Why The Ratchet & Clank Soundtrack Is A Perfect Fit 

Is R&C why your music account is called Afrolizer?

Hah and to think i almost left it out cause i thought nobody would notice

Yeah that cracked me up too 😂

Thieves in Time might have suffered storywise, but I think the game still played pretty good. I wish people wouldn't dump on it so much

@@koen632 i actually had a great time with Thieves in Time, but i just knew if i didn't comment on that someone would point it out :p

where? i lost it lol

You could see it as a home away from home. like a vacation... which is the theme of pokitaru.

In size matters?

veldin and pokitaru were always my favorite tracks as a kid, and twas until more than 10 years later that i realized they were the same. They probably made it for veldin, realized it was a CERTIFIED BANGER and couldn't use it for only 2minutes which is the tutorial and then you can't come back, so they reused it for a long level in the game (one of the few unskippable ones to make sure you hear that masterpiece)

@@jacobobobo4404 they actually made pokitaru first. I see it as pokitaru is, at least in comparison to the other planets, like a second home. therefore the theme is similar to veldin hehe

If you wanted to make thematic reason for sounding the same then you could look at it as polar opposites in ratchets journey. Ratchets home was a barren desert but at least it was peaceful, there was no signs there was fighting or any sort of trouble outside a few pests at home. Meanwhile pokitaru is what ratchet must've dreamed of going to when making his ship, it's a paradise world but when he gets there it's under attack and instead of lounging on the beach he's fighting on land and air every second he's there.

Holopee? Oh shit

That's sad. When people are saying they listen to games soundtrack on regular basis instead of something on a level of music, not soundtrack, and don't even see a problem in telling people they do.

@@meyearsago-lc8bq damn bro who hurt you?

@@meyearsago-lc8bq Huh, I had no idea people could be so bitter towards others based on their own short comings in life. Pretty crazy

@@meyearsago-lc8bq what's wrong with you? Lol

@@meyearsago-lc8bq Then what about the case of soundtracks that are mainly played by singers from other games like Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy and Sonic the Hedgehog as an example? you might not like these soundtracks, but how are those pieces any different from music at all?

Interesting... I played this game when it was first released as a kid, and I now too have a huge love for dnb 😅

Wow. Didn't even realize that... Grew up on the PS2 R&C games and I also love Jungle/DnB

Lmao didn't expect to see those eyes here! Thanks so much!

"Put it in the slot... the weapons you need upgraded... put it in the slot"

@@hennyzhi2261 “I can take your puny little weapon, and turn it into a powerful piece of equipment…”

Just make sure you ask for ID....cant be selling deadly weapons to a minor.

@@memorizedvisions Listen I swear the kid LOOKED 18…

hey wait a minute I know this guy

unfortunately insomniac wants more of cinematic music

Yeah, I really don't get it... It just sounds really generic

@@norsborg2379 well isn't that am bitch! Dave has really kickstarted this series with a boom. Shame that he doesn't do them anymore

i fall asleep to the new games soundtrack. it's so boring.

@@whodatninja439 I know right!?

oooh you're gonna have to, i don't even know where i would start with GC haha

@@otspect yes that entire second soundtrack is filled with super interesting rhythmic ideas, it's super fascinating!

@@aster6000 I look forward to hearing it when you finally get your head around it!

@@aster6000 You have earned a subscriber, dude if you wanted to make videos like this you could. You are really good at it. You could become a youtuber if you wanted to.

Absolutely, for A Crack In Time they brought a new composer on board, Michael Bross, replacing Bergeaud. I also feel like the soundtracks haven't been as memorable since, but it's a little bit more complicated because i suspect it was a concious decision by Insomniac to go for a different style. I wish he was brought back though, even just once every other game or so

Bergeaud still composed the soundtrack until Quest for Booty, but after that they've had various composers. One thing I love about A Crack in Time is the radio stations. There's so much good music there! I love Pirate Radio and Deep Space Jams the most, since rock/metal and jazz/swing are some of my favourite musical genres, so I still give ACiT some credit. But aside from that... it just hasn't been the same for so long.

@@SlyJak2 my 2 favourite are Zolar Forrest and Clank's Subconscious.

Thanks for the kind words! I tried being as objective as possible, anything else would almost be a disservice to all the work that was put into the soundtrack, but i'm afraid being objective about the third game's gonna be a challenge

I agree. Getting pretty tired of "video essays" that are just people gushing about something they like and making surface-level observations about it rather than actually talking about anything in-depth.

@@jerrodshack7610 "WHY X MOVIE IS A CINEMATIC MASTERPIECE BECAUSE IT REALLY GOOD"

Glad you're liking it! Yea i personally keep coming back to the soundtrack aswell whenever i need to focus

I'm really looking forward to hearing how the Rift Apart soundtrack holds up, sadly can't get my hands on a PS5 atm so i'm trying not to spoil anything big :/

@@aster6000 If you were to listen to the soundtrack on it's own, it doesn't spoil anything. It's much better than Michael Bross' work, but it doesn't hold a candle to the PS2 era.

@@normietwiceremoved Alright! I was a little scared there could be tracks called "Nefarious kisses Clank" or something spolery haha

Yes or lego star wars, that's the first game i noticed it in

Yes, i'm still shaping my opinions on the later soundtracks because just saying "it's bad" isn't the whole story, there's a lot of good there and i think many just dislike that the direction changed. Different doesn't equal bad though!

