay however, it apparently didnât look quite like what he
was tasked with making, based on the designs heâd been given to work with. To him, and apparently to others within the
studio, the on-rails sections just didnât seem good enough to show to Sony during an
early demo showcase, or that good at all really. Trzepacz was given a month to turn the space
combat around - a design in which, remember, he had no say, as a programmer that had to
answer to the designer - and the pressure certainly didnât seem to help. This, he told me, was the third time heâd
been given such an ultimatum during his three year stint at Insomniac. Just under a month later, Trzepacz made it
clear that he couldnât make the prototype work in the time he was given, and he departed
the company later that week. That this was the third time heâd allegedly
been told in no uncertain terms âmake this work in a month or elseâ had me very concerned
about whatâs been for most of my life my favorite game developer, the crew that consistently
released games that I enjoyed more than most anything else. And again, I want to make it clear that at
no point in this retrospective have I personally insinuated that excessive crunch occured,
Iâve only referred to it when directly talking about an employeeâs words to me or the public. Many of the ex-Insomniacs I spoke to leveled
the crunch pretty evenly compared to their other employers since in the industry - nothing
too bad necessarily, just about what youâd expect near the end of a project. Likewise, thereâs a strong chance that this
retrospective will receive testimonials in the comments from other Insomniacs with whom
I didnât speak - after all, even with all of my research, there are more than 90 people
I couldnât reach, and I had blind spots where I couldnât obtain interviews, such
as the multiplayer crew, the Idol Minds remaster team, artists, management of course, et cetera
- and some of these people may vouch that Up Your Arsenalâs development was more or
less fine - but crucially, thatâs from their perspective. Especially across different specialties, developers
will invariably have their own experiences during production, just as invariably, their
own experiences cannot discount othersâ. Weâve heard stories of people being called
back in late at night because something with their work went wrong, and stories of programmer
Tony Garcia staying at the office and working for 72 straight hours to clear up his bug
list, and these stories started to concern me more and more with every thread on which
I tugged. When I asked Garcia about that crunch period,
he made it clear that nobody at Insomniac had asked or pushed him into doing that - it
was something he did, in his words âentirely on my own for some pretty dumb and misguided
reasons at the time.â When somebody higher up noticed, they stopped
him right away. According to Garcia, that bug crunch didnât
even make much sense looking back because they werenât in any final stretch to finish
the game or clean it up, and the game wouldâve been just fine if he hadnât done that. But this is where the development teamâs
relative age and experience is important. As Garcia noted during our conversation, he
was only three years into his employment at Insomniac, and even though he was so new relative
to some of the folks that had worked on Spyro, he was in some sort of position to set an
example for the dozens and dozens of new hires that had come in between Ratchets 1 and 3. While Garcia didnât say this part to me
directly, the Snowbeast award came to be specifically because so many new hires complained to him
about the Snowbeasts from Ratchet 2 - a situation where fans are talking to the artist directly
about his work, except those fans are colleagues now. If youâre this fresh, young developer eager
to prove yourself in the industry, working at a studio that made one of your favorite
games just a few years ago, and you see those same developers working day in and day out,
you follow in those footsteps. One of the former Insomniacs I spoke to, who
worked on multiple projects, told me they worked 12+ hours a day on weekdays, and then
on top of that an additional 12+ hours over the weekend, effectively working seven days
a week for their entire multi-year tenure at the studio. According to this employee, they were given
a small salary increase at one point during their time there, which placed them just above
the threshold at which they were no longer guaranteed overtime for those extra 40 hours
a week. Now if you came in and saw that as a new worker,
you might not know about the alleged avoidance of paid overtime, youâd just see somebody
working incredibly diligently every single day and think thatâs the normal here, without
knowing that that person was going through hell every day. And if you overheard CEO Ted Price say that
if youâre not working weekends, you might not have a future at the company, as one former
Insomniac recalled - guess what, thatâs the normal to you, and youâll want to step
up to stick around. And if you saw people sneaking in little hacks
such as printing discs in a specific way to load the Tyhrranoidsâ robot textures on
earlier planets, or a workaround to patch the gameâs multiplayer, on a console that
didnât allow for patches, by writing updates into the buffer space underneath Sonyâs
End User License Agreement - thatâs the normal to you. And if you saw the fancy new tech being worked
on for Resistance and wanted to somehow work it into this less-advanced project, like,
say, reworking the pathfinding for the Battlefield missions, thatâs the normal to you. You, as a new employee, would be surrounded
by some of the cream of the crop of the industry, by people like Ted Price himself that stayed
