Batatat: Arkham City 5x Bigger Than Asylum
Last December I told Rocksteady that I wouldn't be using correct grammar in my Arkham City posts until they released some in-game footage (see here, and here). Today Gamespot published an interview with Sefton Hill, game director at Rocksteady, containing a few new details on Arkham City. But do we have any footage? Do we heck. So, here we go.
Batamn! He moves though the night, like a fart or other invisible thing. But how will you and I be moving down the meanie streets of arkham city? How big will it be? As big as a REAL CITY? Why will we do it? Only batman knows, and hes not telling. But also Sefton Hill knows, and he says.,.
He says that Arkham City will have a "footprint" five times bigger that arkham asylum! I have draw what that is look like.
Why, Sefton? Why did you make your game so big?
"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."
Fasinating. Do you see? With Arkham Asylum we were all "Oh, oh, it is so fun to feel literally inside the batman" but in truth we were missing the most vital part of batmam, which is the flying around a city and doing a BOO! at a crinimal. Oh, crinimals, when will you learn. How many boos will it take.
"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...
...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."
Just like Batman, who also makes the right decision to take action to the streets because sitting at home with a television never got anybody henywhere. THis will be a goood game. This is quinns, over and out
* I'm just going to step out of bad grammar mode for a second to ask the audience how on Earth you can provide the "authentic" experience of being an imaginary man.