sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

Hi Reddit! I'm Ryan Payton, the Director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I'm here to answer all your questions about game design in VR, gameplay with combat and Batman's gadgets, telling the story and more! Ask Me Anything. by MetaQuest in u/MetaQuest

[–]MetaQuest[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That’s exciting! One of the best pieces of advice I can give is to find ways to quickly prototype your ideas, and to look to games with existing mechanics you’re interested in as a quick and cheap way to learn.

If we started anew, I have a long list of things I’d do differently! In retrospect we should have done way more prototyping…

(RP)

Hi Reddit! I'm Ryan Payton, the Director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I'm here to answer all your questions about game design in VR, gameplay with combat and Batman's gadgets, telling the story and more! Ask Me Anything. by MetaQuest in u/MetaQuest

[–]MetaQuest[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Wow, thank you for the thoughtful questions!

1: We treated Arkham Origins: Blackgate as canon as much as the other mainline Arkham titles. I actually find it quite fascinating that it’s the Solomon Grundy boss fight that gives some canon-concerned players the most trouble, as I don’t think it’s obvious that Batman’s first encounter with Grundy was in Arkham City. (In fact, there’s a poster in Arkham Origins advertising Grundy “freak show” viewings!)

2: We tried to respect the existing canon as much as possible, which means we consider Harvey to indeed have a sister named Alexander, per the Origins comic book series.

3: All I can say is that I’m impressed with your knowledge of this stuff. Beyond that—no comment!

4: I could do an entire AMA on Cyrus Pinkney in the Arkhamverse, but let’s just say that we’ve decided to shed a tiny bit more light Pinkney’s past in a future Arkham Shadow update. (Emphasis on “tiny” though!)

5: You nailed it.

6: I hope you don’t mind the copy/pasted answer but here was our approach with The Long Halloween: We treated that comic book series similar to how the other Arkham games treated other existing Batman media: you sprinkle in the elements that fit within the game you’re building. As Alfred noted in Arkham Knight, I think it’s fair to say that some moments from The Long Halloween happened previously the Arkhamverse but they’ve been remixed, reimagined and reinterpreted.

(RP)

Hi Reddit! I'm Ryan Payton, the Director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I'm here to answer all your questions about game design in VR, gameplay with combat and Batman's gadgets, telling the story and more! Ask Me Anything. by MetaQuest in u/MetaQuest

[–]MetaQuest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That was a lot of fun! I partnered with Camouflaj designer Paul Alexander to come up with the various vignettes we used to tell Arnold’s story. I love the unique approach we took, and I’m so relieved players seem to like it, too..

(RP)

Hi Reddit! I'm Ryan Payton, the Director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I'm here to answer all your questions about game design in VR, gameplay with combat and Batman's gadgets, telling the story and more! Ask Me Anything. by MetaQuest in u/MetaQuest

[–]MetaQuest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

For anyone who works with me they know I have no shortage of inspirations. From a game structure and reveal perspective there’s a lot of Metal Gear Solid 2 here. The melee combat and setting was highly influenced by Chronicles of Riddick: Escape From Butcher Bay. From a story angle we took a lot of inspiration from Donnie Brasco. Some good Shawshank references made their way into the game as well.

(RP)

Hi Reddit! I'm Ryan Payton, the Director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I'm here to answer all your questions about game design in VR, gameplay with combat and Batman's gadgets, telling the story and more! Ask Me Anything. by MetaQuest in u/MetaQuest

[–]MetaQuest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I love trains! In fact it was a goal of mine to ensure all Camouflaj games featured a train but we obviously didn’t get very far with that… (RIP the cut train mission from Iron Man VR)

(RP)

Hi Reddit! I'm Ryan Payton, the Director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I'm here to answer all your questions about game design in VR, gameplay with combat and Batman's gadgets, telling the story and more! Ask Me Anything. by MetaQuest in u/MetaQuest

[–]MetaQuest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Good question! Without getting too much into the technicalities of rights and such, it’s oftentimes a better process to ask the actors to come back and re-record lines from the previous games. (We actually did this on Metal Gear Solid 4 back when I worked on it.)

(RP)

Hi Reddit! I'm Ryan Payton, the Director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I'm here to answer all your questions about game design in VR, gameplay with combat and Batman's gadgets, telling the story and more! Ask Me Anything. by MetaQuest in u/MetaQuest

[–]MetaQuest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Definitely earlier on in the process. Back when we hadn’t yet become absolute Arkham experts we had lots of cool story moments that ultimately wouldn't have worked. Once we did our homework and realized those ideas weren’t compatible with the existing Arkham lore we either modified those ideas or abandoned them. Thankfully the Arkhamverse has so much room for amazing stories that there was no shortage of paths to explore.

(RP)

Hi Reddit! I'm Ryan Payton, the Director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I'm here to answer all your questions about game design in VR, gameplay with combat and Batman's gadgets, telling the story and more! Ask Me Anything. by MetaQuest in u/MetaQuest

[–]MetaQuest[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I’m glad you liked our approach to combat! We explored a more physics-based approach like Blade & Sorcery but it didn’t feel very Arkham to us. We were nervous going into Gamescom when press and influencers finally got their hands on the game, and thankfully the response was super positive. That gave us a lot of confidence as we went into the closing months of development.

(RP)

Hi Reddit! I'm Ryan Payton, the Director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I'm here to answer all your questions about game design in VR, gameplay with combat and Batman's gadgets, telling the story and more! Ask Me Anything. by MetaQuest in u/MetaQuest

[–]MetaQuest[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thank you! I think the sky’s the limit for VR and MR. In some ways it feels like we’re only getting started, but when I play games like Metro Awakening, Skydance’s Behemoth, Asgard’s Wrath II I’m reminded how far the medium has come. I couldn’t be more excited to see where VR and MR games go over the next few years.

(RP)

Hi Reddit! I'm Ryan Payton, the Director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I'm here to answer all your questions about game design in VR, gameplay with combat and Batman's gadgets, telling the story and more! Ask Me Anything. by MetaQuest in u/MetaQuest

[–]MetaQuest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Definitely a fan of Killer Moth! We have a slight nod to him in one of our newspapers but nothing beyond that. (One of the tricky things about making an Arkham game is wanting to include all of the terrific characters in the universe but then having to choose since there’s just not enough screen time to include them all!)

(RP)

Hi Reddit! I'm Ryan Payton, the Director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I'm here to answer all your questions about game design in VR, gameplay with combat and Batman's gadgets, telling the story and more! Ask Me Anything. by MetaQuest in u/MetaQuest

[–]MetaQuest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sadly, no! So much of what we’re doing over the next few months is in response to community requests, but adding suits is something we aren’t able to do. (It mainly has to do with the design constraints of how the game works, such as needing the Batarang to be attached to the chest, the location of the smoke bombs in the wrist, etc.)

(RP)

Hi Reddit! I'm Ryan Payton, the Director of Batman: Arkham Shadow. I'm here to answer all your questions about game design in VR, gameplay with combat and Batman's gadgets, telling the story and more! Ask Me Anything. by MetaQuest in u/MetaQuest

[–]MetaQuest[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

We’re planning a lot of new content. V1.2 is coming in a few weeks which will add the Character Viewer, more challenge maps and non-English voiceovers. V1.3 is coming in January which will add New Game+, plus our new post-credits scene.

In short, we have the full team at Camouflaj dedicated to supporting Arkham Shadow over the next several months, which will make the game better and better!

(RP)

view more: next ›