Ratchet & Clank/Headscratchers


 * In A Crack in Time, Ratchet won't let Azimuth use the Great Clock to alter history and prevent Tachyon from destroying the Lombaxes because it could potentially destroy the universe and because it wasn't meant to alter time, only keep it. But Ratchet and Clank do use the Great Clock to travel in time on multiple occasions and even alter history significantly by helping the Fongoids win the battle of Gimlick Valley, with no negative side effects. So why couldn't they allow Azimuth to do the same to help the Lombaxes?
 * I think it's got more to do with using the Great Clock in such a way - as said repeatedly by Orvus, the Great Clock isn't a time machine, it's simply the universe's internal clock. Azimuth wanted to reverse time for the entire universe by at least 20 years - considering that the Great Clock exists to hold the fabric of space/time together, this would be cataclysmic for the universe. When Ratchet and Clank went back in time to the Battle of Gimlick Valley, they were not using the Great Clock, or reversing time - they traveled through cracks in space/time to reach the past/future. The only time that the Great Clock is used by anyone is when Clank goes back to save Ratchet's life - but that was only by a few minutes, and he did it based on the Plumber's hint, so no harm was done.
 * This doesn't change the fact that they had an efficient and apparently safe way of traveling through time and alter history with no ill consequences. Why didn't they tell Azimuth he could use that? I know it could be argued that they just decided they didn't want to mess with the timeline, but when they went to the battle of Gimlick Valley, they did it purely out of convenience, because they needed a new space ship. Also, there is no indication that Ratchet and Clank forget about having fought in the battle, so presumably they wouldn't have forgotten about meeting each other like Azimuth suggested.
 * This bugged me too, though I have some theories. 1) It was all about a matter of scale. At Zanifar Ratchet only interacted with a few people and destroyed a few robots, and failed to do anything noteworthy. Gimlick Valley was a bit larger, but as only one conflict wouldn't effect more than a few thousand people. Azimuth stopping Tachyon would have affected millions of Lombaxes and the entire Polaris Galaxy, not to mention being a shift of twenty years as opposed to just two. 2) The other explanation is that those portals were a one time thing, only able to be created due to the already existing damage of the Great Clock.
 * Lemme sum it up: the first time-travel in Zanifar was just to find Orvus and stop Nefarious The second portal on Gimlick Valley was an excuse to find a ship to get back to the Nefarious Space Station before he could leave for the Great Clock.
 * I think it's also to do with causality. The original version of events on Zanifar and Gimlick Valley had nothing to do with Ratchet, so changing them had no effect on him or the events that resulted in him being there. Changing the fate of the Lombaxes would have a huge personal effect, and create a paradox (Lombaxes are safe, so Ratchet wouldn't try to save them) unless they could create some sort of Stable Time Loop. On the other hand, he could still probably go back and find out what really happened, so long as he didn't try to meddle with events.
 * Why was Clank a real secret agent in the Secret Agent Clank game? In the rest of the series he's only an actor who plays a secret agent but in that game he becomes one for real and no explanation is given at all. Before the game was released, I always assumed it would take place in the continuity of the in-universe Secret Agent Clank holo-films, but the game has some clear Continuity Nods to the other games and Ratchet doesn't seem to be playing Clank's chauffeur.
 * Firstly, Ratchet was FIRED from his role as the chauffeur and replaced by Skrunch, remember? Second...more of a "what if" game maybe?
 * It could still take place in the holo-films. If the "writers" of the Show Within a Show based it on "real" events and characters, then its perfectly plausible for them to reference past events. (Keep in mind that I haven't played the game though.)
 * On the matter of time travel...why did Ratchet just simply hesitate and witness Orvus's death instead of intervening and rescuing the poor dope, like he was told to do?
 * Cutscene Incompetence. Of course, Ratchet didn't know Orvus would suddenly disintegrate. I think the implication was that Orvus committed suicide to prevent Nefarious from finding out about Clank.
 * In Ratchet and Clank 3, Ratchet receives the hypershot - a combination of the swingshot and dynamo from Ratchet and Clank 2, and instead of shooting out a rope, the device shot out a tether of green energy. From Ratchet: Deadlocked onwards, it's referred to as a swingshot but retains the look of the hypershot.
