In the run up to PS5-exclusive Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart’s launch, developer Insomniac divulged some interesting details on how its weapons were designed. For starters, the team at Insomniac evaluates weapons on three gameplay parameters — how spectacular they are to use, do they allow for an element of strategy, and how much humour can be derived by using them. If a weapon scores at least a 10 out of 10 in any single category, it’s considered for Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart.
Some examples of these include the Enforcer shotgun that can shoot one barrel or two, allowing you strategic options as you play, and the Ricochet, which as the name suggests, fires bullets that bounce off enemies multiple times, bringing humour to the forefront.
In addition to this, the PS5 DualSense controller’s adaptive triggers have been harnessed as well, allowing for two kinds of resistance. What this is means is weapons like the Burst Pistol can let you pull the trigger once for a slow and accurate shot or pull twice for the exact opposite effect.
How Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart Weapons are Tested
With a vast array of weapons present in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart, we had to ask game director Mike Daly what his favourite is. His response gave us some insight into how Insomniac tests its weapons.
“Every time I play through the game I pick my least favorite weapons, just to make sure to see how the experience is going,” he says. “So I can give feedback on how we need to sort of bring them up [in terms of polish and being fun to use].”
“And as the result of sort of that process, all of them are my favorites, though,” he continues, diplomatically. After pressed further he admitted that there is one he prefers over the rest.
“If if you’re going to twist my arm and make me pick one, I think I would have to go with the Negatron Collider,” he says. “Because that threshold you have to pull through to fire it, it may seem like a minor inconvenience at first, but I fell in love with it. I basically love charging this thing up for as long as I want. And then being able to blast it out sort of on command or being able to cancel it.”
In addition to this Daly explained that Insomniac’s VFX, audio, and haptic teams worked in tandem to bring Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart’s Negatron Collider to life while explaining some of the functional benefits of that weapon over others.
“I love what the VFX, audio and haptics teams have done with it,” he says. “That sensation of charging up that you can feel in your hands is awesome. I love the details like how it causes like rocks to float in the air around you as it’s charging, just to give you this sense of energy and how they all sort of blast out when you release it. Not to mention, it’s a highly tactical weapon where if you managed to sort of position yourself and sort of corral the enemies just right, you could hit three or four with the same beam. And that’s just super satisfying to execute.”
Safe to say, you can expect the same level of attention to detail to the rest of Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart’s arsenal.
Expect “One or Two” Extra Weapons in Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart’s Challenge Mode
With the game’s wide variety of weapons, we wondered if the team had to leave anything on the cutting room floor for one reason or the other.
“We always want to make way more weapons that the game will allow for lots of reasons,” he says. “Typically, we will prototype a whole bunch, we’ll have this big palette to pull upon. And, and then we need to sort of make these painful decisions about picking the arsenal that is best for the game that we’ve got.”
Daly goes on to explain the factors in play that decide if a weapon makes a cut or not from the perspective of the overall game and where players are at that moment in it.
“So that means sliding them into sort of like a progression that makes sure at any point in the game, no matter what you pick, you’re going to have a good arsenal for dealing with the challenges of the game at that point,” he explains. “Naturally that shows us where weapons sort of overlap with each other a little bit too much.”
This process, ensures that the least usable weapons don’t make the cut and allows the team to opt for a couple more to add in Challenge Mode. It’s essentially the series’ version of new game plus albeit with tougher foes and it returns for this instalment.
“Once we filled the progression through the campaign with that, we’ll pick like one or two extras that we really just can’t live without and put them in Challenge Mode so that you have more new stuff to play with the second time around,” he says. “Then we go ahead and make those weapons we decide on that much better. And they take a lot of time and attention. So we we can use all we can get.”
Hopefully Insomniac’s emphasis on DualSense pays off. It’s not entirely one of the easiest things to demo or show off virtually. With Sony positioning Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart to be its big PS5 exclusive for the first half of the year, we won’t have to wait too long to find out. Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart is out June 11.
For more on the game, check out our interview with Mike Daly on how it was made for the PS5, how its gameplay is informed by Insomniac’s past hits like Spider-Man and Sunset Overdrive, and what it would take to earn Ratchet and Clank: Rift Apart’s Platinum Trophy.
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