PlayStation continues to impress with its big reveal events, with tons of gameplay demos and trailers showing off the PS5's power. One demo in particular was particularly inspiring, for a few reasons. Not only is Ratchet & Clank back and even better, but Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart was one of the most technically impressive PS5 games shown during the event. From the utilization of the PS5's new hardware to the graphical fidelity in the trailer alone, Rift apart looks like a true sequel.
Everything from its dimensional shifting to the action on screen was one of the few games that genuinely showcased what the new hardware is capable of. Jumping from different in-game worlds so seamlessly wouldn't have been possible on the PS4's standard mechanical hard drive. Even though this technology is nothing new, it's great to finally see consoles and developers take advantage of SSD technology for the future. Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart will be the first among many to show off what's coming for the future of console gaming.
Justifying the PS5's SSD
The main draw from Rift Apart's reveal was its hectic dimensional rifts, which continually transported Ratchet and Clank to different worlds. It's unclear why these are happening, but something in the universe keeps smashing different dimensions together and causing chaos. While it's bad for their world, it's incredibly interesting from a player's perspective. This is because the PS5's SSD architecture allows seamless transitions between game worlds, thanks to the higher read/write speeds. While many of the PS5 games shown throughout the presentation were impressive graphically and gameplay-wise, Rift Apart felt like the first game to truly justify the custom SSD interface within the PS5's hardware.
Those dimensional "rifts," as far as we can tell from the trailer, seem to be transporting Ratchet and Clank to a completely different region or world. This is something that never would've been technically feasible on traditional hard drives. For comparison, God of War tried to do something similar with Týr's temple in the middle of the Lake of the Nine, which lead to the other dimensions in Midgard. Every sequence in the World Tree during God of War was a hidden loading screen, to which eventually Kratos and Atreus would find a door. Ratchet & Clank Rift Apart is streamlining that idea, allowing seamless travel between vastly different worlds thanks to the higher storage speeds.
Graphical Fidelity is Just as Great
Along the lines of the PS5's SSD party trick, Rift Apart also seems to be capable of loading in and displaying tons of graphical details quickly as well. As each of these rifts interacts with the in-game world, there's tons of particle effects and objects interacting with one another dynamically. While the texture streaming itself is impressive, the fact it doesn't impede the details of each world is even more impressive. From Ratchet & Clank: RiftApart's trailer and gameplay demo, Ratchet is able to teleport and zoom across areas with ease. It'd be one thing if the visual quality was compromised in favor of loading things faster, but from this demo everything looked crisp for the most part.
At the end of the PS4's lifespan this was a consistent issue with several AAA titles. Most notably with Final Fantasy 7 Remake's first episode, despite in a lot of ways being graphically impressive, had tons of texture pop-in and muddy environmental textures in places both obscure and obvious. This was all in service to saving resources and preventing hiccups or stuttering in the frame rate. But that's no longer an issue with the optimized PS5 SSD outpacing standard mechanical hard drives by a mile. This allows greater detailed imagery in scenes or environments, without having to wait or compromise assets with loading screens or low resolution objects.
Ratchet & Clank is Back
Plus, at the end of the day, one of PlayStation's original mascots is truly back with PS5. Where PS4's reboot of Ratchet & Clank largely mirrored the original game in modern detail, Rift Apart represents a truly new adventure for the Lombax and his robotic companion. Not counting the previous reboot, it's been about seven years since a sequel has come out for Ratchet & Clank. Considering how unique this game's presentation was, it'll be vastly different what we've seen in previous games as well.
PS4's Ratchet & Clank was pretty masterful in bringing mashing together bright effects and colors on screen, Rift Apart is taking that foundation and expanding the scale far beyond what the PS4 is capable of.
Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is currently in development for PS5.