long hours or overnight to get more work done even though they werenât asked to - or the
people that actually were called back in late at night because something went wrong, as
one Insomniac recalled to me - you were part of a team so determined to ship the absolute
best title that they could in spite of everything that went wrong during development, that you
probably took part in the crunch culture yourself, because the management both set a poor example
and didnât stop it when it occurred. Whether Insomniacâs crunch was any better
or worse than the rest of the industry, that seems like it depends on what the personâs
role was, but it was there. None of these games could have come out if
not for it. Crunch was, and this is me speaking here,
professional opportunities be damned, factored into the time budget of this franchise for
years and years, that is a fact, that is an undeniable fact. This is a game defined by the ambition of
those who made it, and I canât help but feel a game occasionally, ever so quietly
tormented by it. The game was supposedly a disaster in the
weeks leading up to its release, with one Insomniac employee expressing fear that they
were going to be responsible for Insomniacâs first critical failure. This game, Insomniacâs highest rated game
to this day, was a butterflyâs wing flap away from being the worst and potentially
as a result last Insomniac game. And this is the trade-off with Up Your Arsenalâs
ambition: A more directed and frankly better-written story led to animators supposedly having to
crunch to finish the story scenes. A more focused gameplay approach finally allowed
Insomniac to put together the character-action game theyâd been looking to make from the
jump, but because platformers were really starting to go out of vogue during the PS2
era, they actually betrayed that very template of shooter-platformer hybrid that they set
as a goal. The constant barrage of enemies allowed designers
to better balance the weapons, especially now that weapons could be upgraded multiple
times, but almost all of Ratchet 3âs variety as a result is either weapon variety in a
game where 7 of the 20 guns are standard weapon tropes, and 5 more return from previous games
directly, leaving only a few that are really new outright - or a variety of combat situations,
since secondary features like racing and space combat ended up cut partway through development
due to either a lack of time and resources, thanks to the issues that arose from the multiplayer,
or simply because they just werenât turning out to be that fun. Because there was arguably a lighter variety,
some fans felt from the jump that Up Your Arsenal was chasing the high that was Going
Commando, but struggling to keep up with it after years of current developers pushing
so hard to keep these games churning. And the irony of that variety thanks to all
of this, thanks to the animation team being behind, thanks to the story treatment aiming
to save artists the time by cutting back on the number of unique creatures, is that thereâs
less of a variety of enemies, in the game where youâre fighting enemies the most. And the thing is, despite how this all may
sound, I love that this game has that combat focus. In the moment, when youâre playing it, Up
Your Arsenal is an exceptionally paced game that masterfully puts together all of what
Insomniac had learned from the first two games. There is constantly something to look forward
to right around the corner, whether itâs a crazy new weapon or a twist in the story,
or an interaction with a fan-favorite character. I love the perfected feedback loop of upgrading
your weapons, the satisfying feeling of feeling a weapon get progressively more powerful as
you shred hundreds of enemies per level. I love that weapons now give proportional
experience when enemies are defeated, rather than all the experience going to whichever
gun dealt the killing shot. I love that right when I might start to get
bored of the more linear level design, thatâs the exact moment that weâre told to revisit
the arena, or when weâre given a series of Ranger Missions on a wide-open battlefield. I love that as weapons level up, they automatically
gain bonuses like the acid mod or lock-on mod, rather than forcing you to buy them with
secret collectibles you might not find in your first playthrough. I love that for as linear as its main level
design is, Up Your Arsenal is the first game where every level was designed from the outset
with secret areas in mind for bonuses like Titanium Bolts or this gameâs new collectible,
Trophies - no relation. Where in the first two games, Gold-slash-Platinum
Bolts werenât as planned, and instead just thrown into random areas that playtesters
had accidentally found, here youâre guaranteed to have those little eureka moments more often
per level. When Iâm sitting down and playing the game,
Iâm laughing at the jokes even though I've heard them countless times by now, Iâm enjoying
the story, Iâm having a blast. I love all of the optimizations of Up Your
Arsenal...but, maybe fittingly given the gameâs title, thereâs always a but. I love the constant intensity of the combat
in the moment, but when I step back I wish we couldâve seen some more of the little
platforming sections that ended up being set aside as a result, rather than being segmented
to just the arenas or the Vid-Comics. I mean, this game doesnât have a single
Grind Rail, despite those being one of the easiest ways to bring intensity without needing
another fight. I love Insomniacâs efforts to throw in more
strategic weapons, but I personally donât find much use in ones like the Infector or
the Holoshield, because theyâre a bit too situational for how enemies usually come at
