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Batman: Arkham Asylum seamlessly tied its
subject matter and mechanics into a cohesive experience that
ultimately showed how great a game could be based on a licensed
property. For the sequel, Batman leaves the confines of the asylum
and heads to the city where he'll have to deal with new threats in
a much larger setting. We spoke with Sefton Hill,
game director at Rocksteady Studios, to learn more about this new
setting and how the Dark Knight will adapt.
GameSpot: One of the great things about Batman:
Arkham Asylum is that the mechanics associated with Batman felt
true to his character and everything felt like it was placed in the
context of that universe. With that in mind, what are you doing to
expand Batman's repertoire of moves and abilities in Arkham City
and how difficult is it to keep those in line with the Batman
character?
Sefton Hill: The range of moves and abilities that
we developed for Batman in the first game were designed to meet the
threats and obstacles that gamers would find within Arkham Asylum.
We wanted to reinforce the feeling of genuinely being the Dark
Knight and then come up with a series of challenges, which best
tested these abilities. Taking the game onto the Gotham streets has
given us the opportunity to significantly increase Batman's
repertoire. Our primary goal is to deliver the "Batman in Gotham"
feeling, and this meant completely overhauling the traversal and
navigation system. We wanted the player to experience the freedom
and exhilaration of gliding down alleyways and soaring above the
skyline, and this has meant [adding] nearly twice as many moves and
animations as in the original game.
But none of this has been difficult to keep in line with Batman's
character as this is where we always start, even before we design
any challenges or locations. "What would it be fun to do as
Batman?" Once we have the answer to that question, we can then
start to make the rest of the game.
GS: As the title suggests, it seems with Arkham
City that you're trying to expand the world and give Batman a
larger arena to use his crime fighting know-how. Is the development
team going for a sandbox-style approach where players can kind of
go at their own pace--picking and choosing side missions--or will
Arkham City be more of a streamlined open-world experience?
SH: The footprint of Arkham City is about five
times bigger than Arkham Island, but our primary intention was
never to create a bigger gameworld just for the sake of it. In
Batman: Arkham Asylum, we really focused our effort on creating an
intense, pressure-cooker atmosphere by locking Batman in the
madhouse and allowing The Joker to turn up the heat. In Arkham
City, we want to take that attitude to the next level, so we
created an experience in which gamers will have a huge amount of
navigational freedom, but they will also feel the extreme pressure
of the challenges that they face. Players will be able to go
anywhere at any time, but we have made sure that players will
always have a very clear idea of where they are needed most if they
want to just stick to the core narrative path of the game. Explore
the streets of Arkham City, and you will find many side missions,
secrets, and street brawls, so players won't find it difficult to
get into some trouble if that's what they are looking for.
I wouldn't describe the game as "sandbox" because a totally open
and free-form gameworld would not allow us to create the kind of
atmosphere that we wanted to, but we don't hold your hand either.
Arkham City is its own place; a massive superprison, jam packed
with supervillains, thugs, and psychopaths. There aren't any rules,
but it has a law of its own, and this is why it is a perfect
setting for Batman. Gamers will have to think and act like the Dark
Knight if they want to survive in a place like Arkham City.
GS: Let's talk about the setting of Arkham City.
Was this the idea for the sequel's setting from the very beginning,
as suggested by the warden's secret room in Arkham Asylum? Does
this setting give you a little more creative freedom?
SH: Yes, the decision to take the second game off
of Arkham Island was really driven by our desire to set a new
creative challenge for the whole team and to give players an even
deeper and more authentic Batman experience. As soon as we had
Batman diving off rooftops and gliding between buildings, we knew
that we had made the right decision to take the action to the
streets. We began thinking about the setting for the sequel very
early on as it is important to us that gamers get a very real sense
of the narrative connection between the two games, and so, the
plans in Warden Sharp's secret room are just one example of the way
in which the two stories link together. Gamers who have played and
completed Batman: Arkham Asylum will definitely see a lot of
interesting hooks in Arkham City that connect to the events that
happened in Arkham Asylum 18 months earlier.
GS: With such a character-focused game, can you
give us some insight into how the story process works for a game
like Arkham City? Does the gameplay precede the story or do you
need to have a story framework in place and then work from there?
What's involved in the villain-selection process?
SH: For every member of the Rocksteady development
team, everything starts with the question, "What would Batman do?"
The most important thing for us is that players genuinely feel like
Batman when they play the game, and so every creative decision that
we take is made with that in mind. Then, once we have a feature in
place, we ask ourselves, "Does that make me feel like Batman?" The
narrative components are crafted to support this feeling, and we
deliberately create scenarios and select villains that enable us to
reinforce the difficult choices that Batman faces as a man and as
the ultimate crime fighter.
GS: Were there any features of Batman: Arkham
Asylum that the team knew it wanted to tweak and refine right away
when jumping to development for Arkham City? Obviously, detective
vision was one of those, but it seems like combat is also being
changed around.
SH: We reappraised every aspect of every feature
that was developed for Batman: Arkham Asylum and rethought them in
the context of the new game setting and story of Batman: Arkham
City. Thankfully, we had some very strong core systems to build
upon. Our goal was, therefore, to develop these systems and add
even more depth and gameplay instead of changing them
fundamentally. Taking the freeflow combat system as an example, the
core mechanics of this system remain in place. However, it has been
updated with lots of new features, including multiple simultaneous
counters, aerial attacks, projectile counters, environment
counters, beatdowns, the ability to combo in gadgets, new special
moves, and more. We have invested as much time and effort into the
improvements for Batman: Arkham City as we did in creating the
entire systems from scratch for Batman: Arkham Asylum, so I really
hope players will appreciate the new features and depth.
GS: Can you give us any hints on what to expect
from Arkham City's multiplayer mode?
SH: We are not making any announcements regarding
multiplayer at this time.
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