Video: Dax Ginn Talks Batman: Arkham City

Dax Ginn, Rocksteady's Marketing Game Manager, recently talk about Batman: Arkham City with Gamer Live. Where he discussed everything from game play to whether or not the game will be released in 3D.

We're reall giving players the oppertunity, as Batman, to soar through the streets of Gotham City. Taking on thugs, taking on the likes of The Joker and Two-Face with a huge cast of awesome supporting characters.

Give us a little background to Arkham City. What does it do to differ from Arkham Asylum

Well, following on from Arkham Asylum the warden of the asylum, Quincy Sharp, is now the Mayor of Gotham City. And he has got this whole plan to cure Gotham of crime. So he shut down Arkham Asylum he shut down Blackgate Prison and he foritfied this huge district of Gotham City and calls it Arkham City. So its like this super prison. And all of those inmate have been thrown in there. There is one rule if they try and escape they are going to be shot and killed. So it's a pretty lawless crazy place, and we thought that was a great setting for a game. Then you throw Batman into that with some other incredible super villains and all hell brakes loose.

What were some of your goals from the last game going into this game?

For us we just wanted to reset all the challenge for the studio. We, I think, did a great job of building up an amazing experience not just in terms of combat and navigation with in Arkham Asylum, but also with crime scene forensics and investigation as well as plumbing the depths of Batman's deep dark psychology. We really delivered on the complete Batman experience. We really wanted to build on that, but give our selves a whole new challenge with the game world that we have built up for Arkham City. For us giving players that sense of power to really determine where they go with in Arkham City, how they play the game, the pace at which the game unfolds for them. That felt like the kind of obvious next step, and a direction that both Batman Fans and gamers were really looking forward to.

What did you do to beef up the appearance and interactiveness of Arkham City?

Man, across the board there is a load more interactiveness then, beefiness is a great way to put it. For us high impact combat is a big part of that sort of genuine authentic Batman experience. So we have doubled the number of animations Batman has got, not just in combat but in every aspect. With that we have also had to beef up artificial intelligence the thugs have when they come at him.Players are going to find they have got two three guys launching simultaneous attacks. They come at you with weapons you can take weapons off them you can use that against them. Batman can integrate his gadgets into combat. He can use his Bat-claw or explosive gel during free flow combat. All of that with in this huge sprawling game world. Its a hell of a combination.

Have you guys ever though about doing something online or like multi-player?

You know we're excited to push the Batman experience in any direction. We think about everything all the time. I think the strengthens we laid down in Arkham Asylum are what did in developing Arkham City. The Batman experience is pretty much a one man experience. He is an incredible character, with and incredible back story. We're doing some amazing work to really drive home that kind of experience we think a lot of gamers are going to be really excited by. For us multi-player or co-op didn't make sense. We just focused on delivering a really kick ass Batman experience.

What platforms can we see this on and when can we see it?

Batman: Arkham City is coming out this fall on PC, Playstaion 3, and Xbox 360.

Miscellaneous:

You know for us our focus was not just on delivering on combat, on stealth, on forensics but also on telling an incredible story. With Paul Dini at the helm of the writing effort as well as Rockstead's lead narrative designer Paul Crocker we are telling story every step of the way. We didn't want to make just a big game world with nothing to do, we really wanted to tell a really tight focused narrative. So we have go these incredible cinematic cut scenes which obviously drive the narrative forward, but we've also got this new surveillance system that allows Batman to listen in to conversations that happen in the vicinity of where he is with in Arkham City. So if you just sit back and listen in, you'll hear thugs loosing it to rumors of things that are going to happen to them. Some of its true some of its not. Some of it is pure speculation. But all of it is brilliantly written. And we really hope player will just sit back and just kind of absorb the atmosphere of Arkham City. We put a lot of love into it and we think it's really awesome.

Possibility of the game being in 3D:

We are super excited about all sorts of technologies and options that are on the table for developers like us these days. We haven't made any anoucements just yet, but we think Arkham Asylum worked beautifully in 3D in game of the year edition. Watch this space for more annoucements coming soon.

Batman: Arkham City comes out October 18, 2011