'The ending was almost taboo' - Rocksteady looks back on Arkham City
Sefton Hill on secrets, multiplayer, and 'that' ending...
By Xbox World 360 for Xbox World Magazine Subscribe now!
Batman: Arkham City was an ambitious sequel to a game that is undoubtedly one of the finest of this generation.
Not only did Rocksteady's build an open-world based on DC's storied Gotham City, but it also took hold of one of the comic book behemoth's most recognisable characters and did the unthinkable.
Following the release of Batman: Arkham City we sat down with Rocksteady's game director, Sefton Hill, to discuss all things Batman movies, games, games, multiplayer - and of course - that controversial ending.
Naturally, there's going to be plenty of spoilers ahead...
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He's the bad guy for the bad guys. He's the bogeyman. He appears out of nowhere - it's almost like he's cheating. When you watch a horror film - something like Halloween - the bad guy comes out of nowhere, he's always one step ahead, he's always got the drop on them. We wanted you to feel like that as Batman. He knows where people are going and has the ability to anticipate that, through his training and years of experience but that's hard to get across in a game.
It's quite interesting; you never see Batman go anywhere. If someone is going to meet him on the roof, he just walks out of the shadows and he's there. That was really interesting for us, to think: 'how does he get around? How does he do this without anyone knowing? How do we give the player that kind of empowerment?'
I always had a personal frustration with stealth games. When you don't know the layout of the room it's very hard for you to feel like you can get the drop on anyone. You have to bumble through it and fail a few times to build up this conceptual picture of the 3D space. We wanted players to go in and use the space to their advantage, rather than be at a disadvantage to the AI. That was the inspiration really - looking at horror films, which I'm terrified of, and looking at the classic comics.
Which movies scare you the most?
Halloween was always terrifying for me. There's a classic Spanish film about a guy who gets trapped in a telephone box - La Cabina. It terrified me, and still terrifies me today. I really can't watch them now, that's the absolute truth. I'm such a wuss.
How do you handle scary games?
It's kind of embarrassing but I almost can't play them. I played the original Resident Evil and it was terrifying. I really wanted to play System Shock 1 and 2; I started playing them and thought: 'Nope. This is terrifying me'. Turned it off.
Do you ever look at other, similar games for clues on how to do things well? Assassin's Creed and Arkham City share some similarities, for instance.
I never really played Assassin's Creed; I played it for an hour. I find that whenI play similar games my thinking gets quite constrained. It's a limitation of my own but it's more interesting if you have to come up with your own solution because it will give your game a unique feel. I try and avoid playing too much stuff in the same space.
There's certainly a load of gameplay out there that I love, and they've been inspirations in different ways through the years - even looking at modern stuff now which is just incredible. Look at Uncharted 3. The production values are really scary. It's such a competitive industry and it's so scary to see what everyone else is doing. I wish everyone else would just chill! Just stop trying so hard! Let's all just relax!
When development began on Arkham City, EA were saying single player is dead and you have to have multiplayer mode to be competitive. Was there ever a moment where someone insisted that Arkham City needed multiplayer?
We're really thankful to Warner on that. At a time when a lot of publishers said you have to have multiplayer, they backed our ideas for single player.
We did look at multiplayer early on and we looked at what it could actually bring to the table. We tried some ideas out but it always felt like it was just there as arequirement. If we did multiplayer then we wouldn't have been able to deliver the quality of game that people wanted - that we wanted. We would end up delivering two watered down products.
You see games where you feel like they bolted the multiplayer on, but if they had taken that effort and put it into the single player, they would have had a better game instead of having a multiplayer that people don't play.
Comments
18 comments so far...
phate666 on 9 Feb '12 said:
Great interview! Totally agree with his views on multiplayer as well.
ensabahnur on 9 Feb '12 said:
Great article, just hope they get stuck into the next Batman game soon, the Jokers return can't come soon enough.
phate666 on 9 Feb '12 said:
Definitely! No way he's dead, I mean, getting Batman to CARRY HIM OUT of prison?!?!?! Kinda the ultimate joke!
ensabahnur on 9 Feb '12 said:
WARNING SPOILERS BELOW
It would be the ultimate joke wouldn't it but then again the joke may be on us.
