Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Batman Arkham Shadow Developer Interview - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: June 8, 2024

Greg sat down with Ryan Payton of developer Camouflaj to talk all about what exactly Batman Arkham Shadow is. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As I live and breathe. Ryan Payton. Hello, sir. Greg Miller. How are you? Doing good. Batman Arkham Shadow. The trailer has just debuted at Summer Game Fest.

That is correct. Unless we totally screwed up the apartment, which couldn't possibly have it. How does it feel? It's out there in the world now. It's out there in the world. It's great to have a more descriptive trailer that shows people what to expect from the story. Not just Batman, glottin in and a rat running away. Yeah, it was, I got to say, there was a big theory going out.

about when we announced the game, we came out with that teaser trailer back in May 1st, as you watched it. It was about 30 seconds. Pretty abstract in nature. We wanted to go beyond just a logo reveal. Sure. And the theory was, there's a big Arkham community out there that really, even though there hasn't been an Arkham game in many years, they really care.

Yeah. And they're going to jump into this thing and have lots of different theories and dissect things to a degree, actually, that I didn't even expect. So that's been really fun. And then looking to the next trailer, we wanted to be a little more excited. explicit, less abstract. This is the story. This is the game.

Here's Batman. You get to play as Batman. Brand new official entry into the other franchise. I mean, you say all that. Yes. Yeah, it's more explicit. Here's Batman. Here's the Harleen Quinzel out there doing her thing.

Scarecrow. I'm loving these drags. I'm one of these Batman freaks. You know that. But you don't show the game. There's no gameplay. What? Why?

So at the end, we got tune in a gamescom for our gameplay trailer, Greg Miller. You got the, you're going to keep little breadcrums. You know what I mean? You can't just show me everything. It's funny. We could obviously start with gameplay, but what I thought was more important was actually to kind of set the tone, talk about the universe, show the universe,

and quite frankly, allow us to focus on making a great game while we partner with our marketing friends who can create this beautiful CG trailer that they care about the game just as much as we do. We want to show the world that this is an authentic, our archimetry. I mean, I don't know about you, but I feel it's just so much fun to look at the trailer and just see all these characters I haven't seen for many years. And so we level set,

introduced through the world where we are, generally speaking, in the timeline. Of course. And with big epic shot. We're post-orgeons before asylum. Exactly.

Sounds a lot like Roger Craig Smith. It is definitely Roger Craig Smith. I don't know how we're confirming that. You know, a lot of times you guys use these voice actors. And I got the ear. I know it's him. Yeah.

I played origins. I love the origins. I know. He did a great job. And I love working with Roger. And yeah, so, yeah, we could have started with gameplay,

but it doesn't give us an opportunity to kind of introduce people, yeah, to the characters to the voice actors. So yeah, that's going to be the next trailer

at Gamescom. So I think me watching the trailer, the first thing I was left with was like, okay, but like, what are we actually doing,

right? Like, of course, there's a blog post up right now that has a little bit more information on it. You know, we talk about grapple gun.

We talk about glide down. We talk about battererangs. We talk about batarangs. We talk about, I mean, then this evolution of iconic free form combat, right?

Punches, deflect, dodge, take downs. It sounds like what I know. But how are you doing that in VR? Right? Of course, there was a Batman Arkham VR game. It came from Rocksteady over there and there was the teleporting and it was very much broken into segments. This doesn't sound necessarily like that's what I'm getting. Correct. Yeah, this is Batman Arkham Shadow is a fully full-fledged big VR game.

We kind of call it Arkham length. It might come in a little shorter than Arkham Asylum, but we aimed at Arkham Asylum in terms of content in terms of that sense of expiration, combat, boss battles, cinematics, yeah, the grapple, the gadgets.

