Rift Apart

 

Taking place after Into The Nexus, Clank has fixed the Dimensionater, allowing Ratchet to search outside the universe for where his kind fled, and why. But of course Dr. Nefarious crashes the party and steals the device, accidentally breaking it, shattering dimensions and separating R&C. Clank meets Rivet, Ratchet’s counterpart in an alternate universe. Ratchet meets Kit, Clank’s counterpart. The two teams try to find one another, and a way to fix the damage before it tears every universe apart.

While I’m glad the series is moving on as if the PS4 Ratchet and Clank never happened, I don’t like what they’ve done to Ratchet. After everything he’s been through, he wouldn’t be insecure, and he certainly wouldn’t be jealous of Clank building a friendship with Rivet. Ratchet was willing to let Clank go when it seemed he would become caretaker of the Great Clock at the end of A Crack in Time, so there’s no way Ratchet would feel possessive of Clank.

It seems Insomniac kept the Ratchet character from the attempted reboot instead of from the PS2 and PS3 games. Ratchet is insecure and timid now. All the courage and determination he once had? Insomniac gave it to Rivet.

Rivet has no history, no backstory, no traits besides doing all the same things Ratchet does, making me wonder just why is she here. Why is Ratchet not doing all of these things? Why must we follow her? What does she add to the narrative?

 

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Speaking of narrative, the story seems structured so it can make references (Allusions! They’re called allusions!) to previous games. They got the gadgebots in there! See ‘em?! They got the raft from One-4-All in there! See it?! We made a REFERENCE! And look, we reused the Rusty Pete model! The game reminds us of things we liked about R&C while delivering none* of those things here.

The gameplay is as solid as ever, though there is a distinct lack of enemy variety. It’s not hard to make a Ratchet and Clank game, as the format has been firmly established since Going Commando (and Spyro 2 before it). Each game relies on story to make the action meaningful.

The story of Rift Apart feels like an excuse to present remixes from R&C’s greatest hits, and all it has to offer is pointless gender swaps of the main characters. Rivet and Kit do nothing that R&C haven’t already done. Rift Apart doesn’t* move the timeline forward, rather serves to remind us of when R&C was inspired and had creativity behind it.

*That said, the sections with Ratchet collecting Lombax orbs are good. They show glimpses of Lombax history and nudge the in-game universe forward, hinting why the Lombaxes fled and where they went. The only problem is this is a side-quest on one planet in one alternate dimension.

This should have been the game.

Rift Apart would have been so much stronger if Clank fixes the dimensionator and he and Ratchet go on a treasure-hunting search for the Lombaxes, uncovering pieces of the lore across multiple planets on multiple dimensions, maybe across multiple games. What we get instead is an infodump on one planet.

After 13 hours with Rift Apart, I’m convinced the game was conceived not for moving the story of R&C forward, but as an excuse to put a gender-swapped Ratchet and a gender-swapped Clank into the game and drop references to previous games. This holds the story back. I wouldn’t have minded had Rivet and Kit added something to the narrative, but Rivet does nothing unique, and Kit has nothing meaningful to say, so what’s the point of them being here?

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I only enjoyed half of this game: the half where I’m not playing as Rivet. I didn’t like Rivet or Kit, and I resented that the game forced me to be with them instead of Ratchet and Clank. Those two have a history, and they have established characters. Their inter-dimensional counterparts are not characterized very well, so the player has no reason to want to follow them.

But what’s unforgivable is how Insomniac turned Ratchet into a shivering coward so Rivet could look heroic. Ratchet himself is no longer a sassy gun-nut eager to rise up to impossible odds. Here he spends a whole mission whining about how scared he is of some undead enemies that have appeared thanks to the multiverse shattering. And then he’s scared while riding a giant insect like a jet-ski. No! Ratchet is the “let’s go faster” kind of person! He has ridden hover bikes at breakneck speeds and fought way nastier foes than skeleton-lizards. He is so far out of character in this game I call it a sin.

