Insomniac Games have blogged a post-mortem regarding the development of Ratchet & Clank on PlayStation 4 and it reveals a number of interesting nuggets about the game, not least that the original development schedule was just ten months.
They also reveal that they play-tested the game with very young gamers and as a result the levels don’t have many sharp corners, because the younglings had difficultly controlling the camera. They created  short vignette to “demonstrate the promise of Ratchet & Clank on the Playstation 4” in a few weeks, and had a prototype up and running in 3 months.
However, they were at the mercy of the movie release date which slipped by almost a year, which frustrated the team but did allow them time to add extra polish. As for the future of the series, Insomniac say “At this moment, we have no idea.”
“We’re delighted by the reaction to the game, amazed and humbled that there’s still an appetite for Lombax and robot adventures after three console generations,” they add. “For all of our initial hand wringing, we’re proud of it. The lessons we learned during development helped us improve our cross-studio coordination, plan our cinematics with more detail, and move through production cycles more gracefully. So who knows?”
Hopefully the excellent reviews (read ours here), and if the UK charts are anything to go buy, great sales figures, will persuade Sony to wave the cheque book at Insomniac once more.
Source: Gamasutra
JR.
I still prefer the three original games to any of the other games that followed.
The new game looked better but the original story was light-years ahead of the remake (thanks to the movie).
In the original, Ratchet was a selfish a-hole but he gradually warmed to Clank as the story progressed and a real friendship was formed. In the remake, they’re like best friends the moment they meet.
The original game was about Ratchet’s journey, in seeing the bigger picture and not just thinking about yourself. There’s none of that in the new game sadly. Just ‘good’ people doing what’s ‘right’ by defeating the ‘bad’ people.
They ruined Captain Qwark’s character arc too. In the original he betrayed the galaxy for personal gain but goes on to redeem himself later in the series. In the new game he’s jealous that ratchet is getting all the attention so he agrees to help the bad guys but then realises he made a huge mistake and tries to redeem himself. Ugh.
I liked the game but for me it was bit of gorgeous-looking nostalgia and nothing more.
I hope they do make a sequel but bring back some of the grit that gave the original games their edge.
tactical20
Shame. Enjoyed the recent game. First one I ever played.