Sargasso is a planet in Rivet's dimension in Rift Apart. It is an alternative dimensional version of the Sargasso from Ratchet's dimension.
History[]
Before Rift Apart[]
The Emperor disregards conquering Sargasso[]
During Emperor Nefarious' conquest of the known universe many years ago, he came across Sargasso and was so repulsed at the planet's wild, primordial state, that he quickly passed on it and decided that there were better ways to spend his time than conquering it. Under an unknown set of circumstances, a young female lombax named Rivet grew up on the planet and took it as her foster home.
The annihilation of the kerchu[]
The Kerchu stationed on the planet, continued as workers under the Nefarious Empire and harvested Gelatonium at their outpost through their various factories. On one such occassion however, the Kerchu accidentally misspelled the Emperor's name on their tax returns and their tribe were consequently wiped out by his forces. Since then, another race known as the Morts moved in, salvaged what they could and took on the Kerchu's jobs in their place.
Rivet meets the morts[]
Still as a child, Rivet came into contact with the morts and began working for them making delivery runs at their inherited factories. After many extensively long work hour sessions, she eventually saved up enough to buy her own residence. Whilst working for the morts, Rivet grew a close kinship with them and they became good allies of hers after many years. At some point, a young pterafoid flyer that had fallen out of its nest was adopted by the morts and raised by them. They named her Trudi and the creature developed a close relationship with both the morts and Rivet.
Rivet joins the Resistance[]
With the Emperor's unrelenting conquest of the universe and the fall of Corson V, a Resistance force against the Empire was formed. Rivet herself joined this resistance and quickly proved to be a formidible force amongst their ranks. She made her residence on Sargasso her base of operations and the morts assisted her with her equipment. After all of her missions with the Resistance, Rivet always returns to her hideout on Sargasso. Officially, the morts remain neutral in the galactic conflict, but they have been harboring Rivet's status as a key member of the Resistance and hiding her from the Emperor's Rebel-hunting spies.
Rift Apart[]
Rescuing the morts[]
After Rivet's mission in Nefarious City to retrieve an important infobot for the Resistance, she came across Clank when he became separated from Ratchet after the Dimensionator exploded, and overheard him admit fault to the dimensional chaos now appearing throughout the universe. She took him with her back to Sargasso to find answers and refused to believe his story of being from another dimension due to her deep mistrust of robots. This mistrust came from her many bad experiences with the Emperor, his robotic followers, the robot Space Pirates and a traumatic experience after losing her arm to a Nefarious Warbot whilst on a mission years prior. The morts contact Rivet in her ship as she approaches Outpost L51 with a distress call and report that they are under attack. Suddenly, a Nefarious Seekerpede sent to the planet to search for the missing infobot, clips her ship and it makes a crash landing, forcing them to make their way to the morts' gelatonium factory using other means.
To cross the planet's acid swamps however, they will need to ride on the back of a speetle and attempt to track one down. Several Speetles escape but Rivet spots one heading into Pocket Dimension: 65-31-99 and follows it inside using the Rift Tether built into her robotic arm to pull open a gap in the damaged dimensions. Inside the pocket dimension they spot the Morts' helperbot; Maynard and follow the Speetle until it hides in one of it's nests. Rivet hits the nest, causing a Speetle to jump out and allowing her to finally jump on it's back. Maynard acts as a guide and leads Rivet along a path out of the pocket dimension and back to the Gelatonium factory using the speeding Speetle. After arriving, Rivet finds that the Goons-4-Less have taken the Morts' hostage and demand they give up the location of their bounty. Clank tries to explain that they had travelled through the dimensional vortex and are looking for Ratchet but Rivet continues to dismiss his claims.
Repairing the dimensional anomaly[]
Once all the Goons at the factory are defeated, Rivet checks the Morts are okay and they assure her that they are fine but some of the other Morts are trapped inside a large, purple dimensional anomaly next to the factory. Clank offers to inspect it as he has experience with dimensional anomalies from his previous adventure with Ratchet. Upon touching it, Clank has his consiousness transported to a space between dimensions and meets the astral form of a man named Gary who has been searching for someone like Clank to help him fix the dimensions. Gary introduces himself as a cosmic prophet and resides on planet Savali, studying in it's vast Interdimensional Archives. He helps Clank with learning to repair dimensional damage and warns that the damage caused by the Dimensionator will continue to spread and eventually lead to a Dimensional Cataclysm unless it can be reversed by that which caused it; with another Dimensionator. After Clank learns more about dimensionality and how to reverse it's damage, he eventually is able to repair the anomaly and reawakens on Rivet's back.
