Ratchet & Clank Wiki:Bulletin board/Interview with James Stevenson

James Stevenson is the Community Director at Insomniac Games, who has worked on every in the Ratchet & Clank series from Tools of Destruction (that was released by Insomniac). He is active with the company's Twitter accounts, on Insomniac's official Discord sever, and appears in most interviews.

We asked him a few questions about the company's stance on the canonicity of the games on Discord, and his answers are below. This will more officially inform Wiki policy (though it was not too far from policy to begin with).

Canonicity of reboot

 * Our theory of current canon is that the events of the Ratchet & Clank movie are a holo-film made within the canon Ratchet universe, Ratchet & Clank PS2 has the real events, and Ratchet & Clank PS4 is Qwark's story of it. Is this right?
 * "Your understanding of it is one way of looking at it, the PS4 game is certainly Qwark's version of events."


 * We know that Qwark said in the game "they're making a game based on a holo-film based on my life?", which made us think the "my life" was in reference to the events of the original Ratchet & Clank-- not sure if that was something done deliberately?
 * "I think you can sort of interpret it that way, though I don't think we have any sort of official stance on if the film is that actual holo-film Qwark references, if that makes sense."


 * In summary, is it safe to assume, until we know what your next Ratchet title is, that the R&C film and PS4 reboots exist independently of the R&C PS2 game, and just have their own canon? Though as has been stated the basic main "points" of the story remain (Drek even succumbs to more-or-less the same fate), Nefarious' backstory is different between the two?
 * "I think I've discussed how they all fit within one canon as different points of view of the same basic story. If I were you all, I'd probably seperate them into PS4 / Film story vs existing mainline story - to account the discrepancies, if something like that makes sense. Acknowledge those while still trying to be as inclusive of the games as possible."


 * Can we assume that character names from R&C PS4 apply only to the PS4 reboot, or do they carry over to R&C PS2? ie the Holocard calls Skid's agent "Don Wonderstar", does that apply to R&C PS2?
 * "Names would carry over, I think, if you're talking about a holistic universe. But Qwark's memory is foggy!"


 * Is it just assumed that every weapon in R&C reboot, including ones that originally came from other games, is manufactured by Gadgetron (or Nefarious and the blarg), or by their original manufacturer?
 * "No official opinion on this. I guess I'd also say we didn't really change the backstories of the weapons, so one could assume Gadgetron is just vending weapons from other companies."

Canon sources

 * Can we (the wiki) basically use tweets from the Insomniac Games' Twitter feed account as official sources, or at least roughly? We always respond with links to this feed when resolving canon issues, such as those related to Size Matters and Secret Agent Clank.
 * "We consider all of the games canon, the comics are canon too. Yeah, our tweets are authoritative in terms of what is or isn't canon. That said, anything our twitter account answers, should only be considered like, b-canon, if that makes sense. The only authoritative sources are the games themselves; if TJ, or Brian Allgeier or Ted says something, you can consider it true, however it's only true until a game contradicts it. The games are always the final and ultimate source. Basically nothing is coded in gold in the canon until it appears in a game or official offshoot (comic, etc)."


 * Does IG have an official stance on if capitalization/spelling of certain terms when there are some inconsistencies, or can the Wiki just assume proper English rules apply?
 * "Assume proper English rules apply."

Log

 * 12th February, 2018: Questions by, unedited answers
 * 18th February, 2018: Questions by