Captain Qwark

Captain Qwark is a fictional character from Insomniac Games' Ratchet & Clank video game series. He first appeared in the 2002 video game Ratchet & Clank as a game's antagonist. In the series, Qwark is a selfish, deluded coward willing to do daring acts in order to gain money and publicity. He also has been known to temporarily side with the villains and betray his allies in order to save himself. However, as of the end of the third game, he has become much more moral, though he still remains a coward.

Video game reviewers have provided different opinions regarding the character. Some criticized his personality calling he is "idiot" and "coward", while others praised his role as a villain.

Appearances

In Ratchet & Clank, he was Drek's secret henchman. Despite being known as a hero, he was being paid money to be Drek's spokesperson of his new artificial planet and took advantage of the offer. Drek noticed Ratchet and Clank's interference with his plans, so had Qwark trick them into a battle with the Blargian Snagglebeast on a training death course. Ratchet and Clank still defeated the monster and survived the death course. Drek was upset with Qwark's failure and ordered Qwark to personally eliminate the duo in a spacefight or he would be fired. Qwark failed again and after being fired, went to try making money selling gadgets as a fake alias "Steve McQwark" (claiming the defective gadgets to be Gadgetron products), such as the Personal Delivery Assistant, which could be used to purchase ammo anywhere away from a Gadgetron vendor, and most notably a device called a "Personal Hygenator".

In Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando, Qwark served as the main villain. He used his "Steve" alias and attempted to make bolts off his Personal Hygenators. The device caused itching pains for its users and alerted authorities to his scam. Qwark was charged 6 billion bolts in fines to the purchasers, but Qwark was unable to pay the fine and when he tried to flee to Pokitaru, was sent to galactic prison, but escaped by flushing himself down one of the toilets in the prison.

Afterwards, Qwark was assumed lost or dead by authorities. With nobody on his tail, Qwark secretly kidnapped Abercrombie Fizzwidget, the president of the MegaCorp company, and disguised himself as Fizzwidget. Qwark, as Fizzwidget, then hired Ratchet and Clank to retrieve the MegaCorp main Protopet, which was stolen by Angela Cross. Then, Qwark would record himself on TV destroying the Protopets by destroying the main one linked to all the others, thus saving the galaxy and regaining his title as galactic hero. Qwark also planned on placing the blame of the Protopets' destructive nature on Ratchet and Clank.

His plans ultimately failed when he tried to press the button to destroy the lead Protopet. The batteries of the device used to do so were in backwards, and instead it mutated the Protopet into a giant Protopet. The giant Protopet ate Captain Qwark and the device. Ratchet and Clank managed to defeat the giant Protopet which resulted in Qwark and the device being released. Angela Cross then took the device and fixed it so she could fix all of the Protopets. Qwark was then sentenced to take part in the MegaCorp testing facility's painful new "Crotchitizer" invention as punishment for his crimes.

In Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal, Qwark fled to the Florana jungles after leaving the MegaCorp testing facility. He had gone mad and forgotten everything previous to joining the monkeys there. Ratchet and Clank had heard he previously had defeated Dr. Nefarious and were sent by the galactic president to search Florana for him. They captured Qwark and brought him aboard the Starship Phoenix, where Ratchet and Clank played Qwark's vid-comics to refresh his memory.

Once remembering his past life, Qwark was assigned as leader of the Starship Phoenix by the galactic president in the task of taking down Dr. Nefarious again, who had returned and was seeking to turn the whole universe into robots. Qwark mainly sent Ratchet and Clank out to do all the dangerous work while he sat around and took all the credit.

Ratchet and Clank eventually found out that Nefarious was aboard a starship called the Leviathan. The duo went with Qwark and Scrunch (a monkey) to confront the villain. Nefarious had turned out to have tricked them and ordered his butler, Lawrence, to teleport him off the Leviathan as he activated the self-destruct system. Qwark elected to stay behind because he said he saw something important. The ship blew up and it was assumed that Qwark died with the Leviathan.

