Interviews

The Future & Beyond: Insomniac’s Ryan Schneider talks Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction
By Steven Hopper

“We love this franchise. It never gets old for us.”

Insomniac has already shown there development chops on the PS3. The developer created the must-have launch title on the PS3 with Resistance: Fall of Man, a game that stood leaps and bounds beyond the tepid majority of inaugural PS3 titles. Now, the team is readying their first PS3 entry to their flagship franchise, Ratchet & Clank, with Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction. The game will retain and expand on the charm of the popular franchise, as well as offer some great new weaponry and controls as only the PS3 can do.

At a recent press event, GameZone sat down with Ryan Schneider, marketing director at Insomniac, to discuss the near-completed game, developing on the PS3, and the Ratchet & Clank franchise as a whole.

Ratchet & Clank has been one of Sony’s most popular first party franchises. To what would you attribute the success of the series?

Ryan: Hopefully, I think that people see the craftsmanship as well as the care put into the game. You can get a sense of the passion behind the game as well as the quality in it, and I think gamers really appreciate that. They know that the developers’ hearts are really in the right place for creating an outstanding experience and I think that translated well worldwide. I know those are soft, mushy things to say, but that’s how I feel.

What was behind the decision behind doing another Ratchet game instead of starting up a new platforming franchise?

Ryan: We love Ratchet and we’re happy with the adventure. It’s so open ended, and when you take the basic premise, an alien who likes to build things and destroy stuff with outrageous weapons and his robotic, puzzle-solving, ass-kicking ally that love to go planet hopping and save the universe, it’s great.

The universe is a pretty big place, and we feel that there is much more to do with the franchise. We want to use the PS3, for instance, to create an experience that we couldn’t have done on the last generation and we’ll look forward to keep evolving what we’re capable of, as we learn more about what the PS3 can do.

Speaking of the PS3, Insomniac developed the highly successful Resistance: Fall of Man for the PS3. What were some of the lessons learned from Resistance when it came to creating Ratchet & Clank Future?

Ryan: I’ll give you a big one: for us, you’ve got to start with a bang. One of the critiques that we got with Resistance was that the York level and Grimsby started out a little slow and players didn’t really get into the game until Nottingham, after Manchester. We really learned from that, so we threw the kitchen sink at metropolis, giving you SIXAXIS gameplay and a variety of platforming from different cinematic camera angles than we’ve used in the past to give you guys a real sense of scale and wonder and excitement of exploring a new universe.

What are some of the challenges you faced when developing on the PS3 as opposed to the PS2?

Ryan: We were actually really lucky, because Resistance: Fall of Man is where we experienced most of our challenges since it was a launch title on new hardware. So, we got a leg up on everybody else because we created that launch title, meaning that Ratchet & Clank Future is ushering in the second-generation of PlayStation 3 titles.

As far as challenges go, there wasn’t anything specific that comes to mind from a non-production standpoint. I don’t remember any major crises. It’s really just a matter of taking advantage of the SPUs [Synergistic Processing Unit used in the PS3’s cell processor], moving more systems to the SPUs, optimizing the SPUs so that we can do more per frame. The result is that you can see up to four times the physics and effects-based activity in Ratchet & Clank Future as you did in Resistance at nearly double the framerate.

Deadlocked was a darker game than the others. Why not have Future follow along the same lines?

Ryan: Ratchet Deadlocked was a darker adventure and this being “Ratchet & Clank: Future”, it’s far more vibrant and it’s vivid in terms of the details. The color palette is much different than Deadlocked. Really what we’re trying to do is go a little bit more sophisticated and explore Ratchet’s roots and his past, but it is an adventure that stands out on its own and if anything it harkens back to the classic Ratchet & Clank games in terms of their look and feel. However, we’re able to take that look and feel to a whole new level on the PS3.

With online being an important factor in previous Ratchet & Clank games, why leave multiplayer out of the game?

Ryan: Honestly, because our fans prefer a kickass single-player experience. It’s a matter of devoting the right resources and we just felt like it was a better devotion of resources to making a bigger, more epic more activity filled single-player experience than a multiplayer experience, and we realize that because of things like the PlayStation Network, we can still create a multiplayer-oriented experience, it just doesn’t have to be as a part of this particular game. And so, we’re looking at the PlayStation Network for the future (no pun intended) and how we can bring the franchise there.

Speaking of the PlayStation Network, do you guys have any plans for downloadable content?

Ryan: Well, the blunt answer is yes. Not for Ratchet & Clank Future, but we will touch the Network somehow with the franchise in a way that we haven’t really elaborated on yet. And we don’t really plan to until we have a better idea on what we plan to do. But, we do have a plan to.

With Ratchet & Clank Future in the bag, what do you foresee being the future of the franchise?

Ryan: I think a good way to answer that would be that people are already excited about we could do next, internally. Brainstorming has already started as far as what we would love to do, and I think that’s really the hallmark of a great franchise.

I think that when your development team is that excited to start thinking of the possibilities for the future immediately after finishing a labor of love like Ratchet & Clank Future, that means you’ve got something special. I know the meat of your question wasn’t answered, but we’re always thinking about what else we could do. I mean, we love this franchise. It never gets old for us.