 * That's because the hypershot functioned as both a swingshot and a dynamo. After Up Your Arsenal, it only functioned as a swingshot, which is probably why they called it a swingshot instead of a hypershot, despite the appearance. Maybe Gadgetron just upgraded its image or something-- the omniwrench changes from game to game, too, without anyone commenting on it, so it may be something like that.
 * A nitpicky Fridge Logic issue - After the Lombaxes left, Fastoon was only populated by Nanophytes scavenging for scraps of Lombax technology. And hello? What is Aphelion? Chopped liver?
 * It could have been that Aphelion was simply too tough a nut to crack. She is, after all, a space-worthy combat vessel, and the Nanophytes just couldn't take her apart, despite her plowed-into-the-ground status. Why they didn't collect her missing pieces that were just floating around I don't know.
 * Because otherwise then you wouldn't be able to fix Aphelion, and Tachyon would catch up to you and blow your head off. End of story.
 * Ah, sure you could. You'd just have to get them from the Nanophites instead of finding them randomly (which seems a bit more logical, actually).
 * Why does Gadgetron continue to develop new RYNOs if every one since the first is considered illegal and banned in several galaxies?
 * Guess.
 * Considering that Gadgetron also made a Black Hole Gun, robot suicide drones and whatever else, the Mega Corps of Ratchet and Clank are basically Umbrella played for laughs.
 * The newly announced All 4 One game looks like it won't carry on from the story set up by the Sequel Hook at the end of ACIT. This just looks like it will be a side story.
 * Insomniac openly stated that the Future games were just a trilogy. I'm assuming that you meant the whole "Until Ratchet has found his own family" thing, and it's annoying that they didn't close a couple of plot points from Tools of Destruction (Tachyon's "Only I know your true name!", Max Apogee, etc.) but we were never promised any clarification. If you look at ACIT's ending as saying "They're still out there, looking for adventure and blowing stuff up!" then it seems a lot more promising...
 * My theory was that the developers TRIED to do a deep-story type game with many plotlines, but couldn't handle it and just wanted the two back together as soon as possible (and preferred Qwark over Talwyn, hence her absence in A Crack in Time). Yes, I was slightly disappointed too, but that didn't stop me from enjoying it (and nabbing that Platinum trophy, hehe).
 * In Tools of Destruction, the cinematic introducing the Dimensionator references the "dimension of the Zanifarian Death Weasels"...but we visited Zanifar in A Crack in Time...in the same galaxy. Did the Fongoids mess time and space up so badly that their local fauna was sent to another dimension...?
 * The final cutscene of Tools of Destruction had Tachyon yelling various things at Ratchet, before dying. Among them was something to the effect of "Only I know your true purpose in this dimension! Only I know your true name!", and Ratchet references this later in the same cutscene, before the whole Zoni thing. In A Crack in Time, though, we meet Alister, who was the best friend of Ratchet's father. Of all the lombaxes we could have met, one would think he'd know something about the "name" situation, but it's never mentioned, and he seems to have no qualms with using the name we're familiar with. I understand that Ratchet's got his own name now, but it's a little confusing to think back on.
 * Maybe he just never got the chance to ask.
 * Or maybe Alister lost contact with Kaden before Ratchet was named.
 * In Tools of Destruction it's commented that if Emperor Tachyon had seen what the Cragmites were like, he wouldn't want to bring them back. He also had quite a bit of a Lawful Evil slant, to their literal Always Chaotic Evil. It really seemed to be setting up for an Even Evil Has Standards moment, but it was never mentioned again.
 * Maybe he Jumped Off The Slippery Slope?
 * It's possible that he only met the grunts, and had not yet gotten the chance to summon the real Big Bads of the Cragmite race. Creepy, crazy, semi mindless minions can be ignored, but who is to say that actual Cragmite leaders might have made Tachyon look like a saint compared to them?
 * The O2 mask. How does that thing work? There's no visible tank or anything to supply Ratchet with air and he's just fine when he goes out into space or underwater (polluted areas I can understand because of the filtering and all that). And the bottomless pits that exists on every planet ever in the Solana, Polaris and Bogon galaxy. Ratchet must've gotten his bravery from living on Veldin, which is a deathtrap. One can only wonder where the locals of Veldin went..
 * Adding on to the whole O2 mask thing, has anyone noticed that he only uses it in certain situations? In ACIT, he uses it on every moon he visits, but in Tools of Destruction, he runs around without it!