Basically, when we approached Warner, almost what, three and a half years ago, four years ago now, about we really

desperately want to work in the Arkham franchise. We want to do a full-on, built from the ground-up VR game that's way

more expansive than what they had with Arkham VR back in 2016. We showed up with a pretty short list of things that we

knew that we had executed on to make an authentic Arkham game. It's, yeah, the combat, it's locomotion, it's the

exploration, the boss battles, the cinematics, the gadgets. So all that stuff completely recreated for VR to really leverage the strengths of that immersive technology in the Quest 3. So then how are you doing it without getting sick? And how are you doing it and making it feel authentic? So I'm used to the first question, given our experience in Iron Man VR. Of course. Right? I remember where I was with you, what, back in 2018 or something when we first showed Iron Man VR. And I think the first question

when people knew we were working out is like, how is that not going to make people sick? You're going to flying around as Batman in VR. Are you crazy? Iron man. I'm sorry. It's okay. You're jumping between heroes I got. I'm in all Batman all the time. Both DC and Marvel lawyers like,

ugh. Right, what the heck? Yeah, so now when we started approaching Arkham Shadow, the first thing we did, just like we did with our previous game, was a tackle the most difficult thing first, which is how do you translate the iconic, rhythm-based free flow combat from Arkham

that inspired a generation or more of superhero and just like third-person action games, right? how do you translate into VR that feels great, that feels like it's Arkham's, feels like an evolution, and also doesn't make you, so it just feels comfortable too. And just like we did with Iron Man,

the team completely nailed it. That was the first prototype. I'll kind of hint at how we do it, but it was, the whole idea was unlocked when our design director on the game, Ryan Darcy said, what nobody wants to do is

run around in VR and run up to a guy and then punch him. and then somehow turn around and then run up to another guy to punch him to get countered and have to do that combo meter. Batman doesn't walk across the room. Batman punches across the room.

So you see a reticle, you punch, you free flow, you get an enemy comes in, you counter, you keep your combo going, you unlock a special combo, you hit him into the air,

you knee him in the face. It's just, it has that same sense of that kind of spinning plate gameplay where you're just trying to, there's a, but you're trying to keep in control of the chaos, like all of those great Arkham games do.

All, again, translated for first person for VR in a way that I think is completely comfortable. So, yeah, that was something we've been working on for three and a half years, iterated on this because we knew we had to nail combat. Yeah. Well, I remember that back in the day, like you're talking about with the Iron Man demos, of course, and how you said, that's what it was all about?

And I'll never forget when you handed me the controllers and you said, all right, how does Iron Man fly? And I went like this. Yep. How does he stop like this? All right. You know how to do it. And I was like, oh.

So if it's that intuitive, I'll be all right. It's that. You punch, you counter, and you can do, yeah, you can use, you can use gadgets in combat as well. Okay, I was going to say, are we breaking these up? No, they're all together. No, you pull the battering off your chest like they do in the, in the, Robert Patterson and Matt Reeves, Batman. Sure. Look that as inspiration. Yeah, you can use other gadgets in the combat. Yeah, so it's just, yeah, we just went as, you have Predator, you can do stealth. You can go in the vents. You can go in the vents. You can go up into the vantage points, pull guys up from there, zip them up on there. Just, yeah, we're just translating every single feature we possibly can from the Arkham franchise into VR.

Wow. And so is it the same then with, you're talking about reticles and things like that. I know we haven't shown gameplay, so maybe you don't even want to talk about it, but I'm going to keep asking. Yeah, yeah, we don't, please. Is it the same then for, you know, if you are old and have it, or I guess you're not old. If the memories are old, remember Arkham did break it up where it would be, all right, and you're fighting 30 guys. And then it is, now you're into Predator Takedown mode, which would basically be if you got found, it was over. Exactly. Same idea here. Exactly. Same idea.

Yeah, because Batman can get torn up by enemies with semi-automatic weapons, right? Yeah. So you got to stay in the shadows. You got to pull at your smoke bombs, drop them down. Yeah. You know, shroud those guys in smoke, take them from a stealth perspective, go into the grates, going to the vents. Yeah, it's all that classic arcum. What is it like working on a prequel?

You know what I mean? When we talk about Iron Man, obviously, that was something you got to go do off on your own. Obviously, have inspirations. Before that with the other games, a camouflage should have done, of course. There's a little game. Jennifer Hale was in it. I forget the name. Yeah, that Republic.