you in this game. And to stretch that even beyond just this
game itself, I love Dr. Nefarious, heâs an incredible character and in this game at
least is the perfect combination of intimidating, formidable, and funny. As much as heâs used for laughs, Nefarious
is a tragic villain in this game: A dude that was mercilessly bullied by our sort-of-hero
Captain Qwark, a perfect foil for Qwarkâs three-game redemption arc. But Iâd really love for him not to have
become a bit of a flanderized crutch for Insomniac to use in later games - and Iâd have loved
if his crazed evil scientist plots didn't devolve to âI want all heroes to lose.â Thatâs not the fault of this game, of course,
but itâs something I think about now when I play it knowing the context that the rest
of the series provides. And I love that Qwark by the end of the game
has his come-to-Jesus moment, that he finally gets to be the hero heâs always pretended
he was, but I wish that the conclusion to his character arc didnât mean he would reset
and retread from here-on out - especially now that his voice actor Jim Ward has retired
due to ongoing health problems, Iâd like to say Qwarkâs deserved better than being
just the buffoon for the last 15 years since Up Your Arsenal concluded his story. And to throw one more but out there, I love
the next level, partly because itâs named the Nefarious BFG, partly because we can get
the Plasma Coil starting on this planet and that thing just shreds everything to bits,
and partly because itâs the easiest place to farm Bolts and break the framerate with
how many Bolts come flying at you...BUT, itâs just straight-up filler. At the end Clank uses the BFG to destroy the
Biobliterator only to discover immediately that a second, bigger Biobliterator is already
finished and ready to go - eat your heart out George Lucas, Nefarious doesnât even
need to wait for his second Death Star. Double but...but we already knew there were
multiple Biobliterators - the game told us immediately, the characters already acknowledged
it, why is it a surprise now? Itâs a really odd moment where this game
drops the ball with the story. But it means that we can jump right to Qwarkâs
true redemption during the final assault on Nefarious. After Ratchet and Clank fight their way through
a lengthy onslaught, pushing through corridors with waves of robo-Tyhrranoids guarding every
doorway, behind every piece of cover; after taking down Nefarious...uh, okay after a fight
through even more of Nefariousâs robot troops across a war-torn battlefield and past a giant
destroyed Clank head which is pretty...uh, strange; after the Galactic Rangers show up
and absolutely demolish the last troops in your way as a thank you for all of Ratchetâs
help; and after an amazing fight against Nefarious, dodging his dozens of doppelganger attacks,
jumping past his shockwave bombs that he throws in a staggered pattern so that you canât
just time your jumps formulaically, running past his anchored laser attack thing, Nefarious
arms the Biobliterator, which goes into...arms and legs mode. Look, letâs not think about it too much,
they were out of time and out of memory, and theyâd just blown their load on making the
Nefarious fight so damn good, so they admittedly half-assed the true final boss. But itâs here, with no possible way for
Ratchet to win except either swerving around in a figure 8 pattern and holding down circle,
or just shooting this giant Death Star with a sniper rifle a few times. Again, letâs just pretend okay? Itâs here that Qwark makes his grand return,
flying in his ship to distract the Biobliterator and give Ratchet a chance to fight. And itâs thanks to Qwarkâs help, at least
if we pretend that he did anything during that fight, that Ratchet and Clank are able
to defeat Nefarious, with the Doctor and his Butler teleporting to some space rock 10,000
years away from any planets, just before the Biobliterator self destructs. And with that bang and a live screening of
Clankâs newest Secret Agent film, featuring almost all of the characters weâve interacted
with over the last three games in the crowd, we end our story, and our trilogy. I could talk about the Challenge Mode or the
new RYNO 3, but as with many facets of this game, theyâre both pretty similar to what
we already saw in Going Commando, with the RYNO acting like a combination of the first
two RYNOs at first before eventually becoming a screen clear like Going Commandoâs Zodiac. I could talk about the Museum some more, but
aside from a few secret minigames hidden inside, itâs very much an evolution of the same
Museum seen in Ratchet 2. Ratchet 3 to many acts as the pinnacle of
this franchise, but many others make a strong case that itâs more iteration than innovation. But, at the end of the day, do these buts
matter? Does it matter that the game feels like it
has less variety than Going Commando did? Does it matter that the game was so close
to collapse thanks to this top-down overambition at Insomniac, or that dozens of Insomniacs
were undeniably afflicted with heavy crunch at points throughout the project, enough that
despite this team being so young and so excited to be here, many of them were out of the company
and some even out of the industry within a couple years of this gameâs release? Yes, yes, I cannot lie, all of these buts
matter, and they matter because if thereâs anything we can take from these buts, itâs
that Insomniac has been more open than you might expect from a game studio regarding
crunch, and that the studio learned lessons from these games and from their ambition,
if sadly not immediately. In this gameâs postmortem writeup, Brian
Hastings noted that in response to this projectâs management failures, the studio had begun
