Newsarama caught up with the lead designer for Batman: Arkham City, Paul Crocker. Crocker was in attendance at Comic Con International and shared some thoughts about the game. In this interview he covered more of what we can expect from the game. Here are the highlights.
Newsarama: Just how big is the actual game?
Paul Crocker: It’s huge. I mean, size-wise I think it’s four to five times bigger than the first game. Gameplay-wise it’s just massive. I think we’ve got something like 400 secrets to find, loads and loads of replayability. We’ve really gone to town on wanting to make the player want to stay playing the game as long as possible. There’s loads to find, loads to do. You know, there’s the main player path but there’s also loads and loads of separate side stories to do, different things you could find out about the Batman universe, things you could find out about Batman and that kind of thing.
Newsarama: I was hearing in some of the gameplay during the convention that the Penguin is British. Where did the choice come from?
Paul Crocker: Well, technically he’s the same American guy who went to England and was abandoned by his parents and he grew up on the streets so when he comes back to Gotham he’s got this kind of Cockney, kind of more violent sounding accent. And it was really a decision…we wanted to put Penguin in because he’s one of the guys everyone knows, the traditional Penguin doesn’t really fit in the Arkham-verse. He’s just a bit misplaced in our universe so we thought, “How do we make this guy the nasty piece of work he needs to be for this game?” Our first thought was well, why don’t we just replace his monocle with a broken bottle [laughs] and from there we went, it evolved into this streetwise, gangster like guy.
But deep down he’s still the same Penguin, he still looks the same, still got the monocle, still has his top hat, still has crazy umbrellas but he’s just coming from a slightly different place.
Newsarama: Are you already looking towards a third?
Paul Crocker: We’re looking to finish this one. Desperately looking to finish this one. But we will finish this one by October the 18th.
While Crocker is sure not to give any hints about a possible third game in the series, he does however insist that their focus right now is on Batman: Arkham City. For the entire interview, head over to Newsarama. Batman: Arkham City will hit stores October 18.
Posted by Dustin Fritschel
