Gaming
The game that comic book fans have crying out for is finally here. As Eidos and Rocksteady Studios invite players to don their capes and utility belts for a tour of Gotham's infamous mental institution, DS catches up with writer Paul Dini to find out more about Batman: Arkham Asylum. Give that you have largely worked on screenplays and comic books, how did you find it working on a video game?
"It's very similar to movies, at least with Arkham. We took an approach as if we were making a movie, while remaining mindful of the fact that this is a video game experience, and we couldn't get quite as much detail as we could with a feature film script. There were similarities in the sense that we wanted a big story, a big location and a big pay-off for the game. We didn't quite get the intricacies of, say, the last Batman movie. It didn't have a subplot, a romantic through-line or a big Bruce Wayne story, because we focused more on the gaming experience. You want to add enough characterisation on Batman so he doesn't come off like a stock good guy, but there's no point in him taking the mask off and doing a Bruce Wayne story because there’s no gameplay there."
"It was still very challenging because you have to write everything that the character does... every bit of dialogue. It's a very straightforward scenario - he's trapped in Arkham during a riot - but at the same time you have to make sure you're not repeating yourself, you're always saying something fun with the character. For instance, you approach a guard and say 'where’s the Joker?' and the guard will give him an answer. But there are many different ways to ask that question, and sometimes the guard will be cooperative and in other cases he will say 'you’re responsible for this', or 'you freak, you're just as bad as the criminals', that sort of thing. So you do have to be smart as far as writing the characters, given that they have both positive and negative through-lines. It's an awful lot of work, much more than a basic screenplay."
How much creative freedom were you given on the project
"We had a large amount of creative freedom on the project. We were not tied to any pre-existing conception of Batman, we weren't tied to anything that is happening in a movie or a comic book currently, we were free to come up with a scenario all of our own and make it an excursion of Batman's world, just as valid as if I was writing a graphic novel or an episode of a Batman TV show, and that was very liberating for us. There's some things you can't do with Batman; you can't have him use a gun, or kill anyone with lethal force, but other than that, it's pretty much fair game."
"There were parts of Batman's history that we referred to, from The Dark Knight Returns, to [Grant Morrison's] Arkham Asylum and The Killing Joke. They all kind of filtered into our consciousness but we weren't really doing Arkham Asylum as 'the game of the graphic novel', although there are some similarities, such as the selection of villains, but we didn't really set out to parrot Grant's style of writing or Frank Miller's or Dennis O'Neil's or anyone’s... we interpreted everything through ourselves and came up with our own take on Batman, which was pretty straightforward. Like I said, it wasn't quite as intricate as graphic novel, but it is a coherent Batman voice, we feel, and one that speaks well for the character's history and the way people think of him."
If you had to sum up the Batman character that you created for the game, how would you describe him?
"Very driven, every inch a dark knight, someone who puts his own needs, his safety and even his sanity on hold to help other people who are in trouble. That makes him very much a traditional heroic knight, or a character out of detective fiction - a conflicted, but basically good man in a hostile situation. He may be an inch away from being as bad as his enemies are, but his basic moral code and internal core keeps him from taking that full step into darkness."
"It's a unique take on the character, but it's still a familiar one because over the last 35 years or so the Joker has evolved, or devolved you might say, from the merry prankster whose crimes have oversized props and outrageous gimmicks, to somebody who is much more deadly, much more mordant in his sense of humour... someone who has to be confined to a lunatic asylum. This is a version of the Joker that a lot of fans have come to expect. He does not have the same air of mystery that the Heath Ledger interpretation, because in the movie the Joker could have just been an insane man who cut his own face and then just showed up one day to cause trouble in Gotham. This is more the super-villain take on the character, with the classic costume, the same gimmicks and probably the same history as the more traditional Joker."
Which of the peripheral characters did you enjoy writing?
"Commissioner Gordon was a lot of fun. We came up with some more detailed things for Gordon to do in the game, but weren't able to do them simply because of time. He works very well as an ally of Batman, and has his own world-weary take on Gotham and the villains. It was fun writing Oracle, and Harley Quinn, who I created for the Batman animated series. It was tremendous fun to put her into the scenario because she's someone who's in it just for the thrill of it. It's all just a game to her and that makes her very deadly in her own way. If she doesn't take anything seriously, she doesn't care who she hurts."
"We might have been able to write him in, but Robin kind of dilutes things because it's such a bizarre, nightmarish scenario, you kind of don't want to be dealing with the idea of throwing a teenager into that mix. I think that his presence would have made it a younger game and we really didn't want to go to the 'Batman and Robin as chums' version of the characters. This is Batman's nightmare, and he's got to face it on his own."
If a follow-up game was announced, would you be interested in reprising you role as writer?
"Who's to say? Possibly."
Batman Arkham Asylum is available now for PS3 and Xbox 360. A PC version will be released on September 18.