Yeah, oh, Republic, that was it. That was your own universe. You could do whatever you want with it. What's it like to step into this? And, you know, Arkham really not only having this legacy, but now, I mean, you guys being what, the third developers, and I'm not trying to throw shade at Blackgate, the handheld version, right? So I guess fourth developers to come in and really play in this world, do you have a lore

master? Is there somebody who's paying attention to all that? How does that work? Yeah, so when we started talking to Warner Brothers in D.C., back at the inception of the project, and we really showed. that we were committed. We cared about this franchise so much. We wanted to do an official entry into the game. We wanted to set it after origin, so it's still relatively early in Batman's career. And I think, yeah, because of the prototypes with combat, with locomotion with grapple, we were able to prove to them that we care enough about this franchise.

We know enough about VR that we can deliver a really great game. And there was so much trust from day one put into me and the team that we were going to do our homework and do something that's really authentic in that universe. and I thought, yeah, it's going to be hard, but it can't be as hard as it was for me when I jumped into Metal Gear back in 2005. Yeah, there was a bit of pressure on you then too. When I had become the lore master and helped develop Metal Gear Solid 4,

I gotta say, now looking three years or so in change into the past, I don't think I really appreciated just how complex and how interwoven that Arkham franchise is. Yeah. It has been an absolute education. If it wasn't for Warner Brothers,

in D.C. to help guide through, like, to kind of fill in the blanks of like actually what's happening behind the scenes, but also giving us an opportunity to go fill in a lot of those things that haven't been developed by Roxetti and Warner Brothers. So it's been hard. I'm not going to lie. But I care so much about making sure that we get everything right. And I think the public's reaction to our teaser trailer. Yeah. Indicated to me that they appreciated the level of detail and care that we've approached that trailer. And that's just the beginning. Obviously, the game is the most important thing. And I think it's for a thing. For sure. That's the thing, you know, watching through the new trailer, right, and having it be there, right, to have the Harleen with the glasses, right? And have, you know, allude to the scarecrow there. And then, of course, go into this and see, and the press release talking about Harvey Dent, right? Right, right. But pre-to-face Harvey Dent, I assume. That's right. Where are we, what is the story? Obviously, you guys call out the Rat King. You see the Rat King there.

Yeah, so the setup of our game is that, yeah, so Batman is X amount of time from coming out of origins, where Gotham City was rocked by the events of that game and what happened with Joker and that big reveal. And so, you know, Batman's, you know, because of his strength, because of his just, his brazen approach, less thoughtful than I think he is in later games in terms of his approach. He's had a lot of early successes, basically just using fear and his strength to defeat, to defeat the different enemies that are threatening God. Gotham. And what we're trying to do with our game that we're alluding to in the title of the game with Arkham Shadow is that we're creating a villain and a world that really kind of takes or pulls the worst out of people. Okay. Including Batman. Okay. And really putting him through a very dark moment and dark chapter in his in his timeline. Would you say something? He's got a pretty dark timeline. He does. And when I was like doing my research and playing through all the other games multiple times, one thing I was I really, I was really taken aback by by. with origins was just how violent and how unremorseful he was. And I think he was more thoughtful as you got in.

So I thought that was an opportunity to show how does he become more thoughtful? How does it become more of a complex... Yeah, right. The blog post calls out, of course, Batman grapples with the contradiction at the core of his identity. The use of force in pursuit of peace. That's right. Yeah. So, yeah, we're going to put him through the ringer in this game.

The Rat King is... The Rat King, our big villain is going to put him through the ringer. And it's going to be fun just to kind of explore these origin stories of these classic characters, like you mentioned, like Harley Quinn, and scarecrow and yeah, a few others. And more, I'm sure. Yeah. This episode of Kind of Funny is brought to you by Punkle,

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Yeah, so if I, so I don't know the exact time, but it's going to be longer than Iron Man, that's for sure. It's a much bigger game. It's a much bigger team. And so, yeah, it's going to be longer than Iron Man, which came in around between, you know, mileage may vary, but between what's eight, seven, eight, nine hours, I think. So we're going to be longer than that. I want to get to that asylum length. Yeah. But I also, I'm not going to repeat the same mistake.

