Thread: Recording Dates in the R&C Universe

If you had to pick a point of reference for date keeping in the R&C universe, what would it be?

I'm thinking something like how the Battle of Yavin IV (BBY and ABY) or Sozin's Comet (BSC and ASC) is used in Avatar (on the wiki, at least; I've not seen it in official sources).

I was thinking the destruction of the Deplanetizer could be used, but I'd like something that affects the whole universe. Maybe the Great Clock's creation or salvation? Or maybe the defeat of Tachyon? Well, Tachyon's defeat isn't *quite* universe shaking, but had he kept the Dimensionator thing's would have been very bad for more than just Polaris.

What do you guys think?

It makes sense that there be a number of different timelines in the Ratchet & Clank universe. The first race to evolve to a point in which they can become conscious (like us humans) would probably start up some sort of civilization, and eventually lead to space travel, and explore other worlds. Then they would discover all sorts of other beings and become a cooperative galaxy (perhaps some competitive?)

At any point they could have started recording time, if ever. It's entirely possible the first people in the Ratchet & Clank universe didn't record time. But when someone decides to begin recording time he can chose to start whenever he likes. It would be most likely that it would start off like how Earth's does now, with different times for different areas of the planet. But eventually they would change it to a world time type thing (Earth has something like this, GMT (Greenwich Mean Time).)

Some planets could not have any time. Some could work how Earth does and some could use a world time. And most galaxies would probably have a time which would probably either date back to a major event (perhaps the point where the planets all united… or the inhabited ones anyway) or simply use the time of a key planet in the Galaxy (Polaris could use Meridian City's time and Solana could use Marcadia's Time)

As for the Great Clock. I don't think that would have much to do with the timeline of the universe, as no one knows of the Clock, it is a secret. And keeping time and recording time are two different thinks, the Clock helps time flow, and repairs time anomalies. Recording time is something creatures make up to help mark dates and events, to make life more organised. Time is not a thing (at least when it comes to recording it)

But it is possible that some super-intelligent being traced back life to a point in which it all began, and proposed that be the time the Universe runs on (or that galaxy)

I am sure that an event as minor as Tachyon's rule, or the Great War would be a bit late to start recording time.

But who am I to say these thing? I am not Insomniac, so these are just likely ideas. Though I don't think Insomniac will be going into time recording, it makes more sense to ignore it all together (or go off planetary time every now and then)

I don't think that there really is such a thing as "too late" to start recording time. It just takes an event of some sort of significance. The Battle of Yavin from Star Wars, for example, happens some tens of thousands of years after the foundation of the Old Republic. And probably even more from before spaceflight was commonplace in the Star Wars universe. And even in the real world there's tens of thousands of human history before the birth of Jesus Christ.

You can't say that it's too late to put down a system, or a standard of recording history, I don't think.

The Great Clock itself is a secret, but there are legends, as evidenced by the Fongoids. Their people didn't just forget that it existed.

And, again, I'm thinking "intergalactic" standard, as the galaxies in Ratchet & Clank seem to be…maybe not closely related, but the existence of intelligent life in other galaxies seems to be common knowledge in the R&C universe. Think about how "galactic standard time" exists in series like Star Wars and Mass Effect. Like that, but across multiple galaxies.

I'm not sure you could say any one thing would unite the galaxies under a unified timekeeping method though, you are right about that. Even things that Ratchet and Clank do in the galaxies aren't all that important to others. They're usually put down before they're major threats to the galaxy or they're simply unknown, like, yes, Ratchet and Clank saving the Great Clock.

Except for Drek's plight, maybe. Oh, on second thought the destruction of the Biobliterator was pretty significant. There was an active war against Nefarious and all. But then again, I think Solana would be the only ones to actually use a calendar based off of Nefarious' use of the Biobliterator.

I dunno, it's just an idea I had. I like it when a series has a timeline that's unique to it, like Star Wars or Avatar and I think it'd be neat for R&C to have a similar type of thing. What I'm suggesting is simply a reference point like the Battle of Yavin for Star War's or the advent of the Hundred Years War by way of Sozin's Comet in Avatar.

You have some good points, yes time could start being recorded at any moment, but I think it's more than likely they've been recording time for some time, as there are some very intelligent life forms in the Ratchet & Clank universe, and as you pointed out, the Fongoids are linked closely to time and could have been recording time, but it doesn't necessarily have to be at the time of the great clock, in fact if they had been recording time it would have fallen apart with the discovery of time travel, and after the damage was repaired by the Clock I would imagine they would leave all technology and time. It makes sense for them to abandon it.

But only the Fongoids knew about the Clock and the Zoni, so if they were recording time, or stopped, the only thing the universe would notice is that they just stopped using technology.

And I think it would be weird if they started recording time at a major event like the Biobliterator. Because that would be them saying "lets start this whole time thing… but lets wait for a major event" or perhaps there could be some unexplainable miracle in which they discover time at the same time Nefarious' war ends? Seems extremely unlikely to me. If they wanted to start up the concept of time, why wait? I'd launch it just as it's perfected. (like calenders and stuff are developed)

On a side note, I'm pretty sure the Greek were recording time (I think it was the Greek, I'm not entirely sure) before we got year 0. Maybe in the Ratchet universe we could get some planets doing things like that. With time starting again, because of a major event (But it would have to be a really major event, the end of a short (but highly dangerous) war doesn't sound like an excellent reason to start time again.

I think they've been recording time for a while in the Ratchet & Clank universe, because if you notice at the beginning of the first game, if you are talking time as in actual hours and such, then you've got it saying 11:05 AM Local Time Veldin, so they probably have time zones on different planets and such already, kind of like we have here on Earth, and as for months and years, after you beat the game and unlock the extras menu, or goodies menu I guess it's called, you get to see magazine covers and such and in the corners of most of them, they list a date for the magazine, kind of like it would be if I bought a copy of Playstation Magazine or something. So they would already have to be recording time before the first game even existed in that case. Also, in the first cutscene of Secret Agent Clank, you notice when they do the comparison of images of Ratchet to confirm it's him robbing the museum, the one image is of Ratchet and Clank celebrating Ratchet's birthday, and they didn't really start celebrating birthdays until around the 17th or 18th century, if I am correct on my history, and they were already recording time then, in our universe, and you can't really celebrate a birthday without an actual birth date, usually, depending on whether or not you know their actual birth date, which in this case, I'm assuming they did know, as Ratchet was an infant when his father died, but from what I gather from the Future series, Ratchet remembers some of those events from that far back, in which case, he would be able to know the date he was born. Therefore, once again, they would already have to be recording time in the Ratchet and Clank universe.

I forgot to mention that in the other post, as there is the clock tower on Silver City, so they would probably record time in very similar ways to us (perhaps with 12 hours too) and as you said, in Ratchet & Clank 1 there were times in between the cinematics.