Thread: Little Details Appreciation Thread

So this is an idea i came up with when playing Ratchet And Clank ACiT.
We all love Ratchet And Clank for big guns, big explosions, big galaxies.. big ears..
But we also know that size not always matters.. .. No? Ok..

We also love Ratchet And Clank for all the little things, the little details that make the worlds feel a little more alive, though we don't always notice them.

The reason i came up with this thread is because i noticed, that in ACiT, whenever you go into quick select and select another weapon, your controller vibrates a little bit, so the whole weapon select feels a little grippier. It's not game changing at all, but it's a tiny detail that made me go "oh wow.. That's neat!"

This thread is all about tiny little details in all Ratchet And Clank games that also deserve some honor. If you stumble upon a subtle little detail that made you go "Oh cool! Insomniac actually did that!", this is the place to share it!


I'll go first with another thing i noticed:

In Ratchet And Clank 1, (didn't check yet if it's like that too in the other games), when you're on a gravity ramp, Ratchet will always slightly lean towards the ground with his upper body, so it looks like the only thing really holding him in place are his Magne-boots.

Off you go, amaze us with what you find!

You can't glide to the bottom of the Nundac Asteroid Ring. The cannons will actually shoot you.

Also, any time you spin around a weapon in the vendor, the guy says: Yeah, yeah, round and round it goes. Ya going spin it all day, or are ya gonna buy it?

You can't glide to the bottom of the Nundac Asteroid Ring. The cannons will actually shoot you.

Oh yea, reminds me that in GC on Gorn, lightning strikes your ship when you go too high up.

Or too far down.

In RAC 2 when your in the megacorp storethe lady says to make sure you have shirts and shoe's reference to the fact that ratchet never wore a shirt or shows in the old game ?

I love in every Metropolis version, there is traffic. As a kid I used to look at it for hours thinking about there those people were going. They're just empty models following a repeating pattern. But that moment, you don't think about such things.

The confusion around a planet's name in UYA in refence to a rivaling game franchise?
http://youtu.be/GLjcxVeNb3I
Just reel it over to 30:15

There are a ton of little details in cutscenes that I've noticed over the years.

There are two in particular which are fresh on my mind:

When Qwark falls over in this cutscene, Nefarious tries not to stumble on him.
You'd think the animator would have put Qwark behind the rest of the group so they wouldn't have to go through the effort of animating that.

The other one is Clank's facial expressions and head animations during this cutscene, mostly when Ratchet is talking to Neftin.

That's not hard to animate, and it's actually better that they did it that way.

Another thing i haven't noticed for an eternity is that in the old games, Ratchet would grin whenever you took out a weapon of the big, bad kind.

The other one is Clank's facial expressions and head animations during this cutscene, mostly when Ratchet is talking to Neftin.

In this cutscene you can also see another thing i found quite neat. The.. pump.. thingy that Neftin has sort of indicates his heart rate, since it pumps faster whenever he's enraged. Kinda similar to Dr. Nefarious, though without the.. technical difficulties.

An obvious one, but, in the original trilogy, I always liked how Ratchet would scowl whenever he was near enemies.

An obvious one, but, in the original trilogy, I always liked how Ratchet would scowl whenever he was near enemies.

Wait what?
All I could notice was him changing if his health dropped enough.

An obvious one, but, in the original trilogy, I always liked how Ratchet would scowl whenever he was near enemies.

Wait what?
All I could notice was him changing if his health dropped enough.

Yep, start up Going Commando or something and have Ratchet face an enemy. He just glares daggers at those guys.

That's not hard to animate, and it's actually better that they did it that way.

I agree, it shouldn't be that hard. But I'm curious why you say it's better like that.

(Btw. In your animation classes. Do you learn rigging and skinning as well, or do you get character ready for animation?)