More 'Batman: Dark Knight Detective' video game thoughts
I know many of you were interested in this idea, so I'm interested in more imput from you guys.
I haven't come up with a solid plot yet, but I know certain things I want included in the game. A poster in a Batman video game thread said that he would want an official comic book writer to write the plot and script, and I think that's reasonable. I would be in favor of Jeph Loeb, personally. That guy may have had a huge hand in that crap-fest 'Smallville,' but he does know how to write a good detective story featuring the Dark Knight.
Again, I want pretty much all of the Batman's greatest villains in this game and involved in a long-running conspiracy plot to various degrees, with or without their knowledge. Sounds very similar to 'Hush,' I realize, but 'Hush' was very rushed in the second half and even seemed a little sloppy in some places. I want this to play out as if it were taking place over a year or so, like at least two of Jeph Loeb's previous works ('The Long Halloween,' 'Dark Victory'). I want the tone to play out like a mixture of 'Hush' and 'Dark Victory' in that it's very atmospheric and focused on detective work, but also representative of how the individual villains and other characters behave and action-oriented. I want the Riddler to be a big part of it, but he doesn't necessarily have to be behind the whole thing. I don't want Hush to be the mastermind, but he can be in on it if that would work out well.
Like I've said before, I want these things to happen in the course of the story: flashback scenes for tutorials in basically
all of the Batman's crimefighting methods (Fighting, Getting around, Detective Skills, Gadgets, Psychological Tactics... each of these areas have many, many lessons to learn), more or less "real time" time passage at night when you patrol and follow up on cases, someone kills off all your street informants so you have to establish new ones, someone either outs or frames all your undercover identities (including Matches Malone) so you have to create at least one or two new ones, and other stuff I haven't decided on.
Anyway, now that I've got the preamble out of the way, here's the new stuff:
I have decided that my earlier declaration that the Batman would have to work toward real life standards of case-building to allow the police and D.A. to get solid convictions for criminals was over-ambitious and unrealistic. While the half-assed way they do it in the 'True Crime' games (you either find contraband during a search or catch someone in the midst of a crime or escaping the scene, cuff them after subduing them, dump them on the ground and go on your merry way to bust new perps) is not nearly good enough for a cop, it's actually perfect for the Batman. As much as I want this game to be as realistic as possible, it's more important that it match up with how things are done in the comics and the animated series, so I could let some things slide. The Batman busts criminals all the time that he just leaves tied up or cuffed at the scene. He always calls the cops to the scene if they haven't been called already, though. I'd have it work this way in the game, and you could choose when you called the police if you wanted to search the scene for a while. Presumably the cops would have oustanding warrants on most of these perps as well as evidence on the perps they could use in court, but there's also leads the Batman needs to follow regarding the underlying conspiracy to which the cops can't be privy just yet. So yeah, the Batman will track down crooks, unearth incriminating evidence whenever possible, but will not follow up most of these arrests after the fact. He catches petty crooks and moves onto the next crime while on patrol, or the next case if there are any unsolved.
Here is something else I've been thinking about a lot lately; how the Batmobile will operate. I've said before that there are certain bonus items you can use at various stages in the game that if you mess up with too much, you'll have to retrain yourself and pass tests before you can continue to use it. The Batmobile should be available at all times for the most part, but if you're crashing into stuff, I think control should be taken away. The Batmobile has autopilot, so that can be used in most circumstances and should be mandatory if you can't drive properly. One thing I wanted for sure for this game is that driving would not be a huge focus. There are so many freeroaming games now that force you to drive all over the place and occasionally race someone, tail someone and outrun and lose someone. I think you should have to use the car a fair amount in this game and should have to chase people and maybe run from the cops (during which you can't use autopilot), but there should be no races (except in an early tutorial where you learn how to handle fast cars around various courses) and you should be able to set an autopilot course to get where you're going if the car is what you want to use to get there (like if it's a long way away and you're on a schedule). The Batman is an action hero with a lot of high-tech stuff, so he should spend most of the time on his feet and not in the car, and you shouldn't have to waste time crashing through obstacles on the sidewalk to play the game. Also, there won't be any time limits that aren't absolutely necessary for the game, or at least none that are unreasonable. If there is a time limit that in real life wouldn't be known to you to the exact second, then you just have to hurry your ass up and hope there's enough time; no countdown clock on the screen unless you know exactly how much time you have to get somewhere or do something.
Anyway, back to the enforced autpilot thing. The Batman is not only a competent driver, but an excellent driver. It wouldn't do for him to clumsily plow through objects on sidewalks and crash into other cars when not in a high-speed chase (and even then it's not encouraged). It certainly wouldn't be okay if he ran someone over. If he kills someone, then the game is over and he has to start over at a minute or so before he failed. Now, because the main plot is supposed to be centered around an insidious conspiracy that infiltrates all levels of Bruce Wayne's life (it just now occurred to me that bad things should happen to Wayne Enterprises as well during all this), I'm thinking that a player's clumsiness could actually tie into the story. If you drive like an idiot (which is really easy to do and sometimes hard not to do in a video game), then the Batman will cut your control off and let the car drive itself with you picking out a destination and/or course on the GPS, and perhaps he could mention that his reflexes and overall performance have been suffering lately. What I'm getting at is, maybe there's something biologically wrong with him that is caused by his unseen enemy or enemies. This is a good place for Hush to play a part, and/or the Scarecrow and/or Poison Ivy. What do you guys think?
