We got to see more of Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart for PlayStation 5 during Gamescom‘s Opening Night Live event. Developer Insomniac revealed that it is coming out during the PlayStation 5’s launch window. That usually means at some point during the console’s first few months of release.
Rift Apart is the latest in insomniac’s 3D action-platformer series. The franchise mixes traditional platforming puzzles with shooter aspects and wacky guns. The first Ratchet & Clank came out for PlayStation 2 in 2002 and has had over a dozen sequels. The last one came out for PlayStation 4 in 2016. It was also called Ratchet & Clank, and it was both a remake of the original and a tie-in with the Ratchet & Clank movie.
Of all the next-gen games we’ve seen so far, Rift Apart is among the most impressive. It looks like a CG movie come to life, and its titular heroes travel through portals to other worlds in the middle of intense action sequences, showing off the loading prowess of the PlayStation 5’s SSD.
The new gameplay demo shows regular villain Dr. Nefarious. Ratchet pulls rifts toward him, helping him cross a destroyed bridge. He also uses a weapon that looks like a lawn sprinkler that freezes enemies. Overall, it’s an extended, uninterrupted version of what we saw before. You can watch the demo below.
In an interview after the trailer, Insomniac said that the game will have no load screens whatsoever. It will also use the PS5 DualSense controller’s haptic vibrations and adaptive triggers to make each weapon feel unique. For a shotgun-style weapon, the trigger will offer resistance about halfway through, representing the use of a single shell. Pulling the trigger all the way down will fire two.
Insomniac also confirmed that this game does chronologically follow Into the Nexus, which came out for PlayStation 3 in 2013.
