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.

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.