The Terror of Talos is a minor boss in Up Your Arsenal. It is an immense, green-skinned, reptilian creature, with large wings capable of flight for prolonged periods, and arm-mounted blasters. It has two pairs of arms and wears armor covering the torso and shoulders. It is capable of breathing fire, and is aided by giant ninjas. The creature itself is fought at the end of the mission "Film a Secret Agent Clank Episode", in which it appears as the final boss for Giant Clank at the end of the Secret Agent Clank episode, "Maxmillian Strikes Back". In the episode, Clank defeats the Terror of Talos to rescue the baroness, played by Courtney Gears.
Combat[]
Clank defeats the Terror of Talos.
Terror of Talos in combat.
Behind the scenes[]
Concept art of the Terror of Talos.
Mike Stout designed the Terror of Talos, along with the rest of the Clank segment of the mission, and was inspired by Godzilla movies. In his original design, the Terror of Talos would be controlled by a puppeteer in a monster suit from a robot head, with six arms controlled with little strings. When Stout pitched this to the programming team, they were receptive to it, but when pitching it to the art and animator teams, they felt that the design was not feasible, due to technical limitations of the PlayStation 2 and an unreasonable amount of animation work required for a single boss.[1]
A meeting discussing the Terror of Talos was used by Brian Allgeier, design director on many games in the Ratchet & Clank series, included this argument it in a speech at DICE. The meeting was set up with Allgeier, Mike Stout, and around six other artists and animators. Stout was very proud of his design, but the artists and animators systematically took apart the design and why it would not work. He was then set off by a comment made in jest suggesting that Stout had designed it by rolling dice and landing on ideas. This led to a meltdown and a huge breakdown in communications, with Stout yelling at the rest of the team, after which there was a tone shift in the room as it went silent and much more serious. Stout in hindsight believes he was incorrect, as he at the time took it personally that the others didn't want an idea he thought was brilliant.[1]
In Ratchet & Clank, the working name for planet Rilgar was originally "planet Talos".[2]
A similar fictional creature, the mechanical monster, appeared in Secret Agent Clank as a boss.
Citations[]
References[]
- Video games
- Insomniac Games (2002). Ratchet & Clank [Game]. Sony Computer Entertainment. PlayStation 2.
- Insomniac Games (2004). Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal [Game]. PlayStation 2.
- Videos
- Stout, Mike; Garcia, Tony [@uselesspodcasts] (2012, August 13). Ratchet & Clank 3 Dev Commentary: 23 - Secret Agent Clank [Video]. YouTube.