Ratchet and Clank's Trek Towards Pixar Quality Visuals

MTV's Multiplayer Gaming site has up a discussion with Brian Allgeier, creative director on the latest iteration of the Ratchet and Clank series. The Ratchet games are made by Insomniac, who released Resistance at the same time the PS3 launched last year. That makes them unique, one of the first teams to have a second PlayStation 3 title out, and it shows in their amazing graphical presentation. The interview covers the team's trek towards an internal idea of 'Pixar-quality' graphics. "The new game is designed to sell itself at a glance. The hook is the image, the approaching-Pixar graphical quality. It's the product of 125 developers at Insomniac, a surprisingly small increase in team size from the 110 who made the third Ratchet game, Up Your Arsenal, for PS2. Allgeier conveyed some stats to emphasize the boost in graphical quality: 90 joints in Ratchet's face in the PS3 game compared to 112 joints in his whole body in the PS2 games; 'tens of thousands' of particle effects on the screen at any one time on PS3 compared to 3,000 in the PS2 Ratchet games. The game's action glides at 60 frames per second, double the rate of Insomniac's Resistance game. But, again, it's not numbers that count. It's just supposed to take a glance." Meanwhile, for more on the development process, the PlayStation blog has up a video post by Brian Hasting, Chief Creative Officer at Insomniac, on clarifying the vision of the game.

Comments

Sounds familiar

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought we were supposed to get Pixar quality graphics with the PS2?
http://money.cnn.com/1999/03/01/life/playstation/

Re:Sounds familiar

[AuMatar]

The problem is that back then, they had to utilize the emotion engine. Emotions are fickle things- the PS2 just didn't feel like rendering Pixar quality graphics. This time they went for the cell- put that good for nothing PS3 behind bars until it does what they want.

Re:Pretty

[toleraen]

Sounds pretty good.

Impressive stuff.

[onion2k]

I have to admit it ... the screenshots look gorgeous. They've nailed the look brilliantly. It's innovative, clearly very clever, it's sumptuous and lush and all manner of other adjectives. Those 125 developers have been hard at work, that's obvious.

Thing is though, it's a game. It's not a film. Pixar only have to bother themselves with the look. These developers have to bother with the game too. So as delightful as it is, the real question any gamer asks isn't "how good does it look?" rather "how much fun is it to play?". Some of the most brilliant games I've ever played were written by 1 person working parttime in their bedroom on an 8 bit computer. "Fun" just isn't something that comes from pumping millions of dollars into a team.

One day studios will realise this, and will realise that they could make a lot more money concentrating on games written by 5 people that are enjoyable even if they look a bit pants.

I'm not going to hold my breath though.

Re:Impressive stuff.

[caerwyn]

The Ratchet and Clank games actually have a pretty good reputation for actually being fun as well. I played the first one on the PS2 and found it thoroughly enjoyable- fun puzzle-platform-action. The high production values really did add to it, as well.

From what I've heard so far, this one's done the same, though I haven't been interested in throwing that much money down the drain to buy a ps3 just yet.

Re:Impressive stuff.

[Astarica]

If you had 1 brilliant guy who could make something really fun, he still can. Nintendo's staff is probably considerably bigger than what they had when they just started but Miyamoto is still the head guy to decide what kind of gameplay to implement. I'm sure Hideo Kojima is not held back by what the janitor or the graphic designer or the voice actor thinks of the next Metal Gear game. What makes a game 'fun' is not the result of throwing more manpower on it. History clearly shows having one guy that knows what makes a good game is a lot more useful than throwing 100 guys that do not at a game. Therefore if any game turns out to suck it is not because of a collective failure, but rather that one guy who is supposed to come up with the fun failed.

For example, a lot of the Megaman games have been criticized as nothing but a massive instant death spike-fest. Did this happen because whoever in charge of the game thought hitting a spike and die instantly is a great way to spend your time? Or did the graphic designer complained and said he spend all his time designing spikes but they're not being used enough? Or maybe the guy who did the animation for Megaman blowing up into bits complained because he wants to see his work appear more often? Or perhaps the voice actor who did Megaman's death scream thought it was so good we should hear it more often? You can almost be sure any good or bad feature occur because the most important guy on the team thought it was a good idea.

