Dax Ginn is very excited. As RockSteady’s brand marketing producer presides over a hands-off demo of Batman: Arkham Knight at the London HQ of Warner Bros, his play-by-play commentary contains as many whoops and cheers as it does informative tidbits. His enthusiasm is unbridled and a massive source of bemusement for the handful of media sitting in in attendance.
But even if Ginn’s passion isn’t infectious, you’d be hard-pressed to argue it isn’t justified. RockSteady’s latest – and final – installment in its critically acclaimed Batman: Arkham franchise looks positively swoon-worthy. The culmination of about eight or nine years’ worth of development, Batman: Arkham Knight takes the London-based studio’s vision of DC’s Dark Knight IP widescreen.
“We have built out the entirety of Gotham City,” says Ginn. “This is something that we’ve wanted to do for years and what we’ve executed for Arkham Knight. The map is about five times the size of Arkham City’s but it also has the intricate detail fans would expect from a game in this series.”
Dark city
The Gotham City Ginn speaks of certainly looks very impressive. Its skyline is a sprawling series of walkways, neon signs and Gothic spires as one would expect, but as evidenced in the demo, there’s quite a bit of variation at street level. Gotham’s China Town district glows red from countless paper lanterns and streetlights. Imposing industrial warehouses tower over the city’s rain-slicked boat docks. The clock tower that houses Oracle’s secret headquarters looks like it was plucked from Gormenghast. Each area of the city has its own distinct flavour, while feeling like part of a cohesive whole.
As Ginn points out, this is a pretty important aspect of Arkham Knight, because it feeds into the player fantasy of feeling like they’re the Caped Crusader. “The sense of being Batman means you don’t get lost in your own city,” he says. “It’s wrapped up in that complete certainty about where you’re going and what you need to do.”
As gargantuan as the game’s environment is, navigating it looks to be a doddle. The grapple-and-glide mechanic from Arkham City is back – players can use Batman’s cape to glide over the city, employing dives and the Bat-Claw to gain momentum, extending hang time. From the looks of the demo, the glide mechanics have also been tweaked to allow players to cover greater distances.
The game’s hand-to-hand combat also has a couple of new additions. Cape-flick, jump, beat-down and counter are all present and correct, as is the fluid way players can flow between opponents. Now, however, players have a nasty flip move they can use to send enemies flying and they can also disarm opponents and use their weapons against them. On top of that, they’re able to use pieces of Batman’s immediate environment to finish off opponents; in a fistfight exuberantly narrated by Ginn, we watch as Batman takes a goon’s head and rams it into a soda vending machine in a skull-crushing act of brutality.
Cruising and bruising
Of course, as has already been announced, one of the biggest features in Batman: Arkham Knight is Bats’s iconic car. RockSteady has finally fulfilled a demand that players have had since the opening cinematic of Batman: Arkham Asylum. They’ve kitted them out with the Batmobile.
“The Batmobile was ‘the thing’ that we wanted to do,” says Ginn. “It was the heart and soul of the game’s design. It was the epicentre of everything.
“Once we’d made that decision we knew the city would have to be a lot bigger to compliment the Batmobile’s speed and destruction and that made all of our technical decision for us. Next gen was critical. We couldn’t do this on a PS3 or Xbox 360.”
RockSteady has infused Batman’s iconic set of wheels with its own unique look, but the closest relative it has is the Tumbler from the Nolan-Verse. The Batmobile in Arkham Knight is metal-plated beast; its moving panels make it seem as though it’s breathing and every burst of fire from the exhaust seems like a release of pent-up rage. Furthermore, there are hardly any pathways closed off to it.
While it’s unable to plough straight through Gotham’s tenement blocks, the Batmobile can smash through street fixtures, trees on traffic islands, fences around carparks and even the odd concrete wall. The demo also showed off that, amongst other things, the Batmobile comes equipped with homing missiles, which players can use to disable enemy vehicles.
The car’s been built to be as user-friendly as possible. Players summon it with the touch of a button and this triggers an animation in which Batman hurtles to the pavement, waits as the Batmobile comes flying towards him and then leaps into its cockpit in one fluid motion. Batman can also eject from the Batmobile and doing so at high-speed sends him up several stories into the air.
Fear of freedom
The demo is slightly problematic in places. The frame-rate crawl is simply horrible and after 20 minutes of staring up at the juddering graphics on a giant cinema screen, it’s hard not to feel a little seasick.
Also, since introducing a car into an Arkham title effectively turns it into an sandbox game, there’s an initial fear that players will be able to break the game’s narrative. After all, how do you keep Batman on the side of angels when most players wreak chaos if you hand them a car, weapons and a city filled with NPC targets. However, RockSteady seems able to step round this through one of the game’s main plot conceits.
Batman: Arkham Knight is set 12 years after the events of Batman: Arkham City, and if you’ve not played that game and you don’t want its plot details revealed to you, stop reading now. In the years since the Joker died there’s been relative peace, with many of the city’s criminals keeping a low profile. This all changes at the start of Arkham Knight with the return of the Scarecrow, who announces that he’s placed fear toxin bombs throughout Gotham. The authorities respond by evacuating the civilian population. Criminals have overrun the streets.
While this is a suitably high stakes set up for Batman’s latest adventure, it also prevents players from making the Dark Knight behave as badly as the criminals he’s trying to put down. To wit, the only traffic – both on-road and on-foot – they’ll encounter are would-be criminals, so if they decide to mow them down with the Batmobile or hammer the daylights out of them, they aren’t breaking the narrative.
A Knight's Tale
“I think gamers who just love the prospect of expressing themselves through the medium, will still like the tight story we’re telling here,” says Ginn. “We’ve set narrative structures up to help with this. Irrespective of where you’re navigating to in Gotham City, you’ll be bombarded with narrative through Batman’s surveillance system.
“You get a highly contrasted sense of whether you’re on a right path or not. The operations of the criminals – such as Two-Face, the Penguin and Harley Quinn – keys into that as well and you can move between them fairly seamlessly.“
RockSteady and Ginn are still speaking about the plot in fairly general terms, but at least they’re prepared to reveal a brand new character for the game – the titular Arkham Knight. Clad in a black mask and a dark almost utilitarian outfit, the Arkham Knight attacks Batman as the demo draws to a close. Ginn announces his name and then states he’s taking no further questions about him. Who is it? A totally new enemy or the alter ego of a returning nemesis? There has been plenty of speculation among fans and journalists ever since the name was mentioned.
In a way, Ginn's reluctance to specify any further makes sense. The Batman: Arkham games all boast sublime mechanics, but they’ve lived and died on their stories. And RockSteady has form on this style of slow, steady marketing – interested viewers should expect a drip-feed reveal concerning characters and extra modes from here on in and precious little else. All we have to go on really is RockSteady’s track-record – and no one could say that isn't enough for now.
• Batman: Arkham Knight is coming to PC, PS4 and Xbox One in 2014
• Batman: Arkham Knight – trailer first glimpse
