WB Games Montreal have revealed that Gotham Knights combat has been "entirely redesigned" to better suit the co-op component of the game, although most of it should be familiar to players.
In an interview with GamesRadar, Gotham Knights creative director Patrick Redding and executive producer Fleur Marty discussed the game at length, pointing out that the familiar old fighting formula had to change if it was to promote co-op gameplay.
"We have entirely redesigned the combat system in order for it to work well in co-op", Marty said. "Of course, we're still a brawler, and some of the mechanics won't feel totally alien for people who played and enjoyed the Arkham series, but it is in many ways very different."
Interestingly enough, WB Montreal have been given a full creative license to make whatever story they want, which is not an easy license to score. Gotham Knights will therefore be separate from the rest of Batmania, the Arkham series included.
Redding stressed that cramming all the Batman lore into a video game isn't always possible, since the medium of comic books allows for far more contemplation in a given moment. Games, on the other hand, are more about your action and character, both of which took centre stage during development.
"Even when we had the outline of our central mystery, we forced ourselves to focus on characterisation first, and how that should shape not only narrative and performances, but the action-set of each of the four heroes", Redding said. "We looked at the overall tone of our Gotham City and used that to decide which supporting cast and villains we should build the game around. That became the foundation, it shaped the game systems, and then we built the game's story and found our cast of characters to work on top of that."
Warner Bros.
WB Montreal said earlier that changes in Gotham Knights' combat aren't that radical , although their wording was sufficiently open-ended to also mean "entirely redesigned". The dev obviously fears alienating the Arkham series fans, perhaps rightfully so, but as long as the combat's fun, we say.
You can find the full interview here .
Batman: Gotham Knights by Warner Bros. Montreal studio
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