In an interview with the Guardian, Rocksteady’s Sefton Hill explained how Batman: Arkham City will offer an impressive 25 hour-long straight narrative and a 15 hour treasure chest of optional side missions. This will be encouraging news for those of you who struggle to justify buying single-player- only games, with the industry standard averaging around 12-15 hours.
Previously Rocksteady revealed some of the cool new mechanics being introduced to their Batman universe, with diving, vaulting, criss-cross wire running, and even something close to flying being just a few. As the last game was such a success both commercially and critically, I very much doubt Arkham City is in danger of flopping.
Mr. Hill went on to describe how he approaches designing a game experience:
“In terms of narrative structure, I think games are much more analogous to an episodic TV series than a film. You have, say, 15 hourly episodes to fill, each requiring its own narrative arc but each plugging into an overarching storyline. It requires a lot of planning to make sure that every single hour is consistent with each other, is feeding and driving towards a compelling crescendo, while remaining implicitly self-explanatory so players can pick up and play at any time and know what they are doing.”
Promising stuff if you ask me, and there’s a huge amount of expectation to match it. Will they live up to the expectations? What do you think?