 * This sounds incredibly random... but Ratchet has no holes in his ears. They're just... flaps of fur on the side of his head.
 * My good man, programmers are an extremely lazy bunch...
 * The holes are probably just covered by the fur.
 * Or else they're not really ears...
 * Regarding Chairmen Drek's new planet- it was completely finished by the end the game. That means he succeeded in tearing up huge chunks of planets, many of which were probably inhabited, and sending them spiraling out of orbit to their doom. Not only that, but Ratchet blows up the new Franken-Planet, eliminating any chance they might have had to repair the planets that the pieces originally belonged to. Even if the original planets weren't inhabited, now the Blarg have no place to call their new home anymore. Sure they attacked you, but if you look at it from their perspective, they were simply obeying orders from their leader (whom they probably had no idea was the one who actually wrecked their homeworld in the first place) to protect their new home.
 * And...this bugs you how?
 * I think the first troper was commenting on the What the Hell, Hero? aspect of the ending-- Drek had already destroyed a bunch of planets to form the new one for the Blarg, but there was nothing to be done about that. All Ratchet and Clank had to do was get rid of Drek and his plan to pollute the new planet would have been a bust, but they destroyed the planet instead, leaving the Blarg with no homeworld at all... and (presumably) nobody to lead them. Kind of makes you feel sorry for them...
 * Is that G-shaped gearish thing supposed to be an ampersand?
 * Yes.
 * I know it can be chalked up to release order, but the fact that Ratchet's character seems to reset for Size Matters after Deadlocked (which is probably where a lot of it came from) drives me up the wall-- particularly since it's just that one game, and he's back to normal again, once Tools of Destruction starts up. Maybe it's intentional, since he was acting pretty much the same as the first game, and there were an awful lot of throwbacks to it, but that doesn't really change much.
 * I'm rather curious as to who took care of Ratchet after the Lombax/Tachyon war. Before A Crack in Time, anyone would have figured his father had looked after him. But now that we know Kaden was one of Tachyon's last victims, it begs the question of who raised Ratchet all these years. I can only guess that maybe that question will be answered in the next (final?) trilogy.
 * Perhaps Ratchet fended for himself on Veldin, or he was adopted until he grew up and started his own garage.
 * Possible, but then that would imply he was old enough to live on his own, which should logically then mean he would have had some memory of his family.
 * He probably lived with foster parents or in an orphanage. The latter seems more likely since he was seen living on his own in the original game. In his cameo in Jak X, he's 18, so if we treat that to mean that he was 18 in Deadlocked-- the closest title to X-- then he probably would've been around 15 in the first game. Still pretty young to be on one's own, but you never know what age means what in the R&C universe.
 * While we're on the topic of Ratchet being pretty much an orphan, how old was he before being sent away? Why didn't he learn Lombax before the in-universe Common/English?
 * It's probably pretty dumb to be vexed by this, but I just have to say it. I can understand destroying things like crates and generators and the like, and getting bolts in return... but some of the destructible items have no business housing the stuff. The ice crystals on IRIS were pushing it, but mushrooms? That was in ACiT's Valkyrie Citadel, too, where it wouldn't have been too strange to see some type of machinery or something...
 * Fridge Logic, best not to overthink it.
 * Near the end of Deadlocked, Big Al was fitted with cyborg-like parts since his body was damaged beyond repair, and it seemed like they would be a permanent thing. But when he shows up in hologram form in the comic series (not sure if it's issue 5 or 6), he looks normal. As in, before he was given the cyborg parts. What happened?
 * Maybe he's just got a synthetic skin on top of the parts. Did we ever see Al as a cyborg later than Deadlocked? (Sorry, it's been awhile since I played through the entire series.) It's doubtful that he would have been able to get anything but the bare minimum on DreadZone so maybe it just took time to get the cosmetic stuff done. The comic takes place after the Future trilogy, after all, so that's plenty of time to adjust to the parts and work around the problems they present.
 * Whatever happened to the abilities Nefarious had in the final battle in A Crack in Time? Surely those would have come in handy in All 4 One, especially in the Polar Sea.
 * If you got to All 4 One's final cutscene after the credits rolled, Lawrence mentions one of those weapons systems and that they have to go pick it up from somewhere. Odds are the butler got his boss functional but not entirely battle-ready in the time between games.