It’s the mission to retrieve the dimensional map. No Bones About It is the trophy. That was my shark-jumping moment.

Even Clank is not spared; he spends the subsequent sequence whining about his self-doubt regarding his ability to fix the dimensional rifts. Clank was never one to doubt himself in any previous game.

It’s as if the writers had a directive to make sure no male character has any confidence or competence in order to make Rivet seem strong by contrast, and to do that, they had to tear down the characters of Clank and Ratchet. The previous games never did this to any of the women, so where is it coming from?

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I was ready to give the game a pass because for a brief moment Rivet and Kit do have a moment to connect. They share a connection, and it’s a decent revelation. It’s a chance for Rivet to redeem herself just as Ratchet did near the end of the original PS2 game, but as soon as it happens, Clank and Ratchet are suddenly cowards and need to be rescued from prison.

In fact, Rift Apart is full of male characters in positions of helplessness. The monks in particular are all big and buff but have effeminate, lispy voices and must be rescued. In any other game this would be fun irony, but in Rift Apart they’re just one instance of a larger theme of taking every masculine character and making him a wimp.

“The Fixer” is a giant robot, and he is reduced to whimpering about the hopelessness of life.

A male-voiced reconnaissance probe mumbles an endless stream of social anxieties.

The women, by contrast, are in positions of power and are always shown as superior to every man around them.

I’m not a gamerg-te bro, but I felt put off by all of this.

Who is this meant to appeal to? Did someone on the team have something against men? I’m unsure what the point is. Women have been in the series in important roles since the first PS2 title, and none of those women were damsels or cowards.

The game is focused on chopping down the men in this story and forcing us to accept Rivet as the only confident and competent person in the game, and this made me dislike her even more.

It didn’t have to be like this. There is plenty of room in the universe for both Ratchet and Rivet to be confident and heroic.

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Rift Apart was on track when R&C reunite and when they are uncovering the lore of what happened to the Lombaxes, but then the game forces the player to follow Rivet, and she does all the same things as Ratchet, but she has no story arc. She has no development. I might not have minded this too much had Insomniac left the characters of Clank and Ratchet alone, but to change them into insecure cowards for the sake of Rivet looking more heroic is awful.

After Crack in Time, R&C has become a corporate-driven franchise that must chase trends so it can continue because it was once successful and therefore should always be successful. Making “references” to its own past is a trend in entertainment, and rebooting a franchise with a gender-swapped cast is also a trend. Rift Apart seems to be trying very hard to appeal to a new demographic, but I’m not sure who would find this appealing because it’s just bad writing.

There is hope the series can return to form, and for about half of Rift Apart, I saw potential for it to do so, but I do not like Rivet. I do not like Kit. If we ever do see them again, I hope Insomniac gives Rivet a story arc and a unique role and some character development so she has a reason to be there.

[supplementary thoughts: During the prison break sequence, there’s an incidental cutscene showing two beefy thugs talking about how they want to break out of their prison cell, and one of them comments “Dude, your biceps will never fit through there.” He’s referring to the air duct, the one Rivet is currently inside of. Normally this would be a fun jab, but combined with all of this it’s another moment designed to frame masculinity as a liability. If I had arms as thick as a lombax’s torso, I wouldn’t need to escape through an air vent. I could twist prison bars into pretzels.

In the original PS2 game, Ratchet fixes Clank as soon as he meets him. Rivet never fixes Clank. His legs remain broken, and he is immobile for the entire game (apart from his minigames, which do not happen in a physical realm). That shows you what kind of person Rivet is. Hasn’t Clank earned her trust enough for her to repair his legs so he can walk on his own? She has many opportunities to do so, but she never does. Again, the writers deliberately put a male character at the mercy of a woman just to make him weak.

Come on. You don’t have to tear men down to have a woman as the protagonist.]