*This article is compiled from IGN US and is not reproduced without authorization.
After the first release of Ricky & Tinker Bells: Time Jump, a question came to everyone's mind: Who is this handsome new character of Longbacchus?
After months of speculation, we finally learned that her name was "Rivet" (literally rivet) – a name that could not be perfect for an otherworldly warrior who could rival Ratchet (literally a ratchet). But for developer Insomniac, finalizing Levitt's personality, her positioning in Time And Space Jump, and even deciding on her name is not an easy task.
At this year's GDC conference, Insomniac chief designer Mark Stuart gave a presentation titled "Lessons from Longbacchus: A Case Study of Ricky and Tinker Bell: A Time-Time Jump." In his speech, Stuart introduced the beginnings and ends of The Name and Design of Levitt to the conference attendees. He said That Levitt grew out of a core idea of Time-Time Jump, which is that "everyone is a hero," which meant they wanted to create a "strong heroine who could operate" and work with Ricky to pick up the girder.
At first, Levitt's code name was "Ratchette" (that is, to feminize Ricky's name, roughly translated to "Ricky"), but this soon became a scrap because Ratchette was "too much like a nickname" and "dwarfed her to a sexually transfigured version of Ricky."
Next, things got a little silly.
"For a while, we called her 'Ricky', after all, she was equivalent to Ricky's allogeneic isotope. We called it this for a while, but in the end we got the script confused. For example: "Ricky needs to rescue Ding-Dong and Ricky, but Ricky doesn't believe Ricky and fights Nepharis for years." At that time, we were still constantly changing the script, and we often couldn't figure out which time and space story we were writing, and we often couldn't figure out which Ricky we were talking about."
Stuart says they then changed the code name to "Gadget" (literally, props). It's a bit better than continuing to call Ricky, but the members of the team who grew up in the 80s were unhappy because there were a lot of characters in the '80s who called it that name (he gave the examples of the protagonist of "Detective Gajet" and the mouse girl Ajie in "Squirrel Wars", both of whom were named Gadget).
Later, at a weekly meeting, when team members were discussing names, someone casually mentioned "Rivet" (rivet), and people immediately liked it. Like the name Ratchet, this belongs to the category of hardware, and it is easy to think of the image of "Rossi the Rivet Worker". So, Levitt's name was settled.
This version of Levitte, because of her dislike of Nefalis, hates Ya and U, and is very resistant to all machinery. She chooses to embrace nature and can tame three mounts: a Beetle, a flying mount, and an Agorian beast (the enemy mount in Ricky and Ding-Dong Rift in Time and Space, with two huge fangs and a horn on its head).
Levitte's ability to tame beasts was eventually rejected, in part because Ricky was much more fun than Revitt in this version. His conventional abilities have allowed him to do what Levitte needs the help of the Beast to achieve. However, there is another consideration for cutting this version.
Stuart said: "We realized that 'women who like nature' are a common routine. For example, "The Last Rainforest", "Wind in the Wind" and "Starfire Fox" Krystal (Blue Fox Heroine) are all like this. What's more, the Ricky & Tinker Bell series is known for being creative, and adding thematic restrictions to her weapons will stifle that idea. Ricky's weapons can teleport, cut, throw bombs, and transform. If Levitt's weapons are limited to the theme of nature, it will give us unnecessary restrictions."
However, the nature theme also provides some inspiration for Levitt's weapons, such as the "Happy Mushroom". Some of the concepts of beasts have also been recycled, becoming the "Speeding Beetle" and the flying mount "Chudi" in "Time Jump". The early setting of the Flying Beetle also has a big glowing ass that explodes if it hits something else. However, sending the mount to death is not in line with the concept of "everyone is a hero", so the game was not retained in the end.
But Insomniac still needs to find a good way to distinguish Levitt from Ricky. They tried to give them a completely different skill set, but it made the testers very unhappy — they often forgot which Lombachian they were manipulating, or jumped into mid-air to find out they didn't have a skill. So Insomniac added a function that could switch between the two at any time, but it was still very confusing to play, and they didn't come up with a reasonable setting to explain: Where did the other Longbacchus go after the substitution? Also, who should be in the cutscene?
Stuart said: "We understood that mixing two very different styles of gameplay would seriously damage the full experience, so we had to rethink how long each Lombachian should have to play, or in other words: is Levitte a nishiki, or is it the icing on the cake?" Is she the same core character as Ricky, or will she provide unique and delightful little side quests that appear from time to time throughout the game to give the player a taste? After all, most games have very different mechanics from Ricky,but each time his parts aren't long. Jingle Bells are generally seen as the icing on the cake. If Levitt's parts were short and concentrated in one place, the problems we encountered would all be solved."
But the answer is right in front of you, in the core idea of the game, "Everyone is a hero". Insomniac wanted to include an actionable, strong heroine from the start, and wanted to create a game that was very featured from start to finish. That means there's no shortcut, and they can't be lazy in the role of Levitt.
"Levitt has to be 'Nishiki' like Ricky," Stuart continues, "and we want to make Levitt the heart of the game." Including her is to inspire people, not just to add a new mechanism. In fact, in the final game, she spends 50% of her play time."
And that's where the Levitt we know came from. Insomniac ultimately chose to have Levitt and Ricky share weapons and skills, and then use other things to distinguish them, such as personality, appearance, animation, and most obvious thing : the plot. We're thrilled that Insomniac has finalized this version of Revital, as you can see from our 9-point review and IGN Game of the Year 2021 nomination list.
Note: After this article was published, Sam Maggs, who was the lead writer of "Ricky and Jingle Bell: Time Jump" for a year and a half, shared more behind-the-scenes stories on Twitter. Maggs played an important role in Therawitt's creation, and several Insomniac employees say she named It.
She walked through a string of tweets about the process of coming up with the name. She says she starts with three core concepts:
It is best to name it after a hardware tool or mechanism
There should be two syllables, which sounds similar to how Ricky feels
It is best to end with a hard tone
It can be seen that "Gadget" is very suitable for these three conditions, which is why they used this code name in the early stages of development. Maggs says that while there are several alternative names, such as "Socket" and "Hammer," "Levitt" immediately won over the team.
Maggs concludes, "I think the narrative that determines the game is far more complicated than 'what someone said at the meeting.' Naming is especially difficult! It's actually the hardest thing I've ever done in most games, and I'm super nasty, hahahahaha. That's a little bit of behind-the-scenes story that I've brought with me."