Head to Rivet's hideout[]
Once the Morts are freed from inside the anomaly, Rivet meets back up with a female Mort she is good friends with and gives her a part from the Space Pirates needed to finish fixing a starship. While the Mort is fixing the ship, Rivet frees more Morts at the Bridge Controls Facility before traveling back to her secret hideout. She plugs Clank into her main computer system and looks through his memory banks to find the truth about him. The events that occurred in Megalopolis play out on her monitor in which she witnesses the Dimensionator, Dr. Nefarious and Ratchet. She is shocked to see a Lombax and finally views the Dimensionator explode in Nefarious City. Rivet wakes Clank up again and admits that he was telling the truth about everything and she reveals the reason for her prejudices.
Rescuing Clank from the seekerpede[]
Once the Infobot she had is decryted, it begins sending out a signal and the Seekerpede that was patrolling the planet suddenly breaks open the wall of her hideout using it's giant mandibles. The Seekerpede uses a tractor beam to pull all metallic objects towards it and it mistakenly takes Clank instead of the Infobot. Rivet; plagued with guilt over her treatment of Clank, chases after the Seekerpede on a Speetle to save him and launches onto it's back, ramming the machine's flight stabilizer. Upon it being grounded, she battles the craft on a defunct work platform and later grounds it again on an island before eventually destroying it's Nefarious Trooper pilot. Once she saves Clank, Rivet offers to help him get a part to fix his broken communicator and the two hop into the new ship the Morts have fixed up for her. Before leaving the planet, Rivet finally checks the contents of the Infobot and finds that it is a target hitlist of the Emperor's key opposers; Phantom, Moydoy, Captain Quantum, Clatchkey and Rivet herself. She posts the list to the Resistance's network to warn them of the danger and the two take off in their ship.
Help Trudi (optional)[]
After fixing Clank's communicator and forming a plan with Ratchet to build a new Dimensionator, Rivet leaves Zurkie's and heads back to her ship. She suddenly recieves a message from a male Mort and is asked to come back to Sargasso to help their friend Trudi if she has the time. Upon arriving back at the gelatonium factory, the Mort explains that she is simply hungry and usually flies to nearby rock islands to collect Zurpstones growing on them but is too weak to fly to get her food herself. Rivet has known this Mort since she was a kid and worked delivery runs for them for many long work hours to save up enough to buy her own residence. The Zurpstone fruits appear scattered around Sargasso's Outpost L51 and can grow in various locations, from caves to the top of high altitude cliff sides.
The Goons-4-Less currently on the planet will frequently fight Rivet for the right to eat the fruit themselves to sate their own hungers and so they might use its protein in their strenuous muscle building diet. Wild Grunthors will eat them aswell and are also combated by the Goons-4-Less to get the fruit before it. Once Rivet finds fifteen, Trudi will eat them and be satiated but the Mort makes a deal to give Rivet rewards if she can find more. After collecting thirty zurpstones the Mort rewards Rivet with Ranger tactical pants and that she can ride on Trudi to fly around Sargasso quickly. After forty-five, Trudi obtains a fireball shooting ability for hitting the Zurpstones at the highest points of the map and with all sixty he will give Rivet a Spybot. After finally getting all sixty Zurpstones, the Mort surprises Rivet with the good news that Trudi is pregnant. This overjoys Rivet to hear and promises she will throw Trudi the biggest baby shower the planet has ever seen. With Trudi's large stockpile of Zurpstones, the Mort estimates it will take five days, six at the most for her to finish eating them all.
Stop the Emperor's invasion[]
After Emperor Nefarious makes his return and steals the newly built Dimensionator, he accepts Dr. Nefarious' plea for an alliance and begins by invading Sargasso in a ploy to draw in Rivet. At Outpost L51, the Emperor's forces are indiscriminately attacking the planet and the local inhabitants. Rivet destroys the attacking Nefarious Troopers and rescues the Morts taking cover. The Morts here inform Rivet that they have repaired the Seekerpede she fought on the planet earlier and it can be used to help fight the invasion back, but it has become partially stuck inside of a dimensional anomaly. The Morts' helperbot Maynard again leads Rivet to her destination and flies through the battlefields towards the trapped Seekerpede. On the way there Kit realises the Troopers are not just going after the Morts but seeking to exterminate all life on the planet. Rivet encounters holograms of the Emperor and Dr. Nefarious, who taunt her and attempt to demoralize her efforts to stop the invasion.
