Do I need to play the previous games to understand the story?

[Hugobossman]

I played the R&C series since the ps2 games and played some of the ps3 ones too. However I've not touched the newer ones as I stopped playing on console some years back.

I just wanted to know if the story will be hard to follow after not playing the recent entries?

Thanks in advance

[tartz]

nah it won't be hard to follow don't worry

[Dr. Peppermill]

No. This was my first R&C game (on PS5). It's an action / platformer game, you don't need previous knowledge to enjoy it.

[Zandatsu]

If you played the OG trilogy then you're pretty much good in terms of the foundation of the story

If you wanna know all the little details then I guess it depends on which Ps3 game you stopped at

If you stopped at Tools of Destruction then you should be okay but miss the significance of some story elements, but otherwise you have the entire foundation of the story.

Crack in Time (game after Tools of Destruction) only progressed the story lore as it gave Clank a true origin and further progressed the search for the lombaxes and Ratchets desire to both find them and keep his current life... it also re-introduced Dr Nefarious and cemented him as the permanent villain and arch nemesis to Ratchet and Clank.

Into the Nexus is barely progression for the Lombax story, it just is them stopping someone else from using the Dimension device incorrectly... BUT the very last scene of the game is a direct set-up for the beginning of Rift Apart

All 4 One, Full Frontal Assault, and the PS4 remix of the OG game do not progress the Lombax story at all

So yeah, TL;DR- since you played the OG games, you're pretty much golden you'll only miss the lore that's been set up and really expanded upon in Tools of Destruction, Crack in Time, and Into The Nexus (again, ITN really didn't progress much, but the beginning of Rift Apart is directly after the ending scene of Into the Nexus)