Bathead said:
Just a suggestion for the video game. All your missions seem to be crimes of one kind or another. How about throwing in a couple of rescue type missions as well? Batman has done a good number of those over the years.
Very good point. The crimes listed are not the full list of missions and activities, but absolutely, there would be rescues (in addition to rescuing the victims of crimes in progress). Thanks for the suggestion.
They'll be less frequent than crimes, especially because I don't want it to be like the game for 'Spider-Man 2' (where the same exact thing happened over and over again, with people falling from scaffolds and hurting themselves in the street all the damn time), but he should definitely do a few different types of rescues several times.
One obvious type of rescue is burning buildings. A structure that looks like it can collapse at any moment from the inside and has the stairways blocked or in ruins is the perfect place for the Batman to do what the professionals can't. With your grapnel, some of your gadgets (including small explosives, which must be used very carefully in this situation) and your ability to move very quickly and carry a rescuee using one arm to secure, wearing much lighter (and less effective, unfortunately) Nomex shielding, you can do what they can't in a pinch. You'd use the grapnel to carry you up through unsafe stairwells (or straight up the center of the building if it's built in an atrium/balcony style) and to lower yourself and your rescuee. You'd use small Bat-bombs on doors, and possibly parts of walls if the Batman says it's okay after using the First-Person/Close Inspection View. You can kick down most doors, but if it's surrounded by enough fire, you could get hurt and be forced to move slower. The same applies to walls that the Batman deems unsafe to blast or kick through (he can kick through cheap walls if he has to in general).
The firefighters would basically be giving up by the time you arrive (you'll get a notice over your emergency and police radio scanner) on whomever is still inside, and there may actually be a fireman or two still in there. You would use your directional microphones to listen to the firemen talking to each other when you arrive for any clues as to where you can make an entry and if they know how many people are still inside. You would be carrying two gas/rebreather masks in your utility belt (later in his career, he actually had a backup mask... or I could be confusing that belt with Robin/Tim Drake's, which had not only at least two rebreather but lots of oxygen cartridges), one of which you would use, and the other you'd put on the person you're rescuing.
If there are multiple people in danger, you'll have to make every attempt at rescuing everyone if you have reason to believe they're in danger, or your Knight rating gets penalized. If in the game you were close enough to hear the firemen say "I think there's X many people still in there and we can't reach them" and/or if you were facing their direction with your directional microphones on (I'm just going to call them "Bat-ears" from now on), the information gets recorded in your Dialogue Record (the Batman remembers everything he hears in this game, and all you have to do is check), which makes you responsible for that information. If the firemen say they don't know or say nothing, then you just don't earn as many points, rather than losing them for neglecting lives you knew were in danger. That dynamic goes for all lives in danger in every situation. Inside the burning building, you can use your Bat-ears to scan around and pick up screams, but the most effective technique for seeking out possible people trapped is if you use the dialogue function to call out and also scan.
It could get annoying, but if this was a recurring type of rescue mission and you kept a decent Knight rating by the time you've done two big fire rescues perfectly, you could earn a special gadget-- a fire extinguisher grenade, which is the same size and shape as one of your other grenades (smoke bomb, tear gas cannister, flashbang) but extinguishes fire for a certain range of where the thing goes off. The fire will spread back there after a little while, but you'll earn some previous time. It would help a bit during the big battle royale with the police, which will indeed be a burning building once Sgt. Branden drops a bomb or two from a helicopter right on the condemned building you ran into to escape the police. There will be some derilicts in there to save, and a cat. The cat is very important, because the Batman saved a cat in 'Batman: Year One,' and in the game, successfully saving the cat will boost your Knight rating considerably from wherever it was and give you the option to roam Gotham City as Catwoman after beating the game!
It occurs to me that if the burning building missions were repeating, that could lead to an old school investigation and another boss fight down the line. After three or so incidents, the Batman would get suspicious, open a Tentative Case file (which automatically puts copies of each of the Batman's pertinent incident reports in one file) and explore the possibility that each of the incidents are related. Maybe this should be left to a second game, since I'm having trouble thinking up ways to keep the games fresh from game to game. I don't know. The first step is to cross-reference the files (which would be easiest in the second game or later, when the Batcomputer is now a formidable intelligence-gathering database), and it may or may not yield a clear lead. You can still do some sort of grouped data function that puts all categorical data in lists for each category (for example, for "Owner/Landlord" you'd get three or so names in the same place category, one for each building). If the cross-reference yields anything at all, though, you must examine it closely and consider it a possible lead. There will be information in the Batman's files on arson, just as with all other crimes in the game, so that info might be helpful and put you on a clearer path. If any of the owner/landlords or supers have been charged with insurance fraud before or are known to be in debt, that's a red flag. If there's record of anyone invested in the building having pressed charged against someone else, that's a possible lead. If you dress up as Matches Malone, walk into a known criminal hangout bar in a huff and start complaining to the bartender that a jackass named [name of landlord] owes him overdue money and is now M.I.A., someone might happen to mention another guy who he owed money and how the guy "learned his lesson." Lead! Or you can start busting heads as the Batman and interrogate people until you get a new lead on the person you're asking about.
Anyway, it all probably leads to Firefly, who'd have been hired to set some really nasty fires by one or more parties whose names you'd find through detective work. That's the kind of stuff I want going on in a Batman game. Conspiracy is the probably the best way to the heart of a bigger case, so files and computers are important, and so is legwork, surveillance and interrogation.
I haven't thought deeply about other kinds of rescue missions yet. Maybe you could offer some suggestions for those?
Thanks again for posting, Bathead.
