An Underwhelming Future: A Critique of Narrative in Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time9/29/2020 The soft conclusion to the Insomniac’s original Ratchet & Clank (R&C) series, Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time (ACiT) is the capstone of a decade of work for one of Sony’s biggest stars. While it’s very ambitious in certain ways, the narrative and overall world building feel bloated and occasionally self-conscious in how they’re presented. The first of the Ratchet & Clank Future games really upped the ante in terms of not just the gameplay but the storytelling of Ratchet & Clank. Its sequel, however, is littered with fumbles that ultimately keep it from surpassing the relatively high bar set by its predecessor.
Ignoring the awkward misstep that is Ratchet: Deadlocked (which has barely any story to speak of), Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction (ToD) is largely a sequel to Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando (R&C3) despite the changed naming scheme. Dr. Nefarious, while far more memorable than past R&C villains, still has fairly simple motives for doing what he’s doing. Tachyon, however, manages to fill the gap between serious and campy in the role of ToD’s antagonist. He’s still a silly-voiced weirdo, but he actually has compelling reasons for what he’s done and what he plans to do. His goals are certainly evil and selfish, but what’s important is that they’re also nearly identical to Ratchet’s: Tachyon wants the Dimensionator to bring back the Cragmites (a banished race of which he is the last), and Ratchet wants it to bring back the Lombaxes (a banished race of which he is the last). Both the hero and his antagonist want the same machine to undo history and bring back their people to the galaxy. A people neither of them have ever met, but a people that each thinks will fill their lives with a sense of belonging that was impossible up until this point. The climax of Ratchet’s character arc is when he has to sacrifice the possibility of fulfilling this desire to accomplish the need of saving the galaxy from Tachyon and his fellow Cragmites. It doesn’t shut the door to Ratchet meeting up with his people in the future, but he’s sacrificing personal happiness now for the good of everyone, because he knows that allowing others to suffer to fuel his own happiness makes him no better than Tachyon. It’s not a masterful work of fiction, but it’s a solid and compelling story with high stakes and a moral at the end. In ACiT, the narrative starts where ToD leaves off, with Clank having been kidnapped by the mysterious aliens known as the Zoni. They show him where he originally came from to help him fulfill his destiny. Ratchet sets off on a journey to find him and along the way ends up meeting General Alister, a Lombax left behind when the rest of the Lombaxes used the Dimensionator to escape the Cragmites long ago. Dr. Nefarious is also back, and he’s here to try for the same goal as everyone else: the Great Clock. Clank’s father (the alien that created him) has established him as the caretaker of this great machine in the center of the universe. The Great Clock is meant to stabilize the universe to keep time and space from literally ripping themselves apart. However, it could also be used as a time machine, and that’s why everyone wants to use it. Once again, we have a machine that can rewrite history (literally, this time) that everyone wants to get their hands on. Most of Ratchet and Clanks’ respective stories take place apart, Alister is only in about one half of the narrative as well, and Dr. Nefarious is in even less (as he’s often seen from afar in cutaway cutscenes). While Clank was a main character in ToD, he was very much a sidekick to Ratchet, and Ratchet was the main driver of that story. All of this adds up to mean that ACiT has: two main protagonists, a protagonist that turns antagonist (Alister), and a primary antagonist in Dr. Nefarious all wanting the same selfish thing, and this story is ultimately how their motives come to blows. Doubling the number of protagonists and antagonists isn’t necessarily a recipe for disaster, but ACiT fails where ToD succeeded for various big but interconnected reasons. ---- #1) Justification: The narrative never gives a compelling enough justification for each of the characters continuing to chase what they supposedly are willing to risk everything to obtain. The story makes very clear to each character, either through first-hand or second-hand communication, that trying to use the Great Clock as a time machine will break it and destroy the universe. There isn’t any element of probability to that warning either. It just simply will destroy the universe if used that way. This means that the choice on whether to try and use it for that is incredibly simple. Both Ratchet and Clank want to use it to save their respective parents, but what good are parents if the entire universe is destroyed? Dr. Nefarious has the baffling idea to recreate the universe in a mold where the bad guys always win and heroes always lose, and putting aside the fact that simple time travel doesn’t make that make sense as a concept, it still just makes him foolish for pursuing it because it will destroy the universe. Alister wants to use it to bring back the Lombaxes, just like Ratchet does, but the only difference between them is that Ratchet correctly realizes that destroying