Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, the story so far

Ratchet & Clank

Ratchet & Clank is not a beloved series only for the excellent gameplay and the spectacular level design, but also for its characters, all well characterized, and the story that, episode after episode, increasingly delineates the bizarre universe imagined by Insomniac Games .

With over fifteen titles under its belt, including main and spin-offs, distributed over the course of nineteen years, it is quite logical to think that not all of them are in step with the history of Ratchet & Clank, not to mention that some is certainly approaching this universe for the first time or has met the franchise with Ratchet & Clank, released for PlayStation 4 in 2016.

A mistake that many make is to believe that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, the episode coming out for PlayStation 5, a follow-up to that title, which instead was a sort of reboot inspired by the feature film which in turn was inspired by the progenitor. Rift Apart is instead a direct sequel to Ratchet & Clank: Nexus and continues the so-called Future series.

Confused? Well, this summary should help you.

Once upon a time ...

... there was a PlayStation 2 game called Ratchet & Clank. The series begins in 2002 when Ratchet, a Lombax from the planet Veldin, goes on a mission with the robot Clank to stop the evil executive president Drek from building a new planet for his species, the Blargs, who lost the world of Orxon to pollution. Drek intends to succeed by literally stealing the pieces of the planets in the Solana galaxy, which is why Ratchet decides to ask for help from Captain Qwark, the most famous hero in the galaxy. Too bad that after a while he discovers that Qwark works precisely for the enemy and that he is not as brave as he appears, but he is a real coward.

The first episode of the saga establishes the friendship that will bind the two protagonists for a long time, and initially defines the character of Qwark who makes his debut as a comic shoulder and antagonist at the same time. Defeated Drek and humiliated Qwark, our heroes take a year off, but in 2003 Ratchet & Clank: Fire at will for PlayStation 2 comes out.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, the two protagonists. In this new adventure, Ratchet and Clank are hired by Abercrombie Fidzzwiget, the president of Megacorp, to recover a specimen of Protopet, an adorable pet that has ended up in the hands of a masked thief: the latter is actually called Angela Cross. , she is a Lombax like Ratchet and she is also a former Megacorp employee who has discovered the true nature of the Protopet and intends to prevent its mass distribution in the Bogon system.

Ratchet and Clank will discover that Qwark has taken the place of the real Fidzzwiget with the intention of causing a pandemonium and then resolving it and regaining the fame that he has lost due to the two protagonists. Eventually, Ratchet and Clank will be able to save this galaxy too, and they will take a well-deserved rest in Megapolis.

Quark becomes more and more important in the series when Insomniac decides to tie him up to the enemy that will torment our protagonists from Ratchet & Clank 3 of 2004. Some time after saving the Bogon galaxy from the Protopets, Ratchet and Clank return to Solana to thwart the threat of Doctor Nefarious, Captain Qwark's archenemesis of all time: the latter, in fact, he bullied when they were in school and kept breaking eggs in his basket even when Nefarious became something of a supervillain, until he ended up in a trap that undermined his self-esteem, making him a coward. Doctor Nefarious, for his part, wants to turn every living thing into a car, and so Ratchet must find Qwark and convince him to put together a team to defeat the common enemy. They will succeed, but Nefarious will slip away, vowing revenge.

The Future Saga begins

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, a gameplay scene. Between the first and second trilogy comes a Ratchet: Gladiator which is quite irrelevant to our recap. It is a spin-off for PlayStation 2 that significantly changed the gameplay - to the point that Clank is not at all playable - and told the misadventures of our Lombax, kidnapped by a criminal boss and forced to fight in the arenas of the reality show Dreadzone.

Much more interesting, however, is the transition to PlayStation 3 with the first episode of the so-called Future trilogy, entitled Ratchet & Clank: Weapons of Destruction. When Megapolis is attacked by the forces of Emperor Percival Tachyon, Ratchet discovers that he is the last Lombax left: Tachyon is in fact convinced that he hides the secret of the weapon with which the Lombaxes defeated his kind of him, the Cragmites. Our heroes run away by stealing the emperor's spaceship, which leads them to another planet; Clank, on the way, dreams of the Zoni, mysterious creatures that seem to know the purpose of his existence.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, an image of Rivet. At this point a real treasure hunt begins that will lead Ratchet and Clank from one planet to another, leading them to make new acquaintances, among which the spirited Talwyn, daughter of Max Apogee, a scholar of Lombax, stands out. It will thus be discovered that the Lombax, during the Great War with the Cragmites, had built a device called the Dimensioner that had sucked the entire enemy species into a black hole. All the Cragmites ... except one: Tachyon.