When a game sucks and has good graphics, you should be thankful that 100 other guys cranking out polygons at least didn't screw up while the one guy who was supposed to come up with the fun did. Conversely if a game is fun but has sucky graphics, all that means is the 1 important guy did his job right but the rest of the team didn't do what they're supposed to do. Nothing more.

Re:Impressive stuff.

[king-manic]

You forgot the most important thing- the game with sucky graphics but a lot of fun gets my $50. The one with great graphics and low fun doesn't. The game with stale mediocre gameplay but a lot of marketting gets everyone else's $50(Madden 2008).

Marketing > Graphics > Fun

Re:Impressive stuff.

[AuMatar]

Games have a limited budget, in money and time. Graphics cost a lot of money, in both artist time and programmer time (pushing out new engines). I hate graphics because its a bad use of the money- there's so many better things they can do with it:

*Cut prices on games
*Polish the gameplay
*Come out with the game earlier
*Take a risk on a more original game, because its cheaper to produce
*Make any story mode longer

I'd rather they do any of the above than spend it on graphics. Graphics don't make the game any better. SNES, or even NES level graphics are just fine- I want the game to be fun. The graphic whores pandering is ruining the industry- way too many resources spent on graphics, the number of fun, original games coming out each year are in the single digits. Some years not even that.

Re:Impressive stuff.

[ucblockhead]

Actually, Pixar's success is due to the fact that they worry about the story first, and the look second.

This... will be interesting

[RogueyWon]

My general take on Sony's strategy for this round of the console wars... which hasn't been producing many results to day... is that they're hoping that in the longer term, their superior hardware will give them a clear technological advantage, attacting both consumers and developers. Right now, both the Wii and the PS3 are still stuck in the release-desert that comes in the year or so after launch, when your shiny new console is mainly used to play old games and gathers a lot of dust. The 360 is the only machine attracting games actually worth playing.

Ratchet and Clank seems to be the first sign that the PS3 is actually moving out of this early stage; the first true "second generation" game for the system. It's basically the first chance we've had to measure a "mature" PS3 game against its Xbox 360 equivalents and seeing whether Sony's strategy is likely to pay off. Once the game comes out in the UK, I'll be looking forward to picking it up and taking a look for myself.

The reviews at least make it clear it won't be money wasted.

Try this:

[Tony]

http://www.us.playstation.com/ratchetandclank/

There are several screenshots. There're also three trailers out, and have been for a while. If you own a PS3, the R&CF demo came out a few days ago. It'll give you a good flavor of the game.

I've loved the R&C franchise so far. The first two games were fantastic. The later two were more weapons-oriented, which was fine, but missed some of the storyline feel of the first two.

R&CF:TOD is supposed to be a return to the cinematic feel.

All I can say is, both the Groovatron and the morph-ball thingy are cool. Use them together to get a chorus line of penguins!

Re:Pretty

[wamerocity]

I bought the game at Best Buy this afternoon and played it for about 2-3 hours. There were about 5-6 times that I burst out laughing out loud. The game looks great, it is really funny, the controls are intuitive and the camera controls do a good job. I watched my brother play the ps2 ratchet & clanks for a while, but this is the first one I've ever played, and am now tempted to go get the ps2 ones. The demo is a good start, but it doesn't really give you what the game has the offer.

Just an example: On the second level, after you meet who the big bad guy is (Percival Tachyon), the planet has all these announcements over an intercom. My favorites were:
- Attention citizens, today is Tachyon appreciation day. Please find your way to the nearest statue of the emperor and kneel before it. followed by
-Attention citizens, due the to the popularity of Tachyon Appreciation day, it has been extended infinite days plus one.

Give it a shot. It's a good buy.

Mostly just pretty

[LKM]

I was really looking forward to this game. It looks awesome, and it was bound to play very well. Unfortunately, playing the demo was one of my biggest disappointments on the PS3 yet. Yes, it's a great game. Yes, it looks gorgeous. But it basically seems to be a linear shooter that plays pretty much like the PS2 versions.

Maybe I had the wrong expectations, but looking at the videos, I was hoping that the gameplay had evolved at least as much as the graphics. I was picturing huge levels and interesting platforming. Instead, you get to run through predefined narrow paths and shoot hundreds of enemies that all look pretty much the same.

If you want a third-person shooter with some platforming, you can't go wrong with R&C. If you loved the PS2 games and want more of the same, buy the thing. If you expected something fresh and innovative, something worthy of this generation, skip it.