I made an Iron Man for PlayStation. Which was that? What was that? I patted the game. Oh. And that's mostly my fault. Yeah. And I'll tell you why.

because we shipped the same year as Half Life Alex, and I heard that game was coming at 10 to 12. And so I was, okay, we could throw another encounter here. We could throw another encounter in here. And I padded that game. And so when we actually revisited Iron Man VR for Quest 2, which you played, it was an opportunity for me to go back to that game and just see that there was so much we could actually remove to make it stronger.

And so the game is actually shorter on Quest than it is on PlayStation, but I think actually stronger because of it. For sure. So I'm also trying to not repeat the same mistake with Arkham Shadow is that if the game comes in, at, I don't know, eight to ten hours, it's okay. It doesn't have to be 10 to 12 like Arkham Asylum was. Talk to me about then the setup of it.

You know, for Iron Man in particular, there was the Hubworld. You know, we're going back to the Tony's Malibu place. But it felt like mission by mission chapter by chapter. There's rankings, there's stars and stuff like that. Batman, of course, even since Asylum, which wasn't open world, but was a Metroidvania, it felt like it was all flowing and I was doing everything in the same night and yada, how does that work here? So from day one, when we approach Warner, we had a couple of different things.

And one of them we said is like, hey, we love Arkham Knight. We're not going to come here and pitch you Arkham Knight, VR, big open world with all of these features. This is our first go at Arkham. What we like to do is start, like in a lot of ways how Rock City started, which was Arkham Asylum. Sure. And so Arkham Asylum is the core inspiration for the way that the game flows and the way the game is structured. So more of a hub and spoke type of structure. You can have open environments like you do the courtyard in.

in asylum, if you remember. Yep, of course. Different dungeons are going to, unlocking different gadgets, a Metroidvania inspired structure. Okay, cool, cool, cool. Are you doing the lean into trying to replay or set a high score kind of thing,

or is it no? Yeah, we're going to do things like that as well. Still actually TBD in terms of like what we're going to ship with and what might be post-launch content. But yeah, we want people to just be able to kind of go back into encounters and kind of get better scores like that, which is pretty fun with the Arkham games. Okay.

Yeah. We've talked about all this. You go there, you pitch the thing, you do the thing, you learn about the lore. but like you talked a bit about fan reaction to the teaser. Has there been or was there even now? Because of course we're recording this before. It actually goes live for everybody. Has there been trepidation getting to actually showing people the game?

Has there been nervousness? Has there been fear? Because of course, Arkham's so beloved. And of course, even though you're using Roger Craig Smith, who is awesome and he's a friend of the show, we love him. Obviously Kevin Conroy was so beloved.

Like there's so many, this is what a Batman game is, right? How was that like coming and tackling that? That's interesting. I'm really, I love... Actually, if you just zoom out of what we're doing on this game, you know, we've been in development, what, for three and a half years, and we just showed it on May 1st, and we're launching this fall.

So it's a pretty tight timeline. So... Look at your favorite developers' Wikipedia page on how long it's take them to make your favorite games. You're moving quickly. And yeah, typically it's at least a year before launch as you typically announce your game, and then you go dark for three, six, nine months, sometimes longer, right? So actually in a very short amount of time,

what we're trying to do is introduce the community, introduce the public to the name of the game, the logo, the abstract trailer. Now we've got the story trailer at Summer Game Fest you all just saw. And then next beat is at Gamescom with the gameplay trailer. And that's what we're going to show. Yes, footage from the game, powered by Questery. And our goal is with this game,

not just with that trailer, but with the game itself, is to make sure that this is the most beautiful game you can possibly play on the Quest 3. Because that hardware, it's a good piece of hardware. I was going to say, San Zaru down there with Asgar's rat. Their ears are burning. Yeah, right? I mean, hey, they did it.

I mean, that game looks beautiful even on the Quest 2, right? But we were able to skip the Quest 2, just not have to worry about supporting that, and just go all in on the new hardware, which is much more powerful. And we know that the Arkham games all look beautiful. And so that's going to be the fan's expectation as well. So now that is what the focus is right

now with the team, is just making sure it looks as good as possible. Are you obviously you're already living it to some degree with the teaser but now with the full video being out there or full trailer being out there are you prepared to fight that fight for VR like this is obviously an ongoing conversation kind of funny all the time but then I know

even with the teaser there was so many including Barrett not even try to be mean but like oh yeah I love it yeah I am so motivated by it because I'm a big believer in VR obviously right but I wouldn't I hope that people think that know that's genuine right because we we didn't have to jump into VR like we did

We started off as an independent developer making mobile games. Yeah. Right. And we just love this technology. We really believe in it. And it makes, meta's making it a lot easier for us because now in 2024, there is this amazing, in my opinion, the best VR hardware out there, which is the meta quest three. It's wireless.

