Our man Joel Szerlip tracked down the development team at Insomniac to talk about their latest creation - the sequel to last year's monster platformer - Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando.

Hello, first would you mind giving us a brief explanation about what Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando is all about?

Brian Allgeier, Design Director
Ratchet and Clank: Going Commando is all about character progression and Megagames.

Ratchet starts with 4 hit points and by the end of the game he can have up to 80. Based on enemy kills, Ratchet's hit points increase and his weapons upgrade. He can purchase armor to improve his resistance to damage - effectively giving him up to 800 hp with the strongest armor! The enemies also increase in size, strength, numbers, and carry heavier firepower.

Ratchet can earn lots of money to buy new weapons and armor by playing Megagames. One of my favorite Megagames is the Gladiator Arena. The Arenas challenge players to defeat 30 enemies in 30 seconds, fight enemies in a cage match, or battle Super gladiators, to describe a few flavors of gameplay. Arenas are also good places to earn weapon and hitpoint upgrades. Other Megagames include Hoverbike Races, Dune Mining, and Space Combat where players can upgrade and improve Ratchet's Fighter ship. Megagames are great in that they let players play repeatedly, unlock new challenges and win tons of cash.

How is the gameplay in Going Commando upgraded/different from what it was in the original?

Colin Munson, Designer
The weapons in Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando take a much more prominent role. No longer can Ratchet rely solely on his wrench to get through most encounters. Instead, he will depend more and more on his arsenal of weapons as he goes deeper into the game. Weapon strategy will become increasingly important as well. Often, Ratchet will find himself using two or three different weapons at the same time in order to advance through one encounter. To top it all off, the weapons will get more powerful the more they are used. Ratchet will become more powerful as well. He will receive experience from each enemy he defeats which will be converted in to additional health points. The weapons and strategy elements combine with tighter Ratchet control and strafing capability to deliver a surprisingly deep combat experience. Add that to an experience-based health system, space combat, spherical worlds, and super-fast hover bike races, and you can see that Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando is vastly different from the original Ratchet & Clank.

What were some of the main goals you were trying to accomplish when making this latest version of Ratchet and Clank?

Brian Hastings, VP Programming
Basically we wanted it to kick 117% more ass. We knew we had some cool new hooks like spherical worlds and gladiator arenas, but we really wanted to find a way to change the core feeling of the game. Basically we wanted it all. It had to be more challenging, but not frustrating or repetitive; it needed new life and depth in the combat, but without losing the charm of the original; it needed a fresh hook, but we didn't want to mimic the latest gaming fad. The RPG systems ended up being the perfect solution. They allowed us to make the game much more challenging and action packed while automatically balancing the difficulty (because more novice players will level-up faster from repeated retries.) The upgrading weapons gave the gameplay a whole new feel and added the depth we were looking for. Personally I think it's the perfect sequel: it's faster, bigger, better, more addictive, has much more replay, and it does it all while preserving the original theme of the franchise. Our apologies to all of you who were hoping for Clank Theft Auto.

How many gameplay hours can gamers expect to spend playing the game?

Ted Price, President/CEO
We've seen in our focus tests that to completely finish the game it takes most players 30+ hours!

What audience were you trying to attract with this game?

Ted Price
We were targeting as broad an audience as possible. Obviously we expect platformer fans to enjoy the game but because the game has so many shooter, adventure and RPG elements we think that non-platformer fans will really enjoy it as well. We certainly saw this with the original Ratchet & Clank.

What differences should we be able to see in the graphics department compared to the original?

Gavin Dodd, Tools Director
Better lighting, environment mapping, environment animations, and more spectacular special effects. On top of this, the render code was optimized so we can draw even more than we did in the first Ratchet & Clank.

What other characters are we going to meet throughout the game?

Oliver Wade, Animation Director
In addition to several characters from the original game Ratchet and Clank, players will be meeting a whole host of new friends and enemies in the Bogon Galaxy. Mr. Fizzwidget, the CEO of Megacorp, is their main contact throughout the adventure, but they also meet up with a mysterious thief, a trailer park mystic, a sock puppet weilding hypnotist, an intellectually superior mutant crab and whole host of bizarre creatures. There are a few twists and turns along the way, and not everyone they meet is who they claim to be.

How much of a challenge is developing Going Commando compared to the first Ratchet & Clank?

Brian Allgeier
Making a bigger game in less time was certainly a daunting task. After the success of the first title, we were confident in taking on some of the more experimental concepts that we had developed for the first game (but not implemented.) like spherical worlds, character progression, and arena battles. Once we started developing many of the new features for Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, we knew we were going to accomplish our goal of not just "cranking out" a sequel , but instead making a whole new game.

Fortunately, the Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando team size grew substantially from 35 to over 80 people during the course of the project, and we had many talented individuals who came in to save the day.

What was the best part of developing Going Commando?

Brian Hastings
The best part was that every day someone would have a cool new feature up to try out. It could be a new weapon or weapon upgrade, or a new robot for Clank to command, or a new feature in space combat, or a new AI feature for the enemies. But it seemed like every time I would go over to someone else's computer there would be something exciting and new to check out, and that just made me more excited to improve whatever I was working on. Maybe the best example is the massive amounts of destructible objects in the game. We had a programming intern named Greg Prisament who, in a mere three months, coded over a hundred types of destructible objects throughout the game. Every time I talked to him he had an even cooler looking piece of destructive mayhem on his computer. It sounds like such a simple thing, but it really made it fun to keep testing the levels and see the new stuff blow up.

Are there any plans for another sequel or new projects?

Ted
We've got some top-secret stuff in the works right now but we can't tell you about it - yet!