MTV's Multiplayer Gaming site has up a discussion with Brian Allgeier, creative director on the latest iteration of the
Ratchet and Clank series. The Ratchet games are made by Insomniac, who released
Resistance at the same time the PS3 launched last year. That makes them unique, one of the first teams to have a second PlayStation 3 title out, and it shows in their amazing graphical presentation. The interview covers
the team's trek towards an internal idea of 'Pixar-quality' graphics.
"The new game is designed to sell itself at a glance. The hook is the image, the approaching-Pixar graphical quality. It's the product of 125 developers at Insomniac, a surprisingly small increase in team size from the 110 who made the third Ratchet game, Up Your Arsenal, for PS2. Allgeier conveyed some stats to emphasize the boost in graphical quality: 90 joints in Ratchet's face in the PS3 game compared to 112 joints in his whole body in the PS2 games; 'tens of thousands' of particle effects on the screen at any one time on PS3 compared to 3,000 in the PS2 Ratchet games. The game's action glides at 60 frames per second, double the rate of Insomniac's Resistance game. But, again, it's not numbers that count. It's just supposed to take a glance." Meanwhile, for more on the development process, the PlayStation blog has up a video post by Brian Hasting, Chief Creative Officer at Insomniac, on
clarifying the vision of the game.