It's fairly powerful. And you've now got this amazing catalog of games that if you buy the hardware for Arkham Shadow, you also know that you can jump into playing, yeah, Asgard's Wrath 2 or Assassin's Creed. This year, you've got. What? You've got Skydanz's behemoth. Yep. You've got Alien. You've got Arizona Sunshine from last year. There's just so much good content.

Oh, yeah. Tetris effect. Yeah, it's Song in the Smoke. There are so many good games that I can just sit there with confidence to say, hey, if we, if we do our job, which is to deliver a great game this holiday with Arkham Shadow, you love Arkham, you love Batman. I have no trepidations about recommending to pick up this hardware now that you have all this great content that's already in, and, you know, available for players, but also on the horizon as well. Okay. Okay.

What haven't I asked you here about this game since you won't, you know, show it? Oh, man. You haven't asked me. Coward. Yeah, what the ending is. I appreciate that. I appreciate that. I would love to ask.

Who's playing Harvey then? Who's playing Jim Gordon? I'll say that a lot of returning cast. Okay. And hopefully at Gamescom, you'll be able to hear their voices. Okay. So looking forward to that. But, yeah, look, Barrett.

Barrett is my spirit animal now. Okay. His reaction to the trailer is something that really resonated with me because I know what it's like to be in his shoes for a franchise that you love so much. And maybe it's not announced for the platform that you wish it was. Sure. But I know what we're making.

And I can't wait to get the headset onto him. And hopefully he, I want his genuine impressions, but I really hope that he, it goes the way I expect it to go, which is he puts the headset on. He's, oh, damn, I'm Batman. Oh, it's not even just floaty arms.

That's been like, the whole suit's here. This looks, oh, this is a quest game? This looks really good. Yeah. Oh, I got the battering? Okay, I got, I got other gadgets here. And, okay, I'm going to go into a combat sequence. And it just flows like a good beat saber session or like a good super, super hot session.

And he's doing Predator. He's going, I love all these characters, but I can see them in a different world and a different view with the immersive nature of VR. I just, that is my inspiration for this game, not just for Barrett, but all the Arkham fans out there. You know, you bring up Super Hot, you bring up Beat Saber. Is this going to give us a workout? It will give you a workout.

Okay. It will. Actually, it's an interesting challenge that you don't really have with the flat screen games. For sure. Well, I guess you can get fatigued in flat screen games too if there's like just too much combat, right? Yeah. You got to pace it out.

But because VR so physical too. Yeah. Yeah, we're getting feedback right now as we're going through playtest. It's like, hey, Ryan, can you like tone down? this huge battle inside monarch theater that is like a really big moment in the game it's it's it's fatiguing so we have to really pace it out to allow players to go explore take their

like literally kind of catch their breath because it's so physical sure and then get back into a comment and that's where you mix in I guess a lot of detective vision right yeah you go yeah you do your investigations yeah crime scene investigations and yeah I'm just talking to characters you have got them radio playing it's just yeah we're taking every single element we possibly can from the Arkham franchise and bring it into this game. Well, Ryan, I can't wait to see it. I can't wait to hear what you have to say about it. Thank you for coming by and talking about this. Game comes the next big beat, obviously.

Right now, everybody should go and watch the trailer, though. Drive up those numbers for you. Yeah, please, drive up those numbers. The numbers for the teaser trailer are amazing. So we're really happy to see that people still clearly care about this franchise. Of course. And I want them to know that we just, we care just as much. And we're going to do the best thing we possibly can with it. Okay. This holiday, you said. This holiday, yeah. Okay. That's right. Ladies and gentlemen, Batman, Arkham, Shadow. This holiday on the MetaQuest three. This has been Ryan Payton. Of course, this has been a breakout of us here on

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