VIDEO GAMES: Paul Dini And Paul Crocker On Crafting The Story Of Batman: Arkham City

The man who possibly knows The Dark Knight best recently sat down with SFX to chat about the process you go through when developing a super hero video game. And the difficulties that come with trying to follow Arkham Asylum.

To start with, could you tell us exactly what your role is on Arkham City, in particular how much influence you actually have over story, character, dialogue, things like that?

Paul Dini: I usually work with the team early on, coming in when the game is in the preliminary stages. In both cases of Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, Paul and the team here have a general overview of where they want to go in the game as far as locations and the general idea of the characters they want to use and the locales they’re going to be using. So I come in at that preliminary story stage and hear their ideas and come up with a few of my own and then we start working back and forth as far as defining what characters we’re using and what is the overall story we’re going to tell. Usually, when we have a session where we break out the story I’m here for a week or so and we have day long story sessions…

Paul Crocker: Long day, long…

PD: Long, long story sessions where we just jam, and it’s not restricted to just here because we’ll go out to dinner, we’ll go out to drinks and in some cases the story gets better depending on what we’re talking about and how the ideas are flowing. It happens in a very organic way. We all know Batman really well, we know his world and his villains, and now with Arkham City we have an established continuity, so there are elements where we can take the game that can continue from one game to another.

One of the strengths of Arkham Asylum’s story was its focus, its linearity and this pressure cooker atmosphere. But this new game opens up the world to a whole city – what challenges did that present for you as storytellers?

PD: Well, with Arkham City it got him out into a bigger world, but it was always a world that we always wanted to explore and we didn’t have the opportunity in Arkham Asylum. One of the key elements of Batman is him, the shadow he casts over Gotham City, and by taking him outside and running around this ruined, walled-off chunk of the city, it really puts him in his element where he can be the night creature haunting the shadows and swooping down on criminals in the middle of the street. It’s great to show him in that realm and that also provides some terrific elements as far as story and character moments.

PC: What we try to do is we have a main narrative that runs through the game, so for a player who’s just interested in that you have this A to B path, just like you had in the first game. But the great thing about having a city is there are many more things to do, so we don’t force you to follow the A to B path. If you’re going to meet the Joker for example, you can go and meet Joker, but at any point you can also go, “Look at all those other cool things to do!”

The mechanism we use to keep you on track is we have the bat-signal in the sky, and that will always be above your next objective, so where Joker is you just go: “Cool, Joker’s there, I know where he is, I can continue to do that if I want, but maybe I want to do one of those other cool things and see what that character’s doing and explore and get down.” One of the great things about Batman: Arkham Asylum was we put in a level of detail into the world, this “Batman DNA” we call it, where everything just felt detailed and had history and we wanted to extend that back into this game. So Arkham City is like Arkham Asylum with the roof blown off; we wanted that same expansive area of high detailed, high quality history and experience.

Do you think videogames are at the point now where they’re comparable to films and comics as a storytelling medium?

PD: I’d say almost. Videogames are complex now and they’re going to get more complex later and I think you’re going to find different ways of telling games, of experiencing games and playing games that is not simply punch ’em ups and action adventure games. I think that where games are going to be in 10 years we’re going to look back and say, “How did we ever get from here to there?” Because I think with any artistic medium it is evolving more and more. I argue with somebody like Roger Ebert, who is terrific, but he says videogames can never be art. I think they are on their way to being art. If you look at where animation was in 1925, it was all rubber hose creatures and little song and dance routines. And then Walt Disney came along and kicked things up and then you look at where they are now with Pixar, it’s been quite an evolution. I think games are strong now and they have a long way to go and when we see them in a few years we won’t even recognise them.

PC: And obviously to treat it as its own medium, it’s not a film and it’s not an animated TV series. It’s this experience that takes a lot longer for people to complete. We’re looking at 25-40 hours, that’s like 20 movies bolted together, so it’s a very different experience. And also we try and make it work for the Batman fans, the people who don’t really know who Batman is. It’s trying to appeal to everyone and give everyone back what they put into the game, which is different than movies which are a much more passive experience.

How are you finding Arkham City? Do you agree that videogames are now up there with movies and comics as a story telling medium?

Plus 25-40 hours of gameplay? Thats a huge improvement on Arkham Asylum, which I think I was able to complete in about 10 hours...

Be sure to check back to SFX to read about introducing Mr Freeze to the game and Paul's experience writing for the comics and animated series.