Combining stealth and action, Eidos is trying to do with Batman: Arkham Asylum something no else succeeded in the past – bring us a good (maybe great) Batman game. Bill Greenm, Senior Designer and Ian Ball, Lead Level Designer, give us some inside info on one of 2009 biggest promises.

NextGN: A lot of gamers hope that Batman: Arkham Asylum will be the first good Batman game. That’s a lot of pressure. What will differentiate Batman: Arkham Asylum from other Batman games?

Greenm: I think we’ve really lifted the bar in terms of depth and polish. I’ve not seen many games to date (let alone a Batman one) with the same level of attention to detail and sheer quality of content. BMAA is dark, mature and serious, like the graphic novels.

NextGN: What is the story of Batman: Arkham Asylum? What influenced you guys more working on the game – the Dark Knight movies or the comics?

Greenm: It’s all about the comics. We extensively researched the Batman universe as far back as the 1930s and we were lucky to have quite a lot of creative freedom to take the licence in our own direction too. Obviously we work closely with Warner/DC to ensure the brand integrity is upheld though, we can’t have Batman fighting aliens with a plasma rifle!

NextGN: What can you tell us about the single player campaign? How long will it take an average gamer to finish it?

Greenm: Last count, you’re looking at around 12-15 hours of natural gameplay, you could spend many more hours searching for secrets and playing through the 16 Challenges Maps, though. I think most gamers are much more keen on seeing quality over quantity but we feel with 15 hours you’re getting both!

NextGN: Batman games are usually designed as brawlers – what made you incorporate stealth into the game? Will Batman: Arkham Asylum focus more on the action or stealth?

Greenm: Early on it was important for us to identify the key aspects which make up Batman’s “work life”. These we primarily narrowed down to brawling, detective work and of course the unique stealth aspects. He’ll approach an environment and work out every way he can take down threats without exposing himself to too many dangers at once. After all, he’s exceptional but he is still only a human and needs to use brains as much as brawn! Divide and conquer as they say!

You should find the game quite balanced, some areas are best dealt with stealthily, others you can just jump in swinging punches, then some areas of platforming, puzzles and of course searching for forensic evidence – story sections tie all these scenarios together.

NextGN: What is FreeFlow Combat and why did you choose this type of combat for the game?

Greenm: Freeflow Combat is our term for the unique combat system we developed for Batman. Our first major revision of the combat system was quite an interesting one-on-one or one-on-two pugilistic confrontation. We rather liked the gameplay but agreed that this combat style made Batman feel a little too “average human”.

Batman needed to be able to take on more than a couple of guys at once, up to ten thugs armed with pipes, knives, tasers etc, he’d need to move a lot faster and cover a lot more ground than most humans can too. In order for Batman to deal with these kind of odds we developed the “Freeflow Combat”. Basically, the player can chain together moves from one opponent to another, the longer he keeps the chain going the more devastating the attacks become. If the player can keep the chain going long enough without being knocked out of it they can execute “takedowns” which finish an opponent off in one glorious move before continuing the chain.

I’m really pleased with the end results – it’s a classic easy to learn hard to master system that feels very fluid and natural!

NextGN: You recently revealed the Challenge Modes – what can you tell us about these modes?

Ball: There are two types of challenge modes in the game, Invisible Predator and Freeflow Combat.  Both of these challenge modes are based on key gameplay mechanics from the main game.  The Invisible Predator challenges put the player in a room full of armed thugs where they must carefully plan their attacks and pick off the weaker targets.  As you pick off the enemies one by one, the others in the room begin to get nervous, they know you are somewhere in the room, hunting them down but they don’t know where.  In the Freeflow Combat challenges you face off against four waves of increasing difficulty in hand-to-hand combat.  Your challenge is to get the highest score possible by chaining together punches and kicks, building up big combo multipliers to boost your score.  All of the challenge maps have their own leaderboards allowing you to compete with a worldwide audience.

NextGN: Any competitive or cooperative multiplayer in the game?

Greenm: Not at this time, you can try to beat your mate’s best scores in the challenge mode though! It’s very addictive! You should hear some of the arguments about scores in the studio!

NextGN: Any plans for future DLC?

Greenm: That’s not something we can discuss right now.

NextGN: In your opinion what is the most enjoyable part in the game? What will players enjoy the most?

Greenm: Quite simply, the atmosphere. Let yourself get immersed in this richly detailed world and I’m pretty sure you will enjoy the ride immensely!

NextGN: Eidos was recently bought by Square Enix. Did that affect the development of Batman: Arkham Asylum in any way?

Greenm: No. Day-to-day we actually work very closely with Warner / DC and Eidos, and these relationships and roles all continued as normal throughout development which was obviously great for us.

NextGN: Will Batman use any weapons in order to stop the prisoners of the Asylum? Are we going to see Batman kill some bad guys or will he just knock them out?

Greenm: Batman never kills people, no matter how evil they may be. We’ve worked hard to ensure Batman doesn’t appear to cause the deaths of anyone in the game – this is a lot more involved than you might think! We have to invent safety nets etc where Batman might be able to throw someone. Don’t worry though, Batman’s got no qualms about hurting bad people in some really bad ways! The fact you’re not actually going to ‘kill’ anyone doesn’t distract from the jaw breaking action at all.

Batman: Arkham Asylum is due for release on Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and PC on August 25, 2009.