The villains have been ramped up in Batman: Arkham Knight

A hero is defined by his villains when you think about. Superman has Lex Luthor, Spider-Man has the Green Goblin and I’ve got Geoff when he’s in a trolling mood. The next Batman game won’t see the dark knight face off against the Joker however, due to a bad case of that villain being rather dead. But his prime threat will be a match in more ways than one for the caped crusader.

Speaking to PlayMag, producer Dax Ginn mentioned the need to create a threat who could challenge Batman both mentally and physically:

It came from thinking about the way that we built interactions and engagements between Batman and the other members of the rouges gallery. They all reflect some aspect of his personality. Each of the super-villains connects with Batman in a very specific way and he is a collection of all of those things, but we never really had a villain who can engage with Batman of a physical, powerful, combat level.

But of course, the Arkham Knight isn’t the only menace in the game. To deal with them, Batman will make use of his trademark gadgets, in a manner that will have the dark knight feel sufficiently prepared instead of overpowered for the challenges ahead. “The concern is that Batman becomes overpowered” Ginn explained.

The way we balanced that is by ramping up the threat that he faces. This time around, Scarerow has returned and united all of the rogues gallery, all of the supervillans, so this is a threat that Batman has never faced before – this unified wall. In that context, he doesn’t feel overpowered, he feels like he’s at the right level of power to face this new threat.

Similarly, with adding the Batmobile, we didn’t want it to feel like, “here is a brand new thing that could never have existed before” – from a narrative perspective we want it to feel like Batman has always had the Batmobile, we’ve just unveiled it here.

And that Batmobile is going to form a fourth pillar of the gameplay, taking it beyond the predator, vigilante and exploration modes. “It’s something we’re very consciously aware of not to make the game feel like a driving game, it has to feel like this synergy between man and machine,” Ginn said.

The in and out gameplay is something we’ve put so much effort into. Just getting out of the Batmobile and getting back into the Batmobile should feel like a lot of fun and that’s why we’ve got this eject and summon move, which is awesome, one of my favourite bits.

We gave the task of programming the Batmobile to the guy who coded Batman. So, all of the experience that he’s developed over Arkham Asylum and Arkham City in making a character in Batman, he was then tasked with doing the same with the Batmobile. Which, on the one-hand is really high risk, but on the other hand, it gives you a vehicle that’s full of character and really intimately linked to Batman because Adam has been responsible for creating both of these things.

Batman: Arkham Knight is out at the end of October on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One. It freakin’ better be.

Last Updated: May 14, 2014