Ahh i don't know, the whole "he's dead", "Mark Hamill has finished with the character" stuff could just be a red herring. If you listen to some of the goons when the games over they even question this themselves asking if he managed to fool Bat's once then why couldn't he do it again.
There was the whole explosion at the end and Bats was knocked unconscious, just as this is happening both Joker and Clayface are really close to the Lazarus Pit. When he regains consciousness you don't get to control Bats, therefore you cannot turn detective mode on and see whether it was the real Joker (Clayface has no bone structure) or not.
Then again it may all be true.
I would be quite disappointed if Mark didn't return for the next game though, his Joker has been one of the best things about these games. Its almost as if this was the role he was born to play and not that foppy haired sister kisser from Tatooine.
teddington on 9 Feb '12 said:
spoiler
did anyone else see the positive pregnancy test in the jokers hideout?
assuming the test was harley quinn's and that joker was the father while posioned, could the baby be a super bane character? thiers lots of places they could go with this to much to type
o well i'll wait and see, cant wait for the next one.
ensabahnur on 9 Feb '12 said:
Yeah but then we'll have to wait 9 months for the sprog to drop and then a good 15-20 years for him to grow into a threat. By then Bat's will be getting around in the batwheelchair.
Unless they go through some sort of rapid aging process to turn him into a current threat. But i'd rather they didn't. Sure Rocksteady have put their own slant on characters but i don't think they should start creating there own ones.
mental_mick on 9 Feb '12 said:
SPOILER
What about Azrael and the Order of St. Dumas? All that business about closing the gates of hell sounds interesting. If the Joker is actually dead, hell is obviously where he's gonna be, so maybe that'll be his ticket back to the living.
I had to read up about Azrael when I reached that stage of the game as I don't know a lot about Batman lore (you know, the more obscure characters).
Hope a third one is in the works
ensabahnur on 9 Feb '12 said:
Good call.
phate666 on 9 Feb '12 said:
Games radar actually did a very good article on this subject. I shall try and find and then post.....
Found it!
http://www.gamesradar.com/batman-arkham ... ts-sequel/
steve w on 10 Feb '12 said:
Always found rocksteadys batman games overrated to much stealth and never a clear direction of what to do next I can never play one of there games without a guide I will not be buying there next batman game.
rmorgan779 on 10 Feb '12 said:
opinions vary i found rocksteadys new batman series a breath of fresh air in this current gen which has seen games strugle for identity
WHERESMYMONKEY on 10 Feb '12 said:
Think about what you just said. It'll take 15-20 years and the mood at the end of the game is very much batman saying f**k this i'm done. I think this would be a brilliant seqway to make a batman of the future game.
ensabahnur on 10 Feb '12 said:
Nah, they've created too good a universe here to throw it all away by shifting forward 20 years and starting anew. Maybe do this with the next gen, it would be a great segue into a Batman Beyond universe. But for now i'd rather they continue with the great characters they have now. Plus they only introduced Hush in this game, he should have a big part to play in the sequel. Also Calendar Man's escape will have to be dealt with as well.
And plus the Joker'll be back, he's got to be. Batman without the Joker just isn't right.
BruceWayne7 on 10 Feb '12 said:
Really????? That's pretty bad if you need a guide for either arkham game. Maybe you should think like batman maybe that'll help you.
sepewrath on 11 Feb '12 said:
I'm glad they didn't just stuff in multiplayer, definitely not a fan of that garbage WB pulled with Catwoman as DLC, but at least they respected the impact a great single player game can still have. Forcing in MP doesn't help, no one is going to stop playing CoD to play your stuffed in MP, why publishers cant figure this out and why gamers who demand games have MP cant figure this out, is something I cant figure out.
Barca Azul on 11 Feb '12 said:
The game and environment were very good, but for me the storey and connecting the villans together was not so good.
Lou151289 on 16 Feb '12 said:
has anybody else noticed the "joker the imortal" sign outside of the theater where you face the final boss after you finish the game? i dont think hes dead.
Gatix on 27 Feb '12 said:
Looking forward to Quinn's super baby