The Lombax miners had found his egg and raised it as one of their own, but then Tachyon had discovered the truth and retaliated by attacking the planet Fastoon with a ragtag army that had forced the Lombax to use the Sizer to escape through a black hole. Ironically, it was Ratchet's father who activated the device, dying to save his species and his son, whom he had previously sent to the Solana galaxy.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, a scene from gameplay. Eventually Ratchet and Clank manage to defeat Tachyon, who ends up being sucked into a black hole. With the Dimensioner destroyed, Ratchet seems to have lost any chance of finding his species; Meanwhile, the Zoni, who during the adventure have helped and guided Clank on several occasions, appear out of nowhere and take him away with them to reveal his true purpose.

Released as a kind of DLC for a few hours, the next title in the Future saga is a short adventure that serves as a prologue to the actual sequel to Weapons of Destruction. In Ratchet & Clank: In Search of Treasure, our favorite Lombax is still looking for Clank and thanks to a supercomputer he discovers a clue that leads him to the planet Merdegraw, where he will find himself fighting against pirates and outlaws to take possession of the Fulcrum Star, an artifact which would help him find his friend. After having lived through various vicissitudes with Talwyn, Ratchet finally manages to discover what happened to Clank, who was kidnapped by the Zoni ... on behalf of Doctor Nefarious.

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, a gameplay scene. In Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time 2009, also PlayStation 3, Clank wakes up in the clutches of Doctor Nefarious, inside a space station called the Great Clock: the latter was created by Orvus, a Zoni who also built Clank because became its keeper. As Clank trains with the help of a robotic attendant named Sigmund, and learns the rules and hazards of time travel, Ratchet and Qwark go through various misadventures in search of the robot, and discover the existence of another Lombax named Alister Azimuth. . Alister was a great friend of Ratchet's father, but it was also the Lombax who indirectly caused the end of the species, by handing over their technology to the young Tachyon: that's why he looks for the Great Clock too, he wants to rewind time and prevent the Lombaxes to use the Sizer.

Obviously Ratchet and the others will manage to find Clank and defeat Doctor Nefarious, but Alister will treacherously assassinate Ratchet to take control of the Great Clock. Clank, as suggested by a mysterious deus ex machina that appears in each episode, known only as the Plumber, rewinds the time by six minutes only to bring his friend back to life and defeat Alister who, having seen the true purpose of the Great Clock , will sacrifice his own life to save that of the protagonists. Eventually, Ratchet sets out in search of his fellow men, while Clank entrusts the Great Clock to Sigmund to support his friend.

Towards Rift Apart

The Future saga then continues in Ratchet & Clank : 2013 Nexus, which begins in tragedy. After the events of A Crack in Time, our Lombax joined the Polari Defense Force and works for Talwyn Apogee. During an escort mission, the situation worsens and the criminal the spaceship was carrying, the extremely dangerous Vendra Prog, manages to escape with the help of her brother Neftin and the Thugs-4-less, causing the spaceship to explode: while Ratchet and Clank are saved, the two Talwyn robots we met in Weapons of Destruction, Cronk and Zephyr, fall apart. Intent on finding the culprit, our heroes pursue Vendra across half the galaxy and discover that the villain wants to build another Dimensioner to free an alien species, known as the Anti, from the Antiverse she is trapped in. Despite their best efforts, and those of Qwark who also helps them on this mission, Vendra manages to free the leader of the Anti, Mister Eye, who for good measure betrays her and imprisons her in the Antiverse.

Ratchet squeezes then a pact with Neftin: the two will collaborate, but once Vendra is saved, both she and her brother will have to turn themselves in. To do this, Ratchet steals the Dimensioner from the Meridian City museum just before Mister Eye attacks her; As Ratchet confronts him in combat, Clank sneaks into the Antiverse and saves Vendra, then heroes and rivals join forces to confine the Ants and their leader back to their home dimension. The Prog brothers are formed as agreed, and Ratchet and Clank find themselves point and head in the search for the Lombax. Seeing Ratchet now resigned, Clank snatches the broken Dimensioner and takes it away with him, suggesting that he intends to repair it.

And with that we have come to Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, which in theory should close the Future trilogy and resolve pending subplots. Will our hero be able to find the missing Lombaxes? What will Clank do with the Dimensioner? Who really is Rivet, the Lombax we will control in the game? We know that in this new adventure we will explore at least one parallel reality in which Doctor Nefarious triumphed and the characters we knew have almost completely different identities. In short, for fans of the series, Rift Apart will be an appointment not to be missed.

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