They break through the Emperor's forces and finally reach the Seekerpede, where Kit makes contact with the anomaly and has her consciousness transported to the space between dimensions like Clank had done. She meets Gary's astral form the same as Clank and he helps her with fixing the anomaly, where they have a happy reunion and catch up on all that has happened recently. The two discuss their thoughts on Clank, and how it's not so surprising that he is Kit's dimensional counterpart. Gary comments that the dimensional cataclysm has been intensifying faster than he expected, with Kit citing the reason being the Emperor's reckless overuse of the new Dimensionator. Kit repairs the anomaly, and she and Gary are overjoyed to see how far the other has come through so much adversity. With the Seekerpede freed, the Morts take the pilot controls and use it to attack the Emperor's battle cruisers.
Rivet and Kit take down a cruiser themselves by overloading the ship's power generator and the Morts send Trudi to pick them up to help in the fight. The Emperor then orders his battle cruisers to activate their Destruct-o Beams to blast through the planet's crust and destabalize it's core to destroy it. This can be done in a matter of minutes so Rivet and Kit fly on Trudi's back and use her fireball attack to quickly destroy the ship's power generators on their decks. Upon destroying one however, the Emperor orders the cruisers to put up their energy shields, making them invulnerable to any weapon Rivet or Kit have. Just when the situation appears grim, a Mort calls Rivet and informs her they had created bombs out of the Gelatonium waste stashes from their factories that are powerful enough to penetrate the shields. Whilst Trudi picks up the bombs to toss at the ships, the Seekerpede provides a distraction by attacking the invasion mothership. The bombs begin to work and the battle cruisers' numbers start to whittle. The Seekerpede however is eventually shot down by the Emperor's forces and the final cruiser is ordered to concentrate all it's power on destroying the planet. Trudi tosses a bomb at the last Battle Cruiser, causing it to start exploding and flying out of control into the side of the Mothership. The Cruiser collision then causes a chain reaction of explosions and the Mothership crashes to the planet below. Trudi flies Rivet and Kit back to a crowd of cheering Morts to celebrate their victory.
Once the crowd disperses and Trudi flies off, the Emperor emerges from a rift behind the two and sends them into a pocket dimension with the Dimensionator. Rivet is not worried however and knows to use her Rift Tether to escape but needs to find a damaged piece of the dimension first to open a rift out. Whilst looking, Kit asks Rivet about her history with the Emperor. She mentions she had spent a long time fighting his regime and in the process lost friends and her arm. Rivet explains she lost her arm whilst on a mission in Nefarious City, she had found a secret entrance into Nefarious Tower and attempted to enter alone but was suddenly attacked by one of the Emperor's warbots. Her attacker for an unknown reason to her did not finish the Lombax off and she was able to escape, but built herself a new robotic arm to replace the one she lost. Upon hearing this, Kit is hit with a dread realization and attempts to speak to Rivet, but the Lombax brushes it off and at that moment finds an exit out of the pocket dimension back to Sargasso. They then decide to head back to Zurkie's to plan their next move with Ratchet and Clank.
Credits[]
After the defeat of Emperor Nefarious in Megalopolis after his attempt to subjugate all dimensions in existence, Trudi is seen in the credits sequence on Sargasso flying through the planet's skies with her recently born offspring. Later, Rivet is seen having a picnic on Sargasso with the Morts along with her new friends Ratchet, Clank and Kit. A picture is taken to commemorate the event that Rivet later hangs up inside her hideout along with the photo of herself and her Resistance friends; Quantum, Moydoy and Clatchkey.
Geography[]
Overview[]
This version of Sargasso is relatively identical to the one in Ratchet's dimension and shares many of the same native lifeforms. It is a wild, primordial world primarily inhabited by non-sapient creatures such as insectoids and reptiles. Many of the planet's creatures are dangerous and will attack intruders to their territory on sight; such as grunthors, sandsharks, horned toads and fendersax wasps. However, the largest creatures on the planet, the troglosaurs, are docile herbivores. The landscape is quite treacherous, full of many large, craggy rock formations and covered in copius amounts of wild plantlife. Even some of the planet's flora can be hazardous, as several large Venus flytrap-like plants inhabit the landscape, and will snap shut on any creature that touches them. One of the most distinctive features of the planet is it's corrosive acid swamps that cover much of it's surface. The many artificial structures and vehicles around Outpost L51 were created by the kerchu, and some have been left long abandoned.
Locations[]
- The Morts' Gelatonium Factory at the Outpost is the primary site of their work on the planet where they extract and refine gelatonium to be sold and used as fuel around the galaxy. Refining gelatonium leaves alot of waste residue around the area and has highly explosive properties.
- The Bridge Controls Facility is a gelatonium harvesting platform over the acidic waters and contains a hammercrank that controls the bridge on the path towards Rivet's Hideout.
