#Flag mashup bot series

The balance between keeping to the 'DNA' of a Ratchet & Clank game against the 'adapt or die' mantra would continue to be a struggle throughout Insomniac's development of a series. This approach was not met well by players, as it veered too much from the buddy cop concept, lacked the exploration of previous games and comedy in the writing. The 'adapt or die' approach was used for the fourth title, Ratchet: Deadlocked (2005), as they made the title darker and more combat-oriented given the popularity of the Halo and Grand Theft Auto series.

#Flag mashup bot series

Allgeier considered that these games had success because they were continually evolving the series to match the current climate in video games, where mascot-driven games had fallen out of favor, and the company had adopted an 'adapt or die' mentality for each title. Both the sequel Going Commando and the following game Up Your Arsenal were well-received and considered commercial successes. They spent more time on developing interesting weapons to make the combat as enjoyable as the platforming sections of the game. In planning the second, they revamped Ratchet's character, as they felt the first game portrayed him as a jerk, according to writer TJ Fixman, and softened the character to make him more relatable, at that point hiring James Arnold Taylor to voice the character (Ratchet's behavior toward Clank in Tools of Destruction when speaking about the existence of the Zoni and the risks posed by the Dimesionator could be a hint or reference to the character in the first game). The first game Ratchet & Clank, released in 2002, was successful. Originally developed as a childlike version of the Star Wars character C-3PO, they later decided that Ratchet and Clank should work instead like a buddy cop film, and made Clank an equal to Ratchet. Along with this character they named Ratchet, they gave him a robotic companion, Clank.

Artists sketched a number of concepts for this alien character, which was originally reptilian, but ended up as a new species they called a 'Lombax', a name Price had come up with. This idea inspired the team since it would allow them to create new worlds and characters to develop.

Now in 2001 and struggling with ideas, Chief Creative Officer Brian Hasting proposed the idea of 'an alien that travels from planet to planet, collecting weapons and gadgets', an idea inspired from Spaceman Spiff from Calvin & Hobbes and from Marvin the Martian.

One, called Monster Knight, never got past the prototyping stage, while a second, called Girl with a Stick and aimed to be a mashup of The Legend of Zelda and Tomb Raider series, had about six months of development work before Insomniac's CEO, Ted Price, decided to cancel it as 'the team wasn't feeling it', according to director Brian Allgeier. With the PlayStation 2 recently announced in 2000, Insomniac began to prototype ideas for games on this new console. The Mysterious Thief)ДЇollowing the development of Spyro: Year of the Dragon, the third installment of the Spyro series, Insomniac Games wanted to move into a new intellectual property, since the Spyro series was owned by Universal Interactive Studios. The series is noted for its inclusion of many exotic, unique and over-the-top weapons and gadgets, a concept that Insomniac Games has expanded into their other games. The games take place in a science fiction setting and follow the adventures of Ratchet (a feline humanoid known as a Lombax, who is a mechanic) and Clank (a diminutive, sentient Zoni 'defective' robot) as they travel through the universe, saving it from evil forces that consistently threaten it. An animated feature film adaptation was released on April 29, 2016.

The series is exclusive to Sony platforms and the intellectual property is owned by Sony Interactive Entertainment. The franchise was created and developed by Insomniac Games and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment for PlayStation consoles, such as PlayStation 2, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation 5, with the exclusion of Size Matters and Secret Agent Clank, which were developed by High Impact Games for the PlayStation Portable. Ratchet & Clank is a series of action platformer and third-person shooter video games.