As some of you may know, I play a lot of videogames. One series that holds a very special place in my heart is the Ratchet and Clank games from Insomniac Studios. The games in the main storyline are single-player third-person shooters with heavy platforming elements.
But the gameplay specifics are beside the point. The first game (from 2002) starts with Clank (the smart one) stealing a spaceship and promptly getting shot down where he crash-lands near where Ratchet is building a spaceship. Ratchet sees the crash and goes to investigate, finds Clank in a shutdown state. Now would probably be a good time to properly introduce the characters. Ratchet, the main character, is a Lombax, which is essentially a bipedal cat. He is mostly impulsive, and always is looking for something to make a bigger boom. Clank is a small, (usually) very intelligent robot, often providing advice or translating from nerd-speak to something Ratchet can understand. Cover art from the first game and the most recent game can be found at the top.
Back to plot. Ratchet was missing one critical component to his spaceship, the robotic ignition system. Clank just so happens to have this system. He also happens to have information that Supreme Executive Chairman Drek of the Blarg is planning to take chunks of planets to create a new homeworld for his people. This has the 'unfortunate' side-effect of also destroying those planets. Clank wants to take this information to Captain Copernicus Qwark (see image). This is pretty much Ratchet's call to adventure, since it involves him leaving the planet he grew up on. There isn't much of a refusal to the call, since Ratchet had wanted to get off that planet to begin with.
As Ratchet and Clank go about the galaxy chasing after reports of Captain Qwark, Ratchet meets many strange people, acquires many useful gadgets, and struggles through many trials, most of them involving combat. Clank serves the role of mentor for the most part. Eventually he confronts Chairman Drek in person and defeats him, marking the end of the first game. As we find out in the second game, Ratchet and Clank become Galactic Rangers since they pretty much saved the galaxy themselves. Yeah, Captain Qwark turned out to be more celebrity than hero. This is not quite a full return to a normal world, but it's a new normal for them, and it suits them better.
The later games follow similar arcs, each building on the previous and developing the characters of Ratchet and Clank more. Ratchet becomes less wide-eyed at the world, growing into a very capable fighter renowned across the galaxy. Clank undergoes less character development, though he gets slightly more cynical after the disappointment that was Captain Qwark.
My particular attachment to this series comes from the fact that the second game of the series was the first videogame that I ever played. That was when I was about 6 years old, and I wasn't very good. I was terrified of failing, so I didn't get very far. As I've grown up and matured, Ratchet also matured, and got better at being clever about how he approached things, which was something I also wanted to do.
