Batman: Arkham City – Giving You Freedom

At this year’s Eurogamer Expo I interviewed Sarah Wellock, Community Manager and Adam Vincent, 3D animator from Rocksteady Studios on the Batman: Arkham City stand. In the first part of this interview Sarah and Adam spoke about every single place in Arkham City being unique and the beefed up combat system. In the second part of the interview they talk about giving you much more control over how the story of Arkham City unfolds, changes made to the development team after Arkham Asylum and working for Rocksteady Studios.

In Batman: Arkham Asylum you were restricted to the confines of the Asylum buildings and grounds in a sequence pre-determined by the underlying plot but Wellock says that “a key difference that the fans will experience in Arkham City is that in the beginning they can go where they want. We think that freedom is something that is really rewarding, especially as Batman.”

Rocksteady have also expanded on almost every aspect of Batman: Arkham Asylum. Wellock told me that Arkham City features “side-missions with Mr Zsasz, Calendar Man and we’ve just announced Deadshot. The Riddler has over 400 Riddler trophies in this one and then the chance to physically strangle that guy yourself! I think in terms of gameplay difference it is giving players freedom to decide how they want the story to unfold a little bit. Not so much with moral choices, punch this guy, don’t punch this guy, more in a you dictate the speed which you play through the game and that’s how you can end up with 40 hours to 100% the game.”

In order to deliver 40 hours worth of gameplay and a free-roaming Gotham City, Rocksteady Studios had to make some significant changes to its personnel numbers after developing Arkham Asylum. According to Vincent “at the end of Arkham Asylum we were around 60 odd. When I started it was 30. I was actually number 30 and now we are at 105 people. The environment team has almost doubled. Almost every single aspect of the team has had at least one or two guys added to it.”

Only 105 people made Arkham City? Wow. I actually expected the number to be a lot higher since they were developing a huge living, breathing Gotham City to get lost in. Impressive.

Even though Rocksteady Studios have been working on Arkham City for 2.5 years and have been jetting their personnel around the world to show off the game there still is a huge amount of enthusiasm and pride for both the game and the company. Wellock said “I think I will look back on this next year and feel as long as I work at Rocksteady or work in the industry that I was part of something really special and really big. Being able to represent the company online and at events is a proudest I’ve been in my career.”

Batman: Arkham City is released on the 21st Oct 2011 for Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and on PC in Nov 2011.

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