Arkham Knight and the Riddler Inspired Mechanic

The DC universe fosters an intriguing cast of colourful villains and equally loony heroes. That’s why the Arkham series did so well, they took a pre-existing IP with a gigantic catalogue of comic book lore, and piggy-backed off a wanting audience that needed their kick of Superhero video games. Well ask and you shall receive… a poorly optimized PC port.

It’s quite sad really, Arkham Knight had all the potential in the world to be the next best game in the highly acclaimed series, and yet it came tumbling out the gates, tripping on this 30 fps caps, texture popping and consistent game crashing. Never threat, we’re now 2 years out from that and now the game is finally playable on PC.

I don’t intend to do a full review of this game, but it you want to look into what I think about the franchise in general, you can read my review on Batman Arkham City, as the two are very similar gameplay wise.

https://reubenterehu.wixsite.com/reubenshortlandviews/single-post/2017/03/24/Arkham-a-series-worthy-of-acclaim

I what do intend to analyse is a game mechanic from Arkham Knight that serves as the main inspiration for the dimension switching mechanic from the game I’m currently working on, “The Duke”. During the sections where you’re forced by the Riddler to complete complicated tasks to save Cat woman, you’re placed on a time trial racing track at the wheel of the notorious Batmobile, tasked with completing the track within a limited time.

The Riddler twist to this menial task is the player control of the environment. Switching between red and white objects, the Dark Knight must carefully time each colour switch to allow the availability of curtain platforms for traversal over hazardous obstacles.

I found this to be an enjoyable mechanic as it kept the player on their feet in a high-octane set piece that involved self-perpetuated timing and genuine skill. I thought of the level in terms of game scripting. A Boolean value was created to track what set of coloured objects populated the room, and provided a player induced control for what specific set of objects aided their progression.

Once I adapted this line of thinking, a thought came to me, what if you could base an entire game's narrative around the usage of this mechanic. What if the two controllable Boolean states in a game code could actually represent two realities that a person with supernatural abilities could travel between, crafted with some greater purpose that drives an invested plot. That’s essentially the basis of thought that fostered the dimensional travel abilities of our protagonist in our game “The Duke”. Along with the themes of economic injustice, communistic idealism, and omnipotent vigilantism that we adapted from the Shakespearian play, “Measure for Measure”, this seemingly insignificant game mechanic from a small section of an overwhelmingly involved superhero game, laid down the fundamental groundwork for the universe building of our game, and centred the narrative around a single quintessential and story-significant superpower.

(Screen shot above from gameplay by “Those Damn Gamers” on Youtube.com - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYYoCmsfmRo)