Hey there, interdimensional travelers!
It’s been an incredible two months since launching Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and we’ve been truly humbled by your kind responses to our game. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was designed as a showpiece for your PS5 console that delivers our signature blend of fun and over-the-top gameplay, all wrapped in a thrilling cinematic package. One way we accomplish this is through animation, so let’s discuss the work our animators did to bring our characters and world to life!
Our Heroes
It’s no secret we love a hero at Insomniac, and we have quite a few in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Not only does the game star our titular duo, Ratchet and Clank, but it also introduces Rivet, a new Lombax fighting with the resistance, and nanobot hacker Glitch, as playable characters.
Glitch posed an interesting challenge for our animators. Because she’s navigating uneven terrain during her hacking missions, our animators worked closely with programmers on procedural locomotion to make her animations look natural with the environment. When she goes up a wall, her spider legs respond accordingly to the surface.
Introducing Rivet
While the animators had a rich history to reference for Ratchet, Clank, and Dr. Nefarious, we faced a much larger challenge creating a new hero that players would embrace in Rivet. With a powerhouse vocal performance from Jennifer Hale, it was up to animation to match it.
Our animators ran with this challenge and built a facial pose library and model sheet to keep the animation of Rivet intact. This proved especially beneficial as it streamlined our processes by allowing us to quickly snap expressions on Rivet, which let us know very quickly we had an endearing new hero in our franchise.
Personalities
The goal of the animation team is to keep the personality in each character with clear reads for every state. Therefore, we have multiple conditions for our characters in the game. For instance, Goons will celebrate with a selfie if they manage to strike our hero. The Grunthors, who are often asleep, are instantly ready for a fight when approached, which shows their aggressive nature. This applies to non-combative NPCs too: they’ll quiver in fear if they’re in the vicinity of a fight or run away.
Living Worlds
Designing each distinct area with purpose is crucial to our players’ experience, and it has its fair share of challenges.
For example, the parade-goers would be too heavy for rigged characters. As such, they’re made with a vertex animation that manages to plunge players into the world, making them feel like they’re part of the celeb