PSU staff writer Will Robinson and managing editor Kyle Prahl have been friends for years. Most days, they talk about video games on Skype, including the mysterious teaser images posted by Sony and Insomniac over the last couple days. Rumors of a Ratchet & Clank / Jak & Daxter crossover title? Brilliant. These boys have been waiting for that game for years.
This is their series.
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Will
It does make a lot of sense for there to be a R&C and J&D cross-over game. it would be amazing
Kyle
I’m pretty impressed that people spotted the Rift Gate similarities so quickly. I didn’t think of that at all. Just saw ‘Heroes Collide’ — "Oh, I guess it’s a Ratchet game or PSASBR sequel."
Err, ‘Heroes Return’ lol
Will
i would want to see a trailer showing heroes colliding.
yeah, I probably wouldn’t have caught that at all, although it does look very Jak & Daxter or Ratchet & Clank inspried artistically speaking. I would have just guessed it was a teaser for a new All-Stars game, like a lot of people said, for the PS4.
Kyle
I only entertained that notion for a little bit, just because All-Stars is still so new, and doesn’t seem to be keeping its long-term playerbase very well. Or keeping up good DLC support, for that matter
Will
Thats why I added "for the PS4". The only way I would see Sony supporting a sequal game is to reach out to hardcore and casual gamers with a brawler early in the PS4’s life. But yeah, if it actaully gets announced as All-Stars 2 I would be shocked.
If it really is a teaser for a Jak and Ratchet cross-world game that would be amazing. It makes a lot of sense that Naughty Dog and Insomniac would team up to do one, given that each series had easter eggs of the other in their games and that there was a cross-world game for Crash and Spyro way-back-when.
Kyle
I think it’d be a refreshing change of pace for both companies, but Naughty Dog especially. Even as Insomniac started doing more mature IPs like Resistance and FUSE, they kept making Ratchet games and stuck to those roots. Meanwhile, Naughty Dog’s just been getting more and more mature/depressing for years
Obviously Uncharted wasn’t depressing, but it feels like they’ve veered far from center in terms of their origins. A crossover game between the two could be this beautiful callback to what first made them really, really special.
But even if it’s just a main series Ratchet title, I’d be excited for that. A successor to Crack in Time
Will
Yeah, it would be great for Naughty Dog to go back to their cartoony roots. It makes sense why ND didn’t continue with Jak and Daxter though. They said that the team tried working on Jak 4 and it was just falling flat from what made the games so great to begin with. Also, they could move beyond the more comical graphics of the PS2 era and start doing realistic characters with the PS3’s tech.
It would only be OK for them to revisit Jak & Daxter if they get the original voice actors back though. 😛
Kyle
No doubt that they would. Man, I can’t even imagine–this is probably farthest from the likeliest scenario (which I think is just another Ratchet title), but what if this thing gets revealed tomorrow and it’s a Ratchet/Jak crossover, legit epic platformer made by both studios, as a PS4 launch title?
Game over.
Will
It would be phenomenal. All the flak that Insomniac caught from die-hard fanboys for making Xbox titles would be gone.
Kyle
I didn’t really care about that. Insomniac has been falling out of my eyes since Resistance 3’s disappointing ending. I looked at Sunset Overdrive as a game, not an Xbox product from a former PlayStation-centric dev. Even then, I didn’t care much.
Would you be excited for another core Ratchet game, with the series’ traditional gameplay?
Will
In all honesty, not really. It just started to get tiring. I would be interested to see what they would do to make a new game unique in some way, but I could easily live without another one. I’ve been thinking about going back to Crack in Time to get the fires burning again. When I saw the news story and claims of it being a new Ratchet game, I was just like, "Oh, ok."
Kyle
Especially if it was on PS3. More power to them for making it for a broader audience, but being a PS4 title is the only reason I’d really care, by simple virtue of it being a PS4 title.
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Will can be found on Twitter.