In reality, Qwark had faked his death so he could stop helping the defeat of Nefarious and instead could retreat to his house to live a lazy life of eating and watching TV. Ratchet and Clank found him and were frustrated with his cowardice, but he still refused to help. Shockingly, in the final battle against Nefarious, Qwark returned in his starship to help defeat him.

In Ratchet: Deadlocked, Qwark plays a minor role and only appears as a voice over at the end claiming that the whole hero-kidnapping business was rubbish as no one ever tried to kidnap him, as Ratchet and his friends escape from the ruins of the Colosseum.

In Ratchet & Clank: Size Matters, Qwark began following Ratchet and Clank to see what they were doing in hopes of joining them in their next adventure. Ratchet and Clank agreed to let Qwark use their ship's computer to research his family history in return for him leaving them alone. Qwark found that his dad was Emperor Otto Destruct of the Technomites, who was planning to make himself big and begin getting credit for all the work he did. After Ratchet and Clank defeated Otto, however, Qwark discovered he was wrong and his parents were killed by defective Technomite technology. He put Otto in Otto's Intelligence Machine, planned to use to trade his intelligence with Otto's intelligence. Otto used his shrink device to shrink Qwark before it happened, but because of that, was given the intelligence of Skrunch the monkey instead of Qwark. Tiny Qwark was taken to Ratchet and Clank's apartment where they kept him hostage there. In the following games, Qwark has somehow returned to normal size.

In Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction, Qwark sends a distress call to Ratchet and Clank after he is attacked by Emperor Tachyon's forces. Though he appears to side with Tachyon, he is in fact working as a double agent, helping Ratchet and Clank from behind the scenes. He later attempts to destroy the Dimensionator, but only ends up accidentally giving Tachyon the device. He is present when the Zoni kidnap Clank.

In Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack in Time, he actively assists Ratchet in rescuing Clank from Dr. Nefarious at various points throughout the game. First he accompanies Ratchet through an early portion of the story, breaking down otherwise impassable doors and obstacles. He was soon captured by the evil Lord Vorselon and taken to his warship along with a large group of aliens called Fongoids. Soon, Ratchet confronts Vorselon and frees Qwark and the Fongoids, who leave the ship using an escape pod. Later on, Ratchet finds him at the Battleplex, where they team up to take on the War Grok; After Ratchet defeats it, The announcer demands they kill it. Qwark delivers a heartfelt speech about heroics, which changes the attitude of the crowd, and they spare the War Grok; Qwark then decides to keep it as a pet, naming it Snowball. After that, Qwark goes undercover as "Nurse Shannon" and infiltrates Nefarious' base. A newly reunited Ratchet and Clank soon show up and together the three fight through waves of enemies, though eventually get captured by several robots and Ratchet and Clank are thrown into space. Later, Qwark and Snowball are seen fighting Nefarious' troops while Ratchet and Clank go to confront Nefarious. After the game, a cutscene reveals Qwark and Snowball flowing through space on a small asteroid, ending with Snowball becoming hungry and presumably eating Qwark off-screen.

The upcoming comic book mini-series reveals Qwark survived and has become the new Galactic President of Polaris. He calls Ratchet and Clank to investigate the disappearance of several planets.

Conception and creation

Captain Qwark was a late addition in Ratchet & Clank: Going Commando; halfway through production of the game, the development team, having missed the character, shoehorned him into the game with a series of vignettes before making him the main villain of the game.^[1]

Reception

In his review of Ratchet & Clank, Gavin Frankle of Allgame stated that Captain Qwark's scenes (along with Chairman Drek's) proved to be more entertaining than those of the main characters.^[2] He was included in GameSpot's "All Time Greatest Video Game Villain" contest and reached the "Round 2" before losing to General RAAM.^[3] IGN ranked him 54th on their list of "The Top 100 Videogam Villains", saying Qwark's "biggest fault, [...], is his cowardice".^[4] Qwark was listed by GamesRadar on its "The Top 7 Bestest Frenemies".^[5] In 2012, ScrewAttack ranked him as the tenth "douchiest" video game character, adding he is very similar to Groose from Skyward Sword and Zapp Brannigan from Futurama, and "is an idiot... and a coward."^[6]

References