Rocksteady studios talked with The Guardian today about the size of Arkham in Batman Arkham Knight. As their reporter found out, the city may be portrayed at its largest yet.
As brand marketing producer Dax Ginn explains, this Arkham will be five times as big as the one gamers got to play in in Arkham City, but it will retain the high level of detail they have set for it. Ginn says it is the culmination of their dream to represent Arkham in its entirety.
Part of that representation demands giving a different flavor to different areas of the city, so they have the familiar neon signs and Gothic spires from the comics, a distinctly orientalized China Town district,a clock tower straight out of, well, Clock Tower, and so forth.
Much of the popular gameplay mechanics returns, but apparently, the Batmobile doesn’t just break up the old formula. It is literally the epicenter of everything around the game’s design. Ginn again attempts to convince us that the technical requirements to depict the Batmobile as they desired it meant that it would not be possible to make the game for the PS3 or Xbox 360.
You could think of the Batmobile as a high level summon. You can make it come to you with the push of a button, and a cutscene will activate showing the big bats entering it with a lot of flair. The Tumbler, the breakaway part of the car, has also made it into this game, so don’t be surprised if a certain truck chase scene gets an ode in it somehow, living Joker or not be damned.
The report makes note of framerate issues, which we hope to see resolved in the final product, but in the end, it points out that the Batmobile may have changed the game’s design as well. Whereas it is commonly referred to as a Metroidvania, now it seems open sandbox, now more a GTAlike, which is good or bad news depending on where you sit. You can decide for yourself if this assessment is accurate when Batman Arkham Knight releases to Playstation 4, Xbox One, and Windows on October 14.