the entire universe is a bad trade off for doing anything. While the story does actually have the player go back in time at several points to change the past in minor events to your favor, it hand-waves away those events as reality-destroying disruptions. It is constantly unambiguous in regards to how using the Great Clock as a time machine will definitely destroy the universe, and that nearly occurs in the climax when Alister storms the Great Clock’s control room. In ToD, the stakes were happiness at the sacrifice of everyone Ratchet knew and loved. There was a potential benefit he could be selfish and chase after should he have wanted to. ACiT has no such trade off. Using the Great Clock as a time machine simply will destroy the universe. It’s an utterly uncomplicated moral decision that makes Alister look just as bad as Dr. Nefarious with how carelessly he disregards this unshifting warning from the maker of the Great Clock. It weakens the stakes of the story in regards to character motivations, and makes the character arcs as a whole fall far flatter than ToD’s did. #2) Setup and Payoff: With both Ratchet and Clanks’ respective motivations being about using a universe-destroying machine to find their families, the overall plot of ACiT leans very close to a retelling of ToD’s story. This being the case, the narrative has two obvious options it can take: either 1) have the same moral ending again, or 2) subvert those expectations and have a different message. ACiT not only picks both and neither of those options, but it also avoids a conclusion to the story simply for the sake of it. ACiT picks option number 1 through General Alister. Alister storms the Great Clock and tries to rewind history all the way back to before the Lombaxes lost the war to the Cragmites to try and save them from destruction. This proceeds to begin tearing the Great Clock and the universe apart, just as he had been warned countless times that it would. He has a change of heart at the last second and sacrifices himself to stop his bad decision and stops Ratchet from saving himself instead. He sacrifices his want of saving the Lombaxes for the need of saving the universe just like Ratchet did in the last game. However, unlike how it’s framed in the narrative when Clank tells Ratchet “He did a brave thing,” this is nothing like how Ratchet acted in the last game. There was no selfish alternative to saving the universe. The alternative was just letting the universe be destroyed after he should’ve known better than to not start destroying it. On top of all of that, this is all after Alister disappears for a while and conveniently forgets that Ratchet already made it very clear that he didn’t want to destroy the universe trying to save the Lombaxes. Alister gets angry at Ratchet all over again for a jarring replay of an emotional conflict between them that has already been shown, and all for the sake of a very rushed redemption arc for Alister. It’s a weak attempt to recapture the message made at the climax of the previous story, and it reads as more confusing than heroic. At the drop of a hat, Alister turns from unflinching zealot to a totally selfless hero. With how headstrong the narrative has shown him to be, a more logical outcome for Alister would’ve been to deny that he was in the wrong until the very end. Instead, the game attempts to lionize his foolishness simply because he changed his mind right before death. Alister begins as a character with a lot of potential to be a compelling foil to Ratchet, but the poor justifications for why he’s doing what he’s doing ruin any character arc he might’ve had. ACiT also picks option number 2, to have a different ending, by ignoring the obvious and better choice it’s been alluding to since ToD. Ratchet is trying to find his family and where he belongs, and Clank is with him every step of the way. The narrative really feels like it’s leading up to the realization that they don’t need to find any new family or any new place they belong, because they already have each other. With one another is where they belong. That’s why they’ve been trying to find each other the entire game. That’s why they’re best friends and brothers in arms. They even share a big hug when they’re finally reunited at the game’s midway point (where in ToD they only do a no-homo fist bump). That would’ve been a fine ending to the story that ToD started and ACiT continued, but that isn’t where the writers at Insomniac took it. Upon defeating Alister and saving the universe, Ratchet bids Clank a farewell as Ratchet prepares to let Clank fulfill his destiny as the caretaker of the Great Clock. But Clank has a change of heart. Stating that he can’t be with his family (the digital representation of his dead father that lives within the Great Clock) until Ratchet finds his own, Clank rushes off to join him after giving the role of caretaker to the Great Clocks’ only other occupant. This ending is not only not a conclusion to the story. It also seems to suddenly frame Ratchet & Clank’s entire friendship with one another as a very utilitarian and toxic one. If Clank is really only joining Ratchet to help him find the Lombaxes through some possible 3rd universe-destroying machine, this ending implies that it’s because he just views himself as a tool to his friend. The narrative has this frustrating insistence on pushing this as their end goal despite repeatedly implying that the characters