Nefarious’s schemes have gone up in smoke, and the Solana Galaxy has been saved once more. Our heroes can finally relax and enjoy the premier of the latest Secret Agent Clank holofilm.
But just because they’re done doesn’t mean we are. Like Going Commando before it, Up Your Arsenal includes one of the coolest unlockables I have ever seen in a video game: The Insomniac Museum, where cut and unfinished content is given a chance to see the light of day of that curious minds like my own can get just a tiny glimpse into the game design process.
This episode is dedicated solely to that exploration.
Being able to see for ourselves how difficult that first Qwark vid-comic was before Insomniac retooled them to be more friendly is eye-opening. I can absolutely see a scenario where a 10-year-old kid isn’t able to get to the end of the game because they do not have the skill necessary to complete it. Since Insomniac already had a problem with that after some children had difficulty with the Glider segments in Going Commando, I imagine they were extra sensitive to this particular feedback.
Additionally, it’s fun to see what kind of weapons get left on the cutting room floor. Judging by both the museum in this and the previous game, many of the weapons we see get cut are cut because they would balloon the animation budgets for the game just by their existence. This is no longer the case in modern design, at least not to the same extent, because weapons like the Groovatron force the team to make a dancing animation for every enemy in the game, including bosses, but now that they’re no longer limited by the PlayStation 2’s paltry RAM and disc read speeds, that’s probably also been a huge boon.
It’s an incredible snapshot of an era where the game development process was far more resource and technology constrained than it is now. We’ve come a long way since then, for better and for worse.
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