while playing chess in their penthouse in the bogon galaxy, ratchet (james arnold taylor) and clank (david kaye) receives word that his home planet, veldin, is under attack by an army of tyhrranoids. posing as an officer in the galactic rangers, he leads an assault that drives off the invaders, who appear to use very sophisticated weapons and equipment. at a post-victory briefing, the galactic president informs the duo that a robotic villain known as dr. nefarious (armin shimerman) is believed to be responsible for organizing the invasion. as very little is known about nefarious, the rangers decide to track down the only man to have ever beaten him: captain qwark (jim ward). ratchet discovers a feral qwark living with an indigenous tribe on planet florana and takes him to the starship phoenix, where he meets ranger captain, sasha phyronix (leslie carrara-rudolph). upon regaining his sanity after watching his old adventures reenacted via vid-comics, qwark forms the "q-force", an "elite" squad that answers only to him, and orders ratchet, clank, and q-force operative skidd mcmarx (neil flynn) to infiltrate nefarious's base on planet aquatos. hacking his database, clank obtains a map of tyhrranosis, the tyhrranoid home world. after ratchet succeeds in killing the tyhrranoid queen, dr. nefarious sends a transmission, mocking the q-force; big al (chris hatfield), the technical expert of the team, traces it to a munitions factory on planet daxx.