improving its training practices in each department, and that it aimed to improve its prototyping
and planning from the outset to avoid running into issues with scope anywhere, be it cinematics
or side modes. Itâs worth noting that the incredible struggles
with this gameâs online mode didnât come from a place of malice, it came from a genuine
underestimation of what multiplayer design would take. But, these failures would serve to improve
the online multiplayer for future Insomniac titles like Ratchet: Deadlocked and Resistance. Other realizations took a bit longer to really
hammer home - it wasnât until the post-mortem for 2006âs Resistance 1 that an Insomniac
higher-up acknowledged the so-called star developers that would step up and bring a
project together, and even after struggling with hiring and training during this project,
those struggles continued well into the first PS3 Ratchet game that came out a year later,
Tools of Destruction, when they were still hiring and training people on the project
just three months before it shipped. Budgeting time for animations continued to
be a struggle even as recently as 2016. But through each of these issues, the studio
seems to have openly audited itself and admitted when it failed. Crunch is a dirty word in the games industry
right now, and yet the main times Iâve used it throughout this retrospective have been
in reference to when Insomniacâs third employee ever used the word himself to describe Up
Your Arsenal. And yet the crunch on Resistance wasnât
as bad as it was on Ratchet, according to that post-mortem. And the crunch on Tools of Destruction based
on my research, hasnât sounded as bad as Resistance. Even as development costs have skyrocketed
and projects have bloated more in scope, nothing came as close to the sun as Up Your Arsenal
did, and Insomniacs, both former and current, seem to have taken from that experience and
used it to improve themselves and their projects. Even the former Insomniacs that Iâve spoken
to that left the games industry because of this project loved their time working on this
game - they just wanted it to be a bit better managed. Does that passion from these former employees,
that lamenting that they loved their work, just not the hours, excuse Insomniacâs management
for allowing a toxic culture of overworking to breed? Absolutely not, and some part of me canât
look at these early games in the same light because of it. But, these failures provided at least some
of the framework for Insomniac to get it right, to grow past the culture of just a handful
of dudes working on a Doom clone in an apartment, to mature and catch up to the company size
that ballooned perhaps faster than the management could handle. And, if Insomniacâs been about one thing
besides crazy weapons in these last 15 years, it very much seems like itâs been project
management, so Iâd like to think that even if they almost certainly havenât solved
the issue entirely, theyâve gotten close. Regardless of your opinion on whether this
game reached Going Commandoâs level of quality or fell short, itâs because this game fired
a shot even further out than Ratchet 2, itâs because it pushed way too close to the sun
that future projects didnât crash and burn, even if this one singed countless feathers
along the way. Regardless of if youâre like me and never
played the original PS2 versionâs multiplayer online, and youâd rather have had a more
robust single-player experience rather than compromising even a little bit - thereâs
another world out there where Ratchet 3âs multiplayer is looked at in the way that Halo
2âs is in our world. And regardless of how when I think of Up Your
Arsenal, so much of what I love is followed by the word âbut,â or how maybe I did
want slightly more variety, or how I occasionally missed that exploratory vibe of the first
two games, or how I wish some of the later games didnât keep chasing at what made this
game lightning in a bottle for the third year in a row - without those buts the rest of
the series would likely have been developed under worse conditions, with more employees
burning out or worse, breaking down. Over the last few years, whenever Iâve tried
to sit down and write a script about this game, to write out my thoughts, I couldnât
get myself past that word - âbut,â because there was always a but at the end of my praise. But, now, thanks to the developers Iâve
spoken to, the stories Iâve heard - some Iâve been able to share, some Iâve not
- Iâm glad the buts are there. But, that said, Iâm never doing a video
this long again. See you for the 14 hour Deadlocked Retrospective. Give me money, Iâm on Patreon. This video was made possible thanks to the
generous support of my Patreon producers, including Goldstorm07, Vincent, Harry, James
Boss, Terminally Nerdy, Wolfkaosaun, and Buckles Chucklo. If youâd like to help support the channel
and future videos, you can do so at patreon.com/TheGoldenBolt. Thank you
Watching this right now! Love this dude's videos. He's thorough and imo very objective / impartial, even though he clearly loves the franchise.
UYA and DL Revival Discord Group: ONLINE SERVERS BACK UP:
https://discord.com/channels/711614240120766474/744693694489296957
Beat it over 100 times! Hell, beat me. Going Commando is my fav of them all.
*TheGamingBrit boxing a sandbag with the image of The Golden Bolt*
Love this guy. Canât wait for Deadlocked
Fucking subscribed. Lol
Been waiting for this one, awesome video!
These videos are so great. I've been waiting anxiously for the UYA Retrospective after watching the first two. UYA came out my sophomore year in college and I made some great online friends playing the multiplayer mode.
His retrospectives are very good, very fun to watch