The Importance Of Narrative In Batman: Arkham Asylum

Batman: Arkham Asylum is a third-person action-adventure game developed by Rocksteady Studios for Xbox 360, Playstation 3 and PC. The story was written by experienced Batman writer Paul Dini who has also worked for Detective Comics and on Batman: The Animated Series, and draws from the 70 year franchise holistically, as opposed to a particular adaptation or branch of the Batman universe. As a result of this the game features many characters from the associated canon such as Commissioner Gordon, Oracle, and The Riddler, as well as new characters like Warden Quincy Sharpe, Frank Boles and William North. The game also features the voice talent of Kevin Conroy (Batman), Mark Hamill (The Joker) and Arleen Sorkin (Harley Quinn), all of whom have also worked as voice actors on Batman: The Animated Series. As the name suggests the game takes place in and around the grounds of Arkham Asylum on Arkham Island in the bay of Gotham City. Players take control of the titular character as he works to stop the Jokers plan of creating an army of mutant monsters to terrorize Gotham City. Although it is a licensed game, Batman: Arkham Asylum has managed to avoid many pitfalls that most licensed games all too regularly seem to fall into, such as an uninteresting storyline, poor game mechanics and thus gameplay, and lack of a player-centric focus in design. As has been claimed by many critics, Batman: Arkham Asylum stands as one of the best console action games regardless of its comic book background, with Electric Playground saying it "simultaneously breaks the Batman videogame curse, and gets on track to become one of the best games of the year." With only a few minor flaws and overall an engaging and entertaining experience, the game remains overwhelmingly appealing to fans of the Batman universe and newcomers alike. As a result, through this essay I wish to examine its importance as a game, a piece of the Batman franchise and as part of wider culture in general. Clearly a big feature of the game as it exists as part of the already well established juggernaut of a franchise universe is the narrative that is told as it plays out. Obviously as a licensed game and having the narrative already written by officially commissioned Paul Dini, the development team was forced to work with certain limitations in order to stay true to both this new arc as well as the wealth of history within the Batman canon. It is difficult to see this as any real hindrance however as crucial narrative factors were already well established, such as back story and interesting characters, as well as a believable and consistent world, (Perry, Storytelling Techniques) thanks to these all existing in comprehensive form within the Batman canon through comics, animations and previous (albeit largely unsuccessful) games. As a result of this Dini and the designers had a wealth of history and pre-text to play around with, allowing them to give the game a rich narrative thus making a strong contribution to the Batman universe overall. Whilst the game could be said to have been marketed mostly at fans of the franchise, it works to draw in new-comers as well, as the main villain is also arguably the most famous in the Batman universe. It could then be said that the game would not have had the same appeal if the main villain was The Mad Hatter for example, in this sense the narrative does depend somewhat on the player knowing an amount of back-story. As a result, fans of the franchise who know some of its history come into the game expecting certain behaviours from the characters they are familiar with. This is delivered as characters, locations and items all interact and respond in a way that is reflective of the franchises deep comic and animation history. The overall experience is very

engaging as so much attention has been paid to maintaining the integrity of this back story, the characters and their behaviours and accurately merging it with the game world. This is evidenced through Batmans cool and calculating manner during conversations with Oracle, here the continuity of having Kevin Conroy as the voice actor serves to further enforce this familiarity that is so crucial in engaging with the story, particularly for fans of the franchise. It can also be seen through collecting interview tapes which are scattered around the island, and playback audio of interviews with patients in the Asylum, such as Scarecrow. Whilst direct interaction with this character is somewhat limited, this audio plays conversations which work to create a story about Scarecrow attempting to reverse his situation and interview his psychiatric doctor, even though he is the patient. Many small items such as this can be found throughout the game environment and whilst they do not directly contribute to the main narrative, they serve extremely well in immersing the player within the often times very dense Batman universe. The over-arching narrative of the game follows what could be described as a skewed 3 act structure, involving quite a short exposition, a number of complications and a final denouement. It is effective in that each complication is contextually compelling enough to make the player want to continue pushing towards the final goal. Another important element of narrative structure is the fact that the game has a relatively high experiential density throughout, so long as the player continues on the main path. On that note, it is interesting to see that despite the game environment existing as an open world, the main narrative progresses in quite a linear sequence from point to point, on a fixed path with alternative paths locked off, at least for the first half of the story. Whilst players can go back and explore areas of the world that they may not have gotten too while passing through previously, (this is expected as certain areas are inaccessible until particular gadgets become available) at times the story will only progress forward when the player enters detective mode to follow a particular path of clues. This comes across as a poor design decision in an otherwise very good system of core game mechanics. However it can be argued that advancing any other way would seem odd as detective mode was most often used to detect and follow a path of evidence around the game world to the next point of interest, usually when tracking a non-player character. Whilst the concept makes sense in the context of the universe and with reference to the player characters background and history, in execution as a game mechanic for advancing the narrative it feels thin and limiting. Also of importance with regard to detective mode is the criticism it received from players and critics for making the game too easy. Some players reported completing the majority of the game in detective mode as it highlighted practically anything of importance to the players attention, thus making it so that many puzzles and combat situations provided little to no challenge to the player. In keeping with the spirit of the Batman franchise, the first real player-NPC interaction is handto-hand combat with prison thugs, after a cinematic sequence revealing the Jokers trap. Combat also serves as a mechanic for narrative structure in that the player cannot pass through some areas of the asylum until they have defeated the enemies in that area. Described as a freeflow combat system, fighting comes down to three moves: attack, stun and counter. Whilst combat involves relatively simple commands (attack, stun or counter) it is up to the player to decide which enemies pose the biggest immediate threat and attack them first. This is a vital skill as combat is most often in close quarters and against multiple enemies some of whom have weapons. This can be considered an element of player centric design in that the fighting system is easy to pick up but difficult to master, and like many games the difficulty of combat

progresses in a gradual upwards, linear direction over the course of the game. Again in appealing to the established character of Batman, some situations require stealth and lurking in the shadows to progress forward with the narrative. Some of the animations used for this and in combat bear some resemblance to various scenes within the Batman films such as Batman Forever and Batman & Robin. Clearly the concept of narrative plays a paramount role in Batman: Arkham Asylum, there would be almost no incentive to play the game without it. It is the driving force on which the game experience hinges. The game contains a vast array of snippets into the history of many characters. Importantly this is really the first Batman game in the franchises history to really get it right, both in terms of a successful game and in producing a product that fits well into and contributes as, an important part of the Batman universe.