- Rivet's Hideout is her residence and headquarters in her fight against the Nefarious Empire with the Resistance. Inside is a large amount of computer and engineering technology Rivet uses to build and maintain equipment and gather intelligence for her missions. Rivet bought this residence herself after saving up enough money whilst working for the Morts doing delivery runs for their factory. She keeps shelves stocked with locally picked fruit, a bed and a couch with a television by it for when she needs to unwind. The hideout is built inside of a mountain across from the Gelatonium Factory and it's existence is kept a secret by the Morts. The Hideout Entrance is at a large armored door at the back of a cave in the mountain and opened with a hammercrank.
- The Crash Site is where Rivet's first ship crash landed after being hit by a Seekerpede. Rivet comments she had not been this far out from the factory and her hideout in a while. She later procured another ship that the Morts had been working on and left the planet again with Clank.
Behind the scenes[]
Some of the level layout of Sargasso in Rift Apart is the same as in the Sargasso of Tools of Destruction, specifically the location of Rivet's hideout and some of the immediate area around it. The cave entrance to the Lombax Testing Facility notably is almost the exact same as the cave at the entrance to Rivet's hideout. The location of Rivet's hideout in her dimension is situated in the exact same site as the Sargasso base of the Center for Advanced Lombax Research in Ratchet's dimension.
Rivet's bed in her hideout is in actuality the body of a repurposed spaceship with the cockpit gutted and converted into a bedding arrangement. The wings and nose section of the ship, as well as the cockpit's roof have all been removed. Interestingly, the body of this ship heavily resembles that of typical Lombax ships seen in the series previously, such as Aphelion or Alister Azimuth's ship. It is very possible this ship is the remains of the craft that Rivet herself arrived on Sargasso in when she was a young child. The reason why Rivet may have used this ship as a bed is that she found it to be perhaps the only connection to her past Lombax lineage, and as a result took comfort from it. The circumstances of how Rivet came to live on Sargasso or who sent her is however unknown.
Although many sandsharks are seen coming out of rifts leading from Sargasso in other locations, and skeletons of some can be seen in the acid swamps and outside Rivet's hideout, they are never fought on the planet itself in Rift Apart. An early promotional image for Rift Apart also features Ratchet and Clank riding a Speetle on Sargasso and escaping from a group of sandsharks. They were heavily setup to be enemies on Sargasso, but for an unknown reason were removed from the planet in the final game and are primarily fought on planet Savali instead.
The cover art for Rift Apart portrays Ratchet on Sargasso and Rivet in Nefarious City, however in the final game the planets playable as each character are the opposite. Sargasso is only playable as Rivet and Nefarious City is only playable as Ratchet. Rivet is only seen in Nefarious City in cutscenes at the beginning of the game and does not return again until the end credits sequence. Ratchet also does not visit Sargasso during the events of Rift Apart and likewise only appears there in the end credits sequence. Additionally, early promotional art and the announcement trailer for Rift Apart feature Ratchet and Clank on Sargasso riding a Speetle. It seems Sargasso was originally going to be a Ratchet level but during development it was changed to be for Rivet instead and artwork depicting this was not changed.
Inside each level of Rift Apart are hidden easter eggs in the form of a dark orb with the logo of Insomniac Games marked on them. Some major locations also have more than one. The logo was intended to be a sky blue color the same as the official Insomniac Games' logo, but due to a graphical glitch it appears as a mix of blues and purples. They are not related in anyway to game progression or trophies and are simply placed in out of view locations for players to happen upon as pieces of the level environment. When they are hit by a weapon, a burst of confetti will emit from them and they will freely roll around the area. If the player refreshes the area, they will be reset again. An orb on Sargasso can be found in the southwest area of the map, at the base of a pumping platform covered in overgrown plantlife.
Previously, the grunthors on the planet were targeted extensively by poachers and became endangered. The Nefarious Empire however, cracked down on poaching operations and the Grunthor's numbers swelled. This very likely was not done to save the species however and had ulterior motives. The Emperor may have disliked the fact that poachers were making large sums of profits from illegal venues outside his Empire for personal gain and not contributing to his own economy.
In Ratchet's dimension, the troglosaurs have four legs, while in Rivet's dimension they have six legs. The six legged variant is closer to their concept art from Tools of Destruction, when they were originally named the Scopulosaurus.
Planet Sargasso and one of it's many flying insects were the very first things shown from Rift Apart in the game's announcement trailer from June 2020.
Tributes[]
Throughout Rift Apart, collectibles named CraiggerBears can be found as tribute to developer Craig Goodman, with one in each major location and nine in total. Collecting one earns the Bronze trophy "It's So Fluffy!" and all nine earns the Gold trophy "UnBEARably Awesome". The one on Sargasso can be found inside Rivet's hideout on her couch next to a television set. Additionally, turning on this television will unlock the Bronze trophy "Lombax and Chill".