@@aster6000 A lot depends on the context, and thus the discussion about the musical direction of the series becomes inherently connected to the subject of the direction of the series as a whole, making it more problematic. People often seem to ignore the shift in tone and storytelling and just complain that they don’t have a funky beat they can put in their mp3 library. If the music of R&C lost some of its identity, it’s because the same thing happened to these games in general. And yet, in the works of Salchow and Bross (haven’t played Rift Apart yet) I can hear these composers took time to familiarise themselves with the Bergeaud soundtracks (for example, Salchow uses not only the theremin for Nefarious, but also a slightly modified Qwark theme from the UYA vid-comics and ToD). Despite all the changes, there is a sense of continuity to me and that’s why I’m waiting for a “fair trial” of Salchow and Bross - their works might not be the greatest masterpieces of video game scoring, but I’m tired of the discussion that pretty much limits itself to “generic orchestra bad, funky PS2 beats good”. I don’t want to seem, like I’m putting some pressure on you in regard to the future videos, this essay just inspired me to try and voice my opinions on the R&C music as well, to the extent that my non-existent musical knowledge and vocabulary allow ;)

@@kubak5463 You make some very good points! The funny thing is, for me the style of the music started shifting around ToD already, while Bergeaud was still the composer. To me that indicates that Insomniac themselves wanted to push the series and its soundtrack into another direction, and it wasn't any composer's fault of "not knowing how to make good Ratchet type beats" or something like that. I feel like it also explains why Bergeaud left, Insomniac was just looking for something else and both parties were fine with that. In the end, the composers job is to realize the director's vision and not to make memorable songs. (Unless that's the vision, of course!) The question if i LIKE that change in direction is a different one.. Perhaps i'll really have to make a video some time ;)

​@@aster6000 Oh yes, you can definitely hear the shift in ToD, though it is seems to me that the major changes are in the instrumentation (more heavily focued on the orchestra) and the cutscenes receiving more music. The approach to the in-game music seems to be pretty much the same as before - there's a bunch of looping tracks for different sections of the level, but not an abundance of them. They are pretty much a collection of "gamey Ratchet tunes" similar to those from the PS2 games, only now they aspire to be more "epic" thorugh the instrumentation. At the same time, the soundtrack doesn't really tell a story any more than the previous osts did - it only goes as far as a puzzle section receiving its puzzle section track, a boss receiving his boss theme and so on (at least that's how I remember it, maybe David did sneak in some nuances that went over my head). I think that is what makes the ToD one of the weaker of Bergeaud's scores, if not the weakest one - he strayed away from the style that made his soundtracks so beloved, but the "cinematicness" we got in return was basically superficial. While the music of Ratchet 1 managed to reflect the game's "patched-up" aesthetics, the music of ToD (to me) reflects the game's uncertainty with how to blend the traditional Ratchet formula with the whole "playable Pixar movie" concept. So yeah, I certainly agree that Insomniacs and David Bergeaud parting their ways was a natural consequence of the franchise's evolution (and, of course, you don't have to like this change in direction). That's why I think that in the context of the game Boris Salchow's score for ACiT really deserves more appreciation. While on the first glance it had a similar approach as the earlier scores (just different looped tracks for different sections of the levels), the devil's in the details. The ACiT score had a bunch of recurring themes/leitmotifs/musical ideas/whatever that it didn't use caresssly - they appeared in appropriate conexts both in the cutscenes AND the gameplay. With my friend (though we both have no real musical knowledge) we actually tried to dive into the recurring elements of this score. Next to the obvious musical representations of Nefarious, Clank or the Fongoids we actually managed to identify the leitmotif of Tachyon, a character that doesn't even appear in the game! You can hear it when he is mentioned by Qwark in the prologue and then when Alister talks about his rise to power on Lumos. In the first situation it is played quickly with some high-pitched synthesisers, in the second one it's slow, quiet, arranged for brass and strings. This is some pretty standard film scoring stuff, but shows AT LEAST the competence and actual care that was put by Salchow into the project. This comment turned out much longer than I intended it to be, but hey, maybe some of this rambling will prove useful to you xD

@@kubak5463 Wow, sounds like that's just your topic! I've listened to Bergeauds soundtracks up and down but sadly can't say the same for the others, so making a video on them seems like quite a daunting task, for now at least! If you like we could talk a bit more in depth about the soundtracks when i get to making a vid about those (hoping that won't be in like 10 years or so lol). I think that would be a great help. At the moment i think my next topic would be the GC soundtrack, and how the formula's been changed up, so kinda doing it one step at a time atm

Yes

Glad you enjoyed it, this really put a smile on my face!

Hmm that's an interesting point.. I just realized, Pokitaru was the first Demo they put together right? So maybe you're on to something.

Those soundtracks got me through an embarassing amount of assignments..!

It feels like nowadays that games are everywhere, real gems are harder to find.. I'm in the same boat.. few games got me hooked in the same way R&C could but perhaps the 3d platformer resurgence can bring that back. If there's any industry where pure passion can change the landscape it's Gaming, so i've definitely not yet lost hope.