When Batman: Arkham Knight releases this fall, it won't be just the urban decay, gothic architecture, and super villains run amok that will make Gotham City so bleak and depressing. Producer Dax Ginn recently spoke to the Examiner about the city's environment, revealing that for as long as players are under the cowl, Gotham wil be will be in a constant nightly downpour.
"Gotham City has got a very specific atmosphere and we spent a lot of time on making sure that's right. It's not just one thing, it's a combination of the atmospherics of light and reflections, it's always raining, it's always night time, making sure that the echoes through the street, they sound right."
The decision wasn't because of some kind of hardware limitations, but rather, what they can allow. Rain (and water overall) is a very difficult thing to convey properly, the way it pools into puddles, hits and reacts to characters and structures, the way it catches the light, etc., so if you're capable of working with something that can capture it properly, you might as well go all out.
Ginn also talked about Gotham's size, promising to be the largest landscape yet in an Arkham game, and how the team worked on making things different enough to provide a change of scenery, but still feel interconnected.
"As you're moving through the city, [you'll notice] that style of architecture changes but it all needs to feel like it's still part of the same continuous city. It's a really difficult challenge."
Ginn closed by cementing Knight's story, or at least Rocksteady's cover for it, with Scarecrow as the big baddie this time around. Things pick up "12 months after the death of Joker in Arkham City, so Joker's death has left this vacuum and the Scarecrow has returned to really take control of that and deliver the vengeance that he has been planning since Batman took him down in Arkham Asylum."
"Scarecrow is really unifying the rogue gallery and the intention of that unified threat is to destroy the Batman once and for all," Ginn said.
Not that Rocksteady isn't reliable, but given the company's penchant for plot twists, I wouldn't be surprised to learn that someone is pulling the Scarecrow's strings. After all, it looks like Best Buy is letting slip some previously unknown info concerning a young Damian. More on that here.