User:GiverOfThePeace/Regarding Higher Tiered Ratchet and Clank Arguments

Introduction

So I've seen this around some posts regarding Ratchet and Clank and I think this blog will be needed just incase future CRTs are made regarding this. Basically people will try to argue Ratchet and Clank's physicality way higher then something like wall level and this blog will be looking into this and other things such as their speed.

Ratchet and Clank Scaling Physically to Weapons

The argument I normally see for this is very odd, it falls under the logic of one being able to go through the entire game with using just Ratchet's wrench, which means he can harm enemies who can tank his weapons.

The first issue is this is a clear case of Game Mechanics, this would be equal to arguing that Link's wooden sword is 2-A because he can use it to harm Ganon, now I know some people will agree with this because that's just how the powerscaling community is, but the issue falls under this is very clearly not canon, hence why there's upgrades present for you (and why the next game shows Link with said upgrades in his case), but with Ratchet the same thing applies, Ratchet doesn't canonically use his wrench to fight bosses alone, he uses all of the weapons in his arsenal. You can even see how difficult wrench only runs are, along with this the wrench barely deals damage to late game enemies, showing it's not the optimal nor realistically developer intended way to play the game. You can do Jak 2 gunless, but that doesn't mean Jak canonically can do all of his missions without his weapons, the same applies here, Ratchet does not canonically use his wrench for everything, the only times we even directly see him use his wrench is when fighting people directly comparable to him.

The second issue falls under the sheer inconsistency of him actually being comparable to his weapons, a straight up canon thing that happens in A Crack in Time is that Alister Azimuth shoots Ratchet with an electricity attack that one-shots him. Alister's can fight enemies in game who can take hits from it too, yet Ratchet in cutscene gets one-shot, this either means that gameplay and cutscenes have ludonarrative dissonance and enemies aren't actually taking the hits from the weapons, or that Ratchet not using the wrench against them, either solution means he doesn't scale to his weapons. Though there's even more anti feats.

Ratchet is afraid of a 6 gigaton explosion he isn't in the epicenter of.

This explosion that overtime destroyed a space station was going to kill Ratchet if he didn't get pulled into space and killed Cronk and Zephyr, both of whom are comparable to Ratchet.

One of Ratchet's strongest weapons needs to be upgraded to have it's rockets deal a megaton of payload.

Ratchet was going to die to this fall if Clank didn't same him.

Ratchet thinks he can't stall something due to it being the size of a building.

Another argument is that he can harm enemies with his weapons who can harm him and vice versa. Issue is, in gameplay, Ratchet isn't "tanking hits", the very first Ratchet and Clank game explains to us how Ratchet survives hits. He is using Gadgetron's patented Nanotech system rebuilding his body from the inside out, this is why when he runs out of nanotech, he dies, and nanotech isn't only for Ratchet, virtually everyone in verse has nanotech even robots like Clank have nanotech. There's no real "tanking" going on during gameplay, it's that they have tech that passively regenerates their body each time they take damage.

I could keep going, the issue falls under that the power that Ratchet's weapons can do very clearly aren't meant to narratively scale to him physically. Thus Ratchet scaling to his weapons just make no sense.

Low 2-B to High 2-B Feats from Rift Apart

So to quickly elaborate, there's this big dimensionator object that Emperor Nefarious was going to use to "destroy the dimensions", issue is, we see the context right here, what Nerfarious is doing is opening up rifts that are slowly overtime going to destroy all the dimensions. He even further notes he will "collapse every dimension" and Rivet notes he's overclocking the dimensionator. So basically, the feat is just a Chain Reaction which scales to no one.

Ratchet and Clank being FTL

This comes from the fact that they can pilot their ship interstellar distances and in Size Matters Giant Clank can fly to different planets while reacting to meteors and stuff.

The issue here is very simple, the anti feats far outweigh Ratchet and Clank even being above Massively Hypersonic.

Here Ratchet gets tagged by a laser robot.

Here a laser comes out way before Rivet can even move, and Rivet is just alt universe Ratchet.

Rivet couldn't outrun Kit's lasers which becomes the entire reason she has a mechanical arm.

Clank views faster then light acceleration as causing temporal manipulation, which they directly need devices to do.

Clank's laser comes out instantly from Ratchet's perspective.

Lightning from cloud to ground directly blitzes Ratchet and Clank, knocking Clank out for a bit. This was considered too dangerous for Clank to be on the planet to the point that it shifts to a gameplay segment of Ratchet on his own while Clank waits on the ship.

Ratchet gets straight up blitzed by an electricity attack.

This one is from gameplay, but it was hilarious, oh also it's Ratchet getting tagged by a missile.

So this is about 7 different anti feats regarding speed (I could grab even more from gameplay too), showing that Ratchet is clearly narratively not meant to be FTL, hell from what one of the planets show, he and Clank shouldn't even be faster then lightning. The ship piloting feats are also not directly FTL because the R&C series have an inconsistent thing with either the ships traveling to the planets outside of a warp speed segment or within a warp speed segment. The only real usable feat would be the Giant Clank being capable of dodging meteors while moving through space, but Clank also directly gets blitzed by lightning and Ratchet gets blitzed by electricity.

Also any "they were off guard" arguments don't work as if we were going by the assumption that they're FTL, lightning quite literally would not be able to surprise strike them, the same with electricity, no matter how low their guard is. The lightning would be frozen from their perception.

Conclusion

Don't know if a discussion rule will be necessary for this, but I will definitely say before making a huge upgrade thread, this blog should be checked, I think this very much clarifies any of the big upgrade arguments. Anyways, ciao.