The seemingly groundbreaking dimensional portals in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart could just as easily have been brought to life on the PlayStation 4 or even PlayStation 3, according to Traveller’s Tales founder Jon Burton. The newest installment of Insomniac’s long-running platformer series put the duo of Ratchet and Clank in a literal multiverse of adventure as they joined forces with a new Lombax named Rivet to stop the evil Dr. Nefarious from taking over the universe.
As befitting its dimension-hopping premise, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart featured special "rifts" that Ratchet and Rivet could grapple into, causing the scenery to seamlessly shift as they cross realities to evade enemies or take shortcuts throughout a given level. Sony and the developers at Insomniac hyped the technology behind these visually stunning portal sequences to no end in the build-up to Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s launch as a PlayStation 5 exclusive in June, stating that the rift-traveling mechanic was only possible thanks to the PS5’s cutting edge Solid State Drive and the faster load times it provides.
According to VGC, Traveller’s Tales founder Jon Burton disputes this claim, suggesting that Insomniac didn’t really need the PS5 to execute Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s portal mechanics. In his most recent Coding Secrets Youtube video, Burton picks apart the scenes where Ratchet uses rifts to cross between dimensions, stating that they are "mostly just cutscenes or very short sections of very limited gameplay” rather than the continuous real-time sequences Insomniac made them out to be. He also points out that Rift Apart’s “Pocket Dimensions,” or smaller side-sections of a level that Ratchet or Rivet go into to complete brief mini-challenges and collect bolts, could have just as easily been rendered on the PS4 or PS3 since they are “really graphically basic, and in fact just seem to use a lot of the same generic objects like crates that would already be available in generic memory.” He finally adds that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart’s faster set pieces could easily be pulled off using buffers, citing his own work on Lego Star Wars III: The Clone Wars as an example of this.
Watch the Coding Secrets video on Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart on YouTube here.
Jon Burton first founded Traveller’s Tales back in 1989, working as a designer and programmer for such titles as Puggsy, Mickey Mania, and Sonic 3D Blast during his time at the studio. He also served as a creative director for some of Traveller’s Tales’ Lego games, and even helped write the direct-to-DVD animated movie Lego Batman: The Movie – DC Super Heroes Unite. Earlier this month, Jon Burton formed a new developer named 10:10 Games after departing from Traveller’s Tales in 2019.
Jon Burton isn’t saying that the PlayStation 5’s Solid State Drive isn’t impressive or that Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart isn’t using the console’s faster load times to “do everything properly,” but he seems to be making a case that members of Insomniac were exaggerating when they claimed that the game’s rifts could only be executed using this new technology. If this is true, then perhaps PS4 owners who can't afford or find a rare PlayStation 5 could have been playing Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart all along.
Source: VGC, Coding Secrets/YouTube
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August 29, 2021 at 12:41AM
