Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal - Development

Development

Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal was the main focus of the Insomniac Team during development. The team of around 115 people were aiming to create a new Ratchet and Clank game that would differ significantly from its predecessors and almost end up being two games in one. Insomniac believed that one of the key processes in the development process was the rigorous testing. Working closely with Sony and listening to fans of the Ratchet and Clank series, they gathered feedback and made improvements to the game. They felt that they had created a game that would appeal to a number of genres with the inclusion of elements of platform, action and side-scrolling gameplay.

At the same time, Jak 3 was being developed by Naughty Dog, a company closely tied with Insomniac. Naughty Dog's Jak & Daxter series and the Ratchet & Clank series are in similar genres; each game in both series' has been released at a similar time and both contain references to each other. Ryan Schneider, an employee of Insomniac, said, "The analogy that I like to use is that at Insomniac we like to look at it as how Tiger Woods and Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant act when it comes to their professions. We don't really look at it as how we compare to other athletes or other games, we just try to do the best that we can and elevate the sport."