Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart PS5

Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart is great for many reasons, but the introduction of Rivet is probably the biggest one. The female Lombax from another dimension is an excellent new character in the series, and almost instantly became a fan favourite. As part of a GDC presentation, in which Insomniac Games' Mark Stuart talked about the making of this PlayStation 5 exclusive, he discussed how the studio designed the new protagonist — including her name.

As it turns out, the name Rivet was actually a fairly late revelation. For a while, she was referred to as Ratchette, but the team decided this belittled the character and put too much emphasis on her gender. Following this, she became known for a long time as Ratchet. "After all, she and Ratchet are technically dimensional counterparts," Stuart explained. "Ratchet is a non-gendered name." Of course, having two major characters both named Ratchet caused plenty of headaches: "This stuck for a while, but ultimately made every draft of the story very confusing... At a time where story treatments were being rapidly iterated on, it was hard to tell what dimension you were in, but also which Ratchet you were talking about."

Next, the character's name was changed to Gadget, but this didn't feel right to the team either. It wasn't until a meeting later in development that the name Rivet was pitched and immediately adopted.

Having two characters named Ratchet would've been wildly confusing, so we're obviously pleased that didn't happen. Nonetheless, it's a brilliant development anecdote. You can read a little more about Stuart's GDC talk over on IGN.

[source ign.com]