are learning that it isn’t actually important. Despite two adventures pointing towards the fact that finding the Lombaxes isn’t actually what will make Ratchet feel accepted and fulfilled, it keeps repeating that he whole-heartedly believes this, and this stubborn refusal to let the character grow and learn the lesson directly in front of his face makes this story’s conclusion feel not just unfulfilling but outright confusing. #3) Tonal Dissonance and Inefficient Storytelling: This problem isn’t as intertwined as the last two, but it’s still a massive problem that underlines the entirety of the narrative. ACiT has a real problem with tonal whiplash in both its dialogue and its themes. This, combined with very inefficient storytelling, makes the story out stay its welcome while simultaneously hurrying to its conclusion far too quickly. The entire game feels like it’s stuck squarely between the silliness of the old R&C games and the more serious take put forward by ToD. As discussed with problems #1 and #2, ACiT does try to touch on some serious topics with its story, albeit similar ones to ToD. However, what ACiT has that ToD lacked is a horrible bloat of extraneous races and characters. The races of the Terachnoids, Fongoids, Argonians, Vullards, and Valkyries feel very shallow, with most of their appearances dedicated to being exhaustingly not funny. Although issues with humor can be chalked up to the decade of time passing since this game came out, it can’t so much be hand-waved away when it occupies so much of the game’s body of text. Lord Vorselon, Dr. Nefarious’ #2 in command, feels almost entirely superfluous in the narrative and only really seems to be there to be someone other than Nefarious for you to fight occasionally. As discussed in Problem #2, even Dr. Nefarious’ motives are so superficial that you could make the story about the Argonians simply causing chaos because they can and it fundamentally wouldn’t change at all. While Tachyon had a legitimate grudge against Ratchet in ToD, Ratchet and his allies also had legitimate grudges against Tachyon, and it made for a more engaging story. The pile of side characters in ACiT serve mostly to enhance the gameplay at the severe detriment to the narrative. Nowhere do I think this issue of humor at the expense of depth is more represented than in how Captain Qwark’s chance for redemption is so brashly thrown away. Captain Qwark, the cowardly, narcissistic, self-proclaimed hero has always been the butt of jokes in the R&C games since the beginning. He has often played at least some role in the plot, but at the end of the day he never really does much more than simply get in the way or make things worse out of his incompetence. This is even the case in ToD, where he unwittingly delivers the Dimensionator straight to Tachyon. In ACiT, however, Qwark actually comes along for the adventure at several points and is instrumental in Ratchet’s reunification with Clank. In removing Clank from Ratchet’s side and so often replacing him with Qwark, Insomniac gave Qwark more pathos than he’s ever had before. They give him the chance to, for once in his life, stand up and really be the hero he so often claims to be. However, similarly to how Alister is forgotten from the narrative for nearly a third of the story, such is the fate of Qwark. Despite finally learning to risk his own hide to save the day, he’s reduced to being a silly, after-credits joke where he’s alone on an asteroid being mauled by a monster forever. Rather than give Qwark the chance to actually finish out the series by doing something important or at least finding some shred of self respect, he is used as a narrative device to get Ratchet information that he needs and then carelessly discarded when he’s no longer needed. They don't even have him ever face off against Dr. Nefarious (a character here almost entirely for fan service), a character who is ostensibly his nemesis. Insomniac don’t write a totally serious game, nor do they even indulge in the easy fan service they allow themselves, and it makes for a game with more than a bit of an identity crisis. ---- To be completely fair, Ratchet & Clank: A Crack in Time isn’t actually the last piece of the pre-reboot R&C timeline. That honor goes to the short downloadable-only game Ratchet & Clank: Enter the Nexus. In that game, Ratchet is finally given the narrative conclusion of realizing that he has more to live for with Clank than he does with other Lombaxes. However, I do not believe that that excuses the sins of ACiT’s storytelling. Each entry in a larger serialized story should be, at least to some extent, a fulfilling story in and of itself, even though it is ostensibly part of a larger story. ACiT’s overly derivative plot, careless character writing, and horribly confused pacing sully what is easily the strongest of the games mechanically up to that point. It makes for a very underwhelming narrative in what would turn out to be Ratchet & Clank’s last big game on a console for the next seven years. If ToD showed that Insomniac can write a compelling narrative for a R&C game, ACiT shows just how disinterested they are in actually pursuing that goal.
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AuthorI'm an avid gamer who likes to detail their thoughts about what they play in the hopes it might aid someone else's search for a game to play. Archives
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