Batman: Arkham Knight is the highly anticipated conclusion to Rocksteady’s Batman Arkham trilogy. The game will be released exclusively on next gen consoles and will feature not only a massive map but also the Batmobile. The Batmobile is a major component of the game and the developers have been able to implement a lot of new gamplay mechanics thanks to it.
Dax Ginn, markeing produces of Rocksteady, was interviewed recently about what the capabilities of the batmobile would be and what kind of variations we could see in the game thanks to it. The following was his lengthy response:
"I think there are a lot of driving games where we could have kind of borrowed gameplay mechanics just because they're easy," he said. "For us, the focus was: 'What's the Batmobile all about? How do we make the experience feel really unique? We really were very concerned about the Batmobile experience feeling like a bolted on driving mode, and we did not want that. That would have been a real failure for us.
So the integration that you saw between the functionality of the Batmobile and the abilities of Batman himself was really important to us, and we developed them early on. So [we have] the ejection—being able to use the speed of the Batmobile and translate that into Batman's movement and then calling the Batmobile back in—kind of splitting them up and then reuniting them in a seamless way.
The challenges around the city are laid out so that if you need to move along a flat plane, obviously the Batmobile is going to be the best way to do that, but there's a lot of gameplay that is set in the vertical plane, so you are encouraged by the nature of the city to leave the Batmobile. But you never need to feel like, 'Oh I need to remember where it is.'
As I noted, the destruction stands out. There's more demolition-derby and bulldozing to this Batmobile than I'd anticipated. Ginn believes that'll please players and help them still feel like a superhero. "It's really nice to be able to say, 'If you get turn slightly wrong as you're making a right turn and you're going to run into the side of the building, you're just going to rip that corner of the building off,' rather than something that just stops the Batmobile, which totally kills the power fantasy of the Batmobile."
"Batman's no-kill policy is pretty non-negotiable whether he's driving or not. You would have seen thugs taking care of themselves," Ginn said. In addition: "The Batmobile is loaded up with a taser system, so, if any thugs come at the Batmobile when it's parked up, it will just taser them automatically and throw them away. And you would have seen it in our previous games that if there is a situation where the player would be able to lethally interact with someone, the game kind of reminds you that, 'Hey, look, you're Batman here, this is not just something you want to try and undermine. You need to be the Batman.' There are systems we have that encourage the player to take this seriously and behave the way Batman would."
The ability to rip through Gotham’s buildings, trees, barricades and pretty much anything else in a super powered tank sounds like a load of fun. Don’t worry though, the night the game takes in entirety of Gotham city is evacuated so, you will not be risking any civilians. I cannot wait for them to show us a bit of the gameplay.