The Batmobile Is A Character In Batman Arkham Knight

The biggest addition to Batman Arkham Knight is undoubtedly the Batmobile, as we’ve reported earlier. Speaking with NowGamer, Rocksteady Producer Dax Ginn explained that the game won’t suddenly become a driving game, but what they’ve tried to do is to create a synergy between Batman and the Batmobile, even going as far as letting the same programmer who created Batman work on the Batmobile.

The concern is that Batman becomes overpowered. 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.

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.

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.

I think if we wanted to look at other driving games, we would have brought in a driving team, because we’ve never made a driving game before.

Rather than do that, we have 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.

In hindsight, I think that was a really smart idea and it makes the Batmobile feel really unique in that respect, it doesn’t just feel like a car, it feels like a genuine character.

I’m really excited about this, and I hope that there will be many opportunities to use the Batmobile against other enemies, both on vehicles and on foot. Batman Arkham Knight is scheduled to release next October for PC, PS4 and Xbox One.