Batman: Arkham Knight AMA with Rocksteady Studios

Gaz Deaves, Rocksteady Studios’ Marketing Manager hosted an AMA on Reddit this afternoon on the upcoming Batman: Arkham Knight!

Gaz Deaves at Rocksteady said the following about the game in the Reddit AMA:

Riddler has an awesome storyline this time around. His desire to defeat Batman on an intellectual playing field means their conflicts are ALWAYS personal, and the dialogue team have been having a great time writing for him. Don’t want to spoil too much about his role!

Riddler

We’ve made a few tweaks to the control scheme – L1/LB is used to call the Batmobile, and it’ll come to you remotely almost anywhere in the city. If you think about it, worrying about where you parked your car doesn’t really feel like a Batman problem! So it’s great to just be able to call on it any time.
Detective mode is now on the d-pad, alongside the gadget selector. It feels like a natural place for it to live.

Xbox One Controller

PS4 Controller

The destructible elements of the city are one of the most fun things about driving the Batmobile around – we want the car to feel totally unstoppable and awesome. So concrete barriers, bollards, road signs, lamp posts, the corners of buildings, other cars, and loads more are all fair game for you to crash through in the Batmobile. It feels AMAZING.

When we switched across to developing for new-gen platforms, it was essential that we build our city with all that extra power in mind. We wanted our version of Gotham to be bigger, more detailed and more awesome than anything that had been done before. A lot of the design of the city was influenced by how we wanted gameplay to feel. For example, we tested the Batmobile on Arkham City maps early in development, and realised that we needed an environment with slightly wider roads and a little more space to create the feeling of freedom that we wanted from the driving.

Batman: Arkham Knight map

The Batsuit went through a lot of iterations, and actually it wasn’t finalised until shortly before we announced the game last year. We wanted the design to mirror the Batmobile, and create this connection between man and machine. When you unlock the new suit, it opens up a load of new abilities, in combat, navigation, and interaction with the Batmobile.

Batman Arkham knight Batsuit front view

Batman Arkham Knight Batsuit cape view

Batman Arkham Knight Batsuit back view

We’ve said in lots of interviews that the size of the environment in Batman: Arkham Knight is around five times the size of Arkham City. But it’s not just bigger in terms of the footprint, it’s much taller – the skyscrapers in some parts of the city are super tall, for example, Wayne Tower. Diving off the very tall buildings really gives me that ‘I AM BATMAN’ feeling!

Batman Arkham Knight

We’ll be talking more about how Red Hood and Harley play later in the campaign. But I can say they’re both very different – from Batman and from each other – and their gameplay reflects their personalities in ways that feel totally natural when you pick up the controller.

Red Hood and Harley Quinn

The design of the Batmobile was primarily influenced by the kind of gameplay functions we wanted it to fulfil. It needs to be fast, fun to drive and pretty much unstoppable – that informed features like the large tires and wide wheelbase, since you’re going to be able to drive over and/or through all kinds of obstacles. We wanted the ejector seat to be a big feature, and so it made sense for us to put the cockpit quite far forward compared to the classic ‘dragster’ design that some Batmobiles have used. We drew a lot of inspiration from the Batmobile in Arkham Asylum – things like the exhaust ports on the side are similar in our new design. The thing we really wanted was to make an awesome, intimidating machine that works as